SHINE IN THE DARK

One week passed.
The academy had not forgotten the duel. It had only learned to talk about it in whispers.
At first the shock had been loud. Seniors argued in the corridors, trainees traded theories over meals, and a class 4 boy swore he had seen a seam in the air where the blow came from. But the facts could not be argued with. Godori Fushiku had stood in the arena, and Kataugi Hatmangh had been carried out of it. The duel of recognition was settled, and the decision stood. Godori was a Shibu trainee of the academy, taken in by Irel Ember herself, and no one, not even Marco, could say otherwise.
Yet one question had never gone away. It followed him down the halls, hung in the dining hall like steam, and sat behind every pair of watching eyes.
*What was that technique?*
No one had an answer. Not the seniors, not the tudos, and not Godori himself.
---
A few miles from the village, the forest was quiet.
It was the wrong kind of quiet. The birds had stopped singing, and the wind that moved the upper branches never seemed to reach the ground. Thin light slanted down through the leaves and laid pale coins over the moss.
"Mummy?"
A little girl stood between two cedars, her basket hanging from one small hand. Her mother had brought her here that morning to gather mushrooms, as they had done a hundred times before. *Stay where I can see you,* her mother had said, and then she had wandered off between the trees with her sleeves rolled up. That had been a while ago.
"Mummy, is that you?"
No one answered. The girl turned in a slow circle, her sandals sinking into the soft ground. Her mother's basket sat at the foot of a tree, tipped on its side, mushrooms spilled across the roots.
"Mummy... where did you go?"
She stepped forward, then another step, and rounded a thick trunk.
Her breath stopped.
Something huge stood in the clearing ahead. Its back brushed the lowest branches, and its hide was mottled grey and brown like old bark, so that for one terrible moment she mistook it for part of the forest. Then it shifted, and the ground shivered under its weight. Its head swung low, and she saw what hung from its jaws.
A sleeve. A hand she knew.
The thing's jaws worked slowly, wetly, and the sound that came from them was one she would never be able to forget. Then it tilted its head, as though bored, and let the shape in its mouth fall to the moss.
"M... Mother!"
The word tore out of her before she knew she had said it. The basket slipped from her fingers. Her knees gave way, and she dropped to the ground in a small, crumpled heap, still calling, her voice cracking. "Mother! *Mother!*"
It did not matter. A child's voice had never stopped anything.
The monster lifted its great head and turned toward her. Its eyes were small and pale and empty, and it did what every monster does.
---
Some days later, in the academy's meeting hall, no one was smiling.
It was a smaller, older room than the main hall, built of black beams and paper screens, with a long lacquered table down its middle. The lanterns burned low. Every seat was taken, and no one spoke above a murmur. Tudos sat shoulder to shoulder with Shibu of classes 1 and 2, some still wearing the dust of the road. At the head of the table, in the high seat, sat the kin of the academy.
The kin said nothing. The kin simply watched the door, hands folded, face unreadable in the lantern light, and the whole room seemed to bend around that silence.
Ragna Flamesworth leaned against a pillar near the back with his arms crossed. For once, he had no joke ready. Across from him, Genji Takamori sat upright and unmoving, a thin line of lightning crackling quietly along his folded sleeves.
The screen slid open.
A man stepped in, and the murmuring died. His cloak was torn at the hem and caked with mud to the knee. A bandage was wound tight around his left forearm, and there were dark circles under his eyes, the sort that come from many nights without sleep. He walked to the centre of the room, bowed once to the kin, and did not wait to be told to speak.
> **STATUS**> **Name:** Ruka Marpilono> **Class:** 2 (Head of Scouts)> **Affinity:** Wind
"Monsters have started appearing in the forest south of the village," Ruka said.
His voice was rough, and it carried to every corner of the room.
"As soon as it started, we started losing people. Farmers. Woodcutters. Women who go in to gather mushrooms. Anyone who goes into those trees for any reason at all."
No one moved.
"Eleven missing in the first week," he went on. "We assumed wolves. Then my scouts found a farmer's cart on the south road, overturned, the ox still harnessed. What was left of the ox..." He paused, jaw tightening. "We stopped assuming wolves."
A murmur ran through the table. Ruka raised his hand, and it stopped.
"Four days ago I sent three teams into the forest to find the source. Two came back." His bandaged arm trembled slightly, and he steadied it with the other hand. "The third team has not. We found one of their cloaks. We have not found the scouts."
"What are we facing?" Genji asked, his voice cold and level.
"Beasts. Large. Larger than anything recorded in the southern forests." Ruka's eyes were distant. "Their hides are close to bark. They do not run from kai. When one of my men hit it with a wind blade, it did not even slow." He swallowed. "We counted at least three different tracks. There may be more."
"Three," said the tudo of Class 3, leaning forward. "Three of them, in one forest?"
"At least."
"Then they're hunting in a pack. Or they're being driven." Ragna had straightened from the pillar, and his voice was flatter than anyone had ever heard it. "Driven by what?"
"I don't know." Ruka's eyes met his. "That is what frightens me."
The hall was silent.
"Another thing." The scout reached into his cloak and laid something on the table, a small child's sandal, caked with dried mud and a dark stain. "We found this at the edge of the village fields two days ago. The tracks next to it led out of the forest, not into it."
No one needed him to explain.
"They're coming closer," someone whispered.
"Every day," Ruka said quietly. "The first sightings were deep in the south woods, a half-day's walk from the nearest house. The latest was at the edge of the rice terraces." He looked around the table, and the exhaustion in his face hardened into something fiercer. "The harvest is ten days away. Every farmer in that village will be out in the fields at dawn. Every one of them. Women, children, old men. And we have *nothing* between them and the forest."
"We could close the road," said a class 1 Shibu from the far end. "Send word to the village to keep indoors."
"And let the crops rot?" a tudo snapped. "They'll starve by winter!"
"They'll be eaten by autumn!"
"Enough," Genji said, and the room fell quiet. He turned back to Ruka. "How long until they reach the village itself?"
Ruka was silent for a moment too long.
"If they keep to the pattern," he said, "days. Not weeks."
A cold stillness settled over the room. Even the lanterns seemed to burn lower.
"Days," Ragna repeated. He rubbed his masked face with one hand, and when he lowered it, his eyes were no longer half-lidded. They were sharp and clear and utterly without humour. "We've got the whole academy sitting on its hands, a village full of people who can't fight, and *days.*"
No one answered.
At the head of the table, the kin finally unfolded those still hands, and every head turned.
The kin's voice, when it came, was quiet. It did not need to be anything else.
"Then we have none to waste."
The paper screens trembled in a rising wind, and somewhere in the forest, far to the south, something large and patient was moving closer to the village.
The morning sun slanted through the paper screens of Class 5's classroom, and Ragna Flamesworth was, as usual, very nearly asleep.
He sat on the edge of the teacher's desk with one leg swinging, his linen mask pulled snug over his nose and his half-lidded eyes fixed on a point somewhere above the students' heads. A stick of white chalk turned lazily between his fingers.
"Right," he said, with the enthusiasm of a man announcing laundry day. "Lecture."
Dan sighed. Zeika slouched in her seat with her arms crossed. In the back row, Godori sat up a little straighter, brush already in hand, and Amana gave him a small, encouraging nod from the next desk over.
Ragna didn't bother to stand. He flicked his wrist and the chalk shot across the room, and a perfect circle bloomed on the board in a single stroke. A second flick drew a smaller one inside it. He never once looked.
"Show-off," Dan muttered.
"Lazy people have to be efficient," Ragna said. "Who can tell me what this is?"
"A circle," Zeika said flatly.
"Brilliant. Five points to Zeika for stating the obvious."
Zeika's glare could have lit a lantern. Amana's hand shot up.
"The big circle is the Outer Zone, Tudo," she said. "The small one inside is the Continent."
"There we go. Someone's been reading." Ragna slid off the desk with a groan, as if standing cost him dearly, and tapped the outer ring with the chalk. "The Outer Zone. Home to monsters, and every other kind of evil thing you've ever had nightmares about. And somewhere out in it..." He circled the edge of the board. "...an unexplored region. Nobody has ever mapped it. Nobody has ever crossed it and come back to say what's there."
"Why not?" Godori asked before he could stop himself.
Ragna's eyes slid toward him, and for a moment the lazy mask slipped, only a little. "Good question, hotshot. Anybody want to guess?"
Silence. Then Dan sighed, long and heavy, and raised one limp hand. "The war."
"The war," Ragna agreed, and he walked back to his desk and sat down, slowly. "The holy war. A long time ago now, but not long enough. The monsters and the demons of the Outer Zone came for the Continent, and they didn't come as a mob. They came with a leader."
He drew a small dark mark at the edge of the outer circle.
"Solora. The archdemon."
The room was quiet. Even Zeika had stopped slouching.
"Here's the part you need to understand," Ragna said. "He wasn't born a demon. The stories say he was a man. But he could do something no man should be able to do. He could control demons, and monsters, and *beasts*, and wield their power as if it were his own. Anyone know the difference between a monster and a beast?"
"Beasts are bigger," Yu Sanik said suddenly, and then looked as though he regretted it.
"Bigger," Ragna said approvingly. "Good. Anyone else?"
A pause.
"They're older," Izumi said, very softly, without lifting her eyes from her desk. "Ancient. And they give birth to monsters."
Every head turned. Dan actually sat up. Zeika blinked.
"Look at that," Ragna said gravely. "Izumi speaks. Someone mark the date."
Izumi said nothing more and returned to studying her hands. Ragna's mask crinkled in a smile.
"She's right. A monster is something your tudo can handle on a good day. A demon is something your whole squad handles on a bad day. But a beast..." He shook his head. "A beast is a huge, ancient thing that births monsters the way a mother births children, and its power doesn't fit in a classroom. Now imagine a man who could *summon* them."
Nobody breathed.
"That's what Solora did," Ragna said quietly. "Demons and monsters were hard enough to stop. Then he started calling the beasts. The battle was almost lost, my little hotshots. Almost every one of us wouldn't be sitting here. So the people of that time changed his title." He wrote it on the board, slowly. "Not *archdemon.* *Archsummoner Solora.*"
The chalk clicked softly against the wood.
"Nobody has crossed the Outer Zone since," Ragna finished. "Whatever's in the unexplored region, the war made sure nobody wants to find out."
A long silence followed.
"This sure is an intense lesson," Amana whispered.
"Agreed," Godori breathed. His brush had gone still in his hand. Somewhere in the middle of the story he had stopped noticing the sun on his shoulders and the stiffness in his bandaged ribs. He was leaning forward on his desk, wide-eyed, as though the beast were breathing at the window.
"What happened to him?" Zeika asked. "Solora."
Ragna paused for one long second, then rubbed the back of his head and gave a lazy shrug. "Ah. That's the bit I've forgotten."
"*TUDO!*"
"Kidding. Another lesson, another day." He stretched, and several joints cracked in a row. "Moving on, before I fall asleep standing up. Now, the Continent."
He tapped the inner circle, and the chalk drew four short lines inside it, dividing it into four.
"Four powers. Iron Blade Empire. Baltis Empire. The Holy Empire. And the Sarovern region." He pointed at each. "Let's start with the one nobody argues with. The Holy Empire."
"They serve a god," Dan muttered.
"They serve a *Lord*," Ragna said. "Anyone know his name?"
"Lord Dorbna," Zeika answered, almost before the question was finished.
Ragna's eyebrows rose above his mask. "You do listen."
"Only when it's about who's strong."
"Naturally." He turned to the board. "The Holy Empire is made up of people with holy power, who serve the Lord Dorbna. Their influence stretches across the whole Continent, further than their borders, further than their armies. And they're ruled by the bishop, the highest authority in the empire." He glanced over his shoulder. "Higher than me. Higher than your seniors. Try not to forget that, and please don't tell the kin I said it."
A few students laughed. Godori grinned.
"Now," Ragna said. "Iron Blade Empire. Dan, guess what they're known for."
Dan sighed from the bottom of his soul. "Blades."
"Blades. Genius." Ragna pointed the chalk at him like a medal. "Swords, and raw, brute strength. Iron Blade soldiers train their bodies like weapons, and their weapons like bodies. You don't out-muscle them, and you don't out-fence them. Not unless you're very lucky or very stupid."
"I'd fight them," Zeika said.
"Rule five," Ragna said without turning. "No fighting without permission."
"I *said* I'd fight them. Not that I was going to."
"Mm. Sit down."
"I'm sitting!"
Amana covered her mouth to hide her giggle.
"Next," Ragna said. "Baltis Empire. These are the magicians." He drew a small spiral beside the name. "They use kai to control the elements to their fullest potential. Not just a spark of fire, or a splash of water. Total mastery. Amana, name the elements for me."
"Water, fire, air, earth, lightning, and ice," Amana said promptly.
"Good. And you lot are all trying to do what a Baltis magician does, only they do it a great deal better. Don't take that personally."
"I'm taking it personally," Zeika said.
"Of course you are." Ragna's voice was lazy, but his eyes had warmed. "A Baltis master can freeze a river from bank to bank, or boil a lake in an afternoon. Please don't try that in the courtyard. I'd have to write a report."
The class chuckled, and for a moment the weight of the war lifted from the room.
Then Ragna turned, and his gaze landed on the back row.
"And last," he said, "the Sarovern region."
Godori's back went rigid.
"Home of our resident hotshot," Ragna went on, "and of every farmer, fisherman and fool who's ever tried to take a swing at a Shibu. Sarovern uses both. Swords *and* kai." He tapped the board where the fourth section sat, between the others. "We're the middle child of the Continent. Not as sharp as Iron Blade. Not as flashy as Baltis. And not as holy as the Lord's people, either."
"Why use both?" Godori asked.
"Because when your neighbours could crush you with one hand, you learn to do a bit of everything." Ragna's mask crinkled. "A Sarovern warrior who can swing a sword *and* shape his kai can surprise anyone. It's not a bad way to live."
Godori grinned. He couldn't help it. His chest swelled, and his hand tightened around the brush. "That's us."
"Don't get cocky, hotshot."
"I'm not!"
"You're a little cocky."
"...Maybe a little."
Laughter broke out, and Ragna let it run before he lifted a finger.
"One more thing, and then I'll let you go before I fall asleep on this desk." He nodded at the board. "A circle inside a circle. The Continent is small, remember. A very small place, surrounded by things that would like it to be smaller. Keep that in mind, the next time you wonder why we train you the way we do." For a moment, his eyes were no longer lazy. "Class dismissed."
The bell rang across the grounds, and chairs scraped as the students gathered their things. Zeika swept out of the room first, muttering something about beasts and not being afraid of anything. Dan trailed behind her with a long, weary sigh. Izumi and Yu slipped away in silence.
Amana lingered beside Godori's desk, tucking her brush into her sleeve. "Well? Still glad you came?"
"Yeah," Godori said, but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring at the board, at the small circle sitting inside the large one, at the unexplored region where no map had ever reached. "It's huge, isn't it? All of it. And we only live in the middle."
Ragna had already settled into his chair with his feet up on the desk and his eyes half closed, looking for all the world like a man who hadn't a care.
But as Godori stood up to leave, he could have sworn the tudo's gaze followed him all the way to the door.