Eight years had passed since the Ivory burned.
Time had moved forward in the way it always did—indifferent, unkind, dragging the living along whether they were ready or not. Alice Ivory was fifteen now, and in those eight years, she had learned one unshakable truth:
The world did not forgive weakness.
The training yard rang with the dull, repetitive sound of wood striking straw.
Again.
And again.
And again.
Alice's arms moved with mechanical precision, her grip tight around the wooden sword as she swung it down into the practice dummy before her. The impact made the straw body sway, fibers loosening where she had struck it dozens of times already. Sweat rolled down her temple, dampening the collar of her training clothes, but she did not slow.
She did not stop.
