The horses steamed in the cold, legs stamping up clots of last season's mud and frost. Soren stepped down first, boots crunching the snow-cured pine needles, then turned to watch Mira help the Lady from the carriage like nothing about this was ever improvised.

She accepted Mira's hand, gave Soren a brief, assessing look, and vanished into the waystation's dark. Even before the door thudded shut, Mira started her prowl, out around the clearing, long knife loose in her hand, eyes skipping over the treeline like she expected the forest to cough up another ambush.

Soren waited for the shift, how now, with the Lady safe behind old timber, the pressure fell on him alone. He shrugged out of the coat, flexing the chill into his arms, and let the weight of the sword ride easy on his back.

The air here was sharp, the kind that left a taste of copper at the teeth, and Soren felt every cracked rib, every stitched muscle the terrain had reintroduced to his memory over the last twenty-four hours.

The waystation had been a hunter's lodge once: stone foundation, tarred roof, windows blinded with pasteboard.

The only sign of occupation was the trail of horse piss up the side and the faint hack of the stove inside, failing to keep the world at bay. Soren could hear the Lady's voice, low and methodical, as she spoke with Mira, something bureaucratic, probably, about the next leg of the trip. He didn't let himself listen.

Instead, he circled to the back, away from the warmth, and faced the long, empty stretch of clearing that sloped down to the river. The wind here came in straight lines, nothing to break it, so each breath felt like a dare. He rolled his shoulder, grabbed the sword at the mid-grip, and let it hang loose at his side.

He started the drills the way he always did: slow, measured, the basic twelve-count cut. Each downward sweep described a little less than a perfect arc, and each time he reset, he felt the echo of every instructor's disappointment in the stiff catch of his wrist. He pivoted, let the blade swing up, then down, then again, until the rhythm smoothed out and he could almost pretend the world outside this moment didn't exist.

He kept at it until the sweat soaked through his shirt, until his fingers numbed, until he felt the old, familiar click at the base of the pinky, where the bone had never quite set right after Jannek's dare, back in their first year. He grinned at the memory, then let it go.

'If I'm going to keep her alive, I need more than this.'

Soren dropped the pace, switched to footwork. The ground was half-frozen, slick in patches, but he mapped the pattern, keeping his toes in the shadow of an imaginary opponent. High guard, low cut, twist, reset. He breathed in the cold until it stung. The motion was not elegant, but it was honest. No one here to grade the performance.

He didn't notice the shard at his wrist warming until he heard her voice, softer than the wind, but cutting through it all the same:

"Soren. Pause."

He exhaled, let the sword tip rest against the ground. A familiar ache crept up his forearm, a memory of pain, or maybe anticipation. He rolled his eyes toward the treeline, half-expecting a ghost, but this was not like the old days. No echo. Just her, in his blood.

Her voice was smaller than he remembered, less arrogant, but still precise as a ruler edge:

"Your stance is strong. Your intent is not."

He snorted, wiped the back of his hand across his jaw. "Then show me."

Silence, then a subtle pull, a tightening just under the skin, as if someone had plucked a string from shoulder to fingertip.

"Start again," she said.

He obeyed. First position, then the step, then the cut. The guidance came not as words, but as a correction in pressure: shift your weight, open the left foot, don't let the knee cave. He adjusted, and the motion felt easier. The sword described a better line.

"Again," she said.

He repeated. The rhythm steadied.

"Don't swing with the arm. Command it."

He focused, let the energy move straight from spine to blade, not detouring through the bunched mess of his shoulder. This time, the arc didn't wobble. He almost laughed.

"Good," she said. "Now—again, but breathe on the draw."

He exhaled hard and tried the sequence, this time pushing the blade forward on the breath, letting the exhale carry the strike. It felt stupid, but the blade bit the air with more force than before, a little more real.

He pressed on, running through the cycle until the world narrowed to nothing but the pattern of cut and step and breath. At the edge of exhaustion, he heard her again:

"Stop."

He stopped. The cold roared back in, sudden and total. His hands shook, but not from chill.

'What's the point of this?' he thought.

Valenna's answer came before he finished asking: "The body is not the blade. The will is."

He grinned, teeth chattering now. "Philosophy lesson?"

"No. Directive. You survived the city. You survived the field. But you haven't survived yourself yet."

He let the silence ride, just breathing. Somewhere up in the woods, Mira's voice called his name, time to go, or maybe just a warning that the Lady needed him.

Soren wiped his palms on the coat, sheathed the sword, and trudged back toward the lodge, feeling the crackle of the shard still live under his skin.

He'd never gotten the hang of being a variable. Maybe now was the time.

Inside, the Lady sat at the table, hair unbound, a map and a pen and a cup of untouched tea arrayed before her like the weapons of a different kind of war. Mira stood by the door, arms folded, eyes giving away nothing. Soren took his place at the wall, feeling the sweat cool on his neck.

The Lady looked up, just once. "Feel better?"

He shrugged. "Closer, maybe."

She nodded, as if that was the answer she'd been expecting, and returned to her map.

Soren thought of the line Valenna had drawn in the air, the way the blade had felt—not sharp, but true.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe that was the whole point: Not to win, not even to survive. Just to be exactly what you were, long enough that someone would remember it.

He closed his eyes, let the silence settle.

Tomorrow, they'd move. Tomorrow, the world would try again to erase them.

Tonight, he'd keep the watch, and keep the lesson alive, if only for himself.

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