The first thing Kael noticed about the training yard wasn't the size.
It was the ground.
Hard-packed earth, beaten down by years of feet.
Every step there felt like stepping on a drumskin.
The second thing was how quiet it was.
No one talked unless they were told to.
No one swung a weapon unless given permission.
That first day, the yard felt like a different world.
---
Sef held out a wooden pole, its surface smooth from a hundred other hands.
"Take it," he said.
Kael's fingers wrapped around the wood. It wasn't heavy. But it carried a weight of something else—expectation.
Ryn took his pole with much more excitement, nearly dropping it in his hurry.
Sef's voice came like a hammer:
"Feet apart. Lower. Lower. If your knees aren't burning, you're not low enough."
They did as told, the pole gripped in their hands, and then—
Nothing else.
Just the stance.
No swinging.
No strikes.
Only the slow, endless ache of holding their own body still.
By the time the sun started to slip toward the rooftops, Kael's thighs burned so much that breathing hurt. Ryn's legs gave out first; Kael only lasted a few minutes more before they too collapsed.
Sef nodded.
"Good. Come back tomorrow."
---
The walk home was quiet except for Ryn's complaining.
"We didn't even use the poles," he groaned, dragging his feet. "That wasn't training. That was torture disguised as waiting."
Kael smirked despite themselves. "Then we survived torture. Sounds like training to me."
"That's not comforting," Ryn muttered.
---
Weeks of work
The days settled into a rhythm:
Morning runs around the outskirts of town.
Training with Sef in the afternoons.
Secret magic practice at night.
At first, Kael counted every minute.
But then something changed.
Every time they pushed past the ache, the next day came a little easier.
The soreness turned from pain to a reminder: I am stronger today than yesterday.
---
By the second week, the drills grew more complex.
Not just standing—stepping.
Sliding the front foot an inch forward while the back foot carried weight, all without lifting the pole too high.
Each movement slow enough that it felt like time itself was dragging its heels.
Sef's instructions came sharp and sparse:
"Balance. Control. Don't think about speed until you can stand without shaking."
---
Kael watched the older trainees whenever they could.
The way they moved was different: grounded and light at the same time, like they belonged to the earth but were ready to let it go at any moment.
Kael wanted that.
---
Magic at night
Magic had become a second form of training, but one they never shared.
Every night after their muscles screamed from Sef's yard, Kael sat cross-legged in the quiet and whispered spells.
The glow spell had once been a clumsy thing, a light that lasted for a few heartbeats before leaving them dizzy. But they had learned to sharpen it.
Instead of "light like a torch," they whispered:
Gentle like dawnlight,
stay while breath flows, soft and sure,
burn not, fade not, shine.
The light that bloomed in their palm lingered for long minutes now, almost effortless.
Precision mattered.
Then came other variations:
Flare-bright, sharp like a blade, but costly.
Soft, steady, almost weightless, but slow to grow.
Words were levers.
The better they chose them, the more they could do with less.
---
Ryn's persistence
No matter how hard the yard was, Ryn never missed a day.
He tripped.
He stumbled.
He fell.
But he always stood back up, brushing dirt off and flashing a grin.
Sometimes he arrived early with a small gift: a sweet bun wrapped in a napkin, a tiny wildflower with its stem bent, a polished river pebble.
"For luck," he said the day he gave Kael the pebble.
Kael tucked it into their pocket without comment. It stayed there every day after.
---
First breakthrough: endurance
A month in, the stance drills no longer made Kael collapse after an hour.
They could last the full session, sweat rolling down their back, arms aching but steady.
Ryn had improved too, though he still wobbled more than Kael.
Sef noticed.
He didn't say anything, just let them hold their stances a little longer before finally allowing, "Rest."
The word felt like a victory.
---
Bruises
Another month passed before Sef let them do more than step.
Now there were rolls, falls, and how to get up without breaking something in the process.
Kael's elbows grew a constellation of bruises.
Ryn collected scrapes on his hands like medals.
When Ryn fell flat on his back after trying to roll out of a sweep, he groaned, "I'm never going to walk again."
"Yes, you will," Kael said, offering a hand.
Ryn looked at the offered hand for a moment before taking it. "You're annoyingly calm."
"Practice," Kael replied.
---
Magic: experiments and failures
The magic experiments became bolder.
It wasn't enough to summon a glow. Kael wanted more.
They tried to make the glow move:
If the light will dance,
lift, like fireflies at dusk,
float where I command.
At first, the glow wobbled and went out.
Over and over, they tried, until one evening the light lifted an inch, hovering just long enough to make Kael gasp before it collapsed.
Other nights ended with headaches from pushing too far, but Kael learned where the edge of safety was: never drain yourself dry. Past that edge lay dizziness, pain, and once—a faint buzzing void that scared them enough to stop for days.
---
And slowly, another truth emerged:
Some spells that burned huge amounts of mana could be made almost costless if the words were exact.
It wasn't easy. It took dozens, sometimes hundreds, of tries.
But when it worked, it felt like painting with a single, perfect brushstroke.
---
The gift
One winter afternoon, Ryn handed Kael a folded scrap of paper.
Inside was a drawing—rough, clumsy lines, but full of motion.
"I drew you," Ryn said, blushing. "Or at least… how you look when you're training."
Kael looked at it for a long moment. "Thank you."
"You don't like it?"
"I do," Kael said softly. "But that isn't really me."
Ryn blinked. "It is to me."
---
The spar
By spring, Sef finally said the words they'd been waiting for:
"Pairs."
Wooden poles clacked together, slow at first. Step. Block. Step. Tap.
Then faster. Ryn lunged. Kael twisted away. The rhythm built until Kael caught the stick, redirected it, and Ryn stumbled with a startled laugh.
For the first time, Kael walked away from the yard exhilarated, not exhausted.
---
The question
That night, Ryn asked, "You're going to take the adventurer's test, aren't you?"
"I think so."
There was a long pause before he said, "I want to tell you something before that happens."
From behind his back, he pulled a bundle of wildflowers, tied with a rough string.
"I like you," he said quietly.
Kael took the flowers with care, unsure what to say.
"Thank you, Ryn."
---
The morning after the flowers, Kael ran harder than usual. The air was wet and heavy, and the dirt path along the river had turned to mud. They didn't care. The splatter on their legs was a small thing compared to the restless pull in their chest.
The yard was crowded that day. Sef had called in older students from the city. The clack of poles echoed like distant thunder as the older ones demonstrated sparring at a speed Kael could barely follow. The movements looked like chaos at first, but the longer Kael watched, the more they began to see the patterns inside the noise—the weight shifts, the stutter-steps, the tiny corrections that let a fighter stay balanced even while being pushed.
Kael couldn't look away. This was the future they wanted.
---
"Eyes forward," Sef barked.
Kael startled, realizing he'd caught them staring too long.
"Today, you learn to move," he said.
---
The next three hours were a blur of motion:
Pivoting on the ball of the foot, swinging the back leg forward, pole held close to the chest to avoid overreach.
Duck. Twist. Step back.
Not just swinging a weapon, but learning how to stay untouchable.
For every mistake, Sef made them do it again. Not ten times. A hundred.
The yard rang with the sound of wood against wood, the grunt of effort, the occasional gasp of pain when someone's timing slipped.
By the end, Kael's arms burned.
Ryn's shirt clung to him, soaked through.
But when they caught each other's eyes, both of them smiled through the exhaustion.
---
That night, Kael's magic practice changed.
The drills had taught them something.
Fighting wasn't about a single strike. It was about small, invisible adjustments, the kind that made the difference between success and failure.
Why shouldn't magic work the same way?
---
They sat with their notebook, staring at the page, thinking about all the spells they'd written. It wasn't just the words—it was where the weight of the words fell.
Like in sparring, even the smallest misbalance made everything cost more.
---
So they began again.
Carry me upward,
wind beneath a dancer's heel,
lend me weightless grace.
The first try lifted them for half a heartbeat. They felt their mana drain in a flood.
They adjusted one word, narrowing the image.
Lift me upward,
wind beneath a dancer's heel,
lend me weightless grace.
This time the lift was smoother. Less drain.
They adjusted again.
Lift with gentle wind,
dancer's heel upon thin air,
carry for one breath.
The third try worked better than either of the first two, and the mana cost dropped by half.
---
They laughed, quietly, in the dark.
It wasn't just about finding the right idea. It was about choosing the simplest way to say it without losing the meaning.
---
Winter was gone. Spring's chill softened.
Kael and Ryn's days became an endless repetition of drills and running, but repetition brought change.
Muscles carved themselves out of bone. Movements that had been clumsy became natural.
And yet, as Kael got stronger, they also got quieter.
Because each improvement only sharpened their awareness that this small town couldn't hold them forever.
---
Ryn noticed.
"You think about leaving a lot, don't you?" he asked one afternoon as they sat by the river, sweat drying on their arms.
Kael hesitated. "I think about what's next."
"And it's not here."
Kael shook their head.
---
Ryn sighed, skipping a stone across the water. "I know. I just wish I could make you stay."
Kael didn't answer. They didn't know how to explain that it wasn't a matter of wanting to leave—it was that staying felt like trying to breathe in a room without air.
---
Sef, as if sensing the shift in them, doubled the difficulty of their training.
Now there were drills with obstacles:
Running while dodging swinging sandbags.
Leaping over narrow gaps without breaking stride.
Climbing a rope wall with the weight of a pole still in their hands.
Ryn cursed under his breath during the rope climbs. Kael focused on rhythm.
Hand, hand, foot, foot.
Breathe.
Don't think about the burn.
Just keep moving.
---
By late spring, Sef let them spar against the older students.
Kael lost, again and again.
But each time they lasted a little longer.
Each time they made fewer mistakes.
The older trainees stopped underestimating them. That respect, wordless and cautious, meant more than any praise.
---
In the evenings, magic became something sharper.
Kael no longer wrote whole pages. Instead, they studied a single spell, rewriting it twenty, thirty times, testing until the phrasing cut away every wasted drop of mana.
---
Thin as paper skin,
pull the wind to circle me,
curve and hold, defend.
The first few tries barely stirred the air. But by the fifteenth version, a faint shell of wind surrounded them, just enough to make a thrown pebble swerve off course.
---
Late at night, with the house quiet and moonlight spilling across the floor, Kael lay awake staring at the ceiling.
The test was close now.
Closer every day.
---
And so was the future they'd been imagining since the day Nyros offered them a choice.
---
By the time the first summer heat began to press down on the town, Kael's body had changed.
The stick no longer felt heavy.
The runs no longer burned as they used to.
And the spells that had once drained them dry now came as easily as breathing.
---
The day Mira said, "Kael, you're of age now," something inside them settled.
This was it.
One more day.
---
That evening, they trained harder than ever before. Sweat stung their eyes, but they didn't stop.
Sef, watching from the bench, just nodded once when the drills ended.
"You're ready," he said.
---
Back home, Kael sat in their room. Ryn's flowers, now dried and fragile, rested on the windowsill. The pebble was still in their pocket.
Their spell notebook lay open across their knees, full of ink-stained pages.
They whispered, just loud enough to hear themselves:
"Tomorrow begins something new."