The Swordsmanship Club training hall was one of the larger buildings on campus.
Taro was right behind him when he pushed the door open.
Lysander glanced back. "I thought beastkin didn't use swords."
"Most don't." Taro shrugged, tail moving behind him with easy energy. "Claws, gauntlets, natural weapons — that's the standard. But some clans use blades. My old clan had a few." He grinned. "Besides, I want to know how everything works. Can't fight well if you only know one thing."
Lysander looked at him for a moment. Then turned back toward the hall.
That was actually a reasonable answer.
A long wooden arena stretched down the center. Weapon racks lined the walls. Training dummies stood in rows along the sides. The place smelled like polished steel and sawdust and the specific quality of a room that had absorbed years of people working hard in it. Nearly thirty students had gathered by the time Lysander and Taro arrived — some already stretching, others testing weapon weight, the general pre-session energy of people who knew what they were there for.
Taro looked around with obvious approval. "This place is solid."
At the far end of the hall a tall young man stood watching the students arrive. Broad shouldered, dark hair tied back, a long sword resting against his shoulder with the casual ease of someone who had been carrying one long enough that it was just part of how he stood. His presence had the specific quality of someone people naturally oriented toward without being told to.
He stepped forward when the last students filed in.
"Welcome. I'm Rowan Kael. Third year, B rank." He let that land for a moment — not to intimidate, just to establish context. "I run the Swordsmanship Club. If you're here to swing a blade at things and hope for the best, you'll get more out of a different club. If you want to actually understand what you're doing, stay."
No one left.
Rowan nodded once. "Good."
He drew his blade in a single smooth motion — not a demonstration of speed, just the clean efficiency of someone for whom the action had long since become automatic. Then sheathed it again.
"Swordsmanship isn't about strength. It's about control, balance, and timing. A stronger opponent with poor fundamentals loses to a weaker opponent with good ones. That's not theory. That's what happens in real gates."
He gestured toward the arena. "Pair up. Basic sparring. I'll come around."
Students began finding partners. Taro immediately pointed at Lysander. "Partner."
"Okay."
They stepped into the arena. Around them other pairs began working — the sound of wooden blades and the irregular rhythm of people still figuring out their footwork filling the hall.
Lysander kept everything basic. Standard blocks, standard footwork. This was a training session not a fight — no reason to push hard, no reason to do anything other than work on fundamentals and get a feel for the space.
Taro was energetic and direct, wind mana giving his movements a burst quality that made him hard to time. Lysander managed it without managing it too obviously.
Across the hall, a cold wave of mana spread briefly through the room and several students paused.
Valeria Frostborn had arrived late and stepped directly to the front of the arena without acknowledging anyone. She drew her blade and faced one of the training dummies. Her posture was exactly what it had been in the lecture hall — composed, contained, nothing leaking out that she hadn't decided to let out.
Rowan stopped beside her. Looked at her stance once. Then stepped back.
"Show them," he said simply.
She didn't respond. She just moved.
The strikes were clean and economical — no flourish, no wasted energy, each movement doing exactly what it needed to do and nothing more. Ice mana gathered along the blade's edge between exchanges, thin and precise, forming and dispersing with the same control. The training dummy came apart in four pieces, each cut landing where she'd intended it to land.
The hall went quiet.
Valeria sheathed her blade and stepped back. She hadn't looked at any of the watching students once.
Rowan resumed his circuit of the room. Eventually he stopped near Lysander and Taro, watching their exchange for a moment without speaking. Taro threw a wind-enhanced punch that Lysander redirected with a parry and used to create distance.
Rowan tilted his head slightly.
"You," he said.
Lysander looked up. "Yes?"
"Your footwork." Rowan studied it for another moment. "It's inconsistent. Some steps are deliberate. Others aren't." He crossed his arms. "You move like someone who learned differently from everyone else here."
Lysander held his gaze. "Still adjusting."
Rowan considered that. It wasn't the answer he'd been expecting and it wasn't quite a full answer either, but it wasn't wrong. He nodded slowly and moved on.
Taro waited until he was out of earshot. "What does that mean — learned differently?"
"Nothing," Lysander said. "Keep going."
Training continued for another hour. Sweat covered the arena floor. Students gradually settled into their rhythms, some improving visibly within the session, others discovering that what they thought they knew needed rebuilding from the ground up.
Above the hall, on the upper balcony that overlooked the training floor, Seraphina Solari stood with her arms loosely crossed. She visited occasionally — not to supervise, just to watch. Patterns were easier to see from above.
Her eyes had stopped on one student near the middle of the floor.
The same one from orientation.
She watched his footwork for a while. The inconsistency Rowan had noted was real — but it was a specific kind of inconsistency, like two different movement systems sitting in the same body and not quite agreeing with each other yet. She'd seen something similar once before in a third year who had trained privately before arriving at the academy, a completely different method overlaid on top of a standard one.
But that student had been from a known training lineage.
This one was listed as a lower district commoner with no formal training history.
She filed it and left the balcony.