The cathedral's upper halls were quiet in the way that always made me suspicious.
Not peaceful quiet. Not the comforting hum of a holy place at rest. No—this was the kind of quiet that pressed its palms against your ears and whispered you should be doing something. I'd slept better than I had in weeks, a deep, dreamless plunge into oblivion that left me almost smug when I awoke. But now, with sunlight bleeding thin through the high windows, a kind of tight urgency curled around my ribs. The kind that didn't care how well I'd slept. The kind that wanted me to start moving.
Training. I needed to start training.
The thought looped in my mind like a sermon I didn't believe in but couldn't stop reciting. The Solarian Crucible was one week away, and I had no idea what kind of monsters—human or otherwise—I'd be staring down in the ring. Every cathedral, every estate, every mercenary circle worth a damn would send their best. Solaris was huge, and its definition of "the best" could range anywhere from honorable duelists to feral axe-wielders who used spinal columns as keepsakes. I wasn't in the mood to find out the hard way which I'd be facing.
And yet—another thought gnawed at me harder than the tournament itself.
Salem.
The way he fought in the street last night… it hadn't been normal. Not just good—I'd seen good. I'd fought good. His movements were too fast, too fluid, too damn unnatural, like his body had been tuned to a different law of physics than the rest of us. And the worst part? I could feel it.
He was holding back. Which meant one thing.
I needed to spy on him.
Oh don't give me that look—if someone's going to be traveling with me, bleeding beside me, and possibly saving my life in a week's time, I have a right to know what their spine-cracking secrets are. And if that involves a little harmless surveillance, well, saints forbid.
I strolled down the upper hall, keeping my steps light. The floor was a patchwork of polished black stone that reflected the cathedral's sunlight like water. Old glass windows lined the walls, each one etched with saints and their self-important miracles. Halfway down, I stopped by one of the narrower windows and leaned in, careful not to cast a shadow on the garden below.
And there he was.
Salem sat shirtless in the cathedral gardens, the early light cutting hard angles across his chest and shoulders. His fiery red hair ran wild, untamed, wind-ruffled—not bound or slicked back like the last time I'd seen it. His skin caught the golden in the air, and for a moment, I forgot entirely what my purpose here was.
He was sitting in perfect stillness, swords sheathed at his sides, eyes closed, breathing so slow and deep that it seemed to tug at the air around him. Every inhale was deliberate. Every exhale felt like it left the world a little emptier.
Minutes slipped by. I should have been bored. I wasn't—though I'll admit that might have had less to do with the meditative ambience and more to do with the fact that Salem was half-naked, all taut muscle and faint scars that caught the sunlight in ways that were quite distracting to say the least.
Eventually, he rose to his feet in a slow, almost theatrical way, like someone peeling themselves from a dream.
His hands found his swords before unsheathing them both. Then, he began hopping lightly into the air. Small hops. Barely a foot off the ground at first, then higher, each one almost weightless, like he was teasing gravity instead of obeying it.
I was confused, yes—but not the harmless, idle kind of confusion you get when you've misplaced your teacup. No, this was the sharp, knifepoint kind of focus that sits in the back of your skull and whispers don't you dare blink. Some part of me knew the next moment was going to matter, that whatever Salem was about to do would stick in my head like a splinter for the rest of my life.
Then his feet brushed the ground—just brushed it, so lightly the grass didn't even bend—and he vanished.
Gone.
In the span of a blink.
My whole body jolted like someone had just shoved a fist into the base of my spine. The breath ripped out of me, my balance swaying in protest as my boots scuffed across the stone floor.
My heart was hammering so violently it felt like it was trying to escape through my throat, and a very thin, very unhelpful voice in the back of my head said, Welp, that's it. You've finally gone mad, Cecil.
Then the garden doors below slammed inward hard enough to rattle the hinges.
I felt it before I heard it—a pressure in the air, sudden and unnatural, like the hallway had been drained of sound and was now holding its breath.
It rolled up the cathedral's spine in a way I could track, not by sight, but by the way the old wooden beams groaned and every window along the corridor seemed to tighten in their frames, as though bracing for impact.
And then—
The air around me shattered.
Not metaphorically. Actually shattered, like thin glass breaking underfoot.
In that same instant, Salem was simply there—standing behind me, close enough that I could feel the heat radiating off of his body.
The sound followed after, an earsplitting crack that tore through the hallway as every last window around us fractured in perfect unison. It was like sound itself had been chasing him and was only now catching up, slamming into reality all at once.
Steam curled from Salem's body in lazy tendrils. Real steam—ghosting upward from his skin in delicate ribbons, sliding off the lines of his shoulders and back as though he'd just stepped out of boiling water. The heat rolled off him in waves, smelling faintly of iron and scorched air.
I turned slowly, not because I wanted to, but because my muscles were listening to the kind of primal terror that makes you move with careful obedience. My eyes widened, and I could feel that expression stretch across my face, raw and unguarded.
Absolute. Undiluted. Terror.
He smirked. "You know," he said, his voice maddeningly calm, "I can tell when someone's spying on me."
I stared at him for a beat too long. "Spying? Please. I was admiring. Totally different category."
One brow arched. "And here I thought you were subtle."
"Clearly there's need for improvement," I tried to sound glib, but my pulse was doing its best impression of a war drum. "Tell me, what the hell did you just do? Because unless I've lost my grip on reality—and that's only a fifty percent chance at the moment—you just broke the speed of sound. Indoors."
His expression darkened slightly as he slid his swords back into place. "Follow me."
And really, how else do you respond to that but with: "Well, that's not ominous at all."
Still, I followed.
We walked down the corridor in measured silence, though I could feel his attention narrowing in that way Salem always did when he was winding up to say something important—or devastating.
"I've been hiding things from you," he said finally. His tone wasn't apologetic, just matter-of-fact. "A lot of things. And some of them… I still can't reveal to you."
"That's reassuring."
He glanced at me but didn't rise to the bait. "The tournament concerns me more than you realize. Which means—for the next week—there's no holding back."
My gut twisted. I'd suspected for a while that Salem wasn't only working for me, but I'd never been able to pin down who else might have a claim on him. Somehow, whatever he was after and whatever I was walking into at Port Fallas… they were connected.
I didn't push. Not yet. Instead, I asked him simply, "Then you'll train me?"
We stopped in front of a tall double door. I knew this one. The cathedral's mirror chamber. I'd used it to train Miko and Aruel before our mission in intercepting the train, the memory of that day flickering across my mind like the edge of a blade.
Salem's hand found the key, and without looking at me, he said, "If you're serious about surviving, then yes."
The door unlocked with a slow, echoing click.
And together, we stepped inside.
The mirror chamber was just as I'd left it—vast, circular, and heavy with the scent of dust that had been gathering here for decades. The walls themselves were plain stone, unadorned and cold, but scattered across the floor stood towering mirrors in tarnished bronze frames, each one leaning slightly as if exhausted from the weight of its own reflection.
Their glass was imperfect—rippling in places, fogged in others—yet still sharp enough to catch the flicker of torchlight and fracture it into strange, wandering shards. Some mirrors stood close together, forming crooked corridors of reflected space, while others were set apart like lonely sentinels watching from the corners.
Salem stepped in first, boots striking the marble floor with that deliberate, measured pace that always made me feel like he was about to pronounce a sentence on my life. I followed, trying not to look like I was casing the place for escape routes—which, in all fairness, I absolutely was.
We stopped near the center of the chamber. For a moment, Salem just stood there, studying me like a craftsman inspecting a questionable piece of raw material. Then he said, "What do you know about magic?"
I laughed at this. The kind of laugh that says you must be joking.
He wasn't.
"Oh, you're serious." I scratched my jaw, buying a little time, because the answer wasn't exactly flattering. "Well… I've picked up a few parlor tricks over the years. Back in my brief time at the academy, I learned to weave a convincing illusion or two, maybe dismantle a charm if it's cheap enough. Nothing that would blow anyone's socks off—unless their socks were already half-off to begin with."
His stare could have bored a hole through steel. "Do you even know about the two basic pathways?"
"The two basic what now?"
Salem closed his eyes and drew a slow, measured breath—then facepalmed so hard I half-expected to hear bone crack. "Hopeless," he muttered.
"I'll have you know," I said, putting on my most dignified voice, "that I attended plenty of lectures at the academy. I just… wasn't necessarily paying attention. I was busy doing—" I coughed delicately "—other things."
"Gods above." He rubbed at his temples. "Fine. Listen carefully." He paused for a moment before continuing. "Every person holds what's called an Astral Nexus. It's the core of their magical energy, the place every spell, every spark, every surge comes from. And mages—real mages—fall into one of two categories. Incarnic or Excarnic."
I leaned an elbow against a nearby mirror, pretending casual interest while filing away at his word.
"Incarnic mages," Salem continued, "use their Astral Nexus to strengthen, alter, or reconfigure their own bodies. That can mean enhancing speed, density, muscle strength… even altering features or bone structure when mastered. In other words, they're walking weapons."
He took a step closer, the torches catching the edge of his jawline. "Excarnic mages do the opposite. They project their magic outward, influencing the environment. That means conceptual manipulation, illusions, barriers, anything that affects what's around them rather than themselves." His tone was steady, instructional, but there was a weight beneath it, like he was building toward something. "Which path a person takes isn't something they choose. It's in their blood—passed down the same way you inherit any other gene."
I nodded slowly. "Alright. So I'm an Excarnic mage then. Makes sense. I've done the whole illusion-weaving thing—"
"No."
I blinked. "No?"
His tone shifted, darkened just a shade. "Most people don't know this, but there's a third path. Rarer than the other two, but abundant enough to matter."
That got my full attention. "And?"
"Concarnic." His eyes held mine in the reflection. "A convergence of both. The ability to draw from both pathways, Incarnic and Excarnic. And you—"
"—am a breathtakingly talented specimen?" I offered.
"You've been using Incarnic displays of magic without realizing it," he said flatly. "Your bodywork in close quarters, the way you recover between strikes—those aren't environmental tricks. They're micro-enhancements. Which means you've been splitting your output between two paths and doing neither well."
The excitement that flared in my chest was only slightly dampened by the insult. "So you're saying I'm special."
"I'm saying you're mediocre at both," Salem replied.
I put a hand over my heart. "You wound me."
He ignored me. "As you could've already guessed, I'm Incarnic. My father was too. And his father before him. My line is full of them. Which means I can train you in that path—and only that path—over the next week."
"Better than nothing," I said, though my voice had that slightly cocky edge I use when I'm trying to pretend I'm not nervous. "So… when do we start?"
"Now," he replied—no hesitation, no room for argument. His hands moved in a blur, both blades sliding free with a whisper of steel so clean it seemed to slice the air itself into ribbons. The sound lingered, sharp and silver, ringing in my ears like a bell tolling for the dead.
Before I could so much as shift my footing, one of the swords left his grip. It cut through the air in a spinning arc. My body moved before my brain did—pure instinct snapping my arm up, fingers closing around the hilt. The leather-wrapped grip seemed to mold into my palm, as though it'd been waiting there all along.
And then, without warning, Salem lunged straight for my throat.