He didn't go home. Not really. He had walked the five miles back from the village in a blind, cold fury, leaving Silas to sputter in his wake. He had left the wheelbarrow. He had left the grain. He had left his dignity in the dust of the market square for Kael to wipe his boots on.
He spent the next three hours in the barn, his hands, his body, his shame on fire. He had punched the main support beam, a thick, unyielding post of solid oak, until the splintered wood was dark with his blood and his knuckles were a raw, pulped mess. It didn't help. The pain in his hands was a dull, distant echo of the roaring void in his chest.
When the sun finally died, painting the sky in a bruised purple and orange, he was forced inside by the smell of Comfort's stew and the bone-deep chill that always followed the sunset.
The kitchen was bright and warm, an island of false peace. Comfort was at the stove, her back to him, stirring the pot. She was a small woman, but she took up all the air in the room. She didn't turn, but she knew he was there. She always knew.
"You're bleeding on the floor," she said, her voice flat.
Mordecai looked down. A single drop of dark blood had fallen from his hand onto the clean-swept pine boards. He felt a fresh, hot wave of shame. He went to the sink, his movements stiff and angry, and pumped the cold well water over his mangled hands. The water ran pink into the basin.
"You left the barrow," she said. It wasn't a question.
"Lost it," he lied, his voice a low, hoarse rasp.
"Silas brought it back an hour ago." She still hadn't turned. "He said you... had an encounter."
"Silas talks too much." He dried his hands on a rough cloth, the fabric catching on his broken skin, making him wince.
"He said Kael was there."
Mordecai slammed the cloth onto the counter. "What do you want me to say, Grandma? That he's a bastard? That his father owns this whole rotten valley? That I stood there and took it? Is that what you want to hear?"
"I want you to sit," she said, finally turning. She ladled two bowls of stew. Her face was a map of deep-cut lines, her eyes a pale, faded blue that had seen too much. They held no pity, only a terrible, weary clarity. "And I want you to stop punching things that hold the roof up."
He sat, his body thrumming with a voltage he couldn't discharge. They ate in silence for a full minute, the only sound the scrape of spoons on pottery.
"You have his hands," she said, her voice soft.
Mordecai froze, his spoon halfway to his mouth. "Don't."
"You do," she insisted, not unkindly. "You have his hands, and his temper." She looked down at her own bowl. "And his... his silence. He used to come in from that dojo, his knuckles all to pieces, and he wouldn't say a word. Just... sit, and glower, and... break."
"I'm nothing like him," Mordecai spat, the stew forgotten. "He was a coward. He was a... a ghost. He ran."
"He was a fool," she corrected, and the bitterness in her voice was so profound it startled him. "A fool who believed he could build something out of honor. Honor doesn't pay the bills, Mordecai. It doesn't put feed in the barn or stop the wind from coming through the walls. And it doesn't... it doesn't protect the people you love."
Mordecai stared at her. It was the most she'd said about his grandfather in ten years.
She let out a long, slow sigh, a sound like dry leaves skittering across the floor. "And now, his foolishness has come for its final payment."
She reached into the pocket of her apron and pulled out a single, folded piece of heavy paper. It was marked with the official, embossed seal of the Grandmaster's Council.
"This came today," she said, sliding it across the table.
Mordecai's heart turned to a cold, heavy stone. His anger was instantly replaced by a sharp, acidic dread. He didn't touch the letter. "What is it?"
"The end, child," she said, her voice hollow. "It's the final notice of foreclosure. The bank, the council... Kael's father... they've all signed off. They're repossessing the dojo."
The kitchen was silent. Mordecai could hear the ticking of the clock on the wall, the pop and hiss of the fire. He had spent his entire life hating that building. He should have felt... something. Relief. Vindication.
Instead, he just felt... cold.
"When?" he asked.
"Fourteen days."
He let out a short, harsh laugh. "Good. Let them have it. Let them tear that pile of rotting wood to the ground. It's nothing but a monument to his failure. It's what he deserved."
Smack.
The sound cracked through the room. Comfort's hand, surprisingly strong, had struck the table, making the bowls jump. Her eyes were not weary now. They were blue fire.
"A pile of wood?" she hissed, her voice trembling with a sudden, sharp rage. "That 'pile of wood' is the only thing he ever built that mattered to him. And it's the only thing of value this family has left. And you, sitting there with his blood on your hands, you dare call it nothing?"
"It is nothing!" Mordecai roared, surging to his feet. "It's a disgrace! It's the reason Kael... it's the reason they all laugh at us! It's a sign hanging over our heads that says 'this family is a joke!'"
"And you think this farm is separate?" she shot back, her voice rising to meet his. "You think that 'pile of wood' isn't tied to every last acre you're standing on? He took a loan, you fool! A loan from the Council, against this house. Against this farm. When they take the dojo... they take everything."
The words hit Mordecai like a physical blow. He staggered back, his hand grabbing the back of the chair for support. "What? He... he... he gambled our home? On... on that?"
His mind flashed to Kael's mocking smile. To the threat against Esther's father. This wasn't a random debt. This was a targeted execution. Kael's father, Grandmaster Tani, wasn't just a banker; he was a predator. And he was foreclosing not just on a building, but on a bloodline. He was wiping the 'Rising Sun' from the map, and taking their land as a trophy.
"He's destroying us," Mordecai whispered, the realization dawning, a cold, dark thriller unfolding in his mind. "He's taking everything. It's... it's all for Kael."
"They've left us one way out," Comfort said, her voice regaining its composure, but her hands were trembling. "They always do. They have to have their... their honor."
She picked up the letter, her hand shaking so much it rustled. "The All-Valley Competition. It's in thirteen days."
Mordecai looked at her as if she were insane. "The Competition? That's a... that's a pageant for the Grandmasters' children. It's a game for Kael and his thugs. What does that have to do with us?"
"The stipend," she said, her voice thin. "The Grandmaster's Council grants a stipend to the winning dojo. An honorarium... 'for the promotion of martial virtue.'" She looked at him, her eyes bright with a desperate, terrible hope. "It's enough, Cai. It's enough to clear the debt. All of it."
Mordecai stared, his mind struggling to catch up. "A stipend... so... we fight?"
"There's a condition," she said, her voice dropping. "A final, cruel little joke, I think. The 'Rising Sun' must be represented. We must... we must 'field a team' of at least one student, competing under the Rising Sun banner."
It was a punch in the gut. A team. From a dojo that had been dead for ten years.
Mordecai let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. "A team? A team? Grandma, it's a trap! Don't you see? They know there's no one! They know we're a joke! Kael's father... he put that in there so he could laugh! He's foreclosing, and he's laughing at us while he does it!"
He was pacing now, a trapped animal in a warm, cozy kitchen. "It's over. They've won. It's... it's just over."
Comfort stood, her face pale, all the fight gone, replaced by the deep, abiding grief he knew so well. "Thirteen days, Mordecai," she whispered. "That's all we have. The competition is on the thirteenth day. The bank comes on the fourteenth."
She walked past him, her hand brushing his arm, a touch he barely felt. She went to the sink and began to wash the dishes, her back to him once more. The conversation was over.
He was left alone in the center of the room, the weight of the farm, the dojo, the impossible, mocking hope of the competition, and the memory of Esther's terrified face pressing down on him, crushing the air from his lungs.
He couldn't breathe. He couldn't be in this house.
He bolted. He ran from the kitchen, out the front door, into the cold, sharp night air. He didn't stop until he was back in the barn, the smell of hay and animal sweat and old wood filling his lungs.
He was trapped. Utterly, completely trapped. He was powerless. He was a coward. He was his grandfather.
No.
His eyes, wild and desperate, scanned the shadows of the barn. They were filled with the tools of his failure: the hoes, the rakes, the empty grain sacks. And then... they landed on it.
Sitting on a high, dusty shelf, untouched for a decade, was the old, heavy, iron-bound toolbox.
His grandfather's box.
He stared at it, his chest heaving. It wasn't a memory. It wasn't an inheritance. It was a taunt.
You want to be nothing like me? it seemed to whisper. You think I was a coward?
Thirteen days.
A new kind of energy, something colder and sharper than rage, moved through him. He walked to the wall and took down the heavy iron pry bar.
He was done being powerless. He was done being afraid. He was done letting his grandfather's ghost rule his life.
He jammed the pry bar under the lid of the locked box.
And with a roar of pure, desperate frustration, he put his back into it, and tore the god-damned thing open.