The reply did not come that night. Or the next. Azit continued to train, but the rhythm was changed now. His movements no longer sought impact; they sought understanding. Every step, every breath, every swing was less boisterous. Not slower, but more true. He stopped lunging. He started listening, not to Mahmoud, but to himself. One morning, at the start of the lesson, he supported his blade flat between his palms. He looked at the reflection in the mirror steel. Not the warrior. Not the sword. Just. the boy behind it all.
What if there was never a curse? What if the dark was just a voice? What if it needed someone to stop yelling over it?
Mahmoud watched him from under the black archway. Not a word was said. For the first time, Azit did not ask what training would be conducted. He simply began. And for the first time, Mahmoud trailed behind him, not to attempt, not to criticize, but to follow along with him.
They fought not as student and master, not as aggressor and antagonist, but as two sides of the same strength. And in the beat of the footwork, in the sound of the steel, Azit began to understand that the war was coming closer. Not the exterior war. The interior war.
Azit meditated before the session, blade sheathed at his hip. Not as a warrior sharpening edge, but as a man ridding himself of dross. His breathing was unhurried. His mind no longer shrieked. There were still specters. But no longer did they shriek.
Mahmoud sat across from him. Watching. Waiting.
"Why do you fight?" he barked.
Azit opened his eyes. Met his gaze.
"I don't," he said. "Not anymore."
Mahmoud's forehead creased.
Azit continued. "I listen. I move. I choose. But fight, the way I used to, that was fear. That was me trying not to break."
A silence. A heavy one.
"You understand now," Mahmoud said at last, "what I could not teach you."
Azit did not nod. He simply stood.
The flames returned that night. The dream, again, charcoaled fields, sun above, footprints behind him. But this time, the voice didn't scream. It merely called. Not to give him a warning, but to call him in.
He had run so far. Stopped. Whirled. And in the dream, the boy that he used to be stood before him. Barefoot. Scared. Grinning.
Azit moved forward.
Azit did not expect the sound that exploded out of him. It was small to start with, one tiny crack like water over ice, and then it swelled until he couldn't keep it inside anymore. Sudden, hot tears cut clean lines through the dirt on his face. He dropped to his knees before the small barefoot child in the dream and the child did not retreat. He simply stared, eyes open and peaceful.
I am sorry," Azit said, her throat rough. "I am sorry I allowed anger to take its residence here. I am sorry I used you to become that which I felt would keep us safe. I made you carry my fear and my hate. I turned you into me and I forgot how to be a human.".
The words were extracting hooks from his chest. They lightened him and hurt him at the same time. He doubled over into himself, hands over his eyes, the weight of years coming apart in the quiet of the dream.
The boy walked on ahead unhesitantly and wrapped his spindly arms about Azit's neck. He clung to him as if the embrace would keep them both suspended. There was no criticism in the hug, only a wild, genuine tenderness that stunned Azit. He clung back awkwardly at first, then with a tenderness he had not known he could feel, and which he knew now to be wretched, and right.
Azit wiped his tears on the back of his wrist, astonished by how dirty and human the gesture looked. He felt the beat of the boy's pulse against his own and the warmth settled something in him that training had left unscathed.
"I'm sorry," he whispered again, this time to the past and to himself. "It was my fault. I let anger control me. I let it take over this body as if it were its own. That's over."
The boy pulled back far enough to gaze into Azit's face. For a second, only two pairs of eyes, old remorse and new resolve, locked. Azit leaned up and wiped away the smudge from the boy's cheek. He had salt on his lips and found the words he had been searching for.
"I swear to you," he talked low, vow hurled like stone on running water, "I will do it all correctly from now on. I will learn to endure what we are with pride. I will not run in rage again."
He hesitated, ancient hunger crawling at the edge of his voice, and then he let it loose, sharpened to a vow and not to hatred. One day I shall go back to the orphanage. They will not be able to look away from what they did. I will force them to answer for what they took from us. I will never turn out like they did. I will make sure they cannot harm anyone else like they harmed us.
The boy nodded as if they had understood each other. He embraced Azit once more, strongly and surely. Azit wiped his face again, with hands less unsteady this time. The tears still existed, but the raggedy edges of them burned with something approaching determination.
When the dream receded and the face of the boy melted away, Azit sat on his knees in cellar darkness for a very, very long while after waking. The sword on his knees seemed like a cold reality. He breathed in and out until the ache in his throat subsided. The apology was made. The hug had been hugged. The promise had been spoken.
He got up, not because he needed to, but because he had been indicated a path to take. The new Azit steeled himself, put the blade up against his backbone, and went to talk to Mr. Mahmoud. He would train. He would prepare. He would learn how to react to the past and not let it consume him.
And when the day came to face the orphanage, he would do it as a complete man, not as the angry thing he once was. He would demand they justify themselves, but he would not let their cruelty reinstate him. The boy in his chest had been forgiven. The man he was becoming would carry that forgiveness like a torch