Arrival was not a fanfare but a test, the road bottlenecked to a promontory of black glass, snow swept so clean it could have been an omen.
Above, the Knightfall Grounds crouched into the cliff with the patience of a nail waiting to drive itself deeper.
At first glance: not a castle, but a fort dressed in the trappings of monarchy. The towers were stunted, as if they'd thought better of advertising themselves in a land where siege engines outnumbered saints.
Flags hung everywhere. Everywhere. Not caught on gusts, but pulled taut by a trick of wire, or some graveyard wind that cared more for spectacle than politics.
Each banner flexed: the double-spired sun, the sigils of victory, even the threadwork constellations that circled the ramparts like a dare to look closer. Soren did.
He slipped on ice twice as he crossed the causeway, boots refusing to pretend he belonged.
Behind, Veyr Velrane made a show of catching him by the elbow, then released with an exaggerated bow, as if that absolved the mutual embarrassment.
"Careful," Veyr said, voice pitched for the guards at the gate to overhear. "The first step's always the worst."
Soren blinked away the cold, which stung less than expected, then squared his chin and stepped past the arch into the inner threshold.
There was a different air inside. Not literal, still the same bite to the nose, but a density to the light. The echoes here didn't fade, they doubled, like the walls held a mirror for every step.
A trio of junior heralds, all shorn to the scalp and dressed in identical white, waited at a lectern. One read a list; one checked for weapons; the third did nothing visible but watched for hesitation.
Soren almost grinned at the perfection of it. These people measured worth not by the sword, but by the microsecond wasted at a decision.
Veyr swept through protocol like a man who'd lived his whole life in a world built for him. Soren stumbled in his footsteps, which only made Veyr's notched smile wider.
"Time to split the line," Veyr said. He dropped the comment like a coin in a wishing well, then vanished in the wake of a gold-clad steward.
Soren watched the steward's braid whip past and tried to tell if it was the same kind of braid he'd seen in the city, or upgraded for ceremony. It was.
He was alone. Or not: the boredom of the junior heralds now zeroed in. Soren tried to look at them without actually looking.
There were subtleties to the initiation, even in the gutters. In this place, the trick would be not surviving, but noticing the rules fast enough to fake that you knew them.
He followed where indicated, across the vestibule, up a flight of non-uniform steps, into a corridor lined with mirrors. Correction: not mirrors.
Sheets of polished metal, warped enough to stretch the body and shrink the soul. Soren felt his own reflection buckle and snap as he passed.
No voices in the corridor, but at the end, a single guard: black plate with a white sun over the heart, weapon at ease but eyes locked on the world's disappointments.
The guard didn't move, but gestured with a chin for Soren to take a left, down a secondary hall. Soren did.
Another set of voices waited, these ones more anxious, buzzing behind a door labeled Iron Cloisters.
The room beyond: low benches, a wash-pan in each corner, and a row of pegs for the new coats that every recruit itched to wear.
Soren saw three others already here, all staged for maximum intimidation.
First, the boy sitting upright with his hands folded on his knees: pale, with a hawk nose and the waxy look of someone unused to sun or defeat.
His hair was the color of early frost, and a diagonal scar traced his left cheek like a failed attempt at molding the bone underneath.
He wore the house badge of Kaldris, a wolf's head doubled, and eyed Soren narrowly, as if to guess which of Soren's limbs was oldest and would fail first.
To his left, a girl, no, woman, Soren adjusted, dressed in black, the gloves on her hands a statement so obvious even he noticed.
She wore her pale hair tight to the skull, not a single strand out of sequence, and when her name was spoken…by no one, which meant she'd forced it ahead of time, it would be said with the sharpness of a needle through cloth.
He was nearly sure he'd never met her, but she looked at him with a smile premade for poisoners: small, careful, a coin waiting for the right side to show.
On the floor, cross-legged and wide-shouldered, the third recruit absently punched the air in time to her own heartbeat.
She was taller even sitting, with the open, freckled face of a fisher's daughter, and the set of her jaw said she'd survived more than the other two combined.
She caught Soren's stare and grinned, voice bright as a dropped bottle: "They said Ashgard sent an orphan. I figured you'd be smaller."
He shrugged. "Orphans come in all sizes."
"That's true," she said, then stuck out her hand with the confidence of someone who'd never been told no.
He accepted it, and she squeezed, not hard but with a deliberate assurance that mapped a new set of bruises.
"Juno Merien," she declared. "Coralward. Don't worry, I bathe."
"Is that supposed to be a warning?" Soren managed.
She laughed, and the girl in black raised her gloves, as if stifling a yawn or hiding a smile.
The hawk-nosed boy spoke last. "Dain Telmaris," he said, looking not at Soren but at the wall as he said it.
Soren had no script for this, so he did what always worked on the street: he waited for someone to make a mistake and then spoke second. "Soren Thorne," he said, careful not to overplay the name. "No house worth mentioning, unless you count what's left of Ashgard."
Juno grinned, appreciative. The girl in gloves only nodded, a single dip. Dain didn't react.
They sat for a while, pretending not to be watching each other. Soren checked the seams of the bench for sabotage, then realized this was the sort of place where sabotage would not be physical, but emotional, reputational, maybe judicial.
A chime somewhere overhead. The door at the far end opened, and a man entered. He was not, Soren decided at once, a knight.
His face was too smooth, his fingers unscarred, his eyes not so much bored as resigned. He wore the badge of Velrane, but with a stripe that Soren recognized as "in service, not in blood." The man's job was clear: bring the trash inside, then haul out whatever survived.
He listed them by name, or title, or offense, then motioned for coats to be hung and faces scrubbed.
Soren washed with a rag that stank of lamp oil and lavender; the scent caught in his throat, dizzying, so strong it threatened to cancel every other memory he had of morning.
They followed the man, two-by-two, down a corridor lined with glass mosaics, clearly expensive, but all showing the same image: a bright white sun, broken into twin halves. The symbolism was so obvious it felt like a threat, but Soren let it pass.
The next room sat long and low, with windows open to the winter, and a single table groaning under bowls of fruit, bread, and hot, brined meat. He tried not to look at the food, but failed.
"Eat," said the man, and then left without waiting.
Dain sniffed everything before taking the closest seat to the exit. Juno attacked the meat like a bear fumbling at a salmon run, and Soren found himself flanked by the poisoner-smile girl, whose plate remained empty.
"Not hungry?" he asked.
She shook her head, then said, in a voice soft as powder: "I don't eat on test days."
He didn't ask if she meant literal tests, or something else.
Juno leaned in. "She's worried she'll fail the weigh-in, but don't tell her I said so."
The woman in gloves didn't react except to lick a sliver of juice from her thumb, an act so precise Soren wondered if she'd practiced it for years.
The meal was perfunctory, but the salt and fat worked instantly, crawling into the spaces between Soren's bones.
He tried not to wolf it, but failed by the third bite. Valenna's presence, which had hovered in the background since arrival, now flexed, like a dog being forced to sit while the other dogs ate.
"You're not impressed?" she challenged, the voice inside his jaw.
'I'm reserving judgment until someone tries to kill me,' Soren replied, chewing slow.
She approved of the caution, or at least didn't argue it.
After the meal, another escort: this time a pair of armored men, both with the blank eyes and absolute lack of fear that meant they could kill Soren in three moves or less.
They led the four recruits out into a yard, paved with tile, each square laced with lead. Soren saw the logic instantly: no footing, no traction, every surface a calculated risk. They were to walk the perimeter, no talk, no hesitation.
Dain led, steps calculated to minimize sound. Juno clanked, not even pretending to care.
The gloves girl moved so light it was hard to tell if she made contact; her shadow seemed to float an inch above the ground. Soren took the middle, as always.
After a lap, one of the guards called them to a line, then gestured to the rack of practice swords set into the snow.
Each blade was lacquered blue or white, insignia stamped along the handle. Dain picked first, of course, and went straight for the Kaldris-marked blade, a slim, straight edge with no guard at all.
Juno grabbed a sword too heavy for anyone else, then spun it in an arc that nearly took Soren's nose. "Friendly!" she said, meaning the opposite.
Soren found a blade that looked like nothing: dull edge, worn hilt, balanced poorly. His kind of sword.
They faced off, two at a time: Dain vs. Juno, gloves vs. Soren. This was not a fight, but a lesson.
Dain moved fast, not just for a noble but for anyone. He kept Juno at distance, tapped the back of her hand twice in quick succession, then disengaged before she could counter.
Soren nodded: this was gutter discipline, or something better.
His own bout began with the girl in gloves giving him the opening move. She stood square, sword at shoulder height, unmoving.
Soren circled, trying for an angle, but every time he shifted, she mirrored. He faked a thrust, then stepped in; she let him, then swept his ankle and he landed flat in the snow, breath knocked out. Not painful, just humiliating.
"Again?" she offered, voice polite, but the smile still poison.
He did not decline.
After five rotations, they were all panting, except for her. The guard called a halt. Juno spat a tooth into the snow, laughed, and offered Soren a hand up without mockery.
Dain nodded, once, at Soren. "You learn quick."
He said nothing; the compliment was a set-up.
"Juno's right," Dain added, voice clipped. "I thought Ashgard sent orphans as a joke. You made her work for it."
Soren shrugged. "Maybe she wanted to."
At the edge of the yard, the second guard waited with a bundle of new coats, each sewn with an emblem.
Soren's was the least decorative: just a silver thread at the collar and a single patch on the left arm. He shrugged it on and found it not quite fitted, but not entirely wrong.
They were sent to quarters next. Soren's room was as promised: a narrow rectangle, cot, basin, a view of the yard that doubled as a view of every mistake you'd made that day. He sat on the edge of the bed and waited for the ache in his arms to dial down.
Valenna, now closer: "You expected allies?"
'Not even myself,' Soren thought.