"Morrow."
The voice carried across the training yard like it owned the space. Hart didn't look up. He was eating. Or trying to. The cafeteria oatmeal had the consistency of wet cement and about as much flavor but it was warm and it was free and those two things had been enough for three years.
"Morrow. I'm talking to you."
Damon Kreig. Standing in the middle of the yard with the stance of someone who expected the world to rearrange itself around them. Gold hair catching the grey morning light. Three students behind him like an honor guard nobody had appointed.
Hart took another bite. The spoon scraped the bottom of the bowl. He was sitting on the low wall by the east wing entrance, alone, because he was always alone, and the oatmeal was almost gone.
"The Warden." Damon said it the way you'd say the name of a disease you'd read about but never expected to see in person. "Four ceremonies. Three years. And you get Warden."
A few students had stopped walking. Not a crowd. Fifteen people maybe. The kind of audience that forms when someone's voice gets a certain edge and the morning is boring enough that watching someone get humiliated seems like a reasonable use of time.
Hart set the bowl down on the wall beside him. Wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.
"I want to see it," Damon said. "Show us what the four-time failure got."
"Got Warden." Hart's voice came out flat. Tired. He'd slept maybe two hours. Maybe less. His shoulder still pulled when he moved it wrong. "You already know that."
"Show us your beast. Every Warden has one." Damon stepped closer. Not threatening exactly. Just filling space the way tall people with Silver-tier Essence do when they want you to remember you're shorter. "Or did you Awaken into the worst class and still manage to come up empty."
Hart looked at him.
This was the moment where he was supposed to do something. Stand up. Accept the challenge. Summon Sable in beast form and let the shadow wolf shut Damon's mouth for him. That's what a normal person would do. That's what the fifteen spectators were waiting for.
In his peripheral vision the Grid flickered. Faint. Only he could see it.
[ADVISORY]
Public confrontation detected.
Recommend: Minimal display.
Hart almost laughed. The screen was telling him what he already knew.
Sable was in his shadow. He could feel her there. A weight that wasn't physical. A warmth near his feet that the cold stone didn't explain. She'd gone into his shadow at dawn when he'd said he needed to leave the room. Hadn't argued. Just looked at him with those mercury eyes, said "Warden," and slid back into his shadow.
He'd tried not to think about how that looked.
"I don't have a beast yet," Hart said.
First lie about this. It came out easy. Too easy. But three years of being nothing teaches you to say things that match what people already believe about you.
Damon stared.
"You Awakened yesterday. As a Warden. And you don't have a beast."
"Contracts need Resonance Crystals." Hart picked up his bowl. Scraped the last bit from the side. "I don't have money for Resonance Crystals. I barely have money for this." He held up the bowl. "So."
Someone in the group snorted. Not at Hart. At the situation. Poorest kid in the academy. Only class that requires an expensive companion. No money. The kind of joke that writes itself.
Damon's jaw worked. He'd come here for a show and Hart refusing to perform was somehow worse than Hart performing badly.
"You're a waste," Damon said. Not loud. Loud enough. "Obviously."
There it was. The word. Damon used it like punctuation.
Hart took the last bite. Cold now. Gritty. He chewed slow because there was nothing else to do with his mouth and if he opened it right now something sharp would come out and sharp was not the play here.
I've spent 1,096 days being invisible. I can survive one more. Let the golden boy have his audience. I'll be busy.
"Probably," Hart said. "Yeah."
Damon waited for more. More didn't come. Hart didn't look at him again. After a few seconds that stretched longer than they should have, Damon turned and walked away and the three behind him went with him and the spectators broke apart because the show was done and it hadn't been much of one.
Hart sat on the wall with his empty bowl and his shadow that was heavier than a shadow should be and he breathed.
The Oak was different at night.
During the day it was just a tree. Strange, old, too big for the courtyard, roots splitting the flagstones in every direction. Students walked past without looking. At night the bark went full black and the branches made sounds. Creaking. Not wind. More like the tree was shifting, adjusting, settling into some posture it couldn't hold while people were watching.
Hart stood under it. Mud under his boots from the training yard twenty meters north. Empty yard. Past midnight. The Greymarch border was a dark line at the edge of the world and something out there was howling. Third time since he'd come outside.
Third howl.
Greymarch superstition. You don't walk outside after the third howl at night. Third howl means something big is hunting.
Hart was outside.
Sable rose from his shadow. Beast form. The wolf filled the space under the branches and for a second all he could see was smoke-fur and mercury eyes and moonlight catching teeth.
"You're afraid," she said.
"I'm outside after the third howl. Seems like the right call."
"Not of the howl." She sat. Head still above his. "Of what you agreed to."
Hart didn't answer. His right hand twitched toward his left wrist and he caught it. Stopped it. Shoved both hands into his jacket pockets instead.
"You said later," he said. "About the questions."
"It is later."
"What are you."
"Primal." The word just sat there between them. She didn't add to it.
"That's not an answer."
"It is all your language has for it." She tilted her head. The mercury eyes tracked something Hart couldn't see. Something above the tree maybe. Or nothing. "I am old. Older than this school. Older than this tree. Not older than the ground beneath it."
"That's a weird way to measure age."
"You asked."
The Oak creaked. A branch shifted above them. Hart looked up. The trunk was wider than his dorm room from underneath. How did a tree this old grow in a courtyard surrounded by stone buildings. Nobody questioned it. Three years here and he'd never heard a single person ask why the Oak existed.
"The screen," Hart said. "The blue one. It says I have a skill. Shadow Phase. I don't know what that means."
"It means part of me is in you now." Sable's voice was flat about it. The way you'd say the ground is wet. "The bond does not go one direction. You take from me. I take from you."
"What do you take."
"Time."
Hart waited.
"Being awake," Sable said. "After a thousand years in the dark. Being awake is what I take from you."
Something moved in his chest. The crack from before. Wider. He wasn't sure he wanted it wider but it kept happening and his hands were in his pockets because if they weren't they'd be doing the wrist thing again and he was tired of that.
"Show me," he said. "Shadow Phase. What it does."
Sable stood. The wolf unfolded and she was big again, terrifying again, and then she moved. Fast. Paw swinging for his chest and his body did something his brain did not authorize.
He stepped sideways and went wrong. Not wrong. Different. For half a second he wasn't fully there. Her paw went through his shoulder. Through it. Like his shoulder was smoke the same way her fur was smoke. He came out the other side stumbling and hit the Oak's trunk with his back and the bark was rough through his jacket and he was breathing too hard.
"What the hell," Hart said.
"Shadow Phase." Sable sat back down. Like nothing happened. "You moved before you knew. The bond teaches the body first."
The Grid pulsed.
Shadow Phase (Tier I)
Status: Active
Duration: 0.4 seconds
Cooldown: Unknown
Note: Involuntary activation. Warden did not initiate.
Involuntary. He hadn't done it on purpose. His body just did it.
"Again," Hart said.
Sable looked at him. Mercury eyes in the dark under the Oak. Another howl from the Greymarch. Fourth now. He'd lost count.
"Again," he said.
She moved.
Two hours. Hart couldn't control Shadow Phase. It fired when it wanted, usually when Sable's paw was about to connect, and it lasted less than a second each time.
Left him dizzy. A little sick. His insides needed a moment to remember they were solid.
By the end his jacket was covered in mud from falling and his palms were scraped raw from catching himself on the Oak's roots and the stiff shoulder was worse than yesterday.
Sable watched him stand up the last time. Mud on his face. Hands shaking. Not from cold.
"Enough," she said.
"One more."
"Enough, Warden." Locked door voice. No room in it.
Hart leaned against the Oak. Bark pressed into his spine. The mud was cold on his cheek. He should wipe it off. His arms didn't want to move right now so the mud stayed.
The Greymarch howled again. He'd stopped counting the howls a while ago.
"Something's wrong out there," he said. "The howls are closer than last week."
Sable was quiet for a long time. The kind of quiet where you can tell the person heard you and is choosing what to give back.
"Yes," she said.
"How close."
"Close enough."
Hart closed his eyes. Back of his head against the tree. The Oak creaked. Old wood settling into old roots.
He had a beast nobody knew about. A skill he couldn't control. Mud on his face. And something was getting closer from the Greymarch and he was the only Warden at Graveston who didn't have a visible beast, which meant when the beasts came he'd be expected to be useless.
He could be useless. He'd had practice.
Or he could come back tomorrow night and the night after and learn to make Shadow Phase fire when he wanted instead of when his body panicked on its own.
The Oak creaked above him. Like it was waiting to hear which one.
Hart wiped the mud off his face with a hand that was still shaking.
"Same time tomorrow," he said.
Sable dissolved into his shadow without a word.