The windmill always creaked like it was complaining, but today it sounded downright offended.
"Look at it," Jotun said, squinting up at the blades as the dust cloud on the road grew bigger. "It's jealous. It can't spin that hard without falling over."
"That's just the wind," I said.
"That's not 'just the wind,' that's the sound of too many important people in armour coming to judge how often we trip over our own feet." He nudged the fowl basket with his boot. "Also, the sound of Draff having a quiet breakdown."
Draff was, in fact, swearing into his apron as he hastily shoved a crate of less-impressive cuts under a tarp.
"Move those feathers faster," he snapped at us. "If the First Company walks in here and thinks this village runs on scrawny chickens and lies, we're doomed."
"Relax," Jotun muttered. "We also have mushrooms and lies."
I snorted, shoulders tight anyway.
The sound of horses grew louder, sharper now that they were close. When they finally crested the rise, Springvale went quiet all at once, like someone had put a lid over the chatter.
The Knights of Favonius had been through before, but never like this.
The company that rode into the square moved like a single creature in a dozen sets of armour—rows clean, spacing exact. Sunlight jumped off polished plates in sharp flashes, dimmed by the dust of the road and the careful scratches of use. Spears and swords rose from saddles like a metal forest. Their cloaks, Favonius white and teal, snapped behind them in the same wind that barely budged our laundry lines.
"Okay," Jotun whispered. "Maybe Barbatos is mad."
"Shut up," I whispered back, which he ignored.
At their head, a man rode who looked like he'd been cut out of every story Jotun had tried to embellish and then sanded down until nothing useless was left.
Captain Roderic Grunwald.
He didn't have fancy tassels or ridiculous antlers on his helmet. His armour was standard captain's plate, the same emblem we'd seen from a distance in Mondstadt, but on him, it felt heavier. His cloak sat just right, his sword hung exactly where his hand could find it without thought. He sat his horse like he was part of it.
He scanned the village as they entered—windmill, pond, hunters' stalls, houses—but his eyes didn't stick to the scenery. They slid over people, measuring. Who stood in front instinctively. Who flinched away. Which gaps would run through if something went wrong?
His gaze brushed over me for a heartbeat. It felt like standing under a cold waterfall.
"Congratulations," Jotun murmured at my side. "You've been eyeballed by a captain. You'll never be clean again."
"Do you ever stop?" I muttered.
He thought about it. "No."
A knight just behind the captain swung down first and turned to face us.
"Captain Roderic Grunwald of the First Company," he called, voice crisp enough to cut bread. "Here by mandate of the Knights of Favonius, for rural defence inspection and militia assessment."
Roderic dismounted with less fuss than it took Jotun to climb a fence. Boots hit dirt. The square rearranged itself around him like it had been waiting.
Up close, he looked older than I'd expected—not old, but past the shiny edges of youth. Fine lines at the corners of his eyes. A scar along his jaw that looked like someone had once tried to cut his head off and failed. Dark hair tied back, a few streaks of grey that made him look more dangerous, not less.
He took off his gloves slowly, tucking them into his belt, and took in the square again. When his eyes passed over me this time, they lingered half a second longer. My hand tightened on the basket handle.
"Head hunter, Springvale," Draff said, stepping forward. "Draff. We weren't expecting First Company. We figured you had bigger problems than our boars."
Roderic's expression didn't shift much, but something in his posture relaxed a fraction—like Draff had said the right kind of wrong thing.
"Windwail Highland is Mondstadt's lung," he said. "We breathe through your fields, your meat, your water. If the villages fall, the 'bigger problems' will already have won." Jotun leaned closer. "He talks like a book with a sword."
"Shut up," I whispered again, but my chest did a strange, tight thing.
"We're here to look at your readiness," Roderic went on, addressing Draff but clearly speaking to everyone. "How your people hold a line. How fast do you move children and elders? How you react when something comes out of those trees that isn't supposed to." His gaze flicked to the woods beyond the pond. "We'll leave you with recommendations. And we'll listen if you tell us our reports are wrong."
"That part's definitely new," an older woman muttered near the well.
Draff snorted. "Reports never mention the mud slope by the pond," he said. "Or the way the spring overflows when the wind's wrong. But we can show your people where they shouldn't be standing when something big stomps through."
Roderic's eyes tracked to the pond, to the low patch of earth I'd fallen on more times than I'd admit. "Good," he said simply. "My sergeants will lay out the drills. Show them your ground."
He didn't need to raise his voice. The square had gone very still.
"Knights!" one sergeant called, turning. "Break and set! Dummies, lines, field markers!"
The First Company dispersed with frightening efficiency.
In minutes, Springvale didn't look like itself. Stalls were pushed back. Crates and barrels were relocated to clear sight lines. Knights paced off distances, planting spear butts to mark where the front rank would stand. They unloaded real training dummies from carts—straw bodies mounted on posts, some with round wooden shields strapped on—and planted them in neat rows.
"Front rank, here," a broad-shouldered sergeant with a scar under his eye bellowed, pointing at the line nearest the trees. "Shields and close blades. If you have a door, plank, or anything else flat and vaguely defensive, congratulations, you're a shield-bearer."
"Second rank, behind them," another sergeant added. "Spears, pitchforks, anything with reach. Third rank, you're on kid-herding duty. If we see you trying to be a hero with bare hands, you're getting personally yelled at by the captain."
"Which is worse than dying?" Jotun whispered. "You still have to live afterwards."
I had my sword. Finch had told me to bring it "just in case" and then pretended not to watch me tie the belt.
I stepped forward when the sergeant called for anyone comfortable in the front.
"Define 'comfortable'," Jotun muttered, hovering.
"You go where they tell you," I said. My heart was beating fast, but my hands were steady.
He sighed dramatically and shuffled into the second rank behind me. "If you die, I'm haunting you."
"If I die, you'll be busy explaining to Finch how," I said.
"That's worse," Jotun decided. "I take it back. Don't die."
Roderic Grunwald walked the forming lines like someone checking the strength of a bridge they were about to march an army over. His gaze flicked to grips, stances, spacing. When he corrected someone, it was with minimal words and maximum effect.
"Lower your shield edge. If you hold it that high, you'll see your doom coming and still take it in the knees."
"Hands closer together on the spear. You're not stirring soup."
Then he reached me.
"Age?" he asked.
"Fourteen," I said.
"Name."
"Taron."
His eyes dropped to my sword. "Training?"
"Self-taught," I said. "Finch gave me a stick. I watched the knights when they came through. And the hunters. And I walk a lot." I stopped before I could start listing how many times I'd walked to the foot of Stormbearer.
"Self-taught," he repeated. His gaze sharpened. "Self-taught fighters either die early or become very bad news for the wrong people. We'll see which direction you're leaning."
Then he moved on.
Behind me, Jotun hissed, "That was almost a compliment. Or a very fancy threat. Hard to tell."
"I think that's just how captains talk," I said, trying not to think about all the directions "die early" could take.
The drills started.
"On my count!" the scarred sergeant shouted. "Front rank—step, strike, recover! I swear by Barbatos, if any of you try to wind up like you're chopping down a tree, I will tie you to one."
He raised his hand.
"Step!"
We stepped. I let my weight shift forward, then settle. The line wobbled, a few people overstepping, one stumbling.
"Strike!"
Blades and makeshift weapons hit the dummies. Some blows glanced off shields. Others thunked into straw.
"Recover!"
Half the villagers dragged their weapons back late, arms flailing. One nearly bashed his neighbour's head with a wild backswing.
The sergeant pinched the bridge of his nose like he had a headache big enough to cover the whole plateau.
"You are not trying to bury your weapons in the ground," he said. "You are trying to make a thing in front of you have a very bad day while you remain standing. Hit." He mimed a short, sharp strike. "Then get your point back up before its friend arrives. Again."
We did it again. And again.
Step, strike, recover.
The rhythm settled into my bones. This was no different than the drills I'd run by the spring, except now, other people's lives could trip over my mistakes. I kept my swings tight. Blade out, blade back. Guard centreline. My wrists remembered how not to overextend. My shoulders remembered not to lock.
The sergeant passed behind me once and grunted. "That's a sword, not a broom, good. Keep it that way."
Jotun, behind me, muttered, "I feel personally attacked."
We moved on to lateral movement.
"Flank!" We shuffled left, shins bumping.
"Protect!" back right.
At first, it was chaos. People forgot which way left was when someone shouted at them. Feet tangled. The third time a hunter stepped squarely onto someone else's heel and sent them lurching, the sergeant actually laughed, short and incredulous.
"Lines are about trust," he said. "You move when I say, how I say, so the person next to you doesn't find your foot where their life needs to be. Again."
I focused on not being the problem. Match the knights' timing. Feel the shift through the line, not just under my own boots. When I did it right, the movement felt like part of the same breath we'd taken together at the start of the drill.
"See?" I murmured.
"No," Jotun whispered. "I see your back. But I assume you're doing great."
"Second rank," the other sergeant snapped, "if you chatter, chatter in sync with the commands!"
A few snickers rippled. The tension in my shoulders bled out, just a little.
Then came the "boar charge" exercise.
A couple of knights hoisted the straw dummies and held them in front of their shields like makeshift tusks. They jogged at us, yelling in exaggerated voices.
"I am very scary," one declared. "Fear my hay-based fury."
"Real boars don't talk," Jotun muttered. "Minus points for immersion."
"Brace!" the sergeant barked.
We braced. The mock impact was still enough to jolt the line. The knights were careful, but they didn't baby us. They wanted to see who flinched. Who closed their eyes.
We ran that twice. On the third reset, the air changed.
It started as a feeling, a prickling at the back of my neck. The practice of shouting died off mid-call. The birds went quiet. Even the windmill seemed to hold its breath.
Then the roar came.
It rolled over Springvale like a landslide, deeper and rawer than anything the knights were pretending. It vibrated through my ribs. My fingers clenched around my sword hilt instinctively.
"That's not one of ours," one knight said sharply.
"No talking," the sergeant snapped—then, more loudly: "Eyes out!"
The sound came again, closer now, ripping through the trees past the pond. Branches thrashed. A couple of birds blasted out of the canopy, shrieking their protest at the sky.
"Shields down!" Roderic's voice cut through the square like someone had drawn a line in the air. "Form on the markers. Noncombatants, back to the houses. Third rank, move them."
He hadn't shouted before. Hearing him do it now made something ancient in me sit up straight.
His sergeants repeated the orders, louder.
"Form line! You know where we put you—go there!"
"Kids inside! If they can't lift a pot, they don't belong out here!"
Springvale reacted.
All those drills we'd just stumbled through suddenly had teeth. People moved—not gracefully, not like knights, but better than they would have that morning. Shields came up. Spears went back to ready. Parents grabbed smaller hands and shoved them toward the doors.
"Jotun," I started.
He was already turning, grabbing a wide-eyed eight-year-old who'd frozen near the well. "Hey, you, come on," he said. "Congratulations, you've been promoted to 'very important person who needs to be somewhere else.'"
Roderic drew his sword in one fluid motion as he moved forward, placing himself just behind where the front rank would solidify. The blade flashed briefly, then settled into a ready guard, angled to catch light and threat both.
The mitachurl crashed out of the trees a heartbeat later and made the dummies look like toys.
I'd seen one from far away once, stalking a ridge. Up close, it was worse. Twice as tall as a man, thick arms roped with muscle, a mask carved with an ugly grin and slitted eyes. Its wooden shield was big enough to be part of a house. The axe it carried looked like someone had ripped a tree limb out of the ground and convinced it to hate us. Hilichurls flowed around its legs like a tide of shrieking, masked shadows.
Every story around every Springvale fire suddenly felt too gentle.
"First rank!" Roderic called. "Shields tight, blades ready! Second rank, watch the flanks. Third rank, do not leave the civilians, no matter what you see!"
The mitachurl roared and thundered toward us.
"Okay," Jotun said somewhere behind me. "New advice: don't die."
"Very helpful," I muttered, but my mouth was dry.
The First Company knights anchored the line.
Their shields locked together with practised precision, their edges kissing to form an angled wall. They weren't just standing there; they were braced—feet dug in, knees bent, spines aligned, every part of them ready to take force and give it back. The villagers and hunters slotted to either side of them, in front of them, behind them as they could.
The knight on my left shifted half a step, shield flaring out just enough to cover the sliver where my shorter reach left a gap.
"Stay with my edge," he said quietly. "Not in front of it."
"Right," I breathed.
The mitachurl hit.
The impact was like a landslide slamming into a stone wall. Shields buckled, then held. The sound of wood and metal colliding thundered in my ears. Boots skidded; clods of dirt tore up underfoot.
"Hold!" the scarred sergeant shouted. "Dig in, dig in!"
Roderic moved just behind the line, sword up, eyes never still. He wasn't staring at the mitachurl's mask; he was watching where the shield wall bowed, where hilichurls clustered, where villagers' grips slipped.
"Right flank, incoming three!" he snapped. "Second rank, take them!"
On the right, three hilichurls tried to dart around the edge. Second-rank knights stepped out to meet them with brutal efficiency—shields slamming, spears thrusting low and sure. One hilichurl went down with a spear in its gut. Another's club rebounded off a Favonius shield and left it open for a clean cut across its chest.
"Draff!" Roderic shouted. "Target joints and faces. Ignore the shield."
"You heard the man!" Draff called. "Aim for the ugly bits!"
"Very specific," Jotun muttered.
Arrows hissed past from the side, slicing through the air with practised whispers. They buried themselves in the mitachurl's upper thigh, its shoulder, the exposed flesh above the shield rim. The monster roared and stomped, trying to push the line back.
My feet sank into the dirt. I barely felt the bruise flare along my ribs where a stray club had kissed me earlier. My world narrowed to the edge of the shield beside me, the tremble of the ground, the shriek of hilichurls.
On my right, a villager's boots were sliding backwards on the damp patch near the pond. His shield edge drooped.
"Off the mud!" I yelled. "Left! Left!"
He flailed, then shoved himself one step over. The knight between us adjusted with him, shield rotating to cover the tiny gap. The mitachurl's next stomp chewed a crater in the wet earth he'd just vacated.
Hilichurls darted in, spear tips jabbing for ankles, thighs, any exposed flesh.
"Second rank, down!" the sergeant barked.
Spears dipped, striking quickly and clean. A hilichurl lunged at the joint between my knight neighbour and me, its spear aimed low. My body moved before my head did.
Backhand cut, swatting the spear away—step in, shoulder tight to the knight's shield. Hilt drove forward, smashing into the hilichurl's mask. It reeled, screech cut short as a spear from behind me punched through its chest.
"Not bad," the knight grunted. "Stay with the line."
The mitachurl, bleeding now, adjusted. It drew its axe back for a wide, sweeping blow, aiming to catch the shield wall from the side.
"Left-side brace, three-step give!" Roderic shouted instantly.
The knights on the left shifted with uncanny coordination—three small steps back and inward, presenting a slanted surface instead of a flat one. When the axe hit, it skidded, riding the angle, the force redirected instead of absorbed. One shield cracked, but the woman behind it dropped swiftly, another knight stepping up over her in the same motion.
Arrows struck again—one burying itself in the mitachurl's exposed armpit as it swung, another in the back of its knee. It roared, staggering.
"Press the leg!" Roderic commanded.
The knights nearest that side surged forward as one, shields punching out, swords stabbing for tendons. One blade found the exact point behind the thick knee joint and drove deep. The monster buckled.
That was when I saw the gap.
The mitachurl's shield, battered and jostled, had twisted. Between its edge and the knight's shield beside me, there was a wedge of space—not big, but enough that if the monster recovered and shoved, something ugly would come through.
I didn't think about hitting the monster itself. My brain flashed back to Finch saying, "If a door sticks, don't punch the middle, push the hinge."
I hit the shield's edge. Short, precise strikes, three in quick succession, using my weight more than my arms. Each impact nudged it a fraction, distracting, loosening.
On the third blow, the mitachurl jerked the shield back to compensate—and overdid it.
The Favonius shield-bearer beside me didn't miss the opportunity. He slammed his own shield hard into the monster's now-too-exposed side, knocking it further off-balance, then thrust his sword underneath, biting into flesh.
"Now!" Roderic's voice cracked like a whip.
He moved.
He slipped through the gap I'd been worrying at as if it had always been meant for him. One step carried him inside the arc of the mitachurl's dropping shield. His sword came up, not in a big overhead chop, but in a tight, cruel cut along the exposed side of the monster's neck. He twisted, stepped again, and drove the point up under the collarbone, burying it with a grunt of effort.
The mitachurl convulsed, its choked roar turning ugly. Its legs buckled. The knights nearest it shoved one last time. The brute crashed down, shaking the ground.
"Hold!" Roderic barked immediately. "Shields up. Eyes out. Do not drop for glory."
The urge to sag was almost overwhelming. My arms shook. My side screamed. Sweat stung my eyes.
Hilichurls, seeing their champion fall, broke.
Some tried to rally. Second-rank knights and hunters cut them down with efficient violence. Most turned and fled for the trees, yelping.
A sergeant took a half-step as if to order a pursuit.
"Let them run," Roderic said, voice back to that calm steel. "They'll tell others what they found here. The message is more useful alive."
The sergeant nodded and called his people back.
The square exhaled as one.
The windmill creaked again, as if deciding the storm had passed. The pond, shaken by the crash, smoothed its ripples out slowly. The smell of blood—monster and hilichurl both—mingled with Springvale's usual scents and turned my stomach and my spine into weird, buzzing things.
"Front rank, keep your guard," the scarred sergeant said. "If you can't hold your sword up after a fight, you will not like the second one."
I dragged my blade back to ready. My wrists wanted to drop; I didn't let them.
Roderic Grunwald walked the line.
He didn't stride like he owned the ground. He walked like he was measuring it again, now with fresh information—the way the front rank bowed, who still shook, who glared defiantly at the trees, who kept glancing back at the fallen mitachurl.
He stopped in front of me.
"Name," he said.
"Taron," I answered, throat dry.
He looked me over. Sweat plastered my hair to my forehead. Dirt streaked my boots. My tunic clung to my side, where a bruise was already forming under it.
"You did not chase the fleeing ones," he said. "You did not abandon the line to hack at the brute when it fell within easy reach. You moved a civilian off bad ground before you swung. When you were struck, you kept your blade up." He tilted his head slightly. "Who taught you that?"
Jotun, from somewhere behind my shoulder, was absolutely vibrating with the desire to blurt something. I ignored the feeling.
"No one," I said. "Or… lots of little no-ones. Finch. Draff's stories. Watching. It just… made sense to stay. Someone has to stand where things are supposed to stop."
Jotun made a muffled noise that might've been a choked laugh or a "don't say weird things in front of captains" warning.
Roderic's mouth almost twitched. "Who taught you to attack the shield edge?" he asked. "Not the monster. The weak line between wood and wood."
"Finch said you don't punch the middle of a stuck door," I said, wiping my palm on my trousers briefly. "You push near the hinges. Shields looked like doors."
"A village carpenter trained you better than some city squires," Roderic murmured.
"Is that a compliment?" Jotun whispered.
"Shut up," I whispered back, too late.
Roderic raised his voice slightly. "Front rank," he called. "Blades ready, but do not move."
The line stiffened again.
"Field conditions tell me one thing," he said. "I'd like to see how much of what I've just seen was instinct and adrenaline, and how much is habit."
His eyes locked on mine.
"Taron," he said. "Step forward."
My stomach flipped. My feet stepped.
I came out of the line into the open patch of dirt between our formation and where the mitachurl lay. The corpse loomed at the edge of my vision like a bad dream. Villagers lined the square beyond it—Finch near the pond, leaning hard on his stick; Marla by the well, arms folded; Jotun just behind the second rank, face pale and eyes too bright.
Roderic lifted his sword into a guard that was almost casual and somehow more dangerous for it. Point angled, blade between us, weight centred.
"When you're ready," he said.
Jotun couldn't help himself.
"No pressure," he stage-whispered. "If you embarrass us, remember I'm going to tell this story forever."
The square felt twice as big with nothing between Captain Roderic Grunwald and me but trampled dirt and the heavy air left behind by a dead mitachurl. The brute's corpse lay just at the edge of my vision, a dark, ugly shape leaking into the soil. Beyond it, Springvale watched: Finch by the pond, one hand gripping his walking stick; Draff near his stall, jaw set; Jotun behind the second rank, eyes huge, trying very hard to look like he wasn't about to vibrate out of his skin.
Roderic raised his sword.
It wasn't flashy. No twirl, no spinning flourish. He just brought it up into a guard that was all lines and intent—blade between us, point aimed comfortably toward my upper chest, weight centred, ready to go in any direction.
"When you're ready," he said.
"When you're ready," Jotun echoed under his breath. "No pressure, just the scariest man in metal in front of you and most of your childhood behind you."
I tried to roll my eyes without losing sight of the captain. "Shut up," I muttered, more to steady myself than to scold him.
I lifted my own sword.
My version of guard was stolen from a distance: bits of Knights' drills glimpsed when mushroom deliveries took me close enough to Mondstadt to see the training yard, fragments of movement mirrored by the spring at dusk. Blade up, point angled toward his face rather than his chest, elbows not too high, hands just far enough from my body that I could move without crowding myself.
My side ached where the hilichurl's club had caught me; I ignored it.
The spring hummed at my back, somewhere behind the houses. The windmill creaked above us. The dirt under my boots was the same dirt I'd fallen on a hundred times as a child.
I stepped in.
No rush, no wild yell. One measured step, then another, closing the distance until a single long stride would let either of us hit the other.
I feinted high, testing.
Roderic's sword barely moved. His eyes flicked, tracking, but he didn't bite. He might as well have told my feint it was boring.
I changed the line, turning the feint into a real cut aimed at his shoulder.
Steel met steel with a clean ring.
He hadn't even shifted his feet. He just rotated his wrist, catching my blade on his, letting my own momentum slide harmlessly off. The force of the parry travelled down my arms. I absorbed it, got my edge back up before he could counter.
He didn't.
"Again," he said.
So I did.
This time I tried something tighter—short, quick feints to the side, then a thrust toward his centre. It was exactly the move that had worked on a hunter two months ago when he'd agreed to "spar a bit" with me after too much wine.
Roderic turned it aside like he'd been waiting for it since I was born.
He angled his blade just so, my point sliding off his guard. My weight tipped forward more than I wanted. For a terrifying half-second, my balance faltered.
In the dark by the spring, alone, that would have put me on my face.
Here, something else happened.
My feet remembered all the times I'd almost gone down on the wet slope near the water and how I'd learned to twist with the fall. I let my front foot slide a bit more, rotated my hips, and turned the stumble into a step to the side instead, blade swinging down and back into guard.
Roderic didn't press the opening. He watched my recovery instead.
"Better," he said.
He came at me then.
Not with the full weight I'd seen him use on the mitachurl—this wasn't a real fight—but with enough force that my arms rang with the effort of not dropping my sword.
He swung once, a diagonal cut that would have broken my guard if I'd tried to stop it dead. I angled my blade instead, letting his weight slide off to one side. The impact shoved me a step back.
"Too much retreat," he said calmly. "If you give ground every time something heavier than you moves, you'll be eating soup for the rest of your life because your arms won't work."
Jotun snorted. "You don't eat soup anyway," he whispered. "You inhale it."
I gritted my teeth, stepped back in.
He struck again, a different line. I met it higher up my blade this time, absorbing the force through my legs instead of letting it yank my arms wide. The shock travelled into my heels, where it belonged.
"Better," he repeated.
We traded a few more blows.
I didn't land anything. Every attack I made, he read a fraction before I finished committing; every feint, he weighed and dismissed. But I wasn't trying to beat him. Not really. I was trying to not embarrass the village in front of the person whose job it was to decide who lived on the front lines.
I mixed in the movements that had saved me in the field minutes ago: tight cuts, quick thrusts, short corrections in my stance. Twice, he deliberately left an opening in his guard—obvious ones, the kind you'd be stupid not to take.
Twice, I refused them.
They were wrong. Too easy. Traps shaped like invitations. The kind you saw in hunters' stories right before someone lost an ear.
After the second time, I chose not to rush in; he dropped his blade slightly.
"Enough," he said.
I blinked, breathing hard. My arms quivered. Sweat ran down my back. The square was so quiet I could hear the wind tugging at the banners.
Roderic turned slightly, addressing the square as much as me.
"Rough edges," he said. "No formal drill. No understanding of proper formations beyond what we've done in the last hour. But—" He lifted his sword tip in my direction a little, not enough for it to feel like a threat. "Guard recovers. Feet correct themselves mid-mistake. Eyes stay on the opponent, not the blade. He does not chase false openings."
Jotun whispered, barely containing himself, "He says nice things in the meanest way."
"He says true things," Finch said from the edge of the crowd, voice low.
Roderic looked between Draff and Finch.
"By the handbook," he said, "he's too young to be anywhere near my company." He let that hang for a heartbeat. "By the field I just saw, he is already doing a knight's work without training, armour, or support."
Something in my chest lurched.
Draff folded his arms. "He's ours," he said. "Springvale's. He knows our paths, our mud, our moods. You're not wrong about what he does, but taking him means leaving a hole."
Roderic nodded slowly. "I see the hole," he said. "I also see the shape of the life that will try to fill it if he stays. Today it was a mitachurl. Tomorrow it may be something worse. He will stand in front of it either way."
Finch shifted his weight, knuckles white on his stick. "You're saying he'll die here," he said flatly.
"I'm saying," Roderic replied, "that if he keeps doing what he did today with only half-learning and stubbornness, something will break him. And it will break him alone." His gaze returned to me. "I would rather that when something tries to break him, it finds an entire company in its way."
Jotun whispered, "I like him less when he's right."
"Jotun," Finch hissed sharply.
Roderic took a slow breath.
"Head Hunter Draff. Finch of Springvale." He used their names like anchors. "I am invoking Captain's Discretion. I intend to take Taron with me to Mondstadt now, as an exception, as a provisional trainee under the First Company. He will live at the headquarters, train with our squires, and attend instruction. Until he reaches the usual age, he will not be assigned to independent patrols."
The words dropped into the square like stones into the spring.
For a heartbeat, nobody moved.
Then everyone moved at once.
"What—now?" Marla blurted from near the well, eyes wide. "As in, today now?"
"Exception?" Jotun echoed. "Exceptions sound like 'fun' and 'danger' had a baby and named it 'probably bad idea'."
"Quiet," Draff snapped.
Finch's gaze swung to me, sharp and searching.
"Taron," he said. "Look at me."
I tore my eyes away from Roderic and met his.
Finch had always looked old to me. Older than the other adults, older than the hunters, older than the windmill, somehow. Right now, he looked… stripped down. All the humor gone. Only worry and something like pride remained.
"You understand what that means?" he asked. "Not just pretty words. Not just 'you get to wave a sword near a city for fun.'"
It meant Mondstadt. It meant stone streets and the tower and the big cathedral whose bells I'd only heard from far away. It meant not waking up every morning to the sound of the spring and the creak of the windmill and Jotun complaining about chores.
It also meant real armour. Real training. Real formations. Real people at my back instead of only whoever happened to be near when something bad came out of the trees.
"It means," I said slowly, "that if something like that comes again"—I jerked my chin toward the mitachurl's corpse— "I'd be better at stopping it. Here or anywhere."
Finch's mouth twitched. "Always so simple when you say it," he muttered.
Roderic spoke again, voice quieter now.
"I won't drag him," he said. "The Order has rules for a reason. Breaking them has costs. But rules exist to keep people alive, not to pretend things aren't happening." He looked at Finch. Then at Draff. Then at me. "He is already in the fight."
Draff's shoulders slumped.
"Damn you," he said, not entirely unkind. "You want us to say it so you don't have to."
He turned to me.
"Taron," he said. "If you go, you're not leaving because we're pushing you away. You're leaving because someone noticed what you're already doing and is foolish enough to want to sharpen it instead of letting it chip itself blunt here."
"Poetic," Jotun muttered. "For a man who once described meat as 'good dead thing'."
Draff glared at him, then back at me.
"You always walk too far," he said. "Might as well walk the road that teaches you something new."
Finch shut his eyes briefly, then opened them again. There was moisture there he'd never admit to.
"Say what you want," he told me. "Not what you think we want. You're the one who has to sleep with it."
My throat felt tight. The whole village seemed to tilt a fraction, like the ground had decided to test me again.
I thought of Stormbearer—the wind at my face, the pain in my legs, the way the path up and down had taught me just how much ground a person could cover when they had to. I thought of that old stick in my hands by the spring, of the way my arms had ached as I taught myself to swing and swing again. I thought of today, of the shield wall, of hilichurls' masks up close, of the mitachurl's roar.
I thought of the way I'd felt when Roderic had stepped through the gap I'd made and finished the fight in three clean heartbeats.
"I don't want to leave," I said. It felt like a confession. "But I don't want to stay and be useless when something worse comes. If this is how I can protect Springvale better… then I want that."
Silence.
Then Jotun exhaled loudly. "Well," he said. "Guess I have to find a new person to blame when things go wrong."
"You'll manage," Marla said tartly, though her voice shook. "You're very talented at misdirecting blame."
"You'll write," Myweiss said from somewhere near the front. Her fingers twitched like she was already composing. "Or make someone else write for you. I'm not losing track of the midpoint of my epic ballad just because you got upgraded to 'exception'."
Roderic inclined his head, as if he'd been waiting for that answer and listening to the answers around it.
"Finch?" he asked.
Finch blew out a long breath.
"Take him," he said. "But if you bring him back broken, I will limp up to your stone tower and ask why, and you won't enjoy answering."
The corners of Roderic's mouth turned up by a fraction. "Understood," he said. "I am not in the habit of wasting good material."
"That's my boy you're calling material," Finch grumbled.
"That's my future problem you're calling 'boy'," Jotun added.
"Jotun," three adults said at once.
Roderic looked at me.
"You will pack what you need," he said. "Not everything. You won't have space for half your life on a horse. Essentials only. We leave at dawn."
Jotun opened his mouth. "Define 'essentials'—"
"You," Marla said sharply, "are not going in his bag."
"I could if I curled up," Jotun argued.
I barely heard them.
The world had gone oddly far away, like the sound after a bell tolls. Dawn. That wasn't "sometime later." That was… now. Almost.
"Yes, Captain," I said.
Roderic sheathed his sword in one smooth motion, the sound of metal sliding home somehow final.
"Stand down," he ordered the line. "See to the wounded. We'll debrief later."
The formation dissolved into motion again. Hunters headed for their families. Knights began to move the mitachurl's body with grim efficiency, already discussing how to burn it properly. Hilichurl corpses were dragged into a pile.
I stood there a moment, sword still in my hand, until Finch's hand settled on my shoulder.
"Come on," he said. "You'll be useless in Mondstadt if you show up without socks."
"I have socks," I said automatically.
"Not enough," he replied. "No one ever has enough socks."
Jotun appeared on my other side like he'd been summoned.
"I volunteer to help pack," he announced.
"You volunteer to try to steal things," Marla said, following.
"I volunteer to make sure he doesn't forget anything important," Hopkins added, quieter, like he hadn't decided whether he was allowed to speak yet.
Myweiss drifted behind us, already humming something under her breath.
We walked as a cluster toward Finch's house, away from the square. The sounds of knights and sergeants and monster-cleaning faded behind us, replaced by the creak of the windmill and the familiar crunch of the path underfoot.
Inside, the house felt both too small and too big.
My bed is in the corner. The little shelf with the three books Finch owned. The hook where my old practice stick hung. The worn table where we'd eaten thin stew and thick stories both.
"Bag," Finch said briskly, because if he stopped, he might not start again. "Clothes first."
Jotun lunged for my trunk.
"Absolutely not," I said, grabbing the handle first.
"Fine," he said. "I'll supervise. Take… three tunics. They probably have laundry in Mondstadt. I think. Or they just air their knights out like cloaks from the cathedral."
"Three is fine," Finch said. "You'll outgrow them, and we'll be stuck shipping new ones anyway."
Marla folded each shirt I pulled out with mechanical precision, smoothing seams. "One for training, one for not training, one for when you ruin one of the first two," she said. "Functional. Even you can follow that."
Hopkins hovered near the door, eyes drawn to the small bundle on the shelf where he kept spring-water cloths. "Take something from here," he said suddenly. "Something the water knows."
My gaze flicked to the old stick.
It wasn't a sword. It wasn't even particularly straight anymore. The bark had worn smooth where my hands had held it. The end was scuffed from years of hitting air and dirt and never quite touching what I imagined.
I pulled it down.
Finch's expression softened. "Good," he said. "Let the city give you steel. Bring the spring your habits to rub into it."
Jotun plopped down on the bed, then bounced up again immediately, restless.
"You know," he said, "when you come back wearing armour, you're going to look ridiculous next to me. I'll need to acquire at least one dramatic cloak to keep up."
"You can't even keep up with your own laundry," Marla said.
"Armour creaks," Hopkins pointed out. "You'll hear him coming."
"I already hear him coming," Jotun said. "He breathes like a person who thinks too much."
"I do not," I said.
"You do," Finch and Jotun said at the same time.
By the time the sun had dipped toward the trees, my pack sat on the table: three tunics, an extra pair of trousers, socks, a spare pair of boots, a small pouch of coins Finch insisted on pressing into my hand "for emergencies, not for fried fish," the practice stick, and the cheap iron sword I'd arrived in the square with.
It didn't look like much.
It looked like more than I'd ever carried for anything that wasn't mushrooms.
Night in Springvale crept in through the windows. The square's noise slowly died down to the usual low buzz. Somewhere outside, a knight laughed, the sound sharp and unfamiliar against our walls.
"Sleep," Finch said. "You'll need to be able to stand upright tomorrow without me poking your knees with a stick."
"I can't," I said honestly.
He sighed. "Then lie down and pretend. It's almost the same."
He left me for a moment, herding the others out with him. Jotun resisted, then relented when Finch threatened to make him do double chores in revenge. Marla squeezed my arm before slipping away. Hopkins hovered, then pressed a small cloth-wrapped bundle into my hand—a scrap of spring water blessing—and followed.
Myweiss lingered in the doorway.
"I'll write this down," she said. "So you don't forget what it felt like to leave."
"I won't forget," I said.
"Humour me," she replied, and was gone.
Finch came back alone, closing the door with a soft thud.
There was a long silence.
"When you were small," he said finally, leaning on his stick, "they left you by the lake. I thought, 'Here is a boy who belongs to water and wind and every bad idea that comes with them.'"
I stared at my hands.
"You walked to Stormbearer because the stew was thin," he went on. "You hit the spring's air with a stick until the night got bored. You don't know how to sit quietly while something dangerous is on the other side of your village."
"I know how to sit quietly," I protested weakly.
"For how long?" he asked.
I had no answer.
He pushed himself off the stick and came closer, resting a hand briefly on my head in a gesture he didn't do often.
"I am proud," he said. "And worried. And tired. And all of that is your fault."
"Sorry," I said.
"No, you're not," he said. "Don't start lying now."
We both laughed a little.
"Sleep if you can," he said again. "If you can't, then breathe. The road will still be there in the morning."
He left.
I lay down on the bed, boots off, clothes still smelling like sweat and monster and smoke. The spring's murmur outside the window was a constant, as it had always been. The windmill creaked. The occasional clink of Favonius armour drifted in from the square.
Sleep didn't come.
Eventually, I gave up on pretending.
I got up, grabbed the old stick, and slipped outside.
The night was clear. Stars pricked the dark. Lanterns in the square burned low but steady, casting long shadows across the dirt. The windmill's blades turned slowly, huge and patient.
Down by the pond, the spring whispered to itself.
I stood in my usual place and raised the stick.
Forehand. Backhand. Thrust. Guard. Cut.
My body moved through the pattern I'd built over the years, the movements smoother now after the day's fight. I integrated little things I'd seen from the knights: the way the shield-bearer had angled his weight, the way Roderic had kept his off-hand relaxed, ready to help or balance.
"Don't die," Jotun said behind me.
I nearly dropped the stick. "What are you doing awake?" I demanded.
"Not sleeping," he said. He shuffled closer, arms wrapped around himself. "Watching my idiot friend decide to hit the air one last time before he leaves to go hit more important air near Mondstadt."
"You were supposed to sleep," I said.
"So were you," he replied.
We stood there a moment, listening to the water.
"You're really going," he said quietly.
"Yes."
"Good," he said, just as quietly. "If you'd said no, I would've had to throw you into the spring until you changed your mind, and that's a lot of work."
I smiled despite myself. "You could just ask."
"No," he said. "This is better. Feels more dramatic if I threaten to drown you."
He was quiet for a beat.
"When you're captain someday," he went on, "don't forget to come back and yell at us about how we hold our sticks wrong."
"I'm not going to be captain," I said.
"You're not allowed to be modest anymore," Jotun said. "You've been 'exceptioned.' That means you're officially too weird for normal rules."
"Exceptioned is not a word."
"It is now," he insisted.
We fell quiet again.
"Look," he said eventually. "I'm going to say something, and if you make fun of me for it, I will throw you into the spring even if you come back with armour."
"Fine," I said.
"You standing in that line today," he said, "made it easier for me to run kids to the houses. Because I knew you'd be there. So… go learn how to stand in lines better, so I can be even lazier."
"That was almost sincere," I said.
"That was extremely sincere," he replied indignantly. "It hurt."
We both laughed.
Dawn came too quickly.
The sky went from black to deep blue to the kind of grey that meant the sun was almost up. The First Company was already a machine in motion at the edge of the village when Finch and I walked up, my pack slung over my shoulder, my sword at my hip, the old stick in my hand.
Horses snorted. Knights checked straps and cinches. Roderic sat his mount as he'd never left it, talking quietly with one of his lieutenants.
When he saw us, he nudged his horse forward.
"Taron," he said. "Ready?"
No.
"Yes," I said.
Finch squeezed the back of my neck once, hard, then let go. "Remember your feet," he murmured. "Don't let city stone teach them bad habits."
"Remember to eat," Marla said, marching up with a small wrapped bundle. "This is for the road. If the Knights' food is worse than Brook's, come back, you're obviously in the wrong place."
"Tell me if they have any training dummies you can break," Jotun said. "I need to know if the stories are accurate."
"Listen for water even if you can't hear this spring," Hopkins said, pressing his usual cloth-wrapped bit of blessed water into my palm. "If you feel very alone, remember something here remembers you."
Myweiss looked like she'd been awake all night.
"I'll write the Springvale part hyper-heroic," she said. "So when you're miserable, you can read it and feel worse about how dramatic you used to be."
"Thank you," I said. "I think."
Roderic watched all of this without comment, something in his eyes softer than yesterday.
"Fall in," he said when the goodbyes had tangled into too many words.
He gestured to a spot just off his left flank—not at the front of the column, not in the back where the supply carts rattled, but near enough to his position that anyone looking would know very clearly whose problem I was now.
I took my place.
The road out of Springvale stretched ahead, winding up toward Windwail and, beyond that, Mondstadt's outer walls.
"From this moment," Roderic said, voice pitched for me alone but loud enough that I'd never be able to pretend I'd misheard, "you train as a Knight of Favonius. Provisional, yes. But knight all the same. You will work harder than you think you can. You will be corrected more than you like. You will not be alone."
I nodded, throat tight. "Yes, Captain."
He raised his hand.
"Company!" he called. "March!"
The First Company moved.
Springvale slid slowly behind us—pond, windmill, houses clustering around the spring. I could still feel the line I'd drawn there under my feet.
The road ahead waited, full of drills and bruises and stone yards and a training ground beside the Favonius headquarters I'd only ever seen from far away.
My hand tightened on the old stick lashed to my pack.
I'd been the boy who walked too far because the pots were too empty. Because the stew was thin. Because someone had to.
Now I was walking further than I ever had.
Not away from Springvale.
Just… carrying its line with me.