2026-01-04 21:43:06Liora rode beside him most days, silent for long stretches, then asking sharp questions about his fighting style or the wastes. She never thanked him again pride wouldn’t allow it but she shared her rations without being asked and took the night watch closest to his.
The other cadets thawed slower. Jax, the broad earth-mana user, grumbled about “waste rats” until Elias helped reinforce a broken wagon wheel with raw strength; after that, Jax offered a grunt that might have been approval. The twins, Kael and Kora wind siblings kept their distance but stopped whispering when Elias passed.
Thorne, invisible to all but Elias, never shut up.
“She’s measuring you, boy. Every move. Veyne Clan breeds schemers.”
“Or she’s just curious.”
“Curious gets people killed. Or bedded. Sometimes both.”
Elias ignored him.
On the fifth evening, Greyhaven appeared.
It wasn’t a city in the traditional sense. It was a fortress carved into the side of a mountain range, its walls seamless black stone veined with mana conduits that glowed faint blue at dusk. Above the main gates, floating platforms hovered training arenas, dormitories, forges suspended by massive chains and anti-gravity runes. Airships docked at towering spires. Banners of a hundred minor clans and mercenary companies snapped in the wind.
The gates stood open, guarded by veterans in gray armor unmarked by house crests. Neutral ground. Here, bloodline meant less than skill.
Liora’s group was waved through after showing academy badges. Elias dismounted with them, Reaper wrapped in cloth across his back to look like ordinary steel.
A grizzled sergeant at the inner checkpoint eyed him. “Name and purpose.”
“Elias Voss. Here to enroll.”
The sergeant snorted. “Fresh meat always smells the same. Trials start at dawn tomorrow in the lower arena. Fail, and you’re out by sunset. Pass…” He shrugged. “You might live long enough to regret it.”
Liora stepped forward. “He’s with us. Saved our squad.”
The sergeant raised an eyebrow but waved them on.
Inside, Greyhaven was chaos ordered by violence. Streets wound between training yards where cadets sparred with live blades. Smithies rang day and night. Taverns spilled laughter and blood in equal measure. Instructors scarred men and women with eyes like winter watched everything.
Liora led them to the second-year barracks, a squat stone building near the mid-level platforms.
“You can bunk in the common hall tonight,” she said. “Tomorrow, after trials, we’ll see.”
Elias nodded. “Thanks.”
She hesitated, violet eyes searching his face. “Why Greyhaven? You fight like you’ve been at war your whole life. You don’t need training.”
“I need time,” he said. “And a place where no one asks about my past.”
Something flickered in her expression understanding, maybe. “This place doesn’t care about pasts. Only what you do here.”
She turned to leave, then paused. “The trials are brutal. They pit new blood against each other until only half remain. No holding back. Deaths happen.”
“I’ll manage.”
Liora’s mouth twitched almost a smile. “Don’t die, waste rat. I still owe you.”
She walked away, braid swinging.
Thorne chuckled. “She likes you.”
“She barely tolerates me.”
“Same thing with proud ones.”
That night, Elias found a corner in the common hall, a vast room filled with snoring cadets on straw mats. He didn’t sleep. The bloodline thrummed under his skin, eager for tomorrow.
Dawn came gray and cold.
The lower arena was a sunken pit of packed earth, ringed by stone benches already filling with spectators cadets betting, instructors assessing, veterans drinking. A hundred new hopefuls gathered at the edges: farm boys with crude weapons, minor clan heirs with polished gear, ex-mercenaries, runaways. All hungry.
An instructor a tall woman with a mechanical arm and flame scars across her face stepped onto a raised platform.
“Rules are simple,” she barked, voice carrying without mana. “Last fifty standing advance. No killing if you can avoid it, but accidents happen. Yield or die trying. Begin!”
Chaos erupted.
Elias moved.
He kept the aura banked, Reaper still wrapped. No need to reveal everything yet.
A big recruit with earth mana charged him first, fists hardened like stone. Elias sidestepped, tripped him with a leg sweep, and drove an elbow into the back of his neck. The boy dropped, unconscious.
Two more came together siblings by the look, wind blades whipping from their hands. Elias rolled under the slashes, came up inside their guard, and struck pressure points with precise, brutal efficiency. Both crumpled.
More came. He danced through them controlled, economical. No wasted motion. War God’s Instinct painted paths through the chaos.
Within minutes, a circle cleared around him. Hopefuls eyed him warily, deciding he wasn’t worth the risk yet.
Across the pit, another circle formed.
Liora.
She fought with storm precision sword a blur of lightning, movements sharp and lethal. Three opponents already lay at her feet, groaning. She caught his eye across the arena and nodded once acknowledgment, maybe challenge.
The fights thinned. Bodies littered the dirt. Yields were called. Instructors dragged the unconscious away.
Soon only sixty remained.
The flame-scarred woman raised her hand. “Close enough. Final ten pairs fight to submission. Winners advance.”
She pointed pairings at random.
Elias drew a wiry cadet with shadow mana fast, sneaky, daggers coated in poison.
The boy grinned. “Fresh meat.”
They circled.
The shadow user vanished, reappearing behind Elias with daggers thrusting for kidneys.
Elias let the aura flare just enough. Time slowed. He spun, caught both wrists, and headbutted the boy hard enough to crack bone. The cadet dropped, out cold.
The arena quieted.
Even the instructors leaned forward.
Liora’s fight ended seconds later her opponent yielding after a blade kissed his throat.
Fifty stood when the dust settled.
Elias was one.
The woman instructor approached him personally as the crowd dispersed.
“Name?”
“Elias Voss.”
She studied him gray eyes, torn clothes, wrapped greatsword. “You held back.”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Don’t need to show everything day one.”
Her scarred mouth curved. “Smart. Dangerous combination. Dormitory assignment in the outer ring. Training starts tomorrow. Don’t be late.”
She walked away.
Liora waited at the arena exit, cleaning blood from her sword.
“You passed,” she said.
“So did you.”
She sheathed the blade. “Outer ring dorms are rough. Fights every night. You’ll fit right in.”
Elias smiled faintly. “Looking forward to it.”
For a moment, they stood in silence amid the groans of the defeated and the cheers of the victors.
Then Liora turned. “Come on. I’ll show you where to eat. Winners get first pick.”
As they walked, Thorne’s voice was thoughtful.
“Place is a forge, boy. It’ll temper you or break you.”
Elias glanced at the floating platforms above, the banners, the cadets already sparring again.
“Let it try.”
Greyhaven had its first taste of the War God’s return.
And it wouldn’t be the last.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
The Price of Victory
The throne hall air hung heavy with the smell of copper and charred flesh, Seraphine’s body still warm on the marble, blood pooling beneath her in a slow, dark mirror that reflected the guttering torches and Harlan’s roaring flame aura in fractured, mocking shards. Her eyes were closed now my doing and the wound in her chest still leaked in weak, rhythmic pulses, the gurgle of her last breath echoing faintly in the high ceiling like a whisper that refused to die. My hands were slick with her blood, Reaper dripping red onto the stone in fat, wet drops that splattered and spread, the metallic tang thick on my tongue, mixing with the bile rising in my throat. Liora stood frozen beside me, lightning still crackling faintly along her blade, blue white arcs dying in the air like dying stars. Her face was pale, eyes wide, locked on Seraphine’s body, the scar on her cheek stark against skin gone gray. Kora’s wind had stilled, dust settling around her feet in a soft, choking cloud, her hands
The Hall of Broken Promises
The throne hall doors had barely groaned shut behind us when the air turned thick with the smell of old fire and fresh blood, the gold plated walls reflecting the last guttering flames in warped, distorted patterns that made every shadow look like it was bleeding. The floor was cold marble streaked with old scorch marks and newer, darker stains dried blood from older fights, fresh from the loyalists we’d just cut down in the antechamber. The echo of their dying screams still lingered in the high ceiling, bouncing back faint and hollow, like ghosts too tired to scream anymore. Harlan stood at the far end, flame aura roaring around him in a crown of white-hot fire, eyes locked on me with that same smirk he’d worn when he pushed me out of the airship years ago, the one that said he’d already won. Lord Voss sat the throne behind him old, broken, flame dim and flickering like a candle in a draft, but his eyes were still sharp, watching, calculating, the way a dying man watches the vultur
The Slaughter at the Threshold
The throne hall doors loomed ahead like the jaws of a dying beast, gold plating cracked and blackened from failing wards, the faint hum of dying mana vibrating through the stone floor and into my boots, each step sending small tremors up my legs that made the stitches in my side tug with fresh, dull pain. The air in the antechamber was thick, hot, heavy with the stink of scorched metal, old blood, and the sour rot of mana cores that had finally given up the ghost, the smell clinging to my tongue and making every breath feel like swallowing ash and regret. The last loyalists had pulled back deeper inside only a handful remained here, crimson plate gleaming dully under flickering torchlight, flame auras low but steady, eyes hard with the kind of fanaticism that doesn’t flinch at death because it’s already decided the cause is worth it. We burst through the side corridor in a tight wedge me at point, Reaper drawn and low, crimson mist already coiling around the blade like living smoke;
The Whisper’s Origin
The whisper had been growing louder for days, no longer just a faint vibration in the stone but a voice that seemed to speak directly into the marrow, soft and persistent, repeating my name in tones that felt both ancient and intimately familiar, like someone who had known me long before I knew myself was trying to remember how to speak. It came most clearly in the hours when the cavern was still, when the fire had burned down to embers and the only sounds were Rag’s deep, rhythmic breathing and Mira’s small, occasional murmurs in her sleep; it rose then, threading through the quiet like smoke, curling around my thoughts until I could no longer tell where my own mind ended and the voice began. I lay awake that night, Liora curled against my side, her head on my chest, silver hair spilling across my shoulder in loose strands that caught the last red glow from the dying fire. Her breathing was slow and even, one arm draped across my waist, fingers loosely curled against the bandage on
The Last Threshold
The manor had finally stopped pretending it could hold on. It drifted downward in exhausted, uneven lurches now, each drop accompanied by a deep, metallic groan that rolled through the mountain like thunder trapped in stone, the lowest spires no longer scraping but gouging long, jagged scars across the upper platforms, sparks flying in brief, angry bursts that lit the gray dawn like dying fireflies. The air carried the heavy, acrid scent of molten gold cooling too fast, mixed with the faint, wet rot of mana conduits that had given up entirely, leaving only the throne hall’s solitary glow high above a pale, flickering gold that looked less like defiance and more like a lantern someone had forgotten to extinguish before abandoning the house.I stood at the forward ledge in the thin, cold light of pre dawn, cloak pulled tight against the wind that bit harder now, carrying flecks of ash and the sharp tang of exposed wiring that stung my nose and made my eyes water. The ache in my side ha
Still Here, Somehow
The cavern smelled like old smoke and damp stone and the faint copper tang of blood that never quite washed out of the air no matter how many times we tried to scrub the floors. The embers in the fire pit were down to almost nothing, just a dull red line that barely reached the walls, throwing shadows that moved slow and tired, like they were as exhausted as the rest of us. I sat against the crate, back to the rough wood, legs stretched out in front of me, the ache in my side a steady pulse now, not screaming anymore, just reminding me with every breath that I was still leaking a little inside, still not quite whole. Liora was curled beside me, head on my shoulder, silver hair loose and tangled from the wind and the sweat of the last push. One arm draped across my chest, fingers loosely curled in my tunic right over my heart, like she was checking it was still beating even while she slept. Her breathing was slow, even, but every now and then she’d hitch, a small catch in her throat,
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