With the trials only days away, the house that Alexander had procured in the middle ring of the Capitol shifted from a place of quiet recovery into a crucible of preparation.
Liz returned from the Scholar's Spire with a storm behind her eyes. She sat with Alexander and recounted everything Xavier had told her: the council's resistance, the king's unexpected decree, and the brutal gauntlet Emil would face. She spoke of the written exam moderated by Archscribe Helien, of the arcane crucible forged by Grand Arcanist Virelyn, and the sword trials under the gaze of Lord Marridan.
Alexander, having listened in silence, slammed his palm on the table. "Then we prepare him," he declared. "Every moment from now until the exam must be used. Drill him. Magic. Sword. Logic. Whatever you can get in."
But Liz shook her head, her expression grim. "It's too late to teach what he should have been learning since he could walk. The written exam was built to weed out anyone not raised within nobility. He'll be thrown questions rooted in a lifetime of education—legal riddles, ancient texts, military analysis in dead languages. We can't catch him up in three days."
Alexander frowned, but she continued, more firmly now. "What we can do is arm him with confidence. I'll show him how to navigate questions when he doesn't know the answer—how to answer with certainty even in the dark. If he doubts himself, they'll smell it like blood in water."
Alexander sat back, lips pressed thin.
"As for magic," Liz said, turning toward the courtyard window, where Emil was practicing footwork with a stick in hand, "I can't teach him what he already hears better than me. I can guide him, but the ones who can truly instruct him? They're waiting on the other side of that gate. The exam will be his bridge to them."
She turned back, eyes serious. "That leaves us one path. We focus on the sword. Let him refine what he's already awakening in himself. If they won't listen to his words, and they'll fear his magic, then they'll respect his blade."
And so, the house became a forge of readiness.
Liz transformed the sitting room into a war camp of books. Tomes on magical theory, primers on logical deduction, military treatises, and even collected speeches from dead kings lay in stacked towers like stone sentries. She tutored Emil mercilessly—not to fill his mind, but to strengthen his poise, to make him fearless in the face of unfamiliar ink and parchment.
And though he had no foundation, Emil absorbed everything. Not like a student, but like a man remembering dreams. Concepts and ideas lit within him not like sparks, but like fires rekindled. It was never about memorization. It was recognition.
"I don't understand," Liz said one evening, eyes narrowing over a candlelit codex. "Most adults struggle with this section for years, even with tutoring."
Emil looked up, blinking slowly. "It just… makes sense. I do not know how else to explain it."
Liz sat back, stunned with silence.
---
Outside in the courtyard, dusk bled into the stones like ink dropped into water. The twilight air hung heavy, windless and watchful, as if the Capitol itself paused to observe. An already ring of worn dirt marked the training circle, its edges bordered by flickering lanterns and the scent of sharpened steel.
Liz stood near the threshold, arms crossed, while Alexander sat perched on the stairs with a bundle of dried herbs clamped between his teeth. Both were silent. All attention belonged to the two figures within the ring.
Raphael shifted into a low stance, knees bent, wooden training sword poised diagonally across his body. He exhaled through his nose and circled to Emil's left.
"Ready?" he asked, not out of courtesy, but necessity.
Emil didn't nod. He simply moved.
Their swords clashed with a loud crack, the sound echoing off the courtyard walls like a firecracker. Raphael pushed forward with a feint—shoulder twist, ankle slide, quick jab to bait a high block—but Emil didn't fall for it. He angled his body, letting the force slip past, then brought his blade down in a snapping arc toward Raphael's thigh.
Raphael barely parried in time.
The older man stumbled back a step, eyes widening. Emil didn't follow up. He simply waited, weight evenly distributed, sword raised in a stance that felt ancient and alien, like something remembered rather than learned.
Raphael reset. Sweat beaded on his brow.
Again.
He lunged.
A sweeping horizontal strike aimed to catch Emil's ribs—standard, practiced, drilled into squires across the realm. Emil leaned back, letting the strike pass inches from his tunic, and responded not with brute force but precision. He stepped forward and inside Raphael's guard, pivoting his hips as he brought the wooden sword up with a rising diagonal cut.
Crack.
The blow landed with enough force to knock Raphael's blade from his hands. It spun away, clattering to the cobblestones.
Silence.
Alexander blinked. Liz's mouth parted slightly, as if to say something—but no words came.
Raphael held up a hand. "Again."
He retrieved his sword, but his steps were slower now, his eyes calculating. This wasn't sparring anymore. This was survival.
They resumed.
This time, Raphael abandoned form. He struck like a soldier—raw, brutal, direct. Overhead cleaves, sudden thrusts, wild sweeps. Anything to push Emil into reacting instinctively.
And Emil did react—but not how he should have.
He began to dictate. He wasn't responding to attacks. He was pulling them out, predicting and baiting. He would lean just enough to make Raphael think an opening was exposed, then punish the false confidence with a counter that struck exactly where it hurt, where it would cause the most damage.
He cut angles—not just horizontal or vertical, but diagonal-in-reverse, slashing from odd, seemingly unfeasible positions. At one point, he rolled beneath a swing, came up behind Raphael, and tapped the nape of his neck with his blade.
Raphael spun, gasping.
Emil's eyes glowed—not with literal magic, but something deeper. Focus. Passion. An understanding.
Raphael reeling from shock, attempted to mentally process the bout.
That stance—those pivots—I was taught that theory in my third year as a squire. The Ashen Flow... but he's improvising it. By tempering down the strengths of that style and combining it with feints from the Northern Drifts he is effectively not just minimizing, but almost eliminating any weaknesses of the Ashen Flow...How fearsome of a child---No, how fearsome of a swordsman Emil is becoming almost instinctively.
Alexander removed the herb stalk from his teeth as a bead of sweat rolled down his brow. Proud as any parent could be of their child yes, but such pride drowned in concern and worry of what lay ahead for Emil.
The next clash was slower, heavier. Raphael gave everything. And for a moment, he seemed to regain ground. He struck at Emil's flank with a low feint, then spun into a rising strike—one meant to simulate disembowelment.
Emil parried—but not with his sword.
He caught the wooden blade with his hand.
Raphael froze.
It wasn't just caught. Emil's fingers locked around it with unshakable precision. Not an act of brute strength, but one of leverage and understanding. He twisted, and Raphael was forced to release his grip—or risk breaking his wrist.
The blade dropped and a single instance later, Emil swept his leg behind Raphael's, knocking him down to the ground.
Emil tossed the sword he had taken from his instructor back to him.
Raphael caught it and stood straight, chest heaving.
"What are you, kid?" he whispered.
Emil tilted his head.
"Did you not tell me Raphael when we first met that you spent more time talking to steel than anyone else? That Steel whispers if you listen? I just took the lessons Liz gave me to listen to mana, and I focused on the sword...It spoke like you said it did."
No more was said.
The lanterns flickered.
And as the wind picked up at last, carrying the reminiscing scent of iron and ash, and in that moment both Liz and Raphael knew:
With strength and talent unbecoming of his age, there was no doubt in the mind of anyone present, that he could conquer mountains and cripple valleys if he simply felt like it.
Emil wasn't training or practicing to pass whatever the entrance trial may hold.
He was remembering how to wage war.
---
The moon hung like a silver eye over the Capitol, its pale light seeping through the shutters of the modest home Alexander had secured with his connections. Inside, the household slept, yes even Raphael and Liz, who in their short time with them, had already become family. Everyone rested deeply save for the boy who dreamed.
In his dream, Emil stood not in a bed, but in a field of ruin.
Ash rained like snow.
The sky above was bloodless and cracked, a canvas split by long-dead lightning. The earth beneath his feet was a charred graveyard of swords, broken bones, shattered dreams and sundered banners, their insignias long lost to fire and war. Blackened trees stood like supplicants with twisted limbs. Smoke wreathed everything, breathing like a living thing. There was no sound but the soft fall of ash.
And then, he was not alone.
The man appeared without fanfare—tall, shrouded in battered steel, his face hidden beneath a helm of dragonbone scorched at the crown. In his hands he held no sword, yet Emil knew him. Knew his stance. His silence. The presence that whispered not words, but remembrance.
The greatest swordsman the history of the world once knew
The one whose sacrifice sealed the world away from annihilation.
The one whose soul had awoken anew.
The man raised an empty hand.
From the ground, a sword rose. Long, black as night with silver veins running like veins of mercury through its edge. Emil reached for it. The moment his fingers closed around the hilt, the dream shifted.
Fire burst to life.
Not flames that devoured, but fire that remembered—a warmth that seeped into his bones, carried the weight of blood and honor.
The unnamed swordsman moved, slow and deliberate, into a stance Emil somehow knew.
Low. Fluid. Guard open, yet impossible to breach. Like a stroke--no a whisper of silent inspiration had struck him, the name of the movement, form, and technique began imprinting themselves onto his essence, his very soul,
Cradle of Ash
The technique did not belong to any school taught in the waking world. It was born of war and lament, to be used exclusively for slaughter. A power only perfected in the solitude of one's dreamscape should a Sword master in limbo find aspiring talent worthy enough to teach.
Emil understood now why it was called that—because it nurtured death like a mother cradling a child. Because its user became the eye of the inferno.
The unnamed swordsman lunged.
Their blades met. Sparks scattered like fireflies. Emil stumbled—then corrected. The movements weren't taught. They were given. Not through instruction, but memory. Every shift in balance, every sweep of his arm came not from conscious thought, but inheritance. The bloodline of battle.
"Watch," the man's spirit seemed to whisper, though no voice came.
And so he watched.
Form One: Ember's Repose
A stance of stillness. It drew opponents in by offering vulnerability. The blade was held low and wide, almost lazily—but within that posture was a coiled spring. The strength of it lay in deception.
As an imagined foe charged, he barely moved until the last heartbeat. Then came a pivot. A rising sweep that carved through shadow and air. The technique invited overcommitment and punished it with lethal precision.
Emil mimicked the form. His feet slid across the ash. He let go of fear. Trusted in the technique. When the phantom charged, he became the counterpoint—a single, flowing retaliation. An echo of fire in stillness.
Form Two: Smoldering Veil
A dance of misdirection. Here, Cradle of Ash abandoned rigidity. The sword flowed in arcs that blurred between offense and defense. Every step confused. Every motion led the enemy away from truth.
The sword master blurred before him, blade twisting in feints and false rhythms. His enemy struck at ghosts—until the real strike came, piercing the heart like a whisper.
This was the form of survival. Of weaving through chaos.
Emil felt his body shift. His breathing slowed. He stepped light, letting instinct guide him. He became smoke, flickering between blows. And when he struck, he did so without hesitation.
Form Three: Ashen Judgement
The final form.
Where Ember's Repose baited and Smoldering Veil bewildered, Ashen Judgement destroyed. It was the conclusion. The executioner's decree. Here, the blade moved like fire unleashed, a storm of wrath with no mercy.
The unnamed Sword Master became fury. Each movement a sentence. Each step a burial.
Emil could barely follow—but then he was within it. The world became sharpness and purpose. His limbs were not his own; they were the will of fire. When the strike came, it left no enemy to counter.
Cradle of Ash and Mana
Emil fell to his knees, chest heaving, the blade heavy in his hands. Ash swirled around him, a vortex of spent fury as the man stood silent.
Then, a final lesson.
The technique did not exist only in flesh. When bound with mana, Cradle of Ash transformed. The user no longer moved alone—the very world shifted in tandem.
In Ember's Repose, mana became stillness that paralyzed. In Smoldering Veil, it became illusion and mist. In Ashen Judgement, it became annihilation as one embodied a ghostly mist that heralded death in its wake.
With precise control, the technique reshaped reality in the space around the blade. A vortex of elemental reaction. A furnace of thought and steel. Few could survive its full arc. Fewer still could understand it.
It was not just a sword style.
It was an inheritance.
And Emil, breathless and awestruck, had claimed it.
He woke with the ash still in his lungs and a name lingering on his tongue.
Cradle of Ash.
---
The sun had barely begun to rise, still hidden behind the great towers of the Capitol. A gentle golden hue kissed the sky, soft and unthreatening. Birds chirped lazily, the city still caught between the last breath of night and the first of day.
Inside the modest courtyard home, Emil stood silently in front of the basin, splashing cool water over his face. His breath was steady, his movements precise. Every motion, from the way he combed back his hair to the deliberate fastening of his tunic, mirrored ritual more than routine. This day was not just any day.
Today was the day of the entrance trials.
And it was his seventh birthday.
The significance of this day in many ways had been restated again and again the past three days. While he should be nervous, Emil couldn't help but be excited for this mysterious future to begin.
When he emerged into the main room, dressed in simple but immaculately clean robes, Liz greeted him with a firm nod and a quiet smile. Raphael offered him a slap on the shoulder and a muttered, "Don't trip in front of nobility. Or do. Make 'em nervous."
But Alexander said nothing at first. He simply beckoned Emil to follow him outside.
The morning chill bit gently at their skin as the two stepped into the quiet street. The Capitol, though beginning to stir, still held onto a hushed reverence. Alexander led Emil to a small walled alcove shaded by an apricot tree, a place he'd found weeks ago and kept in mind.
There, resting against the stone bench, was a long, cloth-wrapped bundle.
Emil blinked, curious. "What is—?"
Alexander stepped forward and gently pulled away the cloth.
A sword lay beneath.
It was unlike any Emil had ever seen. The scabbard was jet black, unmarred and smooth, with subtle etchings that shimmered only when touched by light. The hilt was wrapped in fine sable leather, and the guard bore the faint shape of outstretched wings. When Alexander unsheathed it halfway, the blade itself drank in the morning light—a muted, dark steel, dense and matte, with no shine but immense presence.
It was beautiful.
And large.
Emil's brows lifted. "It's too big."
Alexander smiled. "Maybe. For most boys your age, certainly. But you're not most boys. I've watched you these past months. Watched your arms steady, your stance widen, your spirit harden. It may seem a bit much but I promise it will suit and fit you more with each passing day."
He extended the weapon, holding it flat in his palms.
"Happy birthday, Emil."
Emil stepped forward, almost reverently, and took the sword in both hands. It was heavy—but not too heavy. It felt like gravity. Real. Present. And, inexplicably, familiar. As though it had been waiting for him.
He gave it a slow test swing, and the blade moved with him, not against him. No awkward imbalance. No stagger. Just a soft whistle as it cut the air.
Alexander raised an eyebrow. "You're not surprised."
Emil shook his head, a small smile tugging at his lips. "It feels right." Simply stating.
Alexander chuckled, enjoying a happiness only a father could understand.
From the doorway, Liz watched with a rare softness in her eyes, while Raphael leaned against the post with folded arms and an impressed nod.
The sky brightened above them, the first full rays of sunlight spilling across the cobblestones.
In just hours, Emil would stand before royalty, mages, warriors, and judges.
But for now, he was simply a boy.
A boy with a sword.
And a birthday.
And the world quietly held its breath.