Twenty days had a way of melting into nothing when the world refused to let you keep time. Lucas woke to a pale room and the smell of herbs — sharp and clean, like someone had scrubbed the world of smoke and left only a promise behind. His body felt heavy and foreign beneath the bandages; when he tried to move the ache answered like a warning.
Four children turned as one at the sound. They jabbered in a language Lucas didn't know, quick syllables that clipped together like stones. One of them pointed at him with a grin; the others laughed and edged closer, curiosity louder than caution.
A voice cut the noise — small, fierce and unmistakably human. An old woman stepped into the doorway, hands on her hips. The children broke apart at her look. She scolded them in that same strange tongue, her words sharp as pine needles. Her reprimand sent them scuttling away like mice. When she turned back, she was suddenly careful and soft, bending to Lucas with smooth, practiced gestures as if she dealt in fragile things.
She tried to speak to him, tilting her head like a question mark. Her brow furrowed when he only stared, bewildered. Her hands smoothed the blanket over him, then she called out again — this time with a more urgent cadence — and the door swung open.
He saw the man before he heard him. Tall, broad, the kind of shape that looked like it had been carved to split wood. His clothes were odd and simple: green trousers tied at the waist, a patchwork leather vest that left his chest bare in places. Dark hair was cropped short; his forearms were mapped with thin, white lines of old scars. He did not carry an axe now, but Lucas knew from the way the man moved that he could. He had an ease like someone who lived where the land and its work left marks.
"You… can you walk?" the man asked, his voice low and unadorned. The words came slow, like a man choosing which stones to cross.
Lucas pushed himself up on an elbow. The bandages tugged. Dull pain threaded through his side and ribs, but his legs answered when he swung them over the edge of the bed. "Where's my sword?" he asked before he could nurse himself into cowardice.
The man's face softened into something like an unreadable smile. "Ah. That's the right worry." He stepped forward, moving like he owned the room though he had only just come in. "Come on, stand."
He helped Lucas to his feet with a hand that was rough but careful. Lucas felt steadier with the man's weight holding him. They walked down a narrow corridor where the walls were whitewashed and the light slanted in from a small window — not the tents, not the crowded camp, but a proper roof and walls that did not shake when the wind touched them.
At the end of the hall the man opened a small door and revealed a plain room: a bench, a rack of tools, and on a cloth lay a sword. It was not Lucas's old blade — that had been broken — but it had a familiar silhouette. The man tipped it so the light caught the fuller; the blade gleamed, clean and well-balanced.
"I fixed it," the man said. "Not the same as before, but it will do." He watched Lucas weigh the sword in his hands, felt the way the balance shifted when Lucas tested it across his palm. The new weight sat warmer than memory, but it hummed the way a good blade does.
"How…?" Lucas's voice was small with wonder. "How did you—who are you?"
The man's jaw twitched near a smile. He set the hilt in Lucas's fingers without asking. "Name's Saws," he said, as if naming a thing made it more solid. "You were found on the road. Knocked senseless. I brought you here 'cause I don't like the look of things I leave. You owe me nothing but your knees working."
Lucas let the name settle. It had the rough honesty of a tool. Saws looked older than his posture made him feel, and Lucas found that he trusted the sound of the name before he knew why.
"Where am I? I am from Oakridge, think you can get me back to my hometown?" Lucas asked, the question finally unclenching from his throat.
Saws's face shifted. He sat on a stool and steepled his fingers, watching Lucas like a hawk watching the sun move. "You're a long way from Oakridge, kid. You're not in the Kingdom of Dragons anymore."
The words fell like a cold stone. Lucas felt the room tilt — not physically, but the axis of where he stood had clearly changed. "What do you mean? I—" He searched the man's face for a joke, a smile, anything that would make the sentence make sense.
Saws rubbed a line across one of his scarred hands and leaned forward. "That blast hit the northern gate. You were swept up with the tide of people and flung over the border, right out past the outposts. You were lucky your head wasn't smashed in." He said 'lucky' like it was a thin thing you could hold in a fist and feel it cut.
Lucas swallowed. "So I'm… how far?"
"Far," Saws repeated. "Far enough that the banners here don't care what Oakridge looks like. Far enough you could die out here as a nobody, or you could walk back and be a wanted man—the sorts of messes that happen when gates fall."
The pulse at the hollow of Lucas's throat beat with sudden, sharp dread. He thought of the trials, of the examiners, of Shawn and Drew and Jennie. He thought of the way Leo's name had snapped the camp into a different shape the night before. He thought of being recorded as missing — or worse, as someone who ran.
"Should I go back?" The question was smaller than the fear that pushed it out. He had not expected his own voice to sound so uncertain.
Saws watched him like a man reading the grain of wood. "That's for you to answer," he said finally. "Listen — you're not a proper warrior yet. Not out here. You need time to mend; you need to learn how to make your strikes count for more than your heart. If you go back raw, you'll be a prize for any hungry hand. If you stay, you get stronger."
Lucas tightened his fingers around the sword hilt as if the metal might give him an answer. The new blade was heavier than memory and steadier. Outside, somewhere beyond the narrow window, he could hear the distant murmur of a place that was not his own — a market, maybe, or wind moving through unfamiliar streets.
He felt small, stretched between a past that still smelled of smoke and a future that had not yet given him direction. The choice pulsed inside him: return to the danger and the friends and the fights that defined him, or stay hidden and train until he could return without being devoured.
For the first time since he'd left Oakridge, the question looked like a hinge. Lucas looked at Saws, at the worn-knuckle hands, at the way the man's scars seemed to carry stories without telling them.
"Teach me then," he said at last, surprising himself with the flatness of his tone. It wasn't exactly courage as much as a practical decision — an agreement with a road not yet walked.
Saws' mouth quirked. "Fine." He tapped the sword's pommel with a scarred finger. "But you'll do it my way. No hero theatrics. We start with the pain you don't like. We start with basics." He stood, broad shoulders a dark cutout against the light.
Lucas steadied the blade in his hands, feeling its weight like new resolve. He let the panic that had tried to rise fold into something smaller: a plan.
Outside, the unknown town pulsed with life. Inside the little room, with bandages and children who didn't speak his name, Lucas sat up and listened as Saws began to speak — and for the first time in weeks, he felt the itch of something he could work into.
Saws pushed open the back door, and Lucas followed, blinking against the light that poured in.
The backyard wasn't really a yard—it was an open stretch of wild, breathing land. Beyond the fence line, rolling hills melted into tall mountains painted with mist. The grass shone a deep, rich green, and a thin river curved lazily through it, glinting like melted glass. There were no clustered houses, no city smoke, just space—endless and alive.
Lucas took it in with quiet awe. "It's… beautiful," he muttered, almost forgetting the ache in his ribs.
Saws walked ahead, rolling his shoulders. "Aye. It's clean land. Untamed. You'll either learn from it or die trying."
He reached for something leaning against a stump—and lifted it easily. A hammer the size of Lucas's torso. Its head was dark iron, scarred by use, the handle thick and wrapped in old leather.
Saws slammed the hammer's base against the ground once, and the sound echoed like thunder. "Show me what you've got, boy."
Lucas blinked, startled by the sudden demand. Then a slow grin spread across his face. His heart picked up a beat. "You sure about that?"
Saws didn't answer—only raised an eyebrow.
Lucas inhaled sharply and spread his hands. The air around him seemed to tense, heat pulsing faintly beneath his skin. He focused, imagined the fire like he'd done before—the warmth, the surge, the burst of light—then thrust his palm forward.
"HAH!"
A spark. A flicker. Then… nothing. Just the dry hiss of air.
Saws waited. For a long heartbeat, silence. Then his lips thinned. "That all?"
Before Lucas could form an excuse, Saws lifted his hammer high and slammed it down.
The ground split open. A crack shot toward Lucas, fast as a whip. He barely leapt aside before a wave of earth rolled up, jagged and violent. He landed hard, stumbling backward.
"EAT!" Saws bellowed.
The ground in front of Lucas rippled—then rose. Two massive slabs of soil burst upward like jaws, slamming shut around him with a deafening thud.
Dust and grass flew. When the ground settled, Lucas was half-buried, coughing but alive. The pressure had been real but not bone-breaking. Saws hadn't tried to kill him—only to wake him up.
The old man's silhouette loomed above the dust, hammer resting on his shoulder. His expression was unreadable, somewhere between disappointment and amusement.
He reached down, grabbed Lucas by the wrist, and yanked him to his feet with ease. "You've got guts," Saws said gruffly, brushing dirt off the boy's shoulder. "But guts won't save you. You've got a long way to go."
Lucas groaned, shaking dirt from his hair. "I noticed."
Saws smirked, stepping back. "Good. Then we start from zero."
Lucas clenched his fist, the sting of failure burning behind his ribs—but beneath it, something else flickered: the same hunger that had driven him since Oakridge.
He wasn't going to let that old man's smirk be the last word.
Forty days later, Lucas moved like a different person.
He was quicker—his feet found space before his mind did, his parries were tighter, and his breath no longer raced after every cut. He could take an old man's hammer strike and return with a clean counter. Dirt still clung to his sleeves; bandage marks ran faint beneath his forearms. Everything about him smelled of practice and small, steady improvements.
Saws watched him for a long beat, the hammer resting on one shoulder. The old man's face was as rough and unreadable as weathered wood, but Lucas could see the faint curl at the corner of his mouth.
"You sure you can form fire, boy?" Saws asked finally. His voice carried neither mockery nor hope—just a question like a stone dropped into still water.
Lucas planted his feet and squared his shoulders. "Yes," he said—simple, steady. He meant it.
Saws blinked, a slow, puzzled look crossing his features. He hadn't seen anything for months. He had seen Lucas miss and fall and rise; he had not seen flame answer the boy's will. He scratched at his beard and then, with that tiny, roguish smile that suited him, he shrugged.
"That'll do," Saws said. "Enough to send you home."
Lucas froze. "Huh? What about—what about my fire, old man? I'm—this is—" He tried to stammer the rest out, to tell Saws how much he wanted to stay, how the work felt right, how he could feel himself getting stronger every day.
Saws held up one hand, quieting him. "You belong somewhere else," he said without a trace of sermon. "Not here. You learn here so you can use it there. Go home, make it count."
The old woman who'd watched them—who had scolded the kids and patched boots and set hot broth on the table—came forward then. Her face was mapped with age and small kindnesses. She set a cloth bundle into Lucas's hands. He untied it: inside was a small, well-made bag with room enough for a few things and a strip of leather carved to fit a hilt.
Lucas's eyes widened—simple, bright like a lantern. He turned to her, words catching in his throat, and hugged her clumsily. Her arms were warm and smelled of herbs and smoke. Tears pricked at his eyes; gratitude and the ache of leaving tightened him.
"You'll come back," she said softly, as if she could bargain fate.
"I'll try," Lucas managed, voice rough.
Saws watched them, then set the hammer against his hip and nodded once. "Then go," he said. "Don't waste the strength you've been given."
Lucas slung the bag over his shoulder, fitted the hilt into place on his sword with a little reverence, and turned to walk. He looked back once—at the low house, the old woman smiling by the doorway, at Saws standing like a sentinel—and something small and bright settled in his chest.
They walked away together: a strange pair, the young boy with new steadiness and the old man with a hammer and a secret smile. The land spread out around them—river, hills, the wide, honest sky—and Lucas kept the bag tight against his ribs as if it held more than cloth and a hilt: a piece of the quiet he'd learned here, and a promise he meant to keep.