Noon arrived like the held breath before a storm—sharp and still. The winds that had plagued the valley all morning suddenly quieted, as if the world itself was awaiting instruction. Dust halted mid-drift. Even the light seemed to pause, casting shadows without motion.
And then—he stepped forward.
Alter.
He stood at the heart of the Gauntlet's central ridge, silhouetted beneath the high sun. The valley below stilled as every Dragoon—injured, breathing hard, sweat-slick and sore—turned toward the Sovereign without being told.
Without a word, he drew Starsever.
The blade sang as it left the sheath, catching the sun at an angle that turned the steel into a sliver of holy flame. He held it aloft—not as a threat, but as a promise.
A blade raised like a prayer.
His voice, when it came, was steady and low.
"Observe."
He moved.
But he didn't move.
He stepped forward—into nothing. Into absence.
Then… the air bent.
No ripple. No burst. Just a subtle shift in reality, like pages folding in a book you didn't know was open. Alter folded space between the floating walls and ascending pillars. He didn't leap. He didn't fly.
He drifted.
Carried not by wind—but by the curvature of it. His body tilted sideways as he moved along a rising spire—his foot never fully touching it—before vanishing into a flash of compressed light.
Blink.
He was above them.
Blink again.
Gone.
He slid between shafts of sunbeam and shadow, slipping through dimensions like silk across water. A breeze twisted in his wake—not displaced, but rearranged.
Below, the recruits craned their necks—some shielding their eyes, others scanning in disbelief.
Where was he?
And then—
He reappeared.
At the summit of the Gauntlet.Forty meters above the earth, standing atop a crumbling platform that should have fallen seconds ago.
It didn't.
Not yet.
Not until he allowed it.
The stone groaned beneath him like it bowed, not broke—awed by the presence of one who had learned to walk as shadow walks: weightless, uninvited, unstoppable.
Alter lowered Starsever, its point touching the trembling platform. His voice drifted down like wind caught in a canyon.
"This…"
He paused. Golden eyes glowing.
"…is your new body."
A hush spread.
"One not built of flesh and bone…"
The wind stirred, following his words.
"…but of speed and silence."
Then the platform gave way.
But he was already gone.
Far from the scorched valleys and howling winds of the Dragoon gauntlet, deep within the obsidian heart of Veyr'Zhalar, a room pulsed with reflected firelight and scryed visions. The Aetherflame Scrying Chamber—normally reserved for courtly divination and matters of prophecy—had been turned into a silent theater of breathless observation.
Suspended in the center of the chamber floated a crystalline sphere, its surface glowing with shifting images. Through it, the royal family watched the Dragoon trials unfold in real time—streams of movement rendered in streaks of blurred light, bodies flickering across terrain, runes detonating in cascading brilliance, and silence wielded like a weapon.
The tension hung thick as molten glass.
Prince Ryvar stood with arms crossed and back tense, his ever-defiant posture tempered for once by something close to reverence. His eyes tracked every flicker of a recruit vanishing between pillars, every marker detonation timed with breathless precision.
"They're turning into ghosts," he muttered, half to himself. "Warriors who dance like windblades."
The words held no sarcasm. Only awe.
Beside him, Princess Alyxthia leaned in closer, her golden hair lit by the glow of the scrying pool, her fingers pressed gently to her lips as her eyes narrowed. But her gaze saw more than what the crystal showed. Her dragon-sight danced beneath her lashes, perceiving not just the motions—but the threads of spirit woven through each step, each mark, each strike.
"Not just warriors," she whispered, voice like wind across hollowed stone. "Wraiths… shaped by stormlight."
Her words echoed faintly, the room seeming colder for it.
From the far end of the chamber, Queen Elanra stepped forward, robes trailing like woven moonlight. Her voice didn't rise, yet its weight cut clean through the moment. She did not look at the crystal—but at her king.
"What he is building," she said slowly, "is not an army."
Her gaze sharpened. "It is a doctrine. A bloodline of martial precision. Of silence turned into strength."
A long silence followed.
King Vael'Zarion stood at the highest step of the chamber, hands clasped behind his back, his silver-draconic cloak trailing in ceremonial folds. He had not spoken once since the visions began. But his eyes—burning with layered intensity—never once left the image of Alter hovering mid-air, his form suspended between flame and sky like an omen carved from prophecy.
He exhaled once.
Not as a ruler burdened.
But as a sovereign bearing witness.
His kingdom was changing.
And he was watching the forge take shape.
The wind that morning wasn't gentle.
It howled—not as a whispering breeze, but as a challenge hurled from the cliffs themselves. A declaration that nothing soft would survive the day.
Low fog blanketed the canyon floor, curling like smoke around jagged rocks and rune-marked stone. Mist clung to armor and skin, soaking through cloth and breath. The Dragoon recruits stood in tense formation along the ridge, their silhouettes barely visible against the colorless sky above—a sky so pale and still it felt as though the heavens themselves were holding their breath.
Ahead of them, the Valley of Wind sprawled open like a scar across the land—twisting gullies, rising spires, and shattered platforms suspended by nothing but will and air. It had once been a gorge carved by time.
Now, it was a battlefield forged by intention.
Not a warzone of blades and blood.
But of movement.
Perched atop the jagged stone outcrop that crowned the valley was a lone figure, unmoving.
Back turned to them.
Arms relaxed at his sides.
But the pressure in the air told every soul present exactly who he was.
Alter.
The Prime Dragonic Sovereign, clad in silver-blue Sovereignborn Draconic Plate, radiated no visible aura—yet his presence was unmistakable. It curled around the wind itself, bending it subtly around his form as though nature bowed before him even in silence.
He said nothing for a time.
And then—without turning—he spoke.
His voice drifted like smoke caught on wind currents, soft but unyielding.
"Today… you will learn to vanish."
No echo. No flair. Just words, carved clean through the air.
The recruits shifted.
Some blinked in confusion. Others exchanged uncertain glances.
"Vanish?" one whispered.
"Stealth training?" another muttered under their breath.
But before uncertainty could bloom into doubt—
He was gone.
No blur.
No light.
No gust.
Just absence.
One heartbeat passed. Then two.
Then a faint breeze stirred behind the formation.
Every recruit spun as one.
Too late.
Alter was already walking among them—silent, hands folded neatly behind his back, a calm specter moving through the ranks as if he had always been there. His footsteps made no sound. His armor didn't creak. The mist did not part for him—it accepted him.
They stared. Some with mouths slightly agape. Others held breath they didn't realize they were holding.
His expression was unreadable. Not stern. Not amused.
Only watching.
"Lesson one," he said, voice low, deliberate.
"If your enemy can see you…"
His golden eyes flicked from one wide-eyed Dragoon to the next.
"…you're already dead."
The Ghost Gauntlet
They called it a training arena.
But what greeted the Dragoon recruits was no arena.
It was madness, engineered.
A battlefield sculpted not for combat—but for disorientation. There were no open fields. No comfort in footing. No rhythm to the space. Just layers of movement, misdirection, and consequence. Chaos carved into sequence.
One by one, the recruits stepped through the stone archway that marked the boundary of the Gauntlet. The mist thickened. The wind whispered from the wrong direction. The ground itself seemed to shift with each breath they took.
And then the challenge began.
The first trial. A narrow stretch lined with floating stone pillars suspended midair—some real, some not.
Each pillar blinked in and out of existence at irregular intervals. Some flickered like candlelight, others vanished completely for entire seconds. A single step misplaced, and the recruit would plummet—either into a foam-cushioned safety pit far below, or worse, land awkwardly in front of their squad.
Most preferred the pit.
One recruit attempted to count the phase intervals.
He slipped.
Another closed her eyes, trusted her instinct—and danced across as if the air itself remembered her footsteps.
The corridor didn't punish the weak.
It punished the uncertain.
Deep ravines laced with twisted audio runes. Their purpose? Confuse. Disorient. Rewire instinct.
Here, sound betrayed reality.
Footsteps echoed before they landed. Cries of warning triggered after someone had already fallen. The rush of movement behind you might be your own motion—thirty seconds ago.
One Dragoon shouted for help—and then heard his own voice reply, distorted, from a place he hadn't yet been.
Another spun around mid-jump, startled by a breath that hadn't yet left their lungs.
Panic didn't come from danger.
It came from disconnection.
Circular zones etched into the stone, rimmed with slowly pulsating glyphs. Step inside, and your world fractured.
Every few seconds, the space within strobed—first into total darkness, then into a blast of blinding white light. Again and again. Each cycle disoriented muscle memory and ruined reaction time.
One moment you couldn't see your hand in front of your face.
The next—your vision burned as if staring into a sun-flare.
Blades swung wildly. Feet hesitated.
The best adapted by feeling the wind instead of seeing the strikes.
Others froze, caught between hesitation and blindness.
Only a few moved like shadows through the storm.
High above, suspended tiles formed a broken path over open chasms.
No magic.
No glyphs.
Just raw body and judgment.
Each tile teetered under weight. Some gave way. Some drifted in the wind—erratic, sharp, and unkind. Leaping too soon meant overshooting. Too late, and the tile was already gone.
Below—nothing.
Above—pressure.
Across the valley, a scream rang out as a tile collapsed, followed by a thud into the padded floor beneath.
No broken bones. Only broken rhythm.
And scattered across all sections—
Not still mannequins. These were enchanted constructs armed with spinning wooden staves—programmed to strike at moving targets from above, below, and mid-air. Like anti-air turrets, they rotated unpredictably, responding to breath, speed, and angle.
One caught a recruit mid-dash with a crack across the shoulder. He spun into a roll, coughed, and kept moving—pride bruised harder than the bone.
Another disabled a sentry midair with a marker-infused kick to the rune-core beneath its neck. The dummy sparked, spun once, then toppled off the edge.
It wouldn't be the last.
The Ghost Gauntlet wasn't just a test of movement.
It was a challenge to existence.
To prove you could move through chaos—not with speed, not with force—
But with intention so sharp, the world wouldn't know you were ever there.
The wind hadn't eased.
If anything, it sharpened—as though the Valley of Wind itself sensed the blood rush of challenge and stirred to make it crueler.
The Ghost Gauntlet now pulsed with active glyphs, shifting terrain, and unpredictable windsweeps that howled through the canyons like ancient spirits restless in their graves.
The instructors gave no speeches.
Only a gesture.
And the recruits—divided into squads of five—knew what that meant.
No one moved.
No one volunteered.
So the instructors volunteered for them.
Gorik Ulthane stomped forward first, more dragged by stubbornness than called by strategy. His muscles rippled beneath reinforced leather, sweat already glistening like forged steel on his shoulders. He looked at the Leap Zone ahead—chasm-spanning tiles swinging on wind currents like cursed platforms waiting to betray him.
He grunted.
Then punched the ground.
A deep-thundered earth marker glowed beneath his heel, and before anyone could protest, Gorik launched himself forward—a human missile wrapped in beard and momentum.
He ricocheted off one tile, slammed into a second, half-bounced into a third—then buried himself face-first into the fourth.
A cloud of gravel rained upward.
From the crater, his muffled voice emerged:
"Success."
One instructor nearly choked trying not to laugh.
Talia Fenreith was next.
No hesitation.
She approached the Phasewalk Corridor like it was an old dance partner she'd left on good terms.
With a wild grin and wind markers pulsing along her ankles, she surged forward—boots barely grazing the ground as she vaulted off a blinking wall, flipped through the air, landed sideways on a vanishing pillar, and cartwheeled off a collapsing tile as it disintegrated beneath her.
Midair, a flying dummy zipped toward her like a predator on alert.
She twisted mid-spin, planted both feet squarely on its head—and rode it down like a surfing banshee.
"Wheeeeeeee!" she howled, wind catching her braid.
Then she jumped off again, laughing all the way.
"I was born for this!"
Somewhere on the ridge, another recruit sighed in exhaustion—just from watching her.
Selin Varrow made no declaration.
She simply moved.
Slender. Silent. Slivered from moonlight.
She stepped into the Shadowlight Wells, vanishing with the next strobe of darkness. One dummy's sensors sparked to life—only to die a second later as a blade pierced its pressure core from behind.
The next cycle of light returned.
She was gone.
Not teleported.
Not blurred.
Just… not there anymore.
Even the mist hesitated where she'd once been.
Her instructor—an elite Dragoon veteran with a record of twenty-five successful solo missions—lowered his runic lens slowly, breath caught.
He whispered, under his breath:
"…Gods."
The Ghost Gauntlet didn't stop.
But it was now very, very aware:
The Dragoons weren't running from chaos.
They were learning to dance with it.
By noon, the Ghost Gauntlet had turned cruel.
Mist clung heavier. The wind snapped harder. The stone itself seemed sharper beneath the recruits' boots. Sweat streaked every face. Dozens hunched in exhaustion—some bruised, some bloodied, all battered by the merciless rhythm of trials designed to break rhythm.
Breathing was ragged. Movement slowed.
Confidence frayed.
And then—he stepped forward.
Alter.
Clad in his silver-blue Sovereignborn Draconic Plate, he raised Starsever—his divine blade gleaming not with aggression, but with restraint. It hummed like a sealed storm, singing a pitch only the soul could hear. He did not address the recruits. He didn't lift his chin or raise his voice.
He just moved.
One step forward.
And the world changed.
The air bent around him—not in speed, not in light—but in law.
He didn't vanish.
He folded reality in his wake.
One blink, and he was gone from the base ridge.
The next—he appeared midair, balanced atop a falling stone slab as it cracked under the weight of an echo burst.
A moment later, he was surfing the curve of wind, his form curving sideways across a reverse-echo trench that twisted sound and pressure. His foot tapped a rune post just as he flipped into a backroll—
And five chain detonations spiraled outward from the point of contact, flaring in perfect synchronization like a chorus of explosions bowing to his rhythm.
He landed lightly—thirty meters above the gauntlet, perched on the very summit of the training ridge.
Not winded. Not marked.
Just there.
The wind howled behind him, racing to catch up.
He turned.
No dramatic pose. No aura flare.
Only presence. Still. Commanding.
And then, finally, his voice—low, measured, but edged with divine gravity—carried down to the stunned formations below.
"You're not learning speed," he said. "You're learning presence control."
His gaze moved across the recruits—piercing, golden.
"You're training to erase yourselves… until only your strike remains."
No one spoke.
Not even the brash.
Not even the proud.
They understood now.
This wasn't about being fast.
It was about becoming untouchable.
And every heart there knew—
This was the standard.
High above the volcanic heart of Veyr'Zhalar, nestled within the obsidian spires of the Aetherflame Citadel, the crystal observatory chamber pulsed with refracted light. Its domed ceiling shimmered like liquid glass, runic veins etched through its inner walls channeling magic from the leylines below. At its center, suspended between rings of glowing arcmetal, hovered a grand scrying mirror—a disk of still water that reflected nothing of its surroundings, only truth drawn from across the realm.
The Dragoons' training was unfolding in perfect clarity, each flicker of movement rendered in radiant illusion.
The royal family watched in silence.
King Vael'Zarion stood at the helm of the chamber, arms folded tight across his chest. His eyes, silver and stern, narrowed not in doubt—but in calculation. Each movement on the field below—each vanish, each strike, each impossible maneuver—etched itself deeper into the lines of his jaw.
This was no longer just training.
It was foundation-shattering evolution.
Beside him, Queen Elanra stood with her fingers pressed lightly to her temple, eyes closed but mind fully open. Her connection to ancient energies pulsed through her bones—she wasn't merely watching, she was listening. Her breath slowed with every flicker of draconic resonance that drifted from the valley's edge to her soul.
And it was draconic. She could feel it.
Not borrowed power.
Awakened will.
On the raised platform behind them, Prince Kaelen observed with measured stillness, arms behind his back, the weight of military strategy turning behind calm eyes. But even he couldn't mask the shift in his tone.
"They're not just training soldiers…" he murmured. "They're forging weapons meant for gods."
A few steps away, Prince Ryvar leaned forward, squinting slightly at the flickering illusion of a Dragoon recruit disappearing mid-sprint, only to reappear ten meters away in a flash of perfect motion.
He exhaled, muttering under his breath.
"They're blurring the line between warrior and apparition."
He didn't say it with fear.
He said it with envy.
But it was Princess Alyxthia who broke the silence.
She stood unmoving, golden hair trailing in the glow of the scrying light, eyes wide—yet distant. She wasn't just watching. She was hearing.
Her dragon-sight had activated without her calling it.
And what it showed her…
"I hear the rhythm," she whispered. "Like wind through hollow bones."
Her fingers trembled slightly as she pressed them against the crystal edge of the viewing pool.
"This is draconic will… forged into motion."
The mirror pulsed brighter as another Dragoon vanished midair, reappearing mid-strike, surrounded by the ghostly afterglow of three runic markers detonating in succession.
The royal chamber remained still.
Not from doubt.
But from awe.
From understanding.
They were no longer simply watching soldiers train.
They were witnessing the birth of something sovereign.
The valley did not breathe.
It exhaled chaos.
What was once a forgotten gorge west of the Dragoon encampment had been reshaped—no, forged—under pressure, sorcery, and the meticulous will of a Sovereign into something far crueler. The terrain had been ripped open and re-stitched by shifting platforms, floating glyph-pads, spiraling phasewalk columns, and air currents that bent around motion like a living entity choosing who to favor… and who to destroy.
This place bore a name now.
The Valley of Wind.
And it howled as though haunted by the ghosts of warriors not yet born.
Mist coiled at the valley's mouth like smoke seeping from the lungs of a dormant beast. Thin rays of sunlight pierced the cragged walls, catching the drifting haze and casting long streaks of silver across the field. Everything felt stretched—like time itself had paused to witness what was coming.
At the edge of it all stood Alter.
Alone.
Unmoving.
Sovereign.
He stood like a monument of stillness, carved from the breath of gods. His Sovereignborn Draconic Plate shimmered in the morning light, the silver-blue metal aglow with a subtle ethereal radiance. His right hand gripped Starsever, the divine blade planted into the stone before him like a banner of fate. His left hand was folded behind his back, expression unreadable beneath the wind-shadowed curve of his helm.
Behind him, the Dragoon recruits had assembled in tight formation.
They had been tested—pushed past exhaustion, broken down and reforged. Just over a week had passed since their first day, and already their spirits had been tempered like steel.
But today… something felt different.
There was no announcement. No flare of aura. No martial display.
Just the crushing weight of the Sovereign's silence.
Not fear.
Certainty.
The kind of certainty that a blade brings to a battlefield before it's drawn.
They didn't know what would happen today.
Only that when the sun next touched the rim of the valley—
They would no longer be the same.
The wind rose, hissing through the stones.
Then—his voice came. Soft. Clear. Irrefutable.
"Speed means nothing without presence."
He didn't move.
"And presence means nothing… if it can be erased."
Then—he turned.
Slowly.
His eyes—those impossible golden slits—swept across the ranks. They burned not with rage, not with command, but with purpose.
A fire that did not need to roar to consume.
"Today," he said, voice dropping like a blade,"you will vanish."
And without flourish…
Without flash…
Without even disturbing the mist—
Alter disappeared.
The wind caught where he had been.
But no trace remained.
They hadn't seen it before.
Not truly.
Not when it was just cliffs and mist and scattered ruins west of the encampment. Not when the wind howled empty across the crags and the canyon floor sloped with age-old erosion. It had once been a natural scar across Drakareth's skin—quiet, forgotten.
But now… now they saw it.
The gorge had become something else entirely.
A crucible. A labyrinth. A forge of ghosts.
The canyon had been transformed—remade with brutal precision and sovereign madness into a trial by erasure. It was no longer terrain. It was philosophy turned architecture.
And its name, whispered like a curse and a prayer:
The Ghost Gauntlet.
At the upper rim, the recruits stared down into it, their breath caught between awe and dread.
Floating across the chasm were the Phasewalk Pillars—tall, crystalline structures that blinked in and out of physical reality with no pattern, no mercy. One would shimmer blue for three seconds—then vanish mid-leap, leaving nothing but air and regret. Another would appear just long enough to tempt a footstep—then dissolve with a flash of refracted light, dragging whoever trusted it into a foam-padded drop that bruised more than bodies.
Some pillars didn't flicker at all.
They only pretended to.
The only warning was the sound—a low hum, like breath held between dimensions.
Below them, nestled in fractured trenches carved through the canyon's base, were the Echo Corridors—narrow warpaths lined with glyphs of sensory manipulation. Time and sound divorced from reality here.
In one corridor, your own footsteps echoed five seconds too early.
In another, the clash of steel rang out after the strike had landed.
A scream might drift down the trench before the body hit the ground.
Or never come at all.
It wasn't confusion—it was unreality. To move here was to question your every instinct, your every breath.
At key intersections of the maze lay the Shadowlight Wells—wide circular zones of impossible perception.
Inside, visibility flashed between extremes.
2.5 seconds of perfect darkness.2.5 seconds of blinding exposure.Over and over again.
No warning. No cues.
Just the strobe of contradiction—where the mind was forced to adapt between blindness and vulnerability, between vanishing and being seen too clearly.
Those who hesitated in the dark were blinded by the light.
Those who moved in the light revealed their deaths.
Only the fluid could pass.
Only the unseen.
The path itself offered no solace.
Rune Platforms—small, floating hexagonal tiles—connected major points in the Gauntlet. They spun gently in midair, drifting with the wind's unpredictable breath. And every tile had a hidden law:
Four seconds.
Touch. Count. Jump.
Because on the fourth second, collapse.
Miss the rhythm, and the platform would dissolve—dropping the careless into repulsor traps below, sigils that flared with radiant blue force and hurled failures skyward in full view of every watching eye.
Not fatal.
But deeply, spectacularly humiliating.
And at the center of the Gauntlet—waiting like silent sentinels—stood dozens of enchanted combat dummies, randomized in placement, height, weapon shape, and rune signature. Each bore embedded sensor glyphs designed to track not only successful strikes, but approach vectors, angle precision, execution speed, timing, and retreat paths.
Every hit was recorded.
Every mistake catalogued.
There would be no pretending here.
This wasn't an agility course.
This wasn't an obstacle run.
This was a battlefield simulator engineered to punish presence, to erase hesitation, to refine motion until it left no trace.
Because in war—
Only those who could become ghosts could survive it.
They entered in squads of five.
No horns. No commands.
Just the silent nod from the instructors… and the yawning chaos of the Ghost Gauntlet ahead.
Mist curled low around the stone edges as the recruits stepped forward one by one, swallowed by strobe-light zones, shifting echoes, and the gravity-defying geometry of a battlefield designed to erase hesitation.
The storm waited.
And they went into it.
Talia Fenreith launched first—unsurprisingly.
Wind-sigils flared beneath her boots, and her crimson cloak caught the air like a banner possessed. With a gleeful grin and zero hesitation, she dove onto a vanishing pillar, cartwheeled through a Shadowlight Well, and used a stationary dummy's helmet as a mid-air pivot point to launch herself further into the maze.
Her laughter echoed off the walls like wild music.
"This place is a nightmare!" she shouted, spinning over a collapsing rune platform."I love it!"
She vanished around a corner in a blaze of wind.
No one was surprised.
Korric the Ironwind followed—less wind, more iron.
Thick-shouldered, stone-marked, built like a moving fortress. He stomped through the Phasewalk Corridor with a scowl and raw momentum, barely glancing at the flickering pillars as he leapt from one to the next—
Until the second platform shimmered early.
Too early.
The stone vanished under his foot with a faint chime, and he dropped—straight into a hidden gust trap below that flared with light and catapulted him sideways into a mud bank along the trench wall.
There was a splash.
Then a cough.
Then—spitting a mouthful of moss—he wiped his face with one muddy forearm and muttered:
"…I meant to do that."
Further ahead, the wind didn't move.
It simply yielded.
Selin Varrow passed like a breeze too quiet for the world to notice. Her twin blades were unsheathed, though they made no sound. She moved through the Echo Trenches like someone walking between thoughts—just before a scream, just after a footstep.
Her presence folded against the noise, her pace synced with the stuttering light of the Shadowwell that followed. She flickered briefly into visibility—just long enough for a dummy's sensor core to glow red.
It hadn't seen her.
It had only known it was already dead.
By the time the zone reset, she was gone.
She'd never said a word.
She never needed to.
Rhed Velgroth? He charged in.
A hammer of a man with the subtlety of a crashing wyvern.
He stomped into the corridor full of purpose and fury—
—and promptly tripped on an illusion tile that had shifted five inches forward mid-glitch. His foot caught air, his body pitched, and he tumbled face-first into a half-flickering Phasewalk post that wasn't even fully there.
"You cheating piece of—!"
That was as far as the sentence got.
A crosswind burst flared beneath him, lifted him clear off his feet—
—and blew him clean out of frame.
The watching instructors didn't say a word.
One of them snorted.
And the storm rolled on.
After the sixth wave had fallen breathless into the edge of collapse—after bruises had bloomed across shoulders and silence had begun to fester with doubt—he moved.
No signal.
No shift in aura.
No warning.
Alter simply stepped forward.
And then—he wasn't there.
There was no blur.
No thunderclap.
Just… absence.
What followed could not be called speed.
It was erasure.
The very air seemed to fold where he had walked, rippling like paper being torn and rewritten mid-sentence. One moment, the Prime Sovereign stood at the edge of the cliff—armor catching the faintest gleam of sun—
The next, he was already deep within the Ghost Gauntlet.
He passed between Phasewalk Pillars, slipping through dimensions just before they materialized fully, vanishing seconds before the light touched him. Sound bent around him in the Echo Trenches, his silhouette breaking apart and recombining in rhythms too alien for the ear to trace.
He did not dodge.
He predicted.
He commanded space to open where it should not have.
At one point, he slid beneath a rune platform, only to reappear rising vertically up another, his boots gripping sheer air as if friction obeyed him. Without breaking motion, he somersaulted backward into a reverse Shadowlight Well, disappearing into the strobe of alternating dark and blaze.
A wave of gasps erupted from the watching recruits.
But then they saw it—
He'd already looped through the core.
And was now three zones ahead, perched midair on a narrow, spiraling monolith jutting from the valley's center like a broken tooth.
He landed in total silence.No sound. No aftershock.
The monolith tilted, but held—trembling under his presence as though it understood who now stood atop it.
From that height, Alter lifted Starsever into the air. The divine blade shimmered like liquid starlight, absorbing the wind and reflecting the storm.
His voice followed—not shouted, but heard.
Everywhere.
"This… is Ghost Step."
"It is not stealth," he said, turning the blade gently in his grasp."It is not misdirection."
"It is the complete mastery of motion—"
He lowered the blade.
"—and the denial of form."
And then, he sliced downward.
One clean motion.
A wave of compressed wind erupted from the monolith, spiraling outward with enough force to silence birds mid-flight. The flames of every training torch across the ridge snuffed out in an instant.
A valley that had raged with sound and motion now stood still.
A breath held.
A heartbeat skipped.
And in the space between—
Only wind remained.
Within the veiled sanctum at the crown of Veyr'Zhalar, the royal family stood in unnerving stillness.
The scrying chamber was quiet—lit only by the pulsing glow of the suspended arcane mirror, its liquid surface shimmering with the fractured images of the Ghost Gauntlet far to the south. It displayed no narration, no sound—only raw, uninterrupted vision. Flickering silhouettes danced across impossible terrain. Shapes vanished, reappeared. The valley howled, but here, all was silence.
King Vael'Zarion stood with his arms crossed, expression carved from tempered iron. His silver-draconic eyes narrowed not in confusion, but in contemplation. He watched not as a sovereign weighing spectacle, but as a monarch gauging the future. Not a single word escaped him.
His silence said everything.
Beside the mirror, Queen Elanra remained perfectly still, fingertips resting near her lips, her posture like that of a high priestess before an omen. The scrying currents brushed against her senses like whispers from the deep ley—she could feel it, the shape of what was unfolding.
Not drills.
Not warfare.
Something deeper.
Her voice, when it finally came, was hushed—half breath, half revelation.
"This isn't military doctrine.It's ascension ritual."
Across from her, Prince Kaelen leaned slightly forward, the glint of logic sharp in his eyes. Always the tactician, the strategist, the one who found answers in geometry and measured steps. And yet now… he watched something he could not quantify.
Still, he spoke.
"He's molding soldiers into sovereign weapons."
There was no admiration in his voice.
Only calculation.
And understanding.
From the shadows near the chamber's outer ring, Prince Ryvar—arms draped casually, a smirk flickering at the corner of his lips—exhaled with quiet amusement. He had always carried skepticism like armor, always questioned more than he bowed. But even he couldn't deny what the mirror showed.
He chuckled, dryly.
"Or assassins."
A statement. Not a jest.
But the room's weight shifted with the final voice.
Princess Alyxthia, youngest and most ethereal of them all, stood without movement, her golden hair catching the reflection of flickering runes. Her eyes—lit with a soft, unearthly glow—never blinked. Her dragon-sight was active, seeing beyond the projection, beyond the visible form.
She didn't raise her voice. She didn't blink.
She only whispered—like one hearing a prophecy unfold in real time.
"They'll walk paths no army can follow."
And as the flickering image revealed Alter cutting through space itself—vanishing mid-motion, reappearing like a living ripple of unreality—no one spoke again.
Because they knew:
What they were witnessing…
Was no longer the shaping of soldiers.
It was the birth of phantoms.
Smoke hadn't even faded from the skies above the Flamebound shrine when its echoes stirred waves across Drakareth.
In the Council Hall at Veyr'Zhalar, the chamber lights flickered—lantern flames briefly bowing toward the east. At first, the councilors didn't notice. But the ambient heat shifted. The old marble beneath their seats pulsed faintly, as if warming with memory. Elder Veydras, the most senior of the council mages, paused mid-sentence. His gnarled hands trembled.
"The second pulse…" he muttered.
From his side, Councilor Lirenn, master of court administration, looked up. "What did you say?"
But he wasn't listening anymore. Veydras had gone pale, sweat beading on his temple. He turned toward the large draconic mural behind them—the one that had been lifeless for over a century. Its veins—fine lines of gemstone inlaid through the stone—were glowing softly now. Crimson. Alive.
Councilor Maelin, who handled civil strategy, leaned in. "That's the second shrine, isn't it?"
Lirenn nodded grimly. "The Flamebound. It's been dormant since the last Age."
Council murmurs erupted like dry leaves catching fire. Some were excited. Others afraid.
And then—someone whispered what everyone was thinking.
"…It's not just the shrines."
They all fell silent.
Because outside the sealed hall, even the capital city itself felt it. Throughout the volcano-rimmed sprawl of Veyr'Zhalar, torches flared too brightly. Blacksmith forges erupted in spontaneous flame. Children born with dragon heritage felt heat on their palms. And in the royal vault, a dormant scale from a Firelord Wyrm cracked—just a hairline fracture, but enough to make the warding priests sound the alarm.
The land was awakening.
And all eyes were turning toward the man called Kael'Zhyrion… and the Dragoons he had begun to forge.
Meanwhile, deeper in the capital, in a rose-gold chamber lined with cushions, tapestries, and at least three shattered tea cups, the royal family's mood was far less composed.
King Vael'Zarion sat in the center of the room at a low table, his expression blank as his wife, Queen Elanra, stood with arms crossed and divine pressure pooling faintly around her form. She was a vision of grace, but right now—she looked like a goddess scorned.
"You're sure he's not yours?" she asked again, for what must've been the sixth time.
The king exhaled. "For the last time, Elanra. I don't even know who Soryn is. He just appeared with the captain and Kael'Zhyrion."
Princess Alyxthia, seated nearby, scribbled furiously in her journal. "His hair's the same color as yours," she noted helpfully, not looking up.
"You're not helping," the king muttered.
Prince Ryvar leaned against a pillar with arms crossed. "I'm just saying, if he is your bastard child, that would explain the royal aura. The resemblance. The way he trains like a war god. Also, kind of hotheaded."
"Excuse me?" the king barked.
"I said he's hotheaded."
"That's not what I heard."
Alyxthia looked up suddenly. "He used the sword style of a sovereign. I saw it in my dream. And the dragons in the dream bowed."
Queen Elanra turned sharply. "You dreamed of him?"
"Of a figure with his presence. It might've been symbolic."
The king groaned and rubbed his temples. "Symbolic dreams, flaming shrines, possible royal bastards—can I not have one dinner without it turning into an opera?"
Just then, a steward knocked lightly on the door, cleared his throat, and stepped inside.
"Apologies, Your Majesty. Word from the council—another shrine has awakened. The second outer shrine. The Flamebound."
A moment of silence.
Then the Queen muttered darkly, "He's definitely your son."
Vael'Zarion's eye twitched. "Elanra—"
"I'm just saying! The timing! The name! He even has the family cheekbones!"
Elsewhere in the city, the public's imagination was catching fire in its own way.
In the taverns:
"I heard he trained by fighting actual dragons blindfolded!"
"No, no—he is a dragon, just in human form."
"I saw his sword. It split the training yard. With one swing!"
At the baker's square:
"I baked extra today. What if he walks by again?"
"You think the Sovereign eats regular rolls?"
"Well, he should try my Sovereign Rye."
In the military garrisons:
"The Dragoons aren't normal soldiers anymore. They train like they're preparing to fight gods."
"Wouldn't surprise me. Have you seen that guy called Soryn? Moves like fire wrapped in steel."
Among the youth and noble aspirants:
"I want to join the Dragoons."
"Don't be stupid! You can't even climb the terrace wall without wheezing."
"Shut up, once I learn to punch through a dummy, I'm going to apply."
Rumors spread like wildfire. Respect bled into awe. And awe into something deeper.
Hope.
At the Dragoon field, Soryn stood at the center, watching over synchronized drills.
He didn't speak much. But his eyes missed nothing. His form, his presence, his style—so close to Alter's that even the veterans began to whisper.
And on a nearby cliff—far above—hidden from view, a lone shrine dragon stirred from its perch, curling its tail beneath it.
The wind smelled of fire.
The Sovereign was moving again.
The fire parted like breath, and Alter stepped into a vast, domed chamber filled with an ambient roar—not of sound, but pressure. It was as if the flames themselves were speaking, whispering, exhaling.
The walls of the chamber were carved with ancient glyphs that spiraled like dragon tails, each one resonating with warmth rather than light. Ember motes floated freely in the air, rising and falling like glowing feathers. The floor was a mosaic of draconic crests—faded, fractured, but still pulsing with slumbering power. At the center of it all stood a towering brazier, cold and unlit, but surrounded by scorched claw marks gouged into the blackstone floor. It had not been touched in centuries.
The moment Alter entered, the entire chamber responded.
A heartbeat.
A second heartbeat.
Then—a third.
Flames erupted across the floor in a circular motion, racing outward like fire lines tracing the old sigils. The brazier burst to life, a geyser of golden fire spiraling upward toward the ceiling. Within it—something began to take shape.
A voice formed first. It reverberated through the walls like molten bells:
<"We are the Flamebound, last remnants of the Ember Pact. You walk with our kin's fire in your soul… and yet… you carry more than flame.">
A figure emerged from the heart of the fire. Towering. Wreathed in gold and scarlet flames. A dragon spirit, yet not one bound to flesh. This was an ancient ember—what remained of a once-great Wyrm who gave his heart to keep the flame alive.
It spoke again.
<"Will you reignite the pact? Will you bear our wrath and warmth both, and bind your sovereign flame to the last rites of the Pyrekind?">
Alter did not hesitate.
"I already do."
With that, he stepped into the flame.
The chamber exploded in light.
But the fire did not burn him. Instead, it flowed into him—like threads of memory and fury, of warmth and destruction. He felt the roars of a thousand dragons who once burned across the skies of Drakareth. He saw their triumphs, their deaths, their sacred rituals of rebirth.
And then he saw the truth.
The Flamebound Pact had been more than a legacy—it was a vow. A covenant made to protect the Worldspire, the source of elemental equilibrium, should it ever falter. And now, as the realms trembled and the skies cracked with demonic pulses, the flames stirred once more.
Alter's body lifted from the ground, the runes on his armor igniting. Starsever burned in its sheath without being drawn. His eyes turned molten gold, and the mark on his forehead blazed like a sun.
Flame spirits danced around him, laughing, weeping, screaming.
Then a new voice joined them—not a dragon's, but one ancient and feminine, layered with both motherly grace and searing command.
<"You are the bearer of all aspects now… but we, the Flamebound, give you our Pact anew. Let your flame reignite the sky, Sovereign.">
The fire condensed suddenly, surging into his core. And then—it vanished.
The chamber dimmed.
Alter stood alone. The brazier cold once more. But around him, the walls now glowed faintly with renewed warmth—like the breath of life returning after a long slumber.
He exhaled.
The pact was sealed.
Flames curled from his fingertips as he stepped back through the chamber, ascending toward the surface with quiet reverence.
At the shrine's mouth, Ignivar waited, sensing the change. He lifted his head, eyes narrowing.
"You've returned."
Alter nodded, stepping into the open.
Ignivar sniffed the air and rumbled, "The Pact is burning in you. The Flamebound remember."
Alter smirked. "They do. And they're ready."
He climbed onto Ignivar's back, his gaze cast westward. "One shrine remains. But first… we return."
With a beat of molten wings, Ignivar lifted off the caldera, soaring high into the clouds that now shimmered with the echo of reawakened fire.
In the Council Hall at Veyr'Zhalar, the chamber lights flickered—lantern flames briefly bowing toward the east. At first, the councilors didn't notice. But the ambient heat shifted. The old marble beneath their seats pulsed faintly, as if warming with memory. Elder Veydras, the most senior of the council mages, paused mid-sentence. His gnarled hands trembled.
"The second pulse…" he muttered.
From his side, Councilor Lirenn, master of court administration, looked up. "What did you say?"
But he wasn't listening anymore. Veydras had gone pale, sweat beading on his temple. He turned toward the large draconic mural behind them—the one that had been lifeless for over a century. Its veins—fine lines of gemstone inlaid through the stone—were glowing softly now. Crimson. Alive.
Councilor Maelin, who handled civil strategy, leaned in. "That's the second shrine, isn't it?"
Lirenn nodded grimly. "The Flamebound. It's been dormant since the last Age."
Council murmurs erupted like dry leaves catching fire. Some were excited. Others afraid.
And then—someone whispered what everyone was thinking.
"…It's not just the shrines."
They all fell silent.
Because outside the sealed hall, even the capital city itself felt it. Throughout the volcano-rimmed sprawl of Veyr'Zhalar, torches flared too brightly. Blacksmith forges erupted in spontaneous flame. Children born with dragon heritage felt heat on their palms. And in the royal vault, a dormant scale from a Firelord Wyrm cracked—just a hairline fracture, but enough to make the warding priests sound the alarm.
The land was awakening.
And all eyes were turning toward the man called Kael'Zhyrion… and the Dragoons he had begun to forge.
Meanwhile, deeper in the capital, in a rose-gold chamber lined with cushions, tapestries, and at least three shattered tea cups, the royal family's mood was far less composed.
King Vael'Zarion sat in the center of the room at a low table, his expression blank as his wife, Queen Elanra, stood with arms crossed and divine pressure pooling faintly around her form. She was a vision of grace, but right now—she looked like a goddess scorned.
"You're sure he's not yours?" she asked again, for what must've been the sixth time.
The king exhaled. "For the last time, Elanra. I don't even know who Soryn is. He just appeared with the captain and Kael'Zhyrion."
Princess Alyxthia, seated nearby, scribbled furiously in her journal. "His hair's the same color as yours," she noted helpfully, not looking up.
"You're not helping," the king muttered.
Prince Ryvar leaned against a pillar with arms crossed. "I'm just saying, if he is your bastard child, that would explain the royal aura. The resemblance. The way he trains like a war god. Also, kind of hotheaded."
"Excuse me?" the king barked.
"I said he's hotheaded."
"That's not what I heard."
Alyxthia looked up suddenly. "He used the sword style of a sovereign. I saw it in my dream. And the dragons in the dream bowed."
Queen Elanra turned sharply. "You dreamed of him?"
"Of a figure with his presence. It might've been symbolic."
The king groaned and rubbed his temples. "Symbolic dreams, flaming shrines, possible royal bastards—can I not have one dinner without it turning into an opera?"
Just then, a steward knocked lightly on the door, cleared his throat, and stepped inside.
"Apologies, Your Majesty. Word from the council—another shrine has awakened. The second outer shrine. The Flamebound."
A moment of silence.
Then the Queen muttered darkly, "He's definitely your son."
Vael'Zarion's eye twitched. "Elanra—"
"I'm just saying! The timing! The name! He even has the family cheekbones!"
Elsewhere in the city, the public's imagination was catching fire in its own way.
In the taverns:
"I heard he trained by fighting actual dragons blindfolded!"
"No, no—he is a dragon, just in human form."
"I saw his sword. It split the training yard. With one swing!"
At the baker's square:
"I baked extra today. What if he walks by again?"
"You think the Sovereign eats regular rolls?"
"Well, he should try my Sovereign Rye."
In the military garrisons:
"The Dragoons aren't normal soldiers anymore. They train like they're preparing to fight gods."
"Wouldn't surprise me. Have you seen that guy called Soryn? Moves like fire wrapped in steel."
Among the youth and noble aspirants:
"I want to join the Dragoons."
"Don't be stupid! You can't even climb the terrace wall without wheezing."
"Shut up, once I learn to punch through a dummy, I'm going to apply."
Rumors spread like wildfire. Respect bled into awe. And awe into something deeper.
Hope.
At the Dragoon field, Soryn stood at the center, watching over synchronized drills.
He didn't speak much. But his eyes missed nothing. His form, his presence, his style—so close to Alter's that even the veterans began to whisper.
And on a nearby cliff—far above—hidden from view, a lone shrine dragon stirred from its perch, curling its tail beneath it.
The wind smelled of fire.
The Sovereign was moving again.
The morning sun spilled over the volcanic cliffs of Veyr'Zhalar, draping molten light across the Dragoon training field like a forge's breath. The air shimmered with heat, not from fire—but from exertion, determination, and the silent pressure of the one who stood at its center.
Soryn Vael'Zarion.
Draped in reinforced martial robes lined with subtle draconic sigils, Soryn stood still as stone, arms crossed as his gaze swept over the field. His hair, bound in a high ponytail, flicked slightly in the wind, and his eyes—sharp, intelligent, and unreadable—watched every movement with surgical precision. He hadn't spoken a single word of praise in two days. And yet… the Dragoons were improving.
Massively.
Across the training field, the recruits moved in rotating quadrants. Each quadrant was drilling the three forms of Sky Piercer, perfected under Alter's teachings and now mercilessly refined under Soryn's gaze.
One group trained Sky Piercer: Celestial Thrust—thrusting through moving dummies on platforms set at increasing speeds. They aimed not just to pierce, but to do so with deadly precision in rapid succession. If they missed even once, they had to restart the sequence.
Another quadrant drilled Heavenfall Rend, launching themselves up ramps and through air rings while unleashing upward spirals of wind-laced lightning thrusts. Soryn had them wear weighted greaves. More than one Dragoon landed face-first in the grass, groaning.
The third and most brutal quadrant? Practicing Zero Distance—in enclosed mock chambers where their only option was to strike from within. They had to reach their target, deliver a close-quarters burst thrust, and evacuate before the internal explosion spell triggered. Three recruits got singed. All three got back up. No complaints.
Soryn paced slowly through them all, his hands clasped behind his back.
"Again," he said, to one struggling group. His voice was calm, quiet—yet sharper than a blade.
"But we—"
"Again."
They obeyed.
Soryn was not cruel. He was precise. And that precision seeped into the Dragoon ranks like tempered steel into molten ore.
Those who had been hesitant with swordwork now moved with fluid intent. Those who fumbled their internal force channels now snapped through sequences with growing clarity. The elemental runic markers, once scattered like reckless flares, were now placed mid-combat with deliberate ferocity—on strikes, on feints, even during dives and rolls.
He halted beside one Dragoon—a broad-shouldered recruit named Vellmar. The man had power, but lacked control. His Zero Distance training had resulted in a crater six meters wide… and missed the target by one.
Soryn knelt beside him.
"Too much force, not enough focus," he said quietly. "You're swinging your soul like a hammer when this requires a needle. Reset your breath. Read the line. Try again."
Vellmar nodded with reverence and trembling fingers.
Nearby, Talia Fenreith and Selin Varrow were tag-teaming a Sky Piercer relay, calling out footwork patterns mid-dash. Rhed Velgroth roared across the air rings, leaving a trail of crackling air pressure with every leaping thrust. Elira Mistshade, calm as winter mist, began stacking dual markers before her Heavenfall Rend.
The tempo was rising.
And all across the field, murmurs passed between squads.
"He watches everything."
"How is he so quiet but terrifying?"
"He doesn't even have to yell."
"Is he really not Alter in disguise?"
"Who cares? He trains like the Sovereign himself."
Above them, perched like a sentinel on the upper terrace, a small draconic spirit—one of the shrine-bound observer whelps—tilted its head as it watched. Its eyes glowed faintly with resonance. The Sovereign's will echoed here. Even if the form had changed.
Soryn halted again. His gaze turned skyward for a moment, where a wisp of wind stirred the clouds, curling eastward—toward the next shrine Alter now approached.
He exhaled softly. Then turned back to the field.
"Pair drills. Mark placements mid-strike. Sword stance transitions on the third beat."
He clapped his hands once.
The entire field reacted like it was struck by lightning.
Blades flashed. Wind howled. The training resumed, more furious and refined than ever.
And Soryn watched—not with pride, but with purpose.
They were no longer just elite recruits.
They were becoming Sovereign-forged warriors.
The first Dragoons of the new era.
The sky was bruised with morning stormlight—clouds shifting like dark-bellied beasts over the training grounds carved just outside Veyr'Zhalar's cliffs. Thunder grumbled faintly in the distance, as if even the heavens were watching in anticipation.
The Dragoons stood in formation, armored, breath steady, weapons in hand. Their faces were lined with sweat, tension, and fierce anticipation. Today was no normal drill.
It was their first Gauntlet Trial.
Soryn stood atop a raised obsidian platform to the side of the field, flanked by two silent officiators from the Council. His arms were crossed, eyes calm and unreadable. Behind him, the obstacle course stretched like a living battlefield—one designed to break, challenge, and expose every weakness.
And every strength.
Before them loomed a shifting terrain: high-speed rune gates, aerial platforms wrapped in wind glyphs, dummy constructs laced with elemental traps, moving target zones, mirrored walls for disorientation, and at the very end—a sealed war golem cloaked in corrupted dragon energy.
It was a course designed not for failure, but for revelation.
Soryn raised one hand. "You have three minutes."
Murmurs rippled through the ranks.
"Begin."
The first five launched into motion.
Talia Fenreith dashed ahead like a crimson streak, her wind-marker-fused steps allowing her to phase-flip over the first spire. She marked a dummy mid-air, using Heavenfall Rend to shatter it with a vertical spiral. She landed in a crouch, flipped into a spin, and laid a fire rune onto the terrain mid-roll—perfect execution.
Behind her, Selin Varrow glided low, blade held reversed. She vanished between two platforms, used Ghost Step to fake her location, and reappeared behind a construct. Her Zero Distance Sky Piercer was so clean it left a silent bloom of wind where the dummy had been. No explosion. Just erasure.
They were followed by four more.
Then five more.
And then it began—the cascade of chaos.
Rhed Velgroth tore through his start like a berserker on fire—powerful, fearless, but far too aggressive. He slammed into a rune wall he failed to see. Groaning, he rolled up and kept moving—but misjudged the wind pillar. He crashed into a side ramp. Laughing, he spat dirt and shouted, "I'm alive!"
Not everyone laughed.
Others stumbled at the mirrored maze—striking phantoms instead of targets. Some got caught between poorly-timed mark placements. One Dragoon overloaded a fire marker and had to dive to avoid blowing up a quarter of the course.
It was glorious chaos. Failure sang across the field like steel on stone.
But no one was broken.
And when the last squad went, the entire formation fell silent.
Because what followed was power.
Three recruits—Jaris Tenvahl, Elira Mistshade, and Vellmar, the once-unfocused juggernaut—moved like sharpened storms.
Jaris marked during a single sprinting motion—three markers in three different elements before discharging them into a directional detonation that cleared half a path ahead.
Elira vanished into the mirrored zone—and didn't reappear until the final chamber, dragging the shadows behind her, eyes glowing faintly. She dropped into a flickering double marker stance and executed Sky Piercer: Celestial Thrust into the war golem with such precision it froze mid-step.
Then came Vellmar.
His Zero Distance technique detonated not just through the final golem—but left a compressed crater in its place. The shockwave knocked some watching recruits backward.
When the smoke cleared, he stood there, one knee down, panting. But smiling.
The field was silent.
Then cheers erupted.
Some clapped. Some roared. Some dropped to the ground in laughter and exhaustion. A few hugged. Others simply stared into the sky, as if unsure whether they had survived or dreamed the whole thing.
Soryn stepped down from the platform.
He walked the field without speaking. He checked on the injured, nodded once at the triumphant, and offered no criticism—only a rare sentence that passed his lips with clarity:
"You have tasted the first edge of the sovereign path."
He let it hang there.
Then: "Rest. Tomorrow, we begin again."
The Dragoons collapsed where they stood, grinning, bleeding, changed.
And across the cliffs of Veyr'Zhalar, the pulse of their rise echoed into the land.
As the sun sank behind the cliffs, the final squads completed their runs. Dozens of Dragoon recruits collapsed onto the grass, bruised, breathless, but alive.
Their tunics were soaked. Their faces pale. But their eyes—flickered with something new.
Conviction. Control. And a terrifying spark of joy.
They didn't just survive today.
They'd seen the world slow down.
Tomorrow, they would learn how to make the world stop.
Wind cut through the stone gorge as dawn crept across the Dragoon encampment, painting the cliffs with threads of gold. The recruits stirred in silence, their bodies weary but tempered from ten brutal days of training. Today would mark the eleventh.
Alter stood at the mouth of the gorge known now as the Valley of Wind—his back to the rising sun, arms folded across his armored chest. The land here had been reshaped by his will into a trial ground: floating stone pillars etched with phasewalk runes, narrow trenches that absorbed sound, black wells that reflected only shadowlight, and flickering rune platforms that blinked in and out of phase. It was chaos sculpted for a single purpose—motion.
He didn't give them time to form up.
"This field," he said aloud, voice carried by the wind, "does not reward strength. It does not favor courage. Today… it will erase you if you hesitate."
The recruits flinched. Most had bruises on their ribs, gashes still glowing with slow-healing salves. Their eyes scanned the deathtrap laid before them.
Alter stepped forward and vanished.
Not a sound. Not a shimmer. No flare of aura. One blink—he was gone.
Gasps broke across the line. Then, one by one, they began to hear the sound of pillars cracking in the distance, of wind slicing across stone and the faintest flicker of displaced light. A blur appeared momentarily atop one of the runic towers, only to vanish again in less than a breath. A moment later, Alter reappeared in a crouch at the far end of the field, atop the highest spire—untouched, unseen, unchained by gravity.
"This is Ghost Step," he called out. "Not stealth. Not misdirection. It is the denial of form."
He raised his hand. Five recruits stepped forward—Talia Fenreith, Selin Varrow, Rhed Velgroth, Lysara Vein, and Garien of the Eastmarch.
"Go."
They didn't hesitate. Talia burst forward, leaping from the first phasewalk pillar with wild momentum, her braided hair trailing fire. Selin moved like a phantom beside her—controlled, silent, eyes locked ahead. Rhed, ever brash, hurled himself forward with a war cry, hitting the second platform hard—only for it to flicker out beneath him and send him crashing into the trench below. The others advanced—some with elegance, others with raw instinct—but the trial devoured all error.
From his perch, Alter observed. He said nothing when Talia narrowly avoided a collapsing rune trap. He didn't flinch when Garien misjudged a phasewalk gate and clipped his shoulder on an echo wall. He only watched.
Then came the second wave. Five more recruits. Then five more.
By midmorning, bruises were blossoming like storm clouds across their limbs. Some limped. Others bled. A few were pulled back by medics. And yet… not a single recruit asked to stop.
They weren't just running a course—they were chasing the movement of a sovereign who had defied gravity itself.
By dusk, the field was silent again. Dozens of recruits lay flat on the grass beyond the gauntlet, breath coming in ragged pulls, sweat soaking their torn tunics. Bandages were being applied. Joints were being iced. Rhed sat upright finally and spat dirt, muttering, "That was miserable... I loved it."
Talia laughed beside him. "I thought I broke my ankle twice."
Selin remained quiet, staring back at the valley with a calculating look. "We're not ready yet," she said. "But we will be."
Up on the cliffside, Alter stood again with arms folded, looking down at his battered trainees—not with softness, but with a nod of approval.
From afar, scrying orbs projected the scene to hidden chambers in Veyr'Zhalar. The king observed in silence, one hand resting against his chin. Queen Elanra murmured that the training site pulsed with energy that echoed an ascension rite. Prince Kaelen said nothing, but his gaze sharpened. Ryvar, grinning, muttered something about joining them next time.
And in the scrying mirror's pale glow, Princess Alyxthia smiled faintly—her hands pressed together in prayer, as though she could feel the dragons stirring beneath the earth.
In the field, the wind carried Alter's final words of the day, spoken without volume but heard by all:
"Tomorrow… you disappear."
Day Twelve began beneath a silver-drenched sky, with the clouds hanging low like heavy curtains above the Dragoon training grounds. A faint breeze rolled over the field, carrying the scent of dew-soaked grass and the weight of anticipation. The recruits had assembled at first light, still bearing the bruises and soreness from the previous day's grueling mobility gauntlet, but their eyes carried something else now—resolve. Something was changing within them, and they could feel it in the rhythm of their breath and the way their boots hit the earth. Discipline was taking root. Instinct was sharpening. And today… today, that instinct would be tested again.
Alter stood alone at the far edge of the field, his draconic armor humming softly with latent energy. He had arrived silently at dawn, well before the recruits, and had prepared the day's training course by hand—an act that involved reshaping terrain, channeling ambient elemental energy, and seeding the field with traps that mimicked real-world encounters. He had carved the arena himself into a jagged half-circle ringed with floating rock platforms, shallow ravines, spike-floored pits, and shifting rune seals that triggered randomly when stepped upon.
The objective was simple in theory: survive.
Dragoons were to pass through this course in timed waves, using their developing mastery over Ghost Step, movement control, and internal pressure manipulation to avoid being struck, trapped, or expelled from the training zone. There were no reset switches. Only endurance, decision-making, and pain.
Alter turned slowly as the final squad approached. The recruits quieted. His voice cut through the morning haze like tempered steel.
"Day Twelve. We no longer train to fight. You train to live."
He stepped forward, dragging a clawed fingertip across the air. A line of golden sparks followed the gesture, forming a glowing runic sigil that hovered above the center of the field. "This is Silent Storm Mode. No shouting. No talking. No cries of frustration. You must move as though your life depends on it—because one day, it will."
With a wave of his hand, the signal ignited. The first five recruits were called forth: Talia Fenreith, Selin Varrow, Rhed Velgroth, Kainen Aris, and Vynn Trell. Each one stepped forward, breathing deeply, their weapons drawn and gauntlets tightened.
Then—without countdown or warning—the course shifted.
Platforms lurched, trenches spat upward bursts of compressed air, rune seals ignited with lightning arcs. The five recruits dashed forward.
Talia leapt first, her flame-lined boots leaving behind sparks as she vaulted over a pit. Selin followed in a blur of silver and shadow, her blade spinning once mid-air to redirect a falling slab. Rhed took the aggressive route, launching forward and shoulder-breaking a descending obstacle while absorbing its blow with internal force—a rookie mistake, but gutsy. Kainen ducked under a midair platform, twisting into a roll before erupting upward with a focused burst of wind-enhanced movement. Vynn faltered slightly, hesitating at the first trap seal, but adjusted quickly, bounding sideways with a delayed Ghost Step burst.
Alter watched in silence, arms crossed, as the recruits passed each section of the field. Hidden blades emerged from walls. Geysers of pressurized steam hissed upward. One wrong step would send them backward in a painful sprawl—but not today. Not for these five. They had begun to anticipate the course's rhythm, syncing their motion with its chaos.
After seven minutes, they crossed the final line. Winded. Bruised. But upright.
Talia dropped to one knee, gasping with a grin. "That… was new."
Rhed spat to the side. "That pit smelled like something died in it."
Selin merely smiled. "I like this one."
The next wave was already preparing.
As the sun climbed higher, more recruits entered and exited the gauntlet. Failures were met with instruction, not scorn. Those who succeeded were told to run it again—this time blindfolded. Every hour, the course shifted slightly, the layout never remaining the same.
Alter never raised his voice. Never intervened. But he watched everything.
By midday, a group of recruits had collapsed on the grass just beyond the gauntlet's exit. Steam rose from their shoulders, and their expressions hovered between exhaustion and awe.
"I swear," muttered Derren Fael, wiping blood from his lip. "I saw him watching from the trees. He never blinked. Not once."
"Are you sure he's human?" Lytha Vren asked, holding her knees and shaking her head.
"Probably not," Khalen droned. "But he's training us to fight like we aren't either."
From the cliffs overlooking the field, Draven Stryvalis stood silently with arms behind his back, having arrived mid-morning to observe. He hadn't announced himself—Alter's orders—but his eyes never strayed from the recruits.
Behind him, a courier knight turned and whispered, "Captain, they're pushing past Royal Vanguard standards in just two weeks."
Draven didn't respond immediately.
Then: "No. They're pushing past my standards."
By dusk, the final round had been completed. The field bore scorch marks, cratered stone, and displaced platforms. Smoke lingered in some places, carried off by the drifting wind.
Alter finally stepped forward.
The remaining recruits formed up in a wide crescent. Dirt-streaked, armor dented, but upright.
"You will run it again tomorrow," Alter said simply. "This time, you'll be paired randomly in units of two. You'll learn to fight alone, but survive together."
He turned, stepping away from the group. Then paused.
"You're not recruits anymore," he said over his shoulder. "You're Dragoon-bound."
The silence that followed was thunderous.
And yet—one by one—each Dragoon pressed their fists over their hearts and bowed.
The fire of purpose burned in their eyes. Not for pride. Not for glory.
But for the battlefield that waited… and the sky that called them forward.
The sun had barely crested the stone ridges that cradled the Dragoon encampment when Alter stood before the assembled ranks. The recruits, already lined in formation, had learned to sense when something was about to shift. Today was no different. Yet the weight in the air was not battle-born—it was sovereign, decisive, and tinged with parting breath.
Alter stood at the center of the courtyard, draped in his celestial draconic armor. His presence, ever commanding, carried the gravity of a god's farewell and a general's trust.
His gaze swept across the hundred rows of soldiers before him. Then, with a quiet but resonant voice, he spoke.
"I will be gone for some time."
Murmurs stirred but no one dared speak aloud. He continued, his tone calm yet absolute.
"I leave behind someone in my place. He will oversee your training, command your formations, and test the limits of your resolve. Treat him not as a substitute—but as an extension of myself."
He turned his body slightly and extended his arm behind him.
A flicker of draconic light shimmered at his side, coalescing into the form of a man clad in martial robes that bore royal insignias woven with dragon motifs. Long brown hair tied into a high warrior's tail. Twin greaves at his shins, iron-etched gauntlets over his arms, and eyes that gleamed with quiet depth—calculated, ancient, yet undeniably human.
"I present to you—Soryn Vael'Zarion," Alter declared. "He will serve as your acting overseer in my absence."
Gasps rippled across the field. Many had never heard the name. Some recognized it as royal. But what struck them most… was how the man moved.
Soryn stepped forward with his hands folded behind his back. The way he walked—measured, effortless, and grounded—felt hauntingly familiar. When he stopped, he turned his head with a calm smile and surveyed the entire unit with dragon eyes that seemed to weigh each soul in place.
"I won't waste words," Soryn began. "You're all under the Prime's charge. That means I expect the same performance, if not better. There will be no slack in your drills, no leniency in your formations. The enemies you face in the future will not show mercy. Neither will I."
A few recruits flinched.
Then—to their surprise—Soryn drew his blade. Not a replica of Starsever, but a twin-forged variant known as Wyrmspike. The air cracked as the weapon gleamed.
Without a cue, he vanished.
And then reappeared directly behind the recruits, just like Alter would have.
Some instinctively turned, startled, only to hear a chuckle behind them again.
He had vanished a second time—appearing atop the far pylon overlooking the training field.
"How…?" someone whispered.
Selin Varrow narrowed her eyes. "That's Ghost Step. Or something… even faster."
Rhed Velgroth leaned toward Talia and muttered, "He moved like the Commander…"
Talia just blinked. "No… he moved like the Prime."
Soryn leapt from the pylon, landing with barely a sound. "Your drills continue. Form pairs and review all current variants of Sky Piercer. Squad leaders, enforce synchronicity. Combat instructors will rotate every thirty minutes."
He paused.
"And if anyone slacks off…" His smile vanished. "...I'll know."
The recruits snapped into motion, visibly shaken and energized by the performance.
Alter stepped beside Soryn one last time.
"I leave them in your hands."
Soryn didn't glance back. "They're in good hands already. I'm just the reminder."
Alter chuckled.
Then, without a word, he summoned Ignivar with a pulse of flame from his forehead.
The mythic dragon's massive wings cut across the sky as it descended from the clouds with thunderous grace.
Soryn raised a hand toward the approaching beast. "Fly well, Sovereign."
Alter nodded once, mounted Ignivar, and with a single breath of flame into the air—they ascended, vanishing over the far mountains where the fourth shrine stirred in silence.
Back at the field, Soryn's eyes turned cold once more.
"Alright," he muttered, cracking his neck. "Let's see who among you wants to survive the next war."