The stones in the training yard still held the night's cold like a grudge. Mist clung low over the flagstones, gloving my ankles in damp and making the grass around the edge glint silver. Somewhere beyond the walls, the Dead Forest breathed—long, slow, and patient. Birds hadn't committed to the morning yet; they only chirped in guilty little pockets and then shut up again like they didn't trust the light.
"Are you ready to start now?" Stacy asked, already limbered, already smiling that sharky, too-awake smile people only have at five in the morning if they're morally compromised.
"Yes, I will be in your hands," I said, still rubbing my ears from the pre-dawn wake-up scream that had peeled varnish off the hallway rails.
"Now," she announced with the drama of a stage actor, "you are going to be my first disciple. Amari didn't want to because of her… you know what."
I squinted. "I feel kind of happy I get to be your disciple, and also there's this little dagger of dread poking my liver. Why am I your first disciple? You seem like you've traumatized at least a dozen."
"Haha—no one wants her to train them," Rebeca called down from the balcony that overlooked the yard. She had a mug, a shawl, and the expression of someone watching a play she'd seen a hundred times and enjoyed every single time. "Good instincts, kid."
My tail flicked. "So that's what the danger feeling is. It's you." I turned back to Stacy. She was beaming, but the air around her had that subtle prickle, like it knew to step back. "No turning back now," I said, and was a little surprised to feel that I meant it. Fine. If I was going to be forged, I might as well jump in the fire.
"I'm happy you said that, Kitsuna," she said, already strolling toward the weapon racks lining the wall. "Have you ever used a sword or something like that in your previous life?"
"So we're really starting today? It's five in the morning. At least let me eat."
"No," she said, cheerful as a sunrise. "If we want you to chase that legendary class, we train. A lot. Now answer the question."
"I've held weapons. Used them, a little. Not for killing." I followed her, eyes running over the racks: spears in neat bundles; axes hung like metal moons; bows asleep in their frames; a row of swords catching the weak light like they were already moving.
"What weapons most?"
"Katanas and rapiers. Maybe cross wheels? I handled those a bunch but never learned to use them."
She paused and glanced back with a tilt to her head. "Cross wheels? Of all things."
"Neighbor back on Earth was a collector," I said, and couldn't help the tiny smile that slid in. "Any time he got a new piece, he brought it over. His favorite set was cross wheels. They looked ridiculous until you spun them, then they looked… inevitable."
"I see," she mused, eyes glinting. "Okay. We start with cross wheels. I want to see how you move them."
"Bold of you to assume I can move them," I muttered.
She vanished into the armory alcove and reemerged with two wicked, shining rings, each with a quartet of blade vanes set at the cross points. "No mana," she warned, tossing them to me. "These aren't adamite. You'll melt them."
I caught both, blinked down at my hands, and tried to remember which way you were supposed to not amputate yourself. "Don't I have to start with the fundamentals first?" I asked, very reasonably, while my brain did geometry with the sharp bits. "Like… what if the fundamentals are 'do not hold this like a pizza cutter'?"
"Oops," she said, with zero shame. "Right. Fundamentals. Maybe swords first. Hehe." She scratched her cheek.
Up on the balcony, Rebeca nearly spit her tea. "And that's why nobody signs up."
I sighed. "You do know how to teach, right?"
"I do," Stacy said, completely unconvincing. "I'm a practical teacher. I teach by doing."
"Which is how people die," I noted, but I was already walking to the racks. "Fine. Swords. We have the adamite bag from Steve, so I can use mana, right?"
She nodded. "You still have the bag?"
"Always." I palmed the dimensional storage, pulled the black leather bag into the morning air, and set it beside the rack. The adamite hum felt like winter under my fingers. I unbuckled the flap and took out the first sword that called to me: a double-edged, black-bladed thing with subtle carvings along the fuller, balanced like it wanted to dance or kill or both.
"This one will do," I said.
"Good." Stacy chose a similar blade and came to stand opposite me, ten strides away. "You block; watch how I move."
"I'll try."
"Don't try," she said, and all the warmth in her voice dipped away. "Do it."
Something old and twitchy in me flinched. Before I understood why, I'd jumped back, boot scuffing damp stone, until my spine kissed the yard's far wall. We were twenty meters apart now, easy, and my whole body was humming, skin prickling like an electrical storm had rolled in.
"Why did you jump back?" Stacy asked, all innocence, smiling like a kindly aunt. Her eyes were laughing. The air wasn't.
"I… don't know." The truth landed like a stone. "My instincts screamed at me to move."
"Mm. Good instincts." She rolled a shoulder. "Stop listening to them for now."
"That seems unsafe," I said.
She exploded into motion. One heartbeat she was there; the next she was arrowing toward me, sword low, feet whispering over stone. I didn't think—I fled sideways, then backward, gaining a dozen meters while she chased like it was a game. The edge of her smile sharpened.
"Stop running," she called, in a tone that would have sent birds from trees. "You won't learn if you keep running. I'm not going all out. This is training."
"My instincts—" I protested.
"—are good," she allowed, "and we'll use them later. For now? Plant yourself."
I forced my boots to stop. The yard's cold climbed my legs. I set the sword across my body, left hand steady, right hand light, and pulled in a slow breath. Fox Fire hummed, Fox Ice waited, and Fox Lightning yearned, but I held the mana down and let the sword be steel.
"That's better," Stacy said, and began to run.
I let a hair-thin trickle of mana slip into the blade—ice-cool, clean—and felt the sword tighten in my grip, like a tether had cinched. Stacy's blade came from the right; I met it. The impact was a white bell down my arm, not pain exactly, but presence, and my boots skated on stone. I held.
She didn't pause. Second strike from the left: faster, lower. I saw it—clear, perfect—the line of it, the place it wanted to bite—
—and my body just watched it come.
Her blade stopped at my throat, breath-close, the flat touching my skin. The mist seemed to pull back.
"You saw it," she said, voice even.
"Yeah," I said, frustration chewing. "Body was a postcard. Brain sent; nothing delivered."
"That's normal. Reflexes are trained. Don't sulk—seeing it on the first bout is good." She withdrew the blade and stepped back. "For reference, that second strike was roughly level 200 speed."
I stared. "Why would you—why?"
"To test your eyes." The corner of her mouth kicked up. "You said your natural senses are better than mine. I wanted to see how much."
"You also turned on the scary," I said flatly.
She didn't deny it. "I released bloodlust in the beginning, yes. That's why you wanted to run. You'll get used to it."
"Love that for me," I muttered.
"How much better are my senses than a normal soldier's?" I asked, partly to stop thinking about that cold blade on my throat, partly because data helped.
"A level 150 would be able to see that strike," she said. "Below that, no."
"Cool," I said, because my mouth didn't know what else to do.
"Again." She paced back out to our starting marks. "I'll hold back more. You'll block. And one more thing—no peeking at your status."
"Fine."
"No. Pledge."
I blinked. "What?"
"Make a pledge you won't look until you've mastered that sword."
I raised my chin because dramatic vows are free and because the idea of getting addicted to the numbers made my skin itch. "I, Kitsuna," I said, projecting for an audience I didn't have, "pledge not to look at my status until I've mastered all weapons and am ready for real combat."
The world clicked. A soft, invisible lock turned somewhere in my chest. Something tightened—a limit, a line drawn by my own mouth.
Behind me, Rebeca spat tea over the railing. "Congratulations, idiot! You just cursed yourself for life."
Stacy put both hands on her face. "I said that sword, not all weapons. Do you realize there's backlash if you break a pledge?"
"Aah. Well," I said, and shrugged because what else could I do? The lock in my chest didn't feel bad, exactly. It felt like a hand on my shoulder. "Too late. Guess I'll just… keep it."
"You're impossible," Stacy muttered, and then grinned, feral again. "But excited. I can smell it on you."
"I don't smell," I objected. "And if I do, it's cinnamon and murder."
She laughed, and then there wasn't space for talking because she was coming again.
This time, the bloodlust came like a wave, and I didn't run. I let it wash over me and set my feet like stones. The first strike met my blade; the second I moved to meet, to test the hinge of hips and promise of wrists. I still failed, over and over, but the failures got smaller. Pain slipped its fingers into my forearms, that ten-times curse sharpening each sting; I breathed through it. My lightning-tattoo nerves hissed complaints as I thinned into static.
We fell into a rhythm. She cut, and I blocked. She fainted, I swore. She bounded off a slick patch of morning moss like a cat and came in low, and I did not, did not, jump back into the wall. Sweat made new rivers down my spine. The fog thinned, then burned away. Somewhere in there the sun cleared the wall and laid a bright bar across the yard like a marker: here, see? Time's passing. Keep moving.
"Loosen your right hand," she said, while her blade tried to kiss my ear. "Your left guides; your right just asks."
"You're saying this while attempting to behead me," I said, and corrected my grip, and the sword whispered a different song.
"Better," she said, and then hip-checked me with a strike I absolutely should have seen. "Again."
A pair of kitchen staff paused in the covered gallery that edged the yard, whispering, maybe taking bets. A pair of blackbirds landed on the wall, thought better of it when Stacy spiked a little more killing intent into the air, and yeeted off into the sky like the smart animals they were.
We kept at it until the yard's shadow had slid all the way across and the stones sighed out their stored night. My arms trembled. The sword had gotten heavier, then lighter, then heavier again, like it was calibrating my spine.
Stacy finally stepped in, blade up and then down—a clean little tap to the center of my chest that said, "You're dead," without cruelty. I staggered back and sat down largely by accident.
Four hours had passed.
"You survived so long," she said, smiling down at me like a cat who'd discovered a mouse with extra health points. "I'm surprised."
I propped the sword against my shoulder and panted at the sky. The clouds had organized into smug little piles. "How long has it been?" I managed.
"Four hours," she said. "Longer than I thought you'd last."
"Great. So we eat now? I am starving."
"Yes," she said. "After that, we're going back to training."
I dragged my gaze down from the clouds to her face. "Why?"
"Hehe," she said, which was not an answer and also a crime. "You're working on stamina."
"I see," I said, in the tone of a man reading his own execution order.
"After stamina, we work your ice—if we can combine ice-made weapons with your class, you might punch gods before I die of old age." She was already scheming, eyes bright like someone with too many projects and not enough victims. "That will take us to lunch. After lunch, you get two hours of free time. After that, sparring and stamina again until dinner."
"The free time I can do what I want with, right?"
"Yes. Got plans?"
"Reading," I said without shame. "Weapon forging, construction, balance. I think knowing how a blade is born will help me shape it out of ice. Fewer… interesting explosions."
"Good plan," she said, and then caught herself and squinted like she couldn't believe she'd said it. "Fine. If you want to spend your youth in a stack of paper."
"I like reading," I said. "And I like not dying."
"Just don't end up like your sister," she said, the chisel of sadness edging her voice.
"I won't," I said, and meant it. "I liked our spar. I like moving. Books won't win against that."
"That's good." She rolled her shoulders, satisfied. "Let's eat. I'm starving."
"Hey—don't walk so fast!" I scrambled up and followed, sword sheathed, legs feeling like they were only speaking to me out of politeness.
We crossed the courtyard under the climbing sun. The mansion caught light like it was built out of it—pale stone waking to gold, glass panes brightening. Servants peeled off with smiles or double takes, and a few brave ones asked if we wanted towels, water, bandages, or a priest. Stacy waved them off with the confidence of an immortal and a stomach that had already committed crimes.
Inside, the cool hallways felt like baptism. The dining hall smelled like roasted something, herbs, and bread I refused to admit I liked. Stacy snagged a pitcher of water from a passing tray and drank like a battlefield. I didn't realize I was doing the same until my glass refilled itself twice.
"You're glowy," she said, nodding at my forearms. The black-red lines of the curses had a faint pulse, like embers remembering their job. "Pain?"
"Sure," I said. "Manageable. The left arm is louder than the right." Lightning sulked under the skin, making me itch at nothing. "I didn't even push it, and it still complains."
"Good," she said, and sat. "We'll make it complain every day until it learns manners."
"Abuse," I said, piling meat on a plate. "Report you to the union."
"You're the union," she said promptly. "File it with yourself."
I ate like someone had replaced my belly with a tunnel. The world softened around the edges as the food hit. My brain stopped spinning quite so fast. Across the table, Stacy watched me with that utterly inappropriate fondness people have for small feral animals and weapons they plan to teach tricks.
"You saw a lot," she said after a while, breaking bread without looking. "More than you blocked. That's fine. That's good. Sight first. Then hands. Then feet."
"You sound like a teacher," I told her.
"I am," she said, then wrinkled her nose. "Sometimes."
"Sometimes you're a gremlin."
"Dual class," she said, absolutely straight-faced. "Vice-Captain / Gremlin."
I snorted, almost choked, and refused to be grateful for her hand on my back.
After breakfast, she didn't give me time to pretend naps were legal. We were back in the yard, where the sun had gotten serious about its job and the fog had become a memory. The air smelled like warm stone and cut grass, and the wall shadows had shrunk until there wasn't much to hide in.
"Stamina," she said, and pointed at the perimeter path that circled the yard. "Run."
"How far?"
"Yes," she said, which was not how numbers worked.
I ran. The path took me around the practice dummies (straw men with more scars than sense), past the archery targets (pocked and proud), and along the low wall where the blackbirds had returned to watch like jurors. My breathing found a rhythm, my legs complained like old coworkers, and my left forearm buzzed in mild, judgy disapproval. I ran past Rebeca's balcony; she wiggled her fingers in a mock-gentle wave and mouthed, "You did this to yourself." I mouthed back, "traitor," and she laughed silently, eyes bright.
We layered in footwork drills—stutter steps, pivots, reverse slides—until the path felt like a dance I didn't know the name of. Stacy corrected angles with two-finger taps: ankle, knee, and hip. "Shorten your step." Tap. "Lead with the inside ball." Tap. "Stop clenching your jaw. You'll crack a tooth."
"You have so many opinions," I said, sweat running down my spine like it had rent to pay.
"That's why I'm the teacher," she said. "Also because I like watching you suffer."
"Honesty," I panted. "Refreshing."
When she finally called a break, the world had that oddly quiet ring it gets when your heartbeat is everywhere. I collapsed on the stone curb and leaned back until my skull thumped the wall, and the wall did not care. The sky was very blue and very smug. The curses on my arms had settled into a steady glow like coals thinking about dinner.
"Hydrate," Stacy said, tossing me a canteen. "Then we try ice."
"You just said the love of my life," I told her and sat cross-legged when I felt my legs belonged to me again.
She settled opposite, mirroring my seat, and softened in that strange way she did when it was about Mana. "No big shapes," she said. "No blades. Start with breath. In four. Hold four. Out four. Picture the cold—not winter storm cold. The cold inside a well. Deep, quiet, clean."
I breathed. Four counts in. Hold. Four counts out. The air had a taste when I did it right—sharp, spare, like first snow stepping onto stone. The lightning in my left arm hissed and tried to muscle into the front. I pushed it back; it sulked. Fire in my right side warmed, then politely stepped aside. Ice gathered in the space between my palms like the world was exhaling on my hands.
A film formed. Clear as glass, thin as patience. The first time I'd tried this, it had come out as wobbly cubes that looked like they'd lost an argument. This time I coaxed a disk. Flat. Smooth. Regal, in a tiny, ridiculous way.
"Better," Stacy said quietly. "Now, the trick: weight."
"Ice has weight," I said, but I knew what she meant—the balance of it, the way mass could be cheated with shape and density and will. I sank more mana, slow and steady. The disk grew denser, darkening just a shade as tiny fractures braided into strength.
"Stop there," she said. "Now tilt."
I tilted. The disk held. I felt like a child holding a soap bubble that had agreed to be a coin.
"Your face," Stacy said. "Relax it."
"I refuse," I said, and tried anyway.
We worked like that for a while. Disks to coins to wafers. I made a tiny blade—a paper blade, really—let it sit on my palm, then dismissed it with a thought before it tempted me. We weren't building weapons today. We were learning the alphabet of a language I wanted to speak in poetry later.
By the time we broke for lunch, my head had that fuzzy ache Mana leaves when it's been asked to do tricks, and my hands were pleasantly chilled. I could feel the shape of a future blade sitting somewhere behind my ribs, waiting for the day I could call it out and have it answer like a friend.
Lunch tasted like victory and salt. Stacy talked while she ate—as always—a stream of notes and plans and casually horrifying regimes. I nodded when appropriate, grunted when not, and stored half of what she said in the part of my mind labeled later panic.
She gave me the promised two hours after. I took them. The library was cool and quiet, smelling like dust and old leather and linden polish. I hauled a stack of tomes to a sun-square table near the window and dove in: metallurgy basics; the geometry of a good edge; how tang construction changes balance; the poetry of hilt and guard proportions; a treatise by some long-dead lunatic on the soul of a blade that made more sense than I wanted it to.
Notes formed. Sketches, too—curves that would translate to ice, angles that would let mana sing instead of scream. The hours slid like silk.
I could have stayed there until the moon sat on the windowsill, but I'd made a vow with my own stupid mouth, and beyond that vow was Stacy with a practice blade and a grin. I closed the last book, tucked a few pages of diagrams into dimensional storage, and stood.
Back in the yard, the afternoon sun hammered everything flat. Heat lifted from the stones in visible shivers. The servants had retreated to shade; even the blackbirds had declared a truce with the concept of effort. Stacy was exactly where I knew she'd be: in the center of the yard, blade in hand, smile on, eyes kind.
"Round two," she said.
"Round two," I echoed, and set my feet.
We did not do anything heroic. We did not unlock secret power or birth a legend. We did what we had done all morning: she cut, I blocked; she feinted, I learned. But sometime between the fourth and the fortieth exchange, my body started answering the messages my eyes sent without writing a formal complaint first. My left hand guided more, my right hand asked less, and the sword felt, for three whole breaths, like it had always belonged there.
Stacy noticed. Of course she did. She cut, I turned; she flipped her grip, and I didn't panic; she beamed, and I pretended not to see.
We pushed until evening softened the edges of things and the yard went lavender. When she called it, I was sweat and breath and a little bit of pride.
"Not bad for day one," she said, clapping me on the shoulder hard enough to make my teeth click.
"Not bad for a gremlin," I said.
"Dual class," she reminded me solemnly. "Vice-Captain/Gremlin."
I snorted, then winced, then laughed at myself for both.
We drifted inside with the dusk. The mansion's lamps blinked awake one by one, gold bells of light pooling on floors and turning corners friendly. Somewhere, Lily and Rebeca argued in hushed voices about grocery lists and "professional boundaries," which, given the pair of them, probably meant something I didn't need to smell again. Somewhere farther, a string instrument found a tune like a ribbon caught in wind.
At the dining hall door, Stacy looked over her shoulder at me. "You did well."
"Don't say that," I said automatically. "It'll go to my head."
"Good," she said. "Let it. You'll need stubborn pride to carry the pain."
"I have stubborn everything," I said. "I'm a rock. You said so."
"I did," she said, and held the door.
Dinner was less ravenous than breakfast and more civilized, if only because my hands were too tired to commit crimes. We ate, we argued about whether apples counted as dessert (they do not), and we made tomorrow's plan in the spaces between bites.
When I finally dragged myself toward my room, the corridors felt like a river I knew. I paused at a window that looked out over the yard. It was slate and shadow now, only the shape of it left. My eyes found the place my back had learned the wall, the lines where my feet had stuttered and then found new paths.
I touched the glass. "Tomorrow," I said to my reflection. "We do it again."
The reflection—black hair threaded with ember-red, fox eyes that made knights run, and a mouth that could bare a canine or joke—didn't argue.
In my room, I washed the sweat and dirt off, prodded the bruises already yellowing, and lay down on sheets that still smelled sun-dried and safe. The pledge hummed a little under my breastbone, not a threat but a promise. Numbers would not define me. Movement would. Choices would.
My arms pulsed—left with the sharp wire-bite of lightning, right with the patient glow of fire—and in between those two curses I felt the cool, clean line of ice, waiting for me to make something sharp and true.
I closed my eyes and slept like I'd been switched off, and if the old choppy memories tried to creep in—buckles, needles, countdowns—I let them find the wall I'd stacked in my mind out of new things: a black blade catching morning, a teacher who laughed while she threatened, a balcony critic with a mug, a yard discovering my feet, and the idea of a blade I hadn't made yet but would.
Tomorrow, I'd run again. I'd block again. I'd count breaths until Ice listened. I'd add pages to the stack on forging, because I wanted to shape not just what I held, but what I was becoming.
And what if Stacy yelled loud enough to rattle the windows?
Fine. Some traditions are worth keeping.