Major Tadrick arrived at the gate within the hour, level two hundred and fifty, armor plated and unhurried, the kind of soldier whose reputation preceded him by a full city block.
He studied Hoju for a long moment, taking in the unremarkable sword, the plain traveling cloak, the level two his own Identify skill confirmed within seconds of looking.
“Coug Forest,” Tadrick said, echoing the gate guard’s disbelief with considerably more weight behind it.
“You walked out of Coug Forest carrying a level two.”
“I did,” Hoju said.
“Then you won’t mind proving it,” Tadrick said, already drawing the heavy blade strapped across his back.
“Spar with me.
If you’re telling the truth, you’ll survive it easily enough.”
Fresha stiffened beside him, and Hoju set a steadying hand briefly on her shoulder before stepping forward into the open ground the gate guards had already begun clearing for them.
The match that followed drew a crowd fast, off duty soldiers and curious merchants alike gathering along the gate’s perimeter to watch a captain of Dall’s own garrison test a stranger’s outrageous claim.
Tadrick opened with a heavy, testing strike that Hoju met with Heavenly Parry, redirecting the force back along its own line with enough precision that the captain’s own footing staggered from the rebound.
“Interesting,” Tadrick said, resetting his stance, genuine focus replacing his earlier skepticism.
He pressed harder after that, a rapid combination of overhead strikes and low sweeps that would have ended most spars inside a minute, and Hoju answered each one with Quick Steps and Air Blade, giving ground only when giving ground cost him nothing, closing it back the moment an opening presented itself.
The exchange dragged on long past what either combatant expected, Tadrick’s confidence eroding with every clean parry, Hoju’s own restraint the only thing keeping the fight from tipping decisively in either direction.
It was still locked in that uncertain balance, neither man willing to commit fully to a finishing exchange, when a new voice cut across the gathered crowd.
“That’s enough.”
The woman who stepped through the crowd carried herself with an unhurried authority that made even Tadrick lower his blade immediately, a tall, sharp eyed figure in traveling leathers rather than court finery, her presence alone enough to still the murmuring onlookers.
“Rank Three,” Tadrick said, straightening.
“I was simply testing a claim, my lady.”
“You were testing it well past the point of necessity,” Lady Eva said, her eyes settling on Hoju with an interest considerably more calculating than the crowd’s simple curiosity.
He’s not fighting to win, Tadrick.
He’s fighting to learn exactly how strong you are without ever showing you the full shape of what he actually carries.”
Tadrick’s expression shifted, reassessing the entire match in an instant.
Lady Eva approached Hoju directly, studying him with a frank, unbothered thoroughness.
“Level two,” she said.
“Cap two, I’d wager, given how carefully you’re holding back.
A boy who walks out of Coug Forest carrying that number isn’t a threat to this city.
He’s an opportunity nobody else at this gate has the wit to recognize.”
“I don’t want trouble,” Hoju said carefully.
“Then you’ve come to the right person,” Eva said.
“I have a small house on the edge of my estate grounds, empty and unused.
You and your sister are welcome to it, no questions asked beyond what you’re comfortable answering, and no attention drawn to either of you beyond what you choose to invite yourselves.”
Fresha looked to Hoju, hope and caution tangled together on her face in equal measure.
Hoju studied Lady Eva for a long moment, reading nothing in her but the same calculating, patient interest she’d shown since stepping through the crowd, an interest that felt, at least, considerably more honest than anything Teria had ever offered him.
“Why,” he asked simply.
“Because I collect potential, and I’ve watched a great deal of it walk through these gates over the years,” Eva said.
“Most of it disappoints me eventually.
Something tells me you won’t.” She turned without waiting for further agreement.
“Come.
Both of you. This story is hosted at novelping.com.
We’ll discuss the details somewhere more private than a city gate.”
The small house sat at the quiet edge of Lady Eva’s sprawling estate grounds, modest but sound, and within it, over the following weeks, Hoju and Fresha settled into a rhythm neither of them had known since Teria.
Fresha spent her mornings at the main house, helping with the household’s chores alongside the small handful of other young fighters Lady Eva had taken in over the years, souls who’d shown promise but lacked family, wealth, or standing enough to train anywhere else.
There was Corin, a broad, easygoing boy of seventeen who’d awakened level seventy nine.
Wren, sharp tongued and level ninety, the household’s current strongest.
A pair of younger siblings, Tam and Lia, twelve and ten, still years from any Awakening of their own but kept close under Eva’s care regardless.
And Dessa, level eighty, quiet and watchful, who along with Wren made it clear early on that Fresha’s growing closeness with Lady Eva sat poorly with them both.
“She never used to fuss over the new ones like this,” Wren said one morning, not quite quiet enough for Fresha to miss it, watching Eva help Fresha carry a basket she hadn’t needed carrying for.
“Maybe the new ones are just worth fussing over,” Dessa added, not bothering to hide her own irritation at all.
Fresha said nothing to either of them, keeping her head down and her hands busy, the same practiced patience she’d spent years learning in a household that had never once made her feel welcome either.
Hoju, meanwhile, struck a quieter arrangement with Lady Eva entirely, one kept carefully separate from the other rankers’ notice.
In exchange for the shelter and safety of her grounds, he hunted the surrounding wilderness for unleveled beasts to feed her household, disappearing into the forests beyond the estate for days at a time and returning with enough game to keep the entire house fed through the leaner seasons.
“You could hunt something worth actual coin,” Eva observed once, watching him clean a fresh kill in the estate’s rear yard.
“A level two boy who fights the way you fight could earn considerably more than firewood and gratitude.”
“I’m not interested in coin,” Hoju said.
“I’m interested in staying quiet until I understand what kind of world I’ve actually walked into.”
Eva studied him for a long moment, something unreadable passing behind her sharp, calculating eyes.
“Fair enough,” she said.
“Then let’s keep you quiet a while longer.”
She never once mentioned him to the other four ranked fighters of Dall, not in passing conversation, not in the careful political maneuvering that filled most of her days, keeping the boy who’d fought Major Tadrick to a standstill entirely to herself, a secret she was already, quietly, beginning to build a much larger plan around.