The Second task

Morning arrived slowly, dragging its bulk through the cracks in the barracks' walls. The dim light streamed through thin ribbons over the wooden floors, flickering across dust motes that hung in the still air.

I woke long before the others did, and lay staring up at the ceiling, tracing the old creaks in the beams with my eyes.

Sleep had been scant, fitful, an itch I could not scratch. Not due to pain, though my ribs still hurt from training. Not exhaustion, though my limbs moved with the dull weight of it.

It was the silence.

It had come with me from the ruins. It had lodged in the bones of the recruits who'd witnessed what I witnessed — who felt what I felt.

None of them spoke about it. Not in hushed tones, not in furtive glances. It was as if night had lodged itself in their gullets, rendering their words to pallid powder.

But it wasn't just them.

The knights weren't saying anything, either.

Aldric's orders had been too neat, too easy, as though he had anticipated our report before we even returned. As if the words were spoken and written and erased.

They knew.

The knight order knew.

And they weren't giving us any information.

I took a sharp breath, brushed a hand over my face, and propped myself up. My body complained, muscles clenching, bruises blossoming under my skin in dark, painful patches.

I winced.

And that's when I heard it — a knock.

Soft. Hesitant.

I frowned. Who knocked at the barracks this early?

I got up and walked toward the door, opening it enough to see —

Her.

My mother.

And she stood just inside the threshold, arms crossed, bundled in a heavy cloak against the morning chill. Her expression was inscrutable, the keen gaze of her sharp eyes flickering over me once, assessing the rigidity of my posture, the tightness of my shoulders, and the way I tilted ever so slightly to one side.

Her gaze lingered on my ribs.

I said nothing.

Neither did she.

For a moment, there was only the space between us, all the words we never said, all the questions she never asked.

Then, finally, she spoke.

"You're favoring the right side."

I clenched my jaw. "It's fine."

Her expression didn't shift. "Clearly."

I swallowed, her weight pressing on my breastbone.

She hadn't come to chastise me. She hadn't come to stop me.

She'd come to check if I was still standing.

It wasn't kindness. It wasn't softness.

It was something more pointed than that.

A confirmation. A quiet, unsaid thing.

I exhaled through my nose. "Why are you here?"

She cocked her head a little, as though deciding whether she would answer at all.

Then—"You leave tonight."

My fingers raked at the doorframe. Of course, she already knew.

I met her gaze. "And?"

A pause. A breath.

Then just the slightest flinch of her stance. An instant of hesitation so fleeting, so uncharacteristic, I nearly missed it.

"Be careful."

The words dropped like a blade stuck into wood, deliberate, unmovable.

Before I could answer, she turned, her cloak stirring.

And just like that, she disappeared.

I saw her fade into the morning mist, my chest tight with something that I didn't have the words for.

Something very close to being understanding.

Asura's Silence

When I found her, the training yard was empty.

She wasn't training. Not yet.

Instead, she perched her rear on the edge of the wooden railing by the weapons rack, her dagger running over a whetstone in slow, steady strokes. Her fingers played with that same effortless grace, that dangerous precision that made all she did feel like an inevitability.

When I approached I did not see her look up.

"You're not answering my question," I said.

Her fingers didn't pause.

"I answered," she murmured. "You just didn't like the answer."

I exhaled sharply. "That's not an answer. That's avoidance."

A trickle of something — amusement perhaps. Or something colder.

She cleared another stroke against the blade and then looked up at me. "And yet, here you are."

I crossed my arms. "What I want to know is, what did we see last night? What was watching us."

She studied me then. Not in a way that made me feel small, but in a way that made her seem like she was weighing something invisible.

And then she finally put down the dagger.

"It's not a matter of what was watching," she said, her voice quieter. "It's about why it didn't go on the attack."

I stiffened.

Because she was right.

In the ruins, the figure—it could have moved. It could have struck. But it stood there. Waiting. Watching.

"Like it was waiting for something," I said.

Asura nodded once. "Or someone."

Those words hung heavily in my chest. Someone.

Did she think it was for us? Or for the kingdom itself?

"Asura," I said gingerly, "why are you still here?"

It was a reckless question.

She could have walked away from all this long ago. She would have been beyond the recruits, beyond the knights. She had nothing to prove.

So why was she still here?

She went still.

Not in a way that looked like reluctance — she didn't hesitate. It was something else.

Something deeper.

Then, finally, she stood.

"Because someone has to be."

She didn't make eye contact when she said it.

And then she turned and walked away, without another word.

I saw her walk away, the gravity of her words settling into my soul like rocks in a river.

She wasn't here for herself.

She was here for a different reason.

Or someone.

And whatever it was, it involved the Shadows.

The Second Mission

By noon, the next mission had been set.

And I could tell Something was wrong long before Ser Aldric even spoke. There were no knights gathered like before. No speech, no ceremony. Just names. Orders. Dismissals.

It wasn't a mission.

It was a disposal.

"Alarion. Asura. Varin. Dain. Coren. You leave tonight."

No explanation. No briefing. Just orders.

I caught Asura's eye across the courtyard.

She already knew.

And for the first time since I had known her, I thought I saw a hesitation in her eyes.