The tailor had clearly worked through the night; the breeches no longer threatened to slide off her hips, and the tunic’s shoulders actually aligned with her own. Her ankle, blessedly, held her weight with only a faint tenderness—a testament to Mistress Salvehand’s skill—but the rest of her felt like poorly pounded gristle.
She threw open her door to a scene of chaotic movement as other young men spilled from their rooms into the corridor. It was only then, as they were all herded out into the pre-dawnchill, that the smallness of their number struck her. Nineteen others. They comprised the entirety of the Wyvern Cohort, and the startlingly small group made her own anomalous presence feel even more exposed.
The corridor emptied out onto a vast drill yard Gessa had not yet seen. It was a massive, windswept expanse of packed earth and gravel, flanked on one side by the long barracks and on the other by the looming, silent shapes of the forge and the armory. Sheer granite cliffs rose to the north, stealing the promise of the dawn and holding the yard in a deep, chilling shadow. Awaiting them in the center of that expanse was a different instructor. He stood with an almost casual ease, yet he radiated an energy that was anything but relaxed—a coiled spring beneath a polished veneer.
He was undeniably handsome, his blond hair, the color of sun-bleached wheat, stirred by the keen mountain wind that bit at Gessa’s exposed skin. His eyes, when they swept over the assembled recruits with an unnervingly bright, clear green, seemed to miss nothing, a spark of challenging amusement within their depths. Unlike the recruits, his heels were armed. He wore the Spurs—lethal, bladed shanks of iron. On a normal rider, they would be cruel; on a Wayfinder, they were a boast. He controlled his massive Soul-Beasts with thought alone, leaving his heels free to carry death.
Beside him, untethered and moving with a restless, flowing grace, stood two magnificent horses. One was the deep, dappled grey of a gathering storm cloud, the other a rich, shadowed earth-brown. Their eyes burned with a bright, untamed intelligence, their forms leaner and more elegantly muscled than any warhorse, built for speed and raw endurance.
Gessa felt the familiar jolt deep in her core, the same resonance her own suppressed magic recognized in the presence of a fully bonded Spur. The horses were not mere animals; theywere Soul-Beasts. She had seen Instructor Ky’s solitary lynx and Master Lolly’s watchful owls, but these were different. They seemed less creatures of flesh and blood and more like pieces of the man’s very soul given vibrant, powerful form, mirroring his restless, coiled energy. They stamped a hoof or shook their manes, yet Gessa knew they were responsive to his slightest, unseen signal.
The blond instructor let his gaze drift over the cohort, a faint, almost unreadable smile playing on his lips. Then he spoke, his voice cutting through the morning air, not with Thorne’s raw power, but with a suave, carrying sharpness, each word precisely enunciated.
“Wyvern Cohort, I am Master Jaedon. For the next several weeks, your pathetic hides belong to me.” He paced a few steps, his green eyes glinting with challenging amusement. “Master Thorne, I understand, has already filled your heads with the high-minded principles of our Order. The noble why of it all.” He stopped, and his smile widened, showing a hint of teeth. “My job is far simpler. I am here to focus on the how. Specifically, how each of you will fail, and whether you’re worth the effort of putting you back together afterward.”
A few nervous chuckles were instantly stifled by a cool flick of his gaze.
“Understand the rhythm of your new lives. From dawn until noon, your bodies belong to me on the Anvil. From noon until dusk, your minds belong to the Archivists in the Lecture Halls. You will act as couriers, scholars, and soldiers every single day. Fail in the mud, you are gone. Fail in the library, you are gone. Only those who survive both will earn the right to approach the Calling.
“Oh, we’ll run until your lungs ignite. We’ll drill until your bodies break down in a dozen tedious, predictable ways. But that’s not the real test.” He leaned forward slightly, hisvoice dropping to a more intimate, conspiratorial tone that was somehow more menacing. “The real test comes when your strength has quit, and you look at the recruit next to you. Do you see a competitor to be beaten? Or a partner to be saved? I’m here to burn away your pretty notions of glory and find out who you are when all that’s left is mud, pain, and the person beside you.”
His smile was all predator now. “Most of you will discover you much prefer the company of your own excuses. For the rest of you… let’s begin. A gentle morning constitutional, shall we? To the far ridge and back. Last one to arrive will have the distinct honor of personally introducing our latrine pits to the concept of hygiene.”
The first week was a blur of shock and agonizing pain. The physical demands were extreme, and Jaedon was a whirlwind of focused energy, his comments a cascade of witty barbs that felt more like surgical strikes than insults. During an endurance run that left Gessa’s lungs burning like forge fires, he ran alongside the stragglers with deceptively easy strides.
“Is that your best impression of a glacier, recruit?” he’d call out to a lumbering youth. “I’ve seen continental plates move with more urgency!”
To another, gasping for air, he’d smile encouragingly. “Lovely. Trying to cough up a lung, are we? Less drama, more distance!”
The social dynamics of the cohort quickly revealed their own edges. Roric, the red-haired prodigy, had gathered a small coterie of admirers who mirrored his arrogance. During a combat drill, one of them, a recruit named Wex, deliberately tripped a smaller, struggling boy. Jaedon paused the entire cohort, his charming demeanor evaporating into a dangerous stillness.
“Recruit Wex, is it?” he said, his voice dangerously soft, his green eyes fixed on the culprit. “Such… enthusiasm forfelling your comrades. Perhaps you’d care to demonstrate your technique against me? Or would you prefer to spend the next three nights mucking out the griffin eyries? They’re particularly messy this time of year, I hear.”
Wex, pale and stammering, had chosen the griffins. The open sabotage ceased, but the lines had been drawn. Casualty counts replaced gossip; by midweek, a broken collarbone and a shattered knee proved that Jaedon treated their bodies not as students to be taught, but as raw ore to be hammered until it either hardened or cracked. Gessa simply survived, collapsing onto her cot each night a mosaic of bruises, wondering how she could possibly endure another day.
The shock of the first week numbed, replaced by a deep, aching weariness and the relentless monotony of pain. Her days settled into a brutal rhythm. Meals in the roaring mess hall remained an ordeal; she learned to arrive late, eating quickly at the edge of a table, ignoring the stares. The bathhouse became a carefully calculated exercise in timing to ensure privacy, the fear of another encounter with Instructor Ky a constant spur to her vigilance.
Gessa’s body, however, began its slow, stubborn adaptation. The calluses on her hands, once blisters, were now thick and hard. The muscles in her back and legs, a constant source of agony before, now burned with a familiar, almost reassuring fire. Her endurance grew. She was no longer always last. This fact seemed to genuinely annoy Roric, whose taunts grew harsher.
“Careful you don’t break a hip, grandmother!” he sneered as Gessa hauled herself over a high wall, but the insult lacked the easy confidence it once had. She was still here. She wasn’t breaking.
It was during a punishing run late in the second week that she stumbled badly on a loose rock. Pain shot through herankle, but instinct and pure stubbornness had her regaining her footing and continuing on, her jaw tight. She felt Jaedon’s eyes on her and saw a flicker in his gaze—not approval, certainly, but a clinical interest, like a smith observing a piece of scrap iron holding up unexpectedly in the fire.
That same week, during a grueling session of carrying sandbags up a steep, muddy incline under a driving rain, a recruit named Gaeb simply stopped. He dropped his burden, sinking to his knees in the mire, his shoulders shaking with sobs. Jaedon approached him with a deceptive quietness.
“Recruit Gaeb,” he said, his voice cool and precise. “It appears your sandbag has developed an understandable aversion to further altitude. Or is it perhaps your spirit that finds this gentle mountain mist… overwhelming?”
Gaeb didn’t look up, just mumbled, “I can’t… I can’t do it. No more.”
“Indeed,” Jaedon mused. “There is no shame in recognizing your true composition, Gaeb. Only in persisting in a falsehood that will inevitably lead to your, or someone else’s, demise on the Lines.”
Gaeb scrambled up, wiping mud from his face, and turned toward the gate, desperate to flee.
“Halt,” Jaedon commanded, his voice cracking like a whip.
Gaeb froze.
“You do not leave yet,” Jaedon said, his tone devoid of its usual mocking lilt. “You entered these gates with a burden. You do not leave with it.” He turned to the rest of the group. “Wyvern Cohort, drop your bags. Form up.
