The next few days were a blur of physical exhaustion. Jogging until my lungs felt like they were filled with hot ash. Weight lifting that made my muscles tremble with every rep. Box jumps, stretches, and calisthenics that pushed me until I felt less like a boy and more like a collection of strained wires.

  One thing I noted, however, was that the Manager never directly assisted my training with a weapon. They would stand there, a silent, porcelain-masked observer, watching me sweat through sets of squats or wind-sprints, only to immediately transition me to the next bodily exercise. There were no katas. No stances. No steel.

  “Manager,” I finally wheezed out on the third day, wiping sweat from my eyes with a shaking hand. “Why… why don't you teach me how to use the knife? If that is to be my tool in the Rift, shouldn't I be practicing with it?”

  I had enough. The weight of the upcoming delve was a cold stone in my stomach, and I felt naked without knowing how to hold the blade they had given me.

  “The reason, Sir Wren, isn’t that I lack the ability to teach you,” the Manager replied. Their voice was calm, unmoved by the humidity of the training hall. “It is that the most important thing for you, currently, is the refinement of the vessel. You may refine your skills with the blade at your own leisure; there are rooms in this facility dedicated to training simulations. They are adequate, though they lack the visceral truth of the real thing.”

  They stepped closer, their shadow falling over me as I sat on the floor.

  “The issue is reliance, Sir Wren. If you rely on one weapon too easily, you will find yourself fundamentally flawed the moment that weapon escapes your grip. Consider the logic of the Rift: Say you are grappled by something bigger, stronger, faster, and meaner than you. How would you escape? Pure logic states that you cannot. The beast, the man, or the monster has overpowered you. You are pinned. You are finished.”

  I looked down at my hands—thin, scarred, and still so small. I felt that "giant's boot" from my dreams pressing down on my chest again.

  “In that moment, you die, Sir Wren. Unless you have found a way to unbind yourself from the situation using the only tool that can never be disarmed: your own anatomy.”

  They gestured to the heavy weights and the jumping platforms.

  “I am teaching you the art of the knife. And the staff, the sword, the spike, the shovel, and the cudgel. By training your fast-twitch fibers, your core stability, and your spatial awareness, I am giving you the foundation for every weapon you will ever touch. If you know how to move your weight, a shovel is a guillotine. If you understand leverage, a shard of glass is a longsword.”

  They leaned in, the porcelain mask inches from my face.

  “I am not training you to become a squire in a knight’s order, bound by the ‘proper’ way to hold a hilt. I am training you to surpass them by understanding that the world is your armory, and your body is the architect. A knight is dead without his sword. You, Sir Wren, will be dangerous even if you are naked in a locked room.”

  “Are… are you going to lock me naked in a dark room?”

  My voice was small, the words catching in a throat that felt like it had been scraped raw by the afternoon’s wind-sprints. I shrank back an inch, my mind already flickering toward the "darkness" Aris and I had discussed. The gutter, the trash, the places where things like that actually happened to boys like me.

  The Manager went still. Even behind the porcelain mask, I could feel the weight of their stare.

  “Sir Wren, I am going to assume that was an attempt at humor,” the voice said. Their tone remained a calm, steady baseline, though there was a microscopic tilt of their head. “But judging from your body language, it seems you have misunderstood. That was a metaphor. A concept. The idea is that even though you may not be the world's greatest pugilist, by understanding how your body flexes, turns, winds, and ducks, you can—at the very least—deliver lethal force.”

  They reached down, their gloved fingers closing around a small dumbbell. It was only five kilograms; a weight I had been struggling to lift after an hour. In their hand, it looked like a toy.

  “Take this weight, Sir Wren,” they said, turning the iron over in their palm. “While it wouldn't be the most efficient force amplifier—it has no edge to cut, no length to act as a lever—it is still an object of mass. In theory, I could move this weight in a simple sideways motion. But if I turn my hips just so, lock my elbow at the apex, and snap my wrist at the point of impact, I am no longer just swinging a piece of iron.”

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  They didn't strike anything, but they moved through the motion in slow, terrifyingly fluid increments. I could hear the fabric of their suit snap as their weight shifted.

  “By amplifying the kinetic force through a variety of biomechanics, I am turning my entire body into the weapon. The dumbbell is merely the point of contact. Depending on where that collision strikes—the temple, the bridge of the nose, the floating ribs—I could shatter bone like glass. I could cause massive internal hemorrhaging. I could inflict conditions so debilitating the target would pray for death, if the blow didn't grant it to them immediately.”

  They set the weight back on the rack with a soft, metallic clink that sounded like a funeral bell.

  “You are small, Sir Wren. You will likely always be smaller than the things that wish to eat you in the Rifts. Therefore, you cannot afford the luxury of a fair fight. You cannot afford to rely on a sword that can be broken or a knife that can be dropped. You must understand how to make the universe's physics your only true ally.”

  They stood up straight, the mask once again unreadable.

  “Now. Another set of box jumps. Think about your hips this time. Think about the snap.”

  My calves were screaming. Every muscle from my ankles up to my glutes felt like it was being pulled tight by a winch, but the Manager stood there like a statue, their staff resting lightly against the floor.

  "Two laps, Sir Wren. At a walking pace," they said, their voice as cool and level as the stone beneath us. I started to move, but the tip of their staff tapped the ground with a sharp crack. "On the tips of your toes. Do not let your heels touch the ground. Not even for a second."

  I wobbled immediately. My center of gravity felt like it was floating somewhere outside my body, making me feel clumsy and small. I felt like a bird trying to walk on thin ice, and every time my legs shook, I was sure I was going to go face-first into the mats.

  The Manager walked beside me with that terrifyingly smooth gait of theirs, their porcelain mask never tilting.

  “You seem to think that the floor will always be your friend—that the ground will remain level and the earth will remain still—but that is a luxury the Rifts will rarely afford you.”

  I focused on a spot on the wall, trying to ignore the fire spreading through my feet.

  “In the field, the environment is often as hostile as the monsters within it. You will find yourself on crumbling ledges, slick cavern floors, or the narrow rafters of a ruined Imperial station. You will not always have the luxury of perfect leverage—nor will you have a flat surface to find your balance—and you must learn to exist in that precarious space.”

  I gritted my teeth, trying to keep my heels up even as my ankles threatened to give out. My breath was coming in short, ragged bursts that sounded loud in the quiet hall.

  “Walking on your toes isn't just about stealth—though that is a fortunate side effect of the practice—it is about shifting your center of gravity. It is about learning to feel the vibrations of the ground before your full weight commits to it. If you can move while off-balance—Sir Wren—you can strike from angles your opponent won’t expect. You become a ghost in a world of statues.”

  When I finally finished the second lap, I didn't just sit down; I collapsed. My feet were numb and burning at the same time, but as I sat there rubbing my heels, I found myself watching the way the light hit the floor.

  “I see you have followed some of my words—Sir Wren. You have indeed learned that you can lie on your back like that to open up your airways.”

  I didn't answer right away. I just lay there on the cool mat, staring up at the ceiling and trying to convince my heart to stop trying to hammer its way out of my ribs. Everything hurt. But the Manager was right; staying flat let the air get deeper into my lungs, easing the stinging heat behind my breastbone.

  “Tell me, Sir Wren. Have you given any thought as to what mana types you would like to cultivate?”

  I rolled my head to the side, looking out toward the massive internal glass walls of the facility. Beyond them lay sprawling, tiered fields that seemed to go on forever. I could see trees heavy with glowing fruit and vast farms where rows of green foliage were being managed by workers who looked just as trapped as I was. It was a lot of green for a place that felt so cold.

  “I’d like to see about that,” I murmured, my voice still a bit thin. “Growing a flower seems nice. Someone told me once that I was a flower, as well as a bird. I think I’d like to see about maybe going in that direction.”

  The Manager simply nodded, the light catching the smooth, expressionless curve of their porcelain mask.

  “Plant mages—or Wood Cultivators as they are more formally known—are relatively common. Especially here in Her Imperial Majesty Queen Turs’tal’s domain. Her entire kingdom is her garden—a place where she cultivates the idea that to make a garden blossom and bloom, one must cull the weeds and the ill branches.”

  They stood silhouetted against the artificial sunlight of the greenhouses, looking less like a person and more like a part of the architecture.

  “In many ways, I believe she views her people in the same manner—as brilliant flowers ready to blossom, bloom, and grow—and her kingdom reflects this. Foliage and flora as far as one can see. While you are unlikely to acquire any Wood mana talents, partly due to the person who does not commit the crimes we would have you remove them for, it would not be difficult to find a few skills for you once you have saved up the requisite funds from your delves, Sir Wren. I would be honored to take you shopping for your first purchased skill when the time comes.”

  They paused, tapping their staff once against the floor as if punctuating a thought.

  “Wood mana—I believe—can also be evolved into Smoke. It is a relatively uncommon path, but with your smaller build, it is a specialization I would greatly suggest. When the time comes, we can see about pursuing that further. For now, however, I believe your time is already accounted for. Do you not have another appointment with Dr. Aris? Go along, Sir Wren. She is waiting for you in your office.”