Date: May 24, 541 years since the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored.
The main reception hall of the Agrim estate resembled the belly of a huge stone beast, cold and indifferent to the fates of those inside. The high vaults were lost in the pre-dawn shadows, and the narrow stained-glass windows let through only dim, painfully crimson rays of the rising sun. It smelled of old stone, polished wood, and something indefinably metallic—the scent of discipline, which in this house had been raised to an absolute.
Sarim Agrim, the steward of Ligra, stood at the massive table, his hands clasped behind his back. His face, usually inscrutable, today seemed carved from gray granite. Master Koh was positioned in the shadow of one of the columns, his massive figure motionless, but Dur felt the tension emanating from him. The air in the hall was so thick you could almost cut it with a knife.
Dur and Maël stood slightly behind, still feeling the echoes of yesterday's grueling day in their muscles. Dur felt his energy slowly circulating through his channels, repairing damaged fibers. After Koh's words about the "Flow," he had begun to treat his body differently—not as a tool, but as a fortress to be strengthened from within every hour, every minute.
Suddenly, the heavy oak doors, bound with strips of meteoric iron, parted silently. It wasn't a procession that entered the hall, nor guardsmen. Only a single figure stood there.
A woman.
She was dressed in unusual, loose, multi-layered garments of light gray silk, which billowed even when she stood still, as if living their own ghostly life. Her dark hair was arranged in an intricate hairstyle, pinned with a silver hairpin, and her face... it was frighteningly calm and yet surprisingly alive. On her belt, in a simple leather sheath, rested a long surgical scalpel—an instrument that in her hands seemed more dangerous than any sword.
Maël shuddered. His pupils dilated, and his breath caught for a moment. "Aunt..." escaped his lips in a barely audible whisper.
Sarim Agrim stepped forward and bowed his head in a deep, respectful bow. "The Inner Circle has honored us with its presence. Welcome home, Divilla."
The woman didn't answer immediately. She slowly surveyed the hall with her gaze. Her eyes, the color of a cold stormy sky, lingered for a moment on Dur, and he felt his Vessel involuntarily contract, instinctively trying to protect his vital centers. It wasn't the pressure of a Spirit; it was something else—a feeling of absolute superiority, as if a predator were looking at an insect.
"Sarim," Divilla's voice was soft as silk, but the vibration of a taut steel string was felt in it. "Spare me the ceremonies."
She began to move towards the center of the hall. She didn't walk—she glided. Dur, whose senses were sharpened by training, realized with horror that he couldn't hear the sound of her steps on the marble. As if she barely touched the surface.
Stopping three paces from Maël, she smiled. This smile instantly transformed her face, making it warm and almost kind. "Maël," she reached out and lightly touched his shoulder. "Your father said you had become like a stick, but I see Koh has done a good job on your foundation. You smell like a true Agrim—sweat, steel, and will."
Maël visibly relaxed under her gaze. "Aunt Divilla... I didn't expect it to be you who came. Father didn't write about it."
"Your father is busy holding the empire together," Divilla turned away from him, and her gaze became sharp again, like her scalpel. "Alvost has stopped whispering at the borders. Valerius has begun the harvest. The Inner Circle has decided that Ligra has given you enough theory. It's time for practice."
She looked at Dur. "And this, I take it, is that 'wild Vessel' Sarim reported on? The one walking the path of pure energy? Curious. Rare to meet someone who voluntarily chooses a path without the intermediary of a Spirit."
Dur didn't know what to answer. He stood straight, trying not to show agitation, although his hunter's instincts screamed of the deadly danger emanating from this woman. She seemed to him the embodiment of that very power Koh spoke of, but raised to an absolute.
"Divilla is here to take you," Sarim said coldly. "You will spend a month under her tutelage before you are deployed to the Eastern Frontier."
"A month?" Maël was surprised. "But why..."
At that moment, something happened that Dur wouldn't have been able to explain, even if his life depended on it. Maël was holding his training knife in his hand—he was used to not letting go of it even in formal halls. The next moment, without the slightest sound or flash, Maël suddenly realized that in his hand, instead of the knife, was a small porcelain cup of half-drunk tea, which a second ago had been standing on Sarim's table ten meters away from them. And Divilla, who had been standing in the same place, now thoughtfully twirled his knife in her fingers.
She hadn't moved. There was no rush. Space had simply... changed.
"Here, Maël," she said quietly, returning the knife to him (this time with an ordinary hand movement). "The world is not just straight lines and sword strikes. It is knots that can be untied and tied in new ways."
She approached the table, on which now, instead of the cup, lay a small coin. "The Agrim family stands on three pillars: discipline, sobriety, firmness. Here in Ligra, you've become too relaxed. You eat your fill, you sleep in warmth. But most importantly—your minds are not yet cleansed."
Divilla turned to Dur. "You know, don't you, Dur? In our house, drinking spirits is not encouraged. No smoking, no tinctures that cloud the vision. He who seeks oblivion in poisons is unworthy of wielding energy. The mind must be like this scalpel—clean, cold, and ready to dissect the very fabric of being."
She paused, and her gaze became serious. "For this month, you will forget what rest is. We will run until your legs become leaden. We will lift weights until your sinews begin to burst. And only when you have rid your bodies and souls of everything superfluous, will you be ready to face what is coming from the East."
Dur listened to her, and a strange feeling grew within him. It wasn't fear, but awe before a power he couldn't even comprehend. Divilla wasn't just in the Inner Circle for her beautiful eyes. She was a living weapon, capable of changing reality at will.
"Koh," Divilla nodded to the master, who had remained in the shadows. "You have prepared their bodies. I will prepare their will. Tomorrow at dawn we begin. No leniency for my nephew, no discounts for the 'wild Vessel.'"
She turned gracefully towards the exit, her gray garments billowing smoothly. "And, Sarim... remove that apple wine from the cellars. It smells of weakness even through the stone floor. In this house, only steel and will should smell."
Divilla left, leaving behind a trail of frosty air and ringing silence. Maël looked at the cup in his hand, then at Dur. His face was pale, but in his eyes burned a fire Dur had only seen in moments of the most intense training.
"We're in for it, Dur," Maël whispered. "But it seems this is exactly what we need to not die in the first battle."
Dur nodded, feeling his inner energy begin to boil in anticipation. A month was beginning that would forever change their understanding of what it meant to be strong. Life was just opening its doors, and behind them, the heroes awaited not just sweat, but a rebirth.
When the heavy doors closed behind Divilla, the echo of her words vibrated in the hall for a long time. Sarim Agrim slowly walked to the window, behind which Ligra was drowning in the pre-dawn gloom. His shoulders, usually squared, sagged for a moment, as if the presence of the woman from the Inner Circle had drained all his strength.
Master Koh emerged from the shadow of the column. His heavy boots thudded hollowly on the marble, breaking the oppressive silence. "You heard her, Sarim," he boomed, rubbing his weary neck. "She's not joking. If she thinks the city smells of weakness, then tomorrow those boys will be coughing up blood."
Maël stood, still clutching the very cup Divilla had moved from the table. His fingers were white with tension. "She was always like that," he said quietly, addressing Dur more than the mentors. "As a child, I saw her train in the capital. She could stand motionless for hours, watching falling leaves, and then—one gesture, and all the leaves would be neatly stacked in a pile at her feet. She doesn't fight the world, Dur. She rearranges it."
Dur nodded silently. He was trying to analyze what he had seen. His eyes, trained to track game in dense thickets, had registered not the slightest transition. Maël simply stopped holding the knife and started holding the cup. The space between them hadn't shrunk—it had collapsed.
"Go," Sarim turned, and his gaze became cold and businesslike again. "Eat and rest. Divilla knows no word for 'mercy.' To her, you are not an heir or a protégé, but raw material. Koh prepared your flesh; she will deal with your perception."
Leaving the hall, Dur and Maël headed towards their quarters. The corridors of the estate now seemed narrower and more oppressive. Servants they met pressed against the walls, bowing low. The news of Divilla's arrival had spread through the house like wildfire.
"Did you see her scalpel?" asked Dur, when they stepped onto an open terrace to shorten the path. "It's not just a tool," Maël leaned against the stone railing, looking east. "It's made of meteoric iron that conducts energy, and also cuts it. With Divilla's Spirit, that scalpel becomes part of space itself."
As Dur later learned from Maël, Divilla was at Level 5—Adept. The gap between them was not just in power, but in the very quality of existence. She perceived reality as a chessboard, while they were still just trying to hold the pieces in their hands.
"She mentioned a month," Dur shifted his gaze to the horizon. "So, in thirty days, we'll really be there? On the front line?" "If we survive this month," Maël chuckled nervously. "Aunt Divilla loves monotony. My father says she can make you repeat the same strike ten thousand times, until your muscles act before your brain sends the signal."
The evening passed in tense anticipation. Unusual bustle reigned in the estate's dining hall—cooks were preparing supplies for the journey, and quartermasters were checking the quality of leather for new saddles. Dur ate mechanically, consuming the high-calorie porridge with meat. He knew: tomorrow, his body would need every crumb of this energy.
Before sleep, Dur sat on his bed for a long time, trying to enter a state of "rooting." He imagined his energy becoming thick as resin, filling his Vessel to the brim. He felt he was on the verge of something grand. Divilla's arrival had become the catalyst that tore them from the cozy routine of Ligra.
Morning began not with a gong or Koh's shout. Dur opened his eyes and sat up instantly. Divilla was sitting on the edge of his bed. She was in the same gray garments, and her gaze in the semi-darkness of the room seemed luminous.
"You're awake," she stated. "Good reaction. Your Vessel is vibrating. It means you sense approaching danger."
She stood up and headed for the door. "Get dressed. I'm waiting for you on the lower training ground in three minutes. Whoever is late will spend the day counting sand grains in hourglasses. One by one. By hand."
Dur and Maël were out of the room in thirty seconds. On the lower training ground, hidden from the view of the main garrison by high walls, it was damp and cold. Mist from the valley rose here, enveloping the stones in a damp veil.
Divilla stood in the center, holding two heavy leather bags filled, judging by the sound, with fine shot. "Run," she commanded curtly. "Five laps around the perimeter of the estate. With these bags in your hands. But there's a condition: every hundred steps, I will swap your places with Maël."
The heroes exchanged glances. "What for?" Dur ventured to ask. "To get your bodies used to instantaneous changes in inertia," Divilla tossed her scalpel and caught it deftly. "It's a shock to the vestibular system and energy channels. If you don't learn to restore balance in a split second, in battle you'll simply fall and never get up again."
She snapped her fingers, and the bags in her hands vanished, instantly appearing in the hands of Dur and Maël. The jerk of the weight was so sudden that Maël nearly pitched forward onto the stones.
"Time's running!" Divilla commanded.
And they ran. The first lap seemed like an ordinary exhausting exercise, the kind they were used to with Koh. But on the second lap, when Dur was just starting to find his breathing rhythm, the world around him suddenly "collapsed."
One second he was running ahead, looking at the empty path, and the next—right in front of his face was Maël's back, and in his hands was the weight of the bags, whose inertia pulled him in a completely different direction. Dur stumbled, his feet tangled, and he tumbled head over heels down the gravel.
"Slow!" Divilla's voice came from somewhere above. "Dur, your Flow must stabilize your center of gravity even before your eyes register the change. Again!"
It was hell. Every few minutes, Divilla "swapped" them. They collided with each other, fell, their insides twisted by the constant spatial jumps. By the middle of the third lap, Dur was feeling nauseous, and Maël looked as if he'd been through a rock crusher.
"In the Agrim family, we don't count steps to victory," Divilla walked slowly beside them, her steps light and silent. "We count the mistakes that lead to defeat."
Dur got up, spitting out dust. His energy channels burned, but a new, cold fury began to be born inside his Vessel. He looked at Maël—he too was getting up, his Form trembling finely, trying to adapt to the insane rhythm of the training.
They ran again. The city of Ligra below them was slowly awakening, unaware that on the hilltop, two young men were learning to break the very nature of movement under the watchful eye of a woman whose scalpel was ready to cut the sky. The month of training had only just begun, and its first day already smelled not of honey, but of salty blood and iron.