Part Seventy-Seven — Small Ground

　Months passed the way they usually did at Horizoncrest — quietly, productively, the town continuing to grow around whatever bigger threats were still assembling somewhere out of sight.

　Borga's people threw themselves into construction almost immediately, and the difference showed within weeks — buildings with a solidity to them that even Elaine's elven techniques hadn't quite managed, foundations set deep and sure in ways that spoke to generations of genuine mining and craft expertise.

"You've got good bones in this mountain," Borga told me, examining a section of rock face with the practiced eye of someone who'd spent her whole life reading stone. "Proper dwarven work could do considerably more with it than what's currently here."

"I'd welcome that," I said. "Whatever you're willing to build."

　She set her people to expanding Horizoncrest's infrastructure in directions I hadn't even considered — proper underground storage, reinforced walls where the settlement's edges met open forest, a forge that put my own early, clumsy construction attempts to genuine shame.

　Ignivar's training continued at its own steady, humbling pace, mornings spent on the ground considerably more often than upright, though I noticed, slowly, that the gap between us had started narrowing in small, hard-won increments.

"You lasted eleven seconds longer than yesterday," he observed, one morning, offering his usual hand up.

"You're keeping count?"

"Precisely," he said. "Progress deserves accurate measurement, not vague impression."

Eleven seconds.

Doesn't sound like much.

Feels like considerably more than that, honestly, given how far behind him I started.

　I caught him, later that same week, in a rare moment of something like genuine surprise — a strike I'd landed cleanly enough that he actually stepped back to properly reassess rather than simply absorbing it and continuing.

"That's new," he said, studying the spot where my blade had connected, a thin line of blood already welling.

"Good new, or concerning new?"

"Good," he said, something like real satisfaction entering his usual calm. "You're not simply improving your technique. You're starting to actually understand your own Anathema-mana's shape, rather than throwing it at problems and hoping for the best."

High praise, from him.

I'll take it.

　That evening, Ace found me nursing a bruised shoulder, same as most evenings by then, and settled beside me with his usual dry commentary.

You are losing considerably less dramatically than you used to, he observed. I consider this progress worth noting.

Thanks. I think.

I mean it as a compliment. Ignivar does not offer praise lightly, from what I've observed. His acknowledgment of your progress carries genuine weight.

Yeah. I've noticed that about him too.

　Eris joined us not long after, moving through the space with the same easy confidence she'd developed since Elaine's technique had given her back a version of sight nobody else's healing ever could.

"You're improving," she said, settling in beside me, finding my hand without hesitation. "I can feel it in your aura, even when I can't see the actual bruises. You're holding your shape better under pressure than you used to."

"Ignivar would probably say I've still got a long way to go."

"He's not wrong," she said, "but that's true of basically everyone, about basically everything. Doesn't make the progress you've actually made worth any less."

Fair point.

I think I've been measuring myself against the gap that's left, rather than the gap I've actually closed.

Should probably fix that particular habit.

　I stood at the edge of the training grounds the next morning, watching Ignivar approach for another session, and felt something steady settle into place that hadn't quite been there before — not confidence exactly, not yet, but something adjacent to it.

　The genuine, hard-won sense that the gap between us, however vast it still felt some mornings, was actually closing, one small, measured increment at a time.

Whatever's still coming — the Church, Vahlreth and Skorne, whatever else this world decides to throw at Horizoncrest eventually — I'm not standing still while it approaches.

Every bruise, every lost match, every eleven-second improvement is still improvement.

"Ready?" Ignivar asked, settling into his usual stance.

"Ready," I said, and meant it a little more fully than I had the morning before.