The sound of his own heartbeat jolted him awake: quick and insistent. Kai Fischer opened his eyes to darkness interrupted only by the faintest rim of pearl behind the dormitory shutters. The cold struck him first—a thinness in reality that clung to his skin, more unsettling than any chill of winter.
Maya called it Entropy—the world forgetting how to be solid because the ley lines beneath the floorboards had finally run dry.
He lay perfectly still for a few breaths, waiting to see if any of the others had stirred. Dormitories at the Shenya Orphanage followed the logic of a beehive: order, quiet, and a communal sense that any disturbance in the hive would bring the wrath of the Matron, Maya, upon you. It was a logic that suited Kai. He'd never liked being noticed.
But he had things to do before the sun came up.
Kai pushed aside the thin covers, careful not to let the faded plaid flutter, and eased his feet to the floor. The boards groaned minutely, a sound that summoned a brief spike of dread to his chest. Every morning, there seemed a little less orphanage to walk on. The geometry shifted each night; the cots never seemed quite the same distance apart from dusk to dawn.
He crept forward, but halfway to the door, the floor beneath his leading foot simply gave up.
Kai froze mid-step, his muscles screaming as he shifted his weight back just in time. Directly beneath his toes, the wood grain lost its color and bled into matte-grey static, shimmering like a wound that refused to heal. It wasn't just a patch anymore; it was an active erasure. His stomach did a slow, icy roll as he watched the veins of the wood dissolve and reconstitute, flickering like a low-resolution screen.
He hovered there, one foot suspended over the void. The emptiness was mesmerizing, a cold pond calling him to its depths. He remembered the whispered stories of Toma, the boy who'd stepped into such a glitch and never quite come back out. With a sharp intake of breath, Kai forced his body to move, overextending his stride to leap past the trembling patch of floor.
He landed silently near Ryn's cot. Ryn sprawled diagonally, snoring a guttural challenge to the morning's silence. Kai didn't linger to watch; he picked his way through the rest of the landmines of Entropy until he reached the door.
He crouched by the exit and found the worn slippers he had hidden—if you left them out, they'd be claimed by another orphan or the Entropy itself. He pressed two fingers to his chest, feeling the steel pendant of his father's badge beneath his shirt. He didn't think of the hero from the songs; he remembered the rough, calloused weight of his father's hand on his shoulder and the promise that he'd be back by morning.
He eased open the door, careful not to let the hinges sing, and slipped into the corridor. The orphanage was darker here, the walls less real. Every step was a negotiation between memory and willpower; you had to refuse to let the emptiness notice you.
Kai moved faster now, down the stairwell and past the cold kitchen hearth. The yard beyond lay glassy in the predawn gloom—frost coating the patchy grass in brittle white. He closed the scullery door with a soft click and stood in the biting air.
The training dummy waited at the edge of the yard, a crude post with a gourd for a head. His wooden practice sword hung from the fence. Kai gripped it with both hands, his knuckles whitening as the aches in his shoulders warned him of the grueling hour to come.
He started slow, as always. Simple strikes, left to right, right to left, stepping in and out.
With each swing, flashes of fragmented memory flickered in his mind—chaotic images of the Brumo Cataclysm. He saw the sky ablaze, heard the screams of his neighbors, and felt the tremors of the ground beneath him as he clutched his father's hand, too young to fully understand the horror unfolding around him.
His muscles complained bitterly, but he pressed on, counting each swing in his head, the images fueling his spirit. Fifty. A hundred. The sword felt heavier with every pass, weighted by the burden of those memories. By the second set, his forearms burned. By the third, his breath came in short, frosty puffs, his brow beaded with sweat that the morning refused to dry.
He shifted to the forms he'd learned at the chapter house, the Knight's Path—the way his father would have done it. Block, parry, feint. Move the body as one unit.
Kai was not good at any of it. His left foot dragged on turns, and his arms lacked the reach to make some of the moves look elegant. The dummy mocked him with every misstep, the gourd's painted grin splitting in the blue half-light. He practiced anyway. The only way out was through.
Halfway through his right wrist buckled on a downswing. The wooden sword slipped from his grip and landed with a dull thunk in the grass. Kai went to pick it up and hissed—his palm already blistering from the friction. He gritted his teeth, wiped his hand on his shirt, and started again.
The next set of strikes was worse, if possible. But he did not stop.
He collapsed onto the grass, legs folded beneath him, the wooden sword lying across his lap. For a moment he let himself feel it: the exhaustion, the soreness, the utter futility of it all.
He would never be a knight. Everyone knew it, even the instructors at the chapter house. He was a curiosity, a shadow of a name that once meant something. The sickly son of a hero, the orphan who kept showing up.
He unclasped the pendant at his neck, the simple steel disk cool and heavy in his hand. Alaric Fischer's only possession to survive the Brumo Cataclysm. The town's last hope, they'd called his father. The hero whose laughter echoed like a warm melody in the hearts of those he protected, who faced down the demons and gave Shenya a chance. The stories were told at every festival, the songs louder with each retelling.
But Kai remembered only snatches of the man's voice, a rough hand on his shoulder, and the faint scent of pine and smoke that lingered from his father's worn cloak, along with one final promise: that he'd be back in the morning.
Kai looked down at the steel disk, thumb tracing the edge. He traced the two crossed swords and the shield behind. It was a sign of the Second Order—the fighting line. The First Order, the mages and scholars, rarely came this far north, preferring their hidden academies and their arcane wars. He pressed it to his lips, and then to his forehead, as he had every morning since the day it was given to him.
"I'll make you proud," he whispered. The words came out raw, barely audible. "I'll prove I'm worthy of your name."
He squeezed the pendant tight, so hard the rim bit into his palm.
Kai stood, brushing frost from his knees. The memorial stone waited at the edge of the town green, past the fence and down the worn dirt path. He walked it every morning, and this day was no different. The cold gnawed at his ankles, and his breath came white and uneven, but he kept moving, clutching the practice sword in one hand.
The memorial stone was not grand. Just a slab of granite, worn at the edges, set upright at the end of a row of wildflowers. Below it, a crack in the stone, patched long ago—a deep, jagged line that they said was left by the shadow-beast his father defeated, one of the last true Gloom Incursions. The words were simple, too:
ALARIC FISCHER
KNIGHT-CAPTAIN
HERO OF BRUMO
Someone—probably Maya from the orphanage—had left a fresh sprig of pine on the base. Kai knelt before the stone, legs numb, and set the sword across his thighs.
He closed his eyes, letting the silence fill him. The world was quiet here. No one to judge, or snicker, or remind him that heroes' sons should be bigger, or braver, or at least not the first to fall behind in drills. Just the stone, the sky, and the cold that seeped all the way in.
He reached for the pendant again, clutching it with both hands. "Morning, Father," he said. "Hope I didn't wake you. I've been practicing, but my turns are still awful. I tried to as Vantis says—shoulders loose, eyes up—but I keep losing the target. I'll do better tomorrow."
He waited, as if the stone or the sky would answer him. They never did.
But the ritual was its own comfort. He bowed his head to the ground, pressing his forehead against the rough frost-blistered earth, and let the world be quiet for as long as it wanted.
Then he stood, brushed his hands, and started back toward the warmth of the orphanage, the steel disk pressing a steady, silent weight against his heart.
Back inside, the heat of the kitchen walloped him.
Kai set the wooden sword behind the door and slipped into the narrow galley where Maya stood with her back to him, stirring the cauldron. Her sleeves were rolled up, her hair a tidy gray knot, and she sang under her breath—a song with too many verses to ever remember. The light in here came from two low windows and the ever-present glow of the oven.
She didn't look at him, but her voice sharpened on the next verse. "You're early, Kai."
He shrugged and flinched, only then realizing how much his shoulder hurt. "Couldn't sleep."
Maya turned, ladle in hand. The years had left lines around her eyes and mouth, but nothing could blunt the way she seemed to see straight through a person. "And you thought battering that dummy would help?"
Kai offered a lopsided smile. "It might, eventually."
She grunted and returned to her work. "If you break yourself, who'll I have to chase Lin and Cori when they get into the jam again? Or is that your plan, to get out of chores?" She gave the porridge another stir, then set the ladle aside. "Sit."
The table was already laid—bowls, spoons, even a wedge of yesterday's bread waiting on a plate. Kai sat, slow and careful, and tried not to make a face when the bruise on his hip touched the bench. Maya noticed, of course.
She ladled out a generous portion for him, then another for herself. "Eat. You look like a ghost."
"Thank you," he said, and meant it.
The other orphans trickled in, sleepy-eyed and grumpy. The twins fought over the heel of the bread, while Ryn claimed the biggest bowl for himself and rolled his eyes when Kai didn't protest. Lin and Cori sat on either side of him, as if his mere presence would keep them from trouble. Maya's table rules were clear: no fighting, no shouting, no complaints. This morning, the rule seemed to be "no talking unless you have something worth saying."
Kai ate quietly, eyes half-lidded. The porridge was hot and sweetened with honey, the bread fresh enough to still smell like yeast. With every mouthful, the aches in his arms dulled a little. But the tiredness was deeper today, harder to shake. He pushed through, finishing his bowl.
Maya watched him over the rim of her cup. "You need rest more than training, Kai. You'll wear yourself to sticks."
He shrugged, and she fixed him with that look—the one that made him wish for a helmet. "Vantis says I'll never build up if I don't put in the hours."
"Your instructor isn't the one who'll be scraping you off the ground come winter." Maya's voice was soft but edged with steel. She reached across the table and set her hand lightly on his. Her hands were always warm, even in the cold. "You can't fight the world, you know. It's too big for one person."
He tried a joke, because that was easier than talking about feelings. "That's what my father thought, too. But he still tried."
She smiled, but it was a sad one. "Yes. And that's why I worry."
He didn't want to talk about it anymore. He scraped his bowl clean and stood, gathering dishes so the younger kids wouldn't have to. "I need to get to the chapter house," he said, voice careful.
Maya gave him a look that said she doubted the urgency, but she let him go. As he pulled on his coat, she stopped him at the door.
"Your father would be proud of your heart, Kai. I just wish you could see you don't need to break it to prove yourself," she said, her voice gentle now. "He'd want you to be whole. Promise me you'll take care?"
He nodded, but they both knew he wouldn't slow down. The best he could do was survive the day and come home for supper.
He stepped into the cold again, the steel disk at his throat grounding him. The chapter house bell was already tolling in the distance.