The old man stood with his hands folded behind his back, the worm-spirit's pale glow still clinging like a ghost to the air between them. For a long moment he said nothing; his gaze drifted over the three of them as if mapping lines only he could see. The yard smelled of smoke, split wood, and the thin wetness of melting snow. Even the wind seemed to hush to listen.
"This spirit," he finally said, voice low and careful, "is different from the others. From what I can read, it reveals certain measures — a man's will, his potential, even emotions that are buried. For most people, those things are transparent to the right eye. I have done this a long time, and I have rarely been wrong."
He padded once around the yard, boots sinking a little into the snow, then stopped in front of Elias. The light from the worm-spirit made the boy's skin look paler, like paper, and the old man's eyes softened for the space of a breath.
"I saw potential in you from the beginning," he said bluntly. "I told myself I had not erred. But now — why did it turn out like this?" He mouthed the question more to himself than to Elias. "I have never misread a thread before." His voice carried the weight of someone who had once trusted certainty and had found it slip.
Elias felt the words like a hand on a bruise. He had come to this world with grand illusions — not just the wish to survive, but a young man's expectation to rise, to conquer, to be someone remarkable. In his head he had rehearsed the image: stepping from a rainy alley of his old life into some strange sky and waking with power enough that everyone would bow. Now, standing in the old man's yard with a worm-spirit crawling like pale light between them, the illusion curdled.
I came to be a ruler, Elias thought, and the memory of that cocky promise to himself felt childish. Now I can't even scratch a training dummy. It's just a slap in the face. He tasted embarrassment and a bitter, private grief. Anger flared for a second — at chance, at the unfairness — and then sank into a dull, steady disappointment: everything he expected had been stripped away.
The old man watched the flicker cross him and did not look surprised. "I know what disappointment looks like," he said quietly. "I know what it does to a man. But disappointment can be put to work — or it can rot a life. You can learn. You can forge yourself a different blunt instrument if you have no blade."
Elias blinked. "Different… how?"
A small grin, like a crack of dawn, eased into the old man's face. "There is another path," he said. "Perhaps the thing you lack in spirits or arcane talent you can build in the body. Martial art. Technique. Discipline. If you cannot call wind or spark, you can learn to be a weapon. If your past is closed to me — and therefore to spirits — perhaps your hands are not useless. Strength does not always come from the same place."
Lyra snorted softly, more reflex than malice. "You? A warrior?" She nodded at Elias, half-laughing, half-mean. "He can't even stand on his feet half the time. What makes you think he has a chance as a fighter?"
Daren, ever more measured, looked at Elias with the sort of reserve that belongs to someone balancing hope and reality. "It's possible," he said slowly. "There are many who are poor at magic but strong with a sword."
Elias felt something ignite inside him at the old man's words. It was not a magic spark; it was the hot ember of possibility. The heaviness he had felt since the pebbles had bounced off the dummy — the shame, the private joke at his expense — changed shape into an eager, almost hungry hope. There is a road that does not ask for miracles. There is sweat and skill. He grinned, perhaps too wide.
"Lyra — you wait," he said, voice suddenly bright with a challenge he felt he could keep. "I'll learn martial arts and I'll beat you."
Lyra's laugh was immediate, a short, sharp sound. "You? Fine. I'll enjoy the show." She folded her arms and watched, amusement flickering in her eyes.
The old man raised a hand as if to calm a sudden market of egos. "Enough. We will try, but not as jest. Lyra, first you will do what I taught: concentrate your spirit inward and strike me. Not outward spectacle — inward: condense it into the limb that strikes. Then Daren. Then you, Elias."
Lyra stepped forward without hesitation. She settled into a stance the way some people settle into chairs: accustomed and confident. Her feet dug into the cold earth; the muscles in her legs tightened like drawn cords. She lifted a hand and the red ember within her flared — but she did not send it outward. Instead she drew it into her fist, compressing the warmth like coal between palms. For a heartbeat the air around her shimmered.
When she struck, the strike was not an outward burst but a focused impact. The old man held out an arm to meet it. The contact was loud and hot, a wooden thud and a hiss as the compressed flame tried to flare. The old man did not stagger; he flinched only a little, then smiled.
"Not bad," he said, the smile a rare approval. Lyra inhaled raggedly, exhilaration and fatigue mingling on her face.
Daren followed. He moved more carefully, a sensible man finding his breath. He gathered the green spirit within his core, channeling the wind into his arm like a coiled blade. When his knuckles connected with the old man's padded shoulder, the impact cleaved at the dummy behind him — wood splintered and shards flew, the wind's force whipped into a spray that stung their faces like cold needles. Daren's jaw released into a small, satisfied grin; the old man's features registered that same measured praise.
Now it was Elias's turn.
The old man placed a hand on Elias's shoulder with an unexpected gentleness. "I believe you can do it," he said. Those words were less a test than a vow: an old person's seed given to a younger soul.
Elias felt that vow like warmth. For a moment his illusions flickered back — not the old cocky dreams of conquest but a simpler, raw desire: to be useful, to be strong, to not feel the sting of being laughed at. He crouched, took a breath, and tried to gather something inside himself that he had never learned to gather: a controlled center, a draw of muscle, a compression of will.
This is where the problem sat like an old stone. Elias's "power," such as it was, had never been something he could command. It was a reaction; it woke when he came near death and rewound time. It was not a muscle to flex at will, a spring to wind and release. The idea of condensing it into a fist felt like trying to scoop moonlight into a bowl. He had no training, no breathing exercises burned into him by years of chores, no teacher's barked corrections.
He let his body move by instinct — the same instinct that had mocked him when his fist found nothing but air. He ran forward with the reckless resolve of a boy who thinks speed covers lack. He took aim, let his hips roll, and flung his arm with all the hopeful force he could muster.
His foot found nothing to plant on: the packed snow beneath his boots had a slick, treacherous sheen. He slipped. The momentum pitched his center forward, and instead of a clean strike his gloves met only air and his body toppled like a felled tree. Snow sprayed; he hit the frozen ground in a tangle of arms and legs, breath knocked out of him in a wet gasp. For a moment the world was a white blur of falling flakes and stunned pain.
Lyra barked a laugh, sharp and unrepentant. Daren's mouth formed a small 'oh' of sympathy and disbelief. The old man crouched, not to laugh but to study the boy fallen in the snow. His eyes were not unkind. Rather, they were cataloguing — measuring the way a teacher watches the first clumsy attempt at a new craft.
"You fell poorly," he said, matter-of-fact. "Not a crime. A crime would be to stop trying."
Elias lay panting, snow clinging to his hair and cheek, heat in his face bleeding into cold in a dizzy whirl. Shame pricked him like water on a cut. He wanted to curl up and hide or to shout and run — either escape would get him away from the bright, amused faces. Instead he did something small and stubborn: he laughed. It came out more like a half-choked cough than a true laugh, but it vibrated with something honest.
The old man helped him to his feet with a grip that steadied rather than enabled. "Strength is made of many things," he said, steady but not soft. "Discipline, yes. But balance and habit first. Breath. Posture. Planting your feet in a way that the earth will hold you rather than throw you. You tried to make a force without structure; it is like pouring water into air."
Elias brushed at his sleeve and blinked the snow from his lashes. He tasted a strange, fierce resolve that felt new: not the arrogant dream to rule, but the stubborn, workable hunger to be adequate. "Teach me," he said, voice rough. "Teach me where to start."
The old man nodded, satisfaction in that small thing much like seeing a seed find soil. "We will start where all things begin," he said. "Stance. Footwork. Learning where to plant a foot so the ground becomes your ally. Then breathing — how to hold the center and call power from your own motion. After that, we will teach you how to let energy condense. Not the arcane kind you wish for, but a force of tendon and breath that the world will answer to."
Lyra, who had been watching the exchange with a grin that suggested both scorn and curiosity, folded her arms and gave a short snort. "And if he still falls for another week?"
"Then we will fall together," Daren said quietly with a half-smile. He stepped closer and clapped a hand briefly on Elias's shoulder — a small show of solidarity that warmed Elias more than the old man's words.
Elias felt the sting of the snow still on his skin and the humiliation behind his teeth, but beneath it all, a steady thing: a road laid bare, not by magic but by sweat and time. His mouth set hard. "I'll take it," he said. "Teach me how to stand."
The old man's face broke into the smallest of smiles — a map of hard-lived years softening at the edges. He pointed toward the patch of firmer ground beside the shed, where frost had made the soil grippy beneath the top layer. "Then stand here. Feet shoulder-width. Weight distributed. Breathe in for four counts. Hold for two. Out for four. Again."
Elias moved into position, limbs trembling with adrenaline and cold. He breathed. The numbers were simple, ridiculous in their plainness — inhale, hold, exhale. But as he matched his lungs to the old man's count his hands steadied, the world narrowed, and the humiliation receded just enough to leave focus.
The first lesson was plain: posture. The second was patience. The third, a whisper of a secret the old man had learned young: "The body has memory," he told them. "It forgets dishonor faster than skill. You must teach it what you will be." He demonstrated a slow pivot, feet cutting a small arc in the snow. Elias followed. The motion felt awkward at first — his hips refusing to trust his feet — and then, on the fifteenth repetition, a small thing happened: there was a click of balance and the world aligned for a half-second beneath his soles like the satisfying snap of a piece locked into place.
He smiled, not because he had shown prowess but because he had learned the language of it. Around them the yard breathed and the spirits watched, small lights in the cold, patient and curious. The path ahead was not the quick blaze he had wanted; it was a long melt, a slow burn. But as the old man continued to speak of stances and breathing and weight, Elias felt the quiet truth of it settle: there were more ways to become powerful than one. He would start here, with the earth under his feet, and let whatever strength he had — patient, stubborn, human — be forged into something that didn't need a miracle to exist.