The Blumund Guild hall smells like leather, oil, and something sharper underneath — old sweat, old ambition, the particular scent of a building where people go to become dangerous on purpose.
Vereen holds my hand through the front doors, and I feel the difference in his grip immediately — not the careful, constant tension he's carried since the funeral, but something closer to purpose. This is a place he understands. A place with rules he can teach me to survive by.
We'd walked the whole way from the house without much talk, which has become its own kind of comfortable between us — silence that doesn't need filling, the way it used to. Halfway there, he'd stopped at the market stall that used to be Aileen's favorite, bought a small twist of dried honeyroot without a word, and pressed half of it into my palm.
"She used to give you this before anything new," he said, voice carefully even. "Said it was good luck."
"Was it?"
"No idea. But it made her happy to believe it, so." He shrugged, and I understood, the way I've learned to understand most things he does now, that this wasn't really about luck at all. It was about keeping a small piece of her present for something she'd never get to see.
I eat the honeyroot slowly, savoring it, and don't tell him it tastes faintly of the mornings I don't have anymore.
"Training happens in the yard out back," he tells me as we near the hall, nodding toward a pair of heavy doors at the far end. "Every morning. Sword work for those who want it, magic for those who don't mind headaches instead of bruises."
"Can I do both?"
He glances down at me, something almost like his old smile flickering across his face. "That's not usually how it works. But nobody ever told you that you have to do things the usual way, did they?"
I decide I like that answer.
The yard is already half full of children by the time we arrive — some my age, some older, all of them clustered in loose groups around two very different adults.
The first is a man built like a doorframe, broad through the shoulders, a training sword resting easy across one shoulder like it weighs nothing at all. His hair is cropped short, practical, and his eyes move constantly, cataloguing every child in the yard the way a man might count coins he's responsible for.
"That's Kyle," Vereen says. "Runs the sword side. Good man. Strict, but fair."
The second adult stands near a low table cluttered with chalk, small crystals, and what looks like a half-melted candle despite the morning light. A woman, slighter than Kyle, dark hair pulled back in a braid streaked with what might be premature grey or might just be old ink stains. She's laughing at something one of the older children said, bright and easy, and when she glances up and catches Kyle's eye across the yard, something passes between them that even a five-year-old recognizes instantly.
"And that's Ava," Vereen says. "His wife. Runs the mage side. Don't let the easy laugh fool you — she's sharper than half the Guild combined."
"They're married?"
"Fifteen years, I hear. Still act like they just met, half the time." He says it fondly, though something flickers behind his eyes too — a private ache I recognize now, the kind that comes from watching other people's happy marriages when your own has been taken from you.
He kneels down in front of me, hands settling on my shoulders.
"I'll be back before midday," he says. "Listen to Kyle. Listen to Ava. And Lucifer—" He pauses, like he's deciding how much to say. "Your mother would be proud of you for wanting this. I want you to know that."
I nod, throat tight in a way I don't fully understand yet.
He taps my shoulder twice — not the doorframe, but close enough that I understand it means the same thing — and walks away, leaving me standing at the edge of a yard full of strangers.
I watch him go longer than I probably should, tracking the particular set of his shoulders as he crosses the square — steadier than it's been in months, I think, though I couldn't say exactly why handing me over to strangers would ease something in him rather than add to it. Maybe it's simple. Maybe watching me build a life beyond just the two of us feels, to him, like proof that Aileen's absence hasn't managed to hollow out everything good that's left.
I don't have long to dwell on it. The yard is already pulling my attention in a dozen directions at once — the clash of practice swords, the low murmur of Ava's instructions drifting from her side of the training ground, a cluster of children my own age eyeing me with the particular mixture of curiosity and wariness that seems to follow me most places I go now.
Kyle notices me almost immediately.
"New face," he says, crossing the yard in a few unhurried strides. He crouches down to my level, sword resting point-down in the dirt beside him. "Vereen's boy, aren't you? Heard about your mother. I'm sorry."
"Thank you," I say, because it's what Aileen would have wanted me to say, even if the words still feel too small for what they're meant to hold.
He studies me for a moment longer than the greeting requires — not unkindly, just carefully, the way a man might examine a tool before deciding what it's good for.
"You want to swing a sword, or you want to learn to swing one well?" he asks. "Different questions. Most kids only want the first one."
"The second one," I say, without having to think about it.
Something shifts in his expression — approval, maybe, or just mild surprise that a five-year-old answered like he meant it.
"Good answer." He glances toward the mage side of the yard, where Ava is crouched among a cluster of children, tracing something glowing and faint into the dirt with one finger while they watch, rapt. "Some kids come here wanting to be heroes. Some come here because their parents made them. You strike me as neither. What is it you actually want, boy?"
I consider the question with more seriousness than he probably expects.
"I want to be strong enough that the people I love don't have to be afraid," I say. "And I want it to actually be mine when I get there. Not borrowed."
Kyle goes quiet for a moment, something unreadable passing behind his eyes.
"That's a heavy thing for a five-year-old to want," he says finally.
"I've had practice being older than I look."
He huffs something that might be a laugh, might be surprise, and stands, offering a hand to pull me up alongside him. "Let's see what you've got, then."
A faint hum stirs at the edge of my mind, unfamiliar in its shape.
Blank Card Individual Detected Use Blank Card on Swordsman Instructor Kyle?
I go very still.
I've carried two of these cards since the day I was born, turning the question of their purpose over in my mind more times than I can count. Copy something, from someone, somehow. And now, apparently, the System has decided Kyle is worth copying — the first person in five years of life it's ever flagged this way.
I don't know what he has. I don't know what I'm about to take. But some old, calculating part of me — the part that used to weigh risk against reward in boardrooms, in another life entirely — decides the question isn't really whether to trust the System.
It's whether I trust myself enough to use what it gives me well.
Yes, I think, as clearly as I can manage.
The world tilts, just slightly, and for a moment something passes between Kyle and me that he doesn't seem to notice at all — no flash of light, no dramatic gasp, nothing external whatsoever. Just a quiet, internal shift, like a door opening somewhere I didn't know existed.
Blank Card used. Skill copied: Basic Swordsman Skill, Level 5. Dominion +1% (both parties).
I blink. Kyle blinks too, a fraction of a second later, rubbing absently at his sternum like he felt something brush past without quite registering what.
"You alright?" he asks.
"Fine," I manage. "Just tired."
He accepts that easily enough, though something in his expression lingers a moment longer than the answer warrants — the faint, wordless unease of a man who's just felt something shift and can't name it. He shakes it off, the way adults do when a strange feeling doesn't come with an obvious cause, and hands me a wooden practice sword sized for someone twice my age.
"Let's see your stance, then."
I take the stance without thinking about it.
That's the strange part — not that I know how, but that I don't have to work for it at all. My feet settle into position like they've done this a thousand times before, weight balanced, blade angled just so. Somewhere behind my eyes, half-formed instructions flicker past faster than conscious thought — shift the back foot, rotate through the hip, let the wrist follow the blade rather than lead it — knowledge that isn't mine, exactly, except that now, apparently, it is.
Kyle's eyebrows climb.
"Huh," he says, circling me slowly. "That's... not a beginner's stance. Where'd you learn that?"
"I didn't," I say honestly. "It just happened."
He doesn't press further, though I can tell he wants to. Instead he tosses a second practice sword lightly in his own hand, testing my footwork with a few gentle strikes I somehow — impossibly — know how to redirect. Each block lands cleaner than it has any right to, my small body moving through motions built for someone years older, someone whose muscles have already learned the shape of this fight a thousand times over.
"Again," Kyle says, and I obey, and again after that, and each repetition feels less like discovery and more like remembering something I never actually experienced. It's an uncomfortable feeling, if I let myself sit in it too long — my hands performing a mastery my mind never earned, borrowed competence wearing my own skin.
A small crowd has gathered by the third exchange, other children pausing their own drills to watch. Toren, the sandy-haired boy I haven't met yet, folds his arms nearby with open skepticism, like he's decided in advance not to be impressed and is annoyed to find himself impressed anyway.
"Enough," Kyle says eventually, holding up a hand, breathing only slightly harder than when we started — though I suspect that has more to do with restraint than effort. "That's more than enough for a first day. More than enough for most people's first year, honestly."
By the time the morning session ends, I've drawn more attention than I know what to do with — other children whispering, a few of the older ones watching with open curiosity, Ava herself glancing over more than once from her side of the yard with an expression I can't quite read.
One boy in particular — tall for his age, sandy-haired, maybe seven or eight — drifts over during the break, arms crossed, studying me with the frank skepticism only slightly older children ever manage.
"You're the golden-eyed one," he says. Not a question. Half of Blumund seems to introduce me this way now, like my name is a formality attached to a more interesting fact. "Heard you did that stance perfect on your first try."
"I did."
"Nobody does that on their first try. Took me a month just to stop tripping over my own feet."
"I don't know what to tell you," I say, honestly enough. "It just happened."
He squints at me, clearly unconvinced, but there's no real hostility in it — more the wary curiosity of someone deciding whether a new variable in his world is a threat or just an oddity. "I'm Toren," he says eventually, like the name is a peace offering. "You planning on being insufferable about this, or can we actually spar sometime?"
"I don't know what insufferable means."
That earns an actual laugh — short, surprised. "Good answer. Ask Kyle to teach you that word too, while you're apparently learning everything else in one sitting."
"What's it like," I ask him, curious despite myself, "training here? Before I showed up, I mean."
He considers the question with more seriousness than I expect from someone who spent the last minute needling me. "Hard, mostly. Kyle doesn't go easy on anyone, even the little ones. But it's good hard. My pa says the Guild's the only place in Blumund that doesn't care who your family is, only what you're willing to work for." He shrugs, kicking at the dirt. "Guess that's supposed to be encouraging."
"It is," I say, and mean it.
He wanders off before I can respond further, and I decide, watching him go, that I don't entirely mind the company of someone who isn't afraid to needle a five-year-old just because that five-year-old is odd.
Kyle crouches down in front of me again as the session breaks fully, tone quieter now.
"You've got real talent," he says. "Whatever this is. I don't know where it came from, and maybe that's not my business to ask. But I want you to promise me something."
"What?"
"Don't let a gift make you lazy," he says. "Talent gets you the first ten steps. Only work gets you the next thousand. You understand?"
I think of the words Level 5 still sitting quietly in the back of my mind, a number that arrived without a single hour of practice behind it.
"I understand," I say, and mean it more than he probably expects.
That evening, once Vereen's collected me and we've walked home together, I whisper the old command, curious despite myself.
Status.
———————————— STATUS ———————————— Name: Lucifer Energy: 10 — Measures vitality and stamina Strength: 10 — Measures physical power Speed: 10 — Measures movement and reaction speed Will: 6 — Measures determination and mental fortitude Mind: 10 — Measures cognition, perception, and magical capacity Dominion: 2% — Permanently increases all stats by this number as a percent Resonance: 0% — Description Blocked [Blank Cards: 1] Skills: Basic Swordsman Skill Lv. 5 [Blank Card Used] Locked Skill: ????? ————————————
I stare at the Skills line longer than anything else.
Level 5. Handed to me, whole and complete, without a single hour of my own effort behind it.
It should feel like victory. Instead it sits strangely in my chest, adjacent to something almost like guilt — the same instinct that made me hesitate to trust the System in the first place, sharpened now into something more specific.
Kyle earned that level through years of practice. I own an identical copy of it because a card told me to.
At dinner, Vereen asks how the first day went, and I tell him most of it — Kyle's approval, Toren's blunt curiosity, the stance that came to me like a memory rather than a lesson. I don't tell him about the Blank Card. I'm not sure why, exactly, except that it feels like something I need to sit with privately before I hand it to anyone else to have opinions about.
"You did well," he says, when I finish. "Your mother would have—" He stops, the way he sometimes still does, catching himself on the edge of a sentence he hasn't figured out how to finish without her in it.
"She would have been proud," I finish for him, gently.
"Yes." He clears his throat, blinking hard once before it passes. "She would have."
We sit with that for a moment, the two of us, in a kitchen that still has an empty chair neither of us has moved.
Later, lying in bed, I turn the day over in my mind the way I've learned to turn over everything important — slowly, from every angle, looking for the parts I might have missed the first time.
I don't know yet that I'll spend years trying to close the gap between what the card gave me and what I actually earned. I only know, staring up at the dark ceiling, that Level 5 feels less like an achievement and more like a debt I haven't figured out how to repay.
One Blank Card left.
I think of Kyle's voice — talent gets you the first ten steps, only work gets you the next thousand — and I think of my own reflection in it, a boy who skipped straight to step ten without walking any of the first nine.
I decide, quietly, staring at the ceiling until sleep finally takes me, that the next card won't be spent so easily.
Whatever I use it on next, it's going to have to matter. It's going to have to be something I couldn't have gotten any other way — not a shortcut past effort, but a door that effort alone could never open.
I don't know yet what that will turn out to be.
But I know, even now, that I'll recognize it when I see it.
Outside my window, the village settles into its ordinary night sounds — a dog barking somewhere near the square, the distant creak of a shutter in the wind, the forest's faint, familiar murmur beyond the fence line. Six years old, and already I've learned to sort those sounds into categories: safe, unremarkable, worth waking for. Tonight, everything sits comfortably in the first two.
I think, before sleep finally pulls me under, of Aileen's honeyroot, and Vereen's careful pride, and Kyle's warning about talent and work. Three very different voices, all somehow pointing toward the same quiet truth — that the life worth having is the one you build with your own two hands, however long it takes, however many false starts and borrowed shortcuts stand between where you are and where you're trying to go.
I fall asleep still holding the last of the honeyroot's sweetness on my tongue, and dream, for the first time in a long while, of nothing at all — just rest, uncomplicated and whole, the kind that comes easiest to a boy who's decided, however young, exactly what kind of person he intends to become.