He found the arena by habit — following echoes of noise and the grit of old combat into the place where he and Bram had once clashed.
Without the pressure of a public fight, the coliseum surrendered its secrets. Dust still hung in the air, a fine gray film that smelled faintly of sweat and old iron, but the whirl during a real duel had passed; the place felt patient, waiting.
The scale of it hit him properly for the first time. The duel ring was enormous — as wide as a football pitch, a raw circle of packed earth scarred with the arcs of a thousand blades.
On the north end the stands rose high, rows of stone benches stepping up like a sleeping amphitheater.
Near the gate where he’d entered there was a training precinct: a rectangular dojo space, boxed off and laid with a thick carpet meant to soak blows and keep feet from skidding. The carpet was a disciplined thing — heavy woven fibers dyed a deep, muted red at the center and hemmed with gold thread.
Repeated footwork had polished certain strips to a shine; in places the weave was flattened into soft grooves where elbows had struck, where soles had dragged.
Around the edges were racks, neat and almost reverent: multitudes of weapons standing at attention — swords, spears, halberds, poleaxes, blades whose shapes made Avin’s throat tighten with curiosity. Some pieces looked like relics, others like tools he’d never been taught names for.
He was looking for one thing in particular: the gun Miranda had used — an oddity out of time. He moved down the ranks of steel and hafts, fingers brushing polished hilts, but there was nothing like it. No sign of the strange, modern piece that didn’t belong in the age of plates and banners.
"It must not be common then," he said to himself, eyeing the spear racks.
One sword caught his eye more than the rest. It was not ostentatious — no filigree of jewels, no embossed family crest — but it sat in its stand with a patient, coaxing balance.
He slipped it free. The weight was immediate and perfect: not too heavy to swing, not so light that it felt toyish. The hilt fit his palm as if it had been cast for him.
"Perfect," he muttered, tossing the blade from his right hand into his left and back, feeling the steel sing through the air.
He had never formally learned swordcraft, yet at once his body remembered a strange intimacy with the weapon. The familiarity wasn’t a false comfort; it hummed through his muscles like memory. He felt steadier, like someone had bolted extra timbers into his spine.
"I wonder where this feeling of confidence was when Bram was beating my ass," he thought, smiling despite the memory.
He stepped onto the dojo carpet. The rightful source is novel•fire.net
Up close it revealed its purpose: an inner grid suggested by shadowed squares — training boxes to mark footwork and distance — the boxed carpet designed so pairs could drill within a defined space, boundaries clear for strikes and parries.
The center square bore darker patches where countless strikes had met the woven fibers. The air above it smelled faintly of resin and old sweat, an honest scent that steadied him.
He set his feet into a stance that felt like a map his muscles had drawn for him. Left leg lightly forward, right leg back but not rigid;
the gap between them measured so his weight could sway and absorb instead of snapping. The sword sat in his right hand; the grip twisted so the inner part of his forearm — the crease opposite the elbow — faced the same direction as his chest.
His left hand remained empty, hovering relaxed over his left thigh; his head turned slightly to follow that empty hand, eyes not staring straight but cocked to the left.
From the outside it looked casual, even unprepared, but inwardly the posture was a small fortress: balanced, mobile, patient.
Something was missing still — a sliver of technique, an echo of a tutor’s touch that both Avin and his original self had never quite learned.
He shut his eyes and dove for whatever memory his body could find. Rehearsals, breath patterns, the cadence of repeated practice surfaced like film frames. He surrendered to muscle memory.
He opened his eyes and moved.
First a vertical upward cut — a clean, whistling arc that sliced the silence. The sword’s trail made a satisfying whoosh as air parted. Without hesitating he brought it down diagonally to his right, leaning his torso back just enough for torque. The motion fluidly reversed into an upward diagonal to his right as he stepped forward with his right foot.
Then, the last strike: both hands gripped the hilt with a single, decisive motion and he swung as if to split the world. The blade whipped through the air in a wide, loud gust; dust rose and his hair whipped backward from the force.
He stood there, chest heaving, the sword steady in his hands. A ridiculous, giddy smile spread across his face.
"Thank you, Avin. You are my cheatcode," he said aloud, the words weird and warm.
Gratitude toward a self he was still learning to be.
Fatigue settled pleasant and deep.
He sat cross-legged at the edge of the mat, still cradling the sword. Only one thing remained on his list: the sword’s glow-up — the ritual he’d glimpsed before, Bram’s power, the surge that had terrified him.
Memory fetched the image of that impossible, bleeding-into-light moment, and with it the shadow of the creepy thing he’d seen before the power arrived. He exhaled, steadying himself.
"Do I really have to see the creepy thing again?" he asked the silence, forehead creased.
He needed it. That need honed his decision.
He closed his eyes, tightened his grip on the hilt, felt the grain of leather and the tiny seam at the guard. He let his breath become the rhythm of the chant. Words rose, old and clumsy in his mouth, but they carried the template of invocation:
"O magne magne armorum parens, arma mea divinitate tua imbue."
He pushed the syllables into the quiet, and then he reached for sensation — the memory of mana like a tide.
At first the feeling was recall only; then the recall collapsed into reality. A molten pressure built in his chest, a sweet, electric heat bleeding into his arms.
Mana threaded through his veins, cold and alive, reaching out into the metal beneath his hands. It flowed along the blade as if the steel itself had been hollow to receive it.
When the surge eased, when the pulse in his fingers slowed from thunder to a steady hum, Avin opened his eyes.
The sword had changed. It gleamed with a bright, near-holy light — not gaudy, but true and clarion. Gold flooded the edge and traveled in veins along the blade’s length.
The metal took on a luster that did not merely reflect light but seemed to hold it. Along the back edge there was a shallow hollow — a small, deliberate waft of design that sat like a channel for the blade’s newly-tempered spirit.
The whole thing looked less forged and more awakened, as if hammered from something divine instead of hammered out of ore.
He raised it and felt the difference immediately: the balance was cleaner, the weight distributed with a surgeon’s precision.
The sword vibrated faintly in his palm, a soft purr like a living thing acknowledging its owner.
Ideas flared incandescent behind his eyes. He saw maneuvers, opens, defenses and displays he’d never tried; he saw Bram again, but this time the thought of that fight left him not trembling but hungry.
Faces of future opponents, shadows and banners, the choreography of combat — each possibility shimmered like a promise.
He sat there, the glow pooling across his lap, and for the first time since stepping into this world, there was not just survival at the back of his mind.
There was a thing that felt like readiness — not arrogant, not certain, merely the steady click of a lock finding its key.
He closed his eyes once more and breathed the future in.