The ground felt different today.
Not softer. Not harder. Just wrong.
Leon moved in a slow circle around the ring, shoulders loose, jaw set. The dust curled differently beneath his boots, like the earth hadn't settled since yesterday's swings. He didn't have the sword in his hand this time.
He didn't need it yet.
He was warming up with footwork.
Step. Slide. Pivot. Shift.
The motions were cleaner now. Still heavy. Still slower than he liked. But when his boots bit into the soil and turned under pressure, his core held.
He didn't fall.
He wasn't falling anymore.
Rissa appeared ten minutes in, hair tied back, spear balanced on her shoulder.
"You're early."
Leon didn't stop moving. "So are you."
"Yundar sent a message."
Leon paused. "About?"
She tossed something at his feet.
It landed with a dull clack.
A severed, scorched horn.
Demon bone.
Leon crouched and picked it up. The texture was like sand-blasted stone, cracked at the base, jagged along the edge.
"Southern watch found it last night," Rissa said. "Buried in the base of a tree. Half-melted. No survivors near the site."
Leon turned the horn in his palm.
The shape was familiar.
Too familiar.
It matched one of the creatures from the convoy ambush.
He looked up. "This close?"
"Five miles."
That silence again. The same one from the convoy. The same one from the armory.
They weren't retreating.
They were circling.
By noon, the fog had lifted. The sun shone fiercely on the courtyard, yet the heat didn't linger. It clung. Leon finished drills with Rissa, spear against blade, and took three bruises before he landed one shoulder strike.
When they called it, both sat on the edge of the fence, panting in rhythm.
"Yundar said they're calling a private council," Rissa said between breaths. "Veiren's pushing for more patrols. Your father hasn't spoken."
Leon wiped his brow. "He won't until someone else makes it real."
"And you?"
Leon looked at the horn beside his boot. "I'm already bleeding for it."
He didn't return to the manor right away.
He went to the overlook—the high stone ridge behind the eastern wall, where the wind always hit hardest and the whole southern road lay stretched like a scar across the hills.
He stood at the edge, hands resting on the pommel of his blade.
The horn sat beside him on the ledge.
He didn't know why he brought it.
Maybe as a warning.
Maybe as proof.
Maybe to remind himself that they were still watching him.
"You're here too often," said a voice behind him.
Leon didn't turn.
Isabel stepped up beside him, cloak pressed close from the wind.
"I figured I'd find you here."
"Council's not until night," he said.
"I'm not here for them."
Leon glanced sideways.
She nodded toward the horn. "Yours?"
"No."
"Yours now."
He looked back at the road. "You still think this is about politics?"
"No," she said. "I think it's about legacy."
He frowned. "What does that mean?"
Isabel's eyes didn't leave the horizon. "Your house has always been a sword. The kind people swing without asking where the blade came from. You were meant to be dull. Bent. Forgotten."
"And?"
She turned. "You didn't stay that way."
That night, the council gathered.
Not the full one—just the ones who mattered. Veiren. Valhart. One of the outer ward commanders. An old mage named Caldus with cloudy eyes and too many rings. No robes. No titles. Just chairs and truth.
Leon stood in the corner, silent.
His father sat at the table's end, back straight, expression carved from stone.
When Isabel placed the demon horn on the table, no one laughed.
Not this time.
Caldus leaned in first. "How fresh?"
"Two nights old," Isabel said. "Near our borders."
"Confirmed?"
Leon spoke. "I fought one like it. It bled black. It whispered."
The old mage went still.
"What did it say?"
Leon's voice didn't waver. "That I wasn't supposed to be here."
Silence again.
This one heavier.
Caldus nodded. "Then the seals are thinning."
Lord Cedric's jaw flexed. "Are you certain?"
The mage turned toward him. "They don't speak unless the boundary is warped. And they don't point unless they recognize a break."
Everyone looked at Leon.
He didn't blink.
Isabel broke the tension. "Then we reinforce. Patrols at the marsh ridge, fortification along the southern flank—"
"No." Cedric's voice cut.
Leon straightened. "Why not?"
His father's eyes found his. "Because the moment we prepare for war, the other houses will assume we're provoking one."
Leon stepped forward. "They're already here."
"Then we fight in silence," Cedric said, firm. "Until there's no choice left."
After the meeting, Leon stood alone in the upper hall.
He didn't move when Isabel approached.
"You going to wait again?" she asked.
"No."
"Then what?"
He looked out at the torches below. "I'm going to train until silence isn't needed anymore."
Isabel tilted her head. "And then?"
Leon looked at his hand—still bandaged, still healing.
"Then I'll kill whatever remembers me."
Leon stayed in the upper hall after Isabel left. The lights in the council chamber had faded, and the night pressed heavily against the windows. He remained in the arched passageway, his hands placed on the stone railing as the wind softly murmured through the gap in the tower wall.
Below, the guards rotated. Torches flickered. The estate looked calm.
But it wasn't.
He could feel it under his skin—something crawling just beneath the surface of the world. Like a stretched thread waiting to snap.
He pulled the shard from his tunic.
Held it to the torchlight.
For a second—just a breath—it pulsed. Not with light. With heat. Subtle. Barely there.
He clenched his fist around it.
Then tucked it away again.
Footsteps echoed behind him, slow and measured. Not a servant. Not a soldier.
Roderic.
Leon didn't turn.
"You never used to attend these meetings," his brother said.
"I never used to matter."
"You still don't. Not to them."
Leon's jaw tightened. "Maybe not. But they'll remember me when the walls fall."
Roderic stepped beside him, his voice low. "You're betting everything on something you shouldn't even know exists."
Leon looked him in the eye. "I'm not betting. I've already lost once."
And this time, he wasn't leaving anything standing behind him.