Roric’s words were meant as a vile insult, but a confusing, unwelcome part of her couldn’t entirely deny their premise. Shewasintensely aware of Ky. It was a bewildering feeling, not the self-disgust she would have expected weeks ago, but a frustrating confusion. To feel even a flicker of this for him, her harsh instructor, a man who held her fate in his hands, was impossible, illogical, a complication she could not afford. She shoved the bewildering thought down, her knuckles white on her practice stave.
“Your footwork is sloppy, Roric,” Jaedon’s voice suddenly sliced through the air. “And your mouth is running faster than your feet. Since you have so much excess energy for social commentary, you can demonstrate the next drill for us. Against me.”
The smirk vanished from Roric’s face.
The afternoon session brought a shift in focus. Master Orlan stood before a fresh chart the recruits had not seen before—a high-detail topography of the southern territories. He used a pointer to trace the flow of the currents, skipping the general overviews they had memorized in previous weeks to focus on specific anomalies.
Gessa squinted. The specific curve of the mountain range, the way the coastline hooked inward, it plucked at a chord in her memory. She felt a sudden, inexplicable sense of familiarity, as if she had seen this terrain before, perhaps traced in heavier, darker ink, though the specific context remained tantalizingly out of reach.
Orlan tapped the pointer against a stark, grey void in the center of the colorful web, a large area where the Lines conspicuously bent and flowed around, avoiding it like water flowing around a stone.
“Recruit Bram,” Orlan said, his voice precise. “You have a practical eye. The Great South Line, as you can see, diverts sharply here, leaving this entire domain in shadow. Why?”
Bram considered the map for a moment before answering, his voice a low rumble. “It’s the Ironwood, Master. Lord Polan’s domain. The land is rich in deep cold iron deposits. The Lines can’t cross it; the cold iron repels them.”
The name “Polan” sucked the air out of the room. Gessa’s hand flew to the hematite in her pocket, but she recoiled instantly, as if the stone had suddenly turned white-hot.
The confinement. The refusal to let her travel, even to the village. It wasn’t just jealousy; it was concealment.
She looked around the room at the young faces of Wyvern Cohort—boys on the cusp of manhood, brought here because the blood had finally woken in their veins. That was the natural order: the spark ignited as childhood faded. Had she stepped foot off Polan’s dead land after her own eighteenth naming day, her power would have flared just like theirs.
But the iron had suffocated it. He had drowned her magic in silence during the very years it was meant to rise, twisting it into the starved, wild thing she now carried. He hadn’t just trapped her; he had buried her alive to keep her a secret.
She gripped the edge of the desk, fighting down the bile that rose in her throat. Around her, the other recruits merely nodded, scribbling notes about geological deposits, oblivious to the fact that their geography lesson was describing her torture chamber.
“Master?” A Wex raised a hand, looking confused. “If iron suppresses magic, why doesn’t our gear cause problems? We carry steel swords and wear iron buckles. Shouldn’t that dampen our power too?”
“A vital distinction,” Orlan answered without missing a beat. “We useworkediron. The metal at your hip has been broken by fire. The forge aligns its structure, burning away its natural resistance until it becomes neutral. What lies beneath the Ironwood iscoldiron. Raw. Unworked. It retains the earth’s hunger to ground magic into nothingness.”
The distinction made Gessa shiver. She forced herself to breathe, to anchor herself in the present, just as Master Orlan turned back from the map.
Orlan moved his pointer to a different, more remote location on the map, a place where the Ley Lines didn’t vanish but instead converged into a chaotic, tangled knot of angry red and violet light. “Very well. Now, what about here? The Silver Tangles. The Lines are not absent; they are overwrought. A volatile knot no Spur will navigate. Recruit Roric, explain.”
Roric didn’t hesitate, his voice filled with his usual confidence. “Silver, Master. It doesn’t repel the Lines like iron; it supercharges them. Draws in too much power, makes them unstable, impossible to navigate safely.” He added, showing off for the class, “And it calls the beasts. The raw silver in the rock acts as a magical lure for the worst kinds of Ley-drakes and shadow-cats.”
“Precisely,” Master Orlan said, turning back to the class. “Remember these two fundamental principles, recruits. Iron is a shield; it deadens. Silver is a lure; it maddens. One will leave you powerless, the other will get you killed. Your job is to navigate the balance between them.”
Her lessons with Ky in the North Range training circle were another world entirely. The feedback stone was gone. One bright morning she arrived at the circle to find him waiting for her.
Ky gestured toward a flat, moss-dusted rock in the center of the circle.“Sit.”
Gessa did so warily, perching on the edge of the cold stone.
“Now,” he said, his voice a low, steady command that cut through the wind, “close your eyes. I do not want you to reach for your magic. I do not want you to do anything but feel the air enter your lungs and then leave them. Breathe in to a count of four.” He paused, waiting until she complied, the cold mountain air a sharp sting in her throat. “Hold it for four. Now, release it for four.”
She tried to obey, but her mind was a frantic, terrified animal in a cage, remembering the last time she’d been here. Every beat of her heart was a drum of fear, every whisper of the winda potential threat. Polan’s face swam behind her eyelids; the feeling of Ky’s hand over hers on the stone was a phantom burn.
“Your mind is racing,” Ky stated, his voice free of judgment, a simple observation of fact. “You are not breathing; you are gulping air. You cannot find stillness in chaos. You must build it. Start again. Feel the air pass your lips. Feel it fill your chest. Anchor yourself to the physical sensation. Nothing else exists. In for four…”
She tried again, and again. It was an agonizing process, a battle fought entirely within the confines of her own skull. Slowly, painstakingly, she began to find a rhythm, a tiny island of focus in the raging sea of her anxiety. The buzzing in her head didn’t disappear, but it quieted to a distant hum.
After what felt like an hour, Ky spoke again. “Stand up. Take off your boots.”
Gessa’s eyes snapped open. “Instructor?”
“Your focus is tenuous. Stillness is a battle for you. So we will try a different kind of stillness.” He gestured to the perimeter of the packed-earth circle. “You will walk. Barefoot. Focus only on the sensation of the ground beneath your feet. Nothing else.”
The command seemed bizarre, almost cruel, but there was a cold logic in his eyes she was beginning to recognize. Hesitantly, she pulled off her sturdy recruit boots and socks, her feet, softened by weeks of wearing them, pale and vulnerable. The first step onto the packed earth was a shock of intense, biting cold that made her gasp.
