Days became weeks. Weeks became months.
The rhythm of the academy settled into the squires' bones like a second heartbeat—dawn bell, morning drills, lectures, afternoon training, evening patrols, sleep, repeat. What had seemed impossible that first day became merely difficult. What had been difficult became routine.
Adrian watched it all with the detached interest of someone observing a familiar pattern reassert itself. Training was training, regardless of the life. The exhaustion, the incremental progress, the way bodies adapted when pushed beyond their limits—he'd seen it all before, lived it before. The only difference was that here, he had to pretend each lesson was new.
The first week had been chaos. Half the squires could barely lift their arms by the third day. Brann's cocky grin had faltered by day five. Even Finn's steady rhythm had wavered under the relentless pressure. Edric had collapsed during drills on day six, his body simply refusing to obey anymore. Sir Varic had stood over him, expressionless, and said only: "Rise, or go home."
Edric had risen.
By the second week, the weakest had already left. Their cots emptied overnight, belongings collected, families notified. No ceremony, no farewell. The empty beds served as silent warnings to those who remained.
By the third week, calluses had begun to form. Blisters healed. Muscles that had screamed now merely ached. The surviving squires moved with slightly more confidence, their stances improving, their strikes landing truer.
Adrian measured them all. In his dormitory room, he watched Edric's stubborn determination transform into genuine competence. The farmer's son would never be the strongest or fastest, but he refused to quit, and that counted for something. Brann's wild energy slowly channeled into useful aggression—he still laughed during sparring, but his strikes carried real intent now. Finn's quiet efficiency only deepened; the fisherman's son possessed an almost unnatural ability to conserve energy, to find sustainable rhythms even in unsustainable conditions.
The patrols continued nightly. Different squads, different routes, always under the watchful eyes of Sir Aldric's veterans. Most nights passed quietly—a drunk to escort home, a dispute to mediate, suspicious characters to question. Occasionally, something more: smugglers, petty thieves, once a cultist caught painting forbidden symbols in a forgotten alley. The squires learned to read the city's shadows, to distinguish threat from harmless movement, to trust their instincts while verifying with their eyes.
Adrian excelled at patrols. His roommates noticed, though none commented directly. The way he positioned himself, the routes he suggested, the threats he spotted before anyone else—it all pointed to experience beyond his years. Edric had stopped asking questions after the first week, recognizing that Adrian's past was a door firmly closed. But the looks lingered, the unspoken awareness that their quiet roommate was something more than he appeared.
In the lecture halls, Instructor Halbrecht continued their education. They learned the structure of Arathor's military, the chain of command, the protocols for reporting demon sightings. They studied maps of the kingdom's borders, memorized the locations of major fortresses, learned to read weather patterns that might herald monster migration.
Adrian absorbed it all with perfect recall, his mind cataloging information he might need later while appearing to take notes like everyone else. Most of it he already knew from his previous life, but the specifics of Arathor's current defenses were useful. The kingdom had changed in three hundred years—new fortresses, different strategies, technologies his demon armies hadn't faced.
Knowledge was always a weapon worth sharpening.
By the sixth week, a hierarchy had emerged among the squires. Not official, but undeniable. Ryn Veynar held court among the noble-born, his silver hawk crest long surrendered but his arrogance undiminished. Lady Mira Elbrecht commanded respect through competence rather than lineage, her performance in drills consistently excellent. Gareth Stone, the common-born Ironfang prospect, had become something of a folk hero among the lower-born squires, his raw strength and cheerful brutality earning him admirers.
And Adrian... Adrian was watched. Not with the open admiration Gareth received, nor the courtly respect Mira commanded. Instead, he drew wary attention, the kind given to dangerous things that moved quietly. His consistent excellence in every task, his unshakable composure, his tendency to appear wherever trouble arose—it all marked him as someone significant, even if no one could quite articulate why.
The confrontation with Ryn Veynar in the Registration Hall had set a tone. The hawk heir avoided direct conflict with Adrian, but his eyes tracked him across training yards, his whispers to his followers always stopped when Adrian drew near. It was not friendship, not even truce—merely the watchful tension of rivals who recognized each other's threat.
At the two-month mark, the drills intensified. Sir Varic introduced weapons training beyond simple strikes—disarms, grapples, fighting from the ground, improvised weapons. The squires learned to fight when their swords were knocked away, when multiple opponents pressed in, when exhaustion made every movement feel like drowning.
Adrian adapted seamlessly. His body was young, still growing, but the soul within remembered every dirty trick, every battlefield lesson learned in blood. He taught himself to make mistakes occasionally, to struggle where struggling seemed appropriate. Too much perfection would raise questions he couldn't answer.
The patrols grew longer, the routes more complex. Sir Aldric began sending squads to the rougher districts—places where the Watch's presence deterred violence simply by being seen. They encountered harder elements: gang members who tested their resolve, merchants who tried to bribe them, desperate people who saw armed squires as either salvation or prey.
Adrian's squad—he'd somehow become the unofficial leader, though no title was given—developed a reputation for efficiency. They completed patrols faster than most, caught more smugglers, resolved more disputes. Sir Aldric noticed. His eyes lingered on Adrian during briefings, calculating, measuring.
By the tenth week, something had shifted. The squires no longer looked like children playing at war. They moved with purpose, spoke with confidence born of repetition, carried their wooden swords as natural extensions of their bodies. The chaos of the first days had been hammered into discipline.
Not all of it was visible. In quiet moments, Adrian saw the toll the training took. Edric's hands, once soft from farm work, now bore scars from a hundred sparring sessions. Finn's eyes carried a wariness that hadn't been there before, the knowledge that even city streets held dangers. Brann's laughter still came easily, but underneath it was steel—the recognition that this was not a game, had never been a game.
Three months in, and they were no longer the green recruits who'd stumbled through registration. They weren't knights yet, weren't even close. But they were something more than they'd been.
The wooden swords they carried had become familiar companions, each one scarred and splintered from countless hours of use. Soon, Adrian knew, those would be replaced with real steel. The training wheels would come off. The stakes would rise.
And then the true testing would begin.
On the night before the three-month mark, Adrian lay awake in his cot, listening to his roommates sleep. Tomorrow would bring new challenges, new lessons. But tonight, he allowed himself a moment of reflection.
Three months of hiding his true strength. Three months of careful mediocrity mixed with strategic excellence. Three months of being Adrian Blackthorn, border lord's son, rather than Azrael Bloodrend, demon prince reborn.
It was exhausting in ways battle never had been.
But it was necessary. Every day he stayed hidden was another day closer to the trials that would truly matter. The knight academies would send their recruiters. The real tests would come. And when they did, he would be ready to show exactly as much as he needed to—and not one iota more.
Outside, the night watch called the hour. The city slept, protected by squires who'd learned to stand vigil. And among them, hidden in plain sight, walked someone who'd once commanded armies across demon wastes.
Three months down. Nine months to go until the trial year ended.
Adrian closed his eyes and let sleep take him.
Tomorrow, they would learn about runes.