Three months later.
Pain was the only true measure of progression.
Cassian Ashford stood in the center of the academy's auxiliary training yard, his breath pluming in the freezing dawn air. In his left hand, he held a standard weighted practice sword. In his right, he held nothing but a solid block of dense ironwood.
His alchemical resin cast had been removed three days ago, revealing a pale, atrophied forearm. Healer Esran had forbidden him from holding live steel in his dominant hand. The bone was fused, but the muscles were withered. Attempting to channel the immense gravitational pressure of his Universe God Slayer Art through that weakened limb would shatter his radius and ulna all over again.
Cassian raised the ironwood block, his right arm trembling against the strain. Sweat stung his eyes. Patience, he reminded himself, anchoring his feet into the frost-covered stone using Kane's First Root of balance. There were no magical shortcuts to physical rehabilitation. Reincarnation did not grant him adult muscle mass, and God Slayer energy could not simply erase atrophy. He had to rebuild his foundation from scratch.
He pushed through the burning ache, lifting the block a fraction higher, mapping the exact limits of his recovering tendons.
"If you snap that wrist again, Esran is going to permanently bench you."
Cassian lowered the block, exhaling a ragged breath. Instructor Seris stood at the edge of the sparring ring, her scarred face unreadable. She wore her white-and-gold field armor, a long combat cape draped over her shoulders.
"I know my limits, Instructor," Cassian said, transferring the wooden block to his left hand.
"Good," Seris replied sharply. "Because the introductory phase of your academy life is over. Pack your gear. Today, the first-years deploy into the outer territories. It is time for your first Field Hunt."
Three hours later, the air grew thick with the smell of pine and unnatural ozone.
Cassian crouched low behind a jagged outcropping of slate, the freezing mud seeping through the knees of his tactical trousers. The outer territories bordering Dawnmere were a wild, untamed expanse of dense forest, strictly quarantined from civilian travel.
They were not hunting ordinary wildlife. God Slayers hunted celestial-corrupted beasts—predators that had absorbed ambient, fractured divine energy, mutating them into unnaturally armored, aggressive horrors.
Instructor Seris had deployed the first-year trainees in five-man squads, spreading them across the quadrant to track a pack of corrupted Razor-Hounds. Cassian was deployed with his roommates from Room 17, but due to his weakened arm, Seris had assigned an additional trainee to their squad to ensure their vanguard didn't collapse.
Lying in the frost next to Cassian was Tavin Morrison.
Tavin was thirteen, a year older than most of the first-years, with messy light-brown hair and a sharp, cynical smirk that never quite left his face. His eyes were brown, but a faint ring of dull red circled each pupil, like a stain that had never quite washed out. He watched the tree line with those eyes, his fingers drumming nervously against the hilt of his standard-issue longsword.
"You know, when they said we were hunting," Tavin whispered, his breath barely visible, "I assumed we'd be tracking something with normal internal organs. Not beasts with glowing gold tumors and armor plating."
"Keep your voice down," Marcus Cole hissed from a few yards to their left.
Marcus was crouched low, his matched pair of short blades drawn. He was visibly favoring his right side, his torso wrapped heavily in compression bandages to support his three broken ribs. A celestial ambush during a supervised march through Silverbrook Forest two weeks earlier had left him battered—the same ambush where a third-year squad leader had dragged all of Room 17 out alive—but he refused to miss the Field Hunt. He had failed advanced placement once; he was not going to let a first-year injury hold him back again.
"Just trying to lighten the mood, Cole," Tavin murmured, shifting his weight. "My Phantom God Slayer Art isn't exactly lethal yet. I can make a spectral double of myself, but it usually just stands there looking confused. If that hound rushes us, I'm relying on your Lightning."
"Focus," Frank River interrupted softly.
Frank knelt beside Marcus, his water-blue blades resting loosely in his grip. His posture was patient and defensive, the caution his brother had drilled into him. He was scanning the canopy, watching for the subtle shifts in the branches that betrayed movement.
A sudden, unnatural snap echoed through the woods.
From the deep shadows to their right, Jack Shadow materialized without a sound. The pale, black-haired trainee held his daggers in a reverse grip. He didn't speak, simply raising two fingers and pointing toward a thick grove of old ironwood trees fifty yards ahead.
Two targets.
"Positions," Marcus ordered quietly, grimacing as his ribs shifted. "Frank, anchor the center. Jack, take the high ground. Cassian, Tavin, flank left and funnel them toward my blades."
Cassian drew his steel sword with his left hand. It felt awkward and unbalanced, stripping him of his past-life instincts. He had to rely purely on Kane's mortal teachings. Third Root. Awareness. He slowed his breathing, listening to the unnatural, high-pitched hum of celestial energy vibrating through the trees.
The brush exploded.
Two corrupted Razor-Hounds burst from the tree line. They were hulking, muscular beasts, their fur stripped away and replaced by jagged plates of bone-white armor. Golden light leaked from their eyes and the gaps in their armored joints. They moved with erratic, lurching speed, tearing up the frozen mud.
"Hold the fucking line!" Marcus barked, his short blades sparking with residual Lightning God Slayer energy.
The lead hound lunged straight for the center. Frank stepped forward smoothly, sweeping his water-blue blades in a wide arc. "Tidewall!"
A sudden, pressurized current of water erupted from the frost, forming a dense, rotating barrier. The hound smashed into the water, its momentum stalled for a fraction of a second. That was all Marcus needed. Fighting through the agonizing pain in his chest, Marcus triggered his Lightning Art, closing the distance in a blinding spark of speed and driving his twin blades deep into the unarmored gap at the beast's neck.
The hound thrashed, throwing Marcus backward into the mud, but Jack dropped silently from the branches above, driving both of his daggers directly into the creature's glowing spine. The beast collapsed, its celestial energy venting into the air.
But the second hound had bypassed the center. It banked hard, its glowing eyes locking onto Cassian and Tavin.
"Shit—incoming!" Tavin yelled, stepping forward. He focused, his brow furrowing in intense concentration. A ghostly, translucent double of himself flickered into existence a few feet to his right. The spectral clone wavered unsteadily, looking more like a glitching shadow than a solid threat. Cassian felt it brush past him and frowned. It didn't feel like celestial energy. It felt colder. Heavier. Like something that belonged to the other side of the mountains.
The corrupted hound didn't care. Confused by the sudden appearance of two targets, the beast lunged for the spectral double, its jaws snapping shut on empty air as the phantom shattered like glass.
The beast stumbled, its flank exposed.
Cassian didn't hesitate. He couldn't use Starbreaker Slash, and his right arm was virtually useless. Instead, he channeled Kane's Sixth Root—Purpose. He stepped into the hound's blind spot, pivoted on his left heel to generate mechanical torque, and drove his steel blade upward in a brutal, one-handed strike from the left.
The blade pierced the soft tissue beneath the beast's armored ribs, punching straight upward into its heart. The hound seized, a burst of golden light exploding from its mouth, before it crashed to the forest floor, dead.
Cassian ripped his blade free, stepping back, his chest heaving. His right arm throbbed in protest, but the strike had been true. He hadn't relied on his past-life magic; he had relied on his father's teachings and Tavin's split-second distraction.
"Well," Tavin panted, leaning heavily on his sword and staring at the dead beast. "I suppose being a confusing distraction is a valid tactical strategy."
"It saved my life," Cassian said.
Tavin looked at him, and for a fraction of a second, the smirk slipped.
"Don't tell the others," Tavin muttered, lowering his voice, "but that's the first time my double has ever held together long enough to matter. Usually it just stands there like a scarecrow while I get knocked flat." He looked down at his own hand. "A healer told me once I'd never channel anything again. I figure I'm proving him half wrong." He shrugged, and the smirk slid back into place. "My father used to say that as long as you can still make a joke, you're not dead yet. So I make a lot of jokes."
Cassian held out his left hand. After a moment, Tavin reached out and gripped his forearm, soldier to soldier, the way the old veterans did in the stories. Across the pad of Tavin's thumb ran a neat ladder of tiny white scars, the kind a blade leaves when someone presses it there on purpose, over and over.
"Next time," Tavin added, "try not to need saving from a hound when I'm the only one nearby. My nerves can't take it."
Marcus pushed himself up from the mud, clutching his ribs. He looked at the dead hound, then at Cassian, his silver-grey eyes narrowing in cold, calculating evaluation. He didn't offer praise. He just wiped the blood from his blades and signaled the squad to form up.
By the time the squads returned to Highmere Academy, the sun had already set. The adrenaline of the Field Hunt faded, leaving the first-years exhausted, battered, and bruised.
Instead of returning to the dormitories, Instructor Seris ordered Cassian to the Western Archives to log the squad's celestial energy signatures for the academy records. It was tedious bureaucratic work, but Cassian welcomed the quiet isolation of the domed library.
He walked through the towering aisles of bookshelves, carrying a stack of leather-bound mission logs. Seraphina was nowhere to be seen. The quiet historian who secretly possessed the power of the Divine Phoenix was likely transcribing records in the upper galleries.
Cassian set his logs on a heavy oak sorting table. As he turned to leave, his foot caught the edge of a loose floorboard beneath the table. The wood shifted, revealing a narrow, dust-filled hollow space.
Cassian froze. Third Root. Awareness.
He knelt, pulling the loose board aside. Hidden inside the cavity was a single, degraded black-leather ledger. The lock was rusted, forged from dark iron rather than standard academy brass. Cassian pulled it free, brushing away the thick layer of dust.
Stamped deeply into the center of the leather cover was a broken spear.
Commander Rellan's seal. The same one carved beneath the bridge at Rook's Crossing. The same one that had glowed crimson in the scribe's master registry the day Cassian arrived, when his name had bled up out of twelve-year-old ink.
He had already lived through that shock. He had spent three months making himself stop thinking about it.
But this was not the registry. This was a second book. Smaller. Hidden. Rellan's own.
Moving with practiced silence, Cassian pried the rusted lock open and flipped through the brittle pages until he found it. The same sharp, military cursive. The same entry.
CASSIAN ASHFORD. SCHOLARSHIP SPONSORED.
But the registry had never shown him a date. This page did. The admission had been recorded exactly one day before Cassian and Kairo were born.
One day. Rellan had not guessed. He had known.
His eyes tracked to the right. On the adjacent line, a violent, aggressive smear of black ink stained the page. Someone had taken a heavy scraper and desperately erased the name written beside Cassian's. But the indentations remained pressed into the parchment.
K-A-I-R-O.
"You should not look so closely at things meant to stay buried."
Cassian flinched, snapping the ledger shut and spinning around.
Seraphina stood less than three feet behind him. She moved with a silence that made the back of his neck go cold. For a brief, dizzying second, Cassian felt the weight of a predator standing over him. But just as quickly, the sensation vanished, and she was only the quiet historian, looking down at him with an unreadable expression.
"I was just dropping off the hunt logs," Cassian lied smoothly, keeping his left hand near the hilt of his sword.
Seraphina reached out, placing her hand flat over the broken spear seal. Her eyes locked onto his, piercing and ancient.
"You found the second name," Seraphina noted softly. "Rellan's private copy keeps what the registry was made to forget."
Cassian stepped back. "How much do you know?"
"More than you. Less than I want."
"Then why are you protecting me?"
"Because someone went to a great deal of trouble to put you here," Seraphina replied, her voice dropping to a whisper, "and I intend to learn why before anyone else does." She tapped the black leather. "The scribe's registry lists you as a sponsored scholarship student and nothing more. That is your only shield. This book would hang you. The Priest Hunters are here, Cassian."
Cassian's blood ran cold. The Priest Hunters.
"Grand Inquisitor Matthias does not sleep," Seraphina warned. "He possesses the royal warrant from Dawnmere. He knows the name 'Cassian Ashford.' Deep-cover agents of the religious authorities have infiltrated the public sectors of Highmere. They are searching the dormitories, looking for a boy matching your description. If they discover that Commander Rellan's impossible admission is actually you, they will drag you to the Holy City and execute you for heresy."
She pulled the black ledger from his hands, her expression hardening.
"Keep your head down. Rebuild your atrophied arm. Do not draw unnecessary attention to yourself in the field. When you are physically ready, I will train you to survive what is coming. Until then, trust no one with your secrets."
It was well past curfew when Cassian finally pushed open the heavy oak door to Room 17.
The stone dormitory was silent, plunged into total darkness. Cassian stepped inside, sensing the shift in the air.
"Terror keeps you sharp," a calm, even voice spoke from the corner. Frank River. "Overconfidence gets you killed."
A loud scratch echoed through the dark. Jack Shadow struck a chemical lumen-match, illuminating the small room. Jack sat cross-legged on his bed, silently observing.
Marcus Cole sat against the far wall, wincing as his broken ribs shifted beneath his bandages. His silver-grey eyes were locked onto Cassian, calculating and uncompromising.
"Close the door," Marcus ordered quietly.
Cassian pushed the heavy oak door shut.
"You fought left-handed today," Marcus said bluntly. "Your right arm is weak, but your footwork is flawless. You fight like a veteran soldier trapped in a first-year's body, yet you sneak around the archives and jump at shadows. You are hiding some serious shit, Cassian. In the field, hesitation gets people killed. If we are going to fight together, I need to know what kind of crossfire we are standing in."
Cassian looked at his three roommates. Marcus, fighting through agonizing pain. Frank, patiently defensive. Jack, silently watching.
The Seventh Root, Kane's voice echoed in his memory. Trust.
Cassian knew he could not tell them the whole truth. Reincarnation was a secret that would condemn them all to death. But Marcus was right. Lying about the danger itself was a betrayal of the squad.
Cassian took a slow breath and stepped further into the flickering light of the match.
"I am a fugitive," Cassian said, his voice quiet but brutally steady. "My name is on a royal warrant from the Kingdom of Dawnmere. Grand Inquisitor Matthias and the Priest Hunters are actively searching for my family. They have infiltrated Highmere, and they are looking for me."
Silence fell over Room 17 like an anvil.
Frank's eyes narrowed. Jack didn't move. Marcus stared at Cassian, processing the sheer weight of the confession. The Priest Hunters were the most feared organization in the world.
"If they find out who I am, they will kill me," Cassian continued, looking each of them in the eye. "And if they find out you helped me hide, they will interrogate you, and likely kill you too. My presence in this room puts all of you in severe danger."
Cassian rested his left hand on the brass handle of the door.
"If you want to report me to Instructor Seris, do it now. If you want me to request a room transfer, I will do it. I won't drag you into a war you didn't ask for. The choice is yours."
Cassian stood in the shadows, his right arm aching, waiting to see if he had just destroyed his squad, or if he had finally forged a brotherhood that could survive the dark.