Chapter 22—Baby Steps

The courtyard of the Academy’s training grounds was empty when Raiden and his companions arrived that morning. Mist clung to the flagstones, the pale kind that blurred edges, and the echo of their boots carried too clearly across the space. It felt like a stage before an audience arrived.

The grounds themselves were a place of order. White-gray walls enclosed the wide square, their height just enough to shield from outside eyes but leaving the sky open above. To one side stood the long storeroom, its wooden shutters propped open, racks of blunted practice blades and training shields visible in the gloom. The smell of oiled leather and chalk drifted faintly from inside, reminders of countless drills before theirs. Weather had worn the flagstones smooth, and faint grooves marked where feet had turned and clashed for generations. It was meant to be a place of learning. Today, it felt like a place of judgment.

Randall slung his bow-case down onto the bench outside the storeroom, yawning as though they weren’t here to prepare for a fight that could kill their friend. “You know,” he said, loosening the strap at his chest, “this isn’t how I imagined our mornings together. I was hoping for deer hunts. Or a warm hearth.”

“You’re free to go,” Tadari said flatly. His blade was already unsheathed, gleaming faintly in the filtered light. The steel looked sharper in the mist, as though eager to taste flesh. “But Raiden isn’t. Not anymore.”

Raiden drew a steadying breath. His tunic clung to him already, though they’d barely begun. Every sound—the ring of Tadari’s steel as it shifted in his grip, the whisper of Randall adjusting his bowstring, the muted thud of Ophelin’s walking stick as she crossed the stones—lodged too sharply in his ears.

Ophelin lowered herself carefully onto the bench beside Randall. The walking stick rested across her knees, but her eyes were sharp. “Don’t die,” she said simply. “That’s the rule for training. Anything else, you’ll figure out.”

Raiden gave a thin smile. “Reassuring.”

“You’ll thank me later.”

They began with the basics—though “basic” with Tadari meant bruises more often than guidance. The first strike came fast, a clean downward arc. Raiden raised his blade just in time, the impact jarring through his arms. The force sent him staggering three paces back, boots scraping against damp stone.

“Too stiff,” Tadari said, already stepping forward again. His voice was flat, clinical, as if he were delivering observations on weather instead of dismantling Raiden’s guard. “You lock your wrists. Flex them. Let the force bleed through instead of resisting it.”

Raiden tried, but the second strike drove into his side guard, knocking the breath from him. He grit his teeth and forced his stance steady. He heard the echo of Falden’s voice in the Assembly—why should the Council believe children of rumor?—and it felt as though the prosecutor was standing here instead of Tadari.

Randall winced on the bench. He picked up a practice blade from the rack leaning against the storeroom and turned it absently in his hands. “This looks more like execution than training.”

“Shut up,” Ophelin muttered. “He needs this.”

Her knuckles whitened around the stick as she said it. She could barely stand to watch, but she refused to look away. Every strike Raiden endured was one she couldn’t intercept anymore, not with her leg half-mended. The frustration sat heavy in her chest, hotter than the dull ache that never quite left her injured limb.

The rhythm continued: strike, block, stumble. Strike, dodge, counter too slow. Tadari was relentless but not cruel—never once did he strike to maim, only to expose weakness. Each correction was curt, mercilessly precise.

“You shift your weight wrong. Again.”
“Your footwork drags. Faster.”
“You breathe like prey. Control it.”

Raiden obeyed as best he could, each command piling onto the last until his body was little more than a trembling mass trying to follow shapes. His mind screamed at him to stop, but something deeper—pride, fear, desperation—kept his arms rising.

By midday, Raiden’s arms felt like lead, his tunic soaked with sweat. A shallow cut bled on his forearm where he’d misjudged distance, the sting reminding him of Garid’s smirk in the Assembly. He forced himself upright, ignoring the tremor in his legs.

“Enough,” Randall said finally. “He’ll collapse before he learns anything.”

But Tadari lowered his blade only slightly. His dark eyes fixed on Raiden. “Collapse here, or collapse in the duel. Which do you prefer?”

The words landed heavier than the blade had. Raiden wiped his brow with the back of his arm and raised his weapon again. “Again.”

Tadari did not smile, but he nodded once.

The afternoon session was slower. Tadari adjusted pace, drilling footwork, positioning, the unseen rhythm of combat. He explained little, but his actions spoke—how to step with the strike, how to pivot without stumbling, how to read intent in shoulders before a blade even moved. Raiden absorbed what he could, though his body lagged far behind his will.

Ophelin called corrections too, her sharp eyes cutting through from the bench. “Your left leg drags—fix it.”
“Don’t lean your head forward. Makes it easy to split.”
“Stop thinking about your arms. Think about your center.”

Her voice carried more edge than she intended. She hated being still while others moved, hated the stick across her lap. If she could stand, she’d be in Tadari’s place, drilling Raiden herself, teaching him to use a shield as wall and hammer both. Instead, she had only words. And words felt like ash when what he needed was steel.

Raiden obeyed, each adjustment small, incremental. His body screamed at him, but somewhere in the haze of exhaustion, he realized he was starting to move cleaner. Not well, not yet, but cleaner. The blade no longer felt like a dead weight in his hands.

When the sun dipped low, bells marked the end of classes across the Academy. The sound carried faintly across the grounds. Students drifted past the walls, sparing glances at the odd gathering—a wounded Juggernaut, a child of Calamity, training under the eyes of companions like condemned men preparing for the gallows. Whispers followed, as they always did now.

“Is that him? The one who’s supposed to duel Garid?”
“They say he fights without magic.”
“No one survives Barowen’s heir.”

The whispers prickled Raiden’s skin more than Tadari’s blade had.

Randall slid his bow back into its case and stacked the practice blade he’d been toying with against the storeroom wall. “Day one, and you already look like you’ve lost.”

Raiden slumped onto the bench beside Ophelin, chest heaving. He wanted to snap back, but instead he found himself chuckling weakly. “Then I’ll look worse tomorrow.”

“Good,” Tadari said. His blade sheathed with a clean click. “Better you break here than when it matters.”

Ophelin leaned her stick against the bench, watching Raiden with that same unblinking gaze. “You’ll hate us before this month ends. That means it’s working.”

Raiden let his head fall back against the wall of the storeroom behind him. The stone was cool against his sweat-damp hair. The sky above was washed with the pale violet of evening, clouds tinged in silver. Somewhere deep inside, beneath the exhaustion and bruises, a small ember of determination burned.

Tomorrow would come, and the day after, and the month would crawl by in sweat and pain. But he would endure. He had no other choice.

He remembered the Archmagister’s decree—one month hence—as though the words were etched into his bones. The duel loomed ahead like a cliff he had no choice but to climb. His friends could guard him, advise him, even bleed for him, but in the end, it would be his blade against Garid’s. His breath against Garid’s breath. His life against Garid’s hunger for honor.

The thought should have hollowed him. Instead, strangely, it steadied him.

Ophelin caught him staring at the sky and leaned closer, her voice quiet. “Don’t you dare lose, Raiden. Not for me, not for them. For yourself.”

He glanced at her, at the defiance burning even through the limp in her leg, and nodded.

Randall broke the silence with a mutter. “This is going to kill me before it kills him.”

“No,” Tadari said, his tone final. “It won’t kill him. Not if he learns.”

The mist that had haunted the morning was gone, burned away by a day of sweat and steel. A cool breeze slipped over the walls, rustling the storeroom shutters. Raiden closed his eyes for a moment, just long enough to feel the weight of exhaustion seep into his bones.

Tomorrow, the cycle would begin again. He would bleed again. And perhaps, in those countless repetitions, he might carve a blade sharp enough to face Garid Barowen.

It was a fragile hope. But it was hope all the same.