The knight's words echoed in my skull long after he disappeared.
Fix your stance. Fix your weapon. Come back tomorrow.
He said it like it was nothing.
Like he wasn't reaching down into the quiet, predictable failure that had defined my life and tearing it open with a single sentence. Like he wasn't placing something dangerous into my hands—hope—without bothering to see if I knew how to carry it.
But hope alone doesn't change anything.
Chances mean nothing if you don't reach for them.
That day, back inside the orphanage, I sat on a splintered bench near the far wall and picked bits of wood from my palm with a rusted needle. My hand throbbed with each movement. Blood welled up in thin lines, staining the cloth wrapped around my fingers.
The other kids barely noticed.
They were busy fighting over stale bread. Shouting. Scrambling. The caretakers barked half-hearted orders for silence, exhausted by a battle they'd long since stopped believing they could win.
The orphanage smelled the same as it always had—boiled roots, damp wood, and something sour that never quite went away.
I stared at my injured hand and made a decision.
Not a dramatic one. Not one born of courage or destiny.
A simple decision. A dangerous one. A stupid—but necessary—one.
I decided I would become stronger.
Not strong to be admired.Not strong to be feared.
Strong to survive.
Not as a mage.
Not as a priest.
Not as an evoker whispering to spirits that might never answer.
As a knight.
A real knight.
Not the corrupt kind that extorted slums and called it order. Not the ones who wore armor for display and hid behind authority.
A knight.
The kind people looked for when things went wrong. The kind who stood between the powerless and the blade meant for them. The kind whose Aura shook the ground beneath their feet. The kind whose sword did not hesitate.
But wanting that didn't suddenly change anything.
My body was still weak. My core was still silent. My hands were empty.
No lineage. No teacher. No forged blade.
All I had was a broken wooden hilt and a flicker of something I didn't understand.
But that flicker mattered.
That night, while the others slept or argued or cried quietly into thin blankets, I sat on my narrow mattress and turned the broken hilt over in my hands. The wood was rough now, jagged where it had snapped. My thumb traced the splintered edge until pain flared sharp and immediate.
Good.
Pain reminded me I still existed—even if the world preferred I didn't.
The knight had not given me his name. He hadn't explained himself. He hadn't promised anything.
Just a challenge.
Come back tomorrow. If you're serious.
I stared at the hilt like it might answer me.
Then I started planning.
Step One: Get a Real Weapon.
Not a sword. Not yet.
No blacksmith in Ignis would hand a blade to a slum orphan with no coin and no name. But metal didn't care where it came from, only how it was earned.
I could work.
A tavern. A butcher's shop. Anywhere that needed hands willing to bleed a little.
Coins added up eventually. Bronze first. Maybe silver if I survived long enough. When I had enough, I would find the best blacksmith the slums had to offer—even if their forge was barely more than a pit and fire.
It didn't need to be pretty.
It just needed to be real.
Step Two: Fix my Stance.
I replayed the knight's gaze in my mind—sharp, critical, disappointed not because I was weak, but because I was careless. There was a difference. Weakness could be endured. Carelessness got you killed.
I didn't know knight forms. I didn't know official techniques.
But I had eyes.
I could watch mercenaries spar behind taverns. Street fighters settling disputes with steel and fists. Drunk duelists practicing forms they barely remembered.
I would study them all.
Copy what worked. Discard what didn't. Adjust until my movements no longer betrayed me.
Step Three: Train my Core.
Even if it was silent. Even if it felt like nothing at all.
I remembered the sensation—the twitch, the spark, the pulse that vanished almost as soon as it appeared. It was faint. Fragile. But it was real.
And if it existed once, then it could exist again.
I didn't know how to awaken it. I didn't know what it wanted.
But I would search.
I didn't care how long it took.
Days. Months. Years.
If swinging a blade a thousand times brought it closer, then I would swing ten thousand.
If pain was the price, I would pay it.
And..
Step Four—The Final Goal.
Become a Real Knight.
Not in name alone. Not in fantasy.
Stand before him again—not as a child with a broken stick, but as someone forged through effort and refusal to yield. Someone who earned the weight of his gaze.
If I ever met him again, I would make him look at me not with curiosity.
But with recognition.
I didn't want praise.I didn't want kindness.
I wanted acknowledgement.
Proof that I existed. Proof that I mattered.
Proof that I wasn't just Rain—the drizzle people walked through without noticing.
But something heavier.
Something feared.
Something that arrived whether the world was ready or not.
A storm.
And storms don't ask permission.
They roll in. They roar. They break what stands in their way.
So that night, in a filthy orphanage no one cared about, with nothing but splinters in my hands and resolve burning in my chest, I carved a single promise into my heart:
I will become a knight.
No matter how far I have to climb. No matter how many times I fall. No matter how many try to break me.
The world doesn't wait for the weak.
So I won't stay weak.
Not anymore.