Chapter 138 – Blade, Courtyard, and Name
Elowen drank a little more water before continuing.
The room was still full. No one seemed in a hurry to turn the story into a summary.
"In the beginning," she said, "I just hit a post."
Harley raised an eyebrow.
"A post?"
"A post. A sandbag. Wood. Anything that wouldn't bleed back. Serenya was clear: if the anger wanted out, it came out there. Not on a person."
Astrid crossed her arms.
"And it worked?"
"It worked enough that I stopped shoving people in the courtyard. The rest… was time. And it wasn't all seriousness the whole time either. There was silly stuff too. A lot of it."
---
The real training didn't start with glory.
It started with sore arms, posture corrected twenty times, and Serenya repeating the same phrase until it stuck to the bone:
"Again."
Elowen, still small, held a practice sword too big for her hands. The first strike came out crooked. So did the second. By the third, her shoulder already burned.
"Again."
"I missed again."
"Then land the next one. Again."
Vaela would show up at the end of the morning with water and a cloth.
"If you break the girl before her time, that's on you."
"I'm not breaking her," Serenya would answer. "I'm teaching her not to break in front of the world."
Nyra, from a distance, only commented:
"Her left foot still drifts. Fix that before it becomes a habit."
Elowen hated those mornings.
She hated even more the idea of going back to being the child in the woods who couldn't run properly. So she came back the next day.
Little by little, her body changed its response.
The crooked strike got less crooked. Her breathing stopped failing mid-sequence. The anger, when it came, already had a known path: wood, sweat, silence afterward.
But in the middle of all that, there was everything else.
There was Vaela pulling Elowen by the hand after training to "taste something sweet before the old guards steal it all." There was Nyra pretending not to laugh when Elowen, still small, tried to copy her stance and nearly fell backward. There was Serenya, one morning, finding the girl asleep in the corner of the courtyard after pushing too hard, and instead of scolding her, just taking off her cloak and covering her right there.
"Just five minutes," Serenya murmured that day.
It turned into twenty.
No one woke Elowen before it was time.
---
The years in the kingdom didn't pass as a single block.
They passed in layers.
There was the phase when Elowen only repeated forms. There was the phase when she started sparring with apprentices her own age and came back bruised purple. There was the phase when Nyra put a bow in her hands and discovered that aim wasn't her main path.
"Spear," Nyra said, one late afternoon. "Or a mid-length blade. You're not a long-range hunter. You're a breach."
"Is that a compliment or an insult?"
"It's a diagnosis."
That same day, though, Nyra still grabbed her by the collar when Elowen tried to leave the field looking too serious.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To wash my face."
"After the bread and honey. No arguing."
"That doesn't sound like training."
"It is. Training not to turn to stone."
Elowen ate the bread and honey sitting on the curb, legs swinging, while Nyra beside her pretended to be just "surveying the horizon." Two apprentices walked by and hid their smiles. Nyra pretended not to see. So did Elowen.
Vaela taught rest her own way.
"If all you know is how to attack, you'll die efficient. Learn to stop. Learn to eat. Learn to sleep when your hand still wants to fight."
"I sleep."
"You pass out from exhaustion. There's a difference."
In exchange, it was the same Vaela who, on good days, came into the room with a steaming bowl and announced:
"Tonight's dinner is special."
"Why?"
"Because I burned the first pot and the second one came out good. A celebration of culinary survival."
Elowen, even quiet, sometimes laughed through her nose. Vaela considered that a total victory.
At night, often, the three of them stayed with her on the porch of the low house. Serenya with her arm on the railing. Vaela sewing some strap. Nyra sharpening an arrowhead out of habit.
"Do you still dream about the house?" Vaela asked once.
"I dream."
"Every day?"
"No. Now it's more… now and then."
"And when you dream, what do you do?"
Elowen took a while to answer.
"I wake up. Drink water. Look at the door. Remember there's no basement here."
Serenya spoke without turning her face.
"That's training too."
"It seems like so little."
"Surviving the after is the longest training there is."
One of those nights, a huge moth landed on Serenya's shoulder. Elowen pointed without saying a word. Serenya looked slowly at the insect, then at the girl.
"If you laugh, I'll make you run laps in the courtyard."
Elowen bit her lip.
She laughed anyway.
Serenya let out a long sigh, removed the moth with a care that was almost ridiculous for someone who could drop a grown man in three moves, and murmured:
"Betrayed in my own house."
Vaela, from the corner, didn't hide her laughter at all.
---
The power came slowly.
In the kingdom, no one treated a gift like an instant miracle. There was assessment, containment, discipline. Elowen had felt something in her chest since childhood — a silent pressure, an urge to "vanish one step and reappear at the right angle" — but at first it only got in the way.
The first time the **Veil** truly manifested, she was in the middle of a sparring match.
Her opponent came in a straight line. Elowen dodged late. Her body acted before her mind did. The air around her warped, thin, silvery, and suddenly she wasn't in the same spot anymore. She appeared beside her opponent, the practice sword already coming down.
Her opponent fell sitting, mouth open.
The whole courtyard stopped.
Serenya entered the circle in two steps.
"Stop."
Elowen was panting, eyes too wide.
"I didn't… I didn't think."
"I saw. That's why we're stopping. Power without command is just an elegant accident."
That night, instead of extra training, there was conversation, and soon after, a clumsy attempt at normalcy: Vaela opened a jar of fruit preserve "to bring the scare down." Elowen ate straight from the spoon. Nyra stole the second spoon. Serenya pretended she had nothing to do with any of it while accepting the third.
"Did it scare you?" Vaela asked.
"A little."
"Good. Anyone who isn't scared of new power usually makes a big mistake."
Nyra, still with preserve in her mouth, added:
"Tomorrow we test it short. In. Out. No glory."
Serenya finished:
"And you don't use it in courtyard fights to prove anything. If you do, I lock your training record for a month."
Elowen nodded.
"Understood."
"You don't need to fully understand it now," Serenya said. "You need to respect it."
From then on, the Veil stopped being a scare and became a subject to master.
It also became a reason for affectionate teasing.
Whenever Elowen landed a clean displacement, Nyra would give a low whistle.
"Little showoff."
"It wasn't a show."
"It was. Accept it."
Serenya, on the other hand, would just give her a dry pat on the head.
"Better. Still not perfect. Again tomorrow."
Elowen would grumble. Then train again. Then show up in the kitchen asking for bread as if that were officially part of the method.
---
At twelve, Elowen was no longer just the girl who'd been saved.
She had calluses on her hands. A small scar on her chin from a badly judged spar. The posture of someone who walks into a room and maps the exit out of habit. She was still quiet. Still dry. But the quiet wasn't just fear anymore — it was a choice.
It was around this time that a border patrol let Elowen come along for the first time, not as main combat, but as observed support.
"You stay behind me," Serenya said.
"I know."
"If I say run, you run."
"I know."
"If you pull any idiotic heroics, I'll take you down myself."
"…also know."
Vaela laughed through her nose.
"She's learned the essentials."
The patrol was simple on paper. There was no big battle. There was tension. There was waiting. There was a man too armed and too stupid to respect the kingdom's border.
When he advanced, Elowen felt her whole body want to jump in.
She didn't.
She followed the order.
On the way back, with the danger already behind them, Nyra tossed her a round, shiny piece of fruit.
"For not doing anything stupid."
Elowen looked at the fruit.
"Is this a prize?"
"It is. In my squad, whoever obeys gets sugar. Whoever disobeys gets a run."
"Unfair system."
"Efficient system."
Serenya, up ahead, spoke without turning around.
"Today you passed."
"I barely did anything."
"You did the right thing. Sometimes that's worth more than killing."
Elowen carried that sentence with her the rest of the week.
And she carried the taste of the fruit too, too sweet, sticking to her fingers.
---
Not everything was training and border patrol.
There were mornings when Vaela forced Elowen to help in the communal kitchen just to "remember that war eats too." The first time, Elowen burned the bottom of the pot and went stiff with seriousness. Vaela looked at the damage, looked at the girl, and clapped once.
"Perfect."
"I ruined it."
"You joined the club. I burn one every month to keep tradition alive."
"That's not a tradition."
"It is now."
There were minor festival nights in the kingdom, with music and low fire. Elowen would stay at the edge at first, quiet, until Vaela pulled her by the hand without asking for a speech.
"Just one turn."
"I don't know how to dance."
"Neither do I. That'll make it fair."
The two of them danced badly. Nyra clapped off-beat on purpose. Serenya, arms crossed, swore she wasn't taking part — and ended up guiding Elowen through a simple turn when the girl stumbled.
"Don't tell anyone," Serenya murmured.
"I'm going to tell everyone," Elowen answered, for the first time with a light touch of mischief.
Serenya let out an offended "huh" that only made Nyra laugh harder.
There were also mornings when Elowen woke up early and found Vaela asleep in the chair beside her bed, head tilted, mouth open, snoring softly. Instead of waking her, Elowen would just put a blanket over the woman's shoulders and go back under her own covers.
Once, Vaela opened one eye in the middle of the gesture.
"I saw that."
"You were asleep."
"I sleep with a strategic eye open."
"That's not a thing."
"It is. And thank you."
---
One dawn, Elowen found Serenya alone atop the inner wall.
"Can't sleep?" the girl asked.
"I sleep little. You?"
"I dreamed about the basement."
Serenya made room on the ledge.
"Sit."
Elowen sat. The wind up there was cold and clean.
"I still hate them," she said.
"I hated mine for a long time too."
"Did it pass?"
"It changed shape. Pure hatred burns the target and the hand holding it. Hatred with direction becomes work."
Elowen looked at the low lights of the kingdom.
"I don't want to forget my mother. Or my father."
"Then don't forget them. Carry them right. Some people carry the dead like chains. Some people carry them like a reason. Choose."
"And if I choose wrong?"
"Then you correct it. We correct it together."
Elowen didn't answer right away. She just stayed there, shoulder to shoulder with the woman who had once knelt in the woods and said, "you're with me now."
After a while, Serenya nudged her shoulder.
"When you go down, there's soup. If you don't eat it, I'm telling Vaela."
"That's blackmail."
"That's family."
Elowen lowered her head to hide a small smile.
That dawn, for the first time, she thought the word **family** without feeling like she was betraying her old home.
---
In the academy room, Elowen paused the story long enough to adjust her immobilized arm.
"That's how I grew up. Between courtyard, scolding, broth, patrol… and also bread with honey, bad dancing, burnt pots, and people falling asleep in chairs just so I wouldn't wake up alone. I didn't become a poster hero. I became someone who knew how to go in, get out, and keep standing. And who, in the middle of all that, could still laugh once in a while."
Rina spoke softly.
"It sounds like… a real home."
"It was," Elowen confirmed. "In their own way. Demanding. Loyal. Not overly gentle. But warm. It was exactly what I needed."
Lirien tilted her head, attentive.
"And the academy?"
Elowen looked at the window for a second.
"That came later. When I was old enough to be sent out. When the kingdom decided some of us needed to learn the outside world from the inside — not just from the border."
She took a deep breath.
"The day Serenya called me in and told me I was going to the Eternal Academy… I thought I was being politely thrown out."
Harley raised an eyebrow.
"Seriously?"
"Seriously. Until Vaela threw a cloth at my face and said, 'It's not abandonment, idiot. It's a mission.'"
Marina let out a short, wet laugh.
"That sounds like them."
"It does," Elowen confirmed. "But the fear came anyway. Because leaving the kingdom meant leaving the only ground I had rebuilt."
Her gaze passed over the group.
"And that's why, when I got here, it took me so long to open up. I already had a family. I just didn't believe I could have another one without losing the first."
Joker, quiet until then, spoke.
"Now you know you can."
Elowen held his gaze.
"Now I know."
The room fell silent for a moment, heavy and clear at the same time.
"Next time," Elowen said, "I'll tell you about the goodbye. The journey. And the first day I walked into this academy thinking I'd manage to live alone in a corner, without letting anyone get close."
Astrid scoffed, without much force.
"Spoiler: it failed."
"It failed," Elowen agreed, almost smiling. "And thank goodness for that."
**End of Chapter 138**