Kael's POVThe Binding Ceremony took place every morning, the first light falling on the crystal spire of the Grand Cathedral tinting the world in golds and promise. I was lined up with forty-seven other kids, all seven years old like me, us all shivering with anticipation. Families intoned prayers to the Seven Gods, the voices blending into a prayerful hymn that filled the sacred hall.I remember thinking how beautiful everything was that morning. The stained glass windows depicted heroes of legend, warriors who had slain dragons, sages who had shattered plagues, kings who had united nations. They had all walked in their Script just as they should have, and they had all been rewarded with eternal glory. Today, I was to learn what glory was mine.My father stood behind me, his calloused blacksmith hands on my shoulders. He'd spoken little on the way here, but I'd caught him smiling at me a few times. Pride, I told myself. He was proud of me, proud of whatever destiny the gods had writ

Kael's POV We left Thornwick before dawn on the fourth day, our entire lives packed into two canvas bags and a small wooden cart.My father had sold everything we couldn't carry, his prized anvil, his collection of masterwork tools, even my mother's silver locket that he'd worn around his neck for seven years. We walked down the dirt road leading away from the village without looking back, though I heard shutters closing as we passed and felt the weight of fearful eyes following our departure."Where are we going?" I asked, struggling to keep pace with my father's long strides."East," he said simply. "To the frontier settlements beyond the Whispering Woods. Places where people are too busy surviving to worry about Scripts and prophecies."The frontier. Even I knew what that meant, lawless territories on the edge of civilization where the Church's influence was weak and life was brutal. Monsters roamed more freely there, bandits preyed on travelers, and people disappeared without any

Kael's POV Dawn came too early and too cold.I arrived at Garrick's training yard with muscles already sore from yesterday's journey and a stomach growling from the meager breakfast my father and I had shared. The gate stood open, and inside, students were already warming up, running laps, stretching, practicing forms with a casual competence that made my inadequacy painfully obvious.Garrick stood at the center like a monument to violence. He didn't acknowledge my arrival, didn't offer any greeting. Just pointed to the far corner of the yard."Run. Twenty laps around the perimeter. Go."I ran. Or tried to. By the third lap, my lungs burned. By the seventh, my legs felt like lead. By the twelfth, I was stumbling more than running. The other students flowed past me with ease, some of them laughing at my pathetic pace."Faster!" Garrick's voice cracked like a whip. "You think monsters will wait for you to catch your breath? Move!"I pushed harder, but my body refused to cooperate. On t

Kael's POV Six months passed in a blur of pain, progress, and few victories.I woke up at dawn every day, ran to training ground on legs that never ceased to ache and stretched my body to its limit. Garrick was never kind to me, if anything, he seemed to find new ways to torment me in specific. While other students were doing standard drills, I was made to bear weights, to dash through barriers, endurance exercises that left me gasping on the ground."Screens provide individuals with shortcuts," he had once told me, standing over me as I grunted my way through my hundredth push-up. "They strengthen the body naturally, make skills more accessible, make things improve faster. You don't have shortcuts. So you'll use the long path, and you'll follow it until your feet are bleeding."They did bleed. Regularly.But something was shifting. Gradually, almost unnoticeably at first, then more and more noticeably, my body was changing. Muscles were growing where there hadn't been any before. My

Kael's POV I woke three days later in a room I didn't recognize.Sunlight streamed through a window, painfully bright after the darkness I'd been floating in. My entire body felt like one massive bruise, and when I tried to move my left arm, white-hot agony shot through me so intensely I gasped."Don't move, you idiot." My father's voice, rough with exhaustion and relief.I turned my head, slowly, and saw him sitting in a chair beside the bed. He looked terrible. His eyes were red-rimmed, his face unshaven, his clothes rumpled like he'd been wearing them for days. Which, I realized, he probably had been."Father…""You nearly died." His voice cracked. "The healer said if Aldric had found you five minutes later, you would have bled out in those woods."Memory returned in fragmented pieces. The Scriptbeasts. The fight. Aldric's golden sword cutting through shadow."Where am I?""The healer's house. Garrick paid for your treatment." My father leaned forward, taking my good hand in both