After weeks of enforced rest, Ithan was finally discharged from the hospital. His body was stiff from lying still for so long, the scar across his ribs pulling whenever he moved, but he could walk. That was enough. The healer pressed a satchel of herbs into his hands, muttering something about not testing his limits too soon. He barely heard it—his mind was already outside, reaching for the city he had only glimpsed from narrow window slits.
Stepping into the streets of Achilles was like stepping into a living fortress. The city was carved from stone and iron, every wall too thick to be toppled, every archway braced as though expecting siege. Banners bearing the crimson jaguar snapped in the wind, their edges frayed from weather and war but still flying with defiance.
Soldiers marched in disciplined ranks along the avenues, armor gleaming in the pale light. The clatter of boots on cobblestones became the heartbeat of the city, steady and unyielding. Watchmen occupied every corner, their spears upright, eyes sharp, scanning faces with a discipline that suggested no threat would ever pass unnoticed.
But it wasn't just soldiers. Ithan saw smiths bent over forges that glowed like miniature suns, hammering weapons with sweat-soaked arms. Market stalls lined the main square, yet even the merchants carried blades at their belts, their movements efficient, watchful, as if battle could spill through the gates at any hour. Children darted between carts, laughing, though their games mimicked sword drills and mock skirmishes.
Ithan took it all in slowly, his hand brushing unconsciously against the scar over his ribs. This city didn't merely live; it endured. He could feel it in the way people carried themselves—not the ease of a village untouched by war, but the weight of those who had survived too many raids, too many sieges. Achilles wasn't beautiful in the way Volos had been. There were no wide fields, no quiet evenings. Instead, there was iron discipline, stone walls, and the ever-present scent of ash carried by the wind from the fields beyond.
He paused near one of the outer gates, looking past the ramparts. In the distance, the horizon was split between two hungering wildernesses—the gray haze of the Ashen Fields and the shadow-drenched mass of the Dionian forests. Both pressed against Achilles like wolves against a cage. And yet, the city stood.
For the first time since Volos, Ithan let himself breathe deeply. Achilles was no home, but it was a place that fought to exist—and maybe, just maybe, it was the kind of place he could fight from too.
As Ithan drifted deeper into the avenues, the crimson banners seemed to multiply. Soon he noticed the men and women beneath them—not regular soldiers, but a different breed. The Red Jaguars.
They stood out even in a militarized city like Achilles. Their armor wasn't uniform; some wore lacquered breastplates marked with jaguar sigils, others had mismatched gear scored by old battles. Yet every piece looked earned, lived-in, as if each scar in their metal matched the scars on their skin.
A squad came striding down the street toward him, their gait loose but dangerous. They carried themselves not like drilled legionnaires but predators on the prowl—alert, confident, a touch wild. The people of Achilles parted quickly to give them space, not out of fear, but out of a wordless recognition: these were the ones who bled on the frontlines so the city didn't have to.
One of them, a broad-shouldered man with hair tied in thick braids, gave Ithan a long look as they passed. His gaze lingered on the faint scorch scar visible above Ithan's tunic. A smirk tugged at the man's mouth before he muttered something to his comrades. They laughed, not unkindly, but with the sharp amusement of warriors recognizing another survivor.
Ithan's stomach tightened. He had fought beside mercenaries before, but these weren't like Lason's company. The Jaguars radiated a different kind of weight—less brotherhood, more battlefield ferocity. He could almost feel the echo of killing fields clinging to them, like blood that would never quite wash off.
At the corner of the square, a younger recruit of the Jaguars was running drills with a spear under the watch of a scarred veteran. The boy's stance faltered, and the veteran barked a correction, his tone harsh but his eyes focused, almost protective. It struck Ithan: even in their wildness, there was discipline here, a brutal kind of care honed by survival.
For the first time, he understood why Achilles had never fallen. It wasn't just its walls. It was the people who defended them.
As the squad of Jaguars passed, Ithan kept his eyes forward, willing his body not to betray how raw and unsteady he still felt. He could feel their gazes like weights on his back. Just when he thought they would move on, a voice cut through the street.
"Oi."
Ithan turned, finding the broad-shouldered man with braided hair staring him down. The rest of the squad had stopped a few paces ahead, waiting. The man's smirk widened.
"You're the Ashborn, aren't you?"
The words rippled down the street. A pair of market-goers turned their heads, whispering. Ithan stiffened. The title still felt foreign on his skin, like a cloak he hadn't asked to wear. "Who's asking?" he said, voice low.
The man chuckled, stepping closer until his shadow stretched across Ithan. Up close, the scars on his jaw caught the light, jagged and pale against his dark skin. "Name's Kallus. Red Jaguar. Captain Helen's been expecting you." His tone was rough, but there was no malice in it—only the blunt directness of a soldier used to getting to the point.
"Expecting me?" Ithan's brows knit. "I just got out of a sickbed."
Kallus shrugged, as if that was irrelevant. "Orders are orders. You're to come with me. Straight to the headquarters." He jerked his chin toward the heart of the city, where a fortress-like building rose above the rooftops, its jaguar banners snapping in the wind. "The Captain doesn't like to be kept waiting."
Ithan's hand twitched toward the scar on his ribs, the old ache stirring again. The thought of walking into the den of Helen's company, barely on his feet, set his teeth on edge. Yet the look in Kallus's eyes told him there wasn't really a choice.
"Come on, Ashborn," Kallus said, turning to lead the way. "You've got questions. She's got answers. Let's not waste daylight."
As the squad fell into stride around him, Ithan felt the press of eyes again—civilians watching, whispering, measuring him against the stories they'd heard. He pulled his shoulders back despite the lingering ache. Whatever waited in Helen's office, he would face it head-on.
****
The building didn't look like an office anymore. The marble steps leading up to it were scarred from the weight of boots and weapons, and the bronze doors bore fresh gouges where a jaguar emblem had been hammered into place over the city's crest. Soldiers of the Red Jaguar company lounged in the entry hall, their spears stacked in neat rows against the walls. Ithan caught the smell of oil and steel instead of ink and parchment, the air carrying the restless hum of a barracks rather than the quiet of a civic hall.
It hadn't always been this way. Once, this had been the mayor's seat of administration. But the man Ithan glimpsed now, shuffling parchment at a side desk, wore no authority in his bearing. He worked like a clerk—head down, hands ink-stained—while the mercenaries filled the halls with their heavy steps. Whatever command he'd once held, Helen had stripped it clean. The mayor hadn't been dismissed, only diminished.
Ithan's thoughts flickered: how in Hades had she pulled this off without stirring the Senate's fury from the Capital? Yet all he had to do was watch the way people stepped aside when Helen's name was mentioned, or how soldiers stiffened at her approach. The answer was simple. Power. She carried it like a mantle, and here, it was enough.
They brought him into her office, a chamber that overlooked the whole of Achilles from a tall arched window. The desk was buried beneath maps, not ledgers—inked sketches of the Ashen Fields, markers placed where patrols had clashed with raiders, jagged lines drawn where the Dionian forests pressed too close.
Helen stood at the window, one arm braced against the frame as if the city itself leaned beneath her weight. She didn't turn immediately when he entered, only studied the horizon, her silhouette outlined by the harsh gray light spilling in. The crimson tunic and pants she wore were cut for movement rather than ceremony, marked with faint traces of travel dust and frayed thread from hard use. Her auburn hair was bound in a tight braid, a style unfamiliar to Ithan's eyes, pulled from a land beyond the central continent.
Themyskira, he remembered her saying. A name that belonged not to Erytheia, but to the southern continent he had only ever heard of in passing. Foreign, distant, and yet standing here as if she belonged more to Achilles than anyone born to it.
She turned then, scarlet eyes catching him in their sharp, unyielding gaze. In that moment, Ithan understood: this office, this city, perhaps even this entire province—none of it bent to law. It bent to her.
"I see you're finally out of Sarah's grasp." Helen's voice was flat, but the corner of her mouth twitched like she'd been waiting for a show. She nodded once toward the healer kneeling by the doorway, who dipped his head and slipped away without a word.
"Yes." Ithan's reply came out small, rough as gravel. He kept his fingers curled around the edge of the chair; the movement steadied him more than he let on.
"Sit." Helen didn't bother with a chair for him—she only indicated the battered stool by the map-strewn table. Kallus hovered behind Ithan like a blade at the ready, jaw clenched, eyes flicking between captain and patient with the careful deference of a soldier who knew when to speak and when to be silence. Around Helen, he shrank from swagger to restraint.
Ithan lowered himself onto the stool. The wood creaked; even that sound felt loud in the heavy quiet. Helen's gaze didn't leave him as she folded one arm across her chest. "So," she said, almost conversational, "what's your next move?"
He swallowed. The question was a gauntlet thrown. He could feel the scar at his ribs pull with each breath, a reminder that his body still belonged to the fight. "I'm going after the Blue Orcas," he said. The name left his mouth like a verdict. "I'll kill Anipather and Anastomus."
Helen's lips curved—an almost-smile that had no warmth. "So. Revenge."
"No." The word came like iron. Ithan's hands found each other and gripped until his knuckles went white. He didn't say revenge—he pushed the memory up like something to set on the table and examined it. "Justice."
He let the ghosts show themselves. Not as explanations but as images that shoveled coal into the furnace of his conviction: Volos' village stained with the purple mist of hallucination; children clinging to their parents with faces drenched in drunken stupor; Lason killed in front of him, and he was unable to do anything about it. He tasted copper and saw the flash of Anipather's blade. The light in the room trembled behind those scenes, making them shimmer like fuel on a struck stone.
"They were not men when they did that," he said, voice low now, each word measured. "The Blue Orcas—what they are to people like us isn't… human. They move like predators, take like raiders, wear our flesh while carrying their curse. They turned Volos into a slaughter. Lyra and Doran… they are out there." His fingers tightened. "Any Mystiques they've taken, any who are enslaved—if I can tear them free, if I can stop them from doing this to someone else—then that isn't vengeance. It's stopping a monster."
Helen watched him, the scarlet of her eyes unreadable. Kallus shifted, the edge of a smirk briefly cutting across his face—approval, perhaps, or the grim recognition of someone who'd seen the same atrocities. Around them, the maps on the table lay like quiet witnesses, inked routes and crossed-out villages a ledger of what the March had already paid.
"Justice," Helen repeated, not questioning the word but weighing the weight behind it. She stepped closer, the lamplight picking out the hard planes of her face. "You know what that will cost."
Ithan met her gaze. The room narrowed to the two of them, breath and scar and resolve. He didn't flinch. "I know."
ChatGPT said:
"And you're prepared to pay it?" Helen asked, voice smooth as the edge of a blade.
"Yes." Ithan's answer came out raw but steady. The scar beneath his ribs twinged as he drew breath, a dull reminder of bargains already made.
Helen studied him a heartbeat longer, then pushed off the window frame and crossed the room in two easy steps. She stopped so close he could see the tiny nick along her brow, the way sunlight trapped in the braid at her shoulder. "Even though you're weak as a pup right now," she said, the words more observation than insult.
"Yes."
Her lips parted in something almost like approval. "Very well, then it's decided."
"What is decided?" Ithan asked; the words came small, thin as smoke.
"You're going to work under me." She folded her arms, as if the sentence itself were a shield. The maps on the desk rustled with the motion.
Ithan blinked. "What?"
"You're a mercenary, aren't you?" Helen asked, as if the question were proof enough.
"Yeah." His throat tightened. Pride flared—old, familiar, stubborn. Larson's lessons hummed at the edges of his mind: keep your word, trust your weight, fight how you must. The Red Jaguar's banners felt like another code, one he had never chosen.
Helen's eyes sharpened. "Then you know how cruel this world is. You cannot do what you want alone and expect it to be clean. The Blue Orcas don't sail with just brute force; they are backed by one of the Empire's darker cults. Think you can stroll into their lair, collect a head, and come home? No. You need allies, protection—and skill."
She stepped back to the window and let the city fill the space between them. Down below, men drilled like the tide, spears flashing. "My company will give you both. In return, you sign on as one of mine."
Ithan's mouth worked. Larson's voice rose in memory: Don't be bought for a banner. Mercenary work is a trade—pick your price, keep your honor. The idea of bending his knee to another captain's will tasted wrong. But beneath it, hotter and faster, was another burning: Lyra's face in the smoke, Doran's hand dragged away. The need to reach them thrummed through his bones louder than doctrine.
He let his shoulders fall. "Fine. But why training? You said training doesn't make one's mystery grow stronger."
Helen smiled—no warmth, only the small curve of someone who'd seen men argued into wisdom. "It doesn't," she agreed. "But skill doesn't only grow mysteries. It sharpens the body and the mind. A sharpened blade is worth more than any raw spark when it comes to surviving a fight. Your captain died because he lacked that edge. He had strength, maybe mystery—but not the discipline of a warrior." Her gaze latched onto his, steady and direct. "I'll teach you the path of the warrior. How to move, where to place a strike, how to read an enemy's breath. So you don't die on me."
Ithan's jaw clenched. The name Larson fell out of him like a fist. "Are you disrespecting him?" The growl in his voice came from a place that hurt more than his ribs.
Helen's head tilted. For a second, the scarlet of her eyes softened. "Not disrespecting. Explaining. Many Mystiques rely on the gift and neglect the grind. They expect power alone to carry them. It doesn't. I'll teach you to be more than a spark." She reached into a pouch at her hip and let a small strip of cloth fall into his lap—the Red Jaguar sigil sewn into the corner. "Wear this when you're ready."
He looked at the cloth, then at her. Something shifted in him—not surrender, but calculation. Any path that led him closer to Lyra and Doran, any edge that might keep him alive, deserved a try. The mercenary code had room for pragmatism.
"Fine," he said at last. The word was soft, but it settled like a stone. He slid the strip of cloth into his palm and felt its weight: a promise, a command, and a step toward whatever future he would have to carve with blood and grit.
****
Ithan woke to the sharp sound of boots against the barrack floor. The room smelled of steel, sweat, and the faint smoke of oil lamps burning down to their ends. Rows of recruits stirred around him, some already fastening breastplates, others dragging themselves upright from straw pallets. Kallus loomed over him, arms crossed, his tone brisk.
"Up. The Captain wants you."
The words left no room for hesitation.
Ithan washed his face at the basin, the cold water jolting him fully awake, and then pulled on the armored uniform that had been set at the foot of his bed—a fresh crimson tunic beneath plated guards polished enough to catch the morning light. The weight of the gear was new, not yet shaped to his body, but it felt less like borrowed clothing than a seal pressed on him: Red Jaguar.
Kallus led the way without comment, and Ithan followed, boots clicking on the cobblestones as they ascended a winding path. The trail climbed to the crest of a hill that overlooked Achilles, the Iron City spread wide below like a fortress etched into the earth itself.
The dawn was breaking, sunlight spilling over the battlements and painting the stone in shades of molten gold. Smoke from chimneys curled into the crisp air, catching the light until the whole city seemed rimmed with fire. Ithan slowed a moment, his eyes on the horizon. There was something about the rising sun—it burned steady, unyielding, its light spilling even into the scars of the Ashen Fields in the far distance.
He wondered how such a thing existed, constant and eternal. Questions stirred in him, the ones he'd trained himself to silence as a boy in Ravenstone, where curiosity had been useless against hunger or raids. But out here, in the wider world, that hunger to know clawed its way back.
He knew the basics. He'd taught himself enough to understand flame—how energy needed kindling, how air and spark joined in combustion. That was why he carried jars of liquid fire into battles against Daimons, why he understood how to turn a flame into a weapon. Yet the sun above him was more than fire. What fed that endless blaze? What truth kept it alive?
The thought slipped, as they often did, toward what he had lost. He remembered the cursed mystery shard he'd torn from the Lamia. Power and knowledge bound together in its dark coil—gone now. He had wanted to unravel it, strip it bare, see the truth hidden in its curse. But it had slipped from him, like smoke through fingers. A chance gone, a door closed.
His jaw tightened as he climbed after Kallus. If he could not pry knowledge from mysteries like that, then he would tear it from the world itself, piece by piece.
At the crest of the hill, the pathway leveled into a wide training yard carved from stone. The air was sharper here, carrying the mingled scents of steel and morning dew.
Helen was already there. She stood in the center of the yard with a longsword in hand, the crimson of her tunic snapping faintly in the breeze. Her feet moved with precision across the worn stones, each step a measured pattern. The blade cut arcs through the air, not wild or wasteful but clean, practiced, deadly.
Ithan slowed as he watched. Her motions weren't those of a mercenary showing off—this was something older, disciplined, refined. A dance meant to kill. Every pivot, every thrust carried weight, as if the earth itself recognized her as its edge.
Kallus halted a few paces back, posture shifting instinctively into respect. The swagger he wore in the barracks was gone; in Helen's presence, he was a soldier again.
Helen spun the blade once, the steel singing, then stilled it in a vertical guard. For a moment she simply stood, letting the rising sun strike along the length of the weapon until it gleamed like fire in her hands. Only then did her gaze lift to Ithan.
"You came," she said. Not a greeting—an expectation.
Ithan forced his legs forward, the new armor heavy, his scar aching from the climb. He stopped a few paces away, the echo of her movements still lingering in the air. He had fought beside men with swords before, seen them swing with desperation, rage, or brute strength. Helen's style was none of those. It was… mastery.
Her scarlet eyes measured him, the longsword lowering just slightly in her hand. "You watched."
"Yes," Ithan said, his voice quieter than he intended.
"Good," she replied, stepping closer. Her sword pointed idly toward the ground, but even at rest it seemed to command the space between them. "If you're going to survive what you're chasing, you'll need more than fire in your ribs. You'll need to learn what this means." She angled the blade, the morning light catching its edge. "The art of war in flesh and steel."
Ithan's throat tightened, but he met her gaze. The thought of Lyra and Doran—of Anipather's smirk, of Anastomus's decay—burned behind his eyes. He nodded once.
Helen's mouth curved into the faintest smirk. She slid one boot back, settling into stance, her sword rising as naturally as breath.
"Watch closely, Ashborn. Today, your real training begins. Kallus."
Kallus stepped forward without hesitation. Sparks of light coalesced around his hand, motes clicking together like links in a chain until a trident of shimmering blue hardened into steel. The weapon's weight landed with a thrum against the stone as he leveled it toward his captain.
Ithan's stomach knotted. His hands twitched at his sides before he realized—he had no weapon. No spear. He hadn't seen it since Volos, since the fight with the Blue Orcas. An ache bloomed in his chest, not from the scar but from the absence.
Helen's gaze didn't flicker. "Tell me, Ashborn—have you heard the term battle art?"
Ithan shook his head. "No."
Her lips parted in a brief, knowing smile. "Then open your eyes. Kallus, attack."
Kallus shifted. One step, smooth and measured, set his body into alignment. His weight dropped through his hips, the trident poised like an extension of his arm. He inhaled sharply—then drove forward.
The trident sang as it split the air, the three-pointed head a flash of blue aimed straight for Helen's chest. His form was tight, disciplined, every muscle chained to intent.
But Helen moved like water turned to steel. Her blade snapped in a sweeping arc, catching the trident and knocking it just wide enough to miss. Before the sound of the clash had even died, her second step flowed into a slash, the edge of her sword racing toward his flank.
Kallus twisted. The shaft of his trident spun in his hands, redirecting the strike with a pivot that sent a sharp crack echoing through the yard. His feet stamped hard, anchoring him against her pressure. The control in his weapon was exact, precise—no wasted motion, no reckless swing.
Ithan's breath caught. For a heartbeat, he saw another figure in that stance, another blade flashing with cold, measured intent: Anipather.
Only this time, there was no panic. He was watching mastery unfold.
Helen pressed again, her sword turning from high slash to low cut, forcing Kallus back step by step. Her movements were fluid but unrelenting, each stroke connected to the last like links in a chain, like rhythm itself had chosen her as its blade.
Kallus's trident whirled, meeting her attacks with the precision of someone drilled to his bones. The sound of steel and steel cracked sharply in the morning air, each clash ringing with purpose.
Helen's eyes glinted as she pushed him harder, every cut and thrust not just an attack, but a lesson aimed straight at Ithan.
The clang of steel echoed across the yard as Helen and Kallus locked into rhythm. His trident snapped forward again and again, the blue metal a blur, each thrust clean and sharp, a soldier's precision honed through repetition.
Helen met him stroke for stroke. Her sword didn't so much block as redirect—every angle stolen, every thrust turned aside with the smallest flick of her wrist. Her feet traced invisible lines across the stones, her weight flowing from heel to toe in perfect cadence.
Kallus grunted as he pressed harder, driving the trident into a flurry of strikes. He spun the weapon, turning a thrust into a sweeping cut meant to catch her midsection. Helen ducked low, her braid whipping across her shoulder, and rose with a sudden upward slash that scraped sparks along the haft.
The trident wavered. Kallus planted his foot, rolling the shaft across his palm, and reset his stance in a heartbeat. The precision reminded Ithan of the armored Blue Orca—the way the man's sword had felt like an unbreakable wall. But here, against Helen, that precision looked more like survival than dominance.
"Good," Helen said between the clash of weapons, her voice steady, unlabored. "But you're leaning too much into your back foot. Again!"
Kallus obeyed without pause, lunging in with a renewed thrust, the trident streaking for her shoulder. This time, Helen didn't deflect. She stepped into the attack. The blade of her sword slid up the inner groove of the trident's prongs, locking it fast for a fraction of a second. With a twist of her hips and a sharp pivot, she wrenched the weapon aside and brought the flat of her sword crashing against his gauntlet.
The shock jarred Kallus's grip. His trident tore free of his hands, clattering across the stone yard. In the same breath, Helen's sword-point was at his throat, steady as sunrise.
Silence stretched. Kallus stood frozen, chest heaving, sweat streaking down his temples. Then slowly, he raised his hands in surrender, a wolfish grin tugging at his lips.
Helen lowered her blade and turned her scarlet eyes toward Ithan. The edge of command lingered in her voice. "That, Ashborn, is a battle art."
She sheathed her sword in a smooth motion, never breaking her gaze. "It's not about mystery, not about raw strength. It's about rhythm, intent, and body honed into a weapon of its own. Without it, you're just swinging steel and praying it lands. With it, every motion is alive—connected—an answer waiting for the enemy's mistake."
Kallus retrieved his trident, still grinning despite the welt rising across his hand. He gave Ithan a look that said plainly: This is what you're stepping into.
Helen stepped closer, her presence heavy as a drawn blade. "Your flames kept you alive, Ashborn. But flame alone will not kill the Orcas. If you want justice—if you want to stand where I stand—you'll learn this. Every strike, every breath. Until it belongs to you."
The morning sun caught on her sword as she raised it again, motioning to the space between them. "Now. Take your stance."
Weeks passed, the days marked by the steady rhythm of drills, bruises, and repetition. The barracks courtyard became Ithan's crucible. Dawn after dawn, he rose to the clash of wood against wood, spear haft against practice blades, Helen's voice cutting sharper than any strike.
The Amazon spear art she drilled into him was unlike anything he had known. Every step was measured, every thrust part of a chain, a flow that drew strength from the ground into the strike. At first, he stumbled—too stiff, too wild, trying to force his fire into every motion. But slowly, something changed. His body began to listen. His strikes grew tighter, cleaner. His feet traced the invisible patterns Helen laid out, the lines of her people's battle style.
One morning, as the sun burned away the mists, Ithan spun his practice spear through the sequence she had drilled into him: a high guard into a downward thrust, a pivot into a sweeping cut, finishing with the tip poised at an imaginary throat. He stopped, breath coming steady, sweat running down his back.
Helen circled him, arms folded, eyes sharp. "Hmph." For once, there was no immediate correction. She tilted her head, her braid brushing her shoulder. "You've grasped it. Faster than most of my own Amazons when they first learn."
Ithan planted the butt of the spear into the earth, blinking. "I just… followed what you showed me."
Her smirk said otherwise. "No. You understood it. That's different. A battle art isn't just movement—it's philosophy, rhythm, intent woven into the body. And you…" She stepped closer, her eyes narrowing as if she could read the marrow in his bones. "You take to it too quickly."
Ithan frowned, unsure whether it was an insult or praise. "So I learn fast. That's all."
Helen shook her head. "No. It's more than that." She tapped a finger against the shaft of his spear. "When Anastomus struck you, you should have died. That decay eats men alive. But you didn't. Something kept you breathing."
He stiffened, the memory flashing—the rot crawling over his ribs, the white flame burning against it, the pain that had nearly broken him. "My flames—"
"Not just your flames." Her tone cut him off. "Your body clung to life like a starving wolf on a carcass. That's not willpower alone. That is a second mystery in you. I can feel it, even if you can't. Something in you bends toward survival itself."
"Survival…" Ithan murmured, tightening his grip on the spear.
Helen's gaze burned into him, scarlet eyes fierce. "Yes. A Mystery of Survival. It explains why you adapt so fast. It's why your mind seize concepts like this spear art and make them yours. You're built to endure, to outlast, to claw through what should kill you. That's more dangerous than fire, boy—it's what will make you unstoppable if you learn to wield it."
Ithan's chest rose and fell. The words sat heavy, both gift and burden. A mystery of survival—something he hadn't asked for, but something that had chosen him. His scar throbbed, a reminder that he had already paid for it in blood.
"But how?" Ithan asked, his knuckles tightening around the haft of the practice spear. "Larson told me one cannot wield more than one Mystery—that the truths inside them would clash." His voice carried the edge of disbelief, but underneath it, fear.
Helen's blade rested against her shoulder, scarlet eyes narrowing with patient certainty. "That's true—if the truths are incompatible. But there are exceptions. Some Mystiques can hold two Mysteries, though walking with more than two is like dancing on the edge of fire." She tilted her head, studying him as though peeling away his skin to see what coiled beneath. "From what I sense, this second Mystery wasn't forged. It was born in you—through Mysterion."
"Mysterion…" Ithan echoed, the word tasting like ash. "You mean an insight. A revelation."
"Yes," Helen said. Her tone softened only slightly, curiosity shading her command. "Most likely when you were younger. Tell me, Ithan—was there ever a time you brushed against death, before you awakened the Prometheus Mystery?"
His breath caught. He hadn't told her the name of his Mystery—how had she known? The question gnawed at him, but he pushed it aside. Her scarlet gaze pinned him to memory, and his mind turned unwillingly inward.
Growing up in Ravenstone was to live with death as a neighbor—Dionian raids at dusk, bodies left in the mud by dawn. He'd seen it so often it had become a rhythm, something grimly ordinary. Death had brushed past him too many times for him to name just one. Yet Helen's words dug deeper, urging him toward the marrow of a single memory.
And then it surfaced.
The sickness.
He had just turned nine when it swept through Ravenstone like a curse on the wind. People collapsed in the fields, their coughs wet and red, their skin burning with fever. The huts stank of sweat and rot, of shallow breaths rattling through weak chests. He remembered lying in the straw beside his mother, Tessia, both of them drenched in the same sickness. Her hand had gripped his so tightly her nails cut his skin, her whispers hoarse promises that they would see morning together.
But she hadn't.
She was gone by dawn, her body cold before the fire died. And him? He had lingered on the edge, fever burning him hollow, until suddenly—impossibly—he had pulled back. One day the sickness crushed him; the next, it was gone. He was the only one left breathing in a hut full of corpses.
The villagers whispered then, louder than ever: Curseborn. They said the sickness had clung to him, that it had come from him, that his survival had been proof of the curse in his blood. He'd carried that shadow ever since.
Ithan's expression hardened as he recounted the memory to Helen, his voice stripped of warmth. He spoke as if naming someone else's past, as though distance might dull the wound. Yet his hands betrayed him, gripping the spear until his knuckles whitened.
Helen listened without interruption, her face unreadable. When he finished, silence settled between them, heavy and sharp, like a blade waiting to be drawn.
Helen let the silence stretch, her gaze fixed on him as if weighing the truth of his words against the man standing before her now. Then she exhaled through her nose, shifting the sword from her shoulder to let its point rest against the stone floor.
"That," she said quietly, "was your Mysterion."
Ithan's brows knit. "What do you mean?"
"You think you simply survived that sickness. But that night—when your mother died, when your own body should have followed—you were given a revelation. A truth carved into your soul." She stepped closer, her scarlet eyes unblinking, voice steady as a blade's edge. "That the world wanted you gone, yet you refused. That death itself would have to wrestle you down, and even then, you would claw back up. That truth is a Mystery, boy. A Mystery of survival."
The words lodged deep, colder than he expected. He had always told himself he had been lucky, cursed, or both. Never that his survival had meaning.
Helen tilted her head, studying him as though he were an artifact unearthed from the earth. "It explains everything. Why you adapt so quickly. Why concepts that take others months to understand fall into your hands in weeks. You don't just learn, Ithan. You endure knowledge the way you endured that fever—your mind refuses to let it kill you, and so it bends until it fits you."
Her tone sharpened as she straightened, the sword lifting again with the motion. "But do not mistake this for a gift. Survival is a brutal Mystery. It comes at the edge of suffering, and it will drag you through fire as many times as needed to keep you alive. It won't give you peace. It will make you fight for every breath."
Ithan's jaw tightened. The memories of Volos, of Lason's fall, of Lyra and Doran torn away, burned against the truth she spoke. "Then let it," he said hoarsely. "If survival is what I've been given, I'll use it. I won't waste it."
For the first time, Helen's mouth curved—not into her usual smirk, but into something subtler. Almost approval. "Good. Then you understand. You have Prometheus's fire to strike the world, and this second Mystery to keep you alive long enough to wield it. But together, they are still not enough for you to survive against Anipather."
"So more practice," Ithan said.
"No. This time, I'm going to teach you something that will give you an extra edge in battle," Helen said.