The weeks bled together in a relentless, agonizing rhythm of frost, sweat, and iron.
Every morning began the same: Ronan running the jagged limestone ridges with Cormac’s side-sword gripped tightly in his right hand, his lungs burning with the razor-sharp air as he maintained the continuous Faelun breathing of the Wind-Stride technique. He no longer ran like an awkward, starved serf. The punishing combination of long-distance sprinting, bow draw-weights, and endless repetition of the four core sword forms began to reshape his lanky frame. His shoulders broadened, his forearms grew ridged with whipcord muscle, and his stance acquired the low, balanced center of gravity native to a swordsman rather than a mountain hunter.
From the porch of the cabin, old Fergus often watched the boy, nursing a cup of bitter pine tea while his pale eyes narrowed in quiet, speculative musings. The boy eats pain the way a starving hound eats scrap, old Fergus thought, noting how Ronan’s blade-work had ceased to be a clumsy imitation and was slowly hardening into instinct.
When there was only one week left before his scheduled departure for the southern sinkholes, Fergus stepped into the clearing with his blade already drawn.
"Enough ghosts," Fergus barked, tossing a wooden stave aside. "Draw steel. Let's see if those months of hacking at air amounted to anything, or if you're still just a corpse waiting for a ditch."
Ronan didn't hesitate. He pulled the side-sword from its leather scabbard with a crisp, ringing hiss. The bastard-length blade, perfectly balanced for one-handed dominance, felt light and viciously responsive in his grip.
He didn't wait for permission. Stepping forward with a sudden, fluid burst of Faelun-accelerated footwork, Ronan drove his point downward in a brutal Attack.
Fergus grunted, his own blade flashing up to meet it. The steel clashed with a sharp, ear-splitting shriek that sent a spray of ice chips into the air.
Ronan didn't break rhythm. When Fergus countered with a sweeping horizontal cut, Ronan dropped his weight, slapped the blow aside with a razor-sharp Parry, braced his spine against a hard Block, and whipped his pommel upward in a vicious, lightning-fast Counter, aiming a slashing arc straight for the old Ranger's throat.
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It was a clean, punishing execution of the form. But Ronan was fighting a ghost of the frontier.
With a terrifying, casual speed that defied his weathered years and aching joints, Fergus shifted. There was no wasted motion, only the blur of grey steel. Before Ronan’s counter could find its mark, Fergus’s blade intercepted it with absolute, bone-jarring authority, slapping the boy’s crossguard aside and sending a numbing shock up Ronan’s forearm that nearly tore the weapon from his grip.
Before Ronan could recover his balance, the flat of Fergus’s blade rested lightly, uncomfortably cold against the center of Ronan's chest.
Silence fell over the clearing, broken only by the whistling mountain wind and the heavy, ragged breathing of the boy.
Fergus lowered his sword, sliding it back into its cracked leather scabbard with a dull clack. The sluggish, tired slouch of an old man returned to his frame as if he hadn't just moved with the terrifying precision of a master swordsman who had buried his true lethal capacity beneath decades of frontier dirt.
"Not bad," old Fergus rasped, a grim, heavy smirk touching the corners of his mouth. "You've got the teeth for it."
He looked at Ronan, weighing a heavy question in his mind: Should I teach him more? Should I open the deeper ledgers of the art before I ride out into the sinkholes? But the thought vanished as quickly as it came. Too much knowledge too fast broke men quicker than a snapped bowstring. The boy had the foundation; the rest had to be bought with blood and survival.
The final week passed in a blur of relentless sparring and bruising exhaustion. When the morning of Fergus’s departure finally arrived, the sky was the color of a bruised plum.
The old Ranger strapped his heavy pack across his shoulders, checked the cinch of his saddlebags, and looked down at Ronan one last time in the cabin's cluttered doorway.
"I'll be gone two moons, maybe three," old Fergus said, his voice flat and unyielding. "Don't slack off in your training. The frontier doesn't pause just because the old man is out of sight."
Ronan stood by the hearth, clutching his side-sword, and nodded grimly.
Fergus turned, offering a brief, silent nod to Mordren, who sat sharpening his daggers near the woodpile with cold, indifferent focus. Without another word, the old Ranger stepped out into the biting wind, his boots crunching into the frozen mud as he rode down the mountain ridge, leaving Ronan alone in the shadow of the outer rim.