I didn't sleep that night.
Even as the others in the barracks groaned and snored, I lay on my thin straw mattress, staring at the cracked beams overhead, tracing the splintered wood with my eyes again and again.
Tomorrow. Sunrise. The northern cliffs.
The words burned in my mind like hot iron. They drowned out the ache in my shoulder, even louder than the emptiness in my stomach.
I kept replaying it all — the stranger's blade flashing out of nowhere, the way I'd moved without thinking, the smirk that twisted across his scarred face when I'd dodged his strike.
"You can count the rhythm. You can see the path. That's enough to start."
I didn't even know his name.
But deep down, I already knew this was my one chance to claw my way out of the mud.
When the first hints of dawn glimmered on the horizon, I was already up, rolling my blanket with stiff, deliberate hands. My shoulder still throbbed where Klaus's whip had bitten deep, but I ignored it. The blood had already dried, and if the wound reopened… well, that would be nothing new.
I wrapped the dead rat I'd caught last night in a dirty scrap of cloth and wedged it under a loose stone behind the barracks. Somehow it felt right — like burying the last little piece of who I'd been before.
The trail to the cliffs was nothing more than a faint animal path that twisted through jagged rock and scrubby pines. Cold wind swept down from the mountains, cutting through my shirt like shards of glass. But the farther I climbed, the clearer the air became, the sharp, metallic stink of the mines fading behind me, replaced by pine resin and grass.
For the first time in years, I felt like I could breathe.
By the time I reached the top, the sky had begun to bloom with streaks of gold and rose, the sun still tucked behind the eastern peaks.
And he was waiting.
The stranger stood near the edge of the cliffs, his ragged cloak whipping in the updraft, like some battered banner planted in defiance of the world.
I hesitated, feeling the weight of his presence even before he turned to look at me.
"You came," he said, his voice calm, almost amused.
"I came." My own voice sounded hoarse in the morning air.
"Why?"
The question hung there between us, carried away by the wind before I could answer.
But I did answer, after a long moment, my hands curling into fists at my sides.
"Because I'm tired of being a rat," I said quietly. "I don't want to crawl in the slag anymore."
A faint grin tugged at his scarred cheek. He nodded once, as though satisfied, and reached into his cloak to pull something out.
He tossed it at me.
I caught it clumsily — a length of coarse, fraying rope.
"Blindfold yourself," he ordered.
"What? Why?"
"If you can't feel the blade," he said, "you'll never wield it."
I hesitated, but his one good eye locked onto me, unrelenting. My fingers tightened on the rope. Slowly, I tied it over my eyes, shutting out the dawn.
Darkness swallowed the cliffs.
"Now," he murmured from somewhere nearby, "defend yourself."
The sharp hiss of steel leaving its sheath cut through the air.
I froze, listening to the faint scrape of his boots on stone. My breath came fast and shallow as I tried to track the sound, the rhythm, the pause before the strike.
When the attack came, I moved without thinking — ducking low as a blade whooshed just over my head, the wind of it ruffling my hair.
"Better," his voice came again, quiet and measured. "But you're thinking too much. Don't think. Feel."
The next strike came even faster.
This time, I didn't duck. My body reacted before my mind could catch up, pivoting aside just as the blade cut through the space I'd been standing in.
A long silence followed.
Then I heard the steel slide back into its scabbard.
"Good enough. For now."
I ripped the rope from my eyes, my chest heaving. The stranger regarded me coolly, his scarred face unreadable, though there was something almost approving in his gaze.
"Same time tomorrow," he said, turning away. "Unless you'd rather crawl back to the mud."
I stayed there long after he left, staring out over the mountains as the sun finally rose, flooding the cliffs with golden light.
For the first time, I felt something I hadn't felt in years.
Hope.
---
When I finally descended back to the camp, the miners were already awake, shuffling out of the barracks like a line of beaten dogs.
Klaus's whip cracked in the distance, corralling them toward the carts.
That's when I noticed him.
Or her.
A slender boy in a page's uniform was helping to load supplies near the gate, his cap pulled low over his eyes. Something about the way he moved caught my attention — quiet, deliberate, almost graceful.
For the briefest moment, his eyes met mine.
Sharp. Cold. Calculating.
And then he looked away, stacking crates as though nothing had happened.
But something about him lingered in my mind long after I'd walked past.
There was more to him than met the eye.
And I had the distinct, unshakable feeling that he was watching me just as closely as I'd been watching him.
---
That night, as I lay in my cot, the scent of pine still clinging faintly to my clothes, I thought of the cliffs, of the stranger's blade, and of the page boy's piercing gaze.
"Don't think," the swordsman's voice echoed in my head. "Feel."
For the first time, the darkness didn't frighten me.
And for the first time, I couldn't wait for dawn to come.