The training grounds of Veleth had never seen such silence.

  No laughter from idle children. No bark-wrestling contests between boys too big for their tunics. Just the steady rhythm of breath, the shifting of stances, and the faint rasp of spears over hardened soil.

  Kaelen stood before thirty villagers—no longer just farmers, bark-dyers, and weavers. Today, they were something else. Something in-between what they’d been… and what they might become.

  Rhen stood among them.

  He hadn’t asked for special treatment. When Kaelen stepped onto the field that morning, Rhen was already there, barefoot like the rest, his grip tight on a practice spear, jaw locked in quiet resolve.

  Kaelen hadn’t said a word.

  He didn’t need to.

  They would walk this path together—not as friends, but as blades being sharpened on the same whetstone.

  Kaelen stepped into the center of the field.

  “You will learn how to move,” he said, voice even and clear. “Not like men chasing prey. Not like children chasing shadows. But like shields—heavy, silent, and unshakable.”

  He dropped his spear into the dirt and raised his hands.

  Feet shoulder-width. Knees soft. Shoulders relaxed.

  Then he moved.

  Step back. Pivot. Diagonal shift. Anchor foot, then flow.

  Smooth, like wind around a stone. No wasted energy. No gaps to exploit.

  “This,” Kaelen said, “is called Tir’s Anchor.”

  The name wasn’t Ederon.

  It came from somewhere far behind his current life—from his former world, where he had been a cadet training for the Dominion’s frontline. Tir’s Anchor had been the first of the “Core Twelve”—a movement system designed to create soldiers who could not be knocked down, even in chaos.

  He remembered it vividly.

  The old gravel field. The sharp-voiced instructor. The feel of soaked uniforms sticking to his chest during rain drills. The sting of failure. The bruises from falling, again and again, until his muscles remembered what his pride couldn’t.

  “If your root breaks,” the instructor had said, “you break. Be the anchor. Not the leaf.”

  Now Kaelen passed that lesson to others.

  One by one, he walked the line of recruits, correcting foot placements with the end of his staff.

  “No. Heel soft. You’re stamping, not stepping.”

  “You’re falling forward. Recenter your hips. Move with weight, not speed.”

  He stopped beside Rhen.

  Rhen’s brow was furrowed. His movements were off by just a beat—not wrong, but not right either. Like a song played by someone who hadn’t heard the rhythm before.

  “You’re fighting your own limbs,” Kaelen said.

  Rhen exhaled through his nose. “Feels wrong.”

  “Because your body hasn’t caught up with your mind yet. Keep going.”

  Rhen nodded. No complaint. No ego.

  The group moved in repetition. Footwork. Reset. Movement again.

  By the fourth pass, their steps began to whisper together.

  Kaelen walked through the ranks.

  “You’re learning to move like warriors—not fast, not wild. Grounded. Controlled.”

  He raised his staff and demonstrated the second sequence: a low sweep, pivot, weight transfer, and shoulder turn into a thrust.

  The move wasn’t fancy. But it worked.

  It worked in rain. In mud. In snow.

  He knew.

  He’d used it more times than he could count.

  Back in the war camps, during the Seventeen Fronts campaign, it had saved his life against an ax-wielding mercenary from the Fledgling Coast.

  Now he was teaching it to bark-dyers and basket-makers.

  One by one, they repeated it.

  Some nearly tripped.

  Others overextended.

  Kaelen didn’t shout. Didn’t scold.

  He corrected with quiet efficiency.

  He stopped beside a girl who wore a sling of dried herbs around her waist—one of Elder Taval’s herbalists.

  “You fight like someone used to dodging roots and snakes,” Kaelen said. “Good instinct. Keep your spine lower.”

  She adjusted. Tried again. Better.

  He passed Rhen once more. Rhen was sweating now, a line of dirt smudging his cheek.

  “You’re thinking too much,” Kaelen murmured.

  “I don’t know how not to,” Rhen replied between breaths.

  Kaelen smirked. “Then think with your legs.”

  The drills stretched on.

  Hour by hour, the field filled with the sounds of effort. Grit. Momentum. And pain.

  Rhen collapsed first—flat onto his back, gasping, laughing like someone who’d survived a storm. His body shook with the ache of spent energy.

  “Spirits,” he muttered, staring at the sky. “You barely even look winded.”

  Kaelen didn’t smile—but his eyes glinted.

  “Maybe I’m just better than you.”

  “You think?” Rhen groaned. “Guess I’ll need to work harder.”

  Kaelen’s gaze turned toward the line of trainees—some still standing. Most hunched. But none walking away.

  Good.

  The roots were starting to grow.

  He took a breath, deep and measured, staring into the high canopy.

  Somewhere deep in his soul, he felt it again—the cadet uniform. The drills. The failures.

  But this time, he wasn’t the one being trained.

  He was the one forging them.

  Three months.

  That was all it took for the soil to grow roots where there was only stone before.

  Where once there had been farmers dragging their feet and bark-weavers tripping over their own limbs, now there stood men and women whose bodies moved with rhythm and edge.

  Warriors.

  Or something close.

  Kaelen stood with his arms folded at the edge of the training field, the familiar hard-packed dirt now worn smooth by months of motion. The canopy above filtered golden light through leaves that never quite stopped whispering, casting the field in bands of sun and shadow.

  They were practicing Tir’s Anchor again—the same footwork drill they’d learned on day one. But now…

  Now it was different.

  Fluid. Grounded. Sharp.

  No more clumsy pivots. No more heavy footing or flinching at each strike.

  They flowed like one body broken into thirty.

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  Kaelen said nothing as he walked among them, his eyes scanning for mistakes, for hesitation.

  He found almost none.

  “They move like warriors now,” he thought.

  He remembered the first week—how their limbs tangled with themselves, how every correction felt like pushing boulders up a slope.

  Now, he barely had to speak.

  The drills ended mid-afternoon, when the sun dipped just far enough to cast long shadows across the trees.

  Kaelen raised one hand.

  “Break,” he said. “Pairs. Hand-to-hand.”

  There was no groaning. No dragging of feet.

  They split into their usual sparring partners, all moving like they were itching to begin.

  Rhen and Jorin met at the center as always—two halves of a sharpening wheel. Their styles were starkly different—Rhen fought like an anchor, weighty and patient. Jorin like a viper, quick to strike, quick to retreat.

  Their fists and elbows blurred in the dimming light. Dust flew. Feet stamped hard.

  But neither went down.

  Kaelen nodded slightly to himself. “They’re ready.”

  But not just them.

  Two others had caught his eye in recent weeks—two he watched more closely than the rest.

  The first was Thalenya, the girl from Elder Taval’s herb circle. She was his age, maybe younger by a few moons. She had dark, stone-gray eyes and high, slanted cheekbones beneath a fringe of moss-black hair tied behind her ears with braided twine. Her skin was a sun-darkened bronze like most Ederon, and she moved like someone who never needed to be told anything twice.

  Thalenya never smiled during training.

  But she never broke rhythm either.

  She was precise. Surgical. She absorbed instructions like roots drinking water—and delivered her strikes with the cold calm of someone who understood pressure points more intimately than most warriors.

  She wasn’t fast. But she was exact.

  Then there was Vaela, from Elder Mira’s district.

  She was older—maybe fifteen—taller than most of the other girls and quick as riverlight. Her build was lithe, shaped more by speed than strength. But what marked her was her intuition. She watched once—and copied perfectly.

  Feints. Off-balances. Redirects.

  It didn’t matter what Kaelen demonstrated—Vaela mirrored it faster than anyone else. She didn’t ask questions. She moved. And unlike many of the others, she never got frustrated when corrected.

  That, Kaelen respected.

  Her skin was lighter than Thalenya’s—reddish in tone, with long, jet-black hair she kept tied in a knot high behind her head. She moved with effortless poise, her feet always quiet.

  She didn’t look like a fighter.

  But she sparred like one.

  As Kaelen paced the edge of the field, he watched them all. Thalenya pinning a larger opponent with a sudden lock around the knees. Vaela slipping behind her sparring partner with a knee feint and dropping them with a shoulder trip.

  Even the clumsiest of the original group now held their ground.

  They weren’t just survivors anymore.

  They were trained.

  As the drills came to a close, Kaelen gave the signal—two sharp claps—and the volunteers slowly broke off, breathing hard but not collapsing like they used to.

  Jorin wiped a blood-trickle from his nose and grinned at Rhen. Rhen, breathless, dropped to one knee and gave him a light punch on the shoulder.

  “You’re faster,” he muttered.

  “You’re heavier,” Jorin replied.

  “Not the insult you think it is.”

  Kaelen watched them with a faint smile at the corners of his mouth.

  Then he stepped forward, planting his staff in the ground.

  The sun was dipping lower now—dusk slipping into place like a whisper.

  “You’ve passed the foundation,” Kaelen said. “You’ve endured three moons of drills, bruises, and broken patterns. You move like warriors now. You strike like warriors.”

  “But starting tomorrow,” he continued, his voice steady, “you will think like warriors.”

  A hush settled over the group.

  Kaelen raised his chin.

  “The drills are behind you. Now we begin tactics. Scenarios. Group movements. Battlefield structure. Scouting. Trap design. Threat evaluation.”

  He looked out at them, thirty sets of eyes catching the fading gold light.

  “I don’t want to teach you to fight.”

  “I want to teach you how to win.”

  He let those words settle.

  Then, with a sharp nod, he turned away.

  “Rest. Eat well. Tomorrow, you learn how to turn knowledge into survival.”

  The crowd didn’t cheer. Didn’t shout.

  They stood in still silence—like warriors awaiting a new front.

  And Kaelen walked from the training field with Rhen beside him, dusk falling behind them like a curtain.

  The jungle was quiet.

  Not the silence of emptiness—but the silence of awareness.

  Every leaf, every creak of root and bend of branch seemed to lean in and listen.

  Thirty volunteers stood in formation just beyond the edge of Veleth’s outer paths, where the moss grew thick on the trunks and the canopy strangled the light until it was little more than drifting beams of green.

  Kaelen faced them, arms folded behind his back, his eyes scanning each familiar face.

  Rhen stood just behind him, silent as ever, already blending into the forest without trying.

  “You all know this jungle,” Kaelen said, voice calm but certain. “You were born under its shade. You ran barefoot through its mud before you could walk on planks. You’ve climbed its trees, swum its rivers, followed its trails without needing sight.”

  He paused.

  “So I won’t teach you the jungle.”

  He let that breathe.

  “I’ll teach you how to turn it into a blade.”

  That got their attention.

  A few eyebrows raised. Jorin tilted his head slightly. Thalenya crossed her arms with quiet curiosity. Vaela stood straight-backed, already calculating.

  Kaelen continued.

  “There are only thirty of us. Maybe more, in time. But we will never be a kingdom’s army. We won’t field battalions. We won’t hold battle lines.”

  “But we don’t have to.”

  He stepped forward, gesturing to the terrain around them.

  “Because the jungle is not an obstacle.”

  “It’s an ally.”

  He motioned to a large map scrawled in charcoal across bark parchment stretched between two low branches. A layout of the region—terrain, elevation, river paths, chokepoints.

  Kaelen tapped three points rapidly with a stick.

  “Here. Here. And here. This is where most armies fall apart.”

  “Because organized soldiers rely on three things: line-of-sight, solid footing, and predictable movement.”

  He drew a jagged line through each route.

  “We will deny them all three.”

  A few of the volunteers leaned in, their faces sharpening with interest.

  Kaelen turned toward the thicker brush.

  “First tactic: Hit and Fade. We strike from cover, never more than four heartbeats. You ambush, disable, and vanish. No second engagements. No pursuit.”

  He moved quickly into the underbrush, demonstrating how to weave between low ferns and step silently on moss-covered roots.

  “You will learn to move without snapping twigs. You will learn to breathe without fogging the air.”

  He reappeared behind them, and half the group startled.

  Jorin gave a low whistle.

  “Second tactic,” Kaelen said, now walking toward a narrow animal trail flanked by rocks. “Echo Lines.”

  “We set false movements. Throw voices. Dislodge stones. Build trails that lead nowhere—draw enemies into kill zones or confusion spirals.”

  He looked to Vaela.

  “Tomorrow you and three others will craft a looped trail and see how long it takes the rest to realize they’re walking in a circle.”

  Vaela grinned.

  Kaelen turned.

  “Third tactic: Tree Reapers. Our archers will learn to fire from above, not from flat ground. You’ll learn to climb and shoot. To move across branches, not under them. That’s where you’ll kill the first wave.”

  He tapped a nearby trunk.

  “And more importantly—you’ll never stay in the same tree twice.”

  Kaelen let that land.

  Then his voice lowered slightly.

  “Last tactic for today. The Silence Drop. It’s used only in chaos—when enemies are spread and searching. One strike. Fast. Silent. No bodies left in open view.”

  He picked up a carved branch and demonstrated—how to drop from above, strike a joint, cover the mouth, and drag the body into the underbrush in less than ten seconds.

  The demonstration was quiet. Clinical.

  Thalenya watched him with an intensity that unnerved even Vaela.

  When Kaelen stood upright again, his tone shifted—just slightly.

  “These tactics aren’t glorious. They won’t win you honor songs.”

  “But they’ll keep you alive.”

  He looked around at them, no longer boys and girls, but silhouettes of what would come.

  “And more importantly—they’ll keep your families alive.”

  No one spoke.

  But something in the air had changed.

  Not fear.

  Not awe.

  Readiness.

  Kaelen stood on a high ridge overlooking a narrow basin where tree roots braided together like sleeping serpents. Behind him, the thirty warriors stood in two loose lines, sweat already on their brows despite the early hour.

  “This isn’t a game,” Kaelen said, voice calm but commanding. “This is the first time you’ll see the jungle fight back.”

  He stepped forward, gesturing to the terrain.

  “You know this place. But today, you’ll use it like never before.”

  He pointed to ten trainees standing to his left. Among them were Rhen, Jorin, Vaela, and Thalenya. The most adaptive. The sharpest minds.

  “You ten,” Kaelen said, “are now Ederon.”

  “Scouts. Hunters. Shadows of the forest.”

  He turned to the remaining twenty.

  “You are invaders. Kors. Loud. Confident. Trained to fight face-to-face. But you don’t know this place. And you won’t know who’s watching.”

  The twenty exchanged glances. Some grinned, others narrowed their eyes.

  “Your objective,” Kaelen continued, “is to move from this ridge to the southern ravine clearing—without losing more than half your number. You may work in teams or go as one. Choose your approach.”

  He turned to the Ederon ten.

  “Your job is to stop them.”

  “Not by meeting them head-on—but by doing what this jungle was born to do.”

  “Confuse them. Divide them. Scare them. Wound them if you can—but above all, slow them. Misdirect them. Force them to retreat.”

  He raised a hand.

  “Use the drills I gave you. Tree reapers. Echo lines. The silence drop. Hit and fade. Today is not about strength—it’s about control.”

  He stepped back.

  “You have five minutes. Ederon, vanish.”

  Rhen and the others were already gone before he finished the sentence. No sounds. No branches snapped. One moment they were standing—next, the vines had swallowed them.

  Vaela melted into a bramble thicket.

  Thalenya rolled beneath a moss-bed and disappeared.

  Even Jorin, once the loudest in movement, now moved like river water—quiet and unseen.

  Kaelen turned to the twenty.

  “Invaders. Your time begins now.”

  —

  The first five minutes passed with cautious movement.

  The invader group split quickly—half stayed in a cluster, half broke into scattered threes and fours, sweeping through the jungle with measured speed. They weren’t charging. They remembered Kaelen’s warnings.

  But they weren’t cautious enough.

  From a ridge above, Vaela struck first.

  An arrow padded in tree-fur slammed into a stump six inches from the foot of a trainee named Lero.

  He flinched.

  Too late.

  From the left, a whisper-silent figure dropped from a tree—Thalenya—her blade (wooden and dulled for training) tapping his shoulder twice.

  “Dead,” she said, and vanished back into the canopy.

  One down.

  The group recoiled. They drew practice spears. Their eyes searched wildly.

  Another yell—far to the right.

  Two invaders had found a snare line. Too late. As one ducked beneath a low branch, a trigger vine yanked and flung thick moss across their eyes. Vaela darted out and touched both on the chest.

  “Dead.”

  Two more.

  Rhen and Jorin weren’t using snares.

  They were using doubt.

  Every ten steps, they threw a stone. Broke a twig. Whistled.

  The invaders began to slow. Argue. They couldn’t agree where to go.

  Three scattered.

  One took a separate path—and never returned.

  “Dead,” Rhen whispered from a tree, as he touched the lone boy’s back while he stood confused.

  Back on the main trail, a group of six pushed forward—angry now, frustrated.

  Kaelen watched from the treetop, arms folded, expression unreadable.

  He nodded to himself.

  It was working.

  —

  By the time an hour had passed, only nine invaders reached the ravine.

  Jorin and Vaela dropped into the clearing last, no weapons raised—just satisfied smirks.

  Thalenya sat already on a log, legs crossed, sipping from a water gourd like a cat watching the last rat enter the trap.

  Kaelen stepped forward from the high ridge and whistled once.

  Everyone looked up.

  “All gather,” he said. “North edge.”

  Ten minutes later, the group stood—bruised, panting, wide-eyed.

  Twenty invaders had become nine. Not a single defender had been “killed.”

  Kaelen said nothing for a full minute.

  Then he finally spoke.

  “You now understand what I meant.”

  He turned slowly, eyes resting on each of them.

  “The jungle will not protect you by accident. You must become the jungle.”

  He pointed to the invader group.

  “You were faster, stronger, better equipped—but the moment you lost direction, you lost each other.”

  He looked to the ten Ederon.

  “You used shadows. Terrain. Sound. You moved as one.”

  He stepped closer.

  “You are no longer thirty villagers with spears.”

  “You are thirty wolves with knives.”

  A hush fell.

  Kaelen let it settle.

  “Tomorrow, we do it again. But this time—” he smiled faintly, “—the invaders strike first.”