Chapter 29

Chapter 29: Chapter 29

It took two weeks for the 5th Cohort to fully integrate into the fortress of Trivi. The bodies of the Iron Vanguard mercenaries were burned in massive pyres outside the city walls, and the shattered wooden gates were replaced with reinforced iron gridwork from the deep mining districts.

Life, in its brutal, resilient way, slowly returned to normal.

I sat in the command keep of the upper tier, looking out over the roaring river. For fourteen days, the entire cohort had slept with their armor on and their weapons drawn, expecting the roar of muskets and the massive army of the Republic of Sfirt to appear on the horizon.

They never came.

"They were an isolated vanguard," Yuni had theorized during our morning briefing. "They stole the fortress to establish a beachhead. But without the Ember Stones to maintain the shield, and without their repeating rifles, they lost their strategic value. The Republic likely abandoned them the moment the shield fell, or perhaps the mercenaries were operating on a rogue contract. Either way, the frontier remains quiet."

Miklas hadn’t been satisfied with that answer, heavily doubling the patrols across the river. But as the autumn chill deepened, the immediate threat of an invasion faded into a lingering, paranoid shadow.

With the fortress secure, I turned my absolute focus inward.

The battle in the courtyard had taught me a terrifying lesson. Tactical brilliance and my past life experience meant nothing if my physical body was destroyed before I could use them. I was a Dormant Bud, the lowest tier of awakened magic. I needed to grow. I needed to force my Ember to ascend.

My training regime became an exercise in self-inflicted torture.

The Ember was not a pool of mana that I could easily draw spells from. It was a furnace located deep in my chest ,to solidify the Dormant Bud and push it toward the Swelled Bud stage, I had to constantly keep the furnace burning at maximum capacity while simultaneously breaking my physical limits.

Every morning before dawn, I ran the steep, jagged stone steps connecting the lower and upper tiers of Trivi , I ran them wearing fifty pounds of iron chainmail strapped over my shoulders.

By the fiftieth flight of stairs, my fourteen-year-old lungs would scream for oxygen, my vision blurring at the edges and my legs felt like they were filled with crushed glass. When my body wanted to collapse, I forced my Ember to flare, I envisioned the glowing coal in my chest and threw mental fuel onto it. The magic would flood my veins with scalding heat, forcefully purging the lactic acid and numbing the pain, forcing my legs to keep moving.

In the afternoons, I sparred with Alysia. The scarred lieutenant did not hold back.

"Your mind is fast, Elvit, but your arms are weak!" Alysia barked, parrying a thrust from my Veriti knife and sweeping my legs out from under me with the flat of her scimitar. I hit the muddy courtyard hard, gasping for air. "You fight like a soldier trying to survive. To reach the Swelled Bud, you must fight like a beast trying to conquer! Ignite your core! You have to fully control the fire inside of you."

I roared in frustration, scrambling to my feet. I pushed the Ember so hard I felt my blood boiling. I launched myself at her, my knife moving in a blur, finally managing to score a shallow scratch against her leather pauldron.

By nightfall, my body was a canvas of bruises and exhaustion ,but slowly, over the weeks, the internal fire stabilized. The heat didn’t burn and it settled into my bones. My muscles became denser, my reflexes unnaturally sharp. The Dormant Bud was solidifying, preparing for the painful expansion that would eventually class me up.

On the thirtieth day of our occupation, Miklas ordered me to take a mandatory rest day. My body was on the verge of a breakdown, and even a veteran soldier knew the value of recovery.

I took the opportunity to explore my new home.

Trivi was a marvel of medieval engineering , while walking through the lower tier, I observed the civilian population. The eight hundred citizens were a hardened, stoic people, they were blacksmiths, leatherworkers, and river-fishers and the trauma of the mercenary occupation was still fresh in their eyes, but their behavior toward the 5th Cohort was a mixture of deep reverence and silent fear.

They had seen Miklas call down lightning. They had seen the heavy infantry slaughter the invaders. We were their protectors, but we were also monsters in human skin.

And there was this dreadful feeling around , they young one had those eyes i saw countless time on the Iranian front , they now know they were powerless and they needed something to make so that their life was not as easly taken by others as before.

I walked along the massive semicircular wall protecting the lower city. The roaring of the river below was constant, a white-noise hum that drowned out the clinking of the blacksmith’s hammers. The air smelled of wet stone and pine.

I stopped near one of the heavy ballistas, leaning against the cold stone crenellations. I looked down at my hands. They were calloused and scarred, no longer the soft hands of an orphaned girl. I touched the stitched gash on my right cheek. It had healed into a faint jagged, pale pink line that gave my face a permanent, hardened edge.

I am adapting, I thought, looking out over the wild, untamed moors across the river. Suddenly, a sharp, piercing screech cut through the low roar of the river.

I looked up. The sky an expanse of bruised, grey clouds, but diving through the mist was a massive bird. It wasn’t a common hawk or a scavenger crow. It was an Imperial Falcon.

It was a magnificent, terrifying creature, nearly twice the size of a normal bird of prey, with feathers the color of polished steel and sharp, intelligent golden eyes. It folded its wings, diving at breakneck speed toward the upper tier of the fortress.

My enhanced vision, sharpened by the Ember, caught a glint of metal on the bird’s leg. It was a sealed brass message tube.

The falcon didn’t head for the rookery. It swooped directly over my head, the wind from its massive wings rustling my dark hair, and banked sharply toward the highest balcony of the command keep—Miklas’s personal quarters.

A brass tube meant a Class-One priority dispatch. It meant news from the capital.

My mind instantly began to race. A message from Shepfold. A message from Commander Erula. Or perhaps... a message about Myra.

I didn’t wait to find out. I turned my back to the river and began to sprint up the stone stairs toward the command keep.