The morning came like an accusation — hard, white light slanting through the tall windows, cutting the dust in the air into clean lines. Yuki woke with the taste of iron and the echo of Faunus's voice still braided in his ribs: Steel yourself like a city. For a heartbeat he lay still and let the remnant warmth and cold settle, listening to the faint hum beneath his skin like a restrained storm.
He rose slow, every muscle a reminder that the void had demanded payment. But the hunger to test what he had learned was louder than exhaustion. Training in the void had given him form; he needed proof in motion and in the world that could bleed.
Downstairs the house moved around him like a living thing. Suzume — who wore the soft, practiced patience of someone raised to tend and to shield — stood at the doorway holding a bowl. Hayate, stiffer in the ribs but gentle when his face softened, glanced over a stack of ledgers. Shadow lingered in the shadows near the hall, expression as unreadable as ever; the stoic wall of the household, waiting. None of them broke stride to offer questions. That was the ceremony of the Akio house: care without intrusion, affection measured in deeds.
"Good morning, Yuki," Suzume said, voice small with relief when she saw him. She handed him the bowl as if it were armor. "You look better than yesterday."
He smiled, the movement thin. "Better than I feel," he said, and tasted the truth. The rice was plain and warm; the servants had already prepared his portion with the mechanical kindness of those who had learned to treat him like a child of the house.
Shadow's eyes flicked to his hands. For a long breath they all watched him like instruments taking measure. He flexed his fingers slowly, feeling for the pulse under skin that hummed like a tuned wire. Nothing dramatic—just the awareness of pressure and the promise of direction.
After the meal he excused himself. The yard called. The clan grounds were a patchwork of training lawns, orchards, and a shallow ridge that rolled into the thin brush of the Whisperwood fringe. He walked with a casualness he did not feel, letting the servants' presence fade into the background. Shadow followed at a distance; the man could not, would not, cross certain things — everyone knew their place and counted the unspoken boundaries. For now, Faunus's space had been a private smithy. The real tests belonged to the wild.
The ridge smelled of damp leaves and animal musk. Yuki let his breathing settle, and threaded warmth through his right forearm and cold up his left without looking. He had been taught to treat the weave like a living thing — coax, not command. He brought the two to his sternum and felt the silver-rose filament spool like wire, humming into being. It was steadier now; the lattice held.
"Small," Faunus murmured at his ear, the crow perched on a low branch, eyes like coal. "Don't blow it all in a grand gesture."
Yuki nodded. He would remember the warning.
He moved down the slope with soft steps. The first prey of the morning was small — a low-grade boar that had wandered from the forest edge to root up the grass. It carried the rank scent of wildness but little malice; a creature to sharpen reflexes, not test resolve. He stalked it without drama, let Vanishing Movement slide him along the edge of vision, and then stepped clean as a cut into the clearing.
The boar caught the shift of air. It turned, tusks flashing. Yuki vanished again — a short slide — and reappeared behind it. He struck with a lattice smear, not a shove: heat laced the blade of his palm, cold the edge. The combination seared the flank and numbed the leg. The boar squealed, scrambled, then fell in a tangle of steam and blood. It was tidy. The lattice had done what it was meant to do: a clean disable rather than a needless explosion.
He breathed out, palms sticky with the smell of iron. The victory was small and quiet and tasted of something he had missed: efficacy.
"Good," Faunus said, crisp with approval. "You kept it measured."
The hum under his skin dimmed a notch, as if some small reserve had been spent and then sealed. If the void had been the furnace, then this was the blade drawn from it. He knelt and closed the creature's eyes with a soft, respectful touch. The clan ate simply when they needed to; some of the servants would take the boar for the kitchens. Yuki found a clean pleasure in that — life turned circular, service paid in simple currency.
He could have gone back then, presented the result, accepted relief. But the hunger for a true test had teeth. If the boar had been a class one rehearsal, he wanted a class two examination — something with teeth that could teach him where his weave hurt, where it wasted.
He moved deeper where the shadow of trees thickened. The air chilled; even in early morning the brush there kept an old, damp cold. He narrowed his senses and let the weave sit like a quiet engine. The beasts here were different — more cunning, the sort that moved with purpose rather than hunger.
A sound split the underbrush like a cord snapping: a low, guttering snort. He stepped around a stand of ferns and found the creature. Larger than the boar, with bristled hides and a snout tipped with bone like a crude blade. Its rank was higher; the aura around it was dense, a low grumble of predatory intent. This was Close-to-Low+ — a beast that could chisel through ordinary men with bad luck.
It saw him and charged.
The first impact was a test of timing. The beast closed on him with the blunt, iron force of mass and momentum. Yuki met it in a half-step that threw off its balance — a practiced placement cultivated among dummies and lattice exercises. He vanished: Vanishing Movement that was more a glide than a teleport, and reappeared at the creature's flank with both palms braided.
He pushed. Heat and frost braided into a narrow filament and shot like a wire through sinew. The creature yelped and bucked; steam clung to the air like ghost-smoke. But it did not fold. It lashed with a shoulder, horns ramming the space where Yuki had been. The force carried him through; breath left him in a violent whoop. He tasted the world like a struck bell.
Adrenaline was an ugly companion. He staggered, chest ached, but he did not panic. Muscle memory — the lattice smear, the speed ladder — broke into place. He circled low, baiting the beast into overcommitment. It lunged again with a sweeping arc of tusk. Yuki vanished and reappeared above its back, driving a staccato of crimson-ice pulses into the spine. Each pulse was measured to stop the beast's motion — numb a joint here, scorch a muscle there — until finally its hind legs trailed and folded, hooves skittering in the mud.
And then the pack came.
From the brush a second set of eyes flared: smaller, quicker, a trio of sharp-snouted hunters that had been shadowing the master. They saw opportunity where the master bled. For a moment the world narrowed to teeth and the music of chase. Yuki's heartbeat hammered like a drum; his breath came shallow and hot. This was no longer a private test. It was theater.
He moved faster than he felt he could. The first hunter leapt, jaws aimed for his calf. He vanished — the glide now nearly instinct — and reappeared on the creature's shoulder. He drove a lattice smear along its flank; frost wrapped the hip; heat seared the ribs. It yelped and slid. The second hunter came with teeth bared. He met a Vanishing Palm that cracked the air like a bullwhip: the strike landed a fraction of a second after he reappeared, the filament hairline and precise, and the hunter spun away with a broken snout and a sputter of steam.
But there were three. The last was cunning; it circled like a viper and struck for the back of his knee. His weave hit wrong. Pain flared white and sharp like a knife, and he stumbled. The world stuttered. For the first time since the void, he felt the weave answer him with a cost: the hum under his skin dipped, a coldness crawling like a warning. Faunus's voice was a blade in his ear: Breathe. Thread the lattice—smear, not smash.
He did. He breathed in with a forced calm, threaded heat along the right, cold along the left, pulled the filament into a ring and shoved it at the ground beneath the hunter. The ring blossomed and wrapped the beast's legs, freezing muscle and tendon as it scorched fur. The hunter collapsed with a keening sound that turned into silence.
The field quieted in a ragged inhale. The master lay heaving, steam peeling from its flank. The three attackers were down, broken or driven off. Yuki slumped against an oak and let the world return. His knees shook; sweat and mud painted him in streaks. He had won, but victory tasted of blood and of near mistakes.
Faunus hopped to the limb overhead, eyes like chips of coal. "You pushed too deep on one pulse," he told him. "You can smash through, but not without losing room to breathe. The weave has an economy. Don't bankrupt it."
Yuki laughed breathless and ugly. "Noted." He flexed numb fingers and felt the hollow where the weave had drawn from him. It would refill, but not instantly. That was a law now: techniques cost, and he had to learn to pay without going bankrupt.
Shadow found him as he was packing the beasts for the household. The man's face was unreadable but the tension in his shoulders was a shout. "You went out alone," Shadow said, voice finally breaking the measured cool. It was not anger so much as fear buried under protocol. "You were not to—"
"I know," Yuki said. He met Shadow's eyes square. He did not need to tell him the void, the weave, the crow. Those things were not for Shadow's sight. "I needed to know I could do it."
Shadow's jaw worked. He looked at the carcasses, at the lattice tracings where frost and heat had kissed the earth. Whatever words Shadow had remained unspoken. Instead he offered the older servant's motion — a handpalm bare and open. "Then come. We will make ready for the house," he said.
They moved back together, the servants already waiting, the practical cogs of the clan in motion. Yuki walked with a different light in his step. He had tested himself not just against wood or simulation but against the unpredictable opposition of living things and the cruel addition of an ambush. He had found holes in technique and a price for misjudgment. The void had given him the blade; the ridge had taught him to hold it without losing the hand.
Behind them, Faunus's voice, barely a whisper, threaded to him as the warden of his skull. "Good first work. Remember the ladder. Remember the lattice. Tomorrow: refine speed. And do not let curiosity pry the lock beneath you."
Yuki's reply was a smile that tasted of rain. "I know." He did not know everything. He would not know for a long time. But he also knew this: the world noticed when you moved differently within it. The pulse in his veins was a new weight — to carry, to wield, and to learn how to spend.
The day stretched ahead with chores and faces and small mundane mercies. But beneath the domestic rhythm, a new pattern had been set. He had taken the first paid step out of the void and into the blood of the world. The foundations were not yet a city, but they were laid stone by careful stone — and that was enough for now.