Dawn broke like a hammer over Northaven, shattering Soren's fitful sleep. His shoulder screamed as he rose from sweat-soaked sheets, the wound Trescan's blade had carved still angry and raw beneath fresh bandages. Three weeks since the tournament, and the pain remained his constant companion.

The training yard hummed with activity when he arrived, a dozen knights and twice as many squires already deep in their morning drills. Steel rang against steel, punctuated by shouted commands and the occasional grunt of pain.

Sweat hung in the air despite the morning chill, mingling with the familiar scents of leather oil and iron.

Soren found an empty corner and drew his blade, settling into the stance that had become as familiar as breathing. The first form of the Nine Petals, The Seed Awakens. His feet found their position on the packed dirt, weight balanced precisely between them. His sword extended, point unwavering despite the protest from his damaged shoulder.

The movement that had once felt awkward now flowed with unexpected precision. Each repetition carved itself deeper into muscle memory, each cut cleaving the morning air with increasing confidence.

The defeat at Trescan's hands had changed something fundamental in his approach, no longer grasping at techniques beyond his reach, but perfecting what he could actually execute.

'Better,' he thought, completing the sequence again. 'Sharper.'

Pain lanced through his shoulder as he pivoted, a hot wire threading through scar tissue that refused to yield. Soren ignored it, focusing instead on the subtle shift of weight from back foot to front, the clean arc of steel through empty space. Again. Again. Again.

Across the yard, two Velrane knights paused their sparring to watch him. Soren caught their glances from the corner of his eye, one openly contemptuous, the other measuring with wary calculation. The tournament had changed how they saw him. No longer just the street rat Veyr had inexplicably elevated, but something unpredictable. Something potentially dangerous.

"You're tensing at the pivot."

Kaelor's voice cut through Soren's concentration like a blade. The Swordmaster had approached silently, his scarred face set in its usual expression of controlled irritation. One eye, the other long lost to some unnamed conflict, narrowed as he studied Soren's form.

"Let the waist do the work, not the shoulders," Kaelor continued, demonstrating a move with his own blade. The movement looked deceptively simple when he performed it, a fluid twist that generated power from the core rather than the upper body. "You're fighting your own injury. Work around it instead."

Soren adjusted his stance, focusing on the subtle shift in weight distribution. His next cut flowed cleaner, the blade finding its path with less resistance. The pain remained, but somehow seemed less relevant, a distant signal rather than a limiting factor.

"Again," Kaelor ordered, circling to view the sequence from a different angle. "Tighter. Sharper."

Sweat trickled into Soren's eyes as he repeated the form, salt stinging as he blinked it away. The bandages around his palms had begun to spot with fresh blood, reopened cuts protesting the constant friction against his sword hilt. He ignored the discomfort, focusing instead on the precision of each movement, the economy of each transition.

"Again."

The sun climbed higher, beating down on the training yard with increasing intensity. Knights and squires rotated through their drills, some departing for water or shade, others arriving fresh and eager. Through it all, Kaelor kept Soren working, demanding repetition after repetition of the same sequence.

"Chaos won't save you again," the Swordmaster said, voice pitched low enough that only Soren could hear. "Precision will. One mistake is all they'll need."

The words hung in the air between them, weighted with implications Soren understood all too well. The tournament had been contained chaos, dangerous, but governed by rules and witnesses. What waited beyond those boundaries would offer no such constraints.

His arms trembled with exhaustion as he completed the sequence yet again. Blood had soaked through the bandages on his palms, making the grip slick and treacherous. Each breath burned in his lungs, each movement required increasingly conscious effort to maintain clean form.

"Enough," Kaelor finally declared, gesturing for Soren to sheathe his blade. "You've bled enough for one morning."

Soren wiped sweat from his face with his sleeve, the rough fabric scraping against three days' growth of beard. His entire body ached, the familiar pain of pushed limits layered atop the sharper agony of his healing wound.

Kaelor examined his own blade with critical attention, wiping an invisible smudge from the steel with a cloth pulled from his belt. "Still no word on Sylas," he said, the casual tone belying the significance of the name.

Soren stilled, feeling tension coil in his gut. The assassin who had slaughtered half a dozen men in the forest outside Northaven. The shadow that had spared him for reasons still unknown. The nightmare that haunted his sleep on the nights when pain didn't keep him awake.

"The City Watch claims he's fled," Kaelor continued, testing his blade's edge with his thumb.

"Convenient for them to think so. Saves them the trouble of actually hunting the bastard." His voice hardened, single eye fixing on Soren with unnerving intensity. "Man like that loose in Northaven? He's watching. Waiting. Don't think for a second you're safe outside the ring."

Soren nodded, the implications settling into his bones like winter chill. The tournament had made him visible in ways he'd never intended, to nobles who saw him as an affront, to commoners who viewed him as a symbol, to enemies who might use him as leverage against House Velrane.

And to Sylas, whose motives remained as mysterious as his whereabouts.

He left the yard with leaden steps, his bloodied palms throbbing in time with his heartbeat. The wound in his shoulder pulsed with dull fire, a constant reminder of how far he still had to climb.

Trescan's Aura-enhanced blade had carved more than flesh, it had cut through illusion, exposed the true distance between Soren's hard-won skills and the power nobles took for granted.

The shard against his chest pulsed cold as he made his way through Northaven's winding streets. Valenna had been unusually quiet since the tournament, her presence a faint chill rather than the sharp, insistent voice that had guided him before.

'The hunters close in,' she whispered now, breaking her silence. 'You must learn to hunt them first.'

Soren clenched his fist, feeling the sting as blood seeped through fresh cracks in his calloused palms. Pain and resolve, intertwined like steel folded in a forge, inseparable, necessary, transformative.

The wall of Aura still stood before him, high and seemingly impenetrable. But he would find a way over it, through it, or around it.

He had to. The alternative was unthinkable.

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