The memory surfaced not as a gentle wave, but as a sharp, bright shard driven into his mind by the feel of Nightshade's grip. For a moment, the scent of old leather and oil was replaced by the dry, sun-baked dust of a training yard and the sweet, sharp perfume of his mother's herbs.
**Five Years Ago – The Eastern Reaches**
The cottage stood in the long, weary shadow of Castle Ralke, which reared from a distant, jagged hill like a broken, grey tooth against the sky. It was a modest but proud home of whitewashed stone, with a thatched roof and a kitchen window perpetually crowded with clay pots: feathery dill, pungent rosemary, purple sage, and the tiny white stars of jasmine spilling over the sill. The scent was his mother's signature—honey from her hives, sage from her garden, jasmine for the sheer, stubborn beauty of it—a fragrant defiance against the castle's grim aura.
A dusty path, flanked by wild thyme, led from their wooden gate to the main road, passing a small, honest stable that housed their two aging horses, Briar and Smoke.
In the flattened dirt yard beside the cottage, Arrion, at eighteen and already a mountain of a youth, sweated and struggled. He held a battered practice longsword, its weight unfamiliar and clumsy in his hands.
"No! You great lumbering sapling!" barked Ser Wilham, the old retainer. He was a dried-up stick of a man, his back permanently bent from decades of service, his face a relief map of scars and bitterness under a fringe of iron-grey hair. He leaned on a walking stick, his own sword arm long since ruined by a wound that festered. "It's a blade, not a club! You think the enemy will stand still like a post while you wind up? Again! *Lunge, parry, riposte!* Steps, boy, steps! Grace, not force!"
Arrion obeyed, his movements powerful but untamed. He had the strength to cleave a man in two, but none of the finesse Ser Wilham demanded. The old knight had been hired by his mother, a drain on their meager savings Arrion knew they could ill afford.
"Pointless," Wilham muttered, not for the first time, as Arrion over-extended and stumbled. "Teaching a plowhorse to dance. I'm only here for the coin your mother scrapes together. A waste of good silver."
Arrion tightened his grip on his own heavy practice blade, his knuckles white. The insult to his unknown father's name stung, as it always did. He lunged, a powerful but telegraphed thrust that Wilham sidestepped with infuriating ease, smacking Arrion's wrist with his walking stick. A sharp, numbing pain shot up his arm.
"Dead," Wilham stated flatly. "You're thinking with your muscles, not your mind. A knight's first weapon is here," he tapped his own temple with a gnarled finger. "But perhaps that's asking too much. Perhaps you're just meant to be a big, simple target."
The taunts were a daily ritual. Wilham made no secret of his motives. "I'm here for the marquis's silver, lad," he'd grunt as they saddled horses. "Not to polish a lump of iron into a sword. Your mother's sentimentality pays my tab at the inn."
The taunt stung, as it always did, heating Arrion's cheeks. He turned, ready to hurl the practice sword into the dirt, but he didn't, he could not afford to disappoint his mother
The house itself was a quiet refuge from this harsh tuition. Small but proud, with a herb garden that was his mother's domain. In the kitchen window, clay pots overflowed with vibrant life: purple sage, creeping thyme, bright green rosemary, and the delicate fronds of chervil. Their scent would drift into the main room, a constant, calming perfume.
It was here his mother would find him, after Wilham had left for the day. He'd be slumped at the rough-hewn table, massaging a new bruise, the taste of failure sour in his mouth.
She would approach, and her own scent would envelop him, cutting through the smell of sweat and disappointment: the warm, golden sweetness of honey from the hives she tended, the clean, sharp note of sage from her drying bundles, and underneath, the faint, mysterious whisper of jasmine from a single precious vine by the door. It was the scent of safety, of unconditional love.
Her hair was the rich, dark brown of fertile earth, woven with a few early strands of silver, and braided in a practical crown around her head. But it was her eyes that held you—a clear, piercing grey, like the sky just before a winter storm, seeing everything, missing nothing. Right now, they were fixed on him, soft with understanding.
"Ser Wilham is teaching you to use the mind as well as the muscle," she said, stepping into the yard. The scent of honey and sage and jasmine moved with her, cutting through the smell of sweat and dust. "The strength is yours, a gift. The control is the lesson. A river without banks is a flood. A sword without guidance is a hazard." She picked up a fallen practice dagger and held it lightly. "You do not force the blade. You *guide* it. You let it become an extension of your will. Try again. And breathe."
Under her gaze, the frustration bled away. He wasn't a clumsy oaf. He was a river learning its banks. He went back to the pell, the wooden training post, and began again. *Lunge, parry, riposte*. This time, his movements were tighter, more focused. The *thwack* of the practice sword against the oak was sharper, truer.
He thrived in the other lessons. On horseback, his size became an advantage; he and Briar were an unstoppable force. With the bow, he found a natural rhythm, the purple-wood recurve (a gift from his mother on his sixteenth birthday) becoming a part of his very arm. Survival lore came easily, taught by both Wilham's grudging pragmatism and his mother's deep, ancestral knowledge of root and leaf. The knightly etiquette—the codes, the formalities, the language of heraldry—felt like a foreign tongue, but he learned it, for her.
She was preparing him for a world she hoped he'd enter as a knight, a man of honor and station. He now knew she was preparing him for a world where he might need to fight, flee, and survive the very power that castle on the hill represented.
Ser Wilham watched the improved form, his cynical eyes narrowing. "Hmph. Perhaps not a complete waste. At least you can hit what you aim at now, when you remember to aim."
The memory faded, the scent of jasmine dissolving into the cool, damp air of the storeroom. Arrion's hand tightened on *Nightshade*'s scabbard. Ser Wilham's harsh training had given him the foundation. His mother's wisdom had given him the soul behind the skill. And now, his father's legacy offered the final, formidable tool.
He had been taught to be a knight, to be a survivor. Now, he would have to hope that it had been enough. The boy who struggled in the dusty yard under the shadow of the grey castle was gone. In his place stood the man who would carry *Nightshade* into the dark wood to meet the serpent's agents.