So Soren let himself slip, just once, as the paler boy charged. He let the blade come close, let it bite into the flexor of his arm before using the momentum to drive his shoulder into Cassian's chest, knocking the wind out of him and landing them both hard on the rain-soaked ground.

The impact jarred Soren's teeth, but he came up faster, jamming the cold metal across Cassian's collarbone before feeling the hands clamp around his own, trying to break the hold.

It unspooled from there in shouts and boots and the smell of blood gone to copper in the wet grass. Soren's vision tunneled, but he saw Kale drag another Blue fighter down, saw the transfer drop out with a broken blade, saw the twins, finally, gloriously, succeed in pinning Aria against the nave with what looked like a shared headlock.

Seren's position never changed. She stood, blade at rest, monitoring every kinetic shift. When the signal bell rang, once, twice, then the long, final peal, Soren realized they'd held the field.

He rolled off Cassian, propped himself on one elbow, and waited for the next move. Cassian didn't spit, didn't curse. He only looked at Soren with an expression so blank, so wiped of earlier calculation, that for a moment it made Soren nauseous to be looked at that way. Like a blueprint, or a mirror with the backing peeled off.

Their match was already over, but the tremor in Soren's hands wouldn't stop. He pressed the cut on his arm, watched the twin lines of blood seeping through the skin, and let the ache remind him of the rules: never escalate, never give back more than you're willing to have taken.

Kale offered a hand up, grinning wide and wild in the face, then promptly swore when Soren's weight nearly toppled him. "Beautiful," Kale whispered, low enough for only Soren to hear, "I thought you were dead at least three times."

"Me too," Soren said, and for a heartbeat, he almost laughed.

Behind him, Cassian was already on his feet, collecting the broken halves of his blade as though reconstructing the scene of his own defeat. He said nothing, only stalked toward the instructors with the gait of someone who would rewrite this moment again and again in his head until it became a story he could survive.

The world outside the hollow was brighter than before; the mist risen into sunlight. Soren could see the Academy's highest windows in the distance, reflecting gold, as though the Spire itself had decided to briefly pay attention.

The debrief happened an hour later, after wounds were cleaned and clothes swapped out for dry. In the main hall they assembled, Gray and Blue intermingled, the lines now blurry as the purpled bruises that mottled every wrist and cheekbone.

Dane stood at the head, hair still loose but body squared inside the uniform once more. He waited three beats after the room fell silent, then addressed the group in the tone reserved for funerals and midwinter verdicts.

"There are lessons in simulation, and lessons you bleed for. Today, both were on display." He eyed the cohort, and Soren had the uncanny sense that the Swordmaster saw not just individuals, but the pattern underneath, all the error, repetition, and occasional, accidental grace.

He called out Aria for making a "tactical withdrawal" after injury. He cited Kale for "tactical improvisation," which everyone took as code for breaking things not meant to be broken. He named the twins "force multipliers," a turn of phrase that left them beaming at each other and then pretending they hadn't.

When he turned to Soren, he didn't state a critique, only let the silence pile up. Every eye in the room drifted to Soren, then away, then back, until it became obvious what was demanded.

"He advanced without signal, sir," Soren said, keeping his hands behind his back.

Dane's mouth twitched. "And your response?"

Soren didn't say it, didn't need to. The cut on his arm, still visibly bandaged, spoke louder than any answer.

Dane nodded, then shifted focus. "Next time, make your intention clear before you escalate. If you must escalate, end it so no one else can pay the price." For a moment, Soren heard nothing but the click and grind of the wall clock above, the sound measured and absolute.

The instructors filed out, leaving the cohort in the centrifugal quiet of the aftermath.

Kale touched Soren's shoulder, just once. "I'll buy you a drink when they allow us liquor. Or a decent sleep, if that comes first." He left without waiting for a reply. The twins giggled together, whispering a running recap of the fight; the transfer, Jannek, already wore a new bandage like it was a war medal.

Soren waited for the room to empty before approaching Seren, who stood by the window, watching the mist settle over the yard.

"I think you did well," she said, voice so dry it might have blown away in the wind if not for the conviction in it.

"You saw it," Soren said, nodding toward the field.

She shrugged, neat and economical. "We all saw it." She paused, then: "It's different than the theory. Out there, you either finish first, or the world finishes you."

He looked at her, tried to gauge if this was comfort or critique, but could not tell. Didn't matter. He had the echo of the fight still bouncing through his head. He pressed the bandage hard, felt the warmth bleed into the cold, and tried to decide which sensation to trust.

"Same time tomorrow?" Seren asked, not looking at him.

"Sure," Soren said.

He let the rhythm set in, the routine sharpening itself around the points of injury and near-misses.

He wondered, idly, what it would take for the instructors to stop calling it "training" and admit what it was.

That evening, he lay on his bunk, arm stretched out raw and gleaming in the lamplight. He let the weight of exhaustion push him flat, bones soaked in the dregs of adrenaline and a rising, gnawing need for stillness.

The corridor outside sang with muffled laughter, boots clapping, arguments already brewing over the retelling of the morning's battle. Through the half-closed window, the air smelled like night rain and wet stone.

He thought back over every movement: Cassian's lunge, the counter, the shock of metal on flesh, the sound of his own breath forced out through gritted teeth.

He remembered the empty look on Cassian's face at the end, and the strange charge of recognition that had passed between them in those seconds spent fighting for more than the scoreboard.

He should have felt pride, maybe. Instead, he felt a kind of vertigo: at how close the edge was, how thin the line between method and letting something older take the lead.

The hollow ache in his hand pulsed in time with the rhythm at his chest. The shard in his ribcage hummed, not a warning this time but a simple, ceaseless reminder.

"Keep it contained," he murmured to the ceiling, wondering if Valenna, or someone else, was listening.

From outside, the Spire's evening bells tolled the hour, slow and immense. Soren let the sound roll over him, one peal at a time, until sleep caught him up and drilled his memory through with the shape of fight, the shape of blade, and the shape of the person he was supposed to become.

The next three days wound up like a coil: more drills, more sparring, doubled runs through mist and mud until Soren's hands shredded and rebuilt new skin just in time to get cut again.

Cassian staged a comeback, of course, and Soren responded not by repelling but by absorbing, matching every escalation with containment, until it became sport for the others to guess who'd walk away the least maimed.

After each exercise, the instructors posted the new rankings. Each time, Soren's name locked at the top, Cassian's always directly beneath, the twins and Seren climbing incrementally. No mention of the cuts, the bruises, the cost.

One night, Soren found himself at the refectory just before close, the place empty except for the cleaner's cart and the clatter of saucepans in the kitchen.

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