Eoman decided to stretch his legs, walking towards the children who were already faltering under his approach.
"Focus!" Ryven roared from the other side of the yard, slapping a boy's wrist straight.
As Eoman got closer, Sapphire glared at him. Eoman smiled in response.
"A shield cannot protect the sun from setting," he muttered only for Sapphire to hear.
Then he sidestepped smoothly, bypassing him to focus on Kira.
Sapphire's breath hitched, his hands curling into fists, but he forced himself to stay rooted to the spot. Ryven's earlier words burned in his ears — a shield doesn't groan on the ground.
"And how is the shoulder, My lady?" Eoman asked, his tone dripping with genuine, chilling concern.
Kira swallowed hard, her muscles freezing under his gaze. She looked around at the others. The children remained strictly on guard, their faces blank. They knew Eoman was cryptic — they knew he said terrifying things like she would be the death of them — but right now, they just needed to survive the lesson.
"Keep the weight on your back foot," Eoman instructed softly, gently tapping the side of Kira's uninjured arm to guide her into a defensive stance. "If you lean forward, you invite the blade. It's not yet time to play with prophecies."
His touch was ice cold. Kira flinched, but didn't pull away.
"A good stance keeps your vitals hidden," Eoman murmured, his voice smooth and calm.
He leaned slightly closer, his breath a freezing whisper against the shell of her ear.
'A sheer will can drive someone to an unimaginable death just to keep you breathing, My Lady,' Eoman's voice purred inside her mind, cold and dripping with malicious delight. 'Isn't that a lovely burden to carry?'
Kira gripped her own attire so tightly her knuckles turned white. Her heart hammered against her ribs like a trapped bird, but she forced her eyes to stay fixed straight ahead, refusing to look him in the eye.
Eoman let out a soft, delighted hum, clearly satisfied with the terror he had successfully injected into her veins. He smoothly stepped back, patting her uninjured shoulder with a terrifying gentleness.
"Perfect form," he announced aloud to the yard, his voice bright and entirely normal, as if he hadn't just broken her spirit. "Keep it exactly there."
With a final, mocking tilt of his head toward the trembling children, Eoman turned on his heel.
"And where are you going?" Ryven asked.
Eoman slowed his step but didn't turn.
"Sightseeing," Eoman said. "Don't worry, you won't have time to miss me."
He didn't look back as his long strides carried him away from the dirt yard, leaving behind a suffocating, heavy silence.
The heavy silence didn't last long. The moment Eoman's shadow disappeared into the main courtyard, Ryven spat into the dirt and barked a single word:
"Break."
Lunch was a silent, frantic affair. The children sat on the wooden benches near the barracks, their bodies aching, shoveling down bowls of thick, bland stew.
No one spoke. Kira kept her eyes glued to her bowl, Eoman's parting words still echoing like a phantom chime in her skull: A lovely burden to carry.
Across from her, Sapphire was already aggressively massaging his bruised forearm, his jaw set in a hard, rigid line. They didn't have time to process their fear; they barely had time to swallow before Ryven's heavy boots thudded against the dirt outside.
"Back on the line!" Ryven's voice boomed, shattering the brief sanctuary. "The sun is past its peak. Move!"
When they scrambled back onto the training grounds, the atmosphere had shifted. The maddening pressure of Eoman's gaze was gone.
Ryven stood before them with his sleeves rolled up, a massive wooden crate of padded training daggers at his feet.
There were no mind games this afternoon. Ryven didn't care about their destinies or their prophecies; he cared about their mechanics.
"Eoman plays with your minds because it amuses him," Ryven said, his voice dropping into a low, gruff rumble as he kicked the crate open. "I don't care about your minds. I care about your blood staying inside your bodies. Pick up a blade."
For the next four hours, Ryven pushed them to their physical limits, but for the first time, it felt like a lesson rather than a torture session. He didn't just tell them they were pathetic; he showed them why they were failing.
He physically adjusted Sapphire's hips to give his strikes more leverage. He taught Kira how to use her smaller stature to duck beneath a heavier opponent's guard, protecting her injured shoulder by shifting her entire center of gravity.
It was brutal, exhausting work, but it was practical. By the time the sun began to dip below the horizon, painting the yard in bruised shades of purple and orange, the children were covered in sweat and dirt — but their eyes were different.
The suffocating terror Eoman had left behind was replaced by the cold, grounding reality of muscle memory. They were learning how to fight back.
_______
By the next morning, the training yard had transformed.
Rows of heavy straw dummies lined the dirt platform, their canvas skin marked with crude, painted red crosses. The air smelled of fresh straw and old blood.
Ryven didn't greet them. He just kicked the crate from yesterday aside and dragged out a new one. No padded daggers this time. Just chalk, twine, and a dull, rusted knife.
"You've learned how to stand. Now you learn how to make the other bastard stop standing," he said.
He grabbed the nearest dummy by its burlap hair and yanked it forward.
"First day — disarm. You don't need to be stronger. You need to be earlier."
He demonstrated on Sapphire. Sapphire swung — slow, controlled — and Ryven stepped inside the arc, not away from it. One palm to the wrist, one twist, knee to the elbow. The wooden dagger clattered to the dirt before Sapphire even realized his hand was empty.
"Track the arc. Step inside. Leverage over strength," Ryven barked. "Again. Until your wrists bleed."
For hours, the yard filled with nothing but clattering wood and cursed whispers as they stripped weapons from each other's grips, over and over.
_______
Ryven was already waiting when they dragged themselves onto the yard at dawn. The dummies were gone.
In their place, Ryven stood shirtless, his torso a map of old scars, chalk circles drawn over his own body.
"Yesterday you learned how to take a blade away," he said, tapping a white circle just behind his collarbone. "Today you learn you don't always need one."
He pointed at Kira. "You. Hit me. Here."
Kira hesitated, her injured shoulder still throbbing.
"Don't think, girl. Poke it. Two fingers, hard."
She jabbed. Ryven didn't even flinch. He grabbed her wrist and guided her an inch lower, into the soft dip where the collarbone meets shoulder.
"There. The nerve bundle. You don't punch it. You sink into it."
This time, when Kira pressed, Ryven's entire arm spasmed. His fingers twitched involuntarily.
"Again," he growled at the rest of them. "Pair up."
The yard turned into a symphony of sharp gasps and bitten-back curses.
Ryven stalked between them, correcting with his rusted knife as a pointer.
"Armpit — the whole arm goes dead. You can't hold a sword if your fingers won't close."
He jabbed behind Sapphire's knee with two knuckles. Sapphire's leg buckled instantly and he hit the dirt hard.
"Behind the knee — even a giant kneels if you tell his nerves to."
By noon, they weren't throwing punches anymore. They were hunting for softness. The dip under the jaw. The hollow behind the ear. The thin skin inside the elbow.
It wasn't fighting. It was anatomy.
Kira, for the first time, had an advantage. Her small hands found spots the boys' fists missed. When she pressed two fingers into the side of a boy twice her size, she watched him crumple, eyes wide with shock.
Ryven saw it and gave a single, sharp nod.
"Good. Small doesn't mean weak. Small means precise."
From the balcony above, Eoman's fingers stopped ticking. He leaned forward, his grin widening just a fraction as he watched Kira make a boy twice her size fold without drawing blood.
The third morning, the straw dummies were back.
But the red crosses from before had been repainted. Fewer now. Smaller. Precise.
Ryven stood before them with a real dagger in his hand — not wood, not padded. Steel, dull-edged but heavy. He turned it over once, letting the morning light catch it.
"If you are fighting for your life, you do not show mercy," he said, his voice a steady drumbeat. "You strike where the armor is thin. You strike where the breath leaves."
He walked to the first dummy.
"Up," he said, and drove the blade upward under the ribs at an angle. "Under the breastplate. You don't stab straight. You go up. You find the heart. One thrust, he doesn't get back up."
He moved to the next.
"Throat," he tapped the canvas just under the chin. "You don't need to cut deep. Crush the windpipe. He can't shout for help if he can't breathe."
He stopped at the last dummy, placing two fingers just behind its burlap ear.
"Here," he whispered. "Behind the ear. A short, hard twist. The fastest way to end a fight. No noise. No struggle."
The yard was silent. Even Sapphire wasn't breathing loud.
Ryven looked at them — really looked at them — and for the first time, there was something other than disgust in his eyes. It was a warning.
"I am teaching you this because the world outside these walls will not give you three days," he said. "It will give you three seconds. You will not have time to be kind."
He tossed the steel dagger into the dirt at their feet.
"Now you do it."
No one moved at first. Then Kira stepped forward.
Her hands were raw. Her shoulder was screaming. Her knuckles were white from days of gripping wood and nerves and her own fear. But she picked up the dagger.
She stood before the dummy marked heart, took a breath that rattled, and drove the blade upward exactly the way Ryven had.
Straw tore. Dust spilled.
Then Sapphire. Then the others. One by one, the soft thud of blade meeting canvas filled the yard, over and over until the sound became normal. Until their hands stopped shaking.
It was exhausting, bloody work. Their fingers were raw, their muscles screamed, but as the sun bled out into bruised purple and orange, they stopped stumbling.
Their stances were rooted. Their strikes were quiet, sharp, deliberate.
They were no longer trying to survive the lesson.
They were learning how to kill the things that threatened them.
And from the shadows of the balcony above, the ticking of Eoman's fingers finally stopped.
His unhinged grin widened as he watched future weapons sharpen their edges.