The day of the first mandatory sparring arrived like a sentence. The air in the *Central Cavern* was thick with a new kind of tension—a raw, metallic scent of fear and anticipation that overlaid the usual damp stone and unwashed bodies. The cavern itself was a vast, natural amphitheater. Stalactites hung from the shadowed ceiling like petrified fangs, dripping their eternal, melancholic rhythm onto the uneven stone floor. Torches crackled in iron sconces hammered into the rock walls, their flickering light casting long, dancing shadows that made the gathered trainees look like a congregation of restless ghosts.
Instructor Jiang and Overseer Kragg stood at the edge of the largest marked circle—a ring of worn, smooth stone stained with dark, unidentifiable patches. The trainees, about eighteenr now, in this cohort, formed a loose, silent ring around it.
"The purpose is to cull the weak," Kragg announced, his gravelly voice cutting through the murmur of nervous breaths. "To separate the weapons from the whetstones. You will use the training swords. No killing blows are *taught* today." He paused, his single milky eye scanning them. "But accidents… happen. They are part of the lesson. Begin."
The pairings were called out by a junior instructor with a scroll. A low current of anxiety buzzed through the crowd with each name. When "Lin Xiao" was matched with "Gao," the buzz died into a profound, watchful silence. Nie Luo, paired with a wiry boy named Fen, shot her a glance. His grey-green eyes held no fear, only a sharp, analytical focus. *Watch his right side,* he mouthed silently before turning away.
Gao cracked his neck, the sound like snapping twigs. A vicious grin split his broad, brutish face. He was a mountain of a boy at fourteen, with a thick neck, shoulders that strained his rough tunic, and a permanent scowl etched between his small, dark eyes. His hair was shaved to dark stubble, revealing old scars on his scalp. He hefted the dull, iron-edged training sword as if it were a twig.
Lin Xiao's own sword felt alien and heavy in her small hand. It was a standard-issue *jian*, a straight, double-edged practice sword with a blunted tip, but for her ten-year-old frame, it was cumbersome. She adjusted her grip, the leather wrap rough against her palm. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a frantic bird in a cage. She settled into the basic guard stance her mother had taught her years ago, her single dark brown eye fixed on Gao's center of mass, trying to ignore the looming, predatory presence.
Across the circle, other pairs clashed. The cavern erupted into a cacophony of grunts, shouted curses, and the harsh *clang* of metal on metal. Fen, Nie Luo's opponent, was fast and nervous, lashing out with wild, sweeping cuts. Nie Luo didn't meet force with force. He deflected, his movements economical and precise, using Fen's momentum against him, guiding his opponent's blade harmlessly past with subtle parries. It was a lesson in control versus chaos.
Nearby, two larger boys were locked in a brutal, hacking duel, their swords meeting with sparks, each impact jarring their arms. Another pair grappled on the ground, having discarded their swords entirely, rolling in the grit.
But Lin Xiao's world had narrowed to the circle and the boy within it.
Instructor Jiang gave a sharp nod to them. "Begin."
Gao didn't bother with a stance or any pretense of technique. He came in like a rockslide—a wordless roar tearing from his throat as he lunged, leading with a devastating overhead chop aimed to split her skull. The air whistled around the crude blade.
Lin Xiao reacted on instinct. She didn't try to block. She sidestepped, the wind of his passing sword ruffling her short, uneven black hair. As his blade bit into the stone floor with a spray of sparks, she lunged, thrusting her own jian toward his exposed side.
He was faster than his size suggested. He wrenched his sword free and swept it sideways in a brutal parry. The impact traveled up Lin Xiao's arm like a lightning bolt of pain, numbing her fingers. Her blade was knocked wildly aside, leaving her open.
He backhanded her across the shoulder with his free hand. The force wasn't a punch; it was a shove from a bear. It sent her stumbling backward, her boots skidding on the gritty stone. Pain flared in her left side, and her vision swam for a second.
"Is that all?" Gao sneered, his voice a low rumble. "The little prodigy? You spark like a firefly, but you hit like a kitten."
He advanced, not with speed, but with implacable, crushing pressure. He swung again—a horizontal cut aimed at her waist. Lin Xiao brought her sword up in a desperate block.
*CLANG!*
The shock rattled her teeth. She held, muscles screaming, but his sheer strength forced her blade down. He leaned in, his face inches from hers, his breath hot and sour. "I'm gonna break you, girl. Piece by piece."
With a roar, he disengaged and unleashed a flurry of blows. Hack, slash, chop. Lin Xiao retreated, parrying, deflecting, her world reduced to the next incoming shadow of metal. Each block sent fresh waves of agony up her arms. She was faster, her footwork tighter, but his strength was overwhelming. He was a blacksmith at a forge, and she was the brittle metal being tested.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Nie Luo disarm Fen with a flick of his wrist, sending the boy's sword clattering across the floor. He placed the tip of his own blade at Fen's throat, holding it there until Instructor Jiang nodded. He'd won without drawing blood, his expression calm. His eyes immediately found her, tracking her desperate dance.
Gao saw her momentary distraction. With a feint high, he swept his foot low, hooking her ankle. Lin Xiao crashed to the hard stone, the breath knocked from her lungs. Her sword flew from her grasp, skittering out of reach.
A triumphant growl escaped Gao. He loomed over her, raising his training sword for a final, punishing strike to her ribs. This was it. To be culled. To be the broken whetstone.
But nine years of her mother's secret training, of humiliation, of a promise to survive, ignited something white-hot in her chest. As his sword descended, she didn't curl up. She rolled *toward* him, inside his swing. Coming up on her knees, she drove the heel of her palm upward in a fierce *Azure Spark Strike*, aiming for the soft point under his ribcage.
A burst of blue flame, hotter and brighter than any she'd produced in practice, erupted from her palm and seared into his tunic just below his sternum.
"ARRGH!" The roar was one of pure, incandescent rage, not pain. The spark had burned him, a blackened smudge now visible on the cloth, but it was a bee sting to a bull. It had only fueled his fury. It had humiliated him.
His eyes, blazing with hatred, fixed on her face. He dropped his sword. This was no longer about the spar. His meaty hand shot out and closed around her wrist like an iron manacle, crushing the bones.
She cried out, struggling, but he was immovable. His other hand came up, not in a fist, but clawed. His thumb, thick and grimy, hooked toward her face. He wasn't aiming to knock her out. He was aiming to mar, to punish, to claim a permanent trophy for the insult of her flame.
Time seemed to slow. She tried to twist her head away, but his grip was absolute. Agony, white-hot and unimaginable, exploded in the right side of her head as his thumb dug deep, past eyelid, past resistance, into soft, vulnerable tissue.
The world dissolved into a scream—her own, she realized distantly—and a universe of red, wet, roaring pain. Sight on that side vanished, replaced by a shocking, hot void. The pain was so vast it was silent, a tidal wave that drowned all thought, all fear, all sense of self.
Through the roaring in her remaining ear and the crimson haze in her one good eye, she saw Gao's triumphant, snarling face pulling back, his thumb glistening darkly. He raised his fist, now aimed at her temple, to finish it.
Something in Lin Xiao—the girl who had promised her mother she would survive, the child who had endured her father's disdain, the trainee who had learned to control the blue spark—shattered. What rose in its place was not a girl, but a raw, primordial survival instinct forged in hidden pain and public humiliation.
Her free hand, scrabbling blindly on the cavern floor amidst the grit and cold stone, closed around a jagged, heavy rock about the size of her fist. As Gao's fist descended toward her temple, she didn't try to block. She put all her weight, all her terror, all her screaming, silent rage into one upward, twisting lunge.
The rock met the side of Gao's head, just above his ear, with a wet, crunching **THUD** that seemed louder than any cannon, louder than all the other clashing swords in the cavern.
His triumph froze. His eyes, filled with fury, widened into circles of blank surprise. The force of her blow twisted his head violently. He swayed for a moment, a massive tree cut at the base. Then his grip on her wrist went slack, and he crumpled to the stone floor beside her like a sack of grain, his massive form suddenly, utterly limp. A dark, swift pool began to spread beneath his head on the grey stone.
*Silence.*
Absolute, ringing silence fell over their section of the cavern, broken only by the distant *drip-drip-drip* of water and Lin Xiao's ragged, sobbing breaths. The other fights nearby had stopped. Boys stood frozen, their training swords hanging limply, staring at the small, bloodied girl and the motionless giant.
Lin Xiao dropped the rock. It hit the floor with a dull *tock*. She clutched the right side of her face, feeling the warm, shocking flow of blood, the empty, agonizing socket where her eye had been. She staggered to her feet, swaying, her one wide eye fixed on Gao's body in dawning horror.
No one moved. The collective gaze of the trainees was a physical pressure.
Overseer Kragg stepped into the circle, his boots scraping on stone. He looked down at Gao's body, then at Lin Xiao, who stood trembling, blood streaming between her fingers and down her chin to drip onto her tunic. His scarred face showed no pity, no disgust. His single good eye held a cold, calculating appraisal, as if inspecting a newly forged blade for flaws.
He grunted, a sound of finality that echoed in the silence.
"The whetstone has broken," he announced, his voice flat and carrying to every corner. "The blade remains."
He gestured to two guards who stood at the periphery. "Take the body. Get the girl to the medic. The rest of you," his voice rose to a bark, "back to training! This is what happens here. Remember it."
As rough hands gripped her arms, guiding her away from the circle, Lin Xiao's last sight was a mosaic of frozen faces: Nie Luo, his usual calm shattered into stark, pale shock; Instructor Jiang, observing with a frown that held more thought than emotion; and the dark, spreading stain on the grey stone floor, a stark Rorschach blot of her first lesson in the true cost of survival.
The pain in her face was a forge. The horror coiling in her gut was a hammer. The sticky warmth on her hand was the quench.
And in that moment, Lin Xiao, the discarded daughter, was gone. What stumbled away from the circle, supported by uncaring guards, was something new. Something harder. Something sharper.
Something that had learned the first and most vital lesson of the abyss: when the sword fails, you must be willing to turn anything—even a stone, even your own broken body—into a weapon.