Arlo realized where he was. The familiar stones beneath his feet, the weathered training posts, the way the afternoon sun cast long shadows across the courtyard. He had been somehow taken back to the day he traded his pride for the happiness of an ungrateful younger one.
"Why are you just standing there? Come at me, loser!" His younger brother, Nathan, said with a smirk.
Nathan was far younger than Arlo with a ten-year gap between them. Naturally, the winner of the duel was clear as day. But his brother thought so low of him and challenged him to this pointless battle. Strangely, his father accepted it.
Arlo was always seen as a failure by his family. At the age of seventeen, his father expected him to be one of the highest-ranking young mages in the kingdom. But that was an impossible dream that only few could have ever achieved.
