The training yard did not merely welcome them; it exhaled.
It was a wide, hollowed-out lung of stone and sun-scorched earth, trapped deep within the heart of the northern wing. The high walls of the keep rose up on all sides like the steep banks of a canyon, cutting off the breeze and trapping the midday heat until the air itself felt thick and yellow.
Nevan stepped over the threshold, and the first thing that hit him wasn't the heat, but the silence.
It was a heavy, expectant quiet. Along the elevated stone galleries, the vultures had gathered. Servants who should have been in the kitchens leaned over the railings, their aprons dusted with flour. Guards stood like iron statues, their helms catching the brutal glare of the sun. Even the stableboys had climbed the outer fences to get a view.
They weren't there to see a lesson. They were there to see the ghost prince finally bleed.
Nevan's vision flickered. The transition from the cool, shaded armory to the bleached-white stone of the yard was a physical blow.
The sunlight didn't just shine; it echoed, bouncing off the pale grit of the arena floor until his glacial-blue eyes throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache.
He tried to steady his breathing, but the padding of the gambeson felt like a wet wool blanket wrapped around his lungs. It smelled of old oil and the metallic ghost of previous failures. Every time he inhaled, the leather straps cinched tighter, reminding him that he was no longer the boy in the velvet coat. He was a piece of meat in a cage.
At the far end of the yard, seated upon a chair of dark oak that had been brought out specifically for the occasion, was King Enoch.
He didn't speak. He didn't gesture. He simply sat, his hands resting heavily upon the pommel of his own sword, his gaze a physical weight that seemed to press Nevan's shoulders toward the dirt. Beside him stood William—recovered, composed, and wearing a look of such absolute certainty that it felt like a cold blade against Nevan's throat.
William wasn't worried. He was waiting for the inevitable.
Eric was already in the centre.
He had shed his heavier layers, standing now in a light tunic that showed the restless, coiled strength in his arms. He didn't look like a brother. He looked like an apex predator that had been given permission to play with its food.
He spun his wooden practice sword—a casual, rhythmic whoosh-whoosh that cut through the silence like a heartbeat.
"The sun is quite bright today, isn't it, Nevan?" Eric called out. His voice was light, almost cheerful, but it carried a jagged edge that made the servants in the gallery lean forward.
Nevan didn't answer. He couldn't. His throat was a desert of dry grit and swallowed pride.
He simply raised his own weapon.
The wooden blade felt monstrously heavy. To his mind, which understood the physics of a lever and the center of mass, the weapon was a disaster. It was top-heavy, the hilt too thick for his slender fingers, the balance tilted toward the tip as if it were eager to pull him onto his face.
I know his patterns, Nevan repeated, a desperate mantra beneath the roar of his pulse. He strikes quickly to confuse his opponents. He is predictable. He is a creature of habit. I am a creature of thought.
But as Eric shifted his weight—a micro-movement that Nevan's mind recorded with clinical precision—his body stayed still. The connection between his "superior intellect" and his trembling muscles was a bridge made of frayed silk.
The first beads of sweat began to sting his eyes, blurring the golden-brown of Eric's tunic into a shimmering, threatening haze.
He is going to kill me, the thought surfaced, raw and unbidden, cutting through the layers of his intellectual arrogance. He isn't going to stop until the ghost is gone.
Nevan tightened his grip until the rough grain of the wood bit into his palms. He didn't look at the crowd. He didn't look at the King. He looked only at the tip of Eric's blade, waiting for the world to explode.
---
The King did not give a signal. He did not need to. In the yard of Garthford, silence itself was command enough.
It pressed in from every side—thick, expectant—and in that breathless stillness, something unseen gave way.
Eric moved.
To those gathered above, it was no more than a blur—a flash of pale linen and the sharp whistle of wood cleaving air. But to Nevan, the moment stretched thin, drawn taut as a wire on the brink of snapping.
He saw it.
The shift of weight in Eric's stance. The slight turn of his foot against the dust. The tightening in his arm before the strike was loosed.
He knew what was coming.
Not from numbers or cold reason, but from something quieter—an understanding shaped by long watching, by memory, by the careful noting of habits never meant to be seen.
High.
Eric would go high.
Nevan's body should have moved. A single step. A turn. The smallest answer to the question already asked.
But it did not.
It was as though something within him had come loose—some vital tether between thought and flesh, frayed and failing. He willed himself to shift, to lift the blade, to meet the strike as he knew he must—
Nothing came.
The blow fell.
Wood met wood with a heavy, jarring crack—not clean, not controlled, but brutal. The force shuddered through Nevan's arms, up into his shoulders, into his bones, until his grip faltered and his teeth clenched hard enough to ache.
His guard broke. He did not step aside. He stumbled.
The second strike followed at once—no pause, no mercy. It came low, swift and sweeping, aimed to take what little balance he had left.
Nevan tried to answer.
He truly did.
But his breath had already turned against him. The air sat thick in his chest, refusing him, each inhale shallow and strained beneath the tight grip of leather and padding. His ribs protested, his limbs lagged behind the urgency of his will.
Too slow.
The blow struck his side.
A dull, crushing impact that drove the breath from him in a broken gasp. Pain bloomed deep and sudden, folding him in on himself as the world lurched sideways. For a heartbeat, he tasted iron. For another, there was nothing but the ringing in his ears.
He staggered back, boots slipping against the loose grit beneath him.
"Is that the mind Mother so prizes?"
Eric's voice came easily, untouched by strain, carrying across the yard with cruel clarity. He circled now, unhurried, his steps light, assured—like a hound that knew the leash had already been slipped.
"A mind that cannot so much as guide a stick?"
Above, the gallery stirred.
Nevan's gaze lifted despite himself.
Faces leaned down from the stone like shadows given shape. A kitchen girl pressed her hand to her mouth—not in sorrow, but in something sharper, hungrier. A guard tilted his helm, watching with quiet interest. And there, seated in still authority—
The King. Unmoved and unchanged. There was no anger in his expression. No disappointment.
Only a distant, weary indifference.
That, more than the blow, cut deep.
Nevan's fingers tightened around the hilt until they trembled.
I am not fragile, he told himself, the words scraping raw within him. I am not meant to break.
He forced himself upright, drawing what little steadiness he could gather. His stance shifted—awkward, imperfect, but deliberate. He tried to recall what he had seen, what he had studied, to shape himself into something that might endure.
But Eric did not wait.
He closed the distance in an instant—too near, too sudden.
There was no elegance in what followed. No form.
Only force.
Eric drove into him, shoulder first.
Nevan had no answer.
The impact sent him crashing to the ground. Dust rose around him in a choking cloud, filling his mouth, his nose, his eyes. The taste of earth settled thick upon his tongue as the world narrowed to heat and grit and the pounding of his own heart.
For a moment, he did not move.
He could not.
He stared at his hands—pale once, untouched by anything harsher than ink and parchment. Now they were smeared with dirt, trembling, unsteady as though they belonged to someone else entirely.
Rise.
The command came sharp, insistent.
His body did not obey.
Stay down.
That voice was quieter.
Stronger.
Nevan laid there a fraction of a second longer, the sky above stretched wide and blue.
Too wide.
Too empty.
It was the same blue that draped the Queen's solar in silks and gold-threaded calm—but here, beneath it, there was no comfort. Only exposure. Only the sense of being laid bare beneath something vast and uncaring.
The silence pressed in.
Not kind. Not still.
Waiting.
Then—scuff.
Scuff.
Eric's boots against the stone.
Slow. Measured. Unhurried.
A hunter's sound. A shadow fell across him.
Eric stood above, his wooden blade rested lazily on his shoulder. Mother's little saint," he murmured, the words soft, almost fond—if not for the edge beneath them. "Are you at last learning your place?"
Nevan's fingers twitched in the dirt.
He tried to move. Nothing answered. No strength. No grace. Not even the dignity of a clean failure—only this weak, trembling half-life of a body that would not heed him.
He dragged in a breath that shuddered halfway through his chest.
Move.
The command came sharp, desperate now—no longer calm, no longer certain.
Move.
His hand clawed at the ground. Grit forced its way beneath his nails, biting deep. The pain was small, but real—something to anchor himself to.
He pushed.
His arms shook at once, thin and unsteady, threatening to give way beneath him. The gambeson groaned as he strained, stiff leather dragging against sweat-slick skin, resisting him as though it too wished him to stay down.
For a moment—just a moment—he nearly did.
But something in him refused.
Not pride.
Not yet.
Something uglier.
He forced himself upward.
It was not graceful. It was not noble. It was a slow, uneven rising—like something broken trying to remember its shape. His limbs betrayed him at every inch, trembling, faltering, dragging him toward collapse.
Still—
he rose.
Across from him, Eric watched, a smile still plastered on his face, his posture loose, almost languid. There was no strain in him. No urgency.
Only certainty.
"Still reaching upward?" he said softly, tilting his head. "You never learn."
Nevan said nothing.
He could not.
His throat burned, raw and tight, every swallow thick with dust and something bitter that refused to go down. Words would not come—not as defence, not as wit. Only breath. Only survival.
He lifted his sword.
It felt heavier now.
Not changed—but worse. As though the strength had gone out of him, leaving only the weight behind. His grip tightened, fingers stiff, unsteady, the wood rough against skin already wearing thin.
He tried to steady himself.
Tried to remember—
not words, not teachings, not the endless careful lessons—
but something.
Anything that might hold.
But there was nothing.
Only the sound of his own breathing.
Only the pounding of his heart.
Eric moved.
No flourish this time.
No warning.
The first strike came hard—
Nevan barely raised his blade in time.
The impact slammed into him, jarring through his shoulder, down his arm, into his chest. Pain flared—sharp, immediate, stealing what little breath he had managed to gather.
Before he could recover—
the second blow landed, higher.
His leg gave beneath him, strength vanishing as though it had never been there at all.
He staggered.
Fell to one knee.
Why—
The thought came, ragged, breaking apart even as it formed.
Why can I see it—
He knew.
He knew what was coming.
Every movement, every shift—he saw it, understood it, felt it before it came.
And still—
his body lagged behind, slow, heavy, useless.
Move.
It did not.
Eric stepped closer.
Too close.
Nevan could hear his breathing now—steady, unbroken. Could feel the heat of him, the nearness, the certainty.
"You hide in your thoughts," Eric murmured, voice low. "But thoughts do not bleed for you."
Nevan's vision wavered.
The world swam—light too bright, edges too sharp. Sweat stung his eyes. Dust clung to his tongue.
He could smell it now.
Everything.
The heat. The dirt. The leather. The faint, copper tang of blood—his own, though he could not say where it had come from.
The world was no longer distant.
It was too close.
Too much.
"I know—" Nevan tried, the words tearing from him, hoarse and broken.
But what did he know?
What had all those hours given him?
What use was knowledge that could not lift his arm—could not steady his breath—could not keep him standing?
Eric stepped in. Breaking Nevan out of his thoughts.
Not a strike this time. Another shove.
Much harder. More brutal.
The hilt crashed into Nevan's chest.
Air fled him—ripped clean from his lungs before he could even gasp for it. The world lurched, light bursting white across his vision as his body gave way entirely.
He fell.
Not like before—not stumbling, not catching himself—
this time, there was nothing.
He hit the ground hard, the impact knocking what little strength remained from his limbs. His body struck the stone and slid, dragged through grit and dust as though the yard itself meant to claim him.
The rough earth tore at him, clawing through what remained of his dignity.
When he stilled, he did not rise.
For a moment—he could not even think.
Only feel.
The burn in his chest. The dull, spreading ache blooming through his side. The sting of torn skin where grit had bitten too deep.
His hair fell forward across his face—
once smooth, once kept with careful pride—
now ruined.
The pale strands, once like fresh-fallen snow, hung in tangled disarray, clotted with dust and sweat, streaked grey with the filth of the yard. They clung to his brow, to his cheeks, wild and unkempt, as though they no longer belonged to a prince—but to something dragged from the dirt.
His skin—
once untouched, pale as porcelain—
was no longer unmarred.
Angry patches of red had begun to rise where the blows had landed, deepening even now into bruised shades of purple beneath the surface. The clean, untouched fairness of him had been broken, replaced by something raw, something marked.
Something human.
His lips parted as he tried to breathe, but each breath came shallow, uneven, catching halfway as though his body had forgotten how to draw air without pain.
And his eyes—
those cold, glacial blue eyes—
betrayed him most of all.
They burned.
Not with clarity. Not with thought.
But with something far more dangerous.
Moisture gathered there, unbidden, blurring the edges of the world into something soft and wavering. Tears threatened—pressed close, trembling at the brink—
but did not fall.
He would not allow it.
Not here.
Not before them.
Not before him.
His jaw tightened, a faint, trembling defiance running through him as he forced them back, forced them to remain where they burned behind his eyes.
Even now—
even broken in the dirt—
he refused to give them that.
His fingers twitched weakly against the ground, curling into the grit as though searching for something—anything—to hold.
But there was nothing.
Only dust.
Only heat.
Only the sound of his own breath, uneven and failing.
And the slow, approaching shadow that fell across him once more.
Eric looked down at him, pressing his boot against his chest. Not crushing. Not yet. But as though to mark Nevan as something he had triumphed against.
Nevan lay beneath the weight of it all.
The sky above.
The heat.
The boot upon his chest.
Slowly his gaze lifted. Not to Eric, never to Eric. Past him. To the dais.
The King sat as he had before—unchanged. Unmoved. A thing of stone and time. There was no shift in him, no lean forward, no flicker of concern. He watched as one might watch weather pass over distant hills.
And beside him—
William. Still. Composed. Watching.
There was something in his expression—something colder than anger, sharper than disdain. A quiet certainty, settled deep behind his eyes, as though this moment had long since been decided.
As though Nevan had already fallen—
and this was merely the world catching up.
Nevan felt it then.
Not pain.
Not fear.
Something deeper.
Something burning.
It started low in his chest, beneath the bruising, beneath the shallow breath—something tight, something coiled, something that did not belong to the quiet halls of study or the careful turning of pages.
His thoughts tried—weakly—to rise.
Fragments.
Old habits.
Lessons half-remembered.
But they felt distant now.
Thin.
Useless.
What use were quiet words—
spoken in still rooms—
to a boy choking on dust beneath a brother's heel?
His gaze fixed on his father.
On the stillness.
On the absence.
And something in him broke.
Not cleanly.
Not quietly.
It snapped.
If I fall here—
The thought came raw.
Stripped of polish. Stripped of pride.
If I fall here… I am nothing.
Not misunderstood.
Not overlooked.
Nothing.
Just another body pressed into the dirt.
Something surged.
Not grace.
Not discipline.
Something uglier.
His fingers dug into the ground—not weakly this time, but with force, nails biting deep as though he meant to tear the earth itself open.
And then—
he moved.
Not rising.
Not standing.
He lunged.
The motion was sudden, violent, born not of skill but of refusal. He drove forward with what strength remained, his shoulder slamming into Eric's legs with reckless, desperate force.
It worked.
Eric staggered.
Only a step—but enough.
Enough.
Nevan tore himself upward, breath breaking in his chest as he dragged himself to his feet. There was no stance now. No balance. No thought of form or precision.
Only motion.
Only need.
His sword came up—heavy, unwieldy—and he swung.
Not clean.
Not controlled.
A wild, brutal arc meant not to impress—but to hit.
Eric knocked it aside with ease, the crack of wood sharp in the air.
"Is this what you are?" he spat, irritation breaking through at last. "You flail like a common—"
"If this is what it takes to win..!" Nevan's voice tore free of him—raw, cracked, unrecognisable even to his own ears. "Then i shall be the gladiatorand come out victorious!"
He did not stop.
He stepped in again.
Too close.
Too reckless.
Eric struck him—hard.
The blow landed against his ribs, pain flaring bright and deep—but this time, Nevan did not falter. He felt it—used it—let it drive him forward instead of breaking him back.
Another strike.
His shoulder.
Another—
his side.
Each one hurt.
Each one fed something.
His movements were wrong. Ugly. Unrefined. But they did not stop.
Would not stop.
Dust rose around him with every step, clinging to sweat, to skin, to the ruined pale of him now marked in red and darkening purple. His white hair, once neat and untouched, whipped about his face in tangled disarray, streaked with filth, sticking to his skin.
His breath came in harsh, broken pulls—
but still he moved.
Still he pressed forward.
The yard had gone quiet.
Truly quiet.
Not expectant.
Not waiting.
Watching.
Nevan saw them—only in flashes. Faces no longer leaning in mockery, but stilled. Uncertain. Drawn to something they did not understand.
A boy who should have stayed down—
and did not.
His gaze found William.
Just for a moment.
And there—
there it was.
The smallest fracture.
A flicker.
That certainty—gone. Not shattered, but cracked.
Nevan felt something fierce curl in his chest.
Good. Let him see. Let them all see.
He surged forward again, lifting the blade high—not in elegance, not in form, but in sheer, defiant will.
His mind had gone quiet.
No more thoughts.
No more lessons.
No more careful distance.
Only this—
the sharp, burning need to be seen.
To be more than the fragile thing they had already buried.
And as he brought the blade down—
there was nothing left in him but hunger.
The world had narrowed to breath.
Nothing else held.
Not the crowd.
Not the heat.
Not the pain that clawed through him with every movement.
Only the harsh, broken sound of his own gasps—wet, uneven, tearing at his throat as he forced air into lungs that no longer wished to work.
Nevan came on again.
Not measured.
Not controlled.
Rage had taken what remained of him and twisted it into motion. His strikes were wild now—broad, reckless swings that cared nothing for form or balance. He threw himself forward as though the space between them must be erased, as though distance itself were his enemy.
Eric gave ground.
Not much.
Not enough for others to notice—
but enough.
He turned each blow aside with sharp, efficient movements, wood meeting wood in quick, dismissive cracks. There was no strain in him, no panic—
but something had changed.
He was no longer toying.
Nevan pressed in again, another wild strike, his breath breaking into a ragged snarl as he forced his body forward—
Too close.
Too fast.
Too relentless.
For a fleeting instant—
Eric's footing faltered. A wave of panic flashed through his eyes.
Just a fraction. Enough. This was the chance Nevan had been waiting for.
Mustering every ounce of strength he struck. His form wild but still aiming at Eric's blind spot.
And then— thwack. The sound of wood hitting bone echoed through the yard.
he had struck.
Not with the blade—with the guard.
The hilt drove hard into the side of Nevan's head.
The world went white. Not dim or dark, just white.
A blinding, searing emptiness that swallowed everything whole. Sound vanished. Thought vanished. There was only the violent ringing inside his skull, as though something within him had cracked open and was still echoing from it.
His body followed a heartbeat later.
He hit the ground hard.
This time, he did not feel the fall—not fully. Only the aftershock of it, distant and warped, as though his body no longer quite belonged to him.
The sky spun.
Light smeared across his vision.
And then—
slowly—
something warm traced its way down the side of his face.
Thick.
Viscous.
It slipped past his temple, into his hair, dragging strands of pale white down with it, staining them darker as it went.
Blood.
The taste of iron followed soon after, faint but unmistakable, settling at the back of his tongue.
For a moment—
just a moment—
everything stilled.
The fury that had driven him forward began to ebb, not all at once, but in jagged pieces—like a tide dragging itself back and leaving ruin in its wake.
Pain rushed in to take its place.
His ribs throbbed with every breath, each inhale shallow and sharp. His head pulsed, the ringing still lodged deep within it. His limbs felt distant—heavy, slow, trembling faintly where they lay.
He did not rise.
Not yet.
His chest lifted—fell—lifted again.
Struggling.
Failing.
This is where it ends.
The thought came quietly.
Not with fear.
Not with panic.
Just… truth.
Face in the dirt.
Body broken.
Watched.
Forgotten.