Three weeks later
The training yard had become their second home.
It had been three weeks since Alistair announced the tournament, and the grey morning light had become as familiar as the walls of their dorm rooms. Every day, six AM. Every evening, six PM. The mats were worn where they'd dragged their feet across them. The dummies were cracked from repeated impacts. The air smelled like sweat and determination.
Cora was in the corner, weaving between swinging pendulum weights that Alistair had hung from the ceiling. Each weight moved at a different speed, on a different arc, and she phased through them at the last possible moment—her body flickering between solid and ethereal, her short sword striking targets on the far wall with every pass.
"Mason!" she called out, not breaking stride. "Heat check!"
