Firas was a ranger whose marksmanship comfortably ranked in the top three of the Shadowwing Squad.
Rapid-fire shooting was his specialty—twelve arrows in twenty seconds, every shot dead-on against moving targets.
To outside observers, his bowstring sang unbroken, his releases were clean, and streaks of arcane light chased each other in seamless arcs through the air.
Yet under the most unforgiving scrutiny, there was a brief hesitation between his seventh and eighth shots.
That hitch was so fleeting it fooled almost every ear, but it was enough to degrade his accuracy after the eighth arrow.
Firas was well aware of it himself, and had been trying to force a fix by pouring in extra arcane energy—a self-deceiving patch on a deeper flaw.
Li Fan had seen through the trick on his sixth day.
That afternoon, the thrum of bowstrings echoed intermittently from the auxiliary shooting range for two hours straight.
A rapid cadence, a jarring pause, the cadence picking up again, followed by another pause.
The hitch was stubbornly locked at the exact same juncture.
With a final, dull misfire, the bowstring went completely silent.
Next came the heavy thud of an impact in the dirt as a quiver full of heavy arrows slammed into the ground, accompanied by an intensely stifled curse hanging in the air.
Holding a piece of spare armor leather, Li Fan walked straight into the auxiliary range and stopped three paces from Firas.
“Pumping more arcane energy into it won’t smooth out the gap between your seventh and eighth arrows,” Li Fan said evenly across the open range.
Firas snapped his head around, chest heaving.
He glared at Li Fan, startled fury burning in his eyes at having been seen through.
“You noticed?” “Noticed on my sixth day,” Li Fan replied, meeting his gaze.
“You’re taking the long way around.” Firas’s expression shifted several times, his knuckles whitening around his bow.
A high elf’s innate pride urged him to snap back, but the crushing frustration of the past two hours kept his temper in check.
His voice was dry and strained: “Why didn’t you say anything before?” “Because with that ridiculous pride of yours, you wouldn’t have listened to a word.” Li Fan walked up near the wooden target and held out a hand to Firas.
“Give me the bow.” Firas hesitated for a moment.
To a ranger, a longbow was a second self, never parted with lightly.
But looking into Li Fan’s calm, unblinking eyes, his fingers slowly unclenched, and he passed the weapon over.
Li Fan turned the bow over, rubbing the pads of his fingers along the nock grooves and comparing the wear on both sides of the wood.
Then he straightened up and tossed the bow back to Firas.
“Three things.” Firas caught the bow cleanly and waited in silence.
“First, the wear on the left side of the string groove is much deeper than the right.
When drawing rapidly, your middle finger habitually pulls off to the left.
That’s muscle memory from sloppy childhood habits—not a flaw in your combat technique, but a fundamental error in your physical draw path.” “Second, trying to brute-force through that pause with arcane energy is a fatal mistake.
If you run out of mana on the battlefield, that seven-percent deviation will get you killed at the worst possible moment.” “Third, the solution.
When drawing, consciously force yourself to exert pressure from the right joint of your middle finger.
Before every practice, wrap a thin strip of gauze around the tip of your right middle finger.
Use the tactile friction to forcibly rewire your muscle memory.” Li Fan paused, then gave a timeframe: “Three weeks, at most.” Firas stood frozen, listening to every word without offering a single objection.
A gust of forest wind blew through the range, clearing the heavy air between them.
Firas lowered his head, staring hard at his bare right middle finger.
It was not the awkwardness of wounded pride, but the internal recalibration of a warrior who had finally seen his fatal flaw clearly.
Li Fan brushed the dust off his leather and turned to leave.
“Thanks.” The low word of gratitude came from behind, gruff and wrested from the deepest core of a ranger’s pride.
Toward evening, Li Fan returned along the same path with the replaced leather.
Passing the auxiliary range, he saw Firas still practicing, his back soaked in sweat.
Through repeated bursts of high-intensity shooting, the rhythm of the string sounded noticeably more even than in the afternoon.
The minute hitch was still there, but it had softened—proof that his muscles were painfully remolding now that he had found the right path.
Li Fan did not stop, walking straight back to camp.
Sitting down by the old tree roots on the eastern side, he drew the soil-stained identification badge from his pocket and laid it flat on his palm.
Arcane runes flickered faintly in the twilight, while the metal along the edges had long since oxidized into a dull, lifeless hue.
A design from thirty years ago.
Who knew how many days and nights it had spent buried beneath cold, damp loam.
Li Fan’s calloused thumb lightly brushed over the blurred serial number on the back.
Was the owner of this number still alive?
Perhaps his throat had been slit in some skirmish long ago, his bones and badge left lying in a pool of blood, eventually overgrown with moss to rot into nutrients for the forest.
Li Fan’s fingers tightened abruptly.
The cold metal edges bit deep into his palm, bringing a sharp, real sting.
He had been here less than a month, yet he had already seen through the veneer of tranquility to the bloodshed beneath.
Under the golden canopies, bands of rangers walked the line between life and death every day, and blood was spilled along the border with every passing dawn.
The owner of this badge was merely a fleeting glimpse into this prolonged meat grinder.
Seven days from now, would he even still be standing here?
The Silvermoon Council wanted to force his expulsion.
Though General Aralil had deflected the first wave, if the council pushed the matter to the brink, the general would never overturn Quel’Thalas’s laws for the sake of a human.
Li Fan closed his eyes.
He knew what color the shadow of death would eventually paint across these lush golden canopies.
He knew the hellish purgatory the Scourge would trample this proud realm into.
The crushing weight of future history bore down on his chest like the cold metal in his hand, with no one to share it with.
He opened his eyes, slipped the badge back into his pocket, and pressed it tight against a half-bag of dry cured meat.
Both weighed almost nothing, yet they were his truest anchors to this land.
He stood up, vigorously dusting the remaining dirt from his knees.
Seven days.
He would do whatever could be done in those seven days first.
Night had fallen as he walked back to the camp.
Passing Hawksbill’s quarters, the heavy wooden door was slightly ajar.
A sliver of light leaked through.
Inside, the instructor sat at his desk with his back to the door.
A thick stack of parchment documents covered in dense writing lay on the surface.
Hawksbill’s large hand pressed heavily upon them, his head bowed, without turning a single page for a long time.
The dim yellow light stretched his massive silhouette, casting it slightly hunched.
Li Fan did not pause, continuing through the evening dew toward his quarters.