Night pressed against the narrow window. The Crown complex had thinned to background noise: a cart rattling in the courtyard, a guard's laugh echoing up the stairwell.
Silas sat on the edge of the mattress, boots off. He reached to his sigil.
The [Dagger Mastery] card was waiting in Storage—thin and pale, edges sharp enough to nick skin.
[Skill Card Detected: Dagger Mastery (Common • White)]
[Type: Passive]
[Source: Void Citadel]
The overlay expanded, text stacking line by line in the air.
[Skill Trial – Dagger Mastery (Common • White)]
[Type: Passive]
[Attempts Available: 3]
[Time Dilation: 60 : 1]
[Entry Mana Cost: 10% of current reserve]
[Warning: Trial will immobilise your physical body.]
[Warning: Pain will be fully simulated.]
[On three failed attempts, this Skill Card will be destroyed.]
His mana bar slid into view.
[Mana Reserve: 60 / 60]
[Confirm activation?]
[Yes / No]
The mattress creaked under his weight when he shifted. From outside, a door shut somewhere down the hall. No bells. No blade. Just this little box and the thing squatting behind the menu, waiting to see if he was worth the investment.
Three chances, he thought. Burn all three and I walk into a city of blades with empty hands.
He pictured waking up with the card gone, the [Skills] menu blank, and walking through Stoneveil with soft hands and no edge. The thought turned his stomach. If something is going to break me, better it's this thing than Calder's stage. The mission timer he'd seen hours ago sat like a stone at the back of his mind. Five days.
I don't have time to stay soft.
He pushed his focus onto [Yes].
[Mana Consumed: 6]
[Mana Reserve: 54 / 60]
A cold tug went through his chest, like someone had hooked a nerve and pulled tight. His arms prickled, fingers briefly numb before tingling back to life, feeling lighter and thinner than before.
The room vanished like someone had yanked a sheet away.
He hit the new floor already standing.
Cool stone pressed against his bare feet; the air was still and faintly metallic. Torch brackets lined the walls at even intervals, their flames steady and smokeless, throwing clean rectangles of light across a wide, empty hall. No doors. No windows. Just high walls and a thin rectangle of colorless sky overhead.
An instructor waited at the far end.
The instructor wore a smooth helm where features should be. No eyes, no mouth, just a metal oval over a lean, broad-shouldered frame in plain, close-fitting gear. His spine was straight, shoulders loose, weight balanced evenly over both feet. A dagger hung point-down in his right hand, looking as casual as a finger.
Silas glanced down. A matching dagger sat already in his grip, sized to his palm, the edge catching the torchlight. His stance mirrored the man's without him remembering shifting.
[Skill Trial – Dagger Mastery (Common • White)]
[Attempt: 1 / 3]
[Time Dilation: 60 : 1]
[Instruction Notice: Movements demonstrated by this entity represent baseline Common technique. Master them to pass this Trial.]
The instructor moved.
"You going to say anything, or just stab me?" Silas muttered.
No answer came from the helm. No countdown. The instructor flowed through a slow pattern of cuts and steps: basic guards, deflections, a tight kill-chain that ended in a thrust under the ribs and an upward stab into where a jaw would be. Each motion was stripped of flourish, nothing wasted. Silas followed, his body dragged along like the pattern had already been written into his muscles.
When his footwork lagged, something in the Trial nudged his stance, turning his toes a fraction, twisting his grip. The corrections hurt—short, sharp jabs in tendons and joints—but each adjustment made the next repetition smoother. Form. Guard. Cut. Step. Thrust. Finish.
He ran the pattern again and again, sweat starting to bead at his temples. The hall stayed silent except for the scrape of bare feet on stone and the soft hiss of blades through air.
Script scrolled across his vision.
[Success Condition: Use the shown patterns to kill a live opponent.]
The instructor reset to the far end of the hall, dagger low. His weight slid forward by a finger's width.
Then he came for Silas.
One step, heel to toe, body turning. The dagger rose in a line his eyes almost missed. Every year of courier work screamed the same answer: move, make space, find a gap and go around.
"Move," he hissed, feet trying to give ground, pivoting away like narrow alley habits could save him here.
The instructor rode his line. His footwork was efficient and merciless, cutting off escape before it formed. The blade kissed Silas's forearm in passing. Fire tore up to his shoulder. "Shit—" He gasped, already stumbling when the second strike slid in under his ribs.
Stone slammed his back. Warm wet spread across his side. The instructor's dagger rested against his throat, not pressing, just there.
[Attempt Failed]
[Remaining Attempts: 2 / 3]
The pain stayed.
His lungs burned. His heart hammered against bone that wasn't broken, each breath a jagged rasp like he'd been half-drowned in his own blood. The instructor stepped back, movements calm, and returned to his spot as if resetting a piece on a board.
You ran like a courier and died like cargo.
His body wanted to curl around his side, to guard phantom ribs, but his frustration held him upright. You didn't even try to kill him. You tried to get away and hoped that counted. The word "failed" hung heavier than the ache pulsing through his chest. Two more of those, and the Citadel closes this door forever.
He dragged his focus away from the hurt and down to the instructor's feet. Watch. Learn. Stop thinking like someone whose job is to arrive alive.
The dojo floor wiped clean. His body snapped back to neutral stance.
Most of the pain drained to a deep, bruised throb under his skin, like old injuries pressed by cold fingers. The instructor returned to his starting mark, dagger hanging point-down, helm tilted a fraction as if asking whether he planned to waste the next attempt the same way.
[Skill Trial – Dagger Mastery (Common • White)]
[Attempt: 2 / 3]
Silas rolled the hilt in his hand, testing balance. He set his feet the way the pattern had shown him: one slightly ahead, heel planted, weight light enough to move but heavy enough to engage. His shoulders loosened. He let his breathing match the instructor's, slow and steady.
When the instructor advanced this time, Silas didn't immediately give ground.
He watched the line of the man's shoulders, the subtle shift before the dagger moved. The first exchange was ugly but not hopeless. His blade caught the instructor's off to the side, metal scraping, and he shoved it away from his ribs by a handspan. Instead of stepping back, he drove his shoulder into the man's chest.
Impact rattled up his spine. Not clean. Not pretty. But a hit he'd chosen, not one he'd taken.
The instructor answered by tightening the tempo. His next series of attacks flowed like water, each cut rolling into the next, testing every gap. Silas parried one, arm jarring. He ducked under the second, feeling the blade shear a line of heat over his hair.
On the third, he saw it—a thin opening under the instructor's arm where leather didn't quite meet metal.
Old instinct snarled at him to disengage, reset, buy time. The Trial's new logic whispered that this was the moment to go through, not around.
He hesitated half a heartbeat.
"Don't flinch," he rasped.
Too late.
The instructor rotated, slipping inside his guard like smoke. He stole Silas's chance and drove the dagger straight into his throat. Heat and crushing pressure exploded up his neck. The world narrowed to the taste of copper and the sound of his own strangled breath failing.
Everything went grey at the edges.
[Attempt Failed]
[Remaining Attempts: 1 / 3]
He snapped back into ready stance again, hand flying to his neck out of reflex. No blood. No wound. His fingers still trembled, muscles remembering the last second before death.
You saw it and still flinched.
Shame sat in his mouth, thicker than phantom blood. You were closer. You made him shift. And you still flinched. The counter ticking down to a single attempt flickered like a judgment at the edge of his vision.
One more failure and the Citadel throws this away and you with it.
He dragged his attention back to the instructor's shoulders, hips, dagger line. Next time, you drive the blade and let the consequences catch up later.
The hall felt narrower.
Torchlight hit the stone harder, cutting out more shadow. Sweat ticked down his spine even though his body had technically reset; his nervous system didn't care what the notifications claimed. The instructor took position again, exactly as before. It was the patience that unnerved him most—no gloating, no threats, just an expectation that he would either meet the standard or disappear.
[Skill Trial – Dagger Mastery (Common • White)]
[Attempt: 3 / 3]
[Warning: Final attempt]
He sank his weight over the balls of his feet and built the pattern in his head the way the Trial had been hammering it in: deflect, step in, break balance, stab under ribs, finish under jaw. Not deflect and flee. Not deflect and reset.
Focus!
The instructor moved. He moved with him.
He matched the angle of the man's shoulders, letting the attack line dictate where his dagger needed to be instead of where his fear wanted him. The first slash kissed his forearm instead of opening it to the bone. Pain flared; he rode it. He slapped the blade off-line, metal skidding, and stepped into the instructor's space, ramming his shoulder into the chest plate.
This time he kept the dagger moving.
The point drove toward the soft triangle under the ribs the pattern had marked out. The instructor tried to pivot away. Silas stayed glued, trading a cut across his thigh for a deeper stab between the ribs. He felt, fully and horribly, the sensation of metal grating past cartilage into something vital.
The instructor didn't scream. He folded around the blade.
Silas followed through with a hoarse, "Stay down," using his weight to drag the man to the stones. He yanked the dagger free and rammed it up under the helm, into where the jaw would be.
Pain roared in from every place he'd allowed himself to get hit. Cracked-rib agony when he took a blow to the chest to stay inside. White-hot lightning down his leg where the thigh cut had gone deep. His breath came in ragged pulls. His hands shook on the hilt.
The instructor lay still.
[Skill Trial Completed]
[Skill Learned: Dagger Mastery (Common • White)]
[Simulated Time Elapsed: 2 hours 37 minutes]
[Real Time Elapsed: 2 minutes 38 seconds]
[Basic dagger forms and reflex patterns learned.]
The torchlight guttered once, as if the hall let out a long breath. The instructor's body broke apart into fine grey fragments that lifted on a wind he couldn't feel and blew away.
So that's the price of a "common" skill.
His stomach flipped at how right the finishing thrust had felt. I traded a leg and a lung for the win and it felt clean. The elapsed time numbers hung there, obscene in their efficiency. Contractors probably treat this as bare minimum. He couldn't shake the certainty that higher skill tiers would demand worse.
If this is the bottom rung, I signed up for a ladder made of bones.
The dojo vanished.
Stone became mattress. Torchlight became the dim leak of corridor glow under his door.
Sound slammed back into his ears—the faint murmur of a guard laughing two floors down, the drip of something in a far-off drain, his own ragged breathing. His throat burned as if he'd been screaming into a pillow for hours. Sweat soaked his shirt, clinging it to his skin.
[Mission—Stoneveil Regicide]
[Time Remaining: 5 days 6 hours]
The numbers had barely moved.
His body felt like he'd gone ten rounds with a beast in the pits. Every inhale dragged phantom pain across his ribs. His thigh protested when he shifted his legs, even though his fingers found no cuts, no blood.
He reached to his sigil again and the menu answered, crisp as ever.
[Menu]
[Personal Information]
[Missions]
[Storage Space]
[Skills]
[Equipment]
He focused on [Skills]. A fresh entry flickered into being.
[Skills]
[Dagger Mastery (Common • White) – Learned]
He tapped it with his attention.
[Skill: Dagger Mastery]
[Rarity: Common • White]
[Type: Passive]
[Effect: Refines dagger grip, stance, timing, and kill-pattern execution. Greatly increases accuracy and efficiency when attacking with daggers. Does not create strength, but removes wasted motion.]
[Source: Void Citadel Skill Trial]
He lifted his hand in the narrow room and let it move.
No dagger. Just air. His wrist rotated anyway, imaginary edge angled to catch a strike. His weight shifted into a step-in, the ghost of a shoulder-check hitting an invisible sternum. The motion was smooth, efficient, stripped of the little flinches and hesitations he'd always used to stay alive without putting anyone in the ground.
The room hadn't changed. Same desk. Same chair. Same thin mattress and folded cloak. But his relationship to every dagger in Stoneveil had.
The memory of bones breaking and lungs filling with blood sat just under his skin, as vivid as any real wound. He eased himself back onto the mattress, staring at the ceiling, heartbeat slowly climbing down out of his throat. Phantom aches pulsed along his ribs and leg in time with his pulse—a private reminder of what a "common" skill meant to the Citadel.
That wasn't a lesson. That was an audition.
The Citadel's silence now felt more like approval than absence, and he hated that it comforted him. You passed because you were willing to hurt yourself to make the kill clean. He pictured Calder on the scaffold, or a hawk-crest knight on a plaza stage, and saw the pattern fitting over them like a template.
Stoneveil prides itself on chopping humans into compliance. It's an amateur. I've signed a contract with a true butcher.
On reflex, his attention slid back toward [Storage Space].
The dim seed-icon sat where he'd left it.
[Skill Seed Detected: Toxin Mastery (Uncommon • Green)]
[Status: Dormant]
[Catalyst: Unknown – conditions not yet met]
He saw the blurred description hover just out of reach; the lock icon was a quiet provocation.
If a common card can do this in one night, what will a higher-grade one do? He closed the panel before temptation could bite deeper, but the question stayed behind his eyes.
What is this catalyst I need? His mind echoed this thought.