The plains-clothed guard slowed his horse as the outpost came into view. It was little more than a raised wooden platform, a well, and two bored sentries leaning in the shade.

  “This is as far as I go,” he said.

  I nodded and adjusted my pack. “Thank you. You didn’t have to backtrack for me.”

  He shrugged as if it were nothing. “I was only doing my duty.” Then, more seriously, “Stock up here while you can. Farmers further on are shutting their doors to strangers. Can’t blame them.”

  “I understand.”

  “The Voice Guide your way.” With two fingertips, he traced his lips, the hollow of his throat, and finally pressed a fist over his heart in a gesture of benediction. I returned the gesture clumsily, unused to the action. Maybe something I’ll have to practice if that’s common in the Capital.

  He wheeled his horse around and rode back the way we came. I watched until he became a blur in the heat haze. Then I stepped beneath the outpost’s shade and did what I had been avoiding. I counted.

  Three hard biscuits. A strip and a half of dried meat. Half a pouch of grain mash. Enough for… four days if I stretched it. Five if I was disciplined.

  I opened my coin purse next. Not much better. My parents had tried to press more into my hands, but I wouldn't take it. Not when I knew how narrowly they were already scraping by for this year’s rent and taxes.

  If the farmers refused travelers, I wouldn’t be able to rely on buying a meal or trading labor for bread like I had originally planned. And if I spent too much here, I might reach the capital with empty pockets… No coin for lodgings, and no leverage to earn more before the Academy entrance assessments.

  My jaw tightened. Food… or a bow. If I could hunt quail or rabbits, I could stretch my rations. The plains hid more life than most realized. But I’d need a ranged weapon.

  I approached the guards. “I’d like to buy a bow.”

  They both looked at me as if I’d asked to purchase the outpost itself. “Buy?” one repeated.

  “I have coin.”

  The taller guard barked a laugh. “You think we sell the Crown’s given weapons to passersby now?”

  “I don’t need your best one,” I said quickly. “Just something serviceable.”

  He looked me up and down. Slowly and deliberately. “Do you even know how to use one?”

  “Yes!” I blustered. “You pull the string with the arrow and it goes swoosh!”

  The other guard snorted. The taller one shook his head. “Yeah. A bow would be wasted on you even if we gave you one, little girl.”

  By the Guide’s mangy, flea-bitten beard…“I’m not a child!” I snapped.

  “Could’ve fooled me.” They turned away, conversation over.

  I stood there a moment longer than I should have, fingers curling uselessly at my sides. If I couldn’t hunt, I would run out of food in days. There was nothing to forage in the plains this season… Not without trespassing into planted fields. And stealing from the Crown’s grain fields carried a penalty severe enough to ruin a family for generations.

  My father’s voice echoed in my mind. ‘We endure hardship. We do not pass it to others.’ I would not commit my first crime against innocent farmers even if it meant hunger.

  “Well now,” a voice drawled from the shade beside the well. “You don’t need a bow to bring down a rabbit.”

  I turned. An older farmer sat with his back against one of the outpost legs, hat tipped low over his brow. He had been there the whole time, I realized.

  “You could use a sling.”

  “A sling?” I repeated skeptically. “Like the ones the boys back home use to pelt fence posts?”

  He chuckled. “With enough skill, slings can take down giants.” He reached to his waist and unwrapped the strip of patchy leather hide tied there like a belt. Once loosened, it fell almost to his knee—longer than I’d thought, supple from wear but thick through the center.

  With a small knife, he split each end lengthwise into three even tongues of leather, careful not to cut too far toward the middle. The blade moved with slow precision, stopping just short of the untouched center strip.

  That center he left whole.

  When both sides were braided, he tied off one end into a firm knot, the retention loop. The other he finished with a simple stopper knot, leaving a slight tail to grip between finger and thumb.

  The untouched center now formed a shallow cup between the two braided cords. He pressed his thumb into it, shaping the leather into a curved pocket.

  “Doesn’t need to be pretty,” he murmured. “Needs to hold.” He picked up a small rock from the dirt. “Watch.”

  The sling whirled once. Twice.

  Crack.

  The stone shot forward with a sound like a snapping branch and slammed into one of the outpost’s support legs. Wood splintered. Both guards jerked upright. The farmer didn’t even look at them.

  He smirked at me. “That ain’t even done with Resonance.” My mouth hung open. He pressed the makeshift sling into my hands. “Better than starving.”

  “T-thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me yet. It takes practice.”

  It did. The first stone slipped early and skidded harmlessly through dust. The second nearly took off my own ear. The third flew backward. I gritted my teeth.

  Again.

  Whirl. Release.

  The stone shot wide.

  Again.

  Whirl. Release.

  Closer.

  By sunset my shoulder ached and my fingers were raw, but I managed to strike a weathered fence post twice in a row. Not hard, but enough. Better than nothing.

  That night I camped nearby, keeping within sight of the guards. Rude as they were, I still didn’t trust being alone. A small fire flickered low against the wind, shadows dancing across my pack and boots. I lay on my back, staring at the darkening sky, and the fight played over and over in my mind.

  Drenna’s stance had been calm, movement deceptively casual. She hadn’t rushed me, hadn’t tried to overpower me recklessly. She had watched how I moved under pressure, gauged my reactions, anticipated my mistakes. Like I should have been doing. Like Father had drilled into me again and again. Rules and patterns. I had forgotten the instant betrayal hit.

  Mother… Mother had warned me about this. About people. About the sharp edges hidden behind polite words. I had dismissed her cautious reminder, thinking I knew enough.

  I shook my head, forcing myself back to the present. Regret wouldn’t help me now. I had to remember. Every detail. Every misstep. If I forgot, if I faltered again, I might not survive the next encounter.

  I closed my eyes and imagined the moment her Resonance surged. The way it guided her knife song… Clean and controlled. I tried to replicate the pattern in my mind, guiding my own tiny trickle of Resonance through the pathways from my chest to my arms like Tarin had taught me…

  The hum that I heard was discordant as usual. Dizzying.

  My concentration collapsed when the world spun.

  I exhaled sharply. Training was not the same as surviving someone who wanted you dead.

  The guard had not been exaggerating. I had expected wariness. Tight smiles. Doors closing sooner than usual. I had not expected silence.

  The first farmers I passed beyond the outpost went still the moment I stepped off the road to approach. A woman gathering wash froze mid-motion. A boy driving chickens into a pen abandoned them entirely and ran inside.

  The door shut. The latch slid into place. No one answered when I called out a polite greeting.

  By the second day, it was worse. Men stood in their fields holding tools like weapons. Not raised but ready. Their eyes followed me without blinking. No one offered water. No one offered shade. Even when I made it clear I was only passing through, their gazes lingered too long on my pack, my boots, my hands.

  Strangers were no longer inconveniences. We were risks.

  By the third day, the plains both felt emptier and filled tension. I smelled the faint smell of smoke and mustiness. Like wooden charcoal. I told myself it was controlled burning. I told myself farmers did this sometimes to clear the stalks and prepare for the next planting cycle.

  But my pace slowed anyway. I followed my nose. The farmstead came into view over a low rise and stopped me cold. The house was blackened to its bones. Roof half-collapsed. The barn gutted. Grain stores split open and spoiled in the dirt. Fencing trampled.

  No livestock. No movement. Only ash drifting in lazy spirals across what had once been a yard.

  I did not approach at first. I stood at the edge of the property and listened. The plains were quiet. Too quiet. That was when I understood the fear in the farmers’ eyes.

  I told myself I was only checking. That if anyone still lived, I would help. That if no one did… I would leave.

  I circled wide around the burned farmstead, boots crunching softly in soot. The front of the house had collapsed inward. The barn was a hollowed rib cage against the sky. My stomach twisted.

  I had never seen a dead body before. I had sparred. Bled. Bruised. But death had always been distant… stories from Father, warnings from Mother. Not this close.

  I was searching for a way inside that wouldn’t require stepping over… anything… when I heard it. A crunch behind me. I turned slowly.

  He was large. Not tall, but broad through the middle, thicker at the belly than the shoulders. He had light brown hair shaved close to his scalp. His face was still smooth with youth, cheeks flushed red, brown eyes wide and wild. Younger than me, I thought. But older than the little boy who had run from me at the townhall.

  “Who are you?” he demanded.

  “I–”

  “Did you do this?!” Before I could answer, his hands were on my collar. He shoved me back so hard the scorched wall behind me groaned, nearly giving way. His fingers tightened around my throat, cutting off my protest. “Did you?!”

  “I– no!” I choked, scrabbling at his knuckles in a desperation to breathe. “Traveler!! Ch-checking… survivors!”

  His grip slackened just enough for me to wrench myself free, my lungs burning as I gasped for air. My words had finally pierced through his rage. Perhaps the mention of survivors had done it. A raw sound tore from his throat, stripped of anger and replaced by ragged grief. He stumbled past me, lunging toward the house with a desperate cry. “Ma! Pa! Pisha!”

  He ran inside the burned frame, coughing as soot rose around him. I scrambled after him. He dropped to his knees near the collapsed beams and began clawing at the debris with bare hands.

  “They might be under! They might’ve–” His voice fractured, the sheer weight of his desperation making my chest ache with a sudden, irrational guilt. I couldn't meet his eyes, couldn't offer the comfort he needed. Instead, I stepped back and circled the house, my eyes scouring the ground for any sign of life, any clue that might help his search.

  My steps faltered when I saw them. Three mounds of fresh graves near the back of the property. The soil darker than the rest. Marked simply with wooden stakes. Hoofprints nearby. Heavy boots had trampled the area days ago.

  The guard… This must have been the family he mentioned.

  My chest tightened, and to my shame, relief slipped in with it. They weren’t inside. I would not have to see them like that. I swallowed hard. I walked back inside. The boy was still digging. “They’re not there,” I said again, firmer this time. “Come with me.”

  He shook his head violently. “No! No, they wouldn’t just–”

  “Please.” I touched his shoulder. He flinched, but he followed.

  When he saw the graves, he stopped. All the fight drained out of him at once. He staggered forward and fell to his knees in front of the smallest mound. “I wasn’t here,” he whispered. “I went to trade grain near Riverton. Pa said I should learn the route.” His voice broke. “If I’d stayed…”

  “You’d be on the ground with them,” I said quietly.

  “I have a little sister–” a sob cut him off. “Had. She was only three!”

  The air left my lungs. I stared at one of the three mounds… The smallest one. She would have been small enough to carry, a weight that should have been safe in a parent's arms. To kill something that small... It was monstrous.

  “Did you see them?” He looked up, his eyes swollen, the brief softness of his grief had vanished, incinerated by a rage that came back harder, sharper than before. “Did you see who did this?! Tell me!”

  “N-no… I’m sorry.”

  “But you’ve been traveling,” he pressed, his voice dropping into something dangerous.

  I nodded, the weight of his stare pinning me in place.

  “You must have heard something! You were looking around like… like you weren’t even surprised!”

  “The guard mentioned bandits,” I said, choosing my words as if walking through a minefield.

  His jaw clenched, his teeth grinding against the word. “Bandits,” he spat it out like poison. “I’ll kill them!” He surged to his feet, his entire frame vibrating with a sudden, manic purpose. “I’ll find them. And I’ll kill every last one of them!”

  “You don’t even know where they are,” I blurted. the words were out before I could catch them. I should have kept my mouth shut. Stayed out of this. But the sheer idiocy of it… The plan so suicidal, it made it impossible not to protest.

  His bloodshot eyes were blazing. “You’re traveling. You’ve got gear. You look like you know how to use it.” He loomed over me, his voice dropping to a low command. “Help me find them.”

  My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, rhythmic warning. ‘He’s lost it,’ I thought sickly. ‘He wants to drag me into the grave with him.’

  I wanted to bolt, to put miles between myself and those three wooden stakes. But the irrational guilt from earlier held me fast. I’d seen his grief, and now I was wearing it. He wasn't just asking for help, he was demanding a witness to his vengeance.

  “I can’t,” I said. The words felt like lead in my throat, sinking into the gray dust between us.

  His eyes narrowed, sharp, and accusatory. “So you’re a coward.”

  That hit me with the force of a physical blow, dragging a name from the depths of my mind… Val Asher. The ones who had turned their backs on Solivane… Deliberately poisoning their own veins to wither the power they were meant to wield. They were a stain on my bloodline, a legacy of cowardice. Was I more like them than I thought? The weight of it settled in my chest, more suffocating than the smoke.

  “I…” I began, but the words died under the gravity of my own doubt.

  “I should have known,” he said, his voice dripping with a freezing contempt that was worse than his screaming. “You coward.”

  “I’m not,” I said, my voice cracking. I wanted to sympathize, but he wouldn't stop. He was using his grief like a weapon, and he was aiming it at me.

  “You weren’t here,” he growled, his fists clenched, knuckles white. “You didn't do a damn thing.”

  The guilt cracked, replaced by a sudden, hot indignation. “No, I wasn’t,” I snapped, “And neither were you!” My words had struck the one wound he couldn't bear. His face crumpled. I felt the regret instantly, but the damage was done.

  “If you won’t help me,” he choked out, his gaze dropping to my hip, “then give me that sword! A coward doesn’t need it!”

  “It is not yours to have,” I warned, my hand clamping over the hilt.

  He threw himself at me with a wordless shout. The impact slammed the air from my lungs. He didn't fight with any rhythm, he fought with the frantic, heavy strength of a drowning man. His hands locked onto my wrist and scabbard, wrenching with a force that sent us both staggering backward.

  “Stop!” I gasped, my boots skidding. He shoved me, his weight overbalancing us both, his fingernails digging into my shoulder as he clawed for the leather strap.

  The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

  “Give it to me!”

  Panic flared, white and hot. He was stronger, heavier, and he was winning. My heels caught on a charred root, and as the ground rushed up to meet me, the world suddenly… shifted.

  The wind went silent. The frantic pounding of my heart slowed into a deep, rhythmic thrum that vibrated through my marrow. Resonance. In that heartbeat of clarity, the chaos was stripped away. I saw the tremor in his hands, the way his center of gravity was committed too far forward, the exact point where his boots lacked traction in the loose soil.

  My father’s voice surfaced, calm and steady as a heartbeat: “When they’re bigger, Soryn, don’t meet the storm. Be the wind that redirects it.”

  I stopped resisting. I leaned into his pull.

  As he wrenched the sword toward him, I stepped wide, pivoting on my lead foot with a fluid grace that wasn't my own. Ears ringing loudly with discordant Resonance that was making my head pound.

  I didn't fight his strength; I channeled it. I hooked my hand under his elbow and steered his momentum downward, turning his frantic energy into a plummet. I dipped my shoulder, swept my heel behind his ankle, and let the Resonance map the path.

  He hit the ground with a bone-jarring thud.

  Ash erupted around us. Before he could draw breath, I was over him, pinning his wrist to the dirt and pressing my knee into the hollow of his shoulder. My pulse was still singing with the brief ripples of Resonance.

  “Please,” I whispered shakily. “Just stop.”

  He thrashed once, a guttural, broken sound escaping him, and then he simply went limp. The fight drained out of him, leaving nothing but an empty shell trembling beside the graves. And for a moment, I wondered if the Val Ashers had felt this same hollow victory when they chose survival over duty.

  The silence of the road was better than the shadow of the boy’s grief and accusations. After our struggle in the ash, I hadn't looked back. I had no obligation to a boy who tried to bruise me for my sword. I pushed toward the next townhall alone, my muscles aching from the fight, wanting nothing but a place to rest and a way out of this nightmare.

  But the townhall wasn't a refuge. Even from the gate, the air felt different… Thick with the smell of unwashed bodies and fear. Guards were everywhere, abandoned loose patrols for the tight, anxious clusters near the entrance. In the center of the yard, a woman sat on the ground, her wails cutting through the low roar of the crowd.

  “What’s going on?” I asked a man near the outer fence.

  Before he could answer, the woman’s voice rose into a shriek. “They took them! I know one of them. They took the children!”

  The crowd surged, a wave of people desperate for clarification that nearly knocked me off my feet. I scanned the yard, looking for an exit, but the guards were already closing the perimeter. One of them intercepted me, his jaw set in a grim line.

  “You’re from the road,” he said, more a statement than a question. “How old are you?”

  “Sixteen,” I answered, my skin prickling. “I’m heading for the Capital. I just needed a place to–”

  “You aren't going anywhere,” he cut in. “Bandits are snatching girls your age. You're staying inside until things are settled.”

  “You have no right to keep me here,” I snapped. “It’s my choice to go!”

  The wailing woman looked up, her eyes bloodshot and vacant. “She’s the right age,” she whispered, her voice carrying across the yard. “We can trade her. Use her to get my children back!”

  The murmur started then. A low, volatile sound from the farmers waiting to snap. Before I could draw a breath to protest, the guard’s hand was on my arm. Two more men stepped in behind me. I was a stranger, a girl alone, and in their fear, they saw a liability they needed to lock away.

  They shoved me into a small holding cell off the main hall. The door slammed, and the heavy iron bolt slid home with a finality that made my heart hammer against my ribs.

  I was trapped.

  Dread settled in my chest, heavy and cold, as I stared through the iron bars of the window. Outside, the sky had bruised into a deep purple, and the first rhythmic patter of rain began to tap against the stone. I leaned my forehead against the damp wall, counting the hours.

  A day had already passed.

  If the guards kept me here much longer, the Academy gates would close for the year. The thought of returning home… Of seeing my parents' quiet, unsurprised faces… Was worse than the cell itself. They wouldn't scold me, but I would have to live with the weight of my failure. The disgrace of being someone who was "almost" enough. I would be too ashamed to face Tarin even if I dared to try again next year.

  The day bled into another moonless night, the silence of the townhall only broken by the occasional heavy footstep. I was slumped against the corner when I finally heard it. A distinct, metallic scrape of the bolt unlocking.

  I stood, my dry throat aching, expecting a guard with the nightly bowl of water. Instead, the door creaked open just a silver’s width, and a shadow slipped through.

  It was the boy from the burned farmstead.

  He looked different in the dim lantern light. I backed away, my eyes flicking to the unlatched door behind him, my pulse jumping. We hadn't even traded names before he’d tried to steal my sword yesterday.

  “What are you doing here?” I hissed.

  “I told them I was your brother,” he said. His voice was hoarse but steady. “I told them I’d talk some sense into you.”

  “I’m leaving,” I said. “Step aside.”

  “You won’t make it past the gate,” he interrupted, and moved to cover the door with his larger body as if to keep me from getting any ideas of escaping. “I spoke to the women staying in the compound. She recognized one of the men.”

  I remembered her then, the wailing woman who had watched me with hollow eyes when the guards dragged me in here.

  “He was a new farrier,” Kurtz continued, his voice low and strained. “Worked at Master Dorn’s stables, a day’s journey northeast from here. If he’s been their man all along, they’ve probably taken over and turned those stables as their base of operations. It gives them a roof, fresh mounts, and a place to regroup after a raid."

  I looked toward the barred window once again, staring into the black wash of rain. Even in the darkness, the empty space didn't stay empty; the distance seemed to calculate itself. My mind simply did what it had always done, pulling from a quiet, internal library of every point of interest I’d ever studied.

  I could almost see the gradual tilt of the land to the north and the way the creek bed would have to dip to feed those stables, the geography clicking into a sharp, mental overlay. It was a habit I’d never been able to turn off. Calculating space and angles was easier for me than most people.

  My throat went dry. “And you’re going after them.”

  “My sister might still be alive,” he said. The words came out too fast, like he was trying to convince himself. “The woman said they were taking young girls.”

  I stared at him in disbelief. “Alive? You saw the graves. Are you sure?”

  He flinched as if I’d struck him. The cold mask he’d been wearing cracked, replaced desperation. “But if there’s a slim hope. Just one! That she was taken instead of put in that ground... I can't.” He paused, as if the next words horrified him, “I can’t open her– that grave to check. She must’ve been taken by them! It’s the only thing that makes sense!”

  “Then tell the guards!”

  He leaned in closer, his voice dropping to a harsh, trembling whisper. “The guards? They aren’t going to do anything. They’re waiting for reinforcements. They’ve already decided the ones taken are gone and they can’t risk riding out further. They’re only interested in protecting what’s left inside these walls. While they… while we wait, the trail grows cold. Every day is another league the bandits put between us and those who were taken.”

  He reached out, his hand hovering near mine as if he wanted to grab it but didn't dare. It wasn't an argument anymore; it was a plea.

  “Please,” he breathed. “They’ve given up. I can’t. I won’t. I know the watch rotations. I can get us past the gate while they’re focused on the road.” His eyes locked onto mine, frantic and searching. “Help me find the camp. Just find it. And I felt it… the power you used when we fought..”

  He had felt the Resonance when I took him down, and now he was betting our lives on it.

  “And if I refuse?”

  “Then you stay here. And I go alone.”

  It wasn't a threat; it was acceptance. He would walk into danger with or without me.

  I looked at him then, and the boy who had attacked me in a blind rage was gone. He wasn't looking for blood anymore, he was looking for a life that might still be saved. And maybe that made the difference.

  I exhaled, the tension leaving my shoulders in a long, defeated breath. “Alright. Just to find them and get them out if we can.”

  “Just to find them,” he echoed, relief washing over him so visibly he looked like he might collapse. “Do I have your word?”

  “Aye, you have my word.” I held out a hand, a silent truce between two people who had been at each other's throats hours ago. “I’m Soryn.”

  We clasped forearms, his arm felt cool and sweaty but his grip was firm. “Kurtz.”

  “Alright, Kurtz,” I whispered. “Get me out of here.”

  “They change watch in a quarter hour,” he said quietly. “The rain should hide us better, and stop the guards from following us if they notice we are gone. The outer patrol argues about dice near the east tower. The inner guard smokes behind the grain store.”

  He was familiar with their habits after only a day. I shook my head in wonder. “You’ve been watching them for a while, haven’t you.”

  He didn’t answer. He didn’t need to.

  My legs were stiff from sitting on stone. But I pushed protesting leg muscles into a stealthy crouch as I followed him through a narrow passage that smelled of dried grain and old rope. He stepped around certain boards without looking down. I realized he had also mapped the place before he found me. He led me to a small storage room full of chests where the guards had stashed my gear.

  I watched the other boy carefully when he pulled out my sword scabbard, stared at it as if considering, before handing it over to me.

  Then the guards finally noticed.

  Not at first. Not when Kurtz slipped the last bar free from the warped door of the gate and we eased it open inch by inch. Not when the rain started to come down heavier, turning the torchlight outside into a sputtering halo. But when we crossed the yard, keeping to the long shadows of the eaves, a shout split the night like a thrown blade.

  “Oi!”

  Boots struck cobblestone.

  We ran.

  The townhall doors banged open behind us. I didn’t look back. ‘Looking back is how you trip.’ Father had said that often enough. Kurtz caught my wrist as we veered into the wheat. We slid more than ran, the rain thickening, choking the light from the torches. Somewhere behind us a whistle shrieked. Another answered.

  We did not stop until the townhall was a smear of light behind us.

  We ran through the dark, my ears straining as I followed Kurtz by sound, his large body parting the stalks with violent rustles.

  “We need to go back ho– to the farm.” He panted. “Those bastards didn’t loot everything. We’ll pick up rations, some rope and my axe. Rest. Then we’ll head northeast.”

  We set off at first light and arrived at the stables in the late afternoon. It was as we feared. Two horses lay dead in the dirt, but the rest were gone, taken by the bandits. They hadn't bothered to burn the homestead this time. There was no need to cover their tracks. Whether it was overconfidence or the knowledge that they were already miles ahead… They hadn't cared who saw their path.

  I watched Kurtz’s face pale into a cold sweat. He paced the yard, frustrated tears pooling in his eyes, though he refused to let them fall.

  I knelt to study the churned earth, trying to find a number. Six sets of prints were clear where the road narrowed into a wagon path. Heavy boots, and two lighter sets. A cart had passed recently; the ruts were sharp and fresh. The rain had dampened the ground just enough to hold the shapes without ruining them.

  “Six,” I murmured. Kurtz broke his pacing to crouch beside me. “At least. There could be more waiting at their camp.”

  “Do you know which way?” he asked, his voice tight with anxiety and hope. “Can we catch them?”

  “We can try.” I stood, following the line of the tracks as they cut toward the rising silhouettes of the eastern mountain.

  The grain fields gave way to grass, then tall pine trees, as we began the first incline to the mountain. The air turned heavy with the scent of wet bark and leaf rot. We moved in silence, the damp settling into my bones like an uninvited guest. By dusk, my calves throbbed with a dull ache.

  We camped that night beneath a leaning pine. A small fire, shielded low. The smoke threaded thin through the needles above, disappearing into the dark. Kurtz watched the flames as if they might offer him answers.

  “You felt it,” I said.

  He glanced at me. “Felt what?”

  “Resonance.”

  I expected him to laugh, but he only frowned, considering the word like a taste he couldn't quite name. “Sometimes,” he admitted. “When things are about to go wrong. Or when someone is lying. It’s like a hum. In my chest. In my teeth.”

  A hum in the teeth. I knew that feeling well. A sound I used to tune out as a child because it was just monotonous noise to me.

  “Most people have a modicum of that ability,” I said, falling into Father’s familiar lecture. “Those who show more get noticed. Mentored. Or pressed into service.”

  He looked at me sidelong. “Knights. Nobles. The Academy.”

  “And others,” I said. My parents’ faces flickered at the edge of thought, as they always did when the subject was brought up. A disgraced knight dropout and a mysterious hawk-eyed foreigner. “It isn’t as rare as they make it seem.”

  “So it’s not just you lot,” he said. “With your crests and your rules.”

  “No.”

  Kurtz flexed his fingers over the heat. “And you can use it.”

  “Yes.”

  “Teach me.” It wasn't a request.

  “Just like that?” I let out a sharp, incredulous breath. “You think it’s that easy?”

  “It might be,” Kurtz countered mildly. “If someone showed me how.”

  The silence stretched between us, filled only by the pop and hiss of burning wood and damp soil. I stared into the flames like he did, weighing the cost of a "yes." Teaching him would mean responsibility. It would mean that whatever he did with it next… I had placed the tool in his hand.

  The night (and Kurtz) felt like they were waiting for my answer.

  I exhaled slowly and reached inward. For the hum.

  It never came easily. Not for me nor Father. Looking back, I finally understood why he wouldn’t go into detail on how to use Resonance for combat. He had focused on teaching me to fight without them. For people like Tarin, it was like breathing. For Father and me, it was like forcing something vast and luminous through something far too small.

  “Close your eyes,” I said, resisting the urge to roll mine. I was starting to sound like Father and his endless lessons about listening for the Resonance in the stone. “Don’t reach for it. Listen for it.”

  Kurtz voice dipped with skepticism. “Listen to what?”

  “Everything has a Resonance,” I said. “The air. The rocks. The ground beneath your feet. Even people.”

  I paused and motioned for him to close his eyes. I waited until he did.

  “It isn’t sound exactly. It’s… a vibration. Like something is humming directly into your bones. Some call it the voice of god. The Guiding Voice. It answers your will… It grows stronger with Reason. It bends according to intention.”

  I watched the hair rise on his arms. His shoulders stilled. His eyes moved rapidly behind his eyelids. “There,” he whispered. I felt it too. A tremor, faint but clear, like the first vibration of a plucked string. He latched onto it without fumbling. Without overthinking. I felt the electrifying air of his Resonance as he blindly picked up a stone and crushed it between his fingers as if it were dried clay.

  Blast the Guide’s maggot-infested navel! I had cried blood, sweat and tears for every inch of progress, yet he did it so easily.

  Kurtz opened his eyes, filled with a sudden, excited wonder. “That’s always there?”

  “In theory,” I said, my voice a bit dryer than intended.

  He huffed a tiny smirk. “So in theory, if things go haywire, I won’t be completely useless.”

  I rolled my eyes… This time on purpose. “You were never useless.”

  He looked far too pleased with that.

  We did not find the bandits that day Or the next. By the third day, the land began to change again. The forest thinned where it had once been cut. Stumps lay half-rotted in the undergrowth. Old drag marks scarred the earth. I crouched near a patch of soft soil and traced the edge of a hoofprint with two fingers.

  “Fresh,” I said quietly. “A day. Maybe less.”

  We moved more carefully after that. Along the way we had spoken of plans, though neither of us pretended certainty.

  “We could set their hideout on fire,” he had suggested once.

  “And risk the children choking on smoke?” I asked.

  His jaw tightened. “No.”

  “We could wait for them to leave.”

  “And if they don’t?”

  In the end we settled on something tentative. If we found the camp small enough, we would pull men away in pairs. Quietly. Thin them. Enter when the yard was least guarded. Free the captives first. Confront whoever remained only if we had no choice.

  “If my sister is there,” he had said at one point, voice almost steady, “I’ll know.” I had not asked how.

  We found the bandit camp on the fourth day.

  It lay in a shallow hollow where an old lumber clearing had been claimed and reshaped. A rough palisade encircled it, built from uneven logs bound in haste. Smoke drifted lazily from a longhouse at the center. Smaller sheds leaned along the eastern edge. I counted eleven horses tied near a trough, tails flicking at flies.

  Not that heavily fortified. Thankfully. Manageable if we had to infiltrate. There was a lot of cover.

  I lay prone behind a fallen trunk and counted movement. One man at the gate, leaning on a spear more than holding it. Another pacing the yard in slow arcs. A third seated near the horses, chin dipping now and then as he fought sleep.

  Shadows moved inside the longhouse. Four shadows visible. Maybe more.

  Kurtz lay beside me, silent. Eyes burning with hatred.

  “This could still fail,” I whispered, unable to look away from the way his chest rose and fell too fast, too hard. “If you let your anger overwhelm you.”

  His fingers were wrapped so tightly around the haft of his axe that his knuckles had gone pale. For a heartbeat I thought he might ignore me… Might choose fury over sense. Then, slowly, the tension eased. Blood crept back into his hands in blotches of red. He shut his eyes and dragged in a long, uneven breath, like a man hauling himself back from the edge of a cliff.

  He gave a small nod. “We just get the girls and go.”

  I shifted my attention back to the yard below, forcing myself to see it as lines and movement instead of men and weapons. “We pull two into the trees at a time,” I reminded him of the plan again, tracing their patrol paths in my mind. “Only if they’re roaming alone. If more than that come looking, we abort. The moment there’s risk of an alarm, we disappear.”

  He swallowed. “And then?”

  “Then we move quickly,” I said. “In and out. No hesitation.”

  Kurtz’s jaw tensed, his resolve finally fraying at the edges. The heat of his mission seemed to evaporate, replaced by a cold, creeping doubt that made his next words small. “And if my sister isn’t there?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn't. He didn’t press for a lie he knew I wouldn’t tell. “We wait for night fall,” I said instead

  We waited for the sky to darken at a hidden vantage point where we could observe the bandit camp without being seen. Both of us were lost in our own thoughts.

  The damp brush soaked through my trousers as I sank lower into it, letting the earth’s chill seep into my skin. The sword at my hip felt heavier than it ever had during training. It was no longer a balanced length of steel, but a decision waiting to be made.

  I fixed my gaze on the guard near the gate and tried, deliberately, to unmake him. To strip him down from a man with a face and a life into angles and timing and distance. A problem to be solved.

  I had always known this moment would come. No one applies to the Academy for pageantry. We train for defense. For sacrifice. For the kind of choices that stain your hands with blood even when they are necessary. If the war with Drakari reignited, I would have been expected to cut down enemies without hesitation.

  This was no different. Just sooner.

  That was what I told myself as my heart battered against my ribs, loud enough I feared the bandits might hear it.

  And if I did nothing, those girls would vanish into a fate worse than death, and Kurtz would likely die trying to reach them alone. Discovery meant our deaths. Killing meant our survival.

  A simple plan. Brutal, but simple.

  I tried to pull that logic around my shoulders like a cloak, thick enough to quiet the part of me that still recoiled at what I was about to do.

  I was not a murderer. I was a knight-to-be. And this, whether I wanted it or not, was where my path was leading… A first true test of honor and duty.

  I found a stone near my hand and weighed it, feeling the Resonance stir beneath my ribs. Reluctant, but present. With a sharp flick, I sent it deep into the forest a ways beyond the bandit camp’s northern perimeter. It landed with a crack that suggested enough weight and carelessness to draw an ear.

  The pacing bandit stopped mid-stride. Near the horses, another man straightened, his hand falling to his belt.

  “Check it,” a voice called irritably from the longhouse.

  As two men peeled away from the yard and headed toward the trees, Kurtz and I were already moving. For someone so heavyset, Kurtz moved with a terrifying nimbleness when guided by the Resonance. The first bandit never saw him. I watched his stance shift as if a more skilled version of himself had taken over his body; his arm slid around the man’s throat and pivoted cleanly. The body sagged without a sound, the neck broken and the throat twisted before a shout could even form.

  Unlike Kurtz, I could only channel the Resonance in small bursts. By my own human will, I moved behind the second bandit, whose confusion dawned a second too late. I stepped in low, redirecting his momentum instead of meeting it. He hit the ground hard, and I followed him down, hand pressed firmly against his mouth to smother his cries. Then slid my sword past his ribcage… Cleanly through his heart.

  My first kill. I kept my face blank, desperately channeling a cold calm from my Resonance to keep from throwing up. We dragged them into the brush and waited. No alarm.

  “Now,” I whispered.

  The gap in the palisade was narrower than I thought. I slipped through sideways and dropped into the shadows of the yard, where the air tasted of damp wood, old sweat, and woodsmoke from the torches.

  The back of the longhouse door stood ajar. I heard the children before I saw them, the uneven, frantic breathing of too many people in a small space. Kurtz moved ahead of me, bending over to the girls who sat huddled against the far wall. Their wrists were bound loosely with cloth, just enough to discourage a run, but not enough to waste good rope.

  Kurtz knelt among them, searching faces. “Pisha?” His voice broke despite him. “Pisha?” No one looked up. There was no flicker of recognition, only empty stares.

  I dropped to a crouch, the cloth tearing as I sawed through several bindings with my sword. “Kurtz!” I hissed, snapping him back before he could spiral. “Focus. Get them ready to move. I’m checking the patrol.”

  He blinked, the fog finally clearing as he shifted to obey. I started to rise, but a hand caught my sleeve, anchoring me to the floor.

  “You can’t leave,” a younger girl whispered, her voice reedy with a breathing illness common to those who were born sickly.

  “We can’t stay,” I countered, trying to peel her fingers away.

  “Not without her,” she insisted. Her fingers adjusted from my sleeve to dig into my arm, trembling as she strained with all her tiny strength to keep me from moving.

  Kurtz turned back, his desperation flaring into sharp impatience. “Without who?”

  “My older sister. Drenna.” She must’ve seen the startled look on my face, already guessing what may have happened, because she rushed the next words nervously. “She had no choice. The bandits took me hostage so she would spy for them. But they beat her and took her to the shed in the back. I haven’t seen her since.”

  The shed in the back. In my mind, the camp rearranged itself, the distance to the rear fence calculating as I visualized where Drenna was most likely held.

  Kurtz was staring at me, his brow furrowing. “What?”

  “Someone I knew,” I muttered, the memory of the betrayal surfacing. “That girl who nearly…”

  Outside, a shout cut through the morning air. Names were called, searching and impatient. The bandits were starting to notice that something was amiss.

  The girl’s fingers tightened and a hiccuping sob escaped. “Please. She’s all I have.”

  Kurtz was still scanning the smaller children, hope fading from his eyes. We did not have time for both mercy and caution.

  Guide’s blistering balls! You owe me one for this Drenna.

  “Kurtz,” I ordered sharply. “Get them out. Count them. If your sister is among them, you run.”

  “And if she isn’t?”

  I glanced through a gap in the door, watching the shadows stir restlessly by the longhouse. The camp was waking up.

  “We have to save the ones we can,” I said, finally peeling the girl’s hand from my arm. I didn't look at them when I added with finality, “Go. I have a score to settle.”

  I knew it the moment the first shout went up. Not loud, not yet alarmed. It was harsh in that way men use when something is out of place. A tone that demanded: Check that again!

  We had misjudged the timing by a breath.

  Kurtz had already ushered the girls through the narrow break in the palisade, small bodies slipping into shadow, older ones half-carrying the little ones. I caught his eye just once in the dark. He didn’t speak. He didn’t need to.

  Go.

  The second shout came closer. I turned and ran the other way.

  Branches snapped under my boots as I cut through the shadows of the outer yard, drawing noise deliberately now. If they were counting heads, if they were quick enough to realize people were missing, then they would need something else to look at.

  They could look at me.

  The camp was chaos half-contained of men grabbing weapons, someone overturning a stool, torchlight swinging wild and gold against the timber walls. I slipped between two sheds towards the one further back.

  The smell hit first.

  Blood. Sweat. Rotting straw.

  She was there.

  Drenna lay propped against the far wall, one ankle twisted wrong. A dead man, pants around his ankles, sprawled beside her, throat opened from ear to ear. A dagger pierced through his chest like a finality. His blood had soaked into the dirt, black in the low light.

  For a moment I could not tell if she still breathed. Then her eyes shifted toward me, very much alive.

  I crossed the room in three strides and crouched beside her. Up close, she looked smaller than I remembered. The contempt she wore so easily before had been replaced by pain.

  “Can you stand?” I asked quietly.

  Her gaze cut like the weapon she favored. “Are you going to kill me?” she rasped. Her voice weak but mocking. “Think you can take me this time?” There it was. Sadistic bitch. Even broken, she reached for the blade that had been lodged on the dead man’s body.

  “Your sister asked me to save you.”

  Her fingers twitched at the handle, a short hesitation, before she pulled her knife free. She held it close as she looked at me as if gauging the truth in my eyes.

  Outside, shouting erupted. Real alarm this time. Drenna’s eyes narrowed. “You were going to kill me,” she said. Not accusing. Merely intrigued that I’d have the nerve to try.

  “I’m not like you, you psychopath.”

  Another shout. Closer. My heart stuttered. Kurtz. The children.

  “They’ll search for the kids,” I said. “If they find them–”

  Drenna pushed herself upright with a hiss of pain. “If they find her.” She grunted, her concern only for her sister. For a heartbeat, something passed between us. A tentative truce.

  “Help me distract them,” I said. “Or your sister might get caught.”

  She grinned, teeth stained red, seeing right through me. “You’re still pathetic,” she said. “Couldn’t best me then. What makes you oh-so-capable of helping me now?”

  She seized a torch from the wall bracket and shoved past me.

  “Drenna!” I shouted after her in shock.

  She staggered into the yard and raised the torch high.

  “Hey you shit faced bastards!” she shouted, voice ringing with reckless challenge. “Looking for someone?!” Men turned. Blades flashed. I chased after her, fury and dread tangling in my chest. “You won’t get away like this,” she muttered under her breath when I caught up to her. “They’ll hunt you.”

  “I know!” I stared wide-eyed at the lumbering figures coming towards us. One of them was faster, and broke free from the group to rush at us “And you just made it even worse!”

  She shoved the torch into a stack of dry kindling beside a shed. Flames leapt eagerly. “They’ll follow ME,” she said. “You go. Take the horses.”

  “I can fight–”

  She laughed an unhinged, high pitched laugh before it broke into groan… Clutching her side as if it pained her. She spat a glob of blood at my feet. “You have a lot to learn at that Academy yours before you play hero, you weakling.”

  The first bandit lunged. She met him halfway, reckless and bright.

  I hesitated.

  Coward, something whispered.

  Strategist, something else answered.

  Drenna glanced back once, eyes glinting like silver with happy murderous intent despite the blood and the pain. “Tell my sister not to worry,” she called lightly, Resonance buzzing like angry hornets as she gutted the reckless bandit easily. “Things’ll work out.”

  Then she turned and rushed to meet the others while the flames caught on to the dry kindling faster. Shouting surged toward her. Away from me, and most importantly away from the horses.

  She was just one girl. As good as she was despite being wounded, she would be overwhelmed.

  I ran. But not at the horses.

  The forest closed around me like a held breath. Somewhere ahead, branches cracked, small feet, hurried and frightened. Drenna’s sister looked up tearfully. “Where’s Drenna?!”

  “Kurtz!” I ignored her and swept my eyes around the clustered bodies for the boy. “By the Guide’s nine whores, where are you?!”

  One of the older girls lifted an arm and pointed at a hunched over figure a few feet away. Kurtz, who was grasping his head with his hands, his shoulders shaking in silent tears. Oh… so his sister really wasn’t here. But… there was no time for sympathy! I hurried over to grab at his shoulder. “Kurtz! I need your help!”

  He wouldn’t move. Too lost in his grief. I cursed. I was wasting time. Drenna was going to die. But…

  Why care? She was an unapologetic psychopath. Her sister’s excuses didn't change the bodies she’d likely left behind, or the fact that she’d tried to kill me. But she’d thrown herself to the wolves. Not for my sake. For her sister's.

  I felt my ears ring as common sense fought with… Reason. Will I remain a coward forever? Will I have to justify running away as strategy each and every time?

  The ringing grew louder. More insistent. And along with it an echo of a memory. Of the farmer’s drawling voice. “That ain’t even done with Resonance.”

  My eyes widened.