Blood ran down Aldric's face.

  He could taste it—copper and salt—mixing with the cold mountain air. His left arm hung wrong at his side. Not broken, not yet, but the pain came in sharp waves every time he moved it. Three days of running. Three days of barely sleeping. Three days of staying one step ahead of the men who wanted him dead.

  The cliff edge crumbled beneath his boot.

  He stepped back. Squared his shoulders. Squeezed his left fist—the habit Felix had taught him years ago, a steadying motion that had become as natural as breathing.

  Below him, the river was a thin grey ribbon cutting through the valley. A fall from this height would kill an ordinary man. Aldric wasn't ordinary—but he wasn't certain he could survive it either.

  "End of the road."

  The voice came from the treeline behind him. Aldric didn't turn. He'd heard them coming for the last minute, their footfalls careless now that they knew they had him trapped.

  Three mages. Red-trimmed robes. Crimson Pyre.

  The one who'd spoken stepped forward, a thin man with a pockmarked face and the easy confidence of someone who'd done this before. Behind him, two others spread out to block any escape route—though there was nowhere left to run. The cliff at Aldric's back. Three mages in front.

  Adept-tier at least. All three. Out of his weight class by a wide margin.

  "You've been troublesome," the pockmarked man said. "Give us what you found, and we'll make it quick."

  Aldric's hand moved to his chest, feeling the folded paper through his tunic. Felix's letter. Torn and incomplete, but still readable in parts. He'd found it in the cave—the blood-rite markings, the crude symbols carved into stone. And hidden beneath a loose rock, a fragment of paper with his dead friend's handwriting.

  The Hollowed Rite. They know about—

  The rest was gone. Torn away. But those words alone were enough to get him killed.

  "I don't know what you're talking about," Aldric said.

  The mage laughed. "Your father's a merchant, boy. You're built for lying." He raised his hand, and Aldric felt the mana gathering—a spike of ice forming in the air above the mage's palm. "Last chance. The letter. Now."

  Aldric looked at the cliff. At the river. At the long drop that might kill him.

  Fel would've had something to say about this.

  The thought came unbidden, and with it, a fragment of memory—Felix's voice, lazy and amused, from some long-ago afternoon: When you can't go forward and you can't go back, look for the third option. There's always a third option. Even if it's just dying on your own terms.

  A bitter grimace crossed Aldric's face.

  "You were right, Fel," he whispered. "Some debts... you can't pay in coin."

  The ice spike launched.

  Aldric leaned back and fell into the void.

  ---

  Three Days Earlier

  ---

  The Cloudridge Order's disciple quarters smelled of damp stone and old incense.

  Aldric sat on the edge of his cot, turning the torn letter over in his hands. He'd read it a hundred times since finding it in his belongings three weeks ago—three weeks of wondering how it had gotten there, who had placed it among his things, and what Felix had been trying to tell him.

  The Hollowed Rite.

  He'd never heard of it. Neither had the few people he'd dared to ask—casual questions, framed as curiosity about old stories. But the name had a weight to it. A wrongness. Like something that wasn't meant to be spoken aloud.

  He folded the letter and tucked it into his tunic. Outside his window, the mountain morning was already bright, sunlight glinting off the distant peaks. In an hour, the training grounds would fill with disciples. Tomorrow, he'd stand in line for his monthly stipend—one gold coin. A fraction of what the mage disciples received.

  One gold, for doing the same work. Carrying the same loads. Enduring the same trials.

  Worthless.

  That was the word they used. Not to his face—never directly—but in the way they looked at him, the way they stepped around him like he was something that might stain their robes. The Resonance Lamp had barely flickered when he'd stepped before it at fifteen. In a world that measured worth by mana projection, he'd been labelled a dead end before he'd even begun.

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  Only he knew the truth: his mana didn't flow outward. It flowed inward, tempering his body from the inside. But knowing that didn't change what anyone else saw. To the Order, to his fellow disciples, to the entire Realm of Aerion, he was Aldric Voss—the merchant's son who'd failed his only real test.

  He stood, pulled on his training clothes, and stepped outside.

  The disciple quarters were carved into the mountainside, a cluster of stone buildings connected by narrow paths. At this hour, most disciples were already awake—preparing for morning exercises, heading to the dining hall, or gathering in small groups to discuss technique. Aldric moved through them like a ghost, nodding to the few who acknowledged him, ignoring the rest.

  The training grounds were on the eastern side of the compound, a series of terraced platforms carved from rock. Mages practiced on the upper levels, launching spells at wooden targets, their mana creating visible distortions in the air. Spellblades—what few there were—trained on the lower levels, running drills with weapons and weights, building the physical foundation that their arcanism required.

  Aldric made his way to the lowest platform. The spellblade training area was a cramped square of packed earth, barely a quarter the size of the mage grounds above. Three other disciples were already there—Therin, a quiet boy two years younger than Aldric; Kira, a woman in her twenties who'd come to the Order late; and Dace, who kept his head down and said almost nothing.

  They nodded to Aldric as he joined them. No words. They'd learned early that talking too much drew attention, and attention from the mage disciples was rarely good.

  "Stipend day tomorrow," Kira muttered, running through her stretches. "One gold. I can almost buy a quarter of a decent healing potion."

  "Don't start," Aldric said quietly. "It's not worth it."

  It never was. Complaining changed nothing. The mage elders who ran the Order had decided long ago that spellblades contributed less, and therefore deserved less. The logic was circular—spellblades received fewer resources, advanced more slowly, and were then blamed for their lack of progress.

  Aldric had stopped trying to argue with it years ago.

  He moved through his warmup routine, feeling his body respond. The body-tempering techniques he'd developed were crude—he knew that—but they were his. Every morning for the past two years, he'd pushed mana through his muscles, his bones, his blood. Slowly. Carefully. Trying to find the patterns that worked.

  No one had taught him. There were no manuals for spellblades in the Order's library—those had been locked away decades ago, accessible only to elders who deemed them "unnecessary for general distribution." The techniques Aldric used were ones he'd pieced together from fragments: overheard conversations, discarded notes, his own experimentation.

  He finished his warmup and began the morning's drills. Striking forms. Footwork patterns. Conditioning exercises that left his muscles burning. Around him, the other spellblade disciples did the same, their movements mechanical and tired. They trained because they had to. Because the Order required it, even for those it considered worthless.

  Above them, on the mage platforms, voices carried down—laughter, the crack of spells against targets, the occasional burst of applause when someone landed a particularly clean hit. Aldric kept his eyes on his own work. Looking up only reminded him of the gap.

  An hour passed. The sun climbed higher. Sweat soaked through Aldric's training clothes.

  He was midway through a footwork drill when a shadow fell across the platform.

  "Voss."

  The voice was smooth, mocking. Aldric stopped, turned.

  A mage disciple stood at the edge of the platform—tall, sharp-featured, with the confident smile of someone who'd never been denied anything. Behind him, two companions watched with lazy interest.

  Dorian Vane. Adept-tier. Outer disciple, like Aldric, but in every way that mattered to the Order, they existed in different worlds.

  "Training hard?" Dorian said. "Good. Someone has to do the work mages are too talented for."

  His companions laughed. Aldric said nothing.

  Dorian's smile flickered. He'd expected a reaction—anger, defensiveness, something. Getting nothing was almost worse.

  "See you at stipend distribution tomorrow," he said, voice dropping. "Enjoy your one gold. I'm sure it'll buy you... something."

  More laughter. Then they turned and walked away, heading back to the upper platforms where the real training happened.

  Aldric watched them go. His jaw ached from clenching. His fingers flexed once, hard enough to sting.

  But he said nothing.

  Don't give them the satisfaction.

  It was a lesson he'd learned early. React, and they won. Fight back, and they called you a problem. The only way to survive was to absorb it, to let it roll off like water off stone.

  But water wore stone down eventually. And Aldric could feel himself eroding, day by day.

  He returned to his drills. The other spellblade disciples didn't comment. They'd learned the same lessons, endured the same treatment. Words changed nothing.

  The morning bled into afternoon. Aldric trained until his muscles screamed, then trained some more. The physical exhaustion was easier to manage than the other kind—the weight of being invisible, of being less, of carrying a secret that no one would believe even if he told them.

  The Hollowed Rite.

  The words surfaced in his mind again, unbidden. He pushed them down. There would be time to investigate later. For now, there was only the next strike, the next step, the next breath.

  Late in the afternoon, he made his way back toward the disciple quarters. The compound was quieter now—most disciples had finished their training and scattered to rest, eat, or study. Aldric walked the familiar paths, his body aching in the good way that meant he'd pushed hard enough.

  He was almost at his quarters when a voice called out.

  "Voss."

  Not Dorian this time. Therin, the younger spellblade disciple, hurrying to catch up.

  "Elder council's called a gathering," Therin said, slightly out of breath. "All disciples. Main hall, half an hour."

  A gathering. Unusual. The council rarely summoned everyone at once.

  "Did they say why?"

  Therin shook his head. "Just that it's mandatory. Even the outer disciples."

  Aldric frowned. Mandatory gatherings for outer disciples were almost unheard of. The elders barely acknowledged their existence most days.

  "I'll be there," he said.

  Therin nodded and hurried off to spread the word to the others. Aldric stood for a moment, watching him go.

  Something was wrong. He could feel it in his gut—that same instinct that had kept him alive through years of being the smallest, the weakest, the one everyone overlooked.

  He touched his chest, feeling the folded letter through his tunic. Felix's words. The Hollowed Rite. The mystery that had landed in his lap like a stone dropped from a great height.

  The memory surfaced again, sharper this time. Felix's voice, from that last conversation before everything went wrong. Before the arrow. Before the blood.

  Aldric pushed the thought away. There would be time for that later. Right now, he needed to get to the main hall and find out what the elders wanted.

  He walked toward the gathering darkness, the torn letter hidden against his heart, and tried not to think about cliffs.

  ---

  What happened in those three days? What did Aldric discover in the hills—and who wanted him dead enough to send three mages after him?

  The answers lie ahead, in the shadows of the Cloudridge Order and beyond.