# Chapter 5: The Inquisitor's Gaze
The small pouch of coins felt like a lead weight in Soren's hand, its meager clink a hollow sound against the stone floor of the corridor. The guard's footsteps retreated, leaving him in a silence that was more oppressive than the roar of the arena. The air here was different—sterile, cold, and carrying the faint, sharp scent of ozone and old paper, a smell of authority and secrets. He walked, his body a symphony of aches, the shallow cut on his ribs a stinging reminder of his sloppiness. The sigil on his arm was a slab of black ice, a brand of his failure and his power. *We will be watching you closely.* The words were not a warning; they were a sentence.
He pushed open the heavy door to the outside, and the afternoon sun hit him like a physical blow, forcing him to squint. The world snapped back into focus: the grey stone of the Ladder Commission, the distant shouts of vendors, the ever-present haze of ash that painted the sky a sickly yellow. The journey back to House Marr was a blur of sullen faces and cobbled streets that seemed to lean in, their shadows long and accusatory. Each step was a negotiation with pain, each breath a reminder of the Cinder Cost that gnawed at his insides.
When he arrived at the familiar, grimy facade of House Marr, the main gate was open. He stepped into the training yard, and the scene that greeted him stopped him cold. Rook Marr was not in his office. He was standing in the center of the yard, the sun beating down on the scarred sand, his arms crossed over his chest. He was not alone. Two other fighters, veterans Soren recognized from the yard, were sparring nearby, but they had stopped, their wooden swords held loosely as they watched the unfolding drama. The yard fell silent, the only sound the whistle of the wind through the gate.
Marr's gaze found him, and it was a physical thing. It lingered first on the darkened sigil on Soren's arm, then drifted down to the tear in his tunic and the dried blood caked on his side. His expression was not anger. It was not disappointment. It was a cold, analytical blankness, the look a craftsman might give a flawed tool that had, against all odds, performed a function it was never meant to. He gestured with his chin toward the barracks, a sharp, impatient movement.
"Your winnings have been processed," Marr said, his voice flat, devoid of any inflection. It carried across the quiet yard, clear and sharp. "Ten percent is yours. The rest covers the cost of the cell you wrecked, your medical supplies, and your sponsorship fee. Consider yourself lucky I'm not charging you for the Inquisitor's attention."
He tossed a smaller, much lighter pouch at Soren's feet. It landed in the sand with a soft, pathetic thud. Soren didn't look at it. He kept his eyes on Marr, his jaw set, the familiar wall of stoicism rising to meet the fresh wave of humiliation.
"Now, pick up your sword," Marr commanded, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous growl. "We have work to do. Your little trick was sloppy. An emotional tantrum that left you drained and vulnerable. It was a fool's gambit that only paid off because your opponent was a witless brute. We're going to refine it. Or it will be the last thing you ever do."
The two veteran fighters exchanged a look, a mixture of pity and morbid curiosity, before resuming their sparring, the rhythmic thud of wood on wood a grim percussion for Soren's new reality. He bent down, his muscles screaming in protest, and picked up the pouch. The weight was an insult. He had bled for that money, had risked the Synod's wrath, and this was all he had to show for it. He straightened up, his face a mask of neutrality, and walked toward the weapon rack where his training sword hung. The metal was warm from the sun, its familiar grip a small anchor in the sea of his despair.
"Face me," Marr ordered, drawing his own blade, a well-worn steel longsword that was infinitely superior to Soren's practice weapon. "You used your Gift like a hammer. You saw a nail and you swung. A true weapon has a point, an edge. You need to learn how to aim."
The training that followed was a new kind of hell. It was not about swordplay. Marr had no interest in Soren's footwork or his parries. He wanted the power. For hours, under the unforgiving sun, he forced Soren to stand in the center of the yard and summon the force. "Again," he would bark, his voice a lash. "Focus it. Don't just push. *Direct*."
Soren would try. He would close his eyes, reaching for that place inside him, the cold, quiet core where the power slept. He would remember the fear, the desperation, the snarling face of the Ironclad. But the emotions were muted now, replaced by exhaustion and resentment. The power would stir, a faint tremor in the air, a shimmer of heat haze around his fists, but it would not coalesce. It was a wild animal that refused to be prodded.
"Pathetic," Marr sneered, circling him like a shark. "You think the Ladder gives you time for a tantrum? You think an Inquisitor will wait for you to get your feelings in order? The Gift is a muscle, not a mood. You flex it. You command it."
He drove the flat of his blade into Soren's back, sending him stumbling to his knees in the sand. The impact knocked the wind from his lungs, and a fresh wave of pain flared from his ribs. "Get up," Marr commanded. "You will not stop until you can produce that focused blast on command. You will learn to separate the power from the pathetic emotion that fuels it. You will make it a tool. Or you will die in the sand, and I will find another investment."
The sun began to set, painting the sky in shades of orange and purple, the light casting long, grotesque shadows across the yard. Soren was drenched in sweat, his body trembling with fatigue. The Cinder Cost was a deep, grinding ache in his bones, a constant, draining presence. He had failed a dozen times. The power remained elusive, a ghost he could not grasp.
"Think," Marr's voice was closer now, a low whisper in his ear. "What did you feel? Not the fear. Before that. The moment of decision. The point where you chose to act. That is the trigger. Not the wolf. Not the past. The choice. Find that point."
Soren knelt in the sand, his head bowed. He pushed past the memory of the caravan, past the image of his father's broken body. He forced himself back to the cell, to the Ironclad's relentless advance. He remembered the cold certainty that he was going to die. And then, he remembered the shift. The moment the fear crystallized into something else. Not rage. Not hope. A single, clear, diamond-hard thought: *I will not end here.* It was not an emotion. It was a declaration. An act of will.
He focused on that point. The choice. The decision. He reached for the power, not with desperation, but with intent. He felt it respond, not as a wild surge, but as a coiling tension, like a spring being wound. He opened his eyes. A training dummy stood twenty paces away. He raised a hand, his fingers trembling.
"Now," Marr breathed.
Soren pushed. The air warped. A visible distortion, a ripple of heat and force, shot from his outstretched palm. It was smaller than the blast in the cell, more controlled. It struck the dummy in the chest with a dull *thwack*, making the straw-stuffed torso jerk violently. A small scorch mark appeared on the burlap.
The world swam. The Cinder Cost slammed into him like a physical blow, a wave of nausea and dizziness that sent him collapsing onto his side. He gasped for air, his vision tunneling, the sigil on his arm flaring with a cold, agonizing fire. He felt a trickle of warmth from his nose and wiped at it with the back of his hand. It came away red. He had pushed too far.
Marr stood over him, his shadow falling across Soren's prone form. For a long moment, he said nothing. He simply looked at the scorch mark on the dummy, then back at Soren. A flicker of something—satisfaction, perhaps, or the cold light of avarice—crossed his features before being smoothed away.
"Good," he said, his voice devoid of praise. It was the assessment of a man who had just successfully sharpened a blade. "Again tomorrow."
He turned and walked away, leaving Soren lying in the cooling sand, the taste of blood and ash in his mouth. The other fighters had already disappeared. The yard was empty. Slowly, painfully, Soren pushed himself to his feet. Every part of him screamed. He stumbled toward the barracks, his mind a fog of pain and exhaustion.
His room was as he'd left it, a small, spartan cell with a cot, a washbasin, and a small, barred window. The door had been repaired, the new wood a stark contrast to the grey stone. He sank onto the cot, the meager pouch of winnings still clutched in his hand. He emptied it onto the blanket. Five silver coins and a handful of coppers. It was nothing. A pittance. It wouldn't even buy a week's worth of bread for his mother and brother. The reality of his situation, a truth he had kept at bay with the sheer adrenaline of survival, crashed down on him. This was his life. A tool to be sharpened, a beast to be prodded, all for the profit of a man who saw him as less than human. And all under the watchful, unblinking eye of the Radiant Synod.
He looked at his arm, at the dark, sprawling sigil that marked him. It was a cage. The Ladder was a cage. House Marr was a cage. Isolde's words echoed in his mind. *Uncontrolled power is a sickness.* They saw his Gift as a disease to be cured or contained. Marr saw it as a product to be refined. Neither of them saw him. They saw only the power.
A cold, hard resolve began to form in the pit of his stomach, a diamond-hard core that was not born of emotion, but of will. He would not be their tool. He would not be their patient. He would master this power, not for them, but for himself. He would find a way to control it, to refine it on his own terms. He would climb their wretched Ladder, not for glory or for gold, but for the one thing that mattered: freedom. He would learn to play their game, to wear the mask of the obedient fighter, but in the quiet of this room, in the dead of night, he would forge his own path. He looked at the five silver coins on his blanket, then at the dark sigil on his arm. The price was high, but he would pay it. He had no other choice.