Whether it was because Cassian had been repeating the same exhausting motions for days on end, or because he had finally yielded and done what Dea suggested, he wasn't entirely sure.
As agonizing and counterintuitive as it felt to his instincts, he had taken her advice. He had forced himself to calm down.
He let himself pretend, even just for the time of the training, that he was safe in this forgotten stretch of woods. He let himself believe the lie that he had time. Silly as the mental trick was, it worked.
Manes didn't bark at him for being rigid anymore. The old man hadn't even called him a talentless in two days, instead, he muttered that Cassian's body had 'finally decided to listen.'
Cassian didn't press his luck by arguing with him. In truth, he didn't even care if the old man's occasional nod of approval was genuine or just lazy dismissal. If Manes decided he had passed this leg of training and agreed to teach him something else, then Dea would be bound by her promise to finally open her mouth about the Mark.
Anything—empty praise included—that accelerated his progress and got him out of this clearing faster was a weapon he would gladly take.
Besides, he'd come to like the sword.
He liked the sharp, violent freedom that came with holding a weapon. With the weighted wood gripped in his calloused hands, the mud-splattered yard dissolved.
He wasn't standing in front of a grumpy gaffer in a nameless forest anymore; he was standing directly in front of the Archon.
Every lunging stab was aimed squarely at his chest. Every sweeping, fluid slash imagined the satisfaction of tearing through fine silk and cold armor, gutting the man who had ruined his life.
With every phantom strike, Cassian imagined the blood on his hands, taking quiet, visceral joy in the image. It made him feel powerful. It made him feel whole.
Oddly enough, that dark visualization was the only way he could actually find the internal peace. Dea kept preaching about.
If he convinced himself that all of this misery, even the seemingly useless, repetitive rites of passage, was a direct, necessary step toward carving the Archon into pieces, then he could wait.
He could endure the cold mornings, the aching joints, the endless drills and nagging for however long it took.
"Enough. Let's go."
Manes' raspy voice broke the silence of the late afternoon, signaling the end of the day's session.
Cassian lowered his practice sword, wiping a mix of sweat and dirt from his forehead with the back of his sleeve. The rhythmic structure of these days was beginning to feel eerily like his old life back at the temple—the endless repetition, the rigid discipline, the quiet exhaustion at dusk. Only now, instead of echoing bronze gongs, sacred chants, and towering white marble pillars, his world was reduced to a whiny old man and a rundown mud-and-timber hut hidden in the middle of nowhere.
Cassian spat into the dirt, turning to follow the old man back toward the cabin.
"Same routine tomorrow then?" he asked, adjusting his grip on the wooden blade. "Or are you finally going to show me how to counter a proper parry?"
Manes didn't answer right away. He was walking ahead, his posture looking even more hunched than usual. The crooked, rhythmic tap of his feet against the hard-packed earth seemed slower, heavier.
"Manes?" Cassian pressed, frowning as he took a step closer.
The old man came to a sudden halt a few paces from the cabin door. His shoulders hitched, his breath coming in shallow, wet rattles that sounded like dry leaves scraping against stone.
"Old man, what's wrong?"
"Cassian," Dea's voice rang out instantly in his mind, dropping all of its usual playful or mysterious detachment. It was sharp, clear, and laced with sudden urgency. "Something isn't right."
Before Cassian could even process her warning, Manes' knees buckled.
The wooden sword he always carried slipped from his frail grip, clattering uselessly against the dirt, and the old man pitched forward like a felled tree. He hit the ground with a sickening, heavy thud, lying completely still near the doorway of the hut.
Cassian's heart slammed into his throat. He dropped his wooden sword into the mud and sprinted the short distance between them, dropping to his knees beside his fallen master.
"Hey Manes!" Cassian grabbed the old man's shoulder, rolling him onto his back.
Manes' face was deathly pale, a sickly grey sheen glistening on his weathered skin beneath the dim evening light. His lips were parted, trembling slightly, but no coherent words came out—only a ragged, wheezing sound that choked in his throat.
Cassian pressed a hand against the old man's chest, There was a frighteningly erratic rhythm pounding beneath the frail ribs, like a bird beating its wings against a cage.
He wasn't just tired from the day's training. He wasn't taking another lazy nap. He was sick—deeply, desperately ill, carrying a rot that his stubborn pride had kept hidden right up until his body collapsed under the weight of it.
"Wake up, come on," Cassian gritted out, shaking him gently, panic flaring like hot sparks in his gut. "You can't do this right now. You haven't finished teaching me"
"He's feverish," Dea said, her voice echoing in the tight space of his skull as Cassian pressed a palm to Manes' burning forehead. "His body is failing him, Cassian. He's been pushing through this for days."
Cassian stared down at the frail figure shivering in the dirt. All his plans, his fragile sense of momentum, the promise of mastering the blade and unlocking the secrets of his Mark. It all hung on the breathing of a man who looked ready to slip into the grave right in front of him.
"No," Cassian muttered, hooking his arms under Manes' frail shoulders to drag him toward the cabin. "Not after all of this. You're not dying on me yet, old man. Not until i get what I want "