The badge on Kael's chest had changed.
Where once it bore the dull bronze of an Initiate, now it shimmered with a flickering outline — the mark of a newly accepted recruit. A member of the Emberlight Guild.
He hadn't even heard of them before Selection Day.
Not until a hooded woman with quiet eyes and a voice like iron in velvet approached him after the trials. No fanfare. No crowd. Just a single sentence.
"You fight like someone who's seen fire before."
And that was it. No promises of power, no grand speeches. Just an invitation. One he took without hesitation.
Now, Kael stood beneath the carved obsidian gates of Emberlight's Elandor branch — modest in size, but brimming with quiet intensity. It lacked the grandeur of larger guilds. No soaring towers or golden halls. Just a sturdy keep, Essence runes engraved into the walls, and training yards that rang with the clash of real steel.
This wasn't a place for posing.
It was a forge.
⸻
The Flamekeeper
"Name?" asked the woman at the reception table. Short, muscular, with her black hair in twin braids. She didn't look up from the crystal ledger.
"Kael Fael. Flicker Rank, Second Flame."
She tapped the ledger. The crystal pulsed once, then went dark. Finally, she looked up — eyes dark gold, faint glow under her skin.
"Welcome to Emberlight. I'm Serah. I'll be your Flamekeeper until you survive your first full mission. You listen to me, you stay breathing. Got it?"
Kael nodded.
"No salutes, no yes-ma'ams. You're not a soldier," she added. "You're a weapon in progress. Let's see how much tempering you need."
⸻
Baptism by Fire
Combat training began the next dawn.
Not with lectures. Not with wooden swords.
With a Varnok corpse.
It was strung up in the yard — a mid-tier Type IV Carverspike, its jagged arms still soaked in blackened blood. It stank of rot and Essence corrosion. Half the recruits stepped back. Kael didn't flinch.
"First rule," Serah barked. "Know your enemy. Get up close. Learn the angles. A Varnok doesn't give a damn about your technique if you don't know where to hit."
Kael moved in, tracing the fracture lines in its armor plates, the strange bone lattice near its throat. He noticed a groove running down its shoulder, likely a vulnerability from kinetic impact.
Serah's eyes flicked to him.
"Good. You think like someone who wants to live."
Then came sparring — not with training dummies, but with each other. Kael found himself squared off against a boy two heads taller, armed with a glaive and no patience.
It wasn't a clean fight.
The first blow knocked the breath from Kael's lungs — he barely rolled under the follow-up and countered with a low sweep. Not flashy. Not elegant. But effective.
Serah shouted from the side, "Don't aim to impress. Aim to survive!"
Kael absorbed every strike like it was a question being asked — and he answered each one with sharpened instinct. He moved low, minimized openings, and struck where he could feel pressure shifting. Not reading patterns — feeling them.
By the end, the other boy was on his back.
Kael wasn't untouched, though. His ribs ached. Lip split. Knuckles raw.
But he stood.
⸻
The Flame That Learns
Later that night, while the others nursed wounds or swapped stories, Kael sat alone at the edge of the training yard. The stars above Elandor were dim, hidden behind Essence lamps that lit the streets like watchful sentinels.
Serah approached, tossing him a skin of chilled water.
"You pick things up fast."
Kael shrugged. "I have to."
She studied him for a long moment, then sat beside him, elbows on her knees.
"You're not like most of them. You don't want glory."
"No," Kael said softly. "I want to be ready."
"For what?"
He didn't answer. But in his mind, he saw his brother's body lying in that blood-soaked field. Heard the silence again.
Serah nodded like she understood anyway.
"Emberlight isn't a place for fame. We take missions others avoid. Deep-field scouting. High-risk purges. Recovery of lost Flamebearers. Most of us don't live long."
"I'm not most."
She cracked a small smile.
"Good. Because the world's tired of heroes who burn bright and die fast. It needs torches that keep burning."
⸻
Unseen Steps
Later that week, Kael's routine solidified — sparring in the morning, magic drills in the afternoon, tactical lectures by night. But in between, when the halls were quiet and the others distracted…
He practiced.
A form.
Subtle. Fluid. Unlike the basic drills of most Warbrand trainees.
He performed it in fragments. A palm twist. A circular motion of Essence through his core. A breath that altered the flow of his mana. Something more ancient than anything they taught in the Emberlight manuals.
But he never did the full routine. Never let anyone see.
Because it wasn't something he was taught.
It was something he remembered.