The King's Guard

Chapter 13

The sun had long slipped below the jagged horizon, casting the Academy grounds in a quiet hush. Lights from the dormitory buildings glowed dully, but most recruits were asleep. The training yards were empty, except for two shadows moving in slow, repeated patterns.

Kael exhaled, focusing on the lines of energy around him: the crackling, inconsistent hum that signalled the Rift trying to tear loose. He held it, barely. Sweat lined his back, his legs trembling from fatigue.

“Don’t push too hard,” Reyna called from a few metres away, arms folded tight across her chest. Her stance was relaxed, but her gaze pinned him with quiet precision. “You’re already fraying it.”

“I have to get better at this,” Kael muttered, not looking at her.

His voice was low, and frayed with exhaustion. It wasn’t defiance, it was more like necessity hollowed out into habit.

Reyna didn’t argue. She simply watched, weight shifting slightly on the balls of her feet, eyes never straying from him. Her sharp features were unreadable, but not unkind. Always ready, always poised to intercept whatever disaster he might summon.

Kael inhaled sharply, fingers twitching as he raised his hand again. The energy around him stirred like wind through a cracked windowpane: uncertain, tugging at the seams of the world. He didn’t try to cross the Rift, not after the last time. That memory still stung, a smear of panic behind his eyes. He just drew it near, coaxed it gently, as if pulling a thread from a tapestry without unravelling it.

There—a flicker. A shimmer in the air. Then a low tearing sound, barely audible, swept across the empty yard.

Kael immediately backed off, breaking the connection with a sharp intake of breath.

Reyna gave a curt nod. “You’re getting quicker at noticing the limits.”

Kael dropped to one knee, his palm braced against the cool stone floor. He was breathing hard now, as if the Rift had pulled something deeper from him than just effort.

“It feels like it’s always trying to... break me,” he said after a moment, his voice hoarse. “Like the Rift has teeth.”

“That’s because you treat it like it’s something separate from you.”

Reyna stepped forward with just a pace. Her voice didn’t change, but her presence edged closer.

“It’s not,” she added.

Kael looked up, furrowing his brows. “I’m sorry, but... how’s that supposed to make sense?”

“You act like it’s this thing lurking outside you. Like it’s waiting to pounce,” she said plainly. “But if it came from you, if it responds to you, then maybe it’s not your enemy.”

Kael didn’t reply. He stood slowly, wiping his forehead with the back of his sleeve, the fatigue pressing down on him like wet sand. But he didn’t argue.

Reyna caught the shift in his posture.

“We’ll stop in ten,” she said, already turning slightly, giving him the option to protest.

Kael didn’t. He was too tired to.

They returned to the beginning. Simple breathwork. Slow, and methodical visualisation. Reyna’s instructions came softly, almost rhythmically, each word a metronome tick pulling Kael back from the edge.

“Visualise the Rift as a thread,” she murmured, “not a storm. It’s not there to overwhelm you.”

Kael focused, drawing the image in his mind. A single line. Tense, but not snapping.

“I never asked,” he said after a long silence, his voice faint between exhales. “Why are you helping me?”

Reyna was still. Then: “Because if you lose control in the field again... we might not be so lucky.”

Kael winced. This was a heavily better truth.

“Also...” Her tone shifted slightly, softened. “Because I’ve seen how this place works. They’re quick to write people off. But you’re not useless. You’re just... behind.”

Kael let out a rough laugh. “Thanks.”

Reyna smirked, one eyebrow raised. “Don’t get sentimental.”

They resumed.

For the next hour, Kael worked on small manipulations, stretching the margins of time just a little, reaching forward half a second, pulling tension without letting the Rift tear. The air around him shimmered faintly, like a mirage, each attempt measured and logged. Reyna tracked the stretches with a battered stopwatch, calling out times without comment. Every few tries, he lasted a second longer.

Then he slipped.

It was a twist enough to double his vision, tilt the stars until they blinked out like faulty bulbs. His knees buckled slightly, momentum pitching him sideways.

Reyna caught him immediately, one arm braced under his.

“Don’t hold so much at once,” she murmured, helping him steady. “You’re not a tank. Think like a needle. Precise and deliberate.”

Kael swallowed. His lungs dragged in the air like he’d been underwater. He nodded.

Then, quieter, not quite meeting her eyes: “What about you? Why did you join the Academy?”

She tilted her head slightly. The question landed harder than it should’ve. A faint hesitation followed, one Kael almost missed.

“That’s a bigger question than you think.”

He offered a half-smile. “We’ve got time.”

“No, we don’t,” she said, though the way her voice dropped hinted she’d answer anyway. “My family handles logistics. Eastern Colonies. Administrarion, supply routes, dry numbers. Super boring, trust me.”

Kael waited, sensing that wasn’t the real story.

“But my brother… well, he went a different way. Rift Division. He was top of his class. Recruited straight out of secondary. We were all proud.”

She paused.

“Then he vanished,” she said, voice quieter now. “Official story? Training accident. There was no body or even a single witness. Only a bland report and silence afterwards.”

Kael’s brow creased. “And no one questioned it?”

“Oh, we questioned it,” she said bitterly. “We just never got answers. That’s how silence works, it waits you out. So I enlisted.”

“To find out what really happened?” Kael asked.

She looked away for a moment, then nodded once.

“To get to the level where someone has to answer me.”

Kael didn’t say anything. He just stood with her in the stillness, watching her expression settle back into that unreadable calm. He understood the shape of that kind of grief.

He didn’t press further.

They resumed, more focused now.

Kael began stringing short glimpses of foresight together: a second here, two there without losing stability. Reyna marked each attempt with small chalk lines on the ground.

“Fifteen clean activations,” she said at last, satisfied. “That’s enough for tonight.”

Kael slumped to the grass with a soft grunt, letting the tension spill from his shoulders. His shirt clung to his back with sweat, and the breeze carried the faint smell of ozone and scorched earth from earlier drills.

“Not bad,” Reyna said, lowering herself beside him with the sort of ease that suggested she could spring upright again at any moment.

He stared up at the dark sky, where only a few stars managed to pierce the Academy’s pale security lights. “Still feels unstable. Like it’s going to slip the second I stop thinking.”

“It will,” she replied plainly. “For a while. But you’re making progress. That counts. More than you think.”

He let out a breath. It wasn’t quite a sigh, but it wasn’t relief either. “Feels like I’m just holding my breath and hoping it doesn't crack.”

“Then hold your breath better than anyone else,” Reyna said, glancing sidelong at him. Her tone was dry, but not unkind.

They sat in silence for a while. The night air carried the distant sound of a door slamming somewhere deeper in the compound, and then returned to stillness.

Kael turned his head to look at her. She wasn’t resting. Even with her legs stretched out and her hands braced behind her, she remained alert. Her eyes moved constantly, small shifts like she was tracking something just out of frame. There was nothing careless about her. She sat the way someone might stand near the edge of a rooftop: relaxed in posture, but ready to shift her weight at a moment’s notice.

“You know,” he said, “I’ve had plenty of people tell me what to do. Yell at me to control it. Push me until I cracked.”

“And yet here you are,” she said, not looking at him.

“Yeah. But you’re the first who’s just... watched.”

At that, she gave a half-smile which was barely there, like it might vanish if acknowledged. “Watching’s harder than shouting. Requires patience. And an attention span.”

Kael snorted. “Guess I should be grateful, then.”

“Mmmmm... You should be.”

He let the silence return, then broke it a moment later. “Thanks. I mean it.”

Her smile didn’t return, but she gave a small nod. “Don’t thank me. Just don’t explode in the next mission.”

That drew a weak chuckle from him. “No promises.”

From across the training yard, tucked behind a stairwell that cast a long diagonal shadow, someone else watched.

Jared stood rigidly, his arms folded tight against his chest, his fingers curled beneath the sleeves of his jacket. His eyes flicked from Kael to Reyna and back again, unreadable beneath the dim light. The two of them laughing, talking, and sitting like comrades, struck a hole into his heart.

He turned sharply before they could spot him, boots scraping once against the concrete, and then falling silent as he walked away.

Back on the field, Kael finally pushed himself upright with a groan. His limbs felt heavy, not from fatigue, but from effort that hadn’t quite settled yet.

“I owe you,” he said to Reyna, brushing dirt from his palms.

“You owe me fifteen more clean activations tomorrow,” she replied, her tone crisp. “Then we’ll talk about debt.”

He groaned, dragging a hand down his face. “I thought we were done.”

“We are,” she said, standing smoothly. “For now.”

They walked side by side towards the dorms, neither rushing. The air had cooled, and the pavement was scattered with dry leaves that scraped softly as the wind stirred them. Overhead, the mounted lights hummed faintly, blinking in irregular patterns. A training drone, forgotten in the corner of the yard, flickered once in standby, its red sensor glowing dim.

Just before they reached the entrance, Reyna halted.

Kael slowed and turned. “Something wrong?”

“One more thing,” she said, stepping just slightly closer. Her voice wasn’t louder, but it felt heavier now, like the words mattered more than usual.

He raised an eyebrow, waiting.

“If you ever feel like it’s about to break you,” she said, her gaze fixed firmly on his, “say it. Don’t try to hold it alone.”

Kael blinked. The air between them suddenly felt still.

He nodded, slower this time. “Okay.”

Reyna didn’t wait for anything else. She turned and walked off without looking back.

Kael stood there, staring at the spot she’d just vacated, then turned and pushed open the door to the building.

Behind him, the stars shimmered faintly as if time itself had twitched.