Spring in the Scandinavian Mountains did not arrive with the gentle warmth of southern pastures, but with harsh sunlight glinting off jagged granite peaks and biting glacial winds.
Snow still lingered in the deep, shaded crevasses of the Jotunheimen range, melting into roaring, icy streams that cut through the ancient pine forests below.
Leon crouched low behind a moss-covered boulder, his breathing steady, rhythmic, and shallow.
A year had passed since his conversation with Garrik Vane, and the fragile, undernourished orphan from Sheffield was gone.
At nearly thirteen, Leon had grown significantly, his height catching up to the average for his age.
Months of heavy physical labor, structured training, and the extra meat rations Finn regularly smuggled to him had filled out his frame.
Lean, dense muscle now bound his shoulders and back, giving his movements a sharp, fluid efficiency.
His face had hardened, the remaining baby fat replaced by defined cheekbones and a cold gaze.
He was no longer dressed in rags.
A custom-tailored coat of supple, darkened Graphorn leather protected him from the mountain chill, and tucked into his belt was his wand—still cheap, but held by a hand that had mastered its every flaw.
Today was his first real hunt.
The test that would end his status as camp labor and officially mark him as a member of the Wyrm-Breakers.
Beside him, Vanya leaned gracefully against the rock, her chestnut hair with its golden ombre tips falling loosely near her neck, her intense hazel eyes scanning the valley below.
Behind them stood two veteran duellists, Kaelen and Bram, their wands drawn, silent as gravestones.
“You’re tracking well, little bird” Vanya purred softly, her voice barely carrying over the rustle of pine needles.
“Tell me what we’re looking at.”
Leon focused, his mind instantly stripping away the noise of the mountain—the wind, the rustle of leaves—to isolate the creature’s exact movements.
In less than a second, he took in every detail.
“A Skardraken,” Leon said quietly.
“Adult male. Approaching from downwind.”
Fifty yards away, emerging from a thicket of dwarf birch, was their target.
The Skardraken was a creature endemic to the high Scandinavian peaks—a quadrupede beast roughly the size of an elk, but with the lean, predatory build of a wolf.
Its hide was covered in interlocking, slate-grey scales that mirrored the mountain granite, rendering it nearly invisible against the rocks.
A pair of swept-back, obsidian horns topped its head, and its forward-facing golden eyes searched the terrain with intelligence.
“Scale density is high, but the cartilage behind its jaw is vulnerable,” Leon analyzed under his breath, measuring the distance, wind velocity, and spell travel time.
“One focused, high-frequency piercing spell to the neck will sever the spinal column. It will die before it can summon the pack.”
It wasn’t a creature of legend like a Hungarian Horntail or a Nundu, but it was fast, highly magic-resistant, and deadly to an unprepared wizard.
For an initiate’s trial, it was a lethal benchmark.
And to Leon, who had long since surpassed low-tier poachers like Jad in both magical precision and spell repertoire, it was a straightforward equation.
He raised his wand, his mental calculations locking onto the exact trajectory.
His fingers tightened on the wood, ready to unleash a compressed, razor-thin Diffindo straight through the creature’s throat.
Suddenly, a gloved hand snapped down, gripping his forearm.
Leon stopped instantly, holding his breath, his eyes darting to Vanya without moving his head.
Vanya’s playful demeanor had vanished.
Her eyes were narrowed, focused on the far ridge across the clearing, past the unsuspecting Skardraken.
“Hold,” she commanded softly.
“We have company.”
Leon followed her gaze.
Crouching low in the brush on the opposite side of the valley were three figures, with three more circling around the eastern treeline.
Braconniers.
But not Wyrm-Breakers.
Their gear was mismatched—heavy iron-studded coats, unkempt beards, and crude bone-handled wands.
They had tracked the same beast and had been setting up their own ambush on the far slope.
For several tense seconds, the wind howled through the pines.
The Skardraken, sensing the sudden shift in atmospheric tension, let out a low, vibrating growl and bolted into the shadows of the deep forest, disappearing entirely.
Neither team chased it.
The six rival poachers stepped out from the treeline, their wands held loosely at their sides in a clear display of armed readiness.
Vanya let out a dry, melodic laugh, standing up from behind the boulder and brushing snow off her leather trousers.
“Well, well,” she murmured, gesturing for Leon and the two duellists to follow.
“Look what the glacier dragged in.”
The two groups closed the distance, stopping ten paces apart in the snowy clearing.
The atmosphere was razor-sharp.
Leon stood relaxed, taking in the six wizards before him.
He picked apart their alignment in an instant—the leader’s unstable footing, the scarred duellist gearing up for defense, and the chaos of the four behind them, so poorly positioned they were just as likely to hit each other as their targets.
“Vanya of the Wyrm-Breakers,” the leader of the rival group sneered.
He was a broad, yellow-toothed wizard wearing a greasy bear-hide cloak.
“Didn’t expect to see Garrik’s leash-holders all the way up in Jotunheimen.”
“And I didn’t expect to smell the Fjord-Rats from three miles away, Halvar,” Vanya replied smoothly, her lips curving into a dangerous smile.
“Though I suppose your hygiene hasn’t improved since Garrik kicked your pathetic little gang out of the Oslo markets.”
Halvar’s jaw twitched, his face darkening.
The Fjord-Rats were a minor bande—desperate and thoroughly outclassed by the Wyrm-Breakers in reputation and wealth.
“We tracked that Skardraken for two days,” one of Halvar’s men spat, stepping forward.
He glanced at the four Wyrm-Breakers, his eyes lingering mockingly on Leon.
“You’re running light today, witch. Four of you—and one’s a bloody child. We’re six. The beast is ours, and maybe we’ll take whatever’s in your packs for our trouble.”
A couple of the men grunted in agreement, trying to bolster their courage.
They were nervous—the Wyrm-Breakers’ terrifying reputation preceded them—but the sheer math of six adult wizards against three adults and a boy was making them reckless.
Leon watched them, feeling a strange, detached pity.
‘They don’t understand how Vanya operates.’
“Is that math making you brave, Halvar?” Vanya purred, her voice dropping an octave, laced with pure, sadistic amusement.
“You think numbers protect you from a superior duellist? You think because you brought two extra meat-shields, you get to speak to me like an equal?”
Halvar gritted his teeth, his hand twitching toward his wand belt.
“We aren’t leaving empty-handed—”
He never finished the sentence.
Vanya didn’t draw her wand with a speech or a grand gesture.
Her hand was a blur.
“Avada Kedavra!”
A blinding flash of emerald light split the mountain air.
The jet of killing magic struck Halvar square in the chest before he could even raise his arm.
The light reflected off his wide, terrified eyes a fraction of a second before life vanished from them completely.
He crumpled into the freezing slush like a sack of flour.
Silence crashed over the clearing for a heartbeat—and then total chaos erupted.
“Kill them!” someone screamed.
Red and yellow light erupted across the clearing as the remaining five Fjord-Rats panicked, firing blind, uncoordinated curses.
Kaelen and Bram moved instantly, throwing up a massive, interlocking Protego that absorbed the initial volley with a thunderous crack.
Vanya was already moving like a shadow, slipping past the shield, a cruel, ecstatic laugh bursting from her lips as she unleashed a torrent of dark, agonizing curses at two wizards at once.
Leon acted on pure instinct.
‘Vanya taking two.
Kaelen and Bram engaging one each.
That leaves me the scar-jawed wizard flanking left.’
Leon rolled to the side as a heavy Blasting Curse shattered the boulder behind him, sending sharp granite splinters flying through the air.
He sprang up, his wand whipping forward in a tight, geometric arc.
“Flipendo Maxima!”
The concussive wave slammed into his opponent’s rushed Protego.
The wizard, expecting a weak spell from a child, was caught off guard by the sheer density and kinetic force of Leon’s cast.
The shield shattered with a glass-like pop, staggering the man backward into the deep snow.
Leon didn’t hesitate.
He closed the distance with terrifying speed, his mind calculating every variable—the man’s recovery time, his heavy breath, the exposed throat.
“Diffindo!”
A compressed, invisible arc of cutting magic shot from Leon’s wand.
The wizard instinctively threw his hand up to block.
The spell sliced cleanly through his wrist, sending his wand and hand flying into the snow, followed instantly by a spray of crimson.
The man shrieked in agony, dropping to his knees, clutching his bleeding stump.
Leon froze for a fraction of a second.
His mind flashed.
This wasn’t a Wampus-Lynx.
It wasn’t a boar or a magical beast.
It was a man.
A human being screaming in the snow, his blood staining the pristine Norwegian white.
A wave of visceral hesitation—the remnants of a modern human morality—threatened to paralyze him.
He would have killed you, Leon’s cold logic cut through the shock instantly.
In this world, hesitation is suicide.
The wizard on his knees raised his left hand, a hidden dagger glinting in the pale sunlight, his face twisted in desperate rage.
Leon’s eyes hardened.
The hesitation burned away, replaced clarity.
He stepped forward, bypassed the knife with a quick sway of his torso, and thrust his wand directly beneath the man’s chin.
“Reducto.”
There was a muffled explosion.
The screaming stopped instantly.
The wizard collapsed backward, lifeless.
Leon stood over the body, breathing heavily, his wand tip smoking slightly.
He looked down at his hands.
They were steady.
No tremors.
The psychological barrier had been breached, smashed through by the sheer imperative of survival.
A horrifying, high-pitched scream rang out nearby.
Leon turned his head.
The fight was already over.
Kaelen and Bram were wiping blood from their leather gear, while Vanya stood over the last surviving Fjord-Rat.
The man was writhing in the snow, his body contorting in horrific, unnatural angles as Vanya held her wand over him, her face illuminated by a terrifying, ecstatic thrill.
She was executing him with the Cruciatus curse, slowly breaking his mind for no other reason than her own twisted enjoyment.
She had won her minutes ago, but she savored the agony like fine wine.
Finally, with a lazy flick of her wrist, a purple hex snapped the man’s neck, plunging the clearing back into silence.
The Skardraken was long gone, terrified by the magical crossfire.
The hunt for the beast was ruined.
Vanya turned to Leon, her eyes still sparkling with manic energy, a thread of blood dripping down her neck from a shallow graze.
She looked at the dead wizard at Leon’s feet, then up at Leon’s face.
“Not bad, little bird,” she laughed, stepping over a corpse and clapping him hard on the shoulder.
“No screaming, no crying. Clean execution.”
“The beast escaped,” Leon said, his voice flat.
“Who cares about the beast?” Vanya scoffed, waving a hand dismissively.
“A creature is just gold. A dead enemy is survival. Garrik said you needed to take a life to prove you aren’t soft.”
She bent down, drew a heavy, silver-hilted hunting knife from her boot, and tossed it into the snow at Leon’s feet.
“Sever the head,” Vanya commanded, her smile turning sharp and mocking.
“A head is proof enough. Welcome to the Wyrm-Breakers, Leon.”
Leon stared at the blade reflecting the pale Norwegian sky.
He felt no fear at the prospect, but a wave of profound disgust washed over him.
It was violent, crude, and utterly barbaric—the gruesome chore of a butcher rather than a wizard.
Yet, keeping his face an unreadable mask, he knelt down in the crimson slush, wrapped his fingers around the cold steel, and got to work.
An hour later, as they marched down the winding mountain trail back toward the hidden camp, the weight of the day settled into Leon’s mind.
He was a killer now by the standards of the world he once knew.
He had taken a human life with calculated efficiency, dealt with the bloody aftermath, and felt no crippling remorse—only the cold clarity of survival.
The helpless orphan dragged out of St.
Jude’s was officially dead.
In his place stood an initiate of the Wyrm-Breakers, armed with magic, sharp logic, and an unshakeable ambition.
‘This camp gave me a wand, taught me how to kill, and finally handed me my standing,’ Leon thought, his hand resting comfortably on his wand inside his coat.
He didn’t care about bringing down Garrik Vane’s syndicate.
Certain individuals like Jad would eventually pay for their brutality when the time was right, but the cartel itself was merely a stepping stone.
A blood-soaked classroom.
He would absorb their methods, hoard their secrets, and build his own strength.
And one day, far beyond these frozen peaks, he wouldn’t just belong to someone else’s cartel—he would forge an empire of his own.