To kill a hunter, you must think like prey.
You must feel their eyes on your back. You must know their every move.
And then, you must strike like a ghost.
A ghost they never knew was there.
Gregor's first lesson was not about combat. It was about survival.
The old trapper dragged Adrian into his hovel, a den that smelled of pine, cured leather, and old blood. He threw him onto a cot made of rough-hewn wood and furs.
Without a word, he took a glowing-hot knife from the fire.
Adrian tensed, his hand instinctively going for a dagger that wasn't there.
"Stay still, pup," Gregor growled. "Or I'll let the fever take you. It's a kinder death than Lysandra will give you."
He pressed the searing metal against the gash on Adrian's forearm.
The pain was a white-hot explosion. Adrian roared, his back arching off the cot. The smell of his own burning flesh filled the small hut.
Gregor held him down with one iron-hard hand.
"Good," the old man grunted as he finished cauterizing the wound. "Pain cleanses the foolishness from the blood. Remember that."
He then unceremoniously ripped the makeshift splint from Adrian's ribs and began to bind them properly with strips of leather and moss, his movements rough and efficient.
He offered no words of comfort. He offered no gentle touch.
This was not Elara's healing. This was the wilderness's cure. Brutal, painful, but effective.
For three days, Adrian drifted in and out of a feverish haze.
Gregor forced foul-tasting herbal concoctions down his throat. He fed him a thin, bitter broth.
He did not speak to him. He simply kept him alive.
On the fourth morning, the fever broke. Adrian woke, his body weak and aching, but his mind clear.
Gregor stood over him, holding a bucket of icy mountain water.
He dumped it over Adrian's head.
"Get up," the old man snarled. "The lesson begins."
The second lesson was patience.
Gregor took him to a muddy, windswept ridge overlooking a small clearing.
"Lie down," he commanded.
Adrian obeyed, pressing his body into the cold, damp earth.
"What am I looking for?" Adrian asked, his eyes scanning the clearing.
"Nothing," Gregor replied, lying down beside him. "You are not looking. You are waiting. Now, shut up."
For hours, they lay there. The sun crawled across the sky. The wind bit at Adrian's exposed skin. His muscles cramped. His mind screamed with impatience. He needed to be moving, hunting, planning.
This was a waste of time.
He started to shift, to ease the cramp in his leg.
Gregor's hand shot out and gripped his neck, pressing his face back into the mud.
"The deer on the far ridge saw that," Gregor whispered, his voice a low hiss. "The hawk circling above saw that. The rabbit in its burrow felt that. You move, you die. You breathe too loud, you die. You think too loud, you die."
He released his grip.
"Your hate makes you loud," the old man continued. "It radiates from you like heat from a fire. Lysandra will feel it from a mile away. You must become cold. You must become stone. You must become nothing."
They lay there until twilight. Just as Adrian thought he would go mad from the stillness, a young doe stepped cautiously into the clearing.
It was beautiful. It was alive.
Adrian's first instinct was to see it as food.
Gregor's lesson was different.
"She lives because she is patient," the old trapper murmured. "She lives because she is quiet. She is prey. Learn from her."
The third lesson was about the mind.
They did not practice with swords or daggers. Gregor's weapons were the forest itself.
"A true hunter breaks his prey's mind before he ever touches its body," Gregor said one evening, sharpening a skinning knife by the fire.
He told Adrian a story. A story about a massive, old wolf that had terrorized the northern farms. The Order had sent knights after it. They all failed.
"They tried to fight the wolf," Gregor scoffed. "Fools. You don't fight a force of nature."
Gregor did not try to fight it. For a week, he did not even try to find the wolf.
He simply followed its territory, leaving signs. He would build a small, smokeless fire and leave it burning. He would hang strips of cloth that fluttered in the wind. He would leave the scent of man where the wolf expected only the scent of pine.
"I did not hunt the wolf," Gregor explained, his icy eyes glinting in the firelight. "I hunted its mind. I filled its world with wrongness. I made it question every shadow. I made it jump at every sound. I drove it mad with uncertainty."
After a week, the wolf, exhausted, paranoid, and starved, made a mistake. It took a risk it should not have taken.
And it walked right into Gregor's snare.
"Lysandra is that wolf," Gregor finished, his voice dropping to a deadly whisper. "She is smart. She is strong. But she is a creature of discipline and order. Show her chaos. Show her wrongness. Break her certainty. And she will break herself."
The final lesson was the test.
"Go," Gregor said one morning, pointing to the vast, dense forest. "Disappear. I will give you a one-hour head start. Then, I will hunt you. If I find you before sundown, your training is a failure."
Adrian did not hesitate. He ran.
He used every lesson. He moved silently. He used streams to hide his tracks. He used the wind to carry his scent away. He found a dense thicket and buried himself in it, becoming nothing, just as Gregor had taught him.
He waited, his heart a slow, steady drum.
He failed.
Without a sound, Gregor's hand clamped down on his shoulder from behind.
"You think like a hiding rabbit," the old man grunted in disgust, and then was gone.
They did it again the next day.
This time, Adrian climbed a tree, concealing himself in its high branches. He was sure it would work.
He failed. Gregor's knife was at his throat before he even heard a leaf rustle.
"You think like a squirrel," Gregor sneered. "Predictable."
On the third day, Adrian knew he could not win by playing Gregor's game. He could not out-hunt the master hunter.
So, he changed the game.
He did not run far. He found a clearing with a single, large boulder. He took his knife and made a deep cut on his own arm, letting the blood drip onto the leaves. He smeared it on the rock.
Then, using a branch, he made dragging marks in the dirt, as if a wounded body had been pulled away into a small, dark cave at the edge of the clearing.
He made the scene look like he had been attacked. Not by a man. By a beast. A mountain cat, perhaps.
He set a simple snare, a loop of vine, just inside the mouth of the cave.
Then, he did not hide.
He climbed the boulder itself, lying flat on his stomach, and used mud and leaves to become one with the stone.
He was in plain sight. The last place a hunter would look.
Hours passed. The sun reached its zenith.
Then, a shadow detached itself from the trees. Gregor.
He moved slowly, cautiously into the clearing. He saw the blood. He saw the drag marks.
His cold, analytical eyes scanned the scene. He was suspicious. It was too easy. Too dramatic.
But the lure of a potential answer, the possibility that something else had gotten to Adrian first, was too strong.
He approached the cave, his eyes darting into the darkness, looking for the beast.
He was not looking up.
He took one step too close.
In a blur of motion, Adrian dropped from the boulder onto his back. He landed with all his weight, driving the air from the old man's lungs.
Before Gregor could react, Adrian's knife was at his throat. The loop of the snare had fallen uselessly around Gregor's boot. It had never been the real trap.
They lay there, panting, the student and the master.
Adrian had not out-hunted him.
He had out-thought him.
A slow, grudging smile spread across Gregor's scarred face.
He nodded. A single, sharp gesture of approval.
"Good," he rasped, his voice filled with a strange, new respect.
"Now you are not a rabid wolf."
"Now... you are a ghost."