Morning sunlight streamed through the tall glass windows of Varncrest's east wing, gilding the polished stone floors in honeyed gold. Martin sat cross-legged on a solitary bench by the balcony gardens, notebook open across his lap. He wasn't scribbling yet—just turning a pen slowly between his scarred fingers, the tip tapping out an erratic rhythm. The garden beyond was alive with whispers of wind through ivy-draped arches, the scent of fresh blooms drifting in on the early breeze.
"Planning your massacre already?" A quiet voice asked from above, silk over steel.
Martin didn't look up. "Good morning, Fenice."
Fenice sat down lightly on the carved marble railing beside the bench, his posture so perfectly balanced that not even the trailing folds of his high-collared coat disturbed the blooming lilacs behind him. His sword rested against his knee, sheathed, yet the faint hum of restrained mana always surrounded him—a gilded blade pretending to be just another student.
"You're participating solo, aren't you?" Fenice asked, brushing a fallen petal from his shoulder. His tone was mild, but Martin knew that tone. Underneath it lay a blade sharper than the one at Fenice's hip.
Martin finally tilted his head, eyes still flat and cold. "Why are you so interested? Still salty about the harp?"
"That and—" Fenice's eyes flicked to the runes etched along Martin's wrist, the ones that sometimes flared when he was lost in thought—signatures of the heart he'd stolen, the price he paid for his power. "Your blatant disregard for human life."
Martin snorted. "Life is cheap," he said. His pen stopped tapping. He looked Fenice dead in the eye, unblinking. "It's death that's expensive."
"You enjoy killing," Fenice said, not a question. He wasn't smiling now. His voice was too soft, too careful.
"A bit." Martin shrugged, like it was the weather they were discussing.
"Thought so." Fenice leaned forward, elbows on his knees, expression unreadable. For a heartbeat, his elegant mask slipped—revealing the swordsman underneath, the one who'd earned his gilded moniker by splitting men from crown to collarbone. "You have to enjoy something, I suppose."
Martin's mouth curled up at the corner. "You're honest today."
Fenice ignored that. "You have to enjoy something when your life is always at the edge. Is that it?"
Martin's eyes flicked back to the page, then away to the gardens again—watching sunlight catch on the veins of a rose petal. "You wouldn't understand."
"I understand more than you think."
"No." Martin's tone darkened, the warmth vanishing like breath in winter. "No, you don't. Not really. Even the duels you fought to climb to your precious rank—sixtieth strongest swordsman in the world, wasn't it?—were cushioned by family rescue contingencies, healing contracts, divine relic insurance, and a dozen political nets waiting to catch you if you fell too far. There's always been someone to sew your pieces back together."
Fenice didn't flinch, but his jaw tightened.
Martin's voice lowered, almost conversational. "I never had that. Not once. I don't have a family worth mentioning. No divine favor to cash in. No hidden army to pull me out of the mud. Just me, and whatever scraps of logic I could stitch together before someone tried to burn it all down."
Fenice's eyes fell to Martin's hands, tracing the webwork of old burns and needle-thin scars. "So you became the flame," he said quietly.
Martin barked out a laugh, sudden and sharp. "You're poetic today. Is that what your blade teaches you when you sleep? Metaphors?"
"It teaches me discipline," Fenice said, voice harder now. "Something you could use."
Martin met his eyes again—blue and unyielding, like winter sky. "I don't want discipline. I want freedom. And quiet."
Fenice blinked. "Quiet?"
"That's all I've ever wanted. A place where no one interrupts. A place where I can practice magecraft, test theories, break the world apart if I feel like it—without anyone pretending their bloodline makes them my master."
Fenice's laugh was low, incredulous. "That sounds hypocritical, considering what you did in the South Arena."
Martin's pen flicked through the air again, faster now. "They picked that fight. I finished it. If they didn't want their precious heirs broken like cheap porcelain, they shouldn't have used them like disposable knives."
"You humiliated them. You crippled two of them. You branded the Albrecht boy."
Martin's smile sharpened. "And now no one else will touch me unless they're sure they can kill me outright. That's peace, Fenice. Not your kind—wrapped in silk and prayers and polite invitations. My kind."
The garden fell silent except for the distant echo of footsteps—students crossing the bridge below, gossiping about the upcoming Wargames, rumors swirling like stormclouds. Martin Kaiser, the necromancer. Martin Kaiser, the ruin maker. Martin Kaiser, the mad dog the Empire can't leash.
Fenice's voice cut through it all like a whispered blade. "You're damaged, Martin. But worse—you're proud of it."
"That's just another word for powerful," Martin said.
For a long time, Fenice said nothing. He watched the rose vines sway under the gentle breeze, eyes distant and oddly mournful for someone whose name inspired entire battalions to stand down rather than meet his sword.
"Have you ever," Fenice began slowly, the words dragging like a blade through old wounds, "wanted peace that didn't have teeth?"
Martin tilted his head, puzzled by the softness in Fenice's voice. "I just want quiet," he repeated. "Quiet enough to hear myself think."
"And if the world won't give it to you?" Fenice asked.
Martin's grin was slow, vicious. "Then I'll carve it out of the noise."
Their eyes met across that little balcony garden—one man leaning on lineage, grace, and centuries of technique. The other a self-made storm wrapped in cracked skin and burnt resolve. Two kinds of power, two kinds of cost.
Fenice rose first. He sheathed his sword with a click that felt louder than it should. "When the Wargames begin… try not to turn the entire field into an abattoir."
Martin only shrugged. "No promises."
Fenice stepped away but paused at the archway, half-shadowed by climbing ivy. He looked back over his shoulder. "There's a difference, you know. Between fear and respect."
Martin looked up from his notebook, pen hovering over a half-finished diagram. "And?"
"Someday, you'll learn that power alone can't buy either for long."
Martin's grin didn't fade. "Maybe. But for now, I'll buy myself some quiet."
Fenice's silhouette vanished into the sunlit hallway, leaving Martin alone with the hush of the garden and the faint scratch of his pen on paper.