For weeks before dawn, Ana drove Caden across the gray plain. His ragged breaths and pounding feet carved circles of fatigue in the dust as ash swirling in their wake—followed her barking commands. Each morning he ran until his legs trembled; each evening he collapsed into bruises and blisters—every setback met with another "Again."

On day twenty-one, Ana spotted him slowing, sweat and ash sliding from his face. "Faster," she ordered. He stumbled but refused to quit, dropping into quivering push-ups when she demanded. By week four, though every muscle screamed, Caden still stood. Ana closed in, eyes softening at last—her lips twisted, almost a smile. "Good," she admitted. "Now keep going." He rose, defiance melted into determination. "I will."

For as long as the ley line had bled beneath these fields, the air above it remained charged, haunted by the memory of all it had once connected. Now the glyph—fractured, blackened, but faintly radiant—waited at their feet, as though daring the living to trespass on the memory of its power. As Ana and Caden squared off in the ashen clearing, the world contracted to the length of a blade and the rhythm of two hearts. The sun was a rumor, thin and pale behind shifting smoke. The only color was the pulse: a filament of red that faded and returned, not unlike hope.

Ana tapped the flat of her weapon gently against the glowing rune, a small thunder on the bones of the world. "Center yourself on that pulse," she said, her voice subdued but edged with steel. "Let it tell you when to strike, when to wait. Everything else is noise."

She could tell from the way Caden's hands fidgeted at the hilt that he still heard only the noise: the howling wind, the crackle of dead trees, the dull roar of fear in his own blood. His lips were blue, his cheeks a sickly gray, but he raised the battered sword and nodded. "Ready," he lied.

Ana stepped forward, her movements measured, a silent demonstration of what she expected. In the moment between inhaling and exhaling, she cut through the air, the tip of her blade tracing a perfect parabola toward Caden's exposed shoulder. He flinched, his sword arm jerking up, and by instinct more than plan he managed to block the blow. The clang echoed through his bones and left his grip tingling. Ana smiled grimly, twisted her body, and slammed the point of her elbow into his ribs.

He gasped, the cold air biting his lungs as he stumbled back, boots scraping the cracked line of glyphs. "Again," he wheezed.

"If you lose the rhythm, you lose the fight," Ana said, circling him like a wolf. "Breathe with the ley line." She watched the lines of his face, the way his eyes darted between her hands and the flicker of red beneath their boots. Tenacity, but also the fear she recognized in herself—a fear of the world's vast indifference, of the certainty that failure would not be forgiven.

Caden steadied his breath, locked his gaze, and prepared for another exchange. This time he stepped into her swing, absorbing the blow along his arm, then pivoted to the side. Ana matched his movement, quick and sure, but he kept enough distance to avoid another follow-up strike.

"Better," she admitted, then swept his legs with a low kick that sent him sprawling into the ash.

He landed on his back, the world briefly a smear of gray—black and red, and for a moment he simply stared upward, surprised to be alive at all. The training sword dropped from his fingers. Ana loomed over him, her face unreadable, then crouched and retrieved the blade.

"You're trying to think your way out," she said, laying the sword across his chest. "There's no trick to this, Caden. The ley line is a current. Either you flow with it or you drown."

He blinked ash from his eyes, coughed, and nodded. "Yes, Captain."

The title didn't fit her, not anymore, but Ana let it stand. She offered him a hand, but he shook his head and rolled to his knees, pushing himself upright. She respected the refusal. There was dignity in refusing an easy mercy.

Sheathing her blade, Ana produced her dagger, chipped at the tip but still capable of drawing blood. She tossed it to Caden, who caught it by the hilt. The metal seemed to vibrate in his palm, as if still alive with stories.

"Close-quarters only," Ana said. "No more sword-dancing. This is the work that keeps you breathing."

As they circled each other, Ana reined in her steps, letting her mind wander for just a heartbeat. The ley line's pulse was a memory she could never shake—Ethan's footfalls, the cadence of his laugh, the way he'd mocked her for being too careful, too cold. Ethan had been the first to run the line at full tilt, drunk on the thrill of a power that could snap a man in half if he misjudged its flow. He'd always said she was meant for command, not for living.

"Why do you look at me like that?" Caden asked in a small voice, breaking her reverie.

Ana blinked. "Like what?"

"Like you're measuring me for a grave."

She almost laughed, but the sound stuck in her throat. She feinted with the dagger instead, drawing a sharp line in the air. He parried, then lunged, teeth gritted in concentration. Ana caught the edge against her forearm, twisting it with practiced leverage, and spun him away.

The movement brought her dangerously close to the glyph. For a moment the ley line pulsed brighter, and she felt a jolt—an echo of that familiar, reckless energy. She heard Ethan's voice, as clear as if he stood beside her: "You can't teach a pulse, Kai. You can only ride it."

She slammed the memory down, but a fragment lingered. "Keep moving," she barked, advancing on Caden with a flurry of jabs.

Ash swirled around them, footprints blurring as the fight intensified. Caden's technique improved with each exchange; he adapted, learned from his mistakes. He swept low, slashed high, even managed a glancing blow to Ana's arm. She felt the sting and let it fuel her, pushing him until sweat streaked his brow and his breath came in gasps. She wanted to break him a little, to see if he would rebuild himself stronger on the other side.

She let up for a second, just enough to force him to fill the silence. "What did you lose, Caden?" she asked, voice low and almost gentle.

His answer was quick, but not glib: "My mother. A demon took her."

She nodded, unsurprised. "And your father?"

A muscle in his jaw tightened. "He survived, but not all of him came back."

Ana recognized the look—the longing to fix something that could not be mended. She'd seen it on her own face in the cracked mirror of her memories, each time she thought of Ethan, of Kellan, of the ones she'd left behind.

She pressed him harder, then disengaged, breathing hard. "You're not here to avenge them," she said. "You're here because you want to survive."

Caden hesitated, then nodded. "Yes, Captain."

She advanced again, this time shifting tactics: punches, low kicks, grappling moves more brutal than elegant. She barked each lesson as a command—"Trap the arm! Angle your shoulder! Disrupt the balance!"—and forced him to learn by failing, by tasting the dirt and the sting of pain.

He blocked a blow, then twisted on the rune's glow and managed, miraculously, to catch her with an elbow to the side. Ana stumbled, surprised by his speed, and felt another flicker of pride—quickly smothered. "Not bad," she said, and then swept his legs again. He crashed to the ground, but this time rolled with it, coming up ready.

Ana felt the ache in her muscles, but also a strange lightness, a release. It was almost like being young again. She remembered how Ethan would push her, make her laugh, make her angry—how he'd once carried her back from the brink, both of them bleeding and broken but too stubborn to die.

Caden fell a final time, this time landing face-down in the ash. He didn't move for a long while. Ana considered leaving him there, but found herself kneeling beside him instead, her hand on his shoulder.

The ley line flickered beneath their feet, its red glow as unsteady as candlelight caught in a gust. She let her eyes linger on the glow, granting herself a rare moment to recall that fateful night. The night Ethan was taken from her. They had stood together, defending Ashenheart from a demonic onslaught, when a demon appeared—a merciless predator of mana. Rumors suggested that slaying a life rich in mana allowed one to inherit a piece of their soul. Despite the fractured ley lines, Ethan had boldly tested them, tracing a glyph with his bare hands. "Don't be a coward, Kai," he'd teased. "You're the brave one, remember?"

She watched helplessly as energy swirled into a violent storm, then a piercing scream. The light enveloped him, etching elaborate patterns across his skin in shades of crimson and white. Ana tried in vain to pull him free, but the force was overwhelming. She felt his heart cease beneath her touch, his breath fading from the world forever.

In the aftermath, as the pandemonium waned, she gathered what remained of him and buried it beneath the runes, marking the site with a blade—a vow, not a tribute. She swore never to repeat his error. She would endure and guide others to do the same.

"Ethan used to trace this line better than anyone," she murmured softly, avoiding Caden's eyes. "He could sense the surge, feel the pattern beneath it all."

Ana let go of his shoulder, rocked back on her heels

"Again?" Caden rasps, blood at his lip. "Or do I eat?" A bruise blooms on his chin—Ethan's defiant grin on a stranger. Ana shrugs. "Dinner—if you can stand."

Caden drags himself upright, muscles trembling beneath skin rubbed raw from weeks of combat drills. Ana flicks a strip of dried goat meat his way; he catches it mid-air and tears into it without a word. The taste of ash hangs between them. He finishes, spits a bloody mixture onto the edge of the rune, and looks up. "We start with the bow next?"

The sun sinks reluctantly on the horizon, painting everything in rusted light that filters through the smoke-choked sky. Ana rolls a withered berry between calloused fingers before tossing it near his boot. "Bow at dawn," she confirms, "assuming your wrists survive the first hundred draws." A half-laugh escapes him as he works a strand of meat from between his teeth. The small nod he gives carries the weight of achievement—a minor concession that somehow matters more than it should.

They sit side by side on the cremated remains of a tree stump. Day's last light sifts through curls of ash and smog, painting them both in faint, martyr reds. Ana looks east, toward the ley line's scar, and tries not to count the months since she's watched a sunset without first checking the wind for blood or sulfur.

Caden sits silent, chewing. She expects the questions to come—they always do, around the time boys mistake bruises for pride—but his voice is thinner this evening, almost brittle. "Why did that demon call you... 'Ghul'kharaz'?" he asks, scratching a line in the dirt with his boot. "You don't—what does it mean?"

Ana hears the hesitation, the unspoken itch behind the question. Her throat tightens, but she stares at the horizon and lets the pause drag. Some lessons hurt more than bone and sinew.

She takes a slow breath, coughs up the grit in her lungs. "Means Demon-Slayer," she says. "Means a lot of dead things, most of which used to have names." She expects this will settle it, but nothing ever settles with Caden. He watches her with that stubborn, waiting patience.

He pokes at the ground between them. "They were scared of you," he says. "I've seen plenty of demons. They don't get scared. But those ones—" He shakes his head. "If I'm not supposed to ask, you can just say."

Ana grins, teeth tight. "You're not supposed to ask, but you will."

He grins back, lip split and a rivulet of drying blood. Kids learn pain quick, but they learn what's worse even quicker. Ana props her boots on a cracked root, listens to the nightbirds breaking the silence, distant and dissonant. She fumbles with her flask, drinks deep, and wipes her mouth.

"Demons aren't scared of steel," she says finally, voice lower. "Or fire. Or pain. They're scared of what happens when something with a trace of their own kind gets loose in the chain." The words taste like rust and regret. "Back east, way before the lines fractured, there were people who learned to take in demon blood. Use it against them. The priests called it a curse. The generals called it a weapon."

Caden's eyes widen, but Ana doesn't give him the satisfaction of drama. She stares at her reflection in the flattened metal of her blade instead: the yellow flash in her iris, the hint of something not quite human in the way her skin scars over and over and never smooths.

"It worked. For a while. Then it didn't." She closes the knife and tosses it to Caden, lets him weigh the truth for himself. "That's what they were scared of. Not me, exactly. What I remind them of."

He turns the knife in his palm. "You're not a demon," he says, as if reassuring a child who's seen a shadow dance in the firelight. But she can see in the set of his jaw that he's thinking of all the stories—the ones whispered when torches burn low and children shiver under blankets.

"Nah," Ana scoffs, pushing herself upright. "If I was, I wouldn't have to eat so much salted shit." She tosses the rest of her rations at him, a half-dead smile on her lips. "Now sleep. Bow at dawn. After that, maybe some real rest."

But Caden doesn't move. He hugs his knees, looks at her with that relentless curiosity that's more dangerous than any demon streaking through the ley. "Do you remember what it was like? Before?"

Instead, she says, "It's always been like this. Sometimes with different monsters."

Caden lies down, back to the dead tree, and closes his eyes. But Ana can tell he's still awake. She unslings her axe, makes a show of sharpening it, and lets the whine of stone on steel fill the empty field. The sound settles her. Gives the dark somewhere to nest.

Tomorrow, she'll teach him to shoot. Maybe, if she's reckless, she'll teach him how to survive.

But tonight, she lets the ley hum beneath her bones, lets the old ache of memory anchor her to the here and now. The boy's breath evens out, the night cools, and for a moment, Ana pretends she's just a woman with a weapon, rather than the reason the world keeps turning to ash.

She closes her eyes. And as the ley line's pulse steadies beneath her. She closes her eyes. And as the ley line's pulse steadies beneath her. She promises herself—she won't outlive this one.