The fang of stone didn’t care who stood beneath it. Toby had decided that much after the first hour. Up close, the white pillar was worse than useless for climbing. No cracks, no ridges, and no handholds of any kind. Its surface was smooth in a way that didn’t feel natural. It wasn’t polished or worn, as if the stone itself refused the idea of being touched at all. That, of course, was precisely why Maxwell had decided they would climb it.

  “Again,” Maxwell said.

  Sweat had already soaked the back of Toby’s tunic. His arms trembled from effort and the memory of sliding off the stone over and over like a beetle on a shield. Beside him, Reece and Zak were panting in a way that suggested they’d long surpassed the point of pretending they weren’t exhausted.

  Zak groaned. “I swear this wall hates us.”

  “It doesn’t hate you,” Toby said. “It just knows you talk too much.”

  Reece stepped up to the fang again. He pressed his palm to the flat white surface, closed his eyes, and breathed—slow, the way Maxwell drilled them—attempting to coax the Art to answer. Reece’s hand stuck. Just barely—long enough for his eyes to widen. He pulled himself upward, boots scrambling against the stone for purchase that didn’t exist. His feet slid immediately, but his hand held—a heartbeat longer than it had any right to.

  Zak punched the air. “There it is! That’s it! You madman, grab that stone like it owes you money!”

  Reece was too busy breathing to answer.

  Toby couldn’t help it—a flicker of pride rose in him. Reece wasn’t the strongest of them or the quickest, but sometimes he found the quiet path into things the rest of them battered at with force.

  Reece reached higher with his other hand, trying to make the Art catch there as well—trying to feel whatever he’d felt a moment ago. Toby sensed him strain for it, reaching outward with something that wasn’t quite touch, wasn’t quite thought.

  The moment his second hand found nothing, the connection wavered, as if the stone resisted and Reece’s fingers slid off. His weight shifted immediately but his stuck hand tightened, refusing to let go. His boots skidded against the smooth surface, scraping helplessly. Reece dropped with a grunt, landing on his heels hard enough to jolt his back.

  Zak clapped him on the back. “Truly a masterful fall.”

  “Shut up,” Reece said, the smile already tugging at his voice. He shook out his hands. “I had it.”

  “You did,” Toby said—because he had seen it too. Something had caught. Something real.

  Maxwell stepped closer, studying Reece with that unreadable look of his—the one that always sat somewhere between approval and scrutiny.

  “That hold was yours,” Maxwell said. “A proper connection. Weak, but made. That’s the first step.”

  Reece’s chest rose with something halfway between pride and disbelief.

  “But listen,” Maxwell continued. “Before you go higher than your height, you’ll complete a full circuit at that same level—arms only. No slipping. No dropping. If you can’t keep steady a man’s height from the ground, you’ve no business climbing higher.”

  “Circuit,” Reece echoed, staring at the smooth wall. “Ser, that’s—”

  Reece reached again before he even finished speaking, arm lifting on stubborn instinct. His palm hit the stone—and nothing answered. No spark or thread, just the same cool, indifferent surface. He gritted his teeth and pushed harder, fingers dragging for a hold that didn’t exist. His arm trembled, the effort shaking through his shoulders. For a moment it looked as if he might force it anyway—force the Art to answer out of sheer will.

  Then his hand slipped and his balance went with it. A heartbeat later, the wall peeled him off like rain off slate and he gracelessly sprawled onto the ground with a thud deep enough to make Zak wince in sympathy.

  “That,” Zak said, pointing loosely at him, “was less masterful than the first fall.”

  Reece just lay there, chest rising and falling like a bellows losing steam. “I’m… fine,” he muttered, though he looked anything but.

  Maxwell crouched beside him, not offering a hand, but watching with a practiced eye. “Your reach is gone,” he said. “You’re climbing with arms that can’t hold you and a mind that’s chasing what it already spent. Take a break before you tear something you need.”

  Reece closed his eyes for a moment, then nodded. “Aye, Ser.”

  “Good.” Maxwell stood. “Go water the horses. Cool your hands. Come back when you can feel your fingers again.”

  Toby went to gather the reins, grateful for an excuse to move. His arms still ached from his own attempts, and frustration had begun to settle sharp in his ribs—a feeling he didn’t like to name.

  The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.

  Zak slapped the dust off his trousers and stretched like a man twice his age. “I’m claiming Daisy,” he said. “Flint and I are on bad terms. He’s judged me all morning.”

  Flint flicked an ear at him as if to confirm it.

  They led the horses down the slope beside the fang, the grass parting around their boots, the land dipping toward the thin silver thread of a creek they’d found the day before. It wasn’t much—a shallow run of cold water between smooth stones—but out here it felt like the finest bathhouse in the Kingdom of Eaglelight.

  The horses plunged their noses in without hesitation, snorting greedily as they drank.

  Reece knelt beside Daisy, cupping water over his wrists and forearms. His hands trembled faintly from fatigue.

  Zak dropped onto a flat rock with a sigh heavy enough to shake the grass. “All right, genius,” he said, nudging Reece’s boot with his own. “What did it feel like? The sticking thing.”

  Reece kept splashing water over his hands as he thought. “I’m… still not sure,” he said finally. “It wasn’t like grabbing it with strength. More like… my mind reached for the wall, and the wall agreed to hold me.”

  Zak blinked. “That makes absolutely no sense.”

  “It didn’t make sense to me either,” Reece said. “It wasn’t touch. Not really. More like—” He struggled for the word. “—like brushing against something that wasn’t part of me, but listened for a moment.”

  Toby sat on his heels across from them, letting the cold water run over his palms. “Strange,” he said quietly. “When you climbed… I didn’t feel anything. Nothing at all.”

  Reece frowned. “Nothing?”

  “Nothing,” Toby repeated. “Same with Maxwell when he climbed. No weight. No pressure. But when he used the bow…” Toby hesitated, searching for the right piece of language. “I felt the weight of the Art. Like pressure in the air. Like the world tightened around him.”

  Zak looked between them, brow furrowing. “Hold on. I don’t feel anything when others use the Art. Only myself.” He lifted his shoulders in a helpless shrug. “Reece?”

  Reece shook his head. “Same here.” He flexed his fingers again, as if hoping the feeling might return. “I can’t say I felt anything. Not when anyone else uses it.”

  That left Toby staring at the creek, the cold water slipping around his knuckles. “But I feel it,” he said quietly. “Anytime anyone uses the Art.” His voice tightened without meaning to. “I thought you two felt it too. I thought everyone felt it.”

  Zak and Reece exchanged a look—uneasy, their confidence shaken by the idea that Toby had sensed something they hadn’t.

  “So only you feel it?” Reece said finally, studying Toby now with a knit brow rather than a grin. “Not us.”

  Zak nodded slowly. “And you feel something when any of us try, apparently. We’re blind as moles compared to whatever you are.”

  Reece dipped his hands back into the water, thoughtful now instead of frustrated. “Toby… that means something—” he paused, tilting his head, “—but you didn’t feel anything when I or Ser Maxwell climbed?”

  Toby thought back to Sire Ray’s final stand—the pure and utter domination of someone at the peak, going beyond what their body should have been able to bear. The pressure, the weight—it had been almost suffocating.

  “Not even Sire Ray?” Toby asked. “The last time he—”

  He stopped. A sharp breath slipped out; his jaw set. He didn’t need to say any more. The memory lingered on its own.

  Zak shook his head once the quiet stretched too long. “No. I felt nothing—except what I saw: a great man cutting through plate like I cut through butter on a hot summer’s day.” He snorted. “You don’t need to feel anything to want to watch that. Though I suppose the other side felt fear and the need to flee. Cowards.”

  Reece scoffed. “It was their fault for attacking us—but no, I didn’t feel anything strange. Nothing like what you’re saying.”

  “So does that mean the climbing isn’t the Art?” Toby wondered aloud. “Can you explain the feeling again? Does it feel different?”

  Reece lifted his hands from the water, slowly clenching and unclenching them. “The feeling… it’s different, but similar.” He stared down at his fingers as if testing each joint still worked.

  Zak lay back with a groan, feet still in the creek. “Well, I’m going to be last to it again at this rate. Put your back into it and spin it into words I can understand.”

  “Last is better than not at all,” Toby said.

  “That’s true. So what do you feel? When others use the Art?” Zak asked.

  “A weight,” Toby said slowly. “Sometimes a pull, sometimes a push. A pressure on my skin—almost like I’m underwater.”

  Zak sat up a little. “That sounds like a pretty damn good warning sign if your opponent uses it.”

  Toby nodded. “Yeah, that makes sense now. I think that’s how I beat—”

  “It…” Reece spoke up suddenly.

  Both Toby and Zak turned toward him—expectant, like farmers waiting on a wise elder at the village well, offering an answer no one else had earned.

  “It feels like pushing the rush… The flow? That power that usually fills and flows through your body… gently into the rock,” Reece said.

  Zak blew out a breath. “It’s hard enough to use it when I want to, let alone controlling the flow. Now you want me to push it out of my body too?”

  Reece frowned. “You asked what it felt like. Don’t get upset at me.”

  “Oh yeah?” Zak said. “See how you feel about this.”

  He splashed Reece, and within moments a water fight erupted. Toby barely had time to curse before the pair turned on him the instant he opened his mouth. It was a needed release—of frustration at the training, at the heat, at the knowledge that at any moment an elf might rise from the reeds and strike.

  By the time they returned to camp, they were completely dry. The sun was that relentless. Toby stared up at the fang-like stone and told himself that by the end of the week, he would stand on its peak. He needed to see the view from up there—the one Maxwell kept hinting hid something in plain sight.