The dew was still heavy on the grass of the secluded training grove when Alaric arrived. This spot, tucked behind the old armory and shielded by a high stone wall, was Gram Hilson's contribution to the security.
The stone was ancient, overgrown with ivy that muffled the sound of clashing wood, making it the perfect sanctuary for a boy the world believed to be hollow.
Gram Hilson himself sat atop the wall, his massive frame silhouetted against the rising sun. He wasn't just lounging.
he was a sentinel. Beside him lay his Unique grade warhammer Earth-Shaker, its runic etchings glowing with a faint, dormant amber light.
Gram took a slow pull from a water bag, his eyes scanning the perimeter of the Silverlane estate for any "wandering flies" or Church informants who might be lurking in the shadow.
Bram Thorne stood in the center of the clearing, two wooden swords plunged into the soft earth. He looked like a statue carved from grit and disappointment.
Beside him lay a pile of smooth, heavy river stones, each the size of a man's fist.
You're late by ten seconds, lad," Bram said, his voice a gravelly rasp. He didn't turn around.
"In a real fight, ten seconds is the difference between a scar and a grave. The demons don't wait for you to finish your morning porridge."
Alaric didn't offer an excuse. He knew Bram wasn't looking for one.
He walked to the swords, his small feet crunching on the frost-tipped grass. He reached for the hilt of the first sword. As his fingers closed around the hilt leather wrap, his breath hitched. The sword had been hollowed out and filled with lead. It was a Common grade training tool, but it weighed nearly fifteen pounds—an impossible burden for a five-year-old.
As Alaric struggled to lift it, his lungs screamed. His muscles ached instantly.
"Don't just lift it with your arms!" Bram barked, finally turning. He moved with a predatory grace, his heavy boot catching Alaric's lead foot and kicking it into a wider, more stable stance.
"If you fight with your muscles, a Soldier-rank demon will snap you like a dry twig.
Your muscles are the servants, your core is the master. Find your center, Alaric. If you can't find it, the sword will find the dirt."
I'm going to teach you the foundation of the Silverlane style, but with the 'Thorne' twist, Bram explained, picking up the second wooden sword as if it weighed nothing. "We call it the 'Vanguard's Shadow.
It's a style born in the trenches of the North, where we didn't have the luxury of the Church's Holy Smites' or the Elves' fancy mana weaving. It's a style for the outnumbered. It's about economy of motion. Every movement must have a purpose to kill or to keep from being killed. Anything else is just vanity."
"Now, strike me," Bram commanded.
Alaric lunged. The weight of the sword dragged his shoulder down, ruining his balance. Bram didn't even use his sword, he simply stepped an inch to the left and tapped Alaric's ear with a finger.
"Dead," Bram said flatly. "Again."
For the next three hours, the grove was filled with the rhythmic sound of wood hitting wood—or more often, wood hitting Alaric's ribs.
First form = The Vertical Cleave: To split the skull of an armored foe.
Second form = The Horizontal Ward: To parry and redirect momentum.
Third form = The Rising Thrust: To find the gap in the neck armor.
Alaric's small body was a map of rising welts. His Endurance and will was the only thing keeping him upright. Deep within his soul, the Destruction Essence roiled, sensing his physical distress. It was like a caged beast, scratching at the bars of his ribcage. It whispered to him, a low, hum in his blood, offering to rot Bram's sword into splinters.
Steady, Alaric thought, his vision blurring from exhaustion. If I let even a drop of the Essence out, Gram will feel it.
"You're thinking too much!" Bram yelled, his wooden sword whistling through the air. Alaric barely managed to bring his blade up in time.
The impact sent a shockwave through his teeth. "Stop being weak! Be strong! A sword doesn't think about the smith who made it, it just cuts!"
"Enough," Bram suddenly commanded, gesturing for Alaric to stop and drop the sword. The boy let it fall, and it hit the grass with a heavy thud. Alaric's hands were shaking so violently he couldn't even make a fist.
Bram walked over to the pile of river stones.
"Your arms are like jelly. Now we train the part of you that will actually keep you alive when the Church inevitably realizes you aren't as 'empty' as they think. Sit."
Alaric collapsed into ground. Gram Hilson hopped down from the wall, his heavy boots thumping on the ground. He walked over, his face etched with a mixture of pride and pity.
"Bram, he's five," Gram said softly. "Even the black sun Academy doesn't start resistance training until the children reach the Intermediate rank."
The black sun Academy produces soldiers," Bram countered, his eyes fixed on Alaric. "I'm producing a survivor. The Church's greatest weapon isn't their light, Gram.
It's their Aura. When a Saint rank or a High Seer enters a room, their sheer presence can paralyze a Novice. They call it Divine Majesty. I call it spiritual bullying. If you can't breathe under the weight of a Master, you'll never live long enough to become one."
Bram's expression shifted. The air in the grove suddenly grew cold. The birds in the nearby trees stopped singing. Alaric felt a crushing, invisible weight press down on his head, his shoulders, his very lungs. It was the Aura of an peak expert rank.
It wasn't the violation of the High Seer—that had been a scalpel in his soul. This was a hammer.
"Resist it," Bram growled. "Don't push back with your mana; you don't have enough to win a tug of war with me. Close your pores. Harden your skin. Imagine your soul is a fortress of iron, and my will is just the wind howling against the stone. The wind can scream, but the stone doesn't move."
Alaric closed his eyes. The pressure was immense. He felt like he was at the bottom of a deep ocean, the water trying to squeeze the air out of his heart.
[ Notification: Host Undergoing high-level external pressure ]
I will not kneel, Alaric thought. I have lived a lifetime of failure. I will not be crushed by the 'intent' of a mortal.
[ Resisting... ]
He focused on the Destruction Essence. He didn't release it, but he used it as an anchor. The dark, dense energy acted like a lead weight in his gut, keeping him grounded.
"He's... he's not flinching," Gram whispered, his hand going to the hilt of his hammer. "Bram, look at his face."
Alaric's face was a mask of cold, terrifying stillness. A single bead of sweat rolled down his nose, but his breathing, though shallow, was rhythmic.
[ New Skill Passive Acquired: Physical Resistance (Novice) ]
[ New Skill Passive Acquired: Mental Fortitude (Novice) ]
"That's enough bram" Gram said, stepping forward and placing a hand on Bram's shoulder. The pressure vanished instantly
Alaric gasped, his chest heaving as the air rushed back in. He looked up at Bram, his eyes momentarily flashing a deep, predatory crimson before the Mana Veil snapped back into place.
Deep within his soul, in that dark space where the seed of destruction resided, seed felt the insult of his weakness. The Destruction Essence wasn't a passive pool of mana. it was a hungry, sentient- destructive force. It didn't understand "training." It only understood destruction.
Why do you suffer? it seemed to tempting alaric through the marrow of his bones.
I can turn this man to ash. Give me the reins, and you will never feel tired again.
Alaric felt his vision flicker. The green grass of the grove seemed to dim, replaced by a grey, ash-choked landscape of his past life's regrets.
The urge to let go was intoxicating. If he released just 1% of the essence, the body would feel light as a feather, but the resulting shockwave would likely kill Bram and alert every Person within a hundred miles.
He had to fight on two fronts, against the gravity of the sword and the gravity of his own destruction nature.
He used his Soul as a mental anchor, visualizing his mind as a library under siege. He shoved the temptation of destruction back into the depths of his soul, slamming with the weight of his Willpower.
"No," he hissed through gritted teeth. "I will build this body with my own hands. I won't be a puppet to my own power."
The sweat pouring down his face wasn't just from the weight. it was the moisture of a man fighting a fire inside his own heart.
"You're a strange one, Alaric Silverlane," Bram said, his voice unusually quiet. He reached out and offered Alaric a hand, pulling the boy to his feet.
"Most men I know grown men, Advanced rank warriors—would have been on their knees weeping under that pressure. Why didn't you?
Alaric wiped the sweat from his forehead, his voice small and tired. "The stone doesn't move, Master Bram. You said so yourself."
Bram shared a long, meaningful look with Gram Hilson. There was a new kind of fear in their eyes—the kind of fear a man has when he realizes he's holding a lightning bolt by the tail.
"Enough ," Bram barked, seeing Alaric's knees tremble. He didn't offer a hand, but he did stop the drill. He leaned against his own sword, looking out toward the southern horizon.
"Do you know why we call our land the Black Sun Empire, Alaric? And why our sword arts are so ugly
Alaric wiped sweat from his eyes. Because we aren't the Church?"
Bram snorted. "The Church has their 'Light.' They fight with grace because they believe the Heavens are watching. But the Black Sun was forged in the shadow of the Demon Invasions.
A thousand years ago, when the first Demon Kings crawled out of the demon realm, they didn't care about 'honorable duels.' They ate the heroes and laughed at the poets.
He picked up a sword and swung it in a brutal, efficient arc that ended in a jarring stop.
"Our ancestors realized that against a demon, speed and precision aren't enough.
You need lethality. You need to be able to kill a creature that has three hearts and regenerates its skin in seconds. That's why the 'Vanguard's Shadow' exists. It's not about the 'Light'—it's about the eclipse.
We are the shadow that the Black Sun casts over the monsters."
Bram looked at Alaric with a grim intensity. "When you hold that sword, you aren't a knight. You are a butcher of monsters. You don't aim for the shield, you aim for the throat. You don't wait for an opening, you break their guard with raw, unyielding pressure.
The Church calls it 'barbaric.' I call it the only reason humans still exist on Myhria. If you want to survive the things that live in the dark, you have to become darker than they are."
Gram watched the boy and the tutor, his hand subconsciously rubbing a scar on his forearm
He remembered a night twenty years ago, during the Siege of city. The sky had been choked with the soot of burning catapults. Silas Silverlane had been a young Lord then, and Gram had been his shield-bearer. A General -rank demon, a winged monstrosity with eyes like molten sulfur, had shattered their line.
Gram had fallen, his ribs crushed, watching as the demon closed its claws around Silas's throat.
But Silas hadn't begged. He had looked the demon in the eye with a cold, desperate ferocity, stabbing a broken dagger into the creature's eye again and again.
It was that moment—that refusal to break—that had allowed Gram to find the strength to swing his hammer and end the demon.
Looking at Alaric now, Gram saw that same spark but it was amplified, refined into something colder. Silas was a man trying to survive, Gram thought, his heart heavy.
But this boy Alaric looks like he is trying to rewrite the laws of the world. God help us, Silas, what have we brought into this world.
After training over, gram called the Alaric.
"Listen to me, Alaric," Gram said, kneeling so he was at eye level with the boy. "What we did today, you must never show it. Not to the servants. Especially not to your mother. Elara loves you, but she is soft of heart. If she sees the bruises, she'll stop the training. And if she stops the training, you'll be defenseless when the 'chruch' comes looking for you again."
I know, Uncle Gram," Alaric said, the word 'Uncle' tasting like a necessary lie, yet carrying a grain of truth. Gram was the only person in this world who felt like an ally rather than a parent or a teacher.
"Good. Now, get to the baths," Gram patted his shoulder. "I've told the maids you fell into the rock garden while playing. Stick to the story."
"That boy isn't a Novice, Gram.
"I know," Gram replied.