The main training arena was a pressure cooker of desperate hope. Hundreds of outer disciples stood in anxious clusters, their futures hanging on the day's performance. Irelion stood among them, a dead man at a festival for the young. The raw ambition, the nervous chatter, Around him, disciples whispered last-minute prayers to their ancestors. One boy vomited in the corner. Another obsessively polished his blade. Irelion felt nothing. They were already dead—ghosts who hadn't realized it yet..
His plan was simple. Be a ghost. Be a failure. Be so utterly forgettable that no one would ever look at him twice. He kept his head down, his shoulders slumped, a perfect picture of mediocrity.
Then, a sudden frost fell over the arena.
The buzzing crowd went silent. It started as a ripple near the main entrance and spread, a wave of awe and deference that parted the sea of grey-robed disciples. Irelion didn't have to look. He could feel it in his bones—a familiar, soul-deep chill that had nothing to do with the morning air.
He forced his head up, and the world ground to a halt.
Aurelia Frostbane.
She walked beside the First Elder, but she was the one who held the gravity. Her silver hair was a stark, elegant slash against the blue of her inner sect robes. Her face was a sculpture of aristocratic ice, beautiful and remote. Her eyes—gods, her eyes—were the color of a frozen lake, and they swept over the crowd with a bored indifference that was more intimidating than any rage.
For Irelion, the sight of her was not a blessing. It was a physical assault.
The nineteen-year-old girl in front of him dissolved, replaced by the ghost that haunted his waking moments. The smell of burning silk and melted ice. The black char on her silver hair. The silent apology in her eyes as the holy fire stripped the life from her.
A ragged gasp tore from his lungs. His hand shot to his chest, clutching the rough fabric of his robe as if to hold his ribs together, to stop his heart from beating itself to death. A wave of irrational, searing anger surged through him. Anger at her, for being here, alive and whole, forcing him to remember the horror of her end. Anger at himself, for surviving to remember it at all.
Breathe, you damned old fool. Breathe.
He ripped his gaze away, staring at the packed dirt beneath his feet as if it were the most fascinating thing in the world. He focused on a single, insignificant pebble, making it his anchor in a storm of memory. He could feel her gaze pass over his section of the crowd, a tangible weight that threatened to buckle his knees. He fought the desperate, self-destructive urge to look up again.
From her seat on the raised platform, Aurelia surveyed the disciples. A sea of upturned, adoring faces. Predictable. Boring. She was about to look away when she noticed it. An anomaly.
One disciple, right in the middle of the crowd, was staring at the ground. Not with shy deference, but with a rigid, pained intensity. His hand was clenched into a fist, his entire body coiled like a spring, fighting some invisible war. While every other soul in the arena strained for her attention, this one was actively trying to erase himself from existence.
Curious.
The exam began. Irelion moved through the drills like a puppet. He lifted the required weight but let his arms tremble as if it were a great effort. He ran the agility course with deliberate, clumsy footwork that put him squarely in the bottom half of performers. When his turn came to demonstrate his sword form, he stepped forward, the weight of Aurelia's gaze a physical thing on his shoulders.
He executed the first three movements of the basic Azure Peak style. His stance was, for a fraction of a second, perfect—the unshakeable foundation of a grandmaster. Then he intentionally broke it, letting the blade wobble, the movements becoming passable but utterly uninspired. He stopped.
"Is that all, disciple?" the supervising elder asked, his voice dripping with disdain.
"It is all I am confident in performing without error, Elder," Irelion replied, his voice a dull, lifeless monotone.
He bowed, refusing to look at the platform, and retreated into the crowd. He could feel her eyes on his back, analytical and sharp, like shards of ice. The moment his group was dismissed, he turned and left, not even bothering to wait for the results. He didn't run. He walked with the steady, grim pace of a man escaping the scene of a crime.
From the platform, Aurelia watched him go. The boy with the perfect stance and the pathetic form. The one who fled not with shame, but with the air of a haunted man.
"That one," the First Elder noted, glancing at his list with a dismissive grunt. "Irelion Vance. A completely unremarkable disciple. No future here."
Aurelia's lips thinned. Unremarkable? No. That wasn't the right word. That was a lie. And she intended to find out why he was telling it.