A few weeks passed.
They did not announce themselves as change. Days folded into one another with familiar rhythm—morning drills, afternoon duties, evenings that grew quieter the longer they were observed. To anyone watching from a distance, nothing about my routine appeared altered.
Only the archmage's presence marked the difference.
He taught me without ever calling it teaching.
There were no demonstrations. No incantations. No attempts at shaping or release. What he gave me instead was language—frameworks for things I had already felt but never named. He spoke of pressure as alignment, of instability as imbalance rather than excess, of control not as dominance but as negotiation.
Theory only.
Always theory.
Whenever I asked when practice would begin, he answered the same way.
"When the world asks first."
The world did.
The announcement came during morning assembly, delivered with the same tone used for routine rotations and disciplinary notices. A practical evaluation. Field-based. Mandatory for advanced trainees.
Monster extermination.
No instructors.
No intervention.
The words settled differently than steel drills ever had.
This was not training meant to refine form. It was meant to expose judgment—to see who froze, who panicked, who overextended when the ground pushed back.
I felt the pressure inside me shift, attentive.
Preparation was brief.
Supplies were issued. Teams assigned. Routes marked on worn parchment that treated danger as geography rather than uncertainty. Some trainees hid their nerves behind bravado. Others grew quiet, checking straps and blades with obsessive care.
I did neither.
The archmage did not seek me out before departure.
That absence was deliberate.
As we assembled at the gates, weapons resting heavier than usual at our sides, I realized what this exercise truly was.
Not a test of strength.
A test of response.
Out there, there would be no space to dull intent safely. No instructor to step in when balance tipped too far. Restraint would not simply distort outcomes—it would choose them.
Theory had taught me what might happen.
Practice would decide who paid for it.
When the gates opened and we stepped beyond the boundary of routine, the pressure inside me did not surge.
It settled.
As if the world had finally asked the question it had been forming all along.