DARK WAR REBORN; From Magicless Boy to World's Hidden Hope

Chapter 3: The Spark and the Shadow

The training yard behind the manor was a patch of packed earth ringed by low stone walls and a rickety wooden fence. Dawn after dawn, frost still clinging to the grass, Alard would drill Wayne without mercy. Footwork until the boy’s calves burned, parries until his wrists ached, thrusts and cuts repeated until the motions etched themselves into muscle and bone.

Calley always watched from the fence rail with legs swinging as she occasionally called out corrections in a voice that carried the smug authority of someone who had been swinging a blade since she could walk.

On the fifth morning since Wayne’s training begun, Alard happened to step away from the training yard to speak with the stable master about a lame horse, leaving Wayne and Calley to spar alone.

“Again,” Calley said, circling him with her blunted practice sword. “You’re still dropping your guard on the riposte.”

Wayne lunged. Steel rang on steel as Calley slipped inside his guard with infuriating ease and flicked her blade across his forearm. The practice edge was dull, but the force behind it split skin causing blood to well at once, bright against the pale flesh.

Wayne hissed and lowered his sword in pain. “Gods, Calley, that one actually cut.”

She turned pale when she saw the blood. “I barely touched you. Sit down before you drip on the yard.”

He obeyed, sinking onto an overturned bucket while Calley fetched a strip of linen from the pile they kept for bandages and knelt beside him, pressing it to the wound.

“Hold still. Father will tan my hide if you get blood poisoning.”

The cut was shallow but long, stinging fiercely. Wayne gritted his teeth as she dabbed at it.

Then it happened.

A warmth bloomed beneath her fingers, not the heat of infection, but something gentler, like sunlight on spring earth. A faint golden spark, no larger than a firefly, danced between their skin and vanished. The edges of the cut drew together as though an invisible needle stitched them shut. Moments later, only a thin pink line remained which was already fading.

They stared at each other.

“Did you…” Wayne began.

“I didn’t do anything,” Calley whispered. “That was… that was magic.”

Wayne looked at his arm, flexing it. No pain, not even a scar. He reached for the fallen sword, his heart beating faster than usual.

“Do it again,” he said.

They tried. Calley pressed her hand to his skin and willed healing yet nothing. Wayne closed his eyes and imagined warmth flowing from his own palm to the faint mark still nothing. They touched hands, concentrated until their heads ached. Yet not a glimmer.

“It only worked when you were hurt,” Calley said slowly. “And when I was trying to help.”

Wayne swallowed. “We can’t tell Uncle Alard. At least not yet. Father said the gift skipped me. If word gets out…”

Calley nodded with eyes widen. “He’d send you to the Conclave. Or worse. someone else would hear.”

They bound the arm anyway, for show, and said nothing when Alard returned. The day continued with drills and sweat, the ring of steel. But something had shifted between the cousins, a secret bright and dangerous as a hidden coal.

Far beyond Norwick, in places where men did not walk, the spark had not gone unnoticed.

In the white towers of Hidden Plague, an old woman with blind silver eyes jerked upright from her scrying bowl. A ripple had crossed the weave, though small and fleeting, but unmistakably the light of healing. The feeling was strong and she could tell it was from the north-midlands. From Norwick.

Also in a cavern lit by corpse-fat candles, a man in black robes whose face was hidden beneath a hood of shadow felt the same disturbance. Healing magic, raw and untrained, flaring like a beacon.

“The Mistress would want this one found.” He mummured.

Within two days, strangers came to Norwick.

First was three white mages, cloaked in pale gray, riding white horses with silver bells on their bridles. They rode openly to the village square and demanded hospitality. The reeve offered them the best house though trembling. They asked questions: had anyone seen unexplained lights? Heard voices in the wind? Felt sudden warmth in a wound?

The villagers shook their heads. Norwick had no mages. The only noble house was Lord Alard’s, and everyone knew Alard’s line had lost the gift. The white mages nodded politely, accepted bread and ale, and rode on the next morning, dismissing the manor without a second glance.

Alard watched them go from an upper window with a tight jaw. He could already feel what was coming.

That night, the black-clad riders came.

Six of them arrived after moonset, silent as smoke. With neither bells nor banners. Their cloaks drank the starlight. They moved through the village like wolves, kicking in doors, dragging folk from beds. Questions hissed in the dark: Where is the mage-born? Who hides the spark?

Alard roused the household at the first scream. He buckled on his old longsword, the one he had worn before the gift passed him by.

“Wayne. Calley. You must leave now.” He called out.

Wayne wanted to protest. “Uncle...”

“No arguments.” Alard’s voice cracked like a whip. “There’s a false panel behind the wine racks. It leads to the old escape tunnel. Follow it to the sheep cote on the far hill. Stay there until dawn, then head east to Thorneford. Ask for Captain Garrick, he owes me. Go.”

Calley grabbed Wayne’s sleeve and pulled him toward the stairs. Alard caught his nephew’s arm one last time.

“Live, boy. That’s an order.”

They fled down the narrow stone steps into the cold, Behind them, the manor door splintered under a heavy blow.

They found the panel rotting oak disguised as shelving and slipped through into a tunnel barely wide enough for shoulders. Earth pressed close, damp and root-tangled. They crawled on hands and knees with Calley leading with a single candle stub.

Above them muffled by stone and earth, came shouts. Then a roar of pain, it was Alard’s voice, raw and defiant.

Wayne tried to turn back. Calley seized his collar and dragged him onward.

“He told us to go,” she hissed. “Honor him by living.”

They emerged hours later into the sheep cote, shivering in the pre-dawn chill. Smoke rose above the tree line where the manor stood. Too much smoke.

Calley’s face was streaked with dirt and tears she refused to acknowledge.

Wayne stared at the distant glow with fists clenched so tight that his nails drew blood.

“They’ll come for us next,” he said.

“Then we shiouldn’t let them find us,” Calley replied. Her voice shook, but her eyes were steady.

Behind them, in the ruins of the manor hall, Alard hung broken against the wall. The black-robed leader stood before him, gloved hand still smoking from the dark fire he had used.

“Last chance, mund,” the man said softly. “The boy and the girl. Where are they?”

Alard spat blood onto the stones. “Gone where you’ll never follow.”

The leader sighed and raised his hand again. Alard met his eyes without flinching.

“Tell my brother,” he rasped, “I held the line.”

Then the fire took him, bright and terrible. When it faded, only his ash and silence remained.

But the hunters would not stop. And the hunted had just learned how fast they could run.