The moon hung like a silver sickle over the Iron-Vein Mountains, casting long, jagged shadows across the Vane-Crest estate. While the rest of the manor slept, the back storage room of the Great Forge hummed with a different kind of energy.
The air was thick with the smell of old iron and cold sand. Priscilla stood in the center of the pit Hagar had cleared, her silk nightgown replaced by a rough linen tunic and trousers she had pilfered from the apprentice quarters.
She stared at her reflection in a bucket of stagnant water. The face was soft, the jawline delicate. It was the face of a girl who had spent her life trembling in the shadows of her brothers.
Priscilla tightened her grip on a pair of short iron rods. She exhaled, a sharp, rhythmic burst of air, and moved.
The first strike was clumsy. Her mind knew the trajectory of a perfect Krav Maga elbow strike, but the tendons in this new body screamed in protest. She stumbled, the sand shifting beneath her feet, and fell to one knee.
"Pathetic," she muttered, her voice rasping in the cold.
She stood up and reset her stance. Center of gravity. Guard up. Pivot the hip. She began a shadow-boxing routine, her fists cutting through the air in a blur. Each movement was a battle against muscle atrophy. She practiced the "Leopard's Paw," a strike designed to crush the windpipe, followed by a low sweep. The sand flew around her ankles as she spun, her breathing becoming a steady, mechanical hiss.
Halfway through the second hour, she moved to the weighted iron spheres. They were solid, rusted balls used for grinding ore, each weighing roughly twenty pounds. She gripped two and began a series of lunges.
One. Two. Ten. Fifty.
Her thighs burned like they were filled with molten lead. Her vision blurred, but she didn't stop. In her mind, she wasn't just training a body; she was recalibrating a machine.
A floorboard creaked above her.
Priscilla froze. She dropped the iron spheres silently into the soft sand and extinguished the single candle with a flick of her fingers. The room plunged into total darkness.
She pressed her back against a soot-stained pillar, her hand instinctively reaching for a sharpened metal file she had tucked into her waistband. She waited, her heart rate slowing through sheer force of will.
the silhouette of a man passed by the high, grated window. The moonlight caught the glint of spectacles and a silver-headed cane. Alistair.
He stopped, staring down at the forge's silhouette. He pulled out his pocket watch, the click-clack of the mechanism echoing in the silence. He lingered for a full minute, his gaze scanning the shadows where Priscilla stood hidden, before finally moving on.
Priscilla didn't move for ten minutes after his footsteps faded.
She stepped back into the moonlight, her knuckles bleeding and her sweat turning cold in the northern draft. She looked at her hands—they were no longer shaking from fear. They were shaking from exhaustion.
She picked up the iron file and began to sharpen the edge against a whetstone. The rhythmic shhh-shhh-shhh filled the room.
The "Old Priscilla" was a girl of silence. The "New Priscilla" was a girl of sharpened steel.