Chapter 001

  He crashed backward onto the scorching sand. His skin stung as though lashed by a whip. A groan tore itself from his throat, hard and rasping, echoing off the pine stockade that enclosed their ring. He sucked in air through clenched teeth. His fingers dug deep into the loose, golden sand, scrabbling for purchase, until they met the cool dampness left by the morning rain.

  "Get up," the woman snarled beside him.

  Dust still hung in the air, drifting lazily down onto his body. He barely cracked his eyelids before the cloudless sky sliced his vision with sharp azure. From the remnants of the swirling haze, Aria emerged. She stepped closer, her shadow eclipsing his face. From this angle, she seemed even more unyielding than usual. Her emerald gaze pierced him through, leaving no room for excuses.

  He bit his lower lip. Not in anger. In disappointment with himself.

  A warm southerly gust tugged at her raven-black braid. For a moment, he thought a shadow of a smile flickered across her face, though it might well have been a trick of the shade. He lay there, humiliated, the sand grinding into his skin through his sweat-soaked gambeson. Yet, a fire burned in his chest—a determination not to fail her next time.

  Nothing escaped Aria's scrutiny, least of all what was painted on her son's face. Especially that old, familiar obstinacy. The very same stubbornness that, years ago, had compelled her to forsake the path of House Vesperon and forge a trail of her own.

  The first part of the day always belonged to Mother. It mattered not if snow fell from the heavens or if sheets of rain turned the arena into a bog. From dawn until noon, every day was a long lesson in humility beneath the edge of her blade. At first, he had hated it. In time, however, he grasped the purpose of this harsh tutelage. Every blow fell like a smith's hammer on hot metal, slowly forging a boy into someone ready for the adult world. Into someone self-reliant, ready to follow in their footsteps.

  He brushed a hand over his rough, grey tunic, sweeping away the grit. He wore simple training gear, identical to his mother's. Short sleeves left his arms free, hindering neither sweeping cuts nor blocks. The gambeson reached mid-thigh, moving with his body like a second skin, held in place by a brown belt cinched tight at the hips. Charcoal trousers bore the marks of hundreds of falls. His gaze drifted to her forearm, where a winding scar always drew his eye. Every time she tightened her slender fingers around a hilt, the old mark seemed to come alive, slithering across her skin like a snake. A souvenir from her last campaign, back when she still served in the Emperor's Red Guard.

  Small, slender, yet radiating an unbreakable strength tempered by years in the Legion. The fine lines by her eyes were traces of what she had seen and what she had faced as a young girl. Now, she passed all that experience and craft to her firstborn, so that he might not repeat the mistakes that had once nearly cost her her life.

  Mother's wooden waster tapped a nervous rhythm against the side of her leather boot—tap, tap, tap, tap—like a heart hungry for the next clash. His weapon, meanwhile, lay uselessly nearby, dusted with sand. Aria arched a brow and cocked her head in that characteristic way he knew only too well. It was a sign of impatience, one that almost always heralded another painful lesson. He swallowed hard.

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  "Get up, Belmond Blackwood."

  Aria extended a slender hand toward her fallen son.

  "We start again. This time, mind your weight distribution when you dodge. Legs wider. Hips lower. You must be like a willow in the wind."

  He took her hand. Her fingers were cold, thin, and hard as old roots. As he hauled himself up, he felt grains of sand cascading from his hair and tunic. Though his legs trembled, he lifted his head and met his mother's gaze without hesitation. In her eyes, he caught a familiar glint—a blend of maternal care and a tutor's severity. That spark made him straighten his spine, ignore the ache in his muscles, and reach for his weapon.

  The wooden sword felt like lead in his hands. His fingers clamped around the hilt until his knuckles turned white. Feet shoulder-width apart, knees bent, back straight as a bowstring. He took a deep breath. Muscles coiled as he raised the weapon toward his mother. The blade sang in the air, inscribing a wide arc aimed at Aria's right flank. The whistle of sliced air broke the silence of the nearby grove.

  She flowed past the edge like water around a boulder, her dark hair swirling in the wake. His heart hammered at the sight of that perfect dodge. He had seen these moves hundreds of times, yet he could never quite suppress his awe. He grit his teeth and immediately launched a thrust, aiming for her shoulder. His body moved by rote, following patterns etched deep by countless hours of training, deeper than he consciously realised. The blade whistled in flight exactly as she had taught him—neither too high nor too low.

  She seemed to predict his attacks before he even launched them, evading him always by a hair's breadth. Her green eyes tracked every twitch of his muscles, a golden shimmer flickering in their depths. He knew this precision was an echo of endless hours spent in the courtyard of House Vesperon, where she had trained as a child under the strictest masters. In moments like this, his mother vanished, leaving only a warrior forged in the fires of combat, shaped by years of a bloody trade. Now, standing before him was Aria, known as the Raven's Talon—an heir to the line that had served the Grand Orsenate in the very heart of Erythra for three centuries.

  She pirouetted on her toes, her braid carving a dark vortex in the air, and in the next instant, her body shot forward. Belmond felt the space around Aria grow dense, as if the arena itself were submerged underwater. He knew what that meant.

  Inhale. Exhale. He reached deep inside, to where his heart beat. It struck once, hard—and it was not alone. The Nodus Auricus stirred in his chest like a second heart, waking to life. Aura flooded his body in a wave of warmth, flowing down his arms to the fingers clenched around the hilt. His mother disappeared from his field of view. Instinct took the helm, and his body moved on its own.

  The wooden blades whistled toward one another. A fraction of a second before impact, the air between them ground together. A faint, almost invisible glow coated the weapons, delicate as a pale tongue of flame. Their auras met first and sang. A sharp hiss, followed by the crack of breaking ice, which dissolved into a pure, metallic-crystalline chime that hung trembling in the air. Where the blades met, a wisp of silver-white mist bloomed, barely visible to the eye, like frost breath on a winter morning. Particles of aura collided in a violent dance, sparking and dying faster than a blink.

  Crack.

  Not the dull thud of wood on wood, but the sharp, dry report of snapping fibre. Splinters exploded into the air like a swarm of angry wasps, and ravens burst from the pine branches, taking flight in panic.

  A shard from Aria's sword flew straight for his head, missing his temple by a hair before vanishing into the tall grass beyond the fence. Half his own sword spun away in flight, clattering with a hollow thud into the weapon barrel beside his mother. He stood holding the stump of a hilt, staring at the jagged fibres sticking out where the blade had been a moment ago. The warmth of the aura still pulsed in his veins, slowly receding like a tide leaving the shore. His arms trembled. Until this moment, his mother had never let him feel her full strength. The force of the impact had shuddered through his hands, bitten into his bones, and spread all the way to his shoulder blades.

  "Focus, Bel!" she shouted. "The enemy won't wait. Wake up!"

  He looked up at her. She was gone. He hurled the broken hilt into the sand and lunged for the nearest weapon barrel. He thrust his hand into the thicket of hilts, grabbed the first one he touched, and tore the weapon free just in time. He felt her cold presence at the back of his neck. Aria stood motionless like an executioner awaiting a nod, gripping a blade freshly snatched from the rack. The raised sword hung above her head, heavy as a death sentence, though her own son stood in the line of the cut.