The private training hall of Dame Elara was a stark contrast to the damp, salt-slicked warehouse where Kaela usually trained. Here, the floors were polished oak, and the walls were lined with racks of pristine, oil-slicked weaponry. Kaela stood in the center of the room, her chest heaving, Rust-Eater held in a low guard. Dame Elara circled her, not with a weapon, but with a terrifying, silent pressure. The Knight's Aura was not a wild fire like Silas's, but a heavy, suffocating gravity that made the air feel thick as water. Elara didn't attack; she simply stepped into Kaela's space, forcing the girl to retreat or be crushed.
"You fight like a ghost," Elara critiqued, her voice echoing off the high stone ceiling. "You vanish, you pivot, you strike the weak point. It is effective, Vane, but it is cowardly." Kaela bristled at the word, but Elara held up a hand. "I do not mean you lack courage. I mean you lack presence. In the Guild, you cannot always hide in the shadows. Sometimes, you must be the wall that the enemy breaks themselves against. The Formless Style—yes, I know of it—teaches you to avoid the mountain. I am teaching you how to be the rock the mountain stands on." Elara threw a heavy, blunt training sword to Kaela. "Sheath your rusted relic. Today, you learn to hold the line." For three hours, Elara battered Kaela not with speed, but with relentless, frontal assaults, forcing Kaela to stop dodging and start parrying, to use her Ember Aura not just to hide, but to reinforce her wrists and spine against crushing weight. It was a torture unlike Hagar's, designed to build structure where there was only fluidity.
By the time Kaela stumbled out of the Bastion, the sun was high, and a summons was waiting for her. The training had been a prelude. The Guild wasted no time in testing their new Novices. She was ordered to the West Gate immediately. There, a small squad of four was assembling. To Kaela's lack of surprise and utter disdain, the squad leader was none other than Silas Corvus, looking resplendent in polished plate armor, his earlier humiliation apparently scrubbed away by his rank. Two other Novices, generic boys from minor merchant families, looked at Silas with awe and at Kaela with open suspicion.
"You're late, rat," Silas sneered, adjusting his gauntlets. "Dame Elara might be humoring your eccentricities, but out here, I am in command. We are assigned a sweep of the Whispering Weald's outer perimeter. Reports of a Quartz Stalker. You will take the rear guard. If you fall behind, we leave you." The mission was simple on paper: patrol the tree line, check for signs of Aura Beasts, and report back. But the Whispering Weald was a place where the laws of physics grew thin, and the shadows were hungry. As they marched into the dense, fog-choked forest, the temperature dropped, and the silence of the trees pressed in on them.
Silas led with the subtlety of a parade, his Flame Aura flared constantly to act as a torch in the gloom. It was a beacon of arrogance. To any beast in the Weald, he was a walking dinner bell. Kaela hung back, keeping her Aura tightly coiled inside her, her senses expanded outward. She didn't use her eyes; she listened to the displacement of the air. Hagar's training screamed at her that Silas was walking into an ambush, but the noble wouldn't listen to a word she said. The formation was rigid, loud, and blind.
The attack came from above. A Quartz Stalker—a feline nightmare with skin made of translucent, razor-sharp crystal plates—dropped from the canopy. It didn't roar; it hissed like steam escaping a pipe. It landed directly in the center of the formation, its claws swiping out to decapitate the nearest merchant-born Novice. Silas reacted instantly, screaming a battle cry and unleashing a massive wave of Flame Aura. The fire engulfed the beast, but the Stalker was evolved for this; its crystalline hide refracted the heat, scattering the thermal energy harmlessly into the air. The beast lunged through the fire, unharmed, pinning Silas to the ground with a massive, crystal-clawed paw.
"Hold the line!" Silas screamed, his voice cracking as he struggled to hold the beast's jaws back with his sword. The other two Novices froze, terrified by the ineffectiveness of their leader's power. Kaela watched the calculus of the fight unfold in slow motion. The beast was heavy, shielded, and angry. Hagar would have told her to run. Elara would have told her to strike the beast's center. Kaela did both.
She didn't draw Rust-Eater. Instead, she grabbed the heavy, blunt training sword she had been forced to carry by Elara's regulations. She sprinted forward, not silently this time, but with the heavy, thudding rhythm Elara had drilled into her. She didn't try to pierce the crystal hide; that was impossible for a Novice. Instead, she channeled her Ember Aura into her shoulder and slammed into the Stalker's flank with the force of a battering ram. It was a move of pure, structural violence.
The impact didn't hurt the beast, but it knocked the heavy creature off balance, dislodging it from Silas's chest. The Stalker snarled, spinning to face this new annoyance. It swiped a claw that could shear through iron. Kaela didn't dodge. She planted her feet, remembering Elara's voice: Be the wall. She caught the claw on the crossguard of her heavy training sword, exhaling sharply to lock her joints. The force was immense, cracking the ground beneath her boots, but she held. For one second, she was immovable.
"Silas! The throat!" Kaela screamed through gritted teeth, her arms trembling under the monster's weight. "The crystal doesn't cover the throat!"
Silas, scrambling up from the mud, saw the opening Kaela had created by locking the beast in place. His arrogance vanished, replaced by desperate instinct. He didn't use a wave of fire; he thrust his rapier forward, the tip glowing white-hot. With the beast fixed on Kaela, it couldn't dodge. The blade sank into the soft flesh of the Stalker's throat. The beast thrashed once, convulsed, and collapsed into a pile of dulling crystal shards.
Silence returned to the Weald, broken only by their ragged breathing. Silas stood over the carcass, his chest heaving, his pristine armor mud-stained and scratched. He looked at Kaela, who was checking her training sword for cracks. He wanted to sneer, to claim the kill was entirely his, but the two other Novices were staring at Kaela with wide eyes. They had seen the rat from the slums hold a monster at bay so the noble could strike.
"Standard procedure," Silas finally muttered, sheathing his sword with a shaky hand. "The beast is dead. We return to the Bastion." He turned his back, unable to meet her gaze. Kaela didn't care. She had survived the Knight's training and the Fool's errand. She wiped the mud from her cheek and followed, the heavy, unglamorous training sword resting comfortably on her shoulder, right next to the silent hum of Rust-Eater. The rivalry was far from over, but the respect, however grudging, had been carved in stone.