"So, are you ready for the Rite?"
Arn’s voice reached me from a few steps ahead, as casual as if he had not spent the last hour knocking me into the dirt whenever I made a mistake.
He stood with the tip of his longsword pressed into the ground, one hand resting over the pommel while the other hung loosely by his side.
I tightened my grip around the Jian in my right.
"Not really," I muttered.
Arn’s mouth lifted faintly. "Good. You are learning."
Before I could tell him to go to hell, which honestly I really wanted to, he lifted his sword from the ground.
That was enough, so I moved first.
My body still did not have much strength behind it, not compared to Arn’s at least, so trying to meet his blade head-on was pointless.
I had learned that much within the first few days of him training me. His sword was too heavy, his arm too steady, and every time I tried to force my way through him, I ended up on my back wondering why I had thought it would go differently.
So I stepped to his right instead, letting my Jian cut towards his shoulder as I summoned a thread from my left hand.
The pale strand shot out, thin enough that it would have been almost invisible if not for the light catching it. I guided it around Arn’s other side while he shifted to meet my blade, keeping his attention on the Jian rather than what was creeping towards him.
For a second, it almost worked.
My sword came close enough that I saw his eyes narrow slightly.
Then the hilt of his longsword snapped up.
The pommel struck against my blade and knocked it wide with a force that ran straight through my wrist. My fingers nearly gave out around the handle.
I gritted my teeth, letting the momentum carry me past him instead of trying to stop it.
My thread was still there.
I curled my fingers around it and pulled.
The strand tightened around the lower half of Arn’s blade. I sharpened it as much as I dared, feeling the same edge bite into the skin of my palm as it scraped along my fingers. If I could keep his sword from moving for even a moment, I could come back in with the Jian before he had time to recover.
That was the idea, at least, anyway.
Arn glanced down at the thread around his sword.
Then he looked back at me.
That same bloody unbothered smirk was still on his face.
Goddamn bastard.
I pulled harder.
The thread dug deeper into my fingers, something warm spreading through my hand, but Arn’s sword did not move. Not even slightly. It may as well have been tied to the ground.
Still, I stepped in again.
This time I aimed the Jian straight for the centre of his chest, keeping the thrust quick and narrow. I did not need to beat him in strength. I only needed to give him too many things to deal with at once.
His sword was trapped, my blade was coming in and the thread was sharp enough to cut through flesh if he tried to grab it.
It should have been enough, but surprisingly, Arn did not even take a full step back.
His left hand came up as his gloved hand wrapped around the thread just above his sword.
For a moment, my mind stalled.
The thread had cut through wood. It had cut through cloth. If I sharpened it enough, it could slice into my own fingers like they were nothing. Yet it pressed against the glove and did not leave so much as a mark.
Arn pulled.
The thread came loose from his blade, and when I tried to hold onto it, he simply tightened his fingers.
It snapped.
The sudden loss of tension threw me off balance.
Before I could pull back, his gloved hand caught the flat of my Jian.
Not the handle but the very blade itself.
He closed his hand around it as if the sword had no edge at all, then twisted, breaking my grip.
Arn ripped the Jian out of my hand and pulled me forward with it.
I managed one useless step before his elbow slammed into the side of my face as the world blurred around me.
My feet left the ground, and then I hit it hard enough that the breath vanished from my lungs. Dirt scraped beneath my shoulder as I rolled, stopping a few feet away with my cheek pressed against the cold grass.
For a few seconds, I stayed there, not because I was giving up, but mostly because standing again felt like a deeply stupid decision.
Arn held my Jian by the very tip of the blade almost as if he was holding a stick he had picked up from the ground. His longsword rested over one shoulder while he waited for me to move.
"Again?" he asked.
I pushed myself onto one elbow, my face throbbing.
"Not that I have any other option now, do I?"
That drew the smallest breath of a laugh from him.
I got back onto my feet, dusting dirt from my clothes with my uninjured hand. The side of my face burned, and my right wrist still felt weak from the first strike, but neither of those things mattered much when I had only three days left before the Rite.
Three days.
I should have been terrified.
Instead, some stupid part of me was looking forward to it.
I wanted to know where I actually stood beside the others my age, all those people who had been training their Aspects for years while I had barely been Touched for two months.
But more than that, I wanted to see a Hollow.
Honestly, could anyone blame me? I had spent most of my old life writing about monsters, and now I was going to see one with my own eyes. The fact that it might try to kill me was admittedly less exciting, but I was choosing not to think too hard about that part.
Arn walked over and held the Jian out to me.
I reached for it, but his eyes had fallen to my left hand.
"Yun."
I looked down.
My fingers were bleeding again.
The skin across my palm had split where the thread had pressed against it, the cuts shallow in some places and ugly in others. A few drops of blood had already fallen into the grass beneath me.
I stared at it for a moment.
Then Arn asked quietly, "Don’t you feel any pain?"
I did.
I just did not feel it the way I should have.
The answer sat in my throat, but I could not make myself say it.
Since the Trial, pain had become strange. It was still there, even now. I could feel the burning sting in my palm and the ache in my face, but they seemed distant, like sensations reaching me through a wall. It was enough to notice, but nowhere near enough to stop me.
Arn watched me for another second before letting out a slow breath.
He seemed to understand the answer anyway.
"You keep using your hand to direct the thread," he said.
"I need to."
"You need to stop cutting yourself apart every time you do it."
I looked up at him, ready to argue, only for him to take off the black glove covering his left hand.
The one my thread had failed to damage.
Without it, his hand looked almost ordinary, though there were old scars along his knuckles and across the back of his wrist.
He folded the glove once, then held it out to me.
I blinked.
"Arn."
"Take it."
For a moment, I did not move.
The glove was thin, impossibly thin, black as polished obsidian and smooth enough that it barely looked real. When he had caught my thread with it, I had thought it was some technique. Some effect from his Aspect.
But I knew what it was.
A Vestige.
They were rare enough that even most Touched would never see one in their lives, let alone carry one.
When an Undoing was completed and a Rift was resolved, there was a small chance that something from within remained behind. A weapon. An object. A scrap of something that should have died with the world the Miasma had previously swallowed.
And if that remnant recognised the person who had resolved the Rift, it would bind itself to their soul.
No two Vestiges were truly alike. Every Rift carried its own story, its own world, its own impossible rules. The things left behind carried pieces of that past with them.
A Gift.
And always, somewhere beneath it, a Burden.
Yet Arn was standing there and handing one to me like it was nothing more than an old glove.
"What the hell are you doing?" I asked.
A small smile touched his face. "Giving you something useful."
"You are giving me a Vestige."
"Yes."
"Arn."
I looked from the glove to his face, then over to his right hand.
The glove he still wore there did not match the one he was offering me.
Even Harren, the Head of House Claiom and one of the few Claimed Touched in the six great houses, only possessed three Vestiges. That was how rare they were. How valuable.
And Arn wanted to give one away.
"I have not even completed an Undoing," I said.
"You will."
"You cannot know that."
His expression did not change, but his gaze settled on me with that quiet certainty he always carried.
"I know enough."
My hand hovered over the glove, then stopped.
"I can’t," I said.
"Read it first."
Despite myself, I let out a short laugh.
Arn pushed the glove closer. "Just take it. It does me more damage than help."
I finally took the glove, though my fingers were still reluctant.
It was soft beneath my fingers, cold at first touch, and so thin that it almost felt like skin. The moment it settled in my palm, something shifted inside me.
My Ledger opened.
Runes spread across my vision.
You have been recognised by what remained.
THE HAND THAT HELD has bound itself to your soul.
My breath caught.
Arn’s faint smile returned.
I looked at him.
My mouth opened, but no words came out for a second.
"Arn, I..."
"Do not worry about it too much. Think of it as a gift for becoming Touched."
That was easy for him to say.
My fingers tightened around the glove as I opened my Ledger properly.
VESTIGE
THE HAND THAT HELD
GRADE: TALE
GIFT: UNYIELDING
Neither edge nor fang may part the flesh beneath this glove.
BURDEN: EMPTY PALM
A hand made to shelter cannot also be made to wield.
A grin spread across my face before I could stop it.
He really was right.
It was perfect for me.
Until now, I had always needed to hold back when I sharpened my threads. I could use them, but never fully. Not when one wrong movement could cut through my own fingers before the thread reached anyone else.
With this, that problem was gone.
And the Burden barely mattered. I had no intention of wielding a weapon with my left hand anyway. The Jian was light enough for me to manage with my right, and the thread had always belonged in my left.
A Tale-grade Vestige.
Something that had survived a Tale-grade Rift.
I slipped it onto my left hand. The glove tightened over my mangled palm, and I flinched as it touched the open cuts.
Then it settled, becoming so light that within moments it no longer felt like I was wearing anything at all.
I closed my hand, and the glove moved with me almost like a second layer of skin.
"Thank you, Arn," I said quietly. "Really."
He looked away first, which was probably the closest thing to embarrassment I was going to get from him.
"Make sure you win the Rite for me."
My brows lifted. "You think I have what it takes?"
"If you did not, who would?"
I snorted, looking down at the black glove.
"So I am your favourite, then?"
Arn frowned as if the question genuinely required thought.
"There is Corin."
My head snapped up. "Corin?"
"He would be the one I would put money on."
That stung a little more than it should have.
Arn adjusted his grip around his sword, his eyes shifting back to me. "You know him?"
"I met him during the ceremony."
He nodded slightly. "He is a good lad. I know his father."
That made sense. Arn came from one of House Claiom’s collateral families himself.
"Well," I said, trying not to sound too offended, "good to know exactly where I stand."
"You stand above the rest of them, though."
"The rest?"
Arn’s smirk returned.
"Keep training."
Bastard.
He turned away after that, giving one last glance to the glove on my hand before lifting his sword over his shoulder.
"We are done for today."
I watched him walk back towards the retainers training in the distance, my fingers curling once more beneath the black glove.
Then the excitement in my chest faded, and the truth settled back into place.
Three days.
That was all I had.
Three days, and I still had not figured out how my Act worked.
Over the past two months, I had tried everything I could think of. I had studied the words in my Ledger until they blurred together.
I had imagined different situations. I had pushed myself into danger. Hell, I had once stood at the edge of a cliff, wondering whether getting close enough to death would make the damned thing react.
And yet it had not.
Meanwhile, the people I would face during the Rite had lived with their Aspects for years. They had time to learn them, fail with them, grow into them. They knew what their strongest abilities could do.
I still did not know what mine wanted from me.
My eyes lowered to the glove around my left hand.
Well, at least I had this now.