The cuts came before breakfast.

  Aldric stood in the supply hall with the other spellblade disciples, watching the quartermaster's assistant read from a scroll. Behind him, two mage disciples leaned against the wall, arms crossed, smirking at the spectacle.

  "Stamina draughts: reduced from six vials per month to two." The assistant didn't look up from the scroll. "Healing salve allocation: suspended until further notice. Training equipment requisitions: denied pending Inspector Wyndthorpe's review. Private training room access: revoked. Additional meal portions: reduced to standard allocation."

  "That's not—" Therin started.

  "Those are the new allocations." The assistant's voice was flat, bored. "If you have complaints, take them up with the elder council."

  Therin's mouth opened, then closed. Around him, the other spellblade disciples stood in silence, their faces a mixture of shock and resignation. Dace had gone pale. Kira's jaw was tight. A younger disciple Aldric didn't know well—Maren, maybe—was blinking rapidly, fighting back tears.

  "Is there anything else?" The assistant finally looked up, his expression making clear he hoped the answer was no.

  No one spoke.

  "Then you're dismissed. Next group."

  Aldric turned and walked out with the others. The morning air was cold, biting at his exposed skin, but he barely felt it. The numbers kept running through his head.

  Six vials to two. Healing salve suspended. Equipment denied.

  They'd been struggling before. Now they were being strangled.

  ---

  The morning training session was half-empty.

  Aldric counted heads as he walked onto the grounds. Eight spellblade disciples where there should have been fifteen. The others had been pulled away—assigned to "support duties" that amounted to cleaning the mage disciples' quarters, running messages between buildings, and hauling supplies for the inspection.

  "Support duties." Kira's voice was bitter as she struck the training post. "They've never made us do support duties before. Not like this."

  "They're making a point." Aldric took his position beside her, beginning his own forms. "We're being shown our place."

  "Shown our place? We've always known our place." She hit the post harder, the impact echoing across the empty grounds. "Bottom of the pile. Worthless. Waste of resources."

  The words echoed Caelen's. Aldric wondered if that was intentional—if someone had deliberately chosen language that would reinforce the inspector's framing.

  He focused on his technique instead. The mana flowed through his arm—smoother now, the paths he'd discovered with Garrett's help becoming more natural with each practice. The glow in his right hand was faint but consistent. Progress. Small, but real.

  The concept had become a mantra. Every time the mana caught, every time it bled off at a wrong angle, he adjusted. The corrections were tiny—fractions of degrees, shifts in pressure—but they added up. What had felt impossible a week ago now felt merely difficult.

  Around him, the other spellblade disciples trained in silence. No jokes. No complaints. Just the rhythmic sounds of bodies in motion, punctuated by the occasional impact of fist on wood.

  Therin was working through his footwork forms, but his movements were off—rushed, sloppy. Dace sat on a bench at the edge of the grounds, staring at nothing. He hadn't moved in twenty minutes.

  The audit had begun, and they were already feeling its teeth.

  ---

  Midday brought the first interview.

  Aldric was summoned to a small chamber off the main hall—one of the meeting rooms usually reserved for disciplinary hearings. The room was sparse: a wooden table, two chairs, a single window letting in grey light. No decorations. No warmth.

  Inside, Caelen Wyndthorpe sat at the table covered in documents, his pale eyes moving across a page with the mechanical precision of someone reading a ledger rather than a person's life.

  "Voss." He didn't look up. "Sit."

  Aldric sat. The chair was hard, the room cold. He kept his hands flat on his thighs, forcing himself to remain still.

  "You have been a disciple of this Order for three years." Caelen turned a page. "In that time, you have consumed resources valued at approximately forty-seven gold. Training materials, equipment, food, lodging. In return, you have demonstrated no measurable progress in external mana projection."

  The words were delivered without inflection. A statement of fact, nothing more. As if Aldric's three years of effort, his struggles, his small victories and larger defeats, could be reduced to a single number in a column.

  "My mana flows inward," Aldric said.

  "Yes. The spellblade path." Caelen finally looked up. His expression was blank—not hostile, not dismissive, just... empty. Like a mirror reflecting nothing. "A valid form of arcanism. But one that requires significantly more investment for significantly less return. The question is whether that investment is justified."

  "Less return for whom?"

  Caelen's head tilted slightly. The first sign of anything resembling interest.

  "The Order," he said. "The Ironwing Pact. The broader arcanism community. You consume resources that could be allocated to disciples with higher projected returns. This is not a moral judgment. It is a calculation."

  "And the people whose lives you're calculating?"

  "Are variables in an equation." Caelen turned another page. "I do not make the rules, Voss. I merely enforce them. And the rules state that resources should be allocated where they produce the greatest benefit."

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  Aldric's left fist tightened under the table. The steadying motion. The one Felix had taught him.

  "And if the rules are wrong?"

  Something flickered across Caelen's face. It was there and gone in an instant—too fast to identify. Curiosity? Amusement? Something else entirely?

  "That," he said, "is not a question I am authorized to answer."

  He returned to his documents. Aldric sat in silence, watching the inspector's pale eyes move across the pages, calculating the worth of human lives as if they were entries in a merchant's ledger.

  The room felt smaller than it had when he entered. The walls pressed in. The grey light from the window seemed to dim.

  After several minutes, Caelen spoke without looking up.

  "You may go. You will be summoned again if further information is required."

  Aldric stood. His legs felt stiff, his jaw tight. He walked to the door, his hand on the handle, when Caelen's voice stopped him.

  "Voss."

  He turned.

  "The scar above your brow." Caelen's gaze was fixed on him now, sharp and assessing. "I noticed it during the assembly. An old injury. But not from training."

  Aldric's hand went to his forehead instinctively, touching the crescent-shaped mark. The skin was smooth under his fingers—no raised tissue, no lingering pain. Just a pale line that had been there as long as he could remember.

  "No."

  "Curious." Caelen returned to his documents. "The records contain no mention of its origin. An oversight, perhaps. Or something else."

  The words hung in the air. Aldric felt a chill that had nothing to do with the room's temperature.

  He left without another word.

  ---

  The afternoon brought Dorian.

  Aldric was walking back from the supply hall—empty-handed, as the quartermaster had refused his request for replacement bandages—when he heard the voice behind him.

  "Voss. A word."

  He turned. Dorian Vane stood in the corridor, flanked by two other mage disciples. His arms were crossed, his expression one of casual amusement. The two behind him were grinning—the eager expressions of people who had come specifically to watch a show.

  "Dorian."

  "I heard you had an interview with the inspector." Dorian stepped closer, his boots echoing on the stone floor. "How did it go? Did he tell you what we've all been thinking? That you're a waste of space?"

  Aldric said nothing. He'd learned long ago that responding to Dorian only made things worse. The bully fed on reaction—any reaction. Anger, fear, defiance, it didn't matter. All of it was fuel.

  "Of course, you already knew that, didn't you?" Dorian's smile widened. "One gold a month. That's what they give you. One gold. Do you know what I get? Five. Five times what you're worth. And even that feels like too much for someone who'll never be more than a glorified guard."

  The two mage disciples behind him snickered.

  "Actually, scratch that. Guards have to be useful. You can't even manage that." Dorian circled Aldric slowly, his voice dropping to a mock-whisper. "I heard your friend died. The strange one. What was his name? Felix?"

  Aldric's jaw tightened.

  "Must be hard. Being so worthless that even dying for you doesn't make you worth anything." Dorian stopped in front of him, his smile cold. "Maybe he realized what a waste you were. Maybe that's why he took that arrow. Better to die than to keep pretending you had a future."

  The corridor seemed to contract. Aldric could feel his heartbeat in his ears, his blood pounding against his temples. The air felt thick, hard to breathe.

  But this wasn't about debts or frameworks. This was something else. Something darker. The kind of anger that came from somewhere older, more primal.

  He looked at Dorian—really looked, for the first time. The other boy was taller than him, broader, with the confident posture of someone who had never been told he wasn't good enough. His robes were clean and well-fitted, his equipment high-quality. Everything about him screamed privilege.

  And everything about his smile screamed contempt.

  "Are you going to say something?" Dorian's voice was mocking. "Or are you going to stand there like the worthless failure you are?"

  Aldric's knuckles ached. The mana in his right hand stirred, responding to the surge of emotion.

  He thought of Therin, assigned to clean the mage quarters while his training stagnated. He thought of Kira, striking the training post with bitter fury. He thought of Dace, sitting on the bench with his head in his hands, the weight of the system crushing him.

  He thought of Felix, taking an arrow meant for him. Dying so that Aldric could live.

  But some debts could be settled with blood.

  The thought was there before he could stop it. Dark. Violent. Wrong.

  He forced the anger down. Not here. Not now. Not like this. Dorian wanted a reaction. The inspector wanted an excuse. The system wanted him to be the villain of his own story.

  He would not give them what they wanted.

  "Move," he said quietly.

  Dorian laughed. "Or what? You'll hit me? Go ahead. Give me an excuse. The inspector is looking for reasons to expel spellblades. Assaulting a mage disciple would be a perfect one." He spread his arms wide, presenting himself as a target. "Come on, Voss. Show me what you're worth. Or is that nothing too?"

  The two mage disciples behind him shifted eagerly, sensing entertainment.

  Aldric looked at Dorian for a long moment. Then he stepped to the side and walked past him, his shoulder brushing Dorian's as he went.

  "Coward," Dorian called after him. "Worthless. Waste of resources. Your friend died for nothing! You hear me? Nothing!"

  Aldric kept walking. His jaw ached from clenching.

  He didn't look back.

  ---

  Evening found Aldric on the edge of the training grounds, alone.

  The other spellblade disciples had retreated to their quarters, exhausted and demoralized. The day's cuts had been brutal—not just in resources, but in dignity. The support duty assignments, the denied requisitions, the interviews that treated them like numbers in a ledger. Each one a small humiliation, adding up to something that felt like drowning.

  Aldric sat on a low stone wall, staring at nothing. His hands ached from clenching. The crescent-shaped scar above his brow seemed to throb, though he knew that was impossible.

  Felix's voice echoed in his memory. But so did Dorian's.

  Your friend died for nothing.

  The words were poison. He knew that. Dorian had said them to hurt him, and they had succeeded. But knowing didn't make them easier to carry.

  He thought of Caelen Wyndthorpe, sitting in that cold room, calculating the worth of human lives. He thought of the elder council, bowing and scraping, desperate to avoid the axe. He thought of the system that had produced all of this—the rules, the hierarchies, the assumptions about who mattered and who didn't.

  You have to fight it.

  But how? How did you change a system that didn't even acknowledge you existed?

  He looked down at his right hand. The mana was still there, flowing through the corrected paths. Small progress. Tiny. But real.

  Maybe that was the answer. Not fighting the system directly—that was a losing battle. But finding the places where it rubbed against itself, where the friction created gaps. Finding the angles that let you redirect force instead of absorbing it.

  Garrett had taught him that. Not about mana, but about machines. About levers and fulcrums and the way a small force, applied correctly, could move a large weight.

  You're wasting force on the wrong path.

  Aldric closed his eyes. The anger was still there, simmering beneath the surface. Dorian's words. The audit's cuts. The systematic grinding down of everyone he cared about. The scar that no one would explain, the catastrophe that no one would discuss, the friend who had died for reasons that remained unclear.

  But anger was just energy. And energy could be redirected.

  He would not fight Dorian today. He would not give the inspector the excuse he was looking for. He would not let the system win by making him its weapon.

  Instead, he would wait. He would learn. He would find the angles.

  And when the moment came—when the lever was in place and the fulcrum was set—he would apply exactly the right amount of force.

  Not for himself. For Therin. For Kira. For Dace. For all the spellblade disciples who had been told they were worthless, who had been ground down by a system that didn't care if they lived or died.

  For Felix, who had died for him, and who had taught him that loyalty was worth more than survival.

  Aldric opened his eyes. The anger was still there, but it had changed. Focused. Directed. Transformed from a weapon that could hurt him into a tool he could use.

  He stood, flexed his hands—the fists finally loosening—and walked back toward the disciple quarters.

  Tomorrow would bring more cuts. More interviews. More humiliation. The audit was just beginning, and the worst was yet to come.

  But Aldric Voss had made his choice.

  He would not submit. He would not break. And when the time came, he would make them all remember why you didn't push a man who had nothing left to lose.

  ---

  The audit's teeth sink deeper. A bully's words cut like glass. And somewhere in the darkness, a spellblade makes a promise to himself—a promise that will echo through every choice that follows.

  The first test is coming. And Aldric has already decided what kind of man he will be.