House of Ash and Gold

Chapter 13: The Broken Blade

The yard was quiet at night. Too quiet for a place that bore so much noise by day.

Cael eased the door shut behind him, muffling the faint creak with the edge of his sleeve. The moon hung low over the ridge, spilling just enough light across the packed dirt of the training circle to see without a torch. He pulled the practice blade from where he'd hidden it under the fence and stepped into the ring.

The air was cold enough to sting his lungs, but it didn't slow him. It woke him.

He rolled his shoulders, shook the stiffness from his arms, and planted his feet in the center of the circle.

Here we go again.

The past three nights had blurred together, all of them like this. And yet he came back every time, because each night he could feel himself… changing.

He began slow at first, moving through the drills Matilde had taught him long ago. The sword still felt heavy, but not nearly as bad as it had that first morning in the yard with Jorlan. That morning, the blade had dragged his arms down like an anchor. Tonight it felt… manageable.

His breath plumed faintly in the chill air as he swung again. And again.

Block. Twist. Strike. Reset.

Block. Twist. Strike. Reset.

Sweat prickled down his back despite the cold, but his hands didn't slip on the hilt anymore. His forearms no longer screamed with every motion.

He adjusted his stance mid-swing, and that's when it happened again.

The faint shimmer.

It started at the edge of his vision, faint gold tracing the air ahead of the blade. Almost like the light was marking the correct path before he completed it.

The first time it had happened, on the second night, he thought it was just exhaustion playing tricks. But tonight, he stopped mid-motion and stared at the faint, wavering line hovering before him.

When he moved his arm along that line, the blade's swing felt smoother and wasted less energy.

As if something unseen was correcting him.

He exhaled sharply, wiped his sleeve across his forehead, and reset his feet.

Again.

This time, he kept his eyes open for it. The shimmer appeared sooner, now subtle but there, tracing a faint arc as he shifted from high guard to a downward cut. And the moment he followed that gleam with the edge of his blade, the motion felt… right.

Not yet perfect but better than his clumsy instincts.

That was new.

And it was more than just seeing where Jorlan would strike, like in the yard. Here, alone, the shimmer taught him what he should do.

He stopped to catch his breath, leaning on the blade, his chest heaving.

So it's not just seeing. It's… learning. Like the damn thing has been teaching me all along.

The realization startled him more than the cold.

When he'd first noticed it in the yard, watching Jorlan's shoulder twitch before the blow came. He thought it was just some trick of the Veil's Eye, a glimpse of his opponent's intent. But now, standing alone in the dark, he saw it differently.

It wasn't just anticipation.

It was instruction.

Almost like… a teacher, hidden in the light.

Cael straightened slowly and looked around the empty yard. His eyes traced the packed dirt, the old stones, the half-broken fenceposts.

And then he noticed something else.

The whispers.

They'd started faintly the night before, just murmurs at the edge of his hearing but tonight they coiled through the yard clearer.

The runes.

He hadn't known to look for them until the whispers tugged his eyes down to the ground.

Faint, fading glyphs lay carved into the practice circle, only visible when the moonlight caught them just right. Shapes like curling vines and sharp arrows and circles within circles.

Power slept here.

No wonder the Eye wakes up here, he thought, crouching to trace a rune with his finger.

It hummed faintly beneath his touch, though the wood of the blade dulled it again when he stood.

He couldn't read the runes, at least not yet, but he'd seen enough illuminated margins in the scribe's tower to know the marks weren't random.

Someone had built this yard for more than drills.

And he was starting to believe his family had forgotten what for.

He stood there for a long moment, staring at the faint marks before rising and planting himself square in the center again.

If there really was something here... something to be learned, he meant to drag it out.

This time he moved faster, cutting sharper arcs. He let his body follow the faint lines of light when they appeared, let his hands move without overthinking.

Block. Strike. Step. Counter. Reset.

Again.

Again.

Again.

The blade caught on a knot of wood and split halfway through a strike.

The crack echoed across the yard, loud enough to make him flinch.

Cael froze, staring down at the broken blade in his hand.

It hadn't felt like a hard swing. But the wood had splintered clean through where it met the hilt.

His breath came quick now, the sweat cooling against his shirt. He let the two halves drop into the dirt and flexed his fingers.

His knuckles ached but his grip felt stronger than it had all week.

He crouched to pick up the splintered pieces and slipped them back under the fence where he'd found them. Tomorrow he'd find another.

...

By day, Cael split his time between the scribe's tower and the yard.

At first it had felt like penance. Edric's way of reminding him he didn't belong entirely in either world.

But after a few weeks of this rhythm, Cael found himself growing into it.

The mornings were brutal, yes. Jorlan and the squires still mocked him openly. But their mockery had grown thinner as he stayed on his feet longer each day.

Even when his shoulders burned and his knees buckled.

And by evening, his body still obeyed him well enough to climb the narrow stairs to the scribe's chamber and spend hours hunched over a ledger.

The scribe didn't speak much to him beyond handing down parchment and notes, which suited him fine. The quiet was good.

And though his muscles ached when he sat too long at the desk, he could feel the change creeping through his limbs every time he stood.

Stronger.

More flexible.

Even his lungs, which had once burned if he walked the yard too fast, now felt steady enough to keep him upright through drills and stairs both.

He found himself catching his balance easier when the squires tried to trip him.

He found himself lifting the practice blade without that old tremor in his hands.

And each night, when the rest of the house slept, he crept back to the yard.

On the fourth night, the shimmer appeared stronger.

This time it didn't just mark the path of his swing.

It outlined stances. Patterns.

He stood still, blade poised, as faint golden lines traced a footwork sequence across the dirt.

One step forward. Half-pivot. Shoulder square. Blade angle corrected.

The whispers came again, soft but insistent... urging him to follow.

When he did, the movement felt fluid.

When he hesitated, the light dimmed.

By the end of the sequence his chest heaved, but the blade in his hand felt like an extension of his arm, not a foreign weight.

He'd never felt that before.

It startled him enough that he stopped, lowering the blade and scanning the yard again.

It still looked empty.

But he could feel it now, whatever power that lingered here was awake, and it was watching.

By the sixth night, his body had started to understand what his eyes already knew.

He moved faster now, enough to keep pace with the light.

Enough that when he imagined sparring with Jorlan again, he could almost picture himself keeping up.

Not winning but close enough he could almost taste it.

On the seventh night, the blade broke again.

This time it wasn't a knot in the wood.

This time it split clean from the force of the final strike in the sequence, shards clattering into the dirt.

Cael stood in the middle of the yard, staring down at the wreck of it.

His breath misted in the cold, and his hands burned, but he didn't let himself sit down.

He just stood there, chest rising and falling, staring at the faint shimmer in the dirt where the golden lines still glowed faintly.

It was brighter tonight than ever.

And it was starting to scare him.

Not because it hurt but because some part of him already wanted more.

Later, when he climbed back to his room and shut the door behind him, he sat on the edge of the bed and stared at his hands in the moonlight.

The skin was raw in places, blistered where the hilt had rubbed him raw.

But they didn't tremble anymore.

Not even a little.

He leaned back against the wall, fingers curling lightly around the pendant at his neck.

What am I turning me into?

The whisper that came then was softer than any yet.

But it sounded almost amused.

"You were always this. You just never looked close enough to see."

Cael lay awake for a long time after that, staring at the faint glow of moonlight on the ceiling, replaying the motions in his mind.

Block. Step. Strike. Pivot. Reset.

And that shimmer… showing him where to stand, where to swing, where to strike.

He'd seen enough now to grasp what he'd only half-believed before.

The Veil's Eye wasn't just sight.

It was memories... It watched... It whispered... It taught...

Or maybe… not an Eye at all. Maybe something beyond it, something on the other side of whatever thin curtain he kept peering through.

He called it the Veil, because "what else could you call the thing behind the world that watched and whispered?" The word had simply risen into his mind the first time the shimmer threaded itself through a man's shoulders and hands, showing Cael where the blade would fall.

And when he named it so, it felt right. Like the name had been waiting for him.

But sometimes he wondered: was it just a name he'd chosen? Or was it the Veil itself that had chosen him?

Perhaps it was neither sight nor memory but a medium, something ancient that simply used his eyes as a gate. A current of things already written, waiting only for someone with the right blood to read them.

His blood... Ashveil blood.

He wiped his hands on the training tunic, staring at the faint threads still shimmering around them before they faded.

Did the veil in his name mean something? Had it always?

Cael let the question settle in his chest. He didn't have the answer but he knew one thing.

Whatever the Veil was, it was shaping him into something he didn't yet recognize, but he meant to find out what.