Ethan learned quickly that the land didn't care how clever you were.

  The plains were wide and honest in a way the forest never had been. No close cover, no forgiving shadows. Distance mattered. Wind mattered. Timing mattered. If you made a mistake out here, the world didn't rush to punish you—it just let you fail long enough to notice.

  Good ground to train on, at least.

  He started with the bow.

  Not because it was new—he'd been using it for months—but because repetition stripped away excuses. He planted his feet where the grass thinned to dirt, set a rough line of stones at different distances, and shot until his shoulders burned and his fingers numbed.

  No shadow. No tricks. No magic.

  Just muscle, breath, and judgment.

  When his shots started drifting, he stopped. When his hands shook, he stopped. He forced himself to mark where the misses clustered, not where he wanted them to.

  Azrael watched from a nearby rock, arms folded.

  "You're pulling left," she said after a while.

  "I know." Ethan lowered the bow. "I'm tired."

  "Yeah, well. That's when it counts."

  He loosed another arrow. It struck wide.

  He exhaled and sat down hard, stretching his fingers one at a time.

  "This world uses magic like it's a muscle," he said, mostly to himself. "Flow. Cores. Circuits. Push, pull, release."

  Azrael tilted her head. "And you don't."

  "No."

  He flexed his hand, watched the tendons shift under skin. "What I do doesn't feel like power. More like... I don't know. Setting things up so the world trips itself."

  "That's because you are," Azrael said.

  He glanced at her. "You don't say that like it's reassuring."

  "It isn't meant to be. Traditional mages shape energy. You negotiate with consequences."

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  "That's worse."

  "Yes."

  He laughed once, quietly.

  That was the problem, wasn't it? Every time he tried to understand his magic the way they understood magic, it slipped through his fingers. Runes worked sometimes. Offerings worked sometimes. Names mattered—until they didn't.

  No system he could rely on. Only patterns.

  He stood again and shifted to knives.

  Throwing first. Short range. No flourish. He missed more than he liked. Adjusted. Missed again. Swore under his breath and forced himself to slow down.

  The shadow stirred when his frustration peaked. Not aggressive, not eager—just present.

  "Not yet," he muttered.

  It obeyed.

  That mattered too.

  Beneath his skin, the gu stirred briefly. Not restless, just aware. A faint pressure that reminded him they were there. Waiting. Fed yesterday, dormant today, but never truly gone.

  Different from the maggots that translated sound into meaning. Those were background noise now, easy to forget until he needed them.

  The centipedes didn't let him forget.

  He flexed his hand, felt the subtle shift beneath muscle and tendon, and let it settle again.

  "They're quiet," Azrael observed.

  "For now."

  "Does that worry you?"

  Ethan considered. "Less than if they weren't."

  By midday, sweat soaked through his clothes and his thoughts had gone quiet in the good way—the way that came only after effort burned off the excess noise. He knelt in the dirt and drew a simple circle with a stick.

  Not a ritual. A boundary.

  He sat inside it and closed his eyes.

  This part still felt dangerous. Not because spirits leapt out of the ground, but because sometimes nothing happened—and sometimes something did. Dream-walking, spirit-listening, whatever name people gave it. The result was the same: stepping sideways into a place that didn't care whether you came back unchanged.

  He didn't push. He listened.

  The plains breathed around him. Grass whispered. Insects hummed. Far off, something large moved with the patience of an animal that knew it had no predators.

  No voices. No visions.

  Just pressure. Like a held breath beneath the world.

  Ethan opened his eyes.

  "That's new," he said quietly.

  Azrael's expression had tightened. "You felt it too."

  "Yeah."

  "That means something is paying attention."

  "Does it want something?"

  Azrael shook her head. "Wrong question."

  He stood slowly. "Then what's the right one?"

  She met his gaze. "How long before it decides you're interesting enough to test."

  That night, he didn't train.

  He sat with Maurik and Krill near the fire while meat cooked and children argued over a bone flute someone had carved badly. The sound was awful. No one stopped it.

  The Crowfeet hadn't returned yet. They would, though. Ethan could feel that as surely as he felt the weight of the plains beneath his feet.

  Trade. Hunts. Whispers.

  And beyond that—the Black Queen.

  Not as a person yet, not as an enemy he could picture. Just a shape in other people's fear. A name that made hunters bow and villages offer tribute to shadows.

  Ethan stared into the fire and flexed his hands. Under his skin, the gu shifted slightly, then settled. A reminder that some things didn't care about fear or preparation—they only cared about being fed.

  "I need time," he said quietly.

  Maurik grunted. "Time is made. Or taken."

  Ethan nodded.

  He would train. He would prepare. He would make himself harder to break.

  Not stronger. Just harder.

  Because whatever kind of magic this world ran on, it was already starting to notice him.