-- Calden's Journal – Entry 108 --
Location: East Wing Quarters, Night of the Duel
I almost killed a child today.
That's the part I can't scrub out of my skull.
The boy stood there in front of me, shaking and defiant and so damn small, and I swung like he was a threat. Like he wasn't five years old. Like he wasn't mine to protect.
And I didn't stop. Not until Nareva raised a wall between us—solid, earthen, unyielding. Like her spine.
Her eyes said everything. I hadn't seen judgment like that since the battlefield. Not from a maid. Not from an elf. From someone who had seen the abyss before and recognized the look in my eyes.
She was right.
I wasn't testing him anymore. I was punishing him. For what? His talent? His silence? The fact that his blade moved too well for a boy with no aura?
I don't know.
No—that's a lie. I do know.
It was the pressure again.
That flicker.
That static in the air when Kaelen moved.
It wasn't just form. It wasn't just Beast Style. I've trained prodigies before. I've seen raw instinct. But this wasn't that. This was pressure. Mana-born, soul-etched pressure. And it shouldn't be there.
Not in a Ghostborn.
Not in him.
But it was. And it terrified me.
Because it felt like the boy from twelve years ago.
He had that same glint. That same spark just beneath the skin, waiting to erupt. Everyone thought I was imagining it, until it was too late. Until the Hollowing stripped him down to a shell and left nothing but a memory of what he could've been.
Kaelen isn't hollow. Not yet.
But I see the same fracture lines.
The same exhaustion after each session. The same tremor in the hands after something instinctual overtakes form. The way he looks at me—not with fear, not anymore—but with that quiet pleading. Like he wants to ask me what's wrong with him and doesn't know how.
And gods help me, I don't know how to answer.
He's stronger than the last one.
More controlled. But also more afraid.
He hides it well—behind forced smiles, quick nods, feigned obedience. But I see it when the others aren't looking. The way he flinches when someone raises their voice. The way he stares at his own hands like they've betrayed him.
Like he's terrified of himself.
Today, I pushed too hard.
I thought I was helping. I thought that if I cracked his shell just a little, I could see what's really inside. But when he broke form—when he dropped Dragon and snapped into something primal, something closer to a hunted animal than a swordsman—I saw it.
The fear.
The fury.
The desperation.
It wasn't technique. It was memory. Muscle. Pain buried under too many layers.
Beast Style didn't come from curiosity. It came from trauma.
And I called it out.
I forced it into the light.
What kind of teacher does that?
What kind of man?
Nareva won't speak to me. Not directly. I saw the look in her eyes. The threat in her silence. She's not afraid of me—but she's furious with me. And not because I struck too hard.
Because I struck first.
She knew. I think she always knew.
About his mana.
About the book.
About the shadows he disappears into when the moon's too high and the halls are too quiet.
And now?
Now she's taken him under her wing.
Not publicly, not formally. But I can feel it. The way she watches him. The way she defends him. She's training him in secret—has to be. Magic, no doubt. Quiet lessons between the vines and broken glass of that damn greenhouse.
And I let it happen.
Because I don't trust myself not to swing again.
Maybe it's better this way.
Maybe she'll teach him how to use it without fear. Maybe she'll help him grow into what he's becoming, instead of what he's pretending to be.
I still don't know what Kaelen is.
But I know what he isn't.
He's not safe.
Not to himself. Not to the people around him. Not to anyone who thinks the world is neat and labeled and divided by bloodlines.
Because whatever he is, it didn't come from noble heritage or ancient creed.
It came from fire. From claw. From something wild and broken that refuses to die quietly.
And if I'm honest?
A part of me hopes he doesn't.
Because if Kaelen survives—if he learns to control that fracture, that power—he might become the swordsman the last boy never got to be.
Not a weapon.
Not a monster.
But something the world's never seen.
And gods help us all if he decides he doesn't want to be quiet anymore.
—Calden Thornec