The yard filled with fog so thick it felt like the world had thrown a shroud over everything worth seeing.
They lined up at the instructor's whistle, Soren, Tavren, Rhain, and the rest of the city's scrapings, boots polished to a despairing shine, uniforms cinched so tight there was barely room for breath beneath the ribs.
Soren could see his own reflection in the toe-leather, though the face that looked back seemed older: more the memory of a boy than the thing itself.
Nobody had told them what the ceremony was for. Not precisely. The rumors slithered overnight, as rumors excelled at doing.
Some said it was a final culling before release; others, that the city's House intended a mockery, some public humiliation where the highborn would pick favorites, or worse, names. Soren found he lacked the acid for dread.
At this point, he half hoped it would be a test, just to skip the suspense.
The outer gates of the yard, twin slabs of darkwood, chained and sealed since the first week of training, creaked open with a dramatic groan.
The world beyond was not the familiar haze of Nordhav's slums but a riot of banners, four in number, each tied to a color and memory Soren had, until today, known only from the chipped coins and the mouths of boys who lied for sport.
The frontmost banner, house Kaldris, by the look, was heavy blue, bordered in silver and marked with a wolf's twin heads, one snarling and one devouring.
Soren recognized the wolf pelt mantle from stories; the man wearing it stood at least a head above the rest, hair silver-blond and beard kept in the style of mountain reavers.
His embroidered sleeves ended in actual claws, polished to an ivory sheen. The man's face seemed carved out of boredom, as if he'd rather be elsewhere, or perhaps nowhere at all.
To Kaldris's left, the Sunspire Dominion's banner blazed gold on white, and the man beneath its sigil wore armor not of steel, but interlocked silk plates, the surface shot through with so much glinting thread it hurt to look at directly.
His hair was black, wax-sleek, pulled into a knot so severe it stretched the skin around his eyes, which remained half shut, the way a street hawker's did when he was about to sell you something that would break in the first rain.
Soren couldn't decide if he liked the man, or just wanted to see him humbled.
Third in line, the representative from the Yllaire Confederacy looked half-starved but not unassuming: cloak green-black, buckled at the throat with an iron oak-leaf, skin pale and brows so arched they resembled question marks.
His hands were red and cracked, the nails bitten below the quick; he fiddled constantly with a book, the spine of which was wrapped in copper wire. A knife hilt protruded from behind the book's edge.
No emblem for Ashgard, not that Soren expected one. In the stories, Nordhav's House never recruited. They released.
If you made it through, you got a name and a coat, and never saw the inside of the yard again.
Sometimes, you became an instructor; more often, you vanished into the city's lattice of alleys.
Soren looked for an Ashgard representative out of reflex, but there was only the instructor, arms folded and face unreadable, watching from a step behind the visiting banners.
The three foreign nobles advanced with the methodical choreography of men who'd watched a hundred such ceremonies in their own kingdoms.
They paced the line, each accompanied by a second: the Kaldris wolf by a mute, scarred valet; the Sunspire silk by a woman in mirrored armor; the Yllaire scholar by a scribe whose quill hand was wrapped in blue gauze.
They walked the line, eyes sharp, faces blank, but Soren sensed the inventory of each boy happening in the milliseconds before a name or a flaw could present itself. Tavren, always first for attention, found himself fixed under the Kaldris man's gaze. "Name," the noble rumbled.
"Tavren. No line," Tavren said, eyes forward and voice thin as candlewick.
One glance, then a look to the valet, who shook his head. Kaldris moved on.
Rhain, two down, caught the Yllaire's eye. The scholar sniffed, then murmured a string of syllables Soren only half-heard, but it sounded like a diagnosis of interest.
The scribe scribbled. Soren saw, for the first time, a faint hope light up in Rhain's face.
Then the Sunspire noble stopped in front of Soren. Shorter than the Kaldris lord, but with an intensity that left Soren's hair standing at the back of the neck.
The Sunspire measured him, toes to brow, then turned to his mirror-armored second, who whispered something just below Soren's threshold of hearing.
"You are Soren Thorne," the noble said, not a question.
He nodded.
"Of Ashgard, gutter line? Or other?" the noble pressed, unblinking.
"Gutter. No line," Soren echoed Tavren. For once, the phrase didn't sound like a curse.
The noble's lips quirked, not quite a smile. He fished something from within his sleeve, a small scroll, banded in yellow, and pressed it into Soren's palm.
"Follow when called," he said, and swept down the row.
The three houses cycled twice. After the first round, some boys were dismissed outright, sent through the inner courtyard with looks of sullen relief or, in Glen's case, a performative shrug that didn't quite mask the rawness in his face.
Tavren was passed over on the second loop, but Rhain received a mark: the Yllaire scholar drew a line of ink across the back of Rhain's hand, then sniffed as if unimpressed with the result.
Soren waited, heart pounding hard enough that he felt the Remnant's edge echo the pulse.
Every breath tasted of iron, the air thin as a knife's edge. The Sunspire noble didn't speak to any of the others.
He simply passed, paused at Soren at each circuit, then continued on until the ceremony's logic finished itself.
When it was over, there were only Soren, Tavren, Rhain, and four others: two older than Soren, one smaller and hunched, the last so nondescript Soren felt embarrassed for not knowing the boy's name after all this time.
The instructor signaled for silence. "Boys. You have been seen. Some of you will stay. Some go."
Yllaire's scholar pointed to Rhain: "You. Mirrored Hall, noon tomorrow. If you bleed, don't say it."
Rhain nodded, mouth slack with awe.
Kaldris wolf head just grunted, and his valet took two of the older boys, hands rough on their shoulders, leading them down the causeway toward the west gate.
Finally, Sunspire addressed Soren: "You will present at the blue-glass door at firstlight. Do not bring the coat. Do not bring the sword."
He nodded, barely trusting himself to speak.
Tavren was passed over a final time, and the look on his face was not anger, but something close to pity, or perhaps envy.
The instructor did nothing, just watched, the chin raised as if to catch the wind's taste.
The nobles exited as they had entered, banners trailing smoke and rumor behind them. The instructor dismissed the line with a gesture, and Soren found himself adrift on the yard, the fog now dissipated to a pale, ordinary gray.
Tavren sidled up. He didn't look at Soren directly, but said, "Guess even knives find sheaths."
Soren offered nothing. The cold had climbed inward, as if his blood had forgotten what it was for.
"Does it hurt?" Tavren asked, after a time.
"Not yet," Soren replied.
Rhain passed, hand cradled close, the line of ink already smudged by nervous sweat. He gave Soren a nod, distant, but real.
Soren waited. The rest of the day blurred. Supper was bread, thinner than before. No one talked at mess, or if they did, Soren's ears filtered it out.
There was only the heat and the challenge of the unknown.
Night pressed in. Soren repacked his bundle, folding the blanket with care, and rewound the Remnant fragment in its rag, though it was now more a comfort than a weapon.
He looked at the stone walls, the way the evening light caught the cracks and made them glow a sullen orange, and tried to imagine the world beyond, the place he was to enter at dawn.
The barracks emptied by degrees. Tavren left without fanfare. Rhain, too, but he paused at the door and looked back, as if memorizing the scene in case it changed once he turned away.
Soren was last to sleep, last to rise. In the morning, he dressed with slow, exacting care, as if any missed button or off center fold might send him back to start.
He touched his chest under shirt and coat, one last time, then walked the hall to the blue glass door.
The door opened before he could raise a hand. The Sunspire noble stood just inside, not in armor, but a white and gold tunic, gloves so spotless they looked like they'd never known dirt. The noble's smile was gone, replaced by something sharper.
"Soren Thorne," he announced, as if reciting a name already carved in marble.
"Yes, sir."
He was given a scroll and a silver badge. The scroll was blank, save for the Sunspire seal; the badge cool and heavy, an unfamiliar weight.
"Do I…" Soren started.
"Nothing for it," said the noble. "Your city will not miss you."
Soren supposed that was true. He bowed, more to the moment than the man, then walked through the blue glass door, not looking back, not even once.
When the fog closed in again, it was clean, and for the first time, Soren felt as though he had been not chosen, but set free.
–
Evening came with the end of snow, and a sudden hush as the gates drew shut behind him.