They called it Path Week, a tradition in the valley where all children who turned ten were taken on a field trip to the surrounding region to observe real adults at work. It was supposed to inspire us. Help us figure out what we might want to become one day.
Honestly, most of us were just excited to miss chores for three days. Yana packed me a satchel of dried fruit, cured jerky, and a full waterskin. She even sewed my name into the strap.
"Don't fall into a lake," she warned as I slipped it over my shoulder. "And don't pick a job just because it looks cool. Pick something that calls to your soul."
Mira stood beside me, adjusting the buckle on her cloak with the kind of focused precision she reserved for magical runes and straight book spines. Her ears flicked with each sound around us, kids laughing, carts creaking, a big brass bell ringing as we gathered at the center of the village.
"Ready?" I asked her.
She looked up at me and gave a small nod. "Always."
Our guide for the trip was an old dwarf named Master Hilgroth. He was squat, bearded, and constantly looked like he hadn't slept in a week. But his eyes were sharp, and his voice carried like thunder across the hills.
"All right you muddy-footed gremlins, listen up!" he barked, silencing the group in an instant. "You're about to see how this world really works. Not your cozy little beds. Not your priest-fed bedtime stories. Real people. Real work. Some of it will be dangerous. Some of it will smell. You're gonna learn what it takes to survive outside this village. And if you cry, I'm not carrying your ass home. Understood?"
A murmur of "Yes, Master Hilgroth" echoed around him.
"Good. Let's move."
Our first stop was the Guild Row in the neighboring city of Vallenridge, a towering, walled city two valleys over. It took most of the morning to get there by wagon, and by the time we arrived, my legs were stiff and my butt was sore. But when the city came into view, I forgot about all that.
The walls were built from silverstone, polished until they gleamed like morning frost. Massive banners hung from the gate towers, each bearing a different guild sigil, claw marks, alchemical flasks, runed hammers, sunbursts, and others I didn't recognize.
"This is where the future is forged," Master Hilgroth said, arms spread wide. "Warriors. Scholars. Hunters. Keep your ears open." We were divided into groups and sent to explore different guilds in shifts.
The Blacksmith Guild was first. The heat hit me like a wave when we entered. Sparks danced in the air. Iron rang against anvils in rhythmic clangs. A woman with soot-streaked skin and flaming red hair demonstrated how to imbue weapons with elemental cores. She held a blade over a magic sigil, muttered an incantation, and suddenly the blade hissed with blue lightning.
Everyone gasped. Even Mira's eyes widened.
Next was the Alchemists' Hall, where rows of bubbling flasks sat on marble counters. We watched as a master alchemist dropped a single dragon scale into a vial, causing the liquid to shimmer and float upward in a slow, glowing spiral.
"You drink that," he said, "and your bones don't break for a week."
Someone in the back whispered, "Can I drink two?"
The alchemist laughed. "Not if you like your liver."
We visited the Healers' Circle, where white-robed clerics used magic and herbs to mend wounds, grow lost fingers, and even purge minor curses. Mira was fascinated, hovering behind the instructor and asking more questions than anyone else.
Then came the Hunter's Lodge. The stone hall was covered in monster hides. Fang-lined skulls hung from the walls. A pair of armored hunters stood near a mounted beast that looked like a cross between a panther and a serpent, its eyes frozen open in a permanent snarl.
"Hunters don't just kill," the elder hunter said, pacing in front of us. He was tall, broad, with one arm missing from the elbow down. "We capture, breed, and manage monsters. Female monsters of breeding age are our primary source of traits, power, and material. Wild male monsters? If they can't be tamed… they're culled."
I didn't blink the entire time. The hunter stopped, staring straight at me.
"You've got that look," he said. "The kind that doesn't flinch at blood."
I didn't know what to say. But Mira stepped slightly closer to me, silent as always, her tail brushing my leg.
The next morning, we were taken into the fields, markets, and schools of the surrounding region. Real, working adults doing real, messy, beautiful work.
We watched scribes copying enchanted scrolls, their fingers dancing over rune-paper with practiced ease. The air smelled of ink and ozone. Mira lit up like a lantern when she saw a teacher weave illusionary light into a lesson scroll for beginner spell theory.
Later, we visited a monster ranch, where captured beasts were housed, tamed, and sometimes bred. The rancher was a calm, silver-haired elf woman who showed us how different monster types reacted to various stimuli, how fire-borne creatures grew aggressive in rain, how stone-types preferred slow music, and how breeding-compatible monsters required careful mood stabilization.
"They're not all brutes," she said, petting a wooly, bat-eared creature with six eyes. "Some of them are smarter than you."
She wasn't wrong. There was something about them, especially the female ones, that felt… aware.
Almost human. It unsettled me. But it also intrigued me. The final stop was the Academy of Initiates, the school where all children from the region began formal education once they turned ten.
It was built into the side of a cliff, pale stone halls opening into archways over the valley. Students wore brown cloaks with silver stitching, and teachers moved like they'd seen too much to waste time.
"This," Master Hilgroth said, "is where you'll begin if you pass the entrance test."
I swallowed. I hadn't even thought that far ahead.
"Do you think we'll get in?" I asked Mira as we sat on the edge of a viewing platform, watching students practice spells in the yard below.
"I know I will," she said, smirking slightly.
"Oh, so humble."
She nudged my shoulder with hers.
"You'll get in too," she added.
"You sure about that?"
"You're stubborn," she said. "And smart. And… you've got this weird thing about proving people wrong."
I looked down at the valley. The world seemed big all of a sudden.
"I think I want to be a Monster Hunter," I said before I realized I was saying it out loud.
Mira was quiet for a moment. "I kind of figured."
"Really?"
"You were the only one who didn't look away in the Hunter's Lodge. Not even when they showed the mating pens."
I flushed. " I wasn't staring…"
"Sure." But she was smiling.
We returned to the village the next day, exhausted but full of ideas. I could see it in the others too, kids who used to dream of being knights now talked about alchemy, and kids who'd sworn to be healers now wanted to build magical siege weapons.
Mira and I didn't talk much that night. We just sat by the stream, watching moonlight ripple across the water. The next morning, the village gathered for the formal entrance announcements.
Only twenty names would be called. My hands were clenched so tight they went numb. The elder priest stood on the temple steps, parchment in hand.
He read out names, one by one. Kids stepped forward, cheered or cried, hugged their guardians.
"Derek Warren," he called, pausing slightly before saying my name.
My legs felt like lead. But I walked forward. And right after me, like a thread following a needle, "Mira Vessari."
She joined me at the front, standing just close enough for our arms to brush.
We didn't say anything. We didn't need to. And just like that, we were students.