Oren was tying his bootlaces in the morning when his eyes fell on the necklace he’d taken off before sleeping, hanging on the edge of the wooden crate beside his bed.
He hadn’t looked at it closely in days, though he carried it with him everywhere, tucked beneath his shirt as always, ever since Maren had given it to him before he left.
He reached out and held it for a moment, feeling the rough fabric under his fingers.
She had sewn it herself from scraps of old cloth, and it wasn’t beautiful in any way that deserved praise, but it was hers, and that was enough.
He thought of her suddenly, not because of anything significant, but because a recruit passed by just then carrying a breakfast plate with a boiled egg on it, and he remembered how Maren always insisted on peeling his egg for him on cold mornings, on the pretext that he was too slow at it and would be late for his work at the archive.
It wasn’t an important memory in itself, but it was enough to make him feel the distance of the village from him not as a line on a map, but as something that now lived only in small details.
He decided, in that moment, to write to her.
He found the post office at the northern edge of the camp, a tent larger than usual with long wooden tables at its center, and behind them an elderly clerk wearing small spectacles, sorting stacks of paper with a mechanical motion he had grown used to long ago.
“I want to send a letter,” Oren said as he approached.
The clerk raised his eyes slowly.
“Your name and unit number?” Oren gave him the information, and the man recorded it in a ledger before him without showing any interest beyond routine.
“Have you sent a letter already this week?” “No, this is my first.” “Good.
One letter per week per recruit, no more.
If you send it today, you won’t be able to send another before next week, even if you pay more.” “And if I want to send a longer letter?” “There’s a length limit too, depending on how much you pay.
But whatever you pay, you can’t exceed one letter a week.
That’s imperial policy, not my decision.” He said it in the tone of a man accustomed to repeating the same sentence to dozens of recruits before him.
“And how long will it take to arrive?” “To where?” “A small village, northeast of the capital, near the river.” The man thought for a moment, then said, “Two days, perhaps less if it goes out on the first cart.
The imperial postal network passes through organized stations along the main roads.
Much faster than it was ten years ago.” Oren nodded, sat on one of the nearby wooden benches, and took a sheet of paper and a pen from the clerk.
He sat looking at the blank page longer than he’d expected.
He had never written a letter in his life except simple official ones during his work at the archive short, direct sentences that required no long thought.
But this was different.
He wrote first: “I arrived at the capital safely.
I’m now at a training camp.” He paused.
He looked at the two sentences, feeling they were drier than they should be, but he didn’t know how to add warmth to them without it seeming forced.
He thought of Maren reading only these two sentences, and decided to continue.
“I met Daren and Silen here you remember them from the village.
Daren is still the same, quiet, doesn’t talk about much besides smithing.
Silen hasn’t changed at all, talks to everyone he meets as if he’s known them for years.” He smiled a little as he wrote this part, then continued: “There’s something here I didn’t expect.
They’re teaching us to use magic.
I don’t know how to explain it to you properly, but it’s real, and we train in it every day.
I chose a Path called Theft, which lets me move small things from one place to another without touching them.
I’m still a total beginner, don’t imagine anything grand.” He paused again, reading what he’d written, wondering whether he should explain more or whether this was enough.
He decided to leave it as it was and move to something else.
“The food here is different from ours, but not as bad as I’d heard.
I saw a bit of the capital on the way here much bigger than I imagined, streets that never end and buildings taller than anything I’ve seen in my life.” He thought for a moment about how to end the letter.
He remembered his promise to write every day, and Maren’s quiet refusal to show it when she saw him off at the road, that expression on her face that tried to hide her worry.
He wrote: “I know I promised to write every day, but here you can’t send more than one letter a week.
I’ll write whenever I can.
Tell me about home, about the village, about your work.
And if you need anything, write to me about it directly.” He read the whole letter once more, feeling it was somehow incomplete, less than Maren deserved, but he found no additional words to add without them seeming forced.
He folded the paper, handed it to the clerk, and paid the required fee from the little money he had.
“It should reach her the day after tomorrow, most likely,” the man said as he sealed the envelope.
“Next.” Oren left the tent with a strange feeling, a mixture of relief and emptiness, as though a small part of him had stayed behind in that paper now traveling far from him, toward a place he no longer knew when he’d see again.
The following days passed in their usual rhythm: waking shortly before dawn, a quick breakfast, training, food, cleaning equipment, sleep.
Oren began to notice that his body had finally grown used to this schedule, after everything in it had felt so strange in the first days.
In training, he began to feel a clear difference from his early days.
The copper coin no longer demanded that exhausting effort he’d felt the first time; he could now move it a noticeably greater distance, and sometimes he could repeat the attempt several times in a row without feeling that deep fatigue that had worn him out at the start.
“Good,” Mark said one day, watching Oren move a metal piece from one table to another set slightly farther than the last.
“You’ve gotten faster.
But watch out you still fail whenever something distracts you.” This was true.
The day before, when Oren had tried the same exercise while two recruits argued loudly behind him, he’d failed to move the coin more than once, and felt a frustration he wasn’t used to.
“How do I ignore what’s around me?” he asked.
“You won’t ignore it completely at first.
You’ll learn to make it matter less, little by little.” Mark answered without elaborating further, then added, “Try this.” He set before him a small stone, different from the usual copper pieces.
Oren tried with the stone, and found it a bit harder at first, as though everything new required him to relearn the relationship between himself and the object he was trying to move, from scratch.
He didn’t dwell long on the reason, just kept trying until he finally succeeded.
He knew that what he was doing was very limited, just moving small things short distances, nothing like the tales he’d heard as a child about sorcerers capable of moving mountains or making cities vanish.
But he didn’t think about it with much worry or wonder; he was a beginner, and that was all he expected of himself at this stage.
In the Transformation group, Daren continued his training in the same way he had begun: quiet patience, repetition, and careful attention to every detail.
He could now change the color of the wooden piece more clearly than in his first attempt, and had begun experimenting with other materials with his instructor’s permission a small piece of metal, a smooth stone.
“Why does metal seem harder than wood?” Daren asked one day.
“Because its nature is harder and less pliant.
Change in it requires greater effort.” The instructor answered without elaborating further.
“You’ll learn later how to deal with this difference.
For now, just keep going.” This was enough for Daren.
He didn’t need a long explanation; he preferred to discover the difference for himself through trial, exactly as he used to do in his father’s workshop when experimenting with different kinds of metal without asking about every detail beforehand.
As for Silen, he made striking progress in Binding training, though he remained the one who drew the most laughter among the three groups because of his endless questions.
He finally managed to bind two stones clearly, so that if he moved one a few finger-widths, the other moved by roughly the same amount, though it still cost him great effort and sometimes failed for no clear reason.
“Why does it work sometimes and fail other times, even though I’m doing the same thing?” he once asked his teacher.
“Because you’re not doing exactly the same thing, even if you think you are.
Your state changes from day to day, and that has an effect.” The old teacher answered in his usual calm way.
“You’ll learn to notice this difference yourself, with time.” In the evenings, when the three gathered, the conversation usually turned to training, not out of rivalry, but out of mutual curiosity.
Silen repeatedly asked Oren about the details of Theft, and asked Daren about Transformation, and each of them found in the others’ experience something that made him think about his own from a different angle.
On the second day after sending his letter, Oren came to the post office in the morning to find a letter waiting for him, in handwriting he knew well.
He didn’t open it at once, but carried it with him to a quiet spot behind one of the tents, sat on an empty crate, and opened the envelope carefully.
“Oren, Your letter finally arrived!
I didn’t know the post was this fast — I thought I’d wait weeks before hearing from you.
Everything here is much the same.
Life in the village goes on as usual, prices have gone up a little at the market, especially wheat, but nothing worth worrying about.
Daren’s mother has asked about him more than once his father told her he’s fine, from the last we heard, but she wants to hear it from him herself, so if you see him, tell him to write to his family too.
My work at the market continues, and I’ve finally started saving a little money.
I still dream of the capital, and maybe now I’ll feel like I know it better, after you’ve seen it!
Describe it to me in your next letter if you can.
Something funny happened last week: the neighbor’s cow broke down her barn door and ran off to the market, and half the men ran after her shouting, while the women stood laughing.
It ended with the blacksmith’s little daughter catching her all on her own, with a piece of bread held out to her.
I’m so glad you met Daren and Silen, at least you’re not completely alone there.
The magic you talk about sounds strange, but if it makes you stronger, that’s good.
Don’t worry too much about being skilled at it from the first try you’ve never had trouble with anything you’ve learned before, once you gave yourself enough time.
Write to me whenever you can.
I won’t forget that you promised me, even if it’s just one letter a week.
I’ll be waiting for it.
Maren” Oren read the letter twice, slowly the second time, like someone trying to listen for her voice between the lines.
It wasn’t a long letter, but it carried enough detail to make him feel, for a moment, that he was back in the village, sitting in the kitchen listening to her tell of her day with her usual enthusiasm.
He folded the letter carefully and placed it in an inner pocket close to where the necklace lay, then sat a while, looking at the camp around him, trying to grasp the distance between this place and the cow that had run loose from her barn in the village.
But by the end of the week, something in the camp began to change in a way that Oren was not the only one to notice.
One day, a convoy of military carts arrived, larger than usual, loaded with heavy metal crates, accompanied by a larger guard than any previous convoy.
Training paused for a few minutes as the carts passed through the main square, and the recruits watched them in an unaccustomed silence.
The next day, one of the Transformation group’s instructors was absent without clear explanation, replaced by another, less experienced instructor who seemed worn out by the sudden change.
Daren heard one of the officers mention that the previous instructor had been “urgently summoned to the northern front.” Talk among the recruits began to shift, gradually.
It was no longer limited to griping about training or comparing Paths, but began to be threaded through with more serious questions: how much longer until basic training ended?
Where were new units usually sent?
Was it true there had been heavy losses on the northern front this month?
One evening, the three sat by the usual fire, when an older recruit passed by them, looking deeply exhausted, with the mark of a fresh bandage on his arm.
“Where are you from?” Silen asked him, with his usual curiosity.
“Coming back from the front, minor wound, I’ll return within two weeks.” The man answered in a dry voice, without stopping his walk.
A brief silence settled among them after the man moved off.
“First time I’ve seen a real soldier who’s come back from there,” Silen said, in a quieter voice than usual.
Neither Oren nor Daren commented, but the silence that followed the sentence was enough to say what no one said aloud.
The next morning, all recruits were called to assemble in the main square, without warning, in a tone more serious than usual from the officer in charge.
The recruits stood in long rows while a higher-ranking officer came out carrying a large wooden board with paper fixed to it.
“Unit assignment lists will be posted on this board,” he announced loudly.
“Check your names this afternoon.
Whoever’s name appears has finished basic training, and will join his assigned unit within three days.” A quick murmur spread through the rows, silenced by a sharp look from the officer before he continued with his usual daily instructions as though nothing had just been said.
In the afternoon, Oren went with Daren and Silen to the board, where a large number of recruits had already gathered, pushing gently with tense quiet to read the names.
Oren searched for his name among the long lines, and finally found it: Oren, beside a unit number and a symbol whose meaning he didn’t yet understand.
He raised his eyes a little higher, and found Daren’s name on a different line, with another unit number, then Silen’s name on a third line, with a number entirely different from the other two.
Different units.
None of them said anything for a long while, reading the names and numbers as though trying to make sure they hadn’t misread.
“So this is it,” Silen said finally, in a quieter voice than Oren had ever heard from him.
Daren didn’t answer, just nodded slowly, his eyes still fixed on the board.
The three walked together toward the tent in an unaccustomed silence, the camp’s usual noise seeming farther away than it actually was.
Oren paused for a moment at the tent’s entrance, took Maren’s letter from his pocket, and looked at it a moment before returning it to its place beside the necklace.
From a distance, he heard the sound of new carts entering the camp, loaded with something he couldn’t make out from where he stood, moving slowly toward the eastern edge where the units preparing to move were gathering.
Oren stood still a moment, then returned the letter to his pocket, and heard from the far side of the square an officer’s voice calling out new unit names, while the carts continued their way over the gravel.
Your support means everything.”