(Vladford POV)
Pain learned my name.
It greeted me every dawn, settled into my bones by noon, and waited patiently at night for the mage's hands and the knives of light she used to peel the mark from my flesh—layer by careful layer. Days no longer moved forward; they folded in on themselves, measured not by victories or distance gained, but by how long I could stand before the shaking started.
The camp had changed me. Or perhaps it simply revealed what the empire had tried—and failed—to burn away.
I woke before the horn each morning, before the cooks stirred the embers, before the sentries rotated. I trained in silence, letting the frost sting my lungs as I drew breath after breath, fire coiled tight behind my ribs. The mage warned me not to summon flame outside controlled windows, not yet, not while the mark still clung to me like a parasite—but restraint had become a second skin. I practiced forms instead. Footwork. Balance. Timing.
Usefulness over legend.
