Velra’s words followed Audree home like a burr stuck to fabric.

  If you want more training, ask Ina.

  It sounded simple when she said it—like everything always sounded simple when Velra said it. But the idea of asking Ina to teach him how to fight made Audree’s stomach twist. Ina wasn’t just strict; she was sharp in a way that made you feel stupid for having bones.

  Still… Audree had learned something important recently.

  People didn’t wait for you to be ready.

  Miners. Knights. Rumors. Whatever lived in the woods.

  Everything hit when it wanted.

  And he was tired of being the one on the ground.

  That night, Audree waited until the shop was closed and the house had quieted. The table was half-cleared, candlelight flickering low. Ina sat with her arms crossed, staring at a stack of notes Nora had left. Nora herself was in the back room, humming softly as she cleaned.

  Audree hovered near the doorway like he was about to confess to murder.

  Ina didn’t look up. “Spit it out.”

  Audree winced. “How do you always know?”

  Ina finally raised her eyes, unimpressed. “Because you stand like you’re about to get executed.”

  Audree took a breath. “I want you to teach me how to fight.”

  Ina blinked once.

  Then she leaned back in her chair, expression unreadable. “With what. Your mouth?”

  Audree’s face heated. “I mean… a sword. Basic techniques. How not to get tossed around.”

  Ina’s eyes narrowed slightly, like she was measuring whether this was real or another one of his impulsive phases.

  “Why,” she asked slowly, “do you suddenly care about swords?”

  Audree forced himself to keep his voice steady. “Because I’m tired of fearing being attacked.”

  That was true.

  It wasn’t the whole truth—but it was true.

  Ina stared at him long enough that Audree started to regret opening his mouth at all. Then she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose like she was already exhausted.

  “Fine,” she said. “Tomorrow morning. Before the shop opens.”

  Audree blinked. “Wait—really?”

  Ina gave him a flat look. “Don’t make me regret it.”

  Morning came too fast.

  Audree met Ina behind the house, where the ground was hard-packed dirt and the air still smelled faintly of ash and rain. The family horse watched them from the stable with mild interest, ears flicking.

  Ina tossed Audree a practice sword—wood reinforced with iron bands, heavier than it looked.

  Audree caught it awkwardly, the weight pulling his wrist down.

  Ina didn’t comment. She just drew her own blade, real steel, worn and honest. She held it like it belonged there.

  “Stance,” she said.

  Audree tried to mimic her.

  Ina stepped forward and kicked his front foot.

  Audree stumbled.

  “Wrong,” she said immediately. “Your balance is trash.”

  Audree gritted his teeth. “I literally just started.”

  “And you’ll stay bad if you get defensive about it,” Ina replied.

  She circled him slowly, eyes sharp. “Feet shoulder-width. Knees bent. Don’t lock up. The sword doesn’t hold you up—you hold it.”

  Audree adjusted, sweat already starting beneath his collar.

  Ina nodded once. “Better.”

  She pointed her blade at him. “Now swing.”

  Audree swung.

  It was… fine. Probably.

  Ina stepped aside like the strike was an inconvenience and tapped his ribs with the flat of her sword.

  Audree flinched.

  “That,” Ina said, “would’ve been your liver.”

  Audree scowled. “I’m trying.”

  Ina raised an eyebrow. “Trying to copy me.”

  Audree bristled. “I’m trying.”

  “That’s the problem,” Ina replied. “You’re trying to copy me.”

  Audree stared at her, confused and frustrated.

  Ina pointed her sword at him like it was a lecture pointer. “Audree, you’re not built like me. You don’t move like me. You haven’t lived like me. You probably will never be as good a sword fighter as I was—even now, in my old age.”

  Audree’s jaw tightened at the casual insult.

  Ina didn’t care.

  She leaned in slightly. “But you have things I didn’t.”

  Audree stared.

  Then she nodded toward the bag. “You have a slime that listens to you.”

  Then her eyes flicked—briefly—to his wrapped arm, as if she refused to acknowledge it directly. “And you have… whatever that is.”

  Audree swallowed hard.

  Ina stepped back and raised her blade again. “So stop trying to be me. Learn how to be you.”

  Over the next couple of weeks, Audree’s days split into two halves.

  Velra trained him in magic discipline—breath, flow, spacing, barriers, how to move like a mage and not get caught standing stupidly still. She pushed him to hold mana longer, to endure the burn, to understand that control was the only reason he wasn’t dead.

  Ina trained him in survival—how to keep his feet under him, how to read an opponent’s shoulders, how to use the environment, how to strike and move and not freeze when someone got close enough to smell his fear.

  Audree wasn’t great.

  Not with the sword.

  His swings were too stiff. His timing inconsistent. He overthought everything. He had the bad habit of hesitating right before contact, like part of him still expected fighting to follow rules.

  Ina punished that hesitation relentlessly.

  A tap to the ribs. A shove to the shoulder. A blunt strike to the thigh.

  “Dead,” she’d say. “Dead. Dead again.”

  Audree hated it.

  But he learned.

  He learned to throw sand in someone’s eyes if he had to.

  He learned to smash a potion vial under a boot and use the foam burst to block a path.

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  He learned to send Bubbles sliding low and fast—small distractions, little disruptions that made an enemy flinch at the wrong time.

  And slowly—slowly—he stopped trying to swing like Ina.

  He started swinging like someone who had never been a warrior, but had always been an alchemist.

  Someone who survived by using tools.

  Not brute strength.

  One afternoon, after Audree managed to keep his footing through three exchanges without stumbling, Ina stepped back and lowered her sword.

  “Hm,” she said.

  Audree panted. “What.”

  Ina’s mouth twitched slightly. “You didn’t die immediately.”

  Audree frowned, then realized that was probably praise.

  He wiped sweat from his brow. “Thanks… I think.”

  Ina flicked her blade toward him once, light and quick. “Don’t get cocky.”

  A few days later, Velra met Audree at the edge of the abandoned mill, arms folded, expression unusually sharp.

  “You’ve noticed the knights, right?” she asked.

  Audree’s stomach tightened. “Yeah.”

  Velra’s gaze flicked toward the distant town roads. “They’re acting strange.”

  Audree narrowed his eyes. “Strange how.”

  Velra hesitated, then said carefully, “They keep circling the same rumors. The same names. The same edges.”

  Audree’s grip tightened around his practice sword. “And the woods?”

  Velra’s mouth thinned.

  “They avoid it,” she said. “Like they aren’t allowed.”

  Audree stared at her, a cold weight settling in his chest.

  Because that wasn’t just suspicious.

  That was deliberate.

  And deliberate meant someone—something—had decided Embershade’s forest wasn’t a problem for knights to solve.

  Which meant it was either too dangerous…

  Or not meant to be stopped.

  Audree exhaled slowly, forcing himself to breathe through the rising unease.

  He wasn’t ready.

  Not yet.

  But he was closer than he’d been before.

  And this time—when the world came swinging—he didn’t want to be the one on the ground.

  Night in Embershade was never truly dark.

  Even when the sun vanished, the town still glowed—forge-light and furnace-breath staining the smog a dull orange. Shadows didn’t stretch cleanly here; they pooled, heavy and smeared across alleyways, clinging to brick like soot.

  Audree moved through them anyway.

  He’d gotten used to walking like this—quiet, hood up, arm wrapped, head down. Avoid the main streets. Avoid the market. Avoid the places where the knights might be passing, and the places where miners liked to drink themselves loud.

  He’d been keeping notes too. Pages and pages. Velra’s drills. Ina’s corrections. Observations about his arm’s intake and how long he could hold charge before his eyes started to flicker. Potion revisions in the margins. Failures crossed out so hard the paper tore.

  Progress.

  It didn’t fix everything, but it was something he could build.

  Bubbles shifted inside his bag, warm and damp against the glass vials. Audree had modified a few caps and stoppers—tiny grooves, tiny channels—so Bubbles could “sip” without knocking everything loose. He was… oddly careful now. Not about feelings. Not about people. But about what mattered.

  His tools.

  His breath fogged as he turned into a narrower cut between buildings. The backstreets were emptier, quieter—only the distant clank of late shifts and the hiss of rain on hot stone.

  Then a boot scraped behind him.

  Audree stopped.

  Not frozen—just still.

  He let his hand drift to the wooden practice sword strapped across his back. Not because wood was impressive. Because it was there. Because it was familiar. Because Ina had drilled into him that the first weapon you reached for was usually the one that saved you.

  A second scrape. Closer.

  Audree exhaled through his nose and kept walking, slow, measured—like he hadn’t noticed. Like he was still just a boy in a mining town.

  The alley opened slightly into a small yard behind an abandoned shed. Broken barrels. Old crates. A half-collapsed fence.

  A good place for an ambush.

  A terrible place for them.

  “Oi,” a voice called, rough and sloppy. “There he is.”

  Two men stepped out from behind the shed. Then a third. Faces half-hidden beneath wet hoods. Hands holding pipes, short blades, one crude club.

  Audree didn’t recognize them—but he recognized the look.

  Bold. Certain. Like they’d convinced themselves they were doing something righteous.

  “Should’ve stayed inside,” one of them said. “Heard you’ve been prancin’ around like you’re untouchable.”

  Audree’s stomach tightened.

  So they’d been watching.

  He forced his shoulders loose and breathed—slow, deliberate. In through the nose. Out through the mouth. Velra’s rhythm. Ina’s stance.

  His arm tingled beneath the wrap, faintly alive.

  “Move,” Audree said, voice flat. “I don’t have time for this.”

  The men laughed.

  One lunged.

  Audree didn’t try to block with his body.

  He stepped—angled his feet—let the momentum pass.

  The wooden sword came off his back in one clean motion, not a flourish, just a tool being used. He swung low, hard, and smacked the man’s knee with the reinforced edge.

  Bone jolted. The man cried out, stumbling.

  Audree didn’t stare. Didn’t gloat. He shifted position immediately—because Ina’s voice echoed in his skull:

  Don’t admire your work. Keep moving.

  The second man came in from the right, pipe raised.

  Audree felt the mana in his arm surge—burning, eager. He held the flow without panicking, pushing it through his body like Velra had forced him to do a hundred times.

  Enhancement.

  His heartbeat sharpened. His limbs felt lighter, faster—like his muscles were suddenly honest about what they could do.

  He ducked under the pipe swing and drove his shoulder into the man’s ribs, knocking him back into a crate.

  Wood cracked. The man cursed.

  The third one hesitated.

  Good.

  Audree’s eyes flickered—purple at the edges, sickly green glow tightening his pupils—and the world snapped into unpleasant clarity.

  He saw the third man’s stance: weight too far forward. He saw the pipe in the second man’s grip: loose. He saw the opening where the first man’s injured leg forced him to lean wrong.

  Too much information.

  His stomach rolled.

  He swallowed it down and forced his gaze to narrow—only what mattered.

  A fourth figure moved in the shadows.

  Audree’s breath caught.

  More?

  He shifted, turning his body so the shed was at his back and the open yard was in front of him. No one behind him. No surprises.

  Bubbles stirred in the bag, sensing tension. Audree didn’t look down—just touched the strap near the vials, a signal they’d practiced without meaning to.

  Bubbles responded.

  A soft hiss came from the bag as a thin mist puffed outward—not random, not messy. It carried the faint tang of Audree’s newest mix: a dulling irritant, not lethal, but enough to make eyes water and throats tighten.

  The third man inhaled and started coughing immediately, swearing as he rubbed his face.

  Audree moved through the moment.

  He stepped in, struck the man’s wrist with the wooden blade, and the weapon clattered to the ground. Audree kicked it away without looking.

  The second man recovered and charged again, angry now, reckless.

  Audree’s eyes caught it before it happened: the overextension, the bad footing.

  He pivoted, let the man’s momentum pass, then slammed the flat of the blade into the back of his shoulder—hard enough to drop him onto his knees.

  The first man, limping, tried to swing again.

  Audree raised his sword to parry—

  —and for a split second, his mind flashed to Lief.

  Lief’s shouting. Lief’s angry face. The way he’d looked hurt. The way he’d hugged Audree anyway.

  Audree’s chest tightened.

  He’d been avoiding thinking about Lief because it made him feel too much. Because it made him feel guilty. Because it made him feel lonely in a way he didn’t know how to fix.

  The hesitation was small.

  But in a fight, small was everything.

  The club clipped Audree’s forearm. Pain flared.

  Audree hissed and the mana flow wobbled—dangerously close to snapping.

  Breathe.

  He forced the rhythm back into place, jaw clenched.

  The man grinned like he’d finally proven something.

  Audree’s eyes narrowed, glow sharpening again, and the disgust rose—at the man’s sloppy stance, at his own mistake, at the entire stupid situation.

  He swung.

  The wooden blade caught the man across the ribs with a dull crack, sending him stumbling back, wind knocked out.

  Audree didn’t chase. He didn’t need to.

  He shifted again, sword held low, steady, breath controlled. His arm throbbed beneath the wrap, hungry for more mana, but he kept it leashed. Controlled. Focused.

  The remaining men looked at each other.

  Then they ran.

  Audree stood still for a heartbeat, listening to the retreating footsteps fade into the smog-soaked night.

  His stomach finally lurched from the aftershock of his perception, but he swallowed it down, blinking hard until the glow in his eyes dimmed.

  He exhaled.

  He’d done it.

  Not cleanly. Not perfectly. But he hadn’t been helpless.

  A distant shout cut through the alleyways.

  Audree froze.

  Voices—clearer, sharper, disciplined.

  Metal on stone.

  Knights.

  His pulse jumped. He turned, scooped his bag closer, and Bubbles clung instinctively to the inside like he understood hide, now.

  Audree moved fast—but not panicked. He slipped through a broken fence gap, cut behind the shed, and vanished into the maze of backstreets before torchlight reached the yard.

  He didn’t look back.

  When the sounds finally faded, Audree slowed beneath an overhang, rain dripping from rotten boards onto his hair.

  His hand drifted to his wrapped arm, then to where his bracelet used to be.

  Nothing.

  He swallowed the knot in his throat.

  Lief…

  He shook his head hard, like he could fling the thought away.

  He was improving. He was focusing. He was building himself into something that could survive.

  Maybe that was what he needed right now.

  Maybe this—this lonely sharpening, this relentless forward motion—was the only way he knew how to keep going.

  Audree adjusted the strap of his bag, felt Bubbles settle, then disappeared back into Embershade’s smoke like he’d never been there at all.