Dawn had not yet broken when Kaelen stood in the castle's main courtyard. The air was cold enough to sting his cheeks, carrying the smell of horses and damp earth. A fine, miserable drizzle slicked the cobblestones. His departure, it seemed, would be as gray and unceremonious as his life here had been.
He held a single rucksack. He owned nothing else.
After a long wait, the great doors opened and Baron von Hess himself emerged, flanked by two household guards. He was a tall, severe man whose Anima burned with the steady, commanding light of a seasoned Vessel. He did not approach his son.
"Kaelen," he said, his voice flat and devoid of warmth. "Your command awaits. This writ gives you authority over Blackwood Outpost and the men assigned to it. Do not dishonor my name more than you already have."
A guard stepped forward and handed Kaelen a rolled parchment sealed with the family's wax insignia. There was no handshake, no farewell. The Baron simply turned and walked back into the warmth of his castle, leaving his youngest son standing in the rain. The gilded cage had finally opened, and he had been unceremoniously shoved out.
Kaelen's escort was huddled near the stables. They were a motley collection of ten men who looked as though they had been scraped from the bottom of the barony's barrel. Their armor was a mix of dented steel and boiled leather, their expressions weary and resigned. These were not the Baron's finest. These were the disposable, the disgraced, the forgotten. The Ten Broken Swords.
Their leader, a man whose face was a roadmap of old scars, stepped forward. His nose had been broken more than once, and one eye held a permanent, cynical squint. "Sergeant Brandt, my lord," he said, the title 'lord' sounding more like an insult than a mark of respect. He gave a lazy, perfunctory salute. "The men are ready when you are."
Kaelen met his gaze. With his Sharingan deactivated, he was just a boy of eighteen, slight of build and pale. He could feel their collective judgment: another useless noble brat being sent to the armpit of the world to be forgotten.
"Let's move," Kaelen said, his voice quiet but firm. He swung himself onto the swaybacked mare provided for him and nudged it towards the gate without a backwards glance.
The journey was a silent, sullen affair. They trudged through muddy tracks that wound through sparse woodlands and rolling hills. For hours, Kaelen remained quiet, observing. He watched how his men rode, how they carried their weapons, how they scanned the terrain. He saw the lax discipline, the quiet desperation. Now and then, he would risk a brief, one-second flicker of his Sharingan. The world would flash into crimson clarity, revealing the faint, flickering Anima signatures of his men—some dim with exhaustion, others spiked with resentment. He was gathering data.
By midday, they entered a densely wooded region where the road narrowed, flanked by rocky hills and thick undergrowth. It was a perfect place for an ambush. Sergeant Brandt's posture stiffened, his hand resting on the hilt of his shortsword. The other men grew tense.
Kaelen, however, had already seen it. He had activated his Sharingan for a longer, three-second scan. He hadn't seen the men themselves, but he saw the anomalies. The unnatural silence from the birds on the left. The faint traces of Anima—six small, flickering embers—hidden behind the rocks and trees. He saw the tension in the very air, a pressure wave of murderous intent.
"Halt," Kaelen commanded, his voice cutting through the quiet hoof-falls.
Brandt rode up beside him, his expression a mask of irritation. "My lord, it's best we move through this pass quickly."
"There's an ambush ahead," Kaelen stated simply.
Brandt squinted, scanning the rocks. "With respect, my lord, my eyes see nothing."
"Your eyes are not required," Kaelen replied, his tone devoid of arrogance, stating a simple fact. He pointed with his chin. "There are two archers nestled in that cluster of rocks to our left. Three more men with blades are waiting behind the large deadfall on the right. A sixth, likely their leader, is further up the path, waiting to close the pincer."
His specificity was so absolute, so unnervingly precise, that it silenced Brandt's protest. The men exchanged uneasy glances. How could he possibly know that?
A sharp whistle cut the air. The ambush was sprung.
An arrow flew from the exact cluster of rocks Kaelen had indicated, thudding harmlessly into a tree trunk near where a man would have been if they hadn't stopped. From the right, three ragged men burst from behind the deadfall, roaring a battle cry.
But Kaelen's men were ready. "Left flank, suppress those archers! Front, form a shield line!" Brandt bellowed, his soldier's instincts taking over now that the threat was real.
Chaos erupted, but it was a controlled chaos. The soldiers, previously sullen, now fought with the grim efficiency of cornered dogs. While his men engaged the main force, a lone bandit who had slipped through the confusion charged directly at Kaelen, seeing an easy noble target.
Kaelen drew his plain longsword. To the bandit, he looked like a calm, unmoving boy. To Kaelen's crimson eyes, the world was a symphony of motion. He saw the bandit's lunge before it began, the path of the rusted blade a glowing red line in his vision. He saw the shift of weight, the flex of muscle, the surge of crude Anima.
He didn't move until the last possible second. He took a single, fluid step to the side. The bandit's sword swiped through empty air. As the man stumbled past, off-balance, Kaelen pivoted and drove his own blade through a gap in the bandit's leather jerkin. It was a single, perfect, economical thrust. There was no wasted motion, no theatrical flair. It was simply... efficient. The bandit collapsed without a sound.
The skirmish was over in less than a minute. Thanks to his warning, Kaelen's men suffered only a few minor cuts. They dispatched the remaining bandits and secured the leader, who had been captured just as Kaelen had predicted.
The ten broken swords now stared at their new commander. They looked from the dead bandit at his feet to the calm, pale boy wiping his blade clean on a handful of leaves. There was no triumph on his face, no fear, no emotion at all. There was only an unnerving, absolute calm.
Brandt approached, his cynicism completely gone, replaced by a deep, profound awe. "My lord... how did you know?"
Kaelen sheathed his sword, the sound unnaturally loud in the sudden silence. He looked at the veteran sergeant, his dark eyes seeming to see right through him.
"I was paying attention," he said simply. "Let's keep moving. We're burning daylight."
He nudged his horse forward, leaving his ten men to stare after him. The silence that fell over the column as they resumed their journey was entirely different. It was no longer the silence of contempt. It was the heavy, uncertain silence of respect, tinged with a healthy dose of fear. Their new lord was not what he seemed, and the journey to Blackwood Outpost had suddenly become far more interesting.