Date: March 28, 541, from the Fall of Zanra the Dishonored
Ligra was left behind, hidden by a veil of morning fog and the jagged outlines of its walls. Dur and Maël had slipped through drainage tunnels—a path Maël knew like the back of his hand—and now found themselves in the "Gray Groves." This forest wasn't like Torm's dense thickets; it was sparser, lighter, and constantly bore the mark of human presence—an old cart track here, a cleanly cut stump there. But it had enough space to draw steel without attracting the attention of Collectors or guard patrols.
"Yesterday's fight showed two things," said Maël, loosening his wrists. He held a long, perfectly straight ash staff, serving as his sword. "First: you're damn strong and fast for someone without an active Spirit. Second: you fight like a wildcat. That's good in the forest, Dur, but in the city, against trained Agrim fighters, it'll get you killed."
Dur stood opposite, habitually gripping his bow. Torm's knife hung at his belt. He listened attentively. Ligra was teaching him: here, it wasn't enough to just survive; you had to know how to oppose the system.
"The Agrim sword isn't a tool for fancy duels," Maël assumed a stance. His feet were shoulder-width apart, his torso slightly turned, the staff held horizontally at chest level. "It's part of a formation. Our style is economical, harsh, and devoid of unnecessary movement. We don't strike the enemy. We occupy a position they can't bypass. We are a moving wall."
Maël lunged. It was like a spring snap—short, precise, without a wind-up. Dur barely managed to sway his torso, and Maël's staff only grazed his shoulder.
"See?" Maël returned to his starting position. "You spent energy on a jump. I only used a wrist movement and a push from my foot. In a real fight, against a dozen Collectors, your stamina would last five minutes. Mine would last an hour. Learn the 'Center of Gravity.' In the Agrim family, they say: 'Your support is the ground beneath the city, your will is its walls.'"
Dur took a second staff. His first attempts to copy the stance were clumsy. His muscles, accustomed to the wide swings of a lumberjack and hunter, protested against this constrained, almost mathematical precision.
"Shoulders lower," Maël corrected. "Breathe not with your chest, but with your belly. Your Spirit is still asleep, Dur, but your body must be ready to receive its power. Imagine you're not a man, but part of this cliff."
Three hours passed. Sweat stung Dur's eyes; his arms ached from the unfamiliar strain. But gradually, he began to feel it—that strange equilibrium. When he stopped fighting the staff and began to perceive it as an extension of his own skeleton, his movements became clearer.
"Not bad for a savage," Maël grinned, wiping his face with the edge of his caftan. "You grasp the essence faster than many recruits in… in those barracks I've seen. You have a natural sense of balance."
"Now my turn," said Dur, setting aside the staff and taking up his bow. "Your style is good when the enemy is close. But in the forest, the enemy is the one you don't see."
He gestured for Maël to come to a dense thicket of hazel. "Archery isn't just drawing a string," Dur began. "It's a dialogue. Torm taught me: 'The bow is your lungs, the arrow is your thought.' Maël, you try to subdue the bow with force. You pull it like a well-windlass."
Dur nocked an arrow and, seemingly without aiming, released it. A sharp whistle sounded, and a thin branch thirty paces away, barely swaying in the wind, snapped in two.
"You have to feel the wind with your skin," Dur came up behind Maël and adjusted his grip. "Relax your fingers. Feel how the wood resists you. Don't fight it. Let it return the energy to the arrow. Inhale—you fill yourself with the forest. Exhale—you release a part of yourself into the target."
Maël tried to shoot. The arrow flew wide, thudding dully into an oak trunk. "Damn," he muttered. "It's harder than it looks. My mind is used to counting steps and angles, but here you need to… feel the void?"
"Exactly," Dur nodded. "In the city, you see stones and laws. Here, you must see shadows and the whisper of leaves. Let's try camouflage."
Dur made Maël lie down in last year's leaves under a rosehip bush. "Become part of the landscape. Don't hold your breath—it'll become noisy. Breathe in rhythm with the forest. If a patrol passes, they should take you for a tussock or an old stump. Your clothes are too bright; use mud and moss to break up your silhouette."
Maël, grumbling about ruined silk, diligently rubbed dry earth into his sleeves. Dur watched him and suddenly froze. His forest senses, sharpened by the silence of the Gray Groves, detected something alien. It wasn't the sound of wind or a squirrel's leap.
A heavy, wet crunch. And a smell… the smell of rot and old wool.
"Quiet," Dur whispered, pressing himself to the ground. "We have company."
From a dense raspberry thicket about fifty paces away, a shadow slowly emerged. It was a Stone Boar—a forest beast whose hide was covered in a layer of caked mud and small crystals, making it nearly impervious to simple arrows. Its small red eyes glowed with malice, and thick saliva dripped from its mouth.
But this wasn't just a boar. Above its withers trembled a gray haze—a sign that the beast was possessed by a low-level Spirit of Rot (Natura/Anima). Such creatures became insane and incredibly aggressive.
"This is my chance to test your lessons," Maël whispered. Dur noticed his fingers beginning to vibrate finely again.
Maël didn't wait. He burst from his hiding place, his movements unnaturally fast. His Spirit of Adaptability, fueled by the real threat, finally began to manifest. Maël's legs were springy; he seemed to anticipate the boar's trajectory.
The beast roared and charged. A ton of muscle and bony growth hurtled towards the boy like a flying log. Maël didn't jump aside. He used the Agrim "Wall Stance"—at the last moment, he slightly shifted his center of gravity, letting the boar rush past, and struck the beast's hock with his ash staff.
The staff shattered with a loud crack, but the strike, amplified by the boar's own inertia, made it stumble.
"Dur, now!" Maël shouted, rolling over his shoulder.
Dur was already on one knee. His bow was drawn to its limit. He didn't aim for the side—he knew the crystal hide would deflect the arrow. He waited for the moment. When the boar began to turn, exposing the soft flesh under its jaw, Dur exhaled.
"Inhale—the forest. Exhale—me."
The arrow, loosed with surgical precision, struck exactly under the jaw, piercing the soft tissue and reaching the brain. The boar took two more steps by inertia, wheezed, and collapsed, raising a cloud of dust and dry leaves. The gray haze above its back flared and vanished.
Silence returned to the Gray Groves. Maël sat on the ground, breathing heavily, looking at the splintered remains of his staff. "Your lessons…" he breathed. "If I'd just jumped, he'd have gotten me with his tusk. The camouflage gave me an extra second, and the precision… Dur, you hit the only vulnerable spot in its movement."
Dur walked over to the beast and pulled out the arrow. "Your lunge was good too," he replied seriously. "You weren't afraid of its mass. You used it against him. Is that the sword of Ligra?"
"That's its shadow," Maël got up, brushing off the dirt. "The real Agrim sword doesn't break. And behind it stands the will of the whole family."
They stood over the boar's carcass, two young fighters, each having just realized how valuable the other's experience was. Dur was beginning to understand that city steel and forest cunning weren't enemies, but two parts of one blade. And Maël… Maël looked at his hands, feeling something more than just the ability to adapt slowly awakening within him.
"Tomorrow we'll return to the Worn Cauldron," said Maël. "After a hunt like this, we need to listen to what people are saying. Order in Ligra is fine, but when creatures like this appear in the forest, it means the Agrim shield has cracked somewhere. And we need to know where."
Dur nodded. His path East was becoming increasingly tangled, but for the first time in a long while, he felt he wasn't walking alone. And this trust was stronger than any steel.