The days blurred into a relentless cycle of steel and breath as Ronan integrated the dual-wielding guard into his daily training. The weight of Cormac’s side-sword in his right hand and his father’s ash-hammered dagger in his left felt increasingly natural, their alternating rhythms locking together like interlocking gears.
During a blistering afternoon spar, the routine shattered.
Ronan lunged, his long iron feinting high to draw Mordren’s curved saber outward. The dark elf parried instinctively, expecting the usual clumsy recovery. Instead, Ronan dropped his weight, slipping inside Mordren’s guard with a razor-thin step of Faelun footwork, and snapped his left hand forward.
The blunt tip of his father's dagger stopped a hair's breadth from the dark elf’s throat.
Mordren froze.
The blade didn't pierce skin, but the geometry of the trap was absolute. For a fraction of a second, the dark elf’s obsidian eyes widened in genuine, unmasked astonishment. The boy hadn't just followed instructions; he had engineered an opening through sheer, brutal intuition.
Mordren lowered his saber and stepped back, his chest rising slightly with a heavy breath.
"Give me your hand," Mordren commanded, his voice dropping to a low, analytical murmur.
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Ronan blinked, lowering his weapons slightly as he extended his right arm.
Mordren’s cold, calloused fingers wrapped firmly around Ronan’s wrist, sliding down to press two precise fingers directly against the boy’s pulse point. The dark elf stood completely still, his eyes closing as he searched deep beneath the skin, probing for the faint, resonant thrum or thermal spark that marked a Kindled Core.
Silence stretched across the clearing, broken only by the whistling wind through the pines.
Nothing, Mordren thought, a cold wave of disbelief washing through his tactical mind. No core. Not even the faint, flickering ember of a nascent awakening.
The boy was entirely unKindled. Yet, here he was, executing complex dual-handed geometry and absorbing lethal combat arts at a pace that defied reason. He wasn't moving with the effortless, reality-bending grace of the high-born prodigies bred in the southern kingdom’s secret academies, those pampered monsters who channeled raw mana to rewrite physical limits. Ronan was moving entirely on muscle, bone, and raw, stubborn willpower.
How does a flesh-and-blood creature bridge that chasm without a spark?
Mordren narrowed his eyes, filing the anomaly away with a dark, calculated resolve. I will have to ask Fergus about this when the old man returns.
Mordren released the boy’s wrist, letting go as abruptly as he had grabbed it. He took a half-step back, his expression hardening back into its mask of indifferent severity.
"You haven't formed your core yet," Mordren stated flatly, his tone dismissive enough to hide the deep currents of curiosity churning beneath.
Before Ronan could process the comment or ask what it meant, Mordren raised his curved saber, stepping back into a lethal, aggressive stance.
"Again."