Training began with bruises. Lots of them.
Ryall didn't hold back.
"Feet apart. Core firm. You're swinging a scythe, not waving a feather."
Kael grunted, staggering from the latest blow. "You've said that ten times."
"Because you haven't listened once."
The practice yard behind the guild wasn't glamorous just packed dirt, training dummies, and a few cracked weapons scattered by previous adventurers. But it was quiet. Isolated. Kael needed that.
Ryall circled him with a pair of daggers. Veilborn weren't just fighters they were motion, momentum, and brutality in rhythm.
"You've got the strength. That's obvious," Ryall said, gesturing to the shadow-laced scythe Kael held. "But strength without timing is just wasted energy."
Kael lunged. His strike was faster this time. Ryall twisted, pivoted on one foot, and drove a dagger hilt into Kael's ribs before stepping away clean.
"Again."
Kael rose, grimacing. He wasn't healing fast today. The shadows helped… but only when they wanted to.
Later, Kael trained with Drev in the alley beside the inn.
Drev's style was different. Minimal. Focused.
"Watch the angle of sound," he whispered. "Don't hide in darkness. Make it."
He taught Kael how to use movement as silence how to read windows, light reflections, and floor textures. How to erase presence.
At one point, Kael blinked and Drev vanished.
The next second, a cold whisper touched his ear: "Dead."
Kael didn't flinch.
"I want to learn that," he said.
"You're already learning," Drev murmured. "The Fathom doesn't walk paths. It builds them from void."
Kael didn't understand that yet.
But he would.
Whisperborn magic was harder.
Elira didn't teach like Ryall or Drev. She didn't jab or whisper. She tested.
"There are three threads to Whisperborn magic," she began, pacing their candlelit room. "The inner voice. The outer pulse. And the breach."
Kael frowned. "You're not making sense."
"I'm not trying to. Not yet."
She pointed to the candle. "Make it flicker."
"With magic?"
"With intention."
Kael stared. Nothing happened.
Elira smirked. "Thought so."
She made it flicker without moving.
"Whisperborn magic isn't about doing. It's about imposing thought onto the veil. It's slow. Invasive. Dangerous."
She taught him basic spells: thread snare, echo hush, and memory sting. Each spell required mental precision and pain.
"You'll feel your mind stretch," she warned. "If you stretch too far, it breaks."
Meanwhile, at the Guild
Not everyone believed the reports.
In the Guild's upper chamber, a meeting unfolded. Murmured. Sharp.
"Ryall's team? Conquered that ruin?" asked a robed archivist.
"Confirmed by three separate reps," another replied.
"They've never tackled a Pre-Flow site. And that Kael boy he's barely registered."
A third figure stepped from the shadowed corner. Her voice was cold. "And yet he walked out of the vault marked by something. I want his file pulled. All of it."
"Already done, Guildmaster Varn."
"What of the artifact reports?"
"Statue fragments. Concept residue. And… something we've never seen. A burned sigil. One that shouldn't exist."
"Shouldn't?"
"It matches records only found in the Old Sigil Wars vaults. But darker. Twisted."
Silence fell.
"Watch them," Varn said. "All of them. But keep eyes on Kael. He's either a miracle…"
"…or a mistake waiting to happen."
Back at the Inn
The team gathered again that night. Not as adventurers but as people.
Ryall sipped tea. Elira sat reading. Tessan fixed a cracked gauntlet. Drev cleaned a hidden blade.
Kael sat with them, eyes distant.
"You're improving," Ryall said. "Still swing like a corpse, but better."
Elira added, "Your mind's expanding too. Slowly. But I can feel it."
Kael smiled faintly. "I'll get there."
"You're already halfway somewhere," Drev said cryptically.
Tessan finally spoke. "Wherever you're going… make sure it doesn't leave us behind."
Kael didn't reply.
Because in his bones… he knew he would.
The shadows whispered at the edge of his senses.
The fire crackled.
And something deep inside him stirred
Not hunger.
Purpose.