Kael stood at the edge of the training hall, shadow-cooled stone beneath his bare feet, trying not to look like he was already failing.
Twelve others circled the sparring floor. None younger than him. None lower-ranked. They all wore the bone-gray tunics of Whisperer trainees, every collar stitched with personal sigils. Kael's had none.
No family. No faction. Just him and the shadow stitched to his spine.
"Conscript," barked a voice.
Kael looked up.
Instructor Vann paced the hall's edge like a wolf denied meat. His eyes were small, dark, and disappointingly human.
"Step forward."
Kael obeyed.
The centre of the floor was covered in arcane threads, woven in faded silver ink—a combat ward, meant to absorb magic flare and disallow fatal injuries. The Whisperers trained to cripple, not to kill. Unless commanded otherwise.
Vann turned to the circle. "Our new guest has survived the Quiet Room. Let's see what else he can do."
A few of the older recruits smirked. One—a broad-shouldered girl with twin daggers at her hip—muttered something to the lanky boy beside her.
Kael heard it anyway. "Let's see if the mongrel bleeds shadows."
Tenebris twitched inside him, like a lip curling.
Vann's eyes landed on a figure at the back of the circle.
"Whisper Eline. Test him."
The room shifted.
Kael turned.
She stepped into the ring like a blade unsheathed. Not hurried. Not dramatic. Just certain.
Eline Mora wore a tailored combat coat of ash-grey, its edges stitched in sigil-thread Kael didn't recognize. She was taller than he remembered from the terrace, with pale hair pulled tight into a braid and gloves the colour of dried blood.
Her eyes met his once—flat, unreadable.
Then she bowed. Short. Sharp. Formal.
Kael mirrored it, poorly.
Vann grunted. "Begin."
She moved first.
Kael barely dodged.
The floor surged up under her footfall like it wanted her to win. Each motion precise, measured, terrifying. She didn't use magic—not obviously—but her fingers flicked in patterns Kael couldn't track. Something in the air shifted every time.
She struck. He fell.
Twice.
No words. No smiles. Just the quiet rhythm of her boots and the gasps of the watching recruits.
Tenebris hissed inside him.
You bleed, not from wounds, but from shame.
Kael growled and rolled back. The third time, he ducked left instead of right, letting the shadows pool behind her. There.
He reached—not physically, but with the part of himself Tenebris touched—and yanked.
Her shadow shifted.
A flicker of resistance. Surprise.
Kael surged forward, aiming low.
She twisted—and caught his wrist mid-motion, eyes narrowing. Her gloved hand tightened, and something passed between them.
Not magic. A glimmer. Kael froze. Her emotions—cold, measured—but beneath that, an ache, sharp and buried deep. Just as fast, she pulled back.
The moment shattered. Vann barked, "Enough!" Kael stood, panting, wrist aching. Eline stepped back and nodded to the instructor. Not once did she look at Kael again.
Later, in the trainees' barracks, Kael sat at the edge of his cot, shirtless, wrapping his ribs. A few bruises bloomed violet already.
Bran dropped beside him with two chipped cups of herbal brew.
"Could've gone worse," he offered.
"I got flattened."
"You only touched her shadow because she let you," Bran said, blowing steam off his drink. "But the fact she let you? That's something."
Kael raised an eyebrow.
Bran leaned closer. "She's got a reputation. Eline Mora. Noble-born. Cold as frost. Rumours say she passed the memory-weaving trial at fifteen. Whispered into a baron's mind so clean he slit his own throat and thanked her for the clarity."
Kael took the cup. "Sounds like someone I'd want very far away."
Bran grinned. "Well, bad news."
"What?"
"She requested you."
Kael froze. "For what?"
Bran shrugged. "Didn't say. But knowing her? It's not for your charm."
That night, Kael wandered.
He followed the flickering sigil-lights to the abandoned archive—lower level, east wing. No guards. No whispers. Just dust and the press of memory.
The shelves here were older than the Crown's rule. He found books bound in faded black leather, their titles rubbed away. Scrolls with runes that bled ink if read too fast. One door had the Veilbound mark—half-sigil, half-wound—burned into the wood.
Tenebris grew restless. This place remembers me.
Kael reached for the door.
It opened at his touch.
Inside: an empty chamber. Stone-carved. No furniture. No books. Just a mosaic in the floor, half-shattered.
A man, cloaked in shadow, reaching toward a veil of silver mist.
Kael stepped closer.
From the cracked tile beneath him, a phrase rose in echo.
"What was split can be stitched."
He didn't know if it came from the mosaic, the stones—or Tenebris.
But it chilled him just the same.