The world did not smell like air.
It smelled like iron, wet stone, and the faint sting of old ash—the kind of scent that clung to places built for war and too stubborn to fall. Above House Pilcrow, the sky was a slab of dull grey, clouds pressed together like someone had tried to smother the sun and almost succeeded.
Arel Pilcrow swung his sword anyway.
The wooden blade cut through the air in a clean, economical arc. No wasted movement, no flourish. His bare feet shifted on the packed dirt of the inner yard, weight sliding from heel to toe with practiced ease.
"Again," his father said.
Arel reset his stance.
His arms felt heavy, but not unbearably so. A thin sheen of sweat clung to his skin. His breathing was steady. If this had been ordinary training, he would have asked for water by now.
This wasn't ordinary training.
"Father," he said, without taking his eyes off Kaelen, "we've repeated this pattern twenty-three times."
Kaelen raised one eyebrow. "Counting is not the same as mastering."
"I've executed it correctly the last ten," Arel replied. His tone stayed level, almost conversational. "If the purpose is improvement, we're hitting diminishing returns."
Most children would have said I'm tired.
Arel preferred accuracy.
Kaelen considered him for a heartbeat, then gave a small nod.
"Fair point," he said. "Adjust the pattern."
Arel moved.
This time the strike came in low, then twisted high at the last second. The motion was subtle, almost lazy to the untrained eye, but the angle shifted enough to target a different opening.
Kaelen turned his shoulder, letting the blade skim past, then reached out and tapped two fingers lightly against Arel's wrist.
"Better," he said. "Still telegraphing with your eyes."
"I'll consider blinding myself," Arel said dryly.
His father huffed something that might have been a laugh.
The yard was quiet otherwise. Servants knew better than to linger when Lord Pilcrow trained. The wind tugged at the banners hanging from the walls, the flaming lion sigil rippling against the grey sky.
Arel adjusted his grip.
Objectively, he had a good life.
He had food, warmth, parents who were present and not entirely incompetent. He had access to more training, knowledge, and resources than most people would see in a lifetime.
He also had two unavoidable problems:
There was a war that had been going on since before his great-grandparents' bones turned to dust.
And there was something very old and very hungry living under his ribs.
He lunged again.
Sword, step, breath. No wasted effort. Every motion chosen, not thrown.
Kaelen blocked with the flat of his palm this time, redirecting the blow with the smallest possible movement.
"You're thinking," he said.
"Yes," Arel answered.
"Too much."
"There is no such thing," Arel replied calmly. "Not when my alternative is 'swing harder and hope'."
Kaelen's mouth pulled into a slow, reluctant smile.
"You sound like your mother," he said.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Arel said.
"You should."
They traded another set of strikes. Not fast, not showy. Precise. Methodical. Like two people solving the same puzzle from opposite ends.
Finally, Kaelen lowered his hands.
"Enough," he said. "We've reached the point where fatigue will teach you sloppiness instead of discipline."
Arel exhaled once, controlled. His heart was beating faster, but nowhere near what it could. He'd kept a margin on purpose.
Training to collapse didn't appeal to him.
Training to win did.
"We could switch to theory," Arel suggested. "You still haven't shown me the deployment map from the last border clash."
Kaelen tilted his head.
"You're eight," he reminded him.
"Yes," Arel said. "And?"
Kaelen's eyes gleamed with something like pride.
"And you're a Pilcrow," he said. "Fine. After you drink water."
He walked to the edge of the yard, picked up a clay jug from the low wall, and tossed it. Arel caught it cleanly, took a measured sip, then another. Enough to rehydrate. Not enough to slosh in his stomach.
Another small efficiency.
"Tell me," Kaelen said, as Arel drank, "what do you want from all this?"
He gestured around—the yard, the fortress, the endless drills, the blades.
"Besides stronger arms," he added.
Arel lowered the jug and thought about pretending not to understand the question.
Then he decided that would be a waste.
"Two things," he said.
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. "Only two?"
"Two that matter," Arel clarified. "The rest are decoration."
He set the jug down and met his father's gaze, expression smooth, voice even.
"First," he said. "I want to control myself. Completely. No slips. No 'episodes'. No waking up in a crater I don't remember making."
The air between them shifted.
Kaelen's posture straightened almost imperceptibly.
"And the second?" he asked.
"I want to be strong enough," Arel said, "that this war ends."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't make a speech. He simply stated it, like someone listing a fact on a ledger.
Kaelen watched him in silence.
"Ambitious," he finally said.
"Necessary," Arel corrected. "If the war continues, people keep dying. If I become strong enough that fighting stops being useful for anyone, then it stops. That seems… efficient."
He had thought about this.
A lot.
The world wasted lives the way drunks wasted coins at taverns. Carelessly. Endlessly. Without keeping track.
Arel hated waste.
Kaelen's gaze grew distant for a moment, as if he were seeing something on the other side of the yard. Old battlefields. Old failures.
"You know the war isn't simple," he said eventually.
"I know," Arel replied. "That's why I didn't say 'I'll fix it tomorrow.' I said I'll become strong enough that continuing it is… less practical."
He hesitated, then added, "I don't care who started it. Angels, demons, humans, all of them sound equally unreasonable. I care that it ends."
The words felt right in his mouth.
He had never said them out loud before.
He'd carried them along with the heat.
Kaelen nodded slowly.
"And the… other thing?" he said. "What you carry. You think that also has a neat, rational solution?"
Arel didn't need him to specify.
The Furia Pilcrow didn't have many rivals for "the other thing."
"It's power," Arel said. "Power is never the problem. Lack of control is."
"The world might disagree with you," Kaelen said.
"The world is bad at managing power," Arel countered. "Look at the war."
For a heartbeat, Kaelen said nothing.
Then he laughed. This time it was full and uncontained, rolling out into the empty yard.
Arel didn't smile, but his shoulders loosened by a fraction.
"You are," Kaelen said, "either a genius or a future disaster, and I am not sure which."
"Hopefully the first," Arel said. "Disasters aren't efficient."
The laughter died down.
The wind picked up.
For a moment, the weight of what they'd just said settled between them. Heavy. Real.
"What if you can't do it?" Kaelen asked. His tone stayed calm, but his eyes were very sharp now. "Control it. End the war. What if you fall short? What if the Furia decides it's done listening to you?"
Arel looked at his hands.
They were steady.
"I haven't seen anything yet that convinced me effort plus intelligence can't beat it," he said. "And if I do see something like that…"
He paused, searching for the right words.
"If I ever reach a point where I can't trust myself not to destroy what I care about," he said slowly, "I'll make sure I'm not in a position to hurt it."
Kaelen's jaw tightened.
"You're talking about throwing your life away," he said.
"I'm talking about risk management," Arel replied softly. "If the options are 'I kill everyone' or 'I remove the problem'…"
He trailed off.
The silence that followed was not comfortable.
The thing in his chest—the heat, the weight—stirred at the edges of his attention. Not fully awake. Curious.
It did not like the idea of being "removed."
Kaelen stepped closer, voice dropping.
"Listen to me, Arel," he said. "You don't get to decide you're a lost cause when you're eight years old."
"I'm not deciding anything yet," Arel said. "I'm stating that I know what's at stake."
His gaze flicked up, meeting his father's straight on.
"That's why I need control first," he said. "Before anything else. Before glory. Before titles. Before being called 'hero' or 'monster.' If I can't chain this thing, I'm useless as a solution. I'm just… another problem."
The word tasted like metal.
He didn't raise his aura. He didn't scream. He didn't let himself tremble.
He just said it.
Kaelen closed his eyes for a brief second, then opened them again.
"You sound older than you are," he said quietly.
"That's a common side effect of being born during a war," Arel replied. "And of having everyone whisper 'he might explode' when they think I'm not listening."
The corner of Kaelen's mouth lifted, though his eyes remained hard.
"You do hear too much," he said.
"Good," Arel said. "Information is free. Ignoring it would be stupid."
The faintest trace of the Furia drifted up at the edges of his awareness then—like smoke under a door. Not explosive, not roaring. Just present. Listening.
Almost… amused.
Arel exhaled slowly.
The air around his arms warmed, then cooled again.
He didn't need to see the black wisps to know they were there.
"We both know I'm a risk," he said. "Pretending otherwise would be a waste of time. So we treat it like what it is: a dangerous tool. Either I learn to use it, or I make sure it can't use me."
Kaelen's reply came out sharper than usual.
"I did not have a son," he said, "to talk about himself like a broken sword."
Arel blinked.
For a moment, some of the calculation slid aside, and he just saw the man in front of him—tired around the eyes, scarred, stubborn, refusing to flinch from hard truths but clearly hating some more than others.
"I'm not broken," Arel said.
"Good," Kaelen snapped. "Then stop describing yourself that way."
He scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaled, and when he spoke again, his voice was steadier.
"You want control," he said. "You want enough strength to make war impractical. Fine. Those are… big goals."
"They're the only ones that make sense," Arel said.
"Then you need more than this yard," Kaelen replied. "And more than me."
He looked past Arel, toward the fortress walls, as if he could see through them to somewhere far beyond.
"Bastion Aurora sent word," he said. "They'll take you."
Arel had suspected something like that was coming since the messengers started arriving more often.
Still, hearing it made something settle inside him.
"How soon?" he asked.
"Three days," Kaelen said.
Arel did a quick internal calculation.
Time to pack. Time to review his notes. Time to walk the fortress one more time, not because he was sentimental, but because he liked to know the layout of places where he might someday have to fight or die.
He nodded once.
"It makes sense," he said.
Kaelen huffed. "That's it? No fear? No outrage? No 'I don't want to go'?"
"I didn't say I wasn't afraid," Arel replied. "I said it makes sense."
"You can do both," Kaelen said.
"Yes," Arel agreed. "But fear doesn't change the logic."
He thought of what he'd heard about the bastion.
Students from all over the human territories, from neutral clans, even from certain celestial-aligned groups who liked to pretend they were "impartial observers." Training, ranking, missions. A place where talent was dense and expectations higher.
"And," Arel added, "it's the most efficient place to pursue my two goals."
Kaelen gave a small, mirthless smile.
"You've turned your life into an equation," he said.
"Yes," Arel said simply. "If I don't, someone else will do it for me."
The wind picked up again, tugging at the ends of Kaelen's coat, making the lion banners on the walls snap and crackle.
"There's one thing you're missing from your calculation," Kaelen said.
"What?" Arel asked.
"People," his father said. "You're assuming tools. Weapons. Enemies. But you're going to meet allies too. Students, instructors, idiots, prodigies. Some will drag you forward. Some will drag you down. You can't plan entirely around them, but you ignore them at your own risk."
Arel had considered that.
He just didn't like that part of the equation as much, because people were messy variables.
"I'll adapt," he said.
Kaelen studied him for another long moment.
"You always do," he said.
He stepped closer, resting a hand briefly on Arel's head in a gesture that was almost absent-minded and completely intentional.
"You don't have to carry all of this alone, you know," he said.
"I know," Arel lied.
Kaelen didn't call him on it.
"Go wash up," he said instead. "Your mother will want to talk before you leave. She pretends she doesn't worry. She lies worse than you do."
"I don't lie," Arel protested mildly. "I just… select information."
"That's worse," Kaelen said.
He turned away, but paused after a few steps.
"Arel," he said without looking back. "Whatever you become out there—monster, hero, something in between—remember this: you are my son first."
Arel watched him go.
"My son first," he repeated under his breath.
He wasn't sure that would always be true.
The war didn't care who had loved whom before the killing started.
He bent down and picked up the practice sword from where it had landed.
His muscles ached faintly. Not a pleasant ache. Not exactly unpleasant either. Just a reminder.
There was work to do.
He glanced up at the fortress walls, at the flaming lion banners.
House Pilcrow.
A name that made people straighten, whisper, wince.
"If I'm bound to burn," he said quietly, testing the words aloud for the first time, "I'll choose the fire."
Not a boast.
A decision.
Two goals. One life. Limited time and resources.
Control himself.
End the war.
Everything else was, as he'd told his father, decoration.
He lowered the sword.
Then, because training without a plan was wasteful and he still had three days left in the safest cage he would ever know, he started running through a new set of movements—not the ones his father had given him, but the ones he'd been quietly designing in his head.
Efficient.
Purposeful.
Obsessed, but so calm on the surface that no one watching would have guessed how far ahead he was already trying to see.the same as mastering."
"I've executed it correctly the last ten," Arel replied. His tone stayed level, almost conversational. "If the purpose is improvement, we're hitting diminishing returns."
Most children would have said I'm tired.
Arel preferred accuracy.
Kaelen considered him for a heartbeat, then gave a small nod.
"Fair point," he said. "Adjust the pattern."
Arel moved.
This time the strike came in low, then twisted high at the last second. The motion was subtle, almost lazy to the untrained eye, but the angle shifted enough to target a different opening.
Kaelen turned his shoulder, letting the blade skim past, then reached out and tapped two fingers lightly against Arel's wrist.
"Better," he said. "Still telegraphing with your eyes."
"I'll consider blinding myself," Arel said dryly.
His father huffed something that might have been a laugh.
The yard was quiet otherwise. Servants knew better than to linger when Lord Pilcrow trained. The wind tugged at the banners hanging from the walls, the flaming lion sigil rippling against the grey sky.
Arel adjusted his grip.
Objectively, he had a good life.
He had food, warmth, parents who were present and not entirely incompetent. He had access to more training, knowledge, and resources than most people would see in a lifetime.
He also had two unavoidable problems:
There was a war that had been going on since before his great-grandparents' bones turned to dust.
And there was something very old and very hungry living under his ribs.
He lunged again.
Sword, step, breath. No wasted effort. Every motion chosen, not thrown.
Kaelen blocked with the flat of his palm this time, redirecting the blow with the smallest possible movement.
"You're thinking," he said.
"Yes," Arel answered.
"Too much."
"There is no such thing," Arel replied calmly. "Not when my alternative is 'swing harder and hope'."
Kaelen's mouth pulled into a slow, reluctant smile.
"You sound like your mother," he said.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Arel said.
"You should."
They traded another set of strikes. Not fast, not showy. Precise. Methodical. Like two people solving the same puzzle from opposite ends.
Finally, Kaelen lowered his hands.
"Enough," he said. "We've reached the point where fatigue will teach you sloppiness instead of discipline."
Arel exhaled once, controlled. His heart was beating faster, but nowhere near what it could. He'd kept a margin on purpose.
Training to collapse didn't appeal to him.
Training to win did.
"We could switch to theory," Arel suggested. "You still haven't shown me the deployment map from the last border clash."
Kaelen tilted his head.
"You're eight," he reminded him.
"Yes," Arel said. "And?"
Kaelen's eyes gleamed with something like pride.
"And you're a Pilcrow," he said. "Fine. After you drink water."
He walked to the edge of the yard, picked up a clay jug from the low wall, and tossed it. Arel caught it cleanly, took a measured sip, then another. Enough to rehydrate. Not enough to slosh in his stomach.
Another small efficiency.
"Tell me," Kaelen said, as Arel drank, "what do you want from all this?"
He gestured around—the yard, the fortress, the endless drills, the blades.
"Besides stronger arms," he added.
Arel lowered the jug and thought about pretending not to understand the question.
Then he decided that would be a waste.
"Two things," he said.
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. "Only two?"
"Two that matter," Arel clarified. "The rest are decoration."
He set the jug down and met his father's gaze, expression smooth, voice even.
"First," he said. "I want to control myself. Completely. No slips. No 'episodes'. No waking up in a crater I don't remember making."
The air between them shifted.
Kaelen's posture straightened almost imperceptibly.
"And the second?" he asked.
"I want to be strong enough," Arel said, "that this war ends."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't make a speech. He simply stated it, like someone listing a fact on a ledger.
Kaelen watched him in silence.
"Ambitious," he finally said.
"Necessary," Arel corrected. "If the war continues, people keep dying. If I become strong enough that fighting stops being useful for anyone, then it stops. That seems… efficient."
He had thought about this.
A lot.
The world wasted lives the way drunks wasted coins at taverns. Carelessly. Endlessly. Without keeping track.
Arel hated waste.
Kaelen's gaze grew distant for a moment, as if he were seeing something on the other side of the yard. Old battlefields. Old failures.
"You know the war isn't simple," he said eventually.
"I know," Arel replied. "That's why I didn't say 'I'll fix it tomorrow.' I said I'll become strong enough that continuing it is… less practical."
He hesitated, then added, "I don't care who started it. Angels, demons, humans, all of them sound equally unreasonable. I care that it ends."
The words felt right in his mouth.
He had never said them out loud before.
He'd carried them along with the heat.
Kaelen nodded slowly.
"And the… other thing?" he said. "What you carry. You think that also has a neat, rational solution?"
Arel didn't need him to specify.
The Furia Pilcrow didn't have many rivals for "the other thing."
"It's power," Arel said. "Power is never the problem. Lack of control is."
"The world might disagree with you," Kaelen said.
"The world is bad at managing power," Arel countered. "Look at the war."
For a heartbeat, Kaelen said nothing.
Then he laughed. This time it was full and uncontained, rolling out into the empty yard.
Arel didn't smile, but his shoulders loosened by a fraction.
"You are," Kaelen said, "either a genius or a future disaster, and I am not sure which."
"Hopefully the first," Arel said. "Disasters aren't efficient."
The laughter died down.
The wind picked up.
For a moment, the weight of what they'd just said settled between them. Heavy. Real.
"What if you can't do it?" Kaelen asked. His tone stayed calm, but his eyes were very sharp now. "Control it. End the war. What if you fall short? What if the Furia decides it's done listening to you?"
Arel looked at his hands.
They were steady.
"I haven't seen anything yet that convinced me effort plus intelligence can't beat it," he said. "And if I do see something like that…"
He paused, searching for the right words.
"If I ever reach a point where I can't trust myself not to destroy what I care about," he said slowly, "I'll make sure I'm not in a position to hurt it."
Kaelen's jaw tightened.
"You're talking about throwing your life away," he said.
"I'm talking about risk management," Arel replied softly. "If the options are 'I kill everyone' or 'I remove the problem'…"
He trailed off.
The silence that followed was not comfortable.
The thing in his chest—the heat, the weight—stirred at the edges of his attention. Not fully awake. Curious.
It did not like the idea of being "removed."
Kaelen stepped closer, voice dropping.
"Listen to me, Arel," he said. "You don't get to decide you're a lost cause when you're eight years old."
"I'm not deciding anything yet," Arel said. "I'm stating that I know what's at stake."
His gaze flicked up, meeting his father's straight on.
"That's why I need control first," he said. "Before anything else. Before glory. Before titles. Before being called 'hero' or 'monster.' If I can't chain this thing, I'm useless as a solution. I'm just… another problem."
The word tasted like metal.
He didn't raise his aura. He didn't scream. He didn't let himself tremble.
He just said it.
Kaelen closed his eyes for a brief second, then opened them again.
"You sound older than you are," he said quietly.
"That's a common side effect of being born during a war," Arel replied. "And of having everyone whisper 'he might explode' when they think I'm not listening."
The corner of Kaelen's mouth lifted, though his eyes remained hard.
"You do hear too much," he said.
"Good," Arel said. "Information is free. Ignoring it would be stupid."
The faintest trace of the Furia drifted up at the edges of his awareness then—like smoke under a door. Not explosive, not roaring. Just present. Listening.
Almost… amused.
Arel exhaled slowly.
The air around his arms warmed, then cooled again.
He didn't need to see the black wisps to know they were there.
"We both know I'm a risk," he said. "Pretending otherwise would be a waste of time. So we treat it like what it is: a dangerous tool. Either I learn to use it, or I make sure it can't use me."
Kaelen's reply came out sharper than usual.
"I did not have a son," he said, "to talk about himself like a broken sword."
Arel blinked.
For a moment, some of the calculation slid aside, and he just saw the man in front of him—tired around the eyes, scarred, stubborn, refusing to flinch from hard truths but clearly hating some more than others.
"I'm not broken," Arel said.
"Good," Kaelen snapped. "Then stop describing yourself that way."
He scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaled, and when he spoke again, his voice was steadier.
"You want control," he said. "You want enough strength to make war impractical. Fine. Those are… big goals."
"They're the only ones that make sense," Arel said.
"Then you need more than this yard," Kaelen replied. "And more than me."
He looked past Arel, toward the fortress walls, as if he could see through them to somewhere far beyond.
"Bastion Aurora sent word," he said. "They'll take you."
Arel had suspected something like that was coming since the messengers started arriving more often.
Still, hearing it made something settle inside him.
"How soon?" he asked.
"Three days," Kaelen said.
Arel did a quick internal calculation.
Time to pack. Time to review his notes. Time to walk the fortress one more time, not because he was sentimental, but because he liked to know the layout of places where he might someday have to fight or die.
He nodded once.
"It makes sense," he said.
Kaelen huffed. "That's it? No fear? No outrage? No 'I don't want to go'?"
"I didn't say I wasn't afraid," Arel replied. "I said it makes sense."
"You can do both," Kaelen said.
"Yes," Arel agreed. "But fear doesn't change the logic."
He thought of what he'd heard about the bastion.
Students from all over the human territories, from neutral clans, even from certain celestial-aligned groups who liked to pretend they were "impartial observers." Training, ranking, missions. A place where talent was dense and expectations higher.
"And," Arel added, "it's the most efficient place to pursue my two goals."
Kaelen gave a small, mirthless smile.
"You've turned your life into an equation," he said.
"Yes," Arel said simply. "If I don't, someone else will do it for me."
The wind picked up again, tugging at the ends of Kaelen's coat, making the lion banners on the walls snap and crackle.
"There's one thing you're missing from your calculation," Kaelen said.
"What?" Arel asked.
"People," his father said. "You're assuming tools. Weapons. Enemies. But you're going to meet allies too. Students, instructors, idiots, prodigies. Some will drag you forward. Some will drag you down. You can't plan entirely around them, but you ignore them at your own risk."
Arel had considered that.
He just didn't like that part of the equation as much, because people were messy variables.
"I'll adapt," he said.
Kaelen studied him for another long moment.
"You always do," he said.
He stepped closer, resting a hand briefly on Arel's head in a gesture that was almost absent-minded and completely intentional.
"You don't have to carry all of this alone, you know," he said.
"I know," Arel lied.
Kaelen didn't call him on it.
"Go wash up," he said instead. "Your mother will want to talk before you leave. She pretends she doesn't worry. She lies worse than you do."
"I don't lie," Arel protested mildly. "I just… select information."
"That's worse," Kaelen said.
He turned away, but paused after a few steps.
"Arel," he said without looking back. "Whatever you become out there—monster, hero, something in between—remember this: you are my son first."
Arel watched him go.
"My son first," he repeated under his breath.
He wasn't sure that would always be true.
The war didn't care who had loved whom before the killing started.
He bent down and picked up the practice sword from where it had landed.
His muscles ached faintly. Not a pleasant ache. Not exactly unpleasant either. Just a reminder.
There was work to do.
He glanced up at the fortress walls, at the flaming lion banners.
House Pilcrow.
A name that made people straighten, whisper, wince.
"If I'm bound to burn," he said quietly, testing the words aloud for the first time, "I'll choose the fire."
Not a boast.
A decision.
Two goals. One life. Limited time and resources.
Control himself.
End the war.
Everything else was, as he'd told his father, decoration.
He lowered the sword.
Then, because training without a plan was wasteful and he still had three days left in the safest cage he would ever know, he started running through a new set of movements—not the ones his father had given him, but the ones he'd been quietly designing in his head.
Efficient.
Purposeful.
Obsessed, but so calm on the surface that no one watching would have guessed how far ahead he was already trying to see.the same as mastering."
"I've executed it correctly the last ten," Arel replied. His tone stayed level, almost conversational. "If the purpose is improvement, we're hitting diminishing returns."
Most children would have said I'm tired.
Arel preferred accuracy.
Kaelen considered him for a heartbeat, then gave a small nod.
"Fair point," he said. "Adjust the pattern."
Arel moved.
This time the strike came in low, then twisted high at the last second. The motion was subtle, almost lazy to the untrained eye, but the angle shifted enough to target a different opening.
Kaelen turned his shoulder, letting the blade skim past, then reached out and tapped two fingers lightly against Arel's wrist.
"Better," he said. "Still telegraphing with your eyes."
"I'll consider blinding myself," Arel said dryly.
His father huffed something that might have been a laugh.
The yard was quiet otherwise. Servants knew better than to linger when Lord Pilcrow trained. The wind tugged at the banners hanging from the walls, the flaming lion sigil rippling against the grey sky.
Arel adjusted his grip.
Objectively, he had a good life.
He had food, warmth, parents who were present and not entirely incompetent. He had access to more training, knowledge, and resources than most people would see in a lifetime.
He also had two unavoidable problems:
There was a war that had been going on since before his great-grandparents' bones turned to dust.
And there was something very old and very hungry living under his ribs.
He lunged again.
Sword, step, breath. No wasted effort. Every motion chosen, not thrown.
Kaelen blocked with the flat of his palm this time, redirecting the blow with the smallest possible movement.
"You're thinking," he said.
"Yes," Arel answered.
"Too much."
"There is no such thing," Arel replied calmly. "Not when my alternative is 'swing harder and hope'."
Kaelen's mouth pulled into a slow, reluctant smile
"You sound like your mother," he said.
"I'll take that as a compliment," Arel said.
"You should."
They traded another set of strikes. Not fast, not showy. Precise. Methodical. Like two people solving the same puzzle from opposite ends.
Finally, Kaelen lowered his hands.
"Enough," he said. "We've reached the point where fatigue will teach you sloppiness instead of discipline."
Arel exhaled once, controlled. His heart was beating faster, but nowhere near what it could. He'd kept a margin on purpose.
Training to collapse didn't appeal to him.
Training to win did.
"We could switch to theory," Arel suggested. "You still haven't shown me the deployment map from the last border clash."
Kaelen tilted his head.
"You're eight," he reminded him.
"Yes," Arel said. "And?"
Kaelen's eyes gleamed with something like pride.
"And you're a Pilcrow," he said. "Fine. After you drink water."
He walked to the edge of the yard, picked up a clay jug from the low wall, and tossed it. Arel caught it cleanly, took a measured sip, then another. Enough to rehydrate. Not enough to slosh in his stomach.
Another small efficiency.
"Tell me," Kaelen said, as Arel drank, "what do you want from all this?"
He gestured around—the yard, the fortress, the endless drills, the blades.
"Besides stronger arms," he added.
Arel lowered the jug and thought about pretending not to understand the question.
Then he decided that would be a waste.
"Two things," he said.
Kaelen raised an eyebrow. "Only two?"
"Two that matter," Arel clarified. "The rest are decoration."
He set the jug down and met his father's gaze, expression smooth, voice even.
"First," he said. "I want to control myself. Completely. No slips. No 'episodes'. No waking up in a crater I don't remember making."
The air between them shifted.
Kaelen's posture straightened almost imperceptibly.
"And the second?" he asked.
"I want to be strong enough," Arel said, "that this war ends."
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't make a speech. He simply stated it, like someone listing a fact on a ledger.
Kaelen watched him in silence.
"Ambitious," he finally said.
"Necessary," Arel corrected. "If the war continues, people keep dying. If I become strong enough that fighting stops being useful for anyone, then it stops. That seems… efficient."
He had thought about this.
A lot.
The world wasted lives the way drunks wasted coins at taverns. Carelessly. Endlessly. Without keeping track.
Arel hated waste.
Kaelen's gaze grew distant for a moment, as if he were seeing something on the other side of the yard. Old battlefields. Old failures.
"You know the war isn't simple," he said eventually.
"I know," Arel replied. "That's why I didn't say 'I'll fix it tomorrow.' I said I'll become strong enough that continuing it is… less practical."
He hesitated, then added, "I don't care who started it. Angels, demons, humans, all of them sound equally unreasonable. I care that it ends."
The words felt right in his mouth.
He had never said them out loud before.
He'd carried them along with the heat.
Kaelen nodded slowly.
"And the… other thing?" he said. "What you carry. You think that also has a neat, rational solution?"
Arel didn't need him to specify.
The Furia Pilcrow didn't have many rivals for "the other thing."
"It's power," Arel said. "Power is never the problem. Lack of control is."
"The world might disagree with you," Kaelen said.
"The world is bad at managing power," Arel countered. "Look at the war."
For a heartbeat, Kaelen said nothing.
Then he laughed. This time it was full and uncontained, rolling out into the empty yard.
Arel didn't smile, but his shoulders loosened by a fraction.
"You are," Kaelen said, "either a genius or a future disaster, and I am not sure which."
"Hopefully the first," Arel said. "Disasters aren't efficient."
The laughter died down.
The wind picked up.
For a moment, the weight of what they'd just said settled between them. Heavy. Real.
"What if you can't do it?" Kaelen asked. His tone stayed calm, but his eyes were very sharp now. "Control it. End the war. What if you fall short? What if the Furia decides it's done listening to you?"
Arel looked at his hands.
They were steady.
"I haven't seen anything yet that convinced me effort plus intelligence can't beat it," he said. "And if I do see something like that…"
He paused, searching for the right words.
"If I ever reach a point where I can't trust myself not to destroy what I care about," he said slowly, "I'll make sure I'm not in a position to hurt it."
Kaelen's jaw tightened.
"You're talking about throwing your life away," he said.
"I'm talking about risk management," Arel replied softly. "If the options are 'I kill everyone' or 'I remove the problem'…"
He trailed off.
The silence that followed was not comfortable.
The thing in his chest—the heat, the weight—stirred at the edges of his attention. Not fully awake. Curious.
It did not like the idea of being "removed."
Kaelen stepped closer, voice dropping.
"Listen to me, Arel," he said. "You don't get to decide you're a lost cause when you're eight years old."
"I'm not deciding anything yet," Arel said. "I'm stating that I know what's at stake."
His gaze flicked up, meeting his father's straight on.
"That's why I need control first," he said. "Before anything else. Before glory. Before titles. Before being called 'hero' or 'monster.' If I can't chain this thing, I'm useless as a solution. I'm just… another problem."
The word tasted like metal.
He didn't raise his aura. He didn't scream. He didn't let himself tremble.
He just said it.
Kaelen closed his eyes for a brief second, then opened them again.
"You sound older than you are," he said quietly.
"That's a common side effect of being born during a war," Arel replied. "And of having everyone whisper 'he might explode' when they think I'm not listening."
The corner of Kaelen's mouth lifted, though his eyes remained hard.
"You do hear too much," he said.
"Good," Arel said. "Information is free. Ignoring it would be stupid."
The faintest trace of the Furia drifted up at the edges of his awareness then—like smoke under a door. Not explosive, not roaring. Just present. Listening.
Almost… amused.
Arel exhaled slowly.
The air around his arms warmed, then cooled again.
He didn't need to see the black wisps to know they were there.
"We both know I'm a risk," he said. "Pretending otherwise would be a waste of time. So we treat it like what it is: a dangerous tool. Either I learn to use it, or I make sure it can't use me."
Kaelen's reply came out sharper than usual.
"I did not have a son," he said, "to talk about himself like a broken sword."
Arel blinked.
For a moment, some of the calculation slid aside, and he just saw the man in front of him—tired around the eyes, scarred, stubborn, refusing to flinch from hard truths but clearly hating some more than others.
"I'm not broken," Arel said.
"Good," Kaelen snapped. "Then stop describing yourself that way."
He scrubbed a hand over his face, exhaled, and when he spoke again, his voice was steadier.
"You want control," he said. "You want enough strength to make war impractical. Fine. Those are… big goals."
"They're the only ones that make sense," Arel said.
"Then you need more than this yard," Kaelen replied. "And more than me."
He looked past Arel, toward the fortress walls, as if he could see through them to somewhere far beyond.
"Bastion Aurora sent word," he said. "They'll take you."
Arel had suspected something like that was coming since the messengers started arriving more often.
Still, hearing it made something settle inside him.
"How soon?" he asked.
"Three days," Kaelen said.
Arel did a quick internal calculation.
Time to pack. Time to review his notes. Time to walk the fortress one more time, not because he was sentimental, but because he liked to know the layout of places where he might someday have to fight or die.
He nodded once.
"It makes sense," he said.
Kaelen huffed. "That's it? No fear? No outrage? No 'I don't want to go'?"
"I didn't say I wasn't afraid," Arel replied. "I said it makes sense."
"You can do both," Kaelen said.
"Yes," Arel agreed. "But fear doesn't change the logic."
He thought of what he'd heard about the bastion.
Students from all over the human territories, from neutral clans, even from certain celestial-aligned groups who liked to pretend they were "impartial observers." Training, ranking, missions. A place where talent was dense and expectations higher.
"And," Arel added, "it's the most efficient place to pursue my two goals."
Kaelen gave a small, mirthless smile.
"You've turned your life into an equation," he said.
"Yes," Arel said simply. "If I don't, someone else will do it for me."
The wind picked up again, tugging at the ends of Kaelen's coat, making the lion banners on the walls snap and crackle.
There's one thing you're missing from your calculation," Kaelen said.
"What?" Arel asked.
"People," his father said. "You're assuming tools. Weapons. Enemies. But you're going to meet allies too. Students, instructors, idiots, prodigies. Some will drag you forward. Some will drag you down. You can't plan entirely around them, but you ignore them at your own risk."
Arel had considered that.
He just didn't like that part of the equation as much, because people were messy variables.
"I'll adapt," he said.
Kaelen studied him for another long moment.
"You always do," he said.
He stepped closer, resting a hand briefly on Arel's head in a gesture that was almost absent-minded and completely intentional.
"You don't have to carry all of this alone, you know," he said.
"I know," Arel lied.
Kaelen didn't call him on it.
"Go wash up," he said instead. "Your mother will want to talk before you leave. She pretends she doesn't worry. She lies worse than you do."
"I don't lie," Arel protested mildly. "I just… select information."
"That's worse," Kaelen said.
He turned away, but paused after a few steps.
"Arel," he said without looking back. "Whatever you become out there—monster, hero, something in between—remember this: you are my son first."
Arel watched him go.
"My son first," he repeated under his breath.
He wasn't sure that would always be true.
The war didn't care who had loved whom before the killing started.
He bent down and picked up the practice sword from where it had landed.
His muscles ached faintly. Not a pleasant ache. Not exactly unpleasant either. Just a reminder.
There was work to do.
He glanced up at the fortress walls, at the flaming lion banners.
House Pilcrow.
A name that made people straighten, whisper, wince.
"If I'm bound to burn," he said quietly, testing the words aloud for the first time, "I'll choose the fire."
Not a boast.
A decision.
Two goals. One life. Limited time and resources.
Control himself.
End the war.
Everything else was, as he'd told his father, decoration.
He lowered the sword.
Then, because training without a plan was wasteful and he still had three days left in the safest cage he would ever know, he started running through a new set of movements—not the ones his father had given him, but the ones he'd been quietly designing in his head.
Efficient.
Purposeful.
Obsessed, but so calm on the surface that no one watching would have guessed how far ahead he was already trying to see.