We glanced into the stockroom and grabbed hammers. Trenn, without hesitation, hauled up two—each about the size of my head. I was more modest and chose one about half the size of my own. They looked light enough to lift easily, but reality quickly set in: even lifting mine was difficult, and only with both hands. My efforts with acceleration had taken their toll, noticeably weakening my body.
Trenn's plan for the training was simple and brutal: lift and hold the hammer with one hand, then throw that same hammer or something heavier, and then run. Luckily for me, in the first days the instructors forbade any throwing exercise.
By his merry account, the prohibition suited him: he simply invented another exercise with an even heavier hammer. What it was, Trenn wouldn't say at first—"to be a surprise." Just imagining what else was in store made my head spin again…
On the fifth set, I simply lost all feeling. I told Trenn so, bluntly.
"Think I should grab something heavier?" he asked, genuinely interested, and before I could object,object he added, "Class starts soon, so let's save the second half of the workout for the evening."
"Yeah, yeah…for the evening," I answered wearily. "You'll come get me? Room two-sixteen."
He grinned broadly and shook my outstretched hand—with both of his, almost wrenching my shoulder.
"Fine, my friend Edric!" he said.
For some reason it struck me that Trenn already seemed to have more than enough friends. I hadn't really thought about what our friendship was, anyway.
"Then you can haul these hammers back to the stockroom!" he shouted as he ran off. "I'm late!"
His back disappeared into the distance. For a moment I had the urge to bash in that "friend" of mine. Friendship was strange. No one offered it or drew up a contract—at some point a person is just there, grabbing you by the shoulder, dragging you to the train, then dumping his hammers in your arms and running off. And oddly, it didn't really anger me. It was more…puzzling.
"Have hammers always been this heavy?" I muttered on the way to the storeroom. Or maybe my arms had finally stopped obeying—it was hard to say. I hoisted one onto my shoulder with both hands, and each step was returned by a dull, aching pain in that arm.
The storeroom greeted me with the usual smell of metal and dust. The hammer thudded onto its shelf. My hands trembled as I finally unclenched my fingers. For a moment I wanted to sit on the floor and stare into emptiness, but I remembered the two hammers Trenn still had. I trudged back, breathing hard, and tried to lift one.
As soon as I returned, I had to catch my breath and manage to raise one of the hammers. My back screeched immediately. With a strained, shaky grip, I managed to lift it just a couple of inches before the metal fell silently back to the ground, barely missing my feet. In that moment, I knew exactly what to do next! My body was completely wrung out. If I just let a few more minutes pass, I could figure something sensible out instead of straining my back blindly. I sat down right on the floor, leaning on my hands, and let my muscles finally relax.
"Looking for worms?" came a taunt from behind me.
Turning toward the voice, I hesitated for a moment, wondering who it was. The boy's face was unfamiliar. He stood beside Eryl Krast. In theory, he should know him, but my memory was blank.
"And who might you be?" I asked a perfectly reasonable question under the circumstances.
Judging by his twitching cheek, I'd offended him.
"Still the same, huh?" Eryl interrupted, pushing his friend aside. "By the way, thanks to you I got stronger. So thanks."
"My pleasure," I smirked. "If you ever need another hit to the head, just let me know."
Eryl's expression shifted, but his smile remained unchanged. It was hard to guess what he meant.
"Since you two are here," I continued, "want to help carry these hammers? I'm wiped after training. There shouldn't be a problem for you."
"Sure," his friend snorted. "A weak commoner like you doesn't know what strength is."
He bent down by the hammer, grabbed it with one hand, gritted his teeth…and didn't budge it. He readjusted his grip to two hands, strained with all his might, and raised it a couple of inches before the metal thudded back to the floor. Then a plan formed in my mind.
Over the course of training, my core had finally begun to recover. I tightened my posture, steadied my breathing, and tried to match the rhythm of his heartbeat. First came warmth, soft and spreading from deep inside. I willed it upward to my shoulders and arms. A new feeling suddenly surged: not a burst, but a solid, confident wave of power.
Straightening, I shook the hammer off my knee, calmly stepped aside, and gripped the hammer more securely. Then, in one motion, I lifted it. Marching back to the second hammer, I placed the first on the ground beside it.
"That's enough," I said, interrupting their conversation. "Don't need to worry about me anymore. I'm going to go."
The boy grunted, and Eryl smirked, but neither helped. They walked off without another word.
I bent down, grabbed both hammers, and walked away without looking back. My face flushed hot, my arms ached with pain, but I wasn't about to stop this performance. My footsteps thudded in my ears. Each step either made the hammers feel even heavier, or my body just gave out. My fingers went numb, grip clumsy. My forearms seemed to burn as though someone twisted them from the inside. My face was aflame—I felt sure it could actually burst into flames.
Clenching my teeth, I hurried back to the storeroom. The hammers thudded to the floor almost simultaneously. The metal hit so hard that the echo rolled through the room. My legs immediately buckled. I bent forward, gripping my knees, greedily gulping air.
For a moment the world went dark. The blackout hit so suddenly, unexpectedly, like someone snapped their fingers right in front of my eyes. My ears buzzed, and my body pitched forward. I managed to stay upright only by a miracle. When my vision returned, it was blurry with floating spots at the edges. Warmness trickled down my lips.
I reflexively wiped under my nose and saw a crimson streak on my skin. Blood dripped onto the stone floor, forming a dark stain. I had to stand there a bit longer, waiting until the trembling in my hands calmed and my breathing evened out. The ordeal was over. The cost had been higher than I liked to admit. I'd love to see their faces now…
On the way back, neither Eryl Krast nor his unknown friend was anywhere to be seen. Of course classes weren't canceled for them—everyone had their obligations and schedules.
The room greeted me in silence. The bed was as soft and familiar as if nothing had happened that morning. Fortunately, I'd be alone here for the rest of the day.
Days blurred into each other in one monotonous stream of early workouts, food, evening exhaustion, and short sleep. Nearly every day began the same: training ground, cold earth underfoot, the stone floor of the storeroom, and Trenn—always bright-eyed, as if he had been resting rather than pushing his body for hours. Even on rainy days, when I wanted to sulk and just practice my core, he burst into the room as if coming home.
The first days after that hammer incident, my body still held its grudge. My arms felt like lead, my joints throbbed at night, and my core answered with a dull, muted ache at every attempt to use it. During breaks, I took to walking. Behind the male dormitory, in a maze of paths branching every way, there was one leading to a secluded south exit. It was hardly used. There I found a spot that felt unexpectedly cozy and hidden from sight. Among thorny rose bushes and scattered young trees was a narrow path. The stone tiles had been intentionally removed, and the dirt was reclaiming the path: between roots the grass pushed through, and soft moss covered the well-trodden earth.
If one walked deeper through, pushing aside the bushes, then came to a small clearing and climbed into the trees, an ancient trunk stood on a slight rise, grown from thick, intertwined roots. Around it lay three fallen shoots, younger but stout. Their trunks were twice as thin, the bark still firm, not rotten, as if those younger trees had simply made way for the elder. It required great effort to set this up properly. One log was propped against a rock and leaned on the old tree so I could sit back against it. Another lay underfoot as a makeshift bench. I had thought to place the third under the tree as a backrest, but the small twigs poked against the back, so I abandoned that idea.
It was under this secluded tree, in the shade, during breaks between training with Trenn, that my understanding of magic began to change. The inner core had stopped tremoring and finally settled on a brown hue. I was still two steps from the next stage, the dark-red level Eryl had reached in a month. The gap between us grew only larger. It angered me, sometimes pressing on me, especially in the quiet before sleep. I had to soothe myself with the thought that he started with a base—the blue core built before the Academy. The race had been uneven from the start.
With a brown core, acceleration was no longer a sudden surge. It no longer ripped inward, didn't knock the wind out of me, and didn't leave emptiness behind. Instead, it felt like a rhythm, as if body and core were finally in sync. My blood flowed steadily without jerks. My muscles caught the motion instead of resisting. Occasionally I managed to sustain the acceleration for twenty minutes straight, without pain, with only building fatigue.
In the evenings, when I was out of energy, I often went to the library. Not as much for learning as by habit. Among the dusty tomes and whispering pages, it was quiet, calm—almost safe. Sporadically my gaze would catch a familiar face among the readers…but it was always someone else. Delis never reappeared, as if she'd vanished into the earth. Neither among the tables, nor by the shelves, nor in the side halls. Three weeks, not a single trace. At first it worried me, then angered me, and by the end it just settled into a heavy, unpleasant weight. The questions multiplied, but answers remained none.
Lately something had changed in the Academy. It was felt immediately: in the air, in the tense stares of cadets, and in the whispering in the halls that no longer stopped.
That evening, Trenn wasn't at the training ground—the first time all this while. Instead, I found another man at the edge of the circle. Instructor Pelin simply stood there, arms crossed behind his back, waiting to be noticed. When our eyes finally met, the mustached instructor gave a curt nod.
"Looks like you've grown…the Rector sends his regards," he said, adjusting his mustache. "Tomorrow's the testing, with first light. Be in the clearing before the main building."
He turned as if the conversation was over, but then, without facing me, added, "Get some rest. There will be no second chance."
I didn't even manage a greeting before he vanished. The instructor's speed remained incomprehensible, as if the space behind him just closed. I had been waiting for this day for days. It hadn't been spoken of—the notice appeared only at the very last moment, as if to sharpen nerves. I wanted to push up another level before facing that test tomorrow.
The evening had turned unusually cold. Too cold. It was difficult to concentrate: the wind crept under my clothes, touched my skin, and each gust sent shivers down my spine. But I would rather not leave.
I drew a deep breath again, pulling in as much of the surrounding mana as I could, and at the same time started to accelerate my blood. That was precisely what had always been missing: the filling of the core always lagged. My channels still choked; the mana entered reluctantly, as if hitting an invisible barrier. Rejection set in faster than acceptance, and that was frustrating. It was as if the core knew I was rushing and stubbornly resisted.
I was lost in thought and didn't notice the first raindrop land on my shoulder. Then a second. Then a third. Rain began suddenly. The drops quickened, the leaves above rustled, and the wet smell of earth grew thick. Running back to the dorm made no sense; even if I bolted now, I'd be drenched in minutes. The rain's speed clearly outmatched mine.
"Wonder how soaked Instructor Pelin would be if he ran in this rain… Speed of the body…" I muttered. The thought hit me. Not about the speed of my legs—about the speed within. I drew another deep breath, sucking in mana, while also urging my blood to quicken. First came a pinching in my chest. I lost control of my breath for just a moment, but that was enough. The mana collection collapsed, the acceleration cut off as if someone had yanked the cord.
Consciousness immediately sank inward.
Before me, my core was revealed—brown, bright, pure, with a tint of warm amber. It no longer trembled or "breathed" in jerks like before. Its form was sharp and its planes even, as if someone had patiently polished them from within. It glowed with a soft, solid light.
"Did it work after all?" I whispered to myself, still hardly believing the feeling. For a moment I wanted to share this. Right away. I wanted to tell Trenn and see him first not understand, then pat my shoulder and say something like "I told you so." As for Delis… that was harder. I couldn't at all picture her reaction, and oddly that tugged at me more than anything. I longed to see her eyes, hear her first words if she had any.
The rain did not let up on the way back. By the time I reached the dorm, my clothes were completely soaked, but inside I felt so calm that I scarcely noticed. I quickly stripped off, tossed my wet things by the bed, and collapsed onto it.
The dawn wake-up came too early. Much too early. Dawn was just beginning to pale when the dorm corridors filled with footsteps and hushed voices. Someone was joking, someone silent, and someone fumbling with belts and clasps.
A crowd had gathered in front of the main building. Cadets filled the clearing in a tight ring—dozens, maybe hundreds of figures of all heights and uniform colors, anxious faces. The air vibrated with tension and anticipation. All the first-years were here. And more.
Instructors stood at the center. One of them unfurled a scroll, old and heavy with complex script. Magical threads hovered above it even at a distance—thick, coiled.
"Focus," a dry voice rang out.
The last thing I saw was the scroll burst into flame. The world collapsed for an instant, as if sucked into itself, and then lurched aside. Space blurred, the sound dropped away, and the ground fell out from under my feet. As with my first shift, the transition took only a fraction of a second. When my sight returned, my feet were on different ground.