By late morning he set to work—combat first, then the grind that would feed levels and proficiencies. Short swords sat at 0 for him; that would have to change.
He thought:
"In Primum Devir a blade can sit in either hand—right or left—no matter what I was outside. Most will mirror themselves, right-handed as always. I won't. I'll practice left from the start: feints and cuts written backward, angles reversed, timing skewed. Against players, off-hand movement is harder to read, harder to parry—an unfamiliar stance turning simple strikes into guesses."
A strange advantage.
He weighed the day and chose the plain answer.
Same hill. Same hollow. Same trick.
"Wolves again," he told himself. "Lure, misstep, fall. It's ugly, it's safe, it works." Levels were levels; there was no prize for dying with style.
He glanced at the short sword and let the thought pass without affection. "Not today," he said inwardly. "I won't build a swordsman I don't intend to be." His points had been walking one road since the start: a sage's road. Steel was a seatbelt, not an engine—kept on for the inevitable accident, not for speed.
Left-hand work stayed on the table. "Sinister pays," he admitted, dry. "Even clumsy cuts look strange enough to land." Against players, the off-hand would make easy reads fail. But he folded the idea away. "Later. I'm waiting on a better card."
A brief, formal truth for the record. In Devir, a sage stands inside a system of knowledge. A school gives the frame, and from that frame technique takes its shape. With a proper frame, thought becomes leverage; push and the coarse elements answer first—fire, water, lightning. Most borrow a school already named. A few cut their own. Rarer still are those who hollow a room in the dark of themselves and set laws there—private ground, privately ruled.
He left by the wicket without ceremony. Hedge to stone, stone to scrub, scrub to the gully's bend—he took the same angles he'd written in the dark and let the day pretend they were new.
Along the way he pocketed weapons that didn't look like weapons. Two sharp stones, angular and mean. One smooth weight for the palm, heavy enough to suggest decisions. He tested each in turn, a small toss, a quiet catch. "Later," he told them. "Your work is noise, not murder."
The ridge remembered him. Chalk still powdered where hooves had argued with physics; grass still leaned where a body had gone down the far side. He crested the rise and saw it—a hump of earth swollen above the rest, brush matted where he'd slid. The pit at its crown held its dark like a kept promise.
He checked the line—mound to slope, slope to fall—then lowered himself back into the earth's small mouth. The walls smelled of damp root and old breath. He placed the stones within reach on the lip and settled where a man could vanish by choosing to.
He looked up at the thin blade of sky and let the thought come, dry as bone.
"Not time to leave the cave."
He waited through the white noon and let the hill do the hunting.
Perfect Sight rose and thinned again, a film he used only to choose targets, not to tempt fate. Time passed in the slow grammar of wind and grass until a shape wrote itself against a thorned trunk: ribs tight, ears forward, eyes like chips of iron.
Direwolf — Level 7.
He set a stone in his palm and made the sound the world understands—stone on stone, a clean insult. The head snapped. He showed a sliver of silhouette and answered with the sting: the pointed throw, low and mean.
It struck with a bark of hide.
Commitment made.
He didn't run. He fell. Arms to the rim, weight forward, he slid back into the earth as if the drop were a step he had planned. The wolf came over the crown in a single blind surge, found loose chalk where footing had been a lie, scrabbled, failed—then the hill took its debt in a long, bone-dumb tumble.
Silence. Then the sound of happiness:
[XP Gained: Kill — Direwolf (L7)]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency +7]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency 28/10,000]
The bar moved. Not enough. Good. Patience stays sharp when it's hungry.
He reset the stones on the lip. The world rewound to stillness, then played again with a different cast. Dusk-brown brush shivered a little too carefully. Two shapes this time, spacing like thought and echo.
Direwolf — Level 8.
Direwolf — Level 7.
Pairs required manners. He angled the first clack farther downslope, pulled one set of ears, and kept the second waiting. The closer wolf took the bait with the same old certainty born of hunger. He gave it the silhouette, gave it the sting, and gave the hill the rest. The body went past with a sound like leather dragged over gravel.
[XP Gained: Kill — Direwolf (L8)]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency +7]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency 35/10,000]
The second paced, unwilling to share a mistake. He let it circle, lost it, then found it again against the sky where the ridge made a rim. Another throw, this time at the rock face itself—noise, not pain. Curiosity finished what hunger started. It crested, saw prey where reality had drawn it, and the mound wrote the same ending a third time.
[XP Gained: Kill — Direwolf (L7)]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency +7]
[Fist Weapons Proficiency 42/10,000]
The bar climbed in quiet increments and then crossed the line with a chime that didn't smile.
The third didn't make the same mistake. It came low and fast and, when the lip gave under its paws, it didn't tumble—it flowed. Shoulders wedged, ribs crushed to fit, the wolf drove its skull into the hollow, jaws working air and dirt. Heat and carrion breath filled the pit.
"Fine," he hissed, breath tight. "Steel it is."
Left hand. First cut.
He tore the short sword free, choked up on the grip, and brought the edge down with everything he owned—hard across the flexor bundle above the planted paw. The blade bit tendon and gristle; strength did the rest. The foreleg went out from under it with a wet pop. It shifted to the other, learning fast.
"So do I."
He caught that second wrist the same heartbeat it landed—edge angled, weight behind shoulder—then drove both boots to sternum and shoved.
The wolf went past him, muscle turning to weight, weight to sound—brush, stone, the long sentence of a fall.
The overlay answered without joy.
[XP Gained: Kill — Direwolf (L8)]
[Short Sword Proficiency +7]
[Short Sword Proficiency 7/10,000]
[Level Up]
Emperor — Level 4.
He stayed where he was, back to dirt, breath even, palms dusted white. He didn't celebrate. He counted what was left in his pocket and on the slope, then looked up at the thin blade of sky.
"Still not time to leave the cave," he said, dry as chalk. "Not yet."
Dusk leaned in. The white of the day thinned to iron, then to the old copper he remembered from his first hour here.
He stayed in the hollow, listening to the slope relearn silence.
"Cultists."
The word moved through his head like a splinter. This ridge, this gully, the cattle-chute—close to a path they'd favor when the light turned sideways. Masks that weren't masks. Knives that were sermons. He let the thought touch the village and pull back.
"Will they meddle? Did they already?"
The empty pallet since Midwinter had its own opinion. He didn't argue with it.
"Precautions," he told the dirt. "Not courage."
Don't light fires. Don't leave trails fat with luck. Don't be on open ground when the sun decides.
He took the last of Father Aldric's bread from his belt, tore it in half, and ate without ceremony—dry, clean, honest. Salt, a ghost of yeast, the kind of food that taught you to be grateful for walls.
"Eat, move, disappear," he said, almost amused. "Heroics are for people with spare lives."
He smoothed the lip with his forearm—blurred the scuffs, tucked the stones back into brush, left the pit the way a fox leaves a den it plans to use again. Then he rose into the brush and let the mound have its face back.
Hedge to stone. Stone to scrub. Scrub to the gully's bend. He took the same line he'd written last night and walked it quiet, eyes measuring distance the way other men measure weather.
No beasts in the trough of his path. No bells. Good.
At the wicket he lifted a hand. The captain's shadow leaned, weighed, and waved him through. No words. The hinge muttered; the bar lifted; the door admitted him like a fact.
He stepped under the gatehouse eave and let the village reassert its geometry: rails set denser, chalk where it needed to be, men where they should stand when weight arrives.
"Cultists in mind," he told himself, low. "Not in sight. Yet."
Tomorrow would test that. Tonight, he kept his share of caution and the memory of bread, and he gave the wall what it wanted most—one more quiet return.