The silence was so thick, Soren feared breaking it would splinter him in half.
He woke wrong, skin buzzing, as if the blue-white shard had multiplied behind his ribs overnight and was now a thousandth of a gram heavier than his body could accommodate.
Every muscle sang with the memory of a lesson that hadn't yet been taught. He waited for Valenna's voice, the morning rebuke, the lesson by ambush, but from the moment he blinked awake to the moment he stalked the corridor, there was only the extracurricular throb of the Remnant, and the patience of a world that had already decided what to do with him.
He dressed on autopilot, hands slow, the cloth catching on a blister at the knuckle. Rhain and Tavren were nowhere; neither was the noise of a barracks waking, which meant he'd overshot dawn or undershot curfew.
The hallway, usually a river of boys feigning purpose, was empty.
Every step sounded too loud. Soren kept to the blue line of the tiling, rolling his feet so soft the noise barely registered.
The world outside the door gaped, new and raw. The pit was empty, the practice dummies caught mid-shiver.
He crossed the sand, following the path his boots had cut yesterday, and wedged himself into the shadow at the edge of the ring.
He waited for the instructor to descend, for a barked command or the insulting limp of that old bastard's cane.
Nothing. Not even a bird; Soren scanned the rooftops and saw only the diamond haze of snow slapping off the gutters.
He wanted to leave, to go back inside, but the ache behind his ribs nudged him onward, so he pulled the practice blade from its rack and set himself just beyond the circle's center. He stood, and for a moment, that was all.
Not a stance, he'd seen a hundred stances, and this was nothing like any of them. It was a subtraction, the absence of any desire to move or flex or dominate. He simply stood, waiting for Valenna's voice.
None came.
After five minutes, he felt stupid. After ten, he started to feel cold in places he couldn't name. At the fifteen-minute mark, his shins began to burn, the ache crawling up to the knees, then the tendons at the hips.
Soren gripped the hilt, not tight, not loose, but like an afterthought in his palm. If you'd asked him, he would have said the sword wasn't even there.
The Remnant disagreed.
He counted breaths, sixty, then one-twenty, then so many he lost track and relapsed to counting heartbeats instead. The cold became its own kind of heat, a tight ring around each bone. Still, Soren stayed. His eyes watered, then dried, then watered again.
Only after the sky paled from indigo to eggshell did the voice return, faint as a breath on the opposite side of glass:
"You will not swing until you earn the right to stand."
He almost snorted. Of all the haunted wisdom, this was the lamest. Not a trick, not a drill, just standing.
But Valenna persisted, every syllable now the low, arctic tone that had shamed him in so many night lessons:
"First posture. The Doctrine of the Still. Everything that follows is a lie unless the world believes you mean it."
He straightened. Without a thought, Soren drew his heels into alignment, a line so precise he felt one side of his body rebel.
The back foot angled ninety degrees, the toes of his left pointing straight at the invisible enemy.
He widened his stance until the thigh muscles screamed, then forced his shoulders down and his chest out, the way tavern fighters did right before they decided to risk a punch on a larger man.
The point of the blade hovered out, perfectly level. It required nothing special, no force, no cunning, but the longer Soren held it, the more every fiber in his arms rebelled. His mouth dried out, the spit gone brittle on his tongue.
He fought the urge to glance up at the main house, to check if anyone was watching, but he knew: if you broke the gaze before the world, you lost it for free.
He stood, and the ache settled, as if the body agreed to this new rule. Soren realized he had no idea if an hour had passed or five minutes.
The voice returned, gentle as it ever got:
"The enemy is not across from you. The enemy is the need to move before you have command. You do not step into the fight; you are the place the fight happens."
His calves trembled, then stopped. The cold faded, the world blurred. Even the city's distant clamor shrank, until there was only his body, the cold fire of memory, and the sword's strange, floating equilibrium.
The moment dissolved not with a lesson, but with a simple cessation: Soren exhaled, and the standing was done. He let the blade go slack, and only then did the pain arrive to remind him how much he'd been faking the calm. He stumbled once, then masked it as a stretch.
At the edge of the yard, a copper pot clattered on the cobbles, someone opening up the refectory. Soren pretended he'd been warming up, then strolled back to the door before his legs could betray the wobble.
–
By breakfast, the barracks' regular entropy resumed. Tavren appeared at the table with a new bandage under his eye and a story about being caught on the wrong end of a bet; Rhain followed, unmarked, but with a tension under his skin Soren recognized from last winter when Rhain feared his mother was dead in the city's quarantines.
Soren slurped his beans, ignored the taste, and listened.
"Did you hear?" Tavren said. "They're doing the blood test rounds. Saw them dragging boys up to the Blue Hall at dawn. Even the noble sons."
Rhain poked at his plate. "Glen's gone. Didn't take his shoes."
Soren frowned. "Gone where?"
"No one said," Rhain whispered, voice a hush meant only for the immediate table. "Some said he's in the Infirmary. Some said he's in the cellars."
Tavren leaned close, eyes bright with anticipation of doom. "Some said the test turned his blood blue and they had to put him down like a sick mule."
He grinned, teeth less white than Soren remembered, then shrugged. "Maybe he just ran."
Soren saw it then: more empty seats in the mess, the way the instructors scanned heads with a new intent.
He didn't know if the cold behind his ribs was fear or the Remnant threatening to break free and launch him out the next open window.
After breakfast, they were herded out into the pit for group drill. But today was different: the instructor didn't divide them by size, but by lottery.
Soren drew a spot in the far left corner with three strangers from the south quarters, a boy with no neck, a girl with a single braid, and a redhead with thumb-sized welts on both arms.
They stood in a crude diamond, each unsure if they were supposed to threaten or defend.
The instructor did not speak. He just watched.
Soren remembered the morning's teaching. He did not square up, did not announce himself.
He just stood, feet aligned, practice blade held with the lazy precision of a man waiting for the world to make its move.
The redhead advanced first, swinging wild and arrogant. Soren watched the attack, not the eyes, and stepped a half pace forward, just enough to jam the charge and let the other's momentum carry him off balance.
The other two shifted, unsure, as the redhead stumbled. In the second window, Soren adjusted his stance, chest wide, shoulders low. He let the sword float, showing neither rush nor retreat.
They circled him. Soren did nothing. The memory flickered, Valenna, once, facing seven men in a ring, doing exactly this. He waited until the girl with the braid committed to a darting move.
He didn't parry; instead, he stepped forward into the attack, closing all space. It was so close the moment froze: her sword caught under his bicep, both their faces flushed from the surprise.
He did not strike. He just held posture, smiling.
The instructor grunted, then moved on.
The rest of the morning followed the same rhythm, three-to-one, four-to-one, always Soren standing as the locus, never as the aggressor. By lunch, his thighs radiated with the ache, but beneath the pain was a core of certainty.
He finished drills and retreated to the shade between the barracks and the wall. The sun had finally burned off the worst of the city's blue, leaving a slush that stank of old blood and candle tallow. Soren lay in the wet, breathing until the air tasted right again.
The voice arrived, as he knew it would.
That was the answer, she said. Now you know the trick.
"What trick?" he muttered, half-hoping the voice would vanish if he played dumb.
"You don't fight them all. You fight the world that tells them they have to fight you."
He rolled onto his side, hating the truth of it. "So what now?"
"Tomorrow we draw," Valenna replied. "Today, you taught the world to wait before it bites."
He tried not to smile. It almost worked.
–
That night, the rumors thickened. Boys called into the Blue Hall did not always return. The staff said it was nothing. just tests, just records, just a little Arcana to check your line, but even Tavren admitted with a low voice that one or two had come back "changed." Soren said nothing.