Chapter Four: The Toll
Zack caught the knife. The impact stung his palm and nearly tore the handle free, but his fingers locked around the wood on instinct and held.
Caught it. Didn't fumble. Small victories. We collect those now.
Burrel walked to the center of the yard. His stance was not a fighter's pose. It was the readiness of a cliff face. Something that didn't need to prepare because it was already there.
"You chose the hard road." His voice carried no warmth. No encouragement. Just the flat tone of a man stating terms. "Now you pay the toll. There is no Aether here. No enhanced strength. Only weight. Angle. Mistake." He lowered his knife to his side. "And mistake is pain."
Mistake is pain. Got it. I've been collecting pain all day, so at least I have experience in the field.
"Come."
Zack lunged. His feet pushed off the packed dirt. His arm drove the wooden blade forward in what he thought was a decent thrust.
Burrel was not there.
A crack against Zack's ribs stole every molecule of air from his lungs. He stumbled sideways, gasping, one hand pressed to the spot where the wood had landed. The pain was sharp and specific and deeply educational.
"Again."
Zack attacked. He swung wide. He thrust straight. He tried a combination he'd seen Penn use on the green. Each movement met empty air. Each opening he left earned a punishment. A sharp strike to his thigh that buckled his knee. A jab to his kidney that dropped him to the ground. A tap across his wrist that numbed his fingers and sent the practice knife bouncing in the dirt.
This man is sixty years old and moves like smoke. I am fourteen and move like furniture. The math is not in my favor.
He picked up the knife. His hand shook. His ribs screamed. His kidney had filed a grievance with every other organ in his body.
"You fight like you're shouting at the rain." Burrel stepped back, his face unreadable. "Stop wanting to hit me. See where I am. See where I will be."
See where he will be. Right. Let me consult my crystal ball. Oh wait. My crystal doesn't work. That's the whole problem.
Zack forced his breath to slow. He watched. Burrel stood still, knife at his side, weight balanced. But not perfectly. The front foot carried a fraction more load. The left shoulder sat a hair lower than the right.
Weight forward. Shoulder dropped. He's going to lead with the right hand.
Burrel jabbed. Right hand, just as the weight promised. Zack did not retreat. He slid inside the blow. The knife caught his shoulder, a bright bloom of hurt, but he was already driving his own blade forward. The wooden point closed the distance toward Burrel's stomach.
A hand snapped out. Fingers locked around Zack's wrist an inch from the Chief's tunic. The grip was iron.
Burrel held him there. His dark eyes studied Zack's face from a distance of two feet. Something lived in those eyes. It was not approval. It was recognition. The same look a man gives a stray dog that bites back instead of running.
He released Zack's wrist.
"Enough."
Zack straightened. Every muscle in his body trembled. His shirt was dark with sweat and dirt. His ribs pulsed with each breath.
I almost touched him. One inch. That's the closest I've come to achieving anything all day, and it involved getting beaten for twenty minutes first. Efficient.
"You are not a fighter." Burrel's voice was flat. Final. "You are prey that decided to bite. The difference is everything." He bent and picked up the fallen knife from the dirt. "Your road is short. It ends in a ditch, or at the edge of the world." The knives disappeared into his belt. "Tomorrow. Dawn. You are slow. You are weak. We will fix one of those."
"Which one?"
Burrel's mouth moved. It might have been the beginning of a smile. It might have been gas. With Burrel, the distinction was academic.
"Whichever one you earn."
He walked into the twilight. The shadows took him in three steps. No sound. Just gone.
Tomorrow. Dawn. So I have approximately eight hours to recover from what just happened before it happens again. My body is going to love that. My body is going to write me a strongly worded letter.
Zack stood alone in the dark yard. His anger, the directionless heat that had driven him to the training ground, had changed shape during the beating. It wasn't hot anymore. It was cold. Compact. It sat in his chest with edges.
Sixty days remained before the Ash Corps notice activated. Sixty days before they came for him with grey uniforms and a one-way trip to the Blight-lands. The only thing in his corner was the stubborn refusal lodged behind his sternum and a wooden knife he'd borrowed without asking.
Sixty days. A man who punches like a battering ram is going to train me at dawn. I can see Aether but can't touch it. I caught a knife thrown at my face, which is progress. And my ribs are going to be purple for a week.
I've had worse days.
Actually, no. I haven't. This is the worst day. But tomorrow has potential.
He picked up his shirt from the fence post, pulled it over his head, and walked toward the village path.
Mira sat on the porch.
She didn't look up when he approached. Her elbows rested on her knees, and her fingers were locked together, knuckles white. Her eyes were red. Not crying. Past crying. The kind of red that comes from holding everything in until the pressure builds behind the face.
Zack sat beside her. The wood groaned under them. Neither spoke.
The village murmured below. Warm lights in kitchen windows. The distant sound of someone playing a reed pipe, off-key and persistent. Normal sounds. The sounds of a world that had measured Zack today and found him empty.
Mira's shoulder leaned into his. Light pressure. Warm.
She's been sitting here since the test. Three hours on this porch, processing. She won't say she's scared for me. She'll die before she says it. But her shoulder is doing the talking, and shoulders don't lie.
They sat like that for the time it took the stars to sharpen against the darkening sky.
Mira punched his arm. Not gentle. Accurate.
"Ow."
"Good." She stood, wiped her face with the back of her hand, and went inside. The door closed behind her with a firm click.
Love you too, Mira.
Zack rose to follow. He was two steps from the door when the hair on his neck lifted.
Not wind. Not cold. Something else.
He turned.
The old oak at the yard's edge stood against the last grey light of dusk. Its branches held thick clusters of Aether-rich leaves, glowing faint green in Zack's peculiar sight. Normal. Familiar.
Except the top cluster was wrong.
The branches swayed against the direction of the breeze. The leaves pressed down, flattened by a weight that left no mark on the shimmering Aether around them. Something heavy sat in that tree, and the energy of the world flowed around it without touching, without reacting.
The same way it flowed around Zack.
From the deep gloom between the pressed leaves, two points of reflected twilight stared down. They held no glow. No warmth. They were pools of cold, liquid darkness, and they were fixed on him with the patient focus of something that had been searching for a very long time.
The feeling was not fear. It was recognition. Cold and mutual.
This thing was not watching the village. Not the Chief. Not the porch where Mira had been sitting.
It was watching him. The hollow boy. The Husk.
Zack held its gaze. The cold new thing in his chest, the refusal, the edge, held steady.
He did not look away.
After a long moment, he turned. Walked to the door. Put his hand on the handle. Every nerve in his back screamed at him to run, to look, to react.
He opened the door and stepped inside.
Behind him, the branches settled into perfect stillness.
The presence did not leave.
It had found what it was looking for.