Training with the Aunt officially began at dawn.
Yuli had been summoned to the central clearing, where the old woman awaited with a wooden staff in hand and eyes as sharp as a sword's edge.
There was no marching band, no ceremonial speech. Only the steady weight of duty.
"Ready for me to teach you how to fall without breaking?" the Aunt asked with a smile.
Yuli nodded, though her stomach was a knot of nerves. That woman seemed to need nothing but her voice to move mountains.
There were countless stories about her, some so wild they bordered on myth.
But here she was, small in stature, vast in presence.
"First lesson," she said, striking the staff against the ground. "There's no room for arrogance here. Only for will. If you don't know something, say it. If you can't do something, try again. Understood?"
"Yes, Aunt!"
"Louder. Make the wind tremble."
"YES, AUNT!"
The sessions were harsh, but never unfair.
The Aunt taught with her body and her soul.
She demonstrated every movement, corrected with surgical precision, and demanded effort without breaking spirit.
She made Yuli repeat her stances over and over, until her body understood what her mind had yet to grasp.
"Don't fight to win," she told her once, helping her up from the ground. "Fight to endure. Fight to protect. Around here, winning means the ones you love are still breathing."
As the days passed, Yuli began to understand that the training wasn't just physical.
The Aunt tested her focus, her empathy, her ability to stand tall even when emotions became obstacles.
Once, she made Yuli fight blindfolded while the voices of girls calling for help echoed around her. The distraction nearly threw her off balance.
"Your greatest enemy is your mind," the Aunt told her afterward. "Master it or it will master you."
Despite the falls, the bruises, the exhaustion, Yuli ended each day with a strange sense of gratitude.
There was something healing in the discipline something that quietly began to rebuild the broken pieces inside her.
At the end of one of the most grueling days, the Aunt handed her a cup of hot tea.
They sat together in silence beneath the central tree of the village.
"You remind me of myself when I was a girl," she said suddenly. "But you have something I never had… a second chance."
Yuli looked at her, not daring to ask more.
"Use it well," the Aunt added. "Because if you let it pass… there won't be a third."
And that night, as Yuli lay resting in her room, she understood that this training wasn't just preparing her to become a Guardian.
It was preparing her to face her past… and her destiny.