I stopped sleeping.
Not because I chose to.
Because the dreams wouldn't let me.
---
Every time I closed my eyes, I was back in the crater.
Ash falling like snow.
Metal screaming in the sky.
A voice—not mine—screaming someone's name.
The sword humming.
The earth breaking.
Sometimes, I woke up with my hand around the blade's hilt, already drawn.
Sometimes, I didn't remember drawing it.
---
I started training alone again.
The manor grounds were too populated—eyes always watching, whispering. I slipped out at dawn, past the outer gardens and toward the ravine beyond the estate wall, where trees grew twisted and black from fire that had come long before my birth.
There, I practiced.
Not sword forms. Not drills.
I moved.
Let my body recall what my mind couldn't.
---
The sword was light in my hand.
It had no name yet.
Or maybe it had many—forgotten ones.
Its weight shifted with my breath. Its edge stayed sharp no matter how many times I cut into the stone practice post. Its hum was no longer faint.
It was awake.
---
Aura, they called it.
The breath behind the blade.
The strength beneath the flesh.
I felt it more now—not as light or heat, but as something wrong inside me. A second pulse, timed out of rhythm with my heartbeat. A shadow that followed me too closely.
The instructors said aura obeyed will.
Mine didn't.
It followed fear. Memory. Pain.
Every time I used too much of it, my body turned against me—shaking bones, burning lungs, blurring sight.
But it was mine.
And if it didn't listen, I'd make it.
---
On the sixth day, I tried something different.
I took my breath slow.
Inhale.
Step.
Grip.
Turn.
Exhale.
The Fang.
The first.
The only one I understood.
A low diagonal slash—drawn from the hip, pivoting at the ankle, letting the weight of my aura spill forward—
*Crack.*
The old training stone shattered.
Dust drifted.
I lowered the blade.
Blood ran from my nose.
I wiped it on my sleeve.
---
Later that day, I stood beneath the old lion gargoyle in the west courtyard.
Varian approached, gloved hands behind his back.
He watched me for a moment. Not judging. Calculating.
"You're forcing it."
"I'm controlling it."
"You're surviving it."
I looked away.
He stepped beside me.
"I've seen it before. Aura that wakes before the will does. It'll kill you, if you let it decide what you are."
"Then I won't let it."
"You say that now. Wait until it's not a stone you're cutting, but someone who has your name in his mouth."
---
He handed me a scroll.
Not sealed.
I opened it.
The emblem was from Aetherion Academy.
Black ink. Red wax. One line in silver script across the top:
> Accepted — Sword Track, Noble Division.
My eye flicked to the arrival date. Five weeks from now.
I rolled the scroll once, then again.
Varian said nothing.
---
Back in my quarters, I set the sword down for the first time in hours.
And stared at it.
Not like a weapon.
Like a mirror I didn't recognize yet.
---
That night, I dreamt again.
But this time—
The crater was gone.
Instead, I stood in an endless corridor of mirrors.
Each one reflected something different.
A younger me.
A bloodied me.
A version of me in black armor, eyes gone silver with heat.
And one—
Just one—
Held a man I didn't recognize, holding the same sword, and smiling.
Not kindly.
---
When I woke, the sword was gone from its stand.
It was beside my bed.
Drawn.
Set neatly.
As if placed there by someone who thought I'd need it soon.