Chapter 46 — Weight of the Aftermath
Greyhaven took longer to settle than Arlen expected.
For the better part of two weeks after the creature’s destruction, the city carried a subdued, watchful quality that hadn’t fully faded even once Vessa Thorne’s team departed for the capital, leaving behind only a small residual detachment tasked with monitoring the sealed ruin site. Conversations at the tavern still carried an edge they hadn’t before Millbrook. Fewer solo quests went out past the outer forest without at least one companion along, even for tasks that had never previously warranted the caution.
Arlen understood the shift better than most, though he found himself, in quieter moments, grateful that ordinary routine gradually reasserted itself regardless — quests posted and completed, coin earned and spent, the guild hall’s familiar noise slowly returning to something like its usual rhythm.
He spent much of that first week simply healing the rest of the way, his ribs fully mended now according to Aria’s final assessment, and turned his attention, once his body no longer demanded rest, toward the promise he’d written into his journal during recovery.
Get stronger. Properly. Deliberately.
The question, he discovered quickly, was less about wanting to train and more about figuring out exactly what proper training actually looked like. He’d spent his entire adventuring life so far building skill through practical necessity — reading guild texts, asking careful questions, testing himself against real quests rather than structured drills. That approach had served him well enough, but Millbrook had made plain the limits of it. He needed something more deliberate now. Something that built strength methodically, rather than simply reacting to whatever challenge presented itself next.
He raised the question with Mina first, trusting her practical knowledge of the guild’s resources.
"Aura training," she said, when he explained what he was looking for. "Formal instruction, not just self-teaching?"
"I think so. I want something structured. Real technique, not just whatever I manage to piece together on my own."
Mina considered that for a moment, then nodded slowly. "There’s a retired warrior who takes on private students, works out of a modest yard near the Smith’s District. Garrett Vane — used to run with a mercenary company two decades back, before an old injury slowed him down enough to retire properly. Good reputation. Strict, from what I’ve heard, but thorough."
"Expensive?"
"Reasonably. He charges by the month rather than the lesson — keeps students committed rather than dabbling. I don’t know his exact rate, you’ll want to ask him directly, but it’s not cheap enough that you should go in without having actually saved for it."
Arlen thanked her and spent the following two days doing exactly what he always did before any significant decision — gathering information carefully, weighing the cost against what he could genuinely afford, before committing to anything.
He found Garrett Vane’s training yard tucked behind a modest house near the edge of the Smith’s District, a simple, sturdy fence enclosing a patch of hard-packed dirt marked with the wear of countless drills. Garrett himself proved to be a broad, weathered man in his sixties, moving with the particular careful economy of someone whose body no longer forgave careless motion, though the strength still evident beneath that caution suggested his fighting days, however past, hadn’t left him entirely.
"Mina sent you," Garrett said, more statement than question, sizing Arlen up with a critical, unhurried eye. "Rank E, she said. What’s your combat experience?"
Arlen gave him the honest version — the jackals, the wasps, Millbrook, though he kept the full details of that last engagement appropriately vague. Garrett listened without interruption, nodding occasionally, his expression unreadable.
"You’ve survived more than most Rank E adventurers your age," he said finally. "Instinct’s clearly served you well. Instinct alone will only carry you so far, though. Real technique’s what separates someone who survives dangerous situations from someone who actually controls them."
"That’s exactly what I’m hoping to learn."
Garrett studied him a moment longer. "Aura training isn’t fast. I won’t promise you results in weeks, or even months, necessarily. Some students Awaken within a season of dedicated work. Others take years. Depends on the person, and frankly, depends on how much effort you’re actually willing to put in versus how much you’re hoping talent alone carries you."
"I understand."
"Do you." Garrett’s tone carried the faint skepticism of a man who’d heard similar assurances from countless eager students before. "Three silver a month, paid in advance. Training three days a week, minimum, more if you can manage the time around your quest work. I expect punctuality, and I expect you to actually practice on the days you’re not here, not just show up and expect the yard alone to make you stronger."
"Agreed," Arlen said, already calculating the cost against his savings — manageable, if not entirely comfortable, especially alongside his ordinary living expenses.
He paid the first month’s fee on the spot, three silver counted out carefully, and Garrett accepted it with a brisk nod before immediately launching into what would become, Arlen quickly understood, an entirely ordinary evaluation session rather than any ceremony marking the occasion.
"Show me your basic stance," Garrett said. "Sword drawn, feet shoulder-width, same as you’d use facing an opponent."
Arlen complied, and Garrett circled him slowly, adjusting his grip with a firm, no-nonsense hand, correcting the angle of his shoulders, the distribution of his weight.
"Too much reliance on reaction," Garrett said, stepping back to survey the adjustment. "You move well once something’s already happening. Your foundation, before that moment, needs work. That’s where we’ll start."
They spent the remainder of that first session on nothing more glamorous than stance and breathing, Garrett correcting minor errors with patient, repeated attention, and Arlen found himself, by the session’s end, genuinely exhausted in a way that felt different from any quest he’d completed — not the sharp, adrenaline-driven fatigue of combat, but the slow, grinding tiredness of muscles being asked to hold a position correctly for the first time.
He wrote in his journal that evening, the ache in his legs and shoulders a strange, satisfying counterpoint to the words themselves.
Started formal Aura training today. Three silver a month, three sessions a week minimum. Garrett’s thorough, exactly as Mina described — and exactly as strict. We spent the entire first session on stance alone, nothing I’d call impressive by any measure, though I understand already why it matters.
This gives me something I didn’t fully have before — a legitimate, visible reason for whatever growth people notice in me going forward. Not just a convenient story, but something real happening in front of witnesses, alongside everything else that’s actually happening in private.
I intend to take this seriously. Not just as cover, though I won’t pretend that isn’t part of why I’m here. I want the real thing too — the discipline, the technique, the kind of foundation that doesn’t depend on luck or unexplained abilities to keep me alive the next time something like Millbrook happens.
He closed the journal, muscles still aching pleasantly, and found himself looking forward, with a steady, patient anticipation, to whatever the coming months of deliberate, grinding work might actually build in him.