Jacob had once been considered talented with the sword, a boy who, for a time, seemed to hold a natural gift for the art of combat, but that word, once, was important, because whatever spark of instinct or ease he had carried in those earlier years had long since abandoned him.

When he trained alone he convinced himself otherwise; the swings felt precise, the forms held their shape, the movements aligned with the images he carried in his mind, and he told himself that he was improving, that he was sharpening his edge with each hour. Yet the truth always revealed itself when he stood against someone real.

The truth was simple and cruel: he had been talented once, but his own way of thinking had smothered that talent. To pick up a sword and move without calculation, without prediction, seemed absurd to him.

If an enemy struck, the first step had to be understanding the nature of the strike, its angle, its force, its speed, and only then could one answer with the most appropriate counter. That was how he believed a swordsman should fight, as if battle was a puzzle to be solved rather than a storm to be endured, and to him it seemed the most reasonable path, a path fit for a scholar rather than a warrior.

But the flaw in this path revealed itself every time he sparred with Jessica. His mind was never quick enough, his thoughts always lagged behind his opponent's steel, and by the time he reached a conclusion, the moment for action had already passed. His counters came seconds too late, his parries turned into panicked flinches, and his body remained at the mercy of her blade.

And yet to adopt her way, to move without hesitation, to trust in instinct and strike without thought, that felt wrong, even dangerous. It felt like stepping off a ledge blindfolded, trusting the ground would be there to catch him, and Jacob could not silence the conviction that such recklessness would get him killed one day. He did not want to die, not by making a mistake so foolish as failing to think.

Still, two weeks had passed since he began sparring with her daily, and in that time he had not once lasted more than a dozen exchanges. Worse, the longer it went on the more muddled he became.

Where he should have been growing sharper, he instead found himself slowing, layering thought upon thought until even his first movements were delayed. He had even taken to drafting small plans in the quiet of night, trying to map responses to every scenario he could imagine, dividing and categorising each possibility until he thought he was prepared for anything.

And yet here he was, flat on the floor, the cold point of Jessica's blade pressing against his chest after only three pitiful moves. Three, barely long enough for him to even begin applying one of his carefully rehearsed solutions. He had not lasted, and there was no audience to laugh at him, no classmates to sneer, but the shame burned all the same, heavier than if the room had been filled with mocking voices.

"You're still thinking too much, Jacob. You can't fight like this." Jessica's voice reached him clearly enough, yet he barely allowed the words to settle in his mind, because he was already lost in the familiar spiral of possibilities and counter-possibilities.

His method could work, he was certain of it. There had to be a way to refine it, to trim the hesitation from his thoughts until calculation became as swift as instinct, until judgment was no longer madness but reason sharpened to a blade.

"You're not even listening to me anymore."

"My method can work," Jacob muttered, forcing her sword aside with a movement that lacked conviction before straightening and brushing the dust from his shirt with deliberate slowness, as though the act itself might steady the turmoil of his thoughts. "I just need to figure out how."

Jessica lowered her weapon slightly, watching him with the same mixture of frustration and patience she always carried when dealing with him. "You're too stubborn, Jacob."

He shook his head, his voice quiet but firm. "No. It can work. I just need more practice… more time."

And he believed it, with a stubbornness that dug its roots deeper the more she tried to dissuade him. It could work. His method could be made to work. If he practiced long enough, if he endured enough failures, eventually he would reach the point where thought moved fast enough to match the sword.

Perhaps it looked like regression from the outside, perhaps it even felt like it at times, but to him every falter, every mistake, was another stone placed along the path he was building in his own way.

"Let's spar again." His tone was almost defiant, as if to prove his own conviction by sheer repetition.

Jessica let out a soft breath, her lips curving into a small, wry smile as she lifted her blade once more. "Fine. As long as it takes to beat the stubbornness out of you."

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Jacob raised his own sword to meet her, and for a moment the room was still, the two of them poised at the edge of another clash. Then the silence was broken by the creak of hinges as the door swung open, the sound carrying far louder than it should have. Both siblings turned toward it in unison.

There in the doorway stood Arthur, black-haired and red-eyed, his hand rubbing the back of his neck in that sheepish, unbothered way that made it seem as though he had wandered in by accident rather than intent. "Hey," he said with a faint grin, "Alex told me you'd be here."

Jacob lowered his blade at once and slid it back into its sheath, his attention shifting to Arthur with a frown. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be training?"

And in that instant, as he asked the question, Jacob felt a sharp tug at the back of his mind, the sudden realisation of something he had been ignoring all along, something that had been waiting, quietly, for him to notice.

"Wait… why are you doing sword training instead of magic?" Jacob asked after a pause, his brow furrowing as the thought settled. At first, he had not even questioned it, after all, he himself trained with the sword for his own reasons, but Arthur was different, Arthur was a mage through and through, so why then did he spend nearly every day with Alex, sparring as though the blade were his true path?

Arthur tilted his head slightly, answering with casual ease. "Hmm, I train with Alex during the day, and I work on my magic at night. Don't you do the same?"

"Yes, of course I do," Jacob lied, his face carefully blank, the words leaving his mouth with a calmness that concealed the truth. He waited a moment before pressing, "But why the sword? What reason do you have to train with it?"

Arthur's expression brightened as if he had just remembered something trivial, and with a smile that bordered on careless he said, "Ah, I forgot to tell you. After the banquet incident, I managed to use aura as well. So now I'm both a knight and a mage."

Jacob froze, and for an instant he felt as though the ground beneath his thoughts had given way. Aura. He had aura. To be both a mage and a knight was an achievement so rare that only a handful of names in history could claim it, and now Arthur stood among them.

That made him a genius beyond even himself or Abel, someone who had reached a level that most would never touch in a lifetime. Jacob's own aura was no true aura at all, nothing more than what the rune etched into his sword allowed him to channel, and even then it was a crude imitation that bound itself only to the blade and served no purpose beyond that. But Arthur… Arthur had the real thing, a power that placed him beside figures like Prince Evendor.

"How… how do you forget to tell me something like that? And how did it even happen?" Jacob asked, his voice quiet but laced with disbelief.

Arthur only shrugged, his smile faintly sheepish, "It just did. Anyway, I came here because I wanted us to go out and buy some things, to prepare. Alex said the meeting should end in the next two weeks, so Lazarus will be able to teach us soon."

Jacob's thoughts shifted sharply, the weight of Arthur's words pressing down on him.

'So time is almost up.'

If he could not defeat Dawson by next week, he would have no choice but to go meet Samuel, and that meant he would stand exposed before everyone with his flawed method and his failures.

Perhaps the smarter choice now would be to abandon his way entirely and begin fighting like Jessica did, relying on instinct and reflex instead of thought.

Suppressing the sigh that tried to escape, he finally asked, "What do you want to buy anyway?"

"A few books on rune drawing, efficiency, and how to properly use my inner world so I can store a rune," Arthur explained, his tone casual though his words carried a purpose.

Jacob gave a slight nod as he listened, answering without hesitation, "I already have books on everything you just mentioned, there's no need to go out at all." He spoke with the quiet confidence of someone who had long since buried himself in study, for he truly had read about such things in detail, some time ago.

Arthur hesitated, his expression flickering with something that might have been disappointment, though Jacob did not particularly care to dwell on it. "You may have some," Arthur admitted, "but not the exact ones I need. I think it would be better if we go out together and you help me search."

"I need to train," Jacob replied bluntly, his voice even but firm. "I don't have the time for this."

"Just wait a moment—" Arthur began, but Jacob cut across him, his patience thinning.

"You're being really pushy. Look through the books I have; they're good enough, unless what you're aiming for is something else entirely."

Arthur fell quiet at that, meeting Jacob's eyes for a long second before breaking into an awkward smile, one that seemed more vulnerable than he perhaps intended to show. "Alright, I'll admit it. I just wanted to spend some time with you, and I was told books were your best hobby." He shifted uncomfortably, clearly embarrassed, and for once Jacob found himself at a loss for how to respond.

His first instinct was to refuse. He didn't want to go, didn't want to waste time, didn't want to disrupt his training. That voice inside him always insisted that discipline and solitude were necessary, that attachments and diversions were distractions he could not afford.

But another thought pressed forward, quieter but persistent, that he had promised himself he would try to live differently, that perhaps learning to spend time with others was part of what it meant to change.

'I should just go. I can always increase the intensity of the nightmares later to make up for it.'

That much he decided. For no matter how much he might improve or adapt, there was still a part of him that would never forgive himself entirely. Lucas would not have wanted him to keep living like this, closed off and punishing himself endlessly, yet some kind of penance still felt necessary, some reminder of the guilt he carried, a burden he could never fully put down.

"Fine," Jacob said at last, his voice calm but surprising even himself. "Let's go. We should bring Jessica as well."

Arthur's eyes widened at the answer, and Jessica herself seemed momentarily taken aback, but before either could comment Arthur brightened, almost too quickly, and replied, "That's good. Let's go now, I already have a carriage ready."

He reached out and tugged Jacob toward the door, eager and unrestrained in his enthusiasm, while Jacob glanced back at Jessica. She gave a small nod of agreement, silently sliding her sword back into its sheath before following after them.

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