The following days dissolved into a blur of granite, vellum, and exhaustion.
Brandt had constructed a rhythm, a cage of habit designed to keep his mind from wandering into the darker corners of his new reality. It was a monotonous, grinding cycle, but it was effective.
His mornings were spent in the suffocating silence of the library tower. He sat in his usual spot near the cold hearth, a stack of heavy tomes building a fortress wall around him. It was a performance, mostly.
Maester Eamon, the ancient librarian, had been haunting the stacks recently. The old man moved with the shuffling, dusty persistence of a creature that had lived in the dark too long, his clouded eyes constantly sweeping the room.
It forced Brandt to slow down.
Inside his skull, however, the process was instant.
Silent Acquisition was a voracious thing. He didn't read the books; he inhaled them. A single glance was enough to strip a page of its data and bolt it onto the framework of his growing knowledge.
He could keep going until his mind felt like it couldn't hold anymore, a sharp reminder that the weight of knowledge remains absolute; there was only so much he could ingest at once before the vessel threatened to crack.
Politics, geography, lineage, biology—he gorged himself on it all, staring blankly at the text while his mind sorted and filed the information with the ruthlessness of a forensic auditor.
The afternoons were reserved for the flesh.
Locked inside the stone box of his quarters, stripped down to his linen trousers, Brandt punished his small frame. He pushed the heavy furniture against the walls to clear a space on the rugs, turning his room into a cell for self-improvement.
He circulated the mana through his channels, feeling that strange, electric hum flood his limbs, and then he moved.
Pushups until his arms trembled and collapsed. Squats until his legs felt like lead pipes. Sprints back and forth across the short distance of the room until his lungs burned and the air tasted of copper.
He was desperate for a sign. A change.
The only thing that did change was the hunger.
The mana channels were parasitic, siphoning energy from his body to maintain their integrity. He ate three times a day, consuming meals that would have choked a grown man. The kitchen staff had begun leaving double portions of heavy black bread and hard cheese on his trays without being asked.
Brandt ate mechanically, fueling the furnace.
There was, however, a mercy in this brutal routine.
He was busy. He was so relentlessly, exhaustingly occupied that the demon couldn't catch him.
Lilith remained silent. The crushing, metaphysical weight of her presence hadn't returned since the night in the infirmary. Even the memories of his old life—the rain, the train station, the blood—felt distant, muffled by the immediate, screaming demands of his muscles and his stomach.
He was too tired to be haunted.
It was late.
The keep had long since settled into its nightly slumber, the heavy silence broken only by the mournful howling of the wind against the outer battlements.
Brandt stood at the edge of the training grounds, a solitary, small figure against the vast, frozen darkness. The torches on the perimeter posts had burned low, their flames sputtering and dying, casting long, skeletal shadows that danced across the scarred earth.
He pulled his fur-lined cloak tighter around himself, shivering as the biting wind sought the warmth of his skin.
He checked the moon's position. It was well past the agreed hour.
'He's not coming.'
The thought settled in his gut, heavy and sour.
The training yard was desolate. The frozen mud, churned up by the boots of a hundred soldiers during the day, was now a jagged, treacherous landscape of hard ridges and ice.
Brandt let out a sigh, the sound loud in the quiet night. A cloud of white vapour escaped his lips, instantly snatched away by the gale.
'I miscalculated,' he admitted to himself. 'I bet on a drunkard. I assumed that greed would be a sufficient tether, but perhaps his sloth is stronger.'
He had spent days preparing for this encounter. He had mentally steeled himself for the violence. He had stolen—borrowed—coins from the small coffer in his wardrobe. And now, he was just a boy standing alone in the dark, freezing for nothing.
He turned to leave, his boots crunching loudly on the frost.
Thud. Scrape. Thud.
The sound stopped him.
It was distant at first, emanating from the black mouth of the alleyway leading to the stables. It wasn't the rhythmic, disciplined march of a patrol. It was heavy. Uneven. A rhythmic, dragging percussion.
And then, the smell hit him.
Even over the sharp, clean scent of pine and ice, it was unmistakable. It was a wall of stench—stale, sour ale, old sweat, and unwashed leather. It was a smell so thick and cloying it felt like a physical film coating the back of his tongue.
A shape detached itself from the shadows of the outer wall.
It was massive.
Balg lumbered into the dying light of the torches like a bear waking from a winter coma.
He was huge, a towering slab of muscle that seemed to defy gravity with every swaying step. His patchwork armour—plates of rusted iron strapped haphazardly over dirty furs—clanked and rattled. His long, greasy black hair hung in his face, and his beard was a thicket of neglect that likely held the remnants of his last three meals.
He carried The Slab—that ridiculous, oversized hunk of crude iron he called a sword—dragged casually behind him, the tip carving a deep, jagged furrow in the frozen dirt.
He stopped ten feet from Brandt. He swayed slightly, leaning to the left like a sinking ship. He burped, a wet, resonant sound that echoed in the empty yard.
"Oi," Balg grunted.
His voice was a deep, gravelly bass that seemed to vibrate in Brandt's chest.
"Little Lord."
The giant squinted, his eyes bloodshot and glassy in the gloom, struggling to focus on the small figure in front of him.
"You're actually here."
Brandt stood his ground, suppressing the urge to cover his nose against the assault of the man's hygiene.
"We had an agreement, Balg," Brandt said, his voice steady, though he had to tilt his head back to look the giant in the eye. "You are late."
Balg snorted. He wiped his dripping nose with the back of a hand that was the size of a dinner plate.
"Agreement," he muttered, testing the word as if it were a piece of gristle. "Right. Right."
He leaned forward, looming over the boy. The shadow he cast swallowed Brandt whole, blocking out the feeble light of the torches.
"Listen 'ere, runt," Balg rumbled, a cruel grin splitting his beard. "I don't get out of my warm straw for free. You want Balg? You gotta pay the toll."
Brandt didn't flinch. He didn't argue.
He reached into his cloak.
He pulled out a heavy, leather pouch. It clinked with the distinct, seductive sound of coins striking together.
He didn't hand it over. He tossed it.
He threw it low, aiming for the giant's muddy boots—a deliberate, subtle insult.
Balg moved.
It was terrifying.
One moment, he was a swaying, drunken mountain, barely able to stand. The next, his hand was a blur. He didn't bend down. He snatched the pouch out of the air mid-arc, inches from the ground, with a speed that shouldn't have been possible for a man his size, let alone one this intoxicated.
He straightened up instantly, the pouch disappearing into his massive fist. The drunken sway returned immediately, as if the moment of impossible clarity had never happened.
'Dangerous,' Brandt noted.
Balg weighed the pouch in his hand. He grinned, revealing a row of broken, yellow teeth.
"Heh," he chuckled, a wet, rattling sound. "I like you, Little Lord. Straightforward. And rich. Best kind of friend to have."
He tucked the pouch somewhere into the filthy layers of his armour.
"So," Balg said, planting his massive fists on his hips. "You bought the time. What do you want with it? Falk said you wanted to learn how to hit things."
"Strength," Brandt answered.
The word was simple. Honest.
"I want to be strong. I want to know how to use weight. How to break things that are harder than me."
Balg blinked.
He leaned in again, peering at Brandt with a sudden, confusing scrutiny. The glassy look in his eyes receded for a split second, replaced by a sharp, predatory assessment. He looked the boy up and down, analysing his frame, his stance, the look in his eyes.
"You're a weird one," Balg mumbled, scratching his beard. "For a twelve-year-old... you got a nasty look in your eye. Mature. Like you seen some shit."
Brandt paused.
"I'm nine," he corrected flatly.
Balg froze. He blinked again, slowly, processing the data.
"Nine?"
The giant let out a loud, barking laugh. "Nine?! Bullshit."
He shook his head, dismissing the impossibility.
"Whatever. Nine, twelve, forty. Don't matter to me. Long as the coin is real."
Balg grinned, a predatory expression that promised nothing good.
"Usually, I charge extra for keeping secrets. But since you're family... and since you paid upfront... I'll keep my trap shut."
"Good," Brandt said. "Then we begin."
Balg nodded. He cracked his knuckles, the sound like gunshots in the quiet night.
"One question though, Little Lord," Balg said, his grin widening into something feral.
"Am I allowed to hurt you?"
He looked at the small boy, his eyes glittering with a cruel, eager light.
"Training is rough. Things break. If I snap a rib... am I gonna get hanged for it?"
Brandt looked at the giant. He saw the sadism there. The desire to inflict pain on something smaller, something better born than himself.
It was perfect.
"Naturally," Brandt said calmly. "If I break, it's my fault for being fragile."
Balg's smile vanished.
For a second, he looked almost sober.
"Right then."
The giant moved.
There was no wind-up. No telegraph. Just a sudden, explosive shift of mass.
Brandt didn't even see the hand coming.
The world flipped.
Brandt was airborne. He hit the frozen ground hard, the air leaving his lungs in a painful whoosh. The impact rattled his teeth and sent a shockwave of agony through his spine.
He gasped, lying on his back, staring up at the starless sky.
'Fast,' his mind wheezed. 'Too fast.'
Before he could even try to sit up, the sky was blocked out.
A heavy, iron-shod boot descended.
It landed squarely on the centre of his chest.
Balg pressed down.
He didn't stomp. He leaned. He added weight, slowly, deliberately. Brandt felt his ribs groan. He felt the pressure building, compressing his lungs, squeezing his heart. It was the feeling of being slowly crushed by a landslide.
Balg loomed over him, staring down like a titan examining a bug.
"Lesson one," Balg rumbled, his voice devoid of humour.
"Get up."
The pressure was absolute.
It was not merely heavy; it was a crushing, tectonic force that threatened to flatten his ribcage into a jagged paste against his spine.
Above him, Balg loomed, a dark silhouette against the starless sky. The giant wasn't even looking at him. He was taking a swig from his flask, his weight shifting casually onto the leg that was currently pinning the heir of Rimescar to the frozen mud.
'Get... up.'
The command echoed in Brandt's mind, mocking him.
He gritted his teeth, tasting blood. He didn't panic. He reached inward, grabbing the hum of mana that lay dormant around him. He pulled it violently, flooding his channels.
The electric warmth surged through his limbs. His muscles tightened, buzzing with unnatural strength.
'Now.'
He exploded. He bucked his hips, twisting his torso with every ounce of augmented power he possessed, aiming to dislodge the boot.
Balg didn't budge.
The giant simply... leaned. He shifted his centre of gravity by an inch. That single inch countered Brandt's entire, desperate exertion. The boy's augmented strength slammed into an immovable object, and the backlash shuddered through his own skeleton.
Brandt collapsed back onto the mud, wheezing.
"Wrong," Balg belched, wiping his mouth.
He lifted his foot, just for a second.
Brandt scrambled. He rolled, scrabbling at the ice, trying to gain distance.
A backhand.
It was lazy, slow, and hit like a falling tree branch. Brandt spun in the air and crashed face-first into the dirt. Before he could spit the mud from his mouth, the boot was back. This time, on his spine, pressing his face into the frost.
"Again," Balg grunted.
For the next hour, time dissolved into a blurred loop of agony.
Brandt would rise. He would channel mana. He would attack, or dodge, or simply try to stand. And Balg would put him down.
The giant used no technique.
He used no mana that Brandt could sense. He simply used mass, leverage, and a terrifying, instinctive understanding of violence. He swatted Brandt's augmented strikes aside as if they were the flailings of a toddler.
He dismantled Brandt's dignity with the casual indifference of a butcher deboning a chicken.
Finally, Balg stepped back.
Brandt lay in a heap, his chest heaving, his tunic torn, his skin screaming with a dozen fresh bruises. He rolled onto his back, staring up at the giant with hateful, defiant eyes.
"Is this..." Brandt wheezed, spitting a glob of bloody saliva. "Is this... training? I'm learning... nothing."
Balg laughed. It was a wet, rattling sound.
"You're learning that you're small," the giant rumbled. "And that magic ain't everything."
He turned, stumbling drunkenly toward a dark corner of the training yard where a pile of refuse lay covered in snow. He rummaged around, cursing as he kicked aside broken wooden practice swords.
He returned holding something.
It was a block of raw, pitted iron. It was roughly shaped like a sword—if a sword had been forged by a blind ogre who had only heard of the concept through a vague description. It was a three-foot-long rectangular metal object with a thick leather wrap at one end.
No edge. No point. Just weight.
Balg tossed it.
It landed in the mud next to Brandt's head with a sickening, heavy thud that shook the ground.
"Pick it up," Balg commanded.
Brandt groaned. He grabbed the leather grip. It was freezing. He pulled.
It didn't move.
It weighed at least eighty pounds. For a grown man, a heavy burden. For a nine-year-old boy lying in the mud, it was an anchor.
Brandt breathed. He focused. He began to cycle his mana, preparing to augment himself.
"Ah, ah, ah," Balg tutted, wagging a thick finger.
Brandt froze. "What?"
"No magic," Balg said, his voice losing its slur for a split second. "Muscle only. Meat only."
"That's impossible," Brandt snarled. "I can't lift this without—"
"Then you stay in the mud," Balg shrugged. "Lift it. Hold it straight out. Don't drop it."
Brandt stared at the iron block.
'He wants me to lift this... with this body? Unassisted?'
It was madness. It was physiologically impossible.
But Balg's boot was hovering.
Brandt gritted his teeth. He grabbed the handle with both hands. He engaged his core, his back, and his legs. He screamed, a raw, guttural sound that tore at his throat.
He heaved.
The iron cleared the mud. An inch. Two inches.
His arms shook violently. His tendons felt like they were about to snap. The strain was immense, a white-hot fire running down his shoulders.
'Isometrics,' his mind whispered, latching onto the logic to escape the pain.
It was a crude, brutal, and dangerous theory.
It was also working.
He held it. For five seconds. Ten. His vision swam. The veins in his neck bulged.
"Higher," Balg barked.
Brandt tried. He really tried.
His muscles failed. They simply quit.
The iron block dropped.
Brandt didn't have time to move his leg. The metal edge smashed into his thigh.
He screamed.
Balg didn't offer a hand. He stepped forward, his shadow falling over the curled, agonising ball of the boy. He placed his boot on Brandt's neck.
"You dropped it," Balg whispered, leaning in. The smell of ale was overpowering. "If that was a real fight? You're dead. If you drop your guard? Dead. If you get tired? Dead."
He pressed down, cutting off Brandt's air.
"Die... or lift. Those are the choices."