She cracked him across the shoulder, spun him sideways, then swept his legs from under him with a heel kick he didn't even see until he was already falling.

He hit the sand hard. The sword rolled from his hand.

Lysandra paced around him once, expression unreadable.

"You're stronger than you were yesterday."

He didn't answer. Didn't trust his voice not to break around the edges.

She crouched, picked up the practice sword, and set it beside him.

"But strength without discipline," she said, "gets bought. Or broken."

He pushed himself upright. His ribs burned from blocking hits he should've dodged. His palms throbbed. His breathing was off, but he fixed it before she could point it out.

She noticed anyway.

"You learn quickly." She said it like she was filing it away.

Soren didn't meet her eyes. "You're not pulling your blows."

"I wouldn't insult you by doing that."

He wasn't ready for the way the words landed—heavy, steady, frighteningly close to respect.

Lysandra stood. "Again."

He pushed to his feet. His legs wobbled; he locked them under him before she could see it.

Valenna's presence stirred—calm, steadying, not speaking but letting him feel the shape of what she'd say if she did.

Anchor. Breathe. React second, not first.

He lifted the sword.

Lysandra lunged.

He blocked cleaner this time. Used less force. Let her momentum slide off his guard instead of meeting it head-on.

Her eyebrow lifted. Barely.

"That's it," she said. "Stop fighting like a cornered animal. Fight like you know you'll survive."

He didn't answer. But something in him shifted, the same way the academy had shifted around him.

He moved with her next strike. Not against it. The shock rattled through his wrists but didn't throw him off.

She pressed harder.

He gave ground, but not the way prey gives ground. More like he was trading steps for information.

At one point she swept low again—and this time he saw it early enough to counter. He dropped his weight, caught her ankle with his shin, and forced her to pivot instead of complete the sweep.

She pulled back—not stumbling, not surprised, but reassessing.

"Better," she said. "Much better."

For the next hour she broke him down piece by piece, only to force him to rebuild the pieces correctly. Grip. Guard. Rotation. Breathing. Footwork. Punishing repetition until every muscle in his body ached like something being beaten into shape on a blacksmith's anvil.

Students gathered on the higher steps. Whispering. Watching. Trying to pretend they weren't watching.

Soren ignored them. Lysandra didn't even acknowledge their existence.

When she finally stopped, he wasn't sure how many hours had passed. His shirt stuck to his skin. His vision pulsed around the edges.

She inspected him like a craftsman examining an early blade. Not impressed. Not dismissive. Simply evaluating.

"You're developing too fast," she said.

He didn't know if that was praise or warning. Maybe both.

She tossed him a waterskin. He caught it on instinct.

"You'll report before sunrise tomorrow," she said. "I'll see how you move when your body hasn't recovered."

"Understood," he said.

She paused at the edge of the ring.

"Coren Vale," she said loudly enough for the watching students to hear, "is to train exclusively under me until further notice."

The whispering stopped.

For a second, the world felt like frozen glass.

Then the murmurs broke harder, sharper, ricocheting off the stone walls as Lysandra strode away.

Soren stood alone in the ring, aching, exhausted, half-shattered—and aware of exactly what her declaration meant.

A claim.

And the kind of claim that would not go unnoticed by anyone with power.

Valenna's voice brushed softly along the inside of his mind, the way wind touches a blade before a strike.

You just changed your place in their world.

He knew.

He also knew there was no undoing it now.

The shift didn't come as noise—it came as quiet.

Quiet in the halls where people used to speak freely.

Quiet in the way instructors paused a heartbeat longer when Soren entered a room.

Quiet in the way students who once ignored him now measured their distance like they were calculating what standing too close—or too far—might cost.

It wasn't fear.

Not yet.

It was anticipation.

The kind that means the ground is moving under everyone's feet and nobody knows where the first crack will appear.

Soren felt it before anyone said a word. He'd lived in enough places—trenches, caravans, half-burned border towns—to know when people were waiting for something to happen.

Or someone.

Lysandra's claim had done exactly what she intended: drawn lines. Forced people to choose which side of them they stood on.

And the Academy—greedy, political, always hungry for the next power shift—responded immediately.

––––

At midday meal, he sat alone, as always.

Except he wasn't alone.

People kept drifting near his table. Sitting just a little closer than they used to. Not speaking to him—not bold enough for that—but positioning themselves like proximity alone mattered.

As if Lysandra's attention were something that could rub off by standing near him.

Soren didn't look at them. Didn't acknowledge the way they hovered.

He kept eating, kept breathing, kept the calm that Valenna pressed through him like a steadying hand.

But he noticed.

He noticed everything.

Two of House Merrow's cadets sat across the hall and never looked away from him once. Their insignia—a curled silver wave—glimmered with fresh polish. That meant message relayed. Orders updated.

Caelus twins from House Orien stopped whispering the moment he passed and rested their hands on the pommels of their training blades.

A cluster of younger first-years stiffened when he looked in their direction, then tried too hard to appear casual, which somehow made their fear louder.

And at the far end of the hall, three instructors spoke quietly over a parchment. One of them—Inquisitor Thayne—glanced at Soren, tapped the page once, then resumed talking.

Valenna's voice brushed the back of his thoughts. They're recalculating risk. You changed the board, Soren.

He didn't answer, even in his mind.

Not because he disagreed.

But because acknowledging it made it real.

––––

The evening drills were worse.

Half the advanced trainees watched his session with Lysandra instead of doing their own assignments. She didn't care. Didn't dismiss them. Didn't even look at them.

She worked him harder than yesterday—until his shoulder ground like gravel and sweat stung his eyes.

Then she cut the session early.

Not for his sake.

For optics.

"Walk with me," she said, already turning.

Soren followed, ignoring the prickling sensation of two dozen gazes tracking every step.

She led him out of the training courtyard, down the colonnade lined with carved banners, and into a narrow alcove shielded from the wind.

Only then did she stop.

She didn't face him at first. When she finally did, her expression was not the cold discipline she showed in training. It was razor clarity.

"You know what your presence implies now," she said.

He didn't answer immediately. "That I'm under your instruction."

"That's the surface." She stepped closer. "But the Academy doesn't work on the surface."

Her eyes sharpened slightly. "They think I'm grooming you."

He held still. Didn't flinch. Didn't shift.

Lysandra noticed.

"Not for anything foolish," she said. "For rank. For influence. For position."

He kept his voice steady. "I didn't ask for that."

"I know." Her tone softened—barely, but enough to register. "That's why it works."

A breath of silence settled between them.

Then she added, "Others won't see it that way."

She gave him a slip of parchment—thin, folded twice.

"Read it when you're alone."

She didn't explain. Didn't wait for him to speak. She walked back into the courtyard, leaving him in the alcove with nothing but the cold and the weight of whatever was written in that tiny, insignificant-looking square.

Valenna murmured across his thoughts.

It begins.

He unfolded the parchment.

Just four words, written in a hand he didn't recognize:

HOUSE MERROW WANTS YOU.

The second line was smaller, almost an afterthought:

AND THEY DO NOT ASK.

As he stared at the words, a shadow crossed the archway.

A young cadet stood there. Meridian colors. Pale-eyed. Nervous.

"Coren Vale," she said carefully. "The Council requests your presence. Immediately."

Soren pocketed the note without changing expression.

He nodded once.

Followed her down the hall.

And felt every part of the Academy shifting around him like the beginning of a storm.

The cadet led Soren through the upper halls—quiet, tall, echoing things of cold stone and colder authority.

Council summons were never loud.

They didn't need to be.

By the time he reached the blackwood doors, the girl who'd escorted him had already vanished. Standard procedure. No witnesses. No impressions. No ties.

Soren stood before the doors a heartbeat, breathing once.

Valenna's presence steadied in his thoughts—not words, not yet, but attention. Ready.

He pushed the doors open.

––––

The chamber was round. Every important room in the Academy was round—no corners, no blind spots. The Council sat in tiered seats of carved obsidian, their faces half-lit by spellfire braziers.

Not all were present.

Enough were.

Magistrix Renn.

Inquisitor Thayne.

Lord-Adept Solher.

And Kaelor—standing, not seated.

Kaelor didn't look at him. That told Soren more than anything else.

Renn spoke first. "Close the doors."

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