“What the hell…” a familiar voice said behind me.

  I spun around. Rob stood frozen in his training gear at the edge of the hall, his face caught somewhere between horror and disbelief. His eyes flicked from the ruined dummy to the black blade buried deep in its chest.

  “I, uh… I’m sorry,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to…”

  He stepped closer, crouching beside the dummy and inspecting where the sword had punched clean through the wood.

  “You skewered it like a bloody kebab,” he muttered. Then he glanced up at me, brow furrowed. “What kind of sword is that? What was wrong with the training blade I got you?”

  “I dropped it,” I said. “Pulled this one out on instinct.”

  His gaze slid to the scabbard at my hip. Slowly, a grin spread across his face.

  “Sick,” he said, clearly impressed. He crouched and rolled the dummy slightly, peering at the controls on its back. “You’re braver than I thought.”

  “How so?”

  He tapped the selector. “You set it to red.”

  “I didn’t,” I said quickly. “I swear I set it on green.”

  Rob raised an eyebrow and pointed again. The toggle sat firmly at the top of the scale.

  “I… huh.” I was sure I’d moved it lower.

  A short laugh escaped him before he clapped a hand on my shoulder. “Doyle just got this one fixed.”

  “Uh oh,” I muttered. “He’s going to murder me.”

  Rob waved it off. “Nah, don’t worry about it. I’ve broken that thing…” he paused, counting on his fingers, “…three times. Ish. Anyway, it’s your first go.”

  His gaze drifted to the splintered remains of the dummy. “Still. You didn’t mess around.”

  “Sorry,” I said.

  “It’s fine,” he replied easily. “Just means we’ll need a few more night trips.” He hesitated, then cleared his throat. “I mean… don’t tell Doyle.”

  I frowned. “Night trips?”

  He scratched the back of his head. “Me and Amelia head out sometimes. After dark. Extra field work.”

  “You do?”

  He nodded. “Nothing official. There are vermin in the fields the guards don’t bother with. Big rodents, nasty things. They go after lambs and tear up crops. We wait till they’re active and, well… practise.”

  “That sounds…”

  “Fun,” he finished with a grin. His eyes flicked back to the ruined dummy, then returned to me. “You should come next time. Show us some of your moves.”

  “Ah… I’ll think about it.”

  Rob shrugged. “Don’t take too long. We usually head out every few days.”

  I nodded, thanked him, and moved to retrieve my sword. The blade slid free with little resistance. The wood around it had split apart, shredded where the metal had passed through, as if it had never been solid to begin with.

  Rob stared. “Whoa. That thing’s not normal.”

  “What?” I asked.

  “You got a rune weapon,” he said slowly. “Since when?”

  “Rune weapon, I just got this old thing.” I frowned and looked down at the blade. Near the hilt, half-hidden by shadow and grime, a small rune had been etched into the metal. Either I hadn’t noticed it before, or it was new either way it was faint, almost reluctant to be seen, and looked identical to the rune that had glowed on the dummy’s blade just moments earlier.

  I swallowed. Maybe that’s why the other exploded.

  Rob looked closer. “I think I know that one.”

  “Know what?” I asked.

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  “The rune. Well, maybe,” Rob said, crouching to take a closer look. “Looks like a rune of absorption. Pretty common on training gear. Mostly meant to stop weapons from breaking.”

  He ran a finger along the blade, brow furrowed. “If this thing’s old, this rune might be the reason it’s still in one piece.”

  “Yeah… maybe,” I said. I didn’t have a better explanation, and his was good enough for now.

  I slid the sword back into its scabbard before he could ask any more questions. Rob’s eyes lingered on it a moment longer than necessary.

  “You really should come out on a night hunt,” he said at last. “And maybe let me try that sword sometime.”

  “Ah. Sure,” I said, noncommittal.

  He grinned. “You’ll think about it?”

  I smiled and left it at that.

  “Now what have you boys done this time?” Amelia called from the doorway.

  I turned to see her standing there, hands on her hips, eyes taking in the splintered remains of the dummy.

  “It wasn’t me this time,” Rob said far too quickly.

  She shot him a look. “Sure it wasn’t.”

  “It was me,” I said. “It was an accident.”

  Her expression softened, just a little. “Really?”

  I nodded, guilt burning my cheeks.

  She studied me for a moment, then sighed. “Alright. Then you’re telling Doyle.”

  I blinked. Before I could respond, Rob leaned closer and murmured, “We’ll probably be stuck training without a dummy for a week now.”

  “And we don’t have much time left,” Amelia added quietly, eyes still on the wreckage. He nudged me toward the stone door as I scooped up the untouched foundation elixir.

  Leaving the two of them to their familiar bickering, I slipped away. My throat felt dry, my body still humming from the beating I’d taken, so I headed upstairs toward the kitchen. Doyle was already there, moving about with quiet focus as he prepared the evening meal.

  I told him everything. About the blade. About the training dummy. About how things had gone very wrong, very quickly.

  I waited for reassurance. A shrug. A we’ll sort it out.

  Instead, he swore. Loudly.

  Yet, the outburst wasn’t aimed at me. If anything, he sounded wounded.

  “I can’t believe this,” he said, staring at the sword as though it had personally betrayed him. “Hidden here all this time.” He shook his head. “I know every inch of this place.”

  He stopped a careful distance from the blade, studying it like something that might shift if watched too closely. Then he looked at me, his expression sharp with questions he hadn’t yet voiced. “What do you know of this sword?” he asked.

  “Not much,” I admitted. “Rob thought it might be a rune blade. Something about absorption.”

  Doyle’s interest sharpened. “May I see it?”

  I eased the sword partway from its scabbard, careful not to draw it fully. “He said this mark here was an absorption rune.”

  Doyle studied it for a long moment, then shook his head. “That boy needs to spend more time with a book in his hand not a sword.”

  “So, what is it?” I asked.

  “A holding rune,” he said. “Meant to contain magic rather than spend it. Intent, energy, sometimes even residue from enchantments. Like the force that animated the training dummy you broke.”

  I winced. “Right. Sorry about that.”

  His expression softened. “You walked away. That matters more. The red setting is no small thing.”

  “I swear I set it to green.”

  Doyle studied me for a long moment, not unkindly, but with a careful, weighing look. Then he asked me to recount everything again, slowly, from the moment I’d entered the hall to the instant the dummy fell. When I finished, he let out a quiet breath.

  “I suspect the blade interfered with the construct,” he said at last. “Whatever magic it carries likely altered the dummy’s response. Raised the threat without you touching the setting.”

  I frowned. “It can do that?”

  He gave a small shrug. “What other explanation fits?”

  I had none, and I said as much.

  “Neither do I,” Doyle admitted, rubbing at his brow. “The gaps in our knowledge could fill a library.” He lowered his hand, then looked back at me with something closer to relief. “Still, there is one small mercy.”

  “Oh?”

  “Jerald returns tomorrow.”

  I couldn’t help the grin that crept onto my face. “That old coot.”

  Doyle snorted softly. “Ask him everything you can.”

  “I will,” I said. “Even if I have to pry it out of him. You know how he is.”

  Doyle nodded, a tired smile tugging at his mouth. “All too well. Now go on. I’ve a mountain of vegetables to peel.”

  He waved me away, already turning back to his work. I left with a faint smile of my own. The bugbear spirit took his duties seriously, almost fiercely so.

  Later, alone in my room, the ache finally caught up with me. My body felt heavy, worn in a way that sank past muscle and into bone. The sword rested beside me on the bed, its presence oddly steadying. I didn’t understand why, only that it helped.

  Still, questions nagged at me.

  I was certain there hadn’t been a rune on the blade the first time I’d drawn it. Maybe I’d been rattled. Maybe the cut on my hand had distracted me. I unwrapped the bandage, then froze.

  The wound had already half closed, the skin knit together as though days had passed instead of hours.

  That wasn’t right.

  Maybe the training hall had something to do with it. Runes covered nearly every surface down there, old and layered. Amelia would know more than I did. I filed the thought away.

  Still, the feeling wouldn’t leave me.

  Carefully, I drew the sword partway from its scabbard and turned it in the light. The rune was there, clear enough, but it wasn’t the one Rob had pointed out earlier. This mark was squarer, almost like a warped sigil, a crooked G pressed into the metal. The rune I remembered had been sharper, all angles, like a twisted T tangled with a backward F.

  I frowned and rotated the blade.

  That was when I saw it.

  Another mark, faint but unmistakable, etched along the other side. Tree-like. Branching. Entirely different.

  I turned the sword again just to be sure. Then again.

  Two runes.

  My stomach tightened. Everything Doyle had told me, everything the books warned about, said this shouldn’t be possible. Objects weren’t meant to bear more than one working rune. They fractured, bled power, or failed outright long before that point.

  Yet the blade rested in my hands without protest.

  Cool. Solid. Whole.

  It held the contradiction as if it belonged there.

  “What are you?” I whispered.

  Then I felt it.

  A low vibration passed through me, not in the room, not in the air, but somewhere deeper. I went still as the sensation echoed along my bones, like a sound heard through water.

  And beneath it all, faint but unmistakable…

  A slow, dark laugh.