Michael couldn't sleep.
Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that obsidian figure lunging again, silent as death. Not because of the pain—it had faded—but because of what it meant. He was no longer invisible.
He was a threat.
In the darkness of the room Maera had lent him, the blade lay propped beside the wall, still as stone, but pulsing faintly with that strange, silent heartbeat. A steady rhythm, like it was… waiting.
He approached it slowly, his hand hovering over the hilt.
"You bleed for strength."
The voice returned, not spoken aloud, but buried deep in his chest like a memory. Cold and ancient.
"But bleeding is not enough. Learn the flow, or fall to the flood."
The words made little sense, but they struck something inside him—like the edge of a sword dragging across an old wound.
[Blade Resonance: 12% → 14%]
[Sword Form I – Iron Draw (Mastered)]
[Sword Form II – Flowing Edge: Unlocked]
→ A stance-based technique that mimics enemy movements once survived. Effective against faster foes.
He grasped the hilt.
It no longer felt like a foreign weapon. It pulsed with him—reactive, alive, almost like a partner. He took a breath and stepped back. The room was small, but enough. If he was going to survive whatever came next, he had to be more than angry. He had to become precise.
Dawn.
Kaela watched from the ruined balcony, arms crossed, as Michael moved through slow, deliberate strikes. Unlike before, his style was beginning to evolve. Less brute force. More understanding. He didn't move like a soldier. Not yet. But he was learning.
She stepped forward.
"You're forming your own sword style."
Michael nodded, keeping his eyes forward. "The blade shows me moments. Not techniques. It's like… pressure. Images of how I should move—but I have to earn them. Pain unlocks them."
"Bladebound lore said their swords were alive. Extensions of will," Kaela muttered. "I always thought it was poetic myth."
Michael gave a short, humorless laugh. "It's not poetry. It's pressure."
They stood in silence for a moment, until Kaela tossed a rolled parchment at his feet.
"What's this?" he asked.
"A contract notice. Your face is on it. You're officially marked by the Arcanum. Fifty sunmarks. Alive or dead."
Michael stared at it, then crumpled the paper in his hand.
"They've made it easy for everyone to want a piece of me."
Kaela hesitated, then added, "Including one of the Sixteen Great Houses."
That made him pause.
"Which house?"
She exhaled. "Velisar's. The High Magister's lineage."
Michael tightened his grip on the blade. So the name he'd heard whispered in the Dregs was no myth.
"Why would the highest mage lord care about one Dreg with a sword?"
"Because you're the first anomaly in a hundred years," Kaela said. "And Veyloris doesn't tolerate anomalies. It crushes them."
That evening…
Torren brought him to the catacombs beneath Emberglass—dark tunnels carved long before the Arcanum took power.
"These were rebel safe zones once," Torren explained. "Now, they're empty. But they're yours to train, if you want them."
Michael looked around. Dim torchlight flickered against the stone. Cold air. The scent of moss and metal. A fitting place to become something dangerous.
"Let them come," he said.
Torren smiled grimly. "Oh, they will. You'll have your war. But before then, learn to survive."
[New Trait Learned: Peripheral Sense – Gain instinctive awareness of attacks from outside your line of sight.]
[Blade Resonance: 14% → 17%]
[Warning: Physical exhaustion detected. Further usage may result in bodily collapse.]
Michael dropped to his knees, panting hard. His muscles screamed. But his mind was clear.
This pain?
He could live with this pain.
Because every drop of sweat was another brick in the foundation of something far stronger than magic.