"Young Master, it’s time to get up."
The curtains were pulled open, and sunlight landed right across Owen’s face. He squeezed his eyes shut and turned toward the wall, but the maid had already moved on to the second window.
"The instructor Lord Edmund arranged will be expecting you later this morning," she said.
Owen tried to sit up and stopped halfway. His shoulders and back were stiff, and his sword arm ached from the wrist to the elbow. There was also a faint tenderness running through his hand and forearm, right where Gareth’s lightning had hit him again and again.
His mouth was dry as well. He hadn’t drunk enough at the celebration to feel sick, but he had definitely stayed up later than he should have.
He looked at his pillow and thought about lying back down for a few more minutes.
"It would be a poor way to begin if you kept the instructor waiting, Young Master," the maid said.
"How long do I have?"
"Enough time to wash and eat, if you get up now."
That got him moving. Every stretch on the way out of bed reminded him that fighting an Ascendant on the same day he awakened had not been his smartest decision, but there wasn’t much he could do about it now. He had lost, he was sore, and he would be sore for a while.
The household had already prepared a hot bath for him. Steam had fogged up the window of the bathing room, and when Owen lowered himself into the water, he let out a long breath as the heat started working into his shoulders.
He stayed in longer than he meant to. By the time he got out, the stiffness had eased a little, and the smell of smoke and sweat from yesterday was finally gone.
Two attendants were waiting in his room. Instead of ceremonial clothes, they had laid out a clean set of Ferrers training clothes on the bed. One of them helped him into the fitted coat and fastened the family crest at his chest, while the other gathered up the towels and yesterday’s clothes and carried them out.
On his way to breakfast, Owen cut along the edge of the courtyard where the celebration had been held. Servants were carrying away the last few benches and stacking empty cups into crates, and two workers were rolling an opened cask back toward the storerooms. The braziers had been put out hours ago, but the smell of smoke and stale wine still hung in the air.
Past the courtyard, the rest of the estate was already busy. Soldiers were drilling on the training grounds, the sound of steel carried over from the sparring lanes, and an instructor was shouting corrections at someone who apparently wasn’t listening. Near the stables, a group of men were loading equipment onto wagons.
Nobody paid Owen much attention as he passed. The household had its own work to do, and it didn’t stop just because he had awakened yesterday.
Eleanor was already at the table in the small dining room. She watched him lower himself carefully into his chair, and before he had even picked up his fork, she had added more to his plate.
"How’s your arm?" she asked.
"Sore. The bath helped."
"Did you sleep?"
"Eventually."
She slid a dish of eggs closer to him and went back to her tea. Owen ate for a while, and when he put his fork down and said he was full, she placed another slice of bread and ham on his plate without looking up.
"You can’t train on half a breakfast," she said.
Owen decided not to argue and picked his fork back up.
"Are you nervous?" Eleanor asked.
He thought about it for a moment. "Not really. More curious than nervous."
That earned him a small smile.
They were almost finished when a servant came to the door and bowed. "Young Master, General Edith Rooke has arrived. She is waiting for you in one of the instruction rooms beside the training complex."
Eleanor’s cup stopped halfway to her mouth. She looked at the servant for a second, then set the cup down and turned to Owen.
"Well, don’t keep the General waiting."
Owen didn’t need anyone to tell him who that was. Everyone in the Ferrers household knew the name Edith Rooke.
She was one of the highest-ranking field commanders in the Ferrers military, and she didn’t have a drop of Ferrers blood. Owen had heard her story in pieces for most of his life. She had grown up in an orphanage, gone to her Awakening at eighteen like everyone else, and awakened a sword.
House Ferrers recruited her after that, and she climbed through the military on ability and service alone. She had fought in major monster operations and Breach defenses, earned the rank of General, and was considered one of the strongest swordsmen serving the house.
Owen left the dining room a lot more awake than when he had come in. His father could have asked any competent cultivator in the household to teach him the basics. Instead, he had called in one of his most senior officers, and Owen wanted to know why.
The instruction room was at the quieter end of the training complex. Broad windows let in plenty of natural light, and most of the polished wooden floor had been left open, with enough room to move around or sit and meditate.
A few plain chairs and a row of low training cushions lined one wall, and two weapon stands near the door held ordinary practice swords. The walls were thick enough that the noise from the training grounds only reached the room faintly.
Edith Rooke was standing by one of the windows.
She was tall, with the athletic build of someone who had spent years in the military, and Owen guessed she was somewhere around forty. Her dark hair was pulled back for training. The fitted Ferrers officer’s uniform made her full chest hard to miss, but it was the way she carried herself that held Owen’s attention.
She wore nothing on the uniform except her rank markings, and she looked completely at ease in the room, like someone who was used to giving orders and having them followed.
"Owen Ferrers," she said.
"General."
"Edith Rooke." She introduced herself anyway, even though she clearly knew he recognized her. "Your father has asked me to handle your cultivation foundations personally."
Owen waited for the usual congratulations on his awakening, or at least some comment about being Edmund’s son. Neither came. Edith looked him over once, taking in his posture and the way he was favoring his sword arm, then met his eyes.
"Before I teach you how to cultivate, I need to know what foundation I’m working with."
That seemed fair. Owen assumed she would ask about his Armament Core next, or what it had felt like when it awakened.
"Why does Awakening exist?" she asked.
Owen blinked. That was a question for a ten-year-old.
"Because of the Breaches," he said. "Monsters started coming into Asteria through them, and people needed a reliable way to fight creatures that ordinary humans couldn’t handle."
"What makes an awakened person different from an ordinary one?"
"An active Armament Core and a bonded weapon. Awakened people can cultivate. Ordinary people can’t."
"Why is the ceremony compulsory at eighteen?"
"Because nobody can tell who will awaken beforehand. Birth doesn’t decide it, so nobles, commoners and orphans all get the same chance to be chosen by an armament." He paused, then added, "And it doesn’t always work. The people who don’t awaken stay ordinary."
Edith nodded and kept going. "Why did living armaments become the center of human warfare?"
"Because an ordinary weapon is only ever a weapon," Owen said. "A living armament is bonded to its wielder’s core, and it can be developed further with monster cores."
The questions weren’t hard, and that was exactly what bothered him. Every child in Asteria learned this long before their own ceremony. One of the strongest officers in the Ferrers military had come here personally, and she was spending his first lesson on things he had known for years.