He wrote the note at the Watch kiosk.training circuit; three bells; don't wait up — A.
He set it under Mara's cup so the rim hid half the word training. He stood for one breath to be sure he was calm and not just eager. He was Lv 10. The little group under him was not. They were good. They were learning. They were still under. He would go ahead, outside the walls, and come back stronger for them.
He crossed the plaza while the city counted coins of light into stalls. At South Gate he gave the clerk a look that said errands, not drama. The clerk waved him through because some faces read as work.
Wind met him beyond the stones and made the grass lie down, then stand up again like it was practicing. The land spread flat. Far lines shimmered. Dust lifted and forgot to fall.
South Gate became a small shape behind him. Ahead, the ground scuffed into long arcs. Herd-marks at the dust edge: Glassback Striders. To the left, a low choir tested vowels in the wind: Whistle Wolves.
"One and a half," he said to no one, and to the air.
Switch.
Hunt: Glassback Bloom
He did not rush the herd. He walked until the wind sketched their paths for him. The Striders showed the same bad habit as carts with eager drivers: they chewed a corner when they should have given it a thumb.
The lead Strider cut across his lane to scare his step.
Wisp Step. Silent step. A thin after-image pulled the bite wide.
Line Sever. A pale line on the ground. Two Striders crossed it. Both staggered like they found out physics had a rule.
A glare flash came off a back-plate. He turned his head a thumb and kept his eyes. Faces lie. Hinges tell the truth.
Ghost Pin. A nail of cold light pinned the front knee.Hinge Cut I. Short. Clean. It fell with a sound like a sack deciding to be honest.
Second Strider snapped side-on. He didn't fight the whole animal. He stole the next step.
Angle Step I. Ghost step to the future foot.Cascade Parry I. Catch the leg; roll it off line.Hinge Cut I. Clip the ankle hinge. Done. The animal sold forward and then found the ground because there was nothing else to buy.
The herd bunched, then spread. A younger Strider bolted past with more nerve than plan. It almost gave him its tail out of pride. He let it keep what it thought was a gift. He wasn't here to count trophies. He was here to count beats, steps, and how much less the world lied when set right.
Wind gusted across him and changed direction mid-sentence. Three Striders took that as permission. They came like thrown bowls.
Line Sever. He dragged a second faint line at a shallow angle. Two crossed and lost a foot. The third learned the idea from its friends and made the same mistake because new ideas have gravity.
Grave Grip. Cold numbed a foreleg just enough to steal insistence.
Hinge Cut I. One neat bite at the joint. The Strider took the ground as a suggestion it could finally agree with.
Silence came back one arm-length at a time. He stood with the wind on his teeth and counted himself steady.
[Hunt Complete: Glassback Bloom] +260 XP • Prism Chitin x4 • Strider Tendon x2
There was a windbreak stake with a rag on it and an old knot. He made a field bench there, the good kind, with weight down and tools up. He took the bottle with the tight cork out of his pack.
Craft: Prism Chitin + Bearing Oil (Fine) → Prism Edge I (blade mod)
He oiled the spine, not the edge, so the edge would remember grace, not greed. The blade took a thin cold line of light and held it for a heartbeat, then forgot it. That was right. Pretty was a byproduct. Honesty was the job.
He drank, not much, and ate what folds easily. He rolled his ankles once each, slow. He liked his boots and told them so by not making them carry his mood.
[Level Up] Aiden — GreyStep → Lv 11 XP: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░ 74% → ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░░ 22% +5s • Stat: +1 Footwork
The choir on the left shifted keys. The Whistle Wolves had watched the herd scatter and decided it would be grand to learn bravery now that the lesson was cheap.
Hunt: Whistle Choir
He did not meet sound with sound. He read dust. He read where ankles put trust, where paws tried to make lies stick.
"One and a half."
Switch.
First wolf darted in, then out. It wanted the flinch. It wanted his shoulders to speak before his feet.
Feint Break I. Break feint. Tap the wrist seam—foreleg, inside. The body moved like it had skipped a word.Hinge Cut I. Clean cut across the joint. Done.
Second tried to circle with sound, not with legs. He refused to buy it.
Wisp Step.Line Sever. It crossed the line because the line wasn't there a breath ago. Stagger.He pressed. Hinge Cut I. He didn't punish. He corrected.
Third led with honest speed. He respected it by not insulting it with a trick.
Cascade Parry I. Catch jaw with the flat. Hand the force back with interest.Angle Step I. Inside step.Hinge Cut I. End.
The choir died to breath. The wind tasted of iron and wet and then decided to be only wind again.
He walked a little farther out and then cut back in a spiral so if someone ever had to find him by his footprints they would think he respected the ground.
[Hunt Complete: Whistle Choir] +240 XP • Whistle Bone x3 • Wind Sinew x3
Craft: Wind Sinew + Strider Tendon → Sinew Laces (boots; faster half-steps)
He changed the laces slow and neat, not because laces asked for ceremony, but because neat made the next hour easier and the hour after that possible. The new give in the boots made his steps remember to be shorter, smarter.
The Flats opened more. From a rise he could see a line of old stakes with hum-cups on them. Each cup sang when wind was about to turn rude. Two cups hummed now, different notes. He followed the lower note because lower usually means close.
A cluster of smaller Striders milled near a crack where salt had remembered it used to be a lake. He didn't need to take them. He took steps around them that taught his feet to stand in wind like on a moving bridge. He practiced half-beats until the air lost interest in making him wrong.
He came back past his bench and packed careful. He took what he had earned and left a mark in the dirt that told the next worker this was a good place to build a bench if the flag was still up. He tied the rag in a better knot and showed the stake how a note could be human.
[Practice Logged] Half-beat holds in gust corridor (10/10). +120 XP
He went north-west as light softened. The land grew teeth. Branches made low doors, and tracks doubled back and pretended to be other tracks.
Blackwood Verge (dusk)
The Verge smelled like wet rope and old bark. The path wasn't a path unless you insisted. Latch Ape calls clicked like bad locks that someone had oiled wrong.
"One and a half."
Switch.
Two Apes dropped together—one to latch, one to hit. They had the same old plan many hands have had and will have again: hold one thing and then congratulate yourself with another.
Latcher reached. He did not fight the grip. He cut the need to grip.
Ghost Pin. Pale nail at the elbow. The joint forgot its job.Hinge Cut I. Across the knee of the hitter. That plan sat down like it found out about gravity this morning.
A third swung from a low branch with powder ready. The powder would make air into a lie. He stepped where the wing would be, not where the wing was.
Wisp Step. Silent. After-image ate the throw.Angle Step I. Appear where the next hand would be.Hinge Cut I. Thumb web. Powder jar fell and lied to the ground alone, powder sighing like an old clerk.
A fourth skittered along the trunk and tried to hook his ankle with a line of bark like a strap. He did not reward creativity by fear.
Grave Grip. Cold numb into the strap hand. The hand told the strap to think about something else.Hinge Cut I. Short. Clean. Bark fell. The Ape withdrew the way a pride does when it learns a better shape.
He moved deeper by a thumb and then stopped because the Verge likes to repeat you. The air felt like it would say the same sentence twice if you let it. He cut three lash-lines that kept the nest tied to the low branch, not the bodies, because sometimes you can save time by telling the room it isn't anchored anymore. The nest shifted and chose a new home farther from the path.
[Hunt Complete: Night Snare] +320 XP • Latch Fiber x5 • Joint Oil x2 Reward: Latch Guard (wrap)
He tied the Latch Guard on. It sat where an elbow tries to lie. The wrap did not look like a miracle. It looked like somebody who had done this before wanted the next person to have an easier hour.
He drank water that tasted of bottle, not of river. He kicked a clump of dirt off his boot with the other boot and was gentle about it.
[Level Up] Aiden — GreyStep → Lv 13 XP: ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓░ 56% → ▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓▓ 03% +7s • Stat: +1 Brace
Ink Moths lifted in a thin cloud above a sunken stump. He stepped into the wing's future and cut only when the moths told him where they planned to be. Dust fell like old paper. The air learned to be clear again.
[Task Complete] Ink Dust x3 • Moth Silk x2 (+180 XP)
A low owl passed. It did not care about him. The Verge decided to be dark in a way that did not ask for violence, only for respect. He gave it that and turned back toward the stake line where the Flats could be felt even before they were seen.
He walked in the kind of silence that doesn't think it is special. The kind that seats the mind.
Three Bells — Return
Eboncrest's lamps minted coins of light again. The gate guards had changed but the shape of their boredom had not. He came through with dust on his boots from the Flats and leaf smell on his sleeves from the Verge. The note under Mara's cup was gone. The cup had moved half a thumb.
She stood by the pump with a look that had time in it. "You look like outside," she said.
"Outside was honest," he said.
"How many?"
"Enough," he said, and the number didn't need telling because the city counted it in how he stood.
Sora, Kael, Lynet, Faron gathered because that is what bodies do when it is almost drill time. They set for cross-steps. The pump square gives a good lane. The third plank wobbles if you don't warn it, and that is on purpose because the world does that too.
They were still under his level. That was fine. He had gone ahead for them.
They moved. Sora's line ran clean, then caught a wobble near the third plank where the wood told a different story.
He did not speak. He set his foot a thumb to the right and held the half-beat. His lane steadied. Her next step landed true like it had been told quietly where to go.
"Thanks," she said without turning. Words need less help when feet are doing the job.
"Half-beat," he said. Names help the next hour.
Kael didn't rush the second foot this time. He surprised himself and then tried not to show that he had. Lynet's coil settled without bite and made a line instead of a knot. Faron braced once, exactly once, and exactly enough, and that is a kind of art that gets fewer statues than it should.
They finished the set with no one trying to be impressive and so they were. Water tasted like it always does when lungs remember they are lungs and not drums.
Mara tapped the empty cup against his arm. "Next time, write the same note," she said. "Then go further."
He nodded because nodding is a way to tell someone you already knew and also that you needed them to say it out loud.
The Arc spoke like a clerk who enjoys tidy ledgers.
[Field Circuit Logged] Hunts: Glassback Bloom • Whistle Choir • Night Snare Loot: Prism Chitin x4 • Strider Tendon x2 • Whistle Bone x3 • Wind Sinew x3 • Latch Fiber x5 • Joint Oil x2 Crafted: Prism Edge I • Sinew Laces • Latch Guard Reputation: +2 (Eboncrest)
[Level Up] Aiden — GreyStep → Lv 14 XP: ▓░ 03% → ▓▓▓▓ 41% +8s • Stat: +1 Edge
He closed the window. He put a mint leaf between his teeth and let the clean push the dust back down the throat where it belonged.
He looked at the group and felt the small shift that happens when you bring back a steadier beat and other people catch it without needing to be told. It is a kind of gift that doesn't look like a package. It looks like a lane that holds.
Tomorrow, Ironspine Ridge. Harrier talons. Wight cord. More steps outside. He would bring those back too.
For now, the road inside the walls stayed honest. He had asked, and it had agreed.