Cassian did not bring Ronan to the academy training grounds.

The proper fields lay to the east of the main compound, where instructors oversaw weapon drills, stance work, mana circulation exercises, and the other respectable lies schools liked to call preparation.

Cassian took him west instead.

Over the outer practice walls.
Past the abandoned storage sheds.
Through an old split fence half-swallowed by weeds.
All the way to a stretch of broken woodland and rocky slope where the academy grounds bled into the harsher edges of Graymark’s frontier.

Ronan stopped at the treeline and studied the terrain.

Sparse brush. Uneven stone. Wind moving from the ridge. Several shallow depressions in the earth. Too many places to hide if someone was unskilled.

And too few if someone was not.

Cassian stood with both hands in his coat pockets, looking like a man out for a disappointing stroll.

“This,” he said, “is your first lesson.”

Ronan glanced at him. “We are not using weapons?”

Cassian looked mildly offended. “Of course we are. I’m using myself.”

That was not reassuring.

Ronan stayed silent.

Cassian tilted his head toward the forest line.

“You have one hour. Hide from me. If you remain uncaught by the end of it, you may ask one question about your father.”

Ronan’s eyes narrowed slightly.

“And if I lose?”

“Then you survive disappointment and we repeat the exercise tomorrow.”

Cassian’s tone was lazy, almost bored.

His eyes were not.

Cassian continued, “You may use the terrain however you like. No leaving the marked boundary. No attacking me unless you are very eager to die of embarrassment. And no assuming I will be merciful because you’re young.”

“You are serious.”

“That,” Cassian said, “is the most offensive thing anyone has ever accused me of.”

He stepped aside and flicked two fingers toward the trees.

“Five-minute head start.”

Ronan did not move at once.

He looked at the woodland again, then at Cassian.

Bad ground.

That, by itself, told him enough.

This man had no intention of training him like an academy student.

The truth was simple: Ronan had never planned to be a normal student here.

Joining the worst instructor in Ashgrove had always carried advantages. A teacher with no influence attracted less attention. Low expectations were safer than admiration, especially from the people who still hated his father.

A genius who stood too high became visible.

A visible son of House Veyr became dead.

So Ronan had buried himself for years beneath a quiet obedience and the useful reputation of being damaged but untalented.

It had kept him alive.

For the most part.

Now he had one hour and one unstable teacher standing between him and the first real clue about his father in years.

Ronan moved.

He entered the trees without sound and vanished into broken light.

Behind him, Cassian counted down the five minutes in complete silence.

By the time he stepped forward at last, the woodland looked still and empty.

He smiled faintly.

“Good,” he murmured.

Then he disappeared too.

Too many amateurs chose the nearest cover when panic met opportunity. Ronan moved deeper, crossed stone when possible, and used the wind well enough to break easy scent tracking. He kept low without flattening himself unnaturally and avoided obvious visual traps.

Cassian crouched beside a patch of disturbed earth and brushed two fingers across it.

It was faint.

The boy had reduced pressure on the outer step to keep the track from sinking fully.

Not enough, but far above ordinary student instinct.

Cassian rose and kept moving.

He did not hurry.

There was no need.

Up ahead, Ronan shifted from one patch of cover to another, using a fallen trunk to screen movement before sliding into a shallow hollow half-hidden by roots and shadow. He slowed his breathing. Counted his heartbeats and let his body settle.

Do not think like prey. Be the hunter.

Ronan listened closely.

Wind through thin branches. Distant birds. The dry scrape of leaves turning over stone.

There was nothing. Too quiet.

His shoulders tightened slightly.

He moved again.

A heartbeat later, a training knife buried itself in the tree trunk he had just abandoned.

Ronan’s eyes sharpened.

Cassian’s voice drifted through the woods.

“First mistake,” he called lazily. “You trusted the silence.”

Ronan did not answer.

He changed direction at once.

Downslope this time, using the uneven ground to break line of sight. He cut through a patch of thornbrush, took the shallow pain without reacting, and reached a narrow depression between two stones.

“This won’t work. I have to keep moving.”

“Perhaps you can go faster,” Cassian called lazily. “Unless you’re not taking this seriously.”

Using the stones as cover, Ronan broke line of sight and slipped into the bushes.

Cassian stepped over the spot Ronan had abandoned and let his senses spread wide.

The birds in one patch of canopy had gone quiet too neatly.

Cassian changed course.

Ronan caught a flash of steel through the leaves and nearly cursed.

Too fast. Not physically.

Cassian was moving through the woods as though the entire environment had already confessed to him.

Ronan rolled back, then stopped himself.

Without wasting a single motion, Ronan broke toward the fallen trees. During the escape, he reached down, smeared dirt across the edge of his sleeve to dull the color, then lowered himself against a fractured stone rise where broken shadow hid the outline of his frame.

Breathe smaller.

Think colder.

Cassian passed within eight steps.

Seven.

Six.

Ronan felt his pulse slow by force.

Cassian’s gaze slid over the rocks once.

Then away.

He kept walking.

Ronan did not move.

Ten breaths.

Twelve.

Fifteen.

Only then did he let the tension ease a fraction.

“Second mistake,” Cassian said from directly above him.

Ronan moved instantly.

Cassian dropped from the stone ledge with one hand reaching for his shoulder. Ronan twisted under it, drove low, and used the slope to slip out of the angle. For one brief moment he had no choice but to accelerate properly.

Fast.

Too fast for an ordinary student.

He cleared the lower rocks in a burst and vanished through a stand of thin trees before Cassian’s grip could close.

Cassian straightened.

There it was. The old Berserker bloodline in the Veyr line. Brief, violent, efficient—and far stronger than it should have been in a boy his age.

He laughed once under his breath.

“So you do know how to move.”

Ronan did not answer, but inside, his stomach had gone cold.

He had shown too much. Not enough to expose everything. But enough to confirm Cassian’s suspicion.

Careless. No, it was forced.

For the next twenty minutes, the game became ugly.

Cassian cornered him twice more.

Once near a dead streambed where Ronan used loose shale to trigger a false slide and mask a change in direction.

Once near the roots of a storm-felled tree where Cassian said, conversationally, from somewhere unseen, “If you hide your body and leave your killing intent exposed, I might as well hang a bell on you.”

Ronan learned quickly.

Or rather, this was what he had always been.

He began using misdirection more aggressively, bent grass one way and moved another, disturbed low branches at eye level, then crawled under stone shadow.

He used light against itself, letting the shifting leaves break up the outline of his face.

Cassian hounded him through all of it.

Ronan could not see him most of the time, but he felt him everywhere.

A pebble from the left, a knife from the back and a voice from the top.

This was not training.

It was psychological warfare disguised as exercise.

By the time the hour neared its end, Ronan was breathing harder than he wanted, dirt-streaked, scratched, and furious at how close he had come to being caught multiple times.

But he was still free. That was all that mattered.

He crouched beneath a collapsed stone shelf near the boundary line and listened carefully.

Nothing. Silence again.

For the first time since entering the woods, Ronan allowed himself to think he might actually succeed.

He studied the terrain once more and made the least bad choice: remain still, conserve sound, trust the clock.

A minute passed.

Ronan’s fingers loosened slightly.

One more minute.

Perhaps the man had finally lost the trail.

Perhaps—

“Third mistake,” Cassian said softly.

Ronan froze.

The voice came not from ahead, not from behind, but from the narrow blind angle just above his right shoulder.

Impossible.

Cassian crouched on the stone shelf overhead, one elbow resting on one knee, looking down at him with mild disappointment.

“You started thinking about the hour,” he said. “You should have been thinking about me.”

There was nowhere left to run, Ronan was cornered.

Suddenly—

Cassian felt a strange tug run through his body, and his movement faltered for a brief moment.

Ronan seized the opening and slipped free.

“Oh?” Cassian murmured. “Now that is interesting. Madeline’s bloodline too… I didn’t expect you to inherit both.”

So that was the second bloodline. Blood control. Weak for now, brief and unstable, but real.

“Now I may actually have to try a little harder,” Cassian said. “I can’t lose on the first lesson.”

Cassian disappeared.

Ronan felt Cassian’s presence vanish all at once. He stopped just long enough to check.

A tap landed lightly on his shoulder. For one blank instant, Ronan’s mind stopped.

It looked effortless. A moment later, Ronan was slammed into the ground.

“That was close,” Cassian said mildly. “You almost slipped away.”

“And that is time,” he said.

Ronan drew one controlled breath, then another.

“How?” he asked before he could stop himself.

Cassian’s mouth curved slightly.

“Better question,” he said. “You don’t get it today.”

Ronan stared at him.

Cassian turned and began walking back toward the academy as though nothing important had happened.

“Your intent was too bright,” Cassian said. “Hiding your body was never going to be enough.”

Ronan followed after a second, jaw tight.

Cassian continued, almost idly.

“I’ll give you credit for the surprise,” Cassian said. “But that is not enough.”

—

The academy walls came back into view through the trees, grey in the falling afternoon light.

Ronan was tired, dirty, and hungry. But more than anything, he was curious.

“How did he catch me at the end? There was no way someone at the Awakened level should have kept up after that pause.”

Cassian stopped at the edge of the field and glanced back at him.

“Tomorrow,” he said, “same time.”

Ronan said nothing.

Cassian smiled faintly.

“Try not to disappoint me before then.”

Then he walked off toward the compound, hands in his pockets, looking for all the world like a lazy instructor after an unremarkable afternoon.

Ronan stood in place for a long moment.

The rumors had been wrong.

This man was not merely the worst teacher in Ashgrove.

He was something far more dangerous.

And for the first time in years, Ronan thought that might not be a bad thing.