The next morning brought with it a pale, overcast sky. Mist clung to the ground like breath that refused to fade, and the clearing behind the house was damp with dew. The silence between Kael and Lira had grown heavier since yesterday's session, but neither spoke of it.
They didn't need to.
Kael's movements had shifted—more fluid, more precise. He no longer faltered on his footing, and the sword felt like an extension of thought rather than limb. His breathing remained steady even as the drills intensified.
Still, Lira pushed him.
"Again," she ordered, flipping both daggers as she circled him. "From the high guard. And don't hold back this time."
Kael nodded. His body obeyed before his mind could overthink it. He stepped forward, blade sweeping down, parried her right-hand strike, twisted, and brought the hilt toward her ribs. She dodged, spun low, and tried to sweep his legs.
He leapt over it.
And as he landed, something clicked.
Not in his muscles. Not in his bones.
Deeper.
A weight pulled inside his chest, sharp and sudden, like something ancient shifting beneath stone.
He froze.
Lira paused too, sensing it.
"…Kael?"
He dropped the sword.
His breath caught.
A cold pulse radiated from within him, slow and deliberate, like a second heartbeat. The air around him thickened. Shadows clung to his skin, subtle and smoky—dancing along his arms like strands of fog drawn to something buried within.
Then a whisper echoed through his mind.
"You are bound. Chosen. Remember."
His vision blurred. Not from exhaustion—but from memory.
Not his own.
A battlefield beneath a black sun. Screams. Iron. A silhouette, tall and shrouded in flowing shadow, holding a blade forged from the night itself.
Kael gasped and fell to one knee.
Lira rushed forward, blades vanishing into her belt as she caught his shoulders. "Kael! What's happening?"
He couldn't answer. He could barely breathe.
The pulse grew stronger, pushing through the walls of his mind. It wasn't pain. It was release.
Something sealed had just… opened.
The shadows around him deepened and then, for a moment, they shaped.
A figure stepped from his shadow. Humanoid. Armored in dusk-hardened plates, horned helm bowed. A warrior not born, but summoned.
The thing knelt beside him. Silent. Waiting.
Lira stared, stunned. Her hands went to her daggers, then stopped short.
"…Kael. What is that?"
He didn't know how to answer. The name came to him not in words, but in instinct.
Shadowbrand.
Pact.
Summon a Knight of the Echoed Veil.
His first Pact.
The figure rose and faded, dissolving into smoke and shadow that slipped back beneath Kael's feet like ink into parchment.
He collapsed to both hands, breathing hard, forehead damp with sweat.
Silence settled.
Then Lira spoke, her voice measured.
"That… wasn't aura."
Kael looked up, pale but steady.
"No," he whispered. "It was something else."
She nodded slowly.
"You've made a pact."
He swallowed hard. The pulse was still there inside him, faint now, like a door left ajar.
He didn't know what it meant. Not fully.
But he understood this much.
Something inside him was waking.
And the world would never see him as mort again.