CHAPTER 51: PETALS IN BLOOD

Midnight dragged its fingers across the stones of House Velrane, but Soren’s eagerness wouldn’t let him sleep.

He slipped from his cot, careful to avoid the creaking floorboard by Dane’s bunk. The other recruits were lost to dreams or nightmares, their breathing creating a symphony of snores and sighs in the darkened barracks.

None stirred as he retrieved his practice sword from beneath his bed, the wooden blade a poor substitute for steel but all he was permitted to carry.

His body protested each movement. Kaelor’s "special training" had left his muscles screaming, his joints stiff, his skin a canvas of purple-black bruises layered atop fading yellow ones. Days of punishment remained, each promising fresh torment. Yet here he was, seeking more pain in the dead of night.

’Stupid,’ he thought, easing the door open just enough to slip through. ’Kaelor will kill you tomorrow if you’re too exhausted to stand.’

The shard warmed against his chest as he crept through the silent corridors, navigating by memory and the occasional guttering torch. Valenna’s presence stirred, a whisper of awareness in the back of his mind.

"You’ll break yourself if you chase shadows," she murmured, her voice like cool water over stones. "Your body needs rest, not more punishment."

Soren ignored her, his mind fixed on the dusty book he’d discovered in the forgotten library. The Nine Petals of the Blade.

The incomplete diagrams that had tantalized him with glimpses of power beyond anything Kaelor taught in the yard. The knowledge Valenna had poured into him, burning and transforming.

The training yard stood empty under starlight, the practice dummies ghostly silhouettes against the stone walls. Moonlight painted everything in shades of silver and ash, turning the dirt to pale dust beneath his feet.

The night air bit at his skin, cold enough to make his breath cloud before him.

Perfect. No eyes to judge. No mouths to mock. Just him and the blade and the night.

He moved to the center of the yard, each step deliberate despite the pain that accompanied it. His palms still wept clear fluid where the blisters had split and reformed, split and reformed, over days of gripping heated hilts and weighted swords.

He flexed his fingers, feeling the skin stretch and burn.

The memory of the book’s diagrams floated before his mind’s eye, overlaid with Valenna’s deeper knowledge.

The First Petal, the foundation, the beginning. Without mastering it, the other forms would remain forever beyond his reach.

He set his stance, adjusting his feet until they matched the precise positioning he’d memorized. Weight distributed perfectly between ball and heel, knees bent just so, spine aligned. The practice sword felt awkward in his hands, too light after days of Kaelor’s weighted training.

’The Seed Awakens,’ he thought, recalling the form’s proper name. He took a breath, held it, then began the sequence.

The blade wavered immediately, his exhausted muscles betraying him. Where the movement should have been fluid, it jerked. Where it should have flowed like water, it stuttered like a dying heartbeat. His timing faltered, the rhythm that had seemed so clear in his mind dissolving into chaotic impulses.

He reset, tried again. Worse this time, his strength overshot the motion, turning what should have been a precise cut into something crude and graceless. The practice sword felt like a club in his hands, all subtlety lost.

"Damn it," he hissed, the words misting in the cold air. He shook out his arms, ignoring the fresh spikes of pain the movement triggered. "Again."

Each attempt failed more spectacularly than the last. His shoulders spasmed as he tried to trace the elaborate pattern, muscles locking when they should have yielded. His legs trembled beneath him, threatening to give out entirely. The blisters on his palms split open again, blood slicking the wooden hilt, making his grip treacherous.

Still, he continued. Again and again and again, driving his broken body through motions it couldn’t possibly perform in its current state. Sweat beaded on his forehead despite the cold, trickling down his temples, stinging his eyes. His breath came in harsh gasps that tore at his raw throat.

The shard against his chest pulsed with increasing urgency, Valenna’s presence sharpening with what might have been concern.

"Technique is not mimicry, Soren,"

she said finally, her voice cutting through his frustrated haze. "You can’t force a flower to bloom with fists."

He snarled, the sound more animal than human. "Then I’ll tear it out of the earth."

He drove himself harder, pushing past the wall of pain, past the limitations of flesh and bone. His world narrowed to the next movement, the next breath, the next failure.

Blood dripped from his palms, spattering the dirt beneath him, marking each attempt like primitive tallies.

Midnight bled into the small hours, the moon tracking its inevitable path across the star-strewn sky. Soren lost count of his attempts somewhere after thirty, each one blurring into the next in an endless cycle of frustration and determination.

Then, on what might have been his fiftieth try, or perhaps his hundredth, something changed.

His body, pushed beyond conscious control, surrendered to something deeper. The movement flowed, not from thought but from some wellspring beneath thought. For a fraction of a second, the blade cut exactly as it should, tracing the perfect arc through the night air.

And there, just there, a faint ripple disturbed the space before him, like heat rising from summer stones. It vanished almost before he registered it, gone between one heartbeat and the next.

The shard pulsed once, hard, a flare of heat against his chest. Not quite approval, but acknowledgment. Valenna remained silent, but he felt her watching, assessing.

He tried to recapture that moment, that feeling of surrender. Fifty more attempts yielded nothing but increased pain and frustration.

His shoulders locked completely on the fifty-first try, muscles seizing in protest of the continued abuse. His legs finally gave out on the fifty-second, sending him crashing to his knees in the blood-speckled dirt.

Still, he tried. From his knees now, the forms distorted but the intent unchanged. His vision blurred, either from sweat or exhaustion or some combination of both. The practice sword felt impossibly heavy in his trembling hands.

By the time the eastern sky showed the first hints of dawn, a pale lightening at the edge of the world, Soren could no longer lift the blade. His arms hung useless at his sides, every muscle from fingertip to shoulder a mass of quivering agony. Blood and dirt caked his clothing, sweat plastering his hair to his forehead.

He lay back on the cold stones, staring up at the fading stars. His chest heaved with each labored breath, the shard pulsing in time with his thundering heart.

"First Petal," he whispered, the words a promise, a prayer, a curse. "First Petal..."

Dawn crept higher, painting the yard in shades of gold and rose that did nothing to warm his exhausted body.

Soon Kaelor would arrive for the day’s punishment. Soon the other recruits would fill the space with their shouts and clashing blades. Soon the world would intrude on this private battlefield.

But in this moment, lying broken in the dirt, Soren made a vow to the indifferent sky above. He would master this form, this First Petal. He would force it to bloom, to yield its secrets.

Even if it destroyed him first.