Chapter 134: The Weight of the Blade
"You train alone until I say otherwise."
Sylas’s words echoed in the vast underground chamber long after the assassin had departed. Soren remained kneeling on the stone floor, the practice sword lying where it had fallen from his grasp. His breath came in ragged gasps, each inhale pulling against muscles that screamed in protest.
When he finally rose, his legs trembled beneath him like a newborn colt’s. The bruises from yesterday’s session had barely begun to fade before today’s had layered fresh pain atop old. He retrieved the practice sword, its weight suddenly awkward in his hand.
Alone. Again.
The emptiness of the Veiled Hand’s training hall pressed against him from all sides. Without the assassins’ presence, the chamber felt larger, colder, ancient stone holding centuries of secrets in its worn surface. Only the blue-green lanterns provided companionship, their steady glow casting his solitary shadow across the floor.
Soren began the first form again, moving through the sequence Sylas had demonstrated three days prior. His muscles protested each motion, but he pushed through the resistance, focusing on maintaining proper alignment. The whisper of steel cutting air and the soft scrape of his feet against stone were the only sounds in the cavernous space.
By the tenth repetition, sweat plastered his shirt to his back despite the underground chill. By the twentieth, his arms burned as if bathed in fire. Still, he continued.
Fall. Rise. Begin again.
The shard against his chest remained cool, a counterpoint to his overheated skin. Valenna’s presence lingered at the edges of his awareness, watchful but quiet. She offered no mystical insights, no cryptic pronouncements, just occasional practical corrections when his focus slipped.
’Balance your weight,’ she whispered when he leaned too far into a lunge. ’Your center is drifting.’
Soren adjusted, shifting his weight back between his feet as instructed. The improvement was immediate, his stance stabilized, the blade’s path cleaner through the air.
Hours blurred together, marked only by his body’s changing complaints. The sharp pain of exertion gradually transformed into a deeper ache of adaptation. Each repetition became marginally smoother than the last, each fall a little less jarring, each recovery a fraction faster.
’Precision, then speed,’ Valenna reminded him when frustration pushed him to move faster than his control allowed. Her voice remained calm, practical, a teacher rather than an enigma.
Soren slowed, focusing on making each motion exact before attempting to quicken his pace. The discipline chafed against his impatience, but he couldn’t argue with the results. By mid-afternoon, he could complete the sequence with a fluidity that had been absent that morning.
Days passed in similar fashion. Wake before the others. Train until exhaustion claimed him. Sleep the dreamless sleep of physical depletion. Begin again with the dawn. The isolation should have bothered him more, perhaps, but after the Cathedral’s interrogation chambers and the constant threat of immolation, solitude felt almost like luxury.
On the fifth day, the pattern broke.
"Your footwork is sloppy."
Soren turned sharply, blade instinctively rising to guard position. Mira stood in the eastern entrance, leaning against a pillar with arms crossed over her chest. The blue-green light caught the edges of her tattoos, making them seem to writhe across her skin like living things.
"Sylas said I train alone," Soren replied, lowering the practice sword.
Mira’s mouth curved in what might have been amusement. "Sylas says to keep you from dying. I’ll settle for keeping you from embarrassing yourself." She pushed away from the pillar, moving toward him with predatory grace. "Your back foot slides on the third transition. It’ll get you killed against anyone with decent training."
She demonstrated the correct position, her movements economical and precise. No wasted energy, no unnecessary flourish, just deadly efficiency distilled into human form.
Soren mimicked her stance, adjusting his foot placement as indicated. The change felt awkward at first, working against muscle memory he’d been building for days. Then something clicked into place, a sense of rightness, of balance previously missing.
"Again," Mira commanded, circling him with critical eyes. "The whole sequence."
He complied, moving through the form with the correction incorporated. The improvement was immediate and dramatic, what had been a moment of vulnerability transformed into a smooth transition, power flowing unbroken through the movement.
"Better." She made another adjustment to his elbow position, her touch brief and impersonal. "Containment here means control throughout."
For the next hour, she continued offering corrections, always curt, always precise. Each change built upon the last, transforming his practice from adequate to effective. Soren absorbed every instruction, his body adapting with a speed that surprised even him.
As he completed the sequence again, incorporating all her corrections, he caught Mira studying him with narrowed eyes. Something in her expression had shifted from professional assessment to something closer to unease.
"You learn wrong," she said finally, her voice oddly flat.
Soren lowered his blade, breathing hard from exertion. "Wrong?"
"Too fast." Her tattooed face remained expressionless, but her eyes had hardened. "Like you’re remembering stuff, not learning."
The observation struck too close to Valenna’s words. The shard pulsed cold against his chest, though her presence remained silent. Soren opened his mouth to respond, but found no words that wouldn’t reveal too much.
Mira watched his silence, her gaze uncomfortably perceptive. Whatever she might have said next was interrupted by a new presence in the chamber.
Sylas stood in the doorway, tall and predatory, those unsettling green eyes taking in the scene with calculated interest. He had appeared without sound, as was his habit, there one moment where empty space had been the moment before.
"Enough drills," he said, his cultured voice carrying across the stone floor. "Spar."
Mira looked between them, something unspoken passing across her tattooed features. Without comment, she stepped back, taking a position against the nearest pillar.
Sylas retrieved a practice blade from the wall rack, testing its balance with a casual flick of his wrist. He moved to the center of the training floor, his steps so precisely placed it seemed as if he measured each one.
"Begin," he said, blade lowering into guard position.
The first exchanges were brutal. Sylas moved with fluid speed that made Soren’s improved techniques seem childish by comparison. Each strike came from an unexpected angle, each defense transforming seamlessly into counter-attack. Soren found himself driven back across the floor, barely managing to parry blows that would have ended the match instantly had they connected.
His defenses crumbled under the onslaught. A particularly vicious series of strikes left him off-balance, his guard too wide, his recovery too slow. Defeat seemed inevitable—
Until something shifted.
The change came not as conscious decision but as physical certainty. One moment Soren fought with desperate technique; the next, his body simply... knew. Blade met blade with perfect timing, his feet finding positions he’d never practiced, weight shifting with uncanny precision.
The shard remained cool against his skin, its pulse steady and strong. Valenna’s voice stayed silent, yet he felt her presence like an open door behind him, not directing, not controlling, simply... there.
His movements flowed with sudden efficiency, almost elegance. Each parry connected to counter-strike with organic inevitability. His breathing steadied, his vision sharpened, the world narrowing to the perfect geometry of combat.
For a handful of heartbeats, Soren held even against Sylas’s expertise. Not winning, that would have been impossible, but matching him, meeting force with appropriate response, finding the narrow path between aggression and caution.
Then Sylas changed tactics. A feint became something else entirely, his blade sweeping under Soren’s guard with serpentine precision. The practice sword spun from Soren’s grasp, clattering across the stone floor. Before he could react, Sylas’s blade completed its arc, the edge slicing a shallow cut across Soren’s forearm.
Pain flared, bright and immediate. Blood welled from the thin line, droplets falling to the stone floor beneath.
Sylas stepped back, wiping his blade clean with methodical care. Only then did Soren become aware of other presences in the chamber, assassins had gathered at some point during their exchange, silent observers to whatever had just happened.
"He shouldn’t have lasted that long," Mira said, breaking the silence. Her voice carried notes of professional assessment undercut with something less certain.
Sylas studied the thin line of Soren’s blood on his cloth. "He’s learning faster than I can measure. Or something’s teaching him."
"No," came another voice from the shadows. Naeria stepped forward, her gray eyes fixed on Soren with scholarly intensity. "Something’s using him."
The accusation hung in the air, sharp as the blade that had drawn Soren’s blood. Sylas didn’t acknowledge it directly, his green eyes never leaving Soren’s face.
"You’ll train with me at dawn," he said flatly. The words formed an order, but Soren recognized the test beneath them.
One by one, they left, Sylas first, followed by his silent assassins, Mira lingering a moment longer before disappearing into the corridor beyond. Naeria remained the longest, her gaze calculating, measuring, before finally turning away.
Alone again, Soren sank to the floor, cradling his bleeding arm. He stared at the drops of his blood on the ancient stone, each one a perfect crimson circle against gray.
"You moved like one," Valenna’s voice came softly in his mind, breaking her silence at last. Not accusation, not pride, simply observation of an undeniable truth.
Soren had no answer. His blood continued to fall, marking the stone with evidence of whatever he was becoming.