They stood opposite each other on the bare training ground, breath misting in the cool morning air. Lucas felt the weight of the moment like a held breath; the long night of worry had boiled down to this simple line between them.
"So what," Lucas said, forcing a smile he didn't feel, "you gonna fight me now?"
Shawn only moved once—smooth, economical—and the world narrowed to the taut arc of his bow. "Something like that," he answered, voice even and flat.
The first arrow sang. It broke the air with a clean whine and forced Lucas's eyes to follow—just as Shawn wanted. He stepped left, the shaft whistling past, and felt for the rhythm of the fight. Then, impossibly, Shawn vanished from where he'd stood and was suddenly at Lucas's flank, a flash of motion so quick Lucas's mind stuttered.
The impact was a brutal, clean kick to his ribs. He tasted dust as his feet left the ground and palms found sand; an arrow clipped his way as he flew. He hit the earth hard and rolled instinctively, drawing breath and finding the world tilted. Shawn's smirk was there, calm and almost bored, like a man watching a lesson unfold.
Before Lucas could gather himself, a rain of arrows raked the sky—dozens of dark shafts arcing in from above. He flattened himself into the hollow of the ground and the arrows thudded and skimmed all around him, a chorus of wood and feather. He could feel the shock of each gust of displaced air as the volley passed.
"Don't underestimate me," he managed between breaths, wiping grit from his mouth. "I've barely started."
He sprang up, every reflex honed by months of training kicking in. He moved through the storm of falling arrows with a dancer's timing, sliding under one, spinning out of the path of another, catching a seam of rhythm between their trajectories and using it to slip forward. Each dodge sharpened him; each landing stoked the ember of something stubborn and hot inside.
Shawn watched, unhurried. The smile on his face was small, satisfied—not from malice, but from proof. Then Lucas felt it: a sting at the back of his neck as something kissed his shoulder. He didn't have time to think before it burned with white pain. He staggered, hot blood slicking his fingers when he touched the wound.
"How—?" he spat, surprise more furious than the throbbing ache.
Shawn's hand lifted, lazy and precise. Between his fingers a thread gleamed faint in the sun, a filament no more than a hair but pulsing with intent. He traced the line back with one graceful motion and Lucas's head turned for him as if pulled.
There, half-hidden in the dust behind Lucas, a bow lay propped at an angle. The string was taught and the whole instrument looked ordinary at a glance—except it hadn't been there a moment ago. The line that connected Shawn's finger to that bow shivered. Shawn turned the thread over between two fingers as if admiring a fine wire. The air around it hummed with the unmistakable twist of concealment.
"It wasn't a trick," Shawn said, voice soft as paper. "It was planning."
Lucas swallowed, the taste of shame. He had been hit from behind while watching the sky, thinking only of the rain of arrows; the thought of a second bow hidden so close had never crossed him. The concealing thread—magic of the sort that required practice and cold thought—had made the ordinary impossible to see.
Shawn stepped closer, keeping his voice low so the space between them felt like a private room. "From the start of the fight I set the frame. I fed you choices—ones I knew you'd make. I watched the way you moved, the way you flicked your shoulder when you expected a straight shot. You fight off instinct. That's not wrong. It's honest. But it's readable."
He tapped the thread between his fingers. The faint glint of magic pulsed. "You build yourself on instinct and rage. Familiar swings, familiar anger. You do the same things when you're angry you do when you're tired. You repeat patterns. You become a book I can open."
Lucas pushed himself up, blood smearing the back of his hand. Anger flared—not the blind kind that had gotten him through childhood fights, but a sharper spike now: humiliation edged with a grudging respect. "So what? That's not fair."
"Fair has nothing to do with this," Shawn said. He folded the thread away, the bow at his back fading into the cloth of nothingness as concealment slipped shut. "If you walk into tomorrow with only what you did here—anger, instinct, the same old swings—you'll lose. Not maybe. Certainly. I could prove it again and again."
He watched Lucas, eyes cool and precise. "You can be stronger, Lucas. But strength without plan is noise. Learn to think one step ahead. Learn to make your opponent move to your will, not the other way around."
The words cut. They were not cruel—they were the blunt instrument of truth. Lucas felt them land like strikes, small and exact. He tasted blood and pride and the salt of resolve.
Across the empty field the sky brightened. The duel had been a lesson given with no pretense of gentleness. Shawn's point hung between them: adapt, or fall.
Lucas drew a long, wet breath and met Shawn's gaze. The fight had not ended so much as shifted—into something heavier, a promise of what must come next.
"I won't be fighting you now," Shawn said, his tone calm, almost dismissive. "I told you all you needed to know."
Lucas tightened his grip on his sword, sweat dripping from his brow. His pride burned at how easily Shawn had outclassed him, but beneath the sting there was a quiet resolve. "Wait," he called, his voice rough. "What about the masked fighter? You've seen them, haven't you? What are their weaknesses?"
For a moment Shawn's eyes flickered, unreadable in the pale moonlight. Then he shook his head. "Weaknesses? If they have them, I don't know them." He started to walk away, his boots crunching lightly over the dirt. But before the shadows swallowed him, he glanced back. "What I do know is this—you'll never beat them by swinging the same way you always do. Watch. Adapt. Change as the fight unfolds. That's your only chance."
The words hit Lucas harder than any arrow. He stood there, breathing heavy, his sword still drawn, as Shawn's figure vanished into the night.
The camp fell silent again, save for the distant crackle of a dying fire. Lucas looked at his blade, then at his trembling hands. He let out a low growl and forced himself upright. Shawn's lesson wasn't going to be wasted. If the masked fighter couldn't be read from the outside, then he would sharpen himself until he could read them from within the fight itself.
And so, while Shawn rested, Lucas stayed—his silhouette moving alone beneath the stars.
Lucas stayed long after the camp had gone quiet. He kept the tent flap open for air, letting the night press cool and honest against his face while he moved.
Blade met leather with a steady, hollow rhythm—swing, return, swing. He imagined Shawn's words as a metronome: plan, not rage. He tried to fold the lesson into muscle memory, to make thinking and motion the same thing. Each cut was deliberate now, not the angry arcs of the orphanage days but small, practiced lines meant to test balance and tempo. He counted the breaths between strikes. He watched the way his feet shifted, how a tiny change in angle could open a dozen new counters.
When he let the sword sing, he tried to call the fire the way it had come once before—during the trial, when terror had squeezed him and something hot and terrible had answered. He focused until his knuckles whitened, until the world narrowed to the hiss of the blade through the air. He felt for the heat in his chest, the thrum he had always supposed was only courage or stubbornness.
Nothing.
He struck again. The steel flashed; it bit the practice dummy's hide; sand kicked up. Still nothing. He breathed, centering, pushing the thought like a plough through soil: imagine the flame, imagine it answering. He concentrated on memories of the master, on Leo's face the night of the slaughter, on Shawn's slow, precise demonstration in the moonlight—but the fire would not come. It sat behind a glass he could not see.
Frustration pooled, hot and personal. Lucas dropped his sword and sank to one knee on the hard ground. Bandages around his ribs tugged with the movement, a dull throbbing answering each heartbeat. He clenched his fists until his nails dug his palms, and then he slammed one flat down into the sand. The impact sent grit into the air and a cracked sound that echoed like a wordless curse.
"Why can't I even feel it?" he spat to the night, the question raw and useless. Anger rose quick—at himself, at every time he had been two steps behind someone he admired. It tasted like metal.
For a long moment he let the anger have him. It steadied his hands, gave him a shape to carve against. Then, slower, he let his mind untangle. Shawn had not only mocked his flaws; he had pointed out a path. Plan. Predict. Make the opponent move.
Lucas forced himself to the small things—footwork without flourish, breath control until his pulse calmed by degrees, eyes learning to scan for rhythm rather than force. He shadowed moves in his head: the masked fighter's habits, the way the silent one shifted weight before a thrust, the cadence of someone who never spoke yet always seemed to speak through motion.
He worked until his shoulders burned and the cold carried a bite that made his breath white. He did not attempt the fire again; not with flailing hope. Instead he practiced the edges of combat—the reach of a step, the angle of an elbow, the economy of motion that would leave room to think a split second longer. He practiced making decisions before his blood could call the shots.
Hours bled into the small, blue light of pre-dawn. When at last Lucas paused, the camp around him still slept, but his hands did not shake. His muscles held the memory of motion, and his head held something sharper: the realization that power without shape was a hammer that would always miss a nail hidden behind armor.
He rose, gathered his sword, and wrapped the bandages tighter where the knife cuts had opened. He brushed sand from his trousers and tucked the blade against his hip. There was no fury now—only the quiet, dangerous sort of hunger that makes a person learn. Tomorrow would not be the same fight it had been tonight. Tomorrow, he would walk in with a plan.
Lucas turned his face to the thinning sky and let the first pale line of sunrise wash the edge of the world. The flame would come, he told himself. Maybe not tonight. But it would come when he stopped begging for it and started building the steps that would make it answer.
The first pale fingers of dawn chased the last stars from the sky as Lucas folded his sword into its sheath. He moved with careful, measured motions—no hurry, only the small, precise rituals that steadied him: rewrapping a bandage, checking a strap, tasting the cool air. The camp was waking; tents whispered open and the low, ordinary noise of people preparing for the day crept into the morning.
Taylor caught his eye as he passed. A young man with wild, spiky brown hair and glasses, Taylor stood oddly composed among the morning bustle, a silver staff topped with a red orb resting in one hand. His deep-red tunic hung neatly from his shoulders, black belt cinching it to keep form and function together; loose dark trousers and scuffed black shoes finished the practical look. Taylor gave Lucas one of those small, observant looks that took in more than it showed, then turned away as if deciding something.
"Isn't he the anomaly-?" Lucas thought to himself, "Drew will be fighting—well, good luck to him, I guess." , "Staring is not good, anomaly boy" Taylor said as he walked on and Lucas left too.
Lucas tightened a strap and let the comment wash past. Labels had a way of sticking whether one wanted them or not. He felt the old familiarity of everyone watching—their eyes tracing the line he walked—but the lesson from last night sat like a small tool in his chest: plan, adapt, don't rely on a single spark.
By the time he reached the edge of camp the trial grounds were coming alive. Figures moved in the soft light; breath fogged as the air cooled and the day stretched. The masked contender was already there—first there, as if summoned by the place itself. Lucas stopped a step short, surprised. There had been no sound of someone leaving their tent; no whisper, no shuffled canvas. Yet there they leaned against a tree with a spear resting idle by their side, the mask unreadable in the fledgling sunlight.
An examiner paced between the markers, presence like a well-worn cloak—quiet, authoritative. He watched with the same unreadable patience as the mask did, the crackle of his authority rippling through the gathered candidates like a current. Around them, others took their places, the murmurs of nerves and strategy folding into the morning. Lucas felt the moment narrow to a fine point: the last quiet before the test.
Slowly, the rest of the candidates gathered on the ground. Lucas found his place without thinking, eyes flicking to Shawn—who stared impassively at the examiner—and then to Drew, who stood beside him, shoulders squared but gaze drifting toward Taylor and the examiner in equal measure.
The examiner cleared his throat. Conversation cut off like a snapped thread; every head turned toward him. "For the duels," he began, voice measured and absolute, "any sort of fighting is allowed. You are here to show your skills and powers. Now some may ask—what if they die or get injured? No worries." He snapped his fingers.
The world folded.
In an instant the air changed and every candidate found themselves gone from the open ground. Lucas materialized alone in a spacious chamber that smelled faintly of stone and old smoke. The room was large enough to swallow sound; its brick walls reminded him of the previous trials, but this time weapons hung from iron hooks — spears, axes, short blades, a heavy flail — each glinting dully in the light. He knew, with a small, stubborn certainty, that he did not need any of them.
The masked fighter was there too, on the opposite side of the room, leaning like a rooted statue against the far wall. They rose without haste, spear resting in one steady hand. The mask offered no hint of expression; the figure's stillness felt like a held breath.
The examiner's voice echoed from nowhere and everywhere. "This is an illusionary world. Even if you die here, you will return the same as normal to the real world." His tone slid across the chamber like a rule carved into stone. "To win, there are several ways. First: kill or paralyze your opponent completely. Second: knock your opponent out and break the walls of this room. And last, but not least: impress the examiner."
Lucas took it in. The hook of the rules lodged in his mind, practical and cold. He glanced at the weapons hanging from the walls. They were tempting, glittering tools of immediate change—yet he felt no pull toward them. The fight would be between what he already carried and what the masked fighter concealed.
Elsewhere, Drew's world was not so different: a stone chamber, the same harsh light, and a wall rigged with an axe, a spear and a flail. Across from him, Taylor stood composed, staff in hand, the red orb at its tip a gentle glow. He did not move like someone about to strike—he moved like someone arranging a thought into shape. Then Taylor tapped the staff once on the floor and the orb gleamed, and where there had been a single figure there now stood two—an exact likeness, a clone that split Taylor's calm in half. Drew's eyes widened. Taylor's mouth curled into a small, satisfied smirk. "What kind of anomaly is he?" Drew thought.
Shawn's room, predictably, was the quietest of all. He leaned, unruffled, hands idle at his sides. His opponent moved in a contrary rhythm—striking strange poses that said nothing of blade or bow. The poses were theatrical, bizarre, as if the man sought to distract by unmaking the idea of combat itself. Shawn watched with that same bored patience, the faint curl of amusement at the corner of his mouth.
Back at Lucas's room, the masked figure loosened from the wall with the same slow, deliberate movement that had unnerved Lucas before. They walked—not hurried, not cautious—just a measured approach that erased the room's space in small, inevitable steps. The spear rested against a shoulder like a question mark, then, with a sudden sharp movement, they rotated the haft, leveled the tip toward Lucas and broke into a run.
Lucas reacted on the first breath of motion. The lesson from the night—plan, not rage—settled in his limbs like a second skin. He drew his sword in one smooth motion, not the wild slash of a boy who wanted to kill but the compact, efficient pull of someone who'd practiced restraint. The spear came like a white line; the blade met it in a harsh ring that split the air.
Steel bit metal. Sand shivered beneath their feet. Lucas felt the shock of impact run up his forearm, the vibration flow through his shoulders into his core. He didn't push with blind force. He redirected—angled, stepped, slid—every motion economical and small. The clash didn't roar. It spoke in clicks and the soft, frustrated hiss of a thing resisted.
The masked fighter jumped back the instant Lucas held the point. Their retreat was not a falter but a careful reset: distance re-established, posture rebuilt. The spear tipped, the mask tilted as if to appraise. For the first time, Lucas felt the weight of the space between them as an ally rather than an enemy.
He stood with his breath steady, bandaged ribs aching but voiceless in the quiet. The fight had not yet begun, but something had shifted inside him. Where there had been only reaction before, there was now a thin lattice of thought—footwork considered, breath measured, intent shaped into small, repeatable motions. Anger no longer drove his hand; a cooler hunger sharpened it.
He had come into the duel bruised and uncertain. Leaving the first exchange, he understood he was different: less a boy who met force with force and more a fighter who could watch a clockwork movement and answer with a plan. The masked figure watched him back—the unreadable mask acting like an indifferent mirror. Lucas met that blankness with something steadier than fear.
Ready, he thought. Not certain, not triumphant—ready.