They made camp in the square they'd cleaned—low wall, cracked fountain, a coin-sized fire under Wind Veil so smoke wouldn't gossip. The two rescued adventurers slept hard in the lee of the broken bench. The city creaked the way dead cities do when they forget themselves.
The black-cloaked swordsman said little. He took first watch without asking, back to stone, sword across his knees. Twice a stray ash-gust made the chalk marks whisper. Once, long after midnight, a thin remnant slithered along the alley's edge, remembering how to be teeth.
He was already standing.
No flourish. No warning. One quiet step. One clean stroke.
The remnant came apart like a lie said softly and died without a sound. He wiped the edge on ash and sat again, as if he'd only adjusted the fire.
Mira stirred, not fully awake. In the morning she would say she'd dreamed a line of silver moving where darkness shouldn't. Kael slept like a wall. Elira's breath evened only after her hand found Lumeveil's scabbard and stayed there.
Second watch, Kael took the wall. Third, Mira, muttering half-jokes to keep herself honest. The swordsman never fully slept; he simply folded the night around him and listened.
Before dawn, the city went still in that particular way that means morning is deciding whether to arrive. Elira woke to the smell of cold stone and salt. She found him standing where alley and roofline could both be seen, gaze far but not empty.
Mira came to her shoulder, whispering, "He moves like a shadow. You think he's… shadow-born? Demon-side?"
Kael rubbed a knuckle, eyes narrow. "If he is, he's a strange one. Shadows don't usually hold the line for strangers."
Elira watched the memory of his cut—the air he used, the way his blade carried wind without taking wind's name, the way his pressure made room for light without wearing light's color. Two flavors she knew. But under them… nothing she could pin to a root. Not fire, not water, not stone. Not any element at all.
"His edge carries wind and light," she said softly. "But it doesn't belong to either."
Mira frowned. "So… what does it belong to?"
"I don't know," Elira said. "Yet."
Dawn finally chose them. Gray bled to pale, then to the kind of weak gold cities earn by surviving the night.
The black-cloaked swordsman turned from the alley. He didn't clear his throat. He didn't dress the words up. He just set them down where they'd stick. "You three fight like you're scared to die," he said. "You should try fighting like you want to live."
No one joked. Not first.
Mira looked at her hands, then up. "Then show us how," she said, voice small and stubborn.
Kael's gauntlets whispered as he flexed. "We listen. We hit. We learn."
The black-cloaked swordsman stood by the dry fountain, watching them check straps and blades. He didn't bother with mystery this time.
"My name is Haco," he said. Voice steady. No flourish.
Mira arched a brow. "At last, a name."
Elira inclined her head. "Then tell us what comes next, Haco."
"I want your measure," he said. "Not stories. Not hope. Steel."
"Where?" Elira asked.
"Training yard behind the guild," he said, turning. "What's left of it."
They followed him through a lane of cracked shutters and ash-stiff carts. The guildhouse still had three walls. Behind it, a rectangle of worn stone waited—chalk scars, shattered dummies, a rack of splintered practice blades abandoned in a trough. Wind moved without sound.
Haco stepped to the far line and chose a slender practice sword. Even junk looked correct in his hand. "This won't be to the death," he said. "But strength untested is strength unproven. Show me if you're worth walking beside."
Mira twirled one ring, deadpan. "You could've just asked nicely."
"I did," he said, and the corner of his mouth nearly moved.
Kael planted his feet. "We do this together."
Elira nodded. Her heart felt steady and heavy at once. "We prove it."
She lifted her palm, breath a thread. "Lumeveil—veil the shadow, crown the light. To my blade. Light Form."
The long sword came bright and clean, edge a quiet promise.
"Stand with me, Draga—armor of the steadfast, fist of the storm!" Kael growled. Gold-bronze plates rolled up his forearms and shoulders; the air around him got heavier in a useful way.
"Let the flood burn and the frost shatter—Aure!" Mira let her focus bloom. Crimson and azure arcs woke around her wrists, balanced like breath.
Haco inclined his head—thanks for the courtesy of names—and then simply moved.
No windup. No stomp. A blur of clean steps and he was there, inside Kael's reach. A casual palm touch slid between the plates and shoved; Kael skidded three meters, boots burning chalk into the stone.
"Too square," Haco said mildly. "Root honest. Angle lazy."
"Modest feedback," Mira muttered, and snapped her fingers. "Rime Wedge!"
Ice bit across his ankle line, a slanted trap. He didn't leap. He didn't smash. He changed lanes—one half-step across her timing—and the wedge split empty air.
Elira's instincts screamed. She cut high, Dawn Cut—thin, fast, precise. Steel rang—
—and met wood that felt like a wall.
Haco's eyes flicked to the glow under her edge. Noted. He slid past her shoulder like a page turning.
Kael slammed down a fist. "Pulse Vault—set, arm, detonate!"
The stones under Haco's last step bulged, a ring of dirt-thunder bucking to throw him.
His heel whispered off the rising lip; he let the shockwave pass through the space he no longer occupied. "Your mines talk too loud," he said, already behind Kael. The practice sword tapped a seam in the plates; Kael felt the sting through three layers and hissed.
Mira's rings brightened. "Short cast. Crimson Deluge—clip!"
A shoulder-wide rush of searing water folded tight, edges icing hard. Steam blew past his cloak—he stepped into the hot, out through the cold, the cut of his blade parting pressure like a seam ripper.
"Beautiful," he said, and meant it. "But scattered. Power ahead of control."
"Eat my scattered," Mira snapped. "Frostbind Lattice!"
A tight grid skated over the stones; he hit it on purpose, let it steal him a fraction, took that fraction as a gift to pivot around Elira's next line.
He was above her then—coat whipping like a dark flag. Elira didn't think; she raised, a thumb-wide Veilguard flashing along Lumeveil's spine, catching the practice blade just long enough for her wrists to live.
He passed her ear like a quiet threat and said, not unkindly, "You hold more than light, don't you?"
The words hit someplace she didn't have names for. She bit them down and moved.
Kael came through like a train. "Quake Step!"
The ground shook meanly; Haco's stance didn't blink. Kael chained it: "Thunder Pulse!"
A crackle leapt from knuckles to wood; the practice sword swallowed it like rain into sand.
He is old, Draga rumbled in Kael's head.
"I noticed," Kael grunted, and kept swinging.
Mira shifted gears. "Hydro Mirror!"
A skin of water flashed into a palm-wide lens; her eyes flicked across its surface to read his tells—micro-angles, pressure lines, the seam where he liked to exit.
"There," she breathed. "Elira—two beats left, high-right!"
Elira went now. "Wind Guide!"
A sliver of air tugged at her ankle, trimming her stride; Split-Edge came on the beat Mira called—
—Haco wasn't there.
Wood kissed Elira's guard and, somehow, taught her a better parry. She took it, angry and grateful at once.
"Again," he said—not to taunt. To ask.
They gave him again.
Mira: "Boil-Line!" A hair-thin thread of scalding flow scored the practice blade's flat—softened, not broken.
Kael: "Iron Lockstep!" The yard's skin locked under his next two options.
Elira: "Lantern Needle." A razor-bright scratch traced the guard—weak point marked.
Haco smiled with his eyes. "Better."
Then he pressed hard.
Pressure dropped like a storm lid. Shadows lengthened where they shouldn't; light thinned with no cloud. Mira's breath hitched. Kael's stance wobbled once and recovered. The Stair's memory pressed a cold palm against Elira's ribs.
"If this is all you have," he said, voice no louder than before, "you're corpses waiting to happen."
Something hot and old pushed back from Elira's chest—not Lumeveil, not wind, not light the way she'd learned it. Her mouth moved before fear could veto.
"…Consecrate."
The yard blossomed.
A clear ring of force snapped outward from her boots: not heat, not ice, not wind—sanctity. It carried weight that knew where to land. It wrapped Mira in a slim, humming shield and split incoming pressure like a river stone. It slid across Kael's plates and bled off hurt, lifting fatigue a thumb's width from his bones. It kissed the dead dummies and cracked them along old scars. It hit Haco square.
He stopped.
The practice blade broke clean at mid-span with the sound of an oath changing its mind. Steam rose from the chalk lines like breath in winter.
At last, your true voice breaks free, Lumeveil whispered, almost laughing.
Mira stood wide-eyed. "That wasn't element."
Kael flexed, feeling the world weigh him less for a heartbeat. "A skill," he said, breath rough. "Not a color."
Silence took the yard. Haco looked down at the broken wood, then up—calm shifted, not to anger or surprise but to recognition.
"Unbound light," he said quietly. "A consecration. So that power still walks."
Elira's hands shook around the grip. "I… didn't mean to. I don't even know how—"
"That is enough," he said, and meant it. He let the ruined practice sword fall. "Rough. Undisciplined. But you're worth keeping alive."
Mira huffed, half-laugh, half-sob. "High praise from doom in a cloak."
Kael finally let his fists drop, plates sighing. "We pass?"
"Barely," Haco said—and there was almost warmth under it. "But you did."
He took a step closer. Up close, his face looked younger than the ruin and older than the sea. His eyes held a tired brightness Elira had only seen in people who had lost more than they told.
"From this moment," he said, "I'll walk with you. The road ahead won't forgive hesitation."
"And you'll… teach us?" Elira asked, steady voice, shaking core.
He considered. "Not teach," he said at last. A faint tilt of his head. "Walk beside you. For a while."
"Trust is earned," Kael said—true, not threatening. "Who are you—really?"
Haco looked past them at the busted dummies and the broken guild wall where the sun threw red through a ragged hole, staining stone like old glass. He reached for his hood—stopped—let his hand fall.
"Names can wait," he said. "Work can't."
Kael exhaled, lowering his gauntlets. "So you are coming with us."
"I said I would if you could stand," Haco answered. "You stood."
Mira rolled her shoulder, the fight finally catching up. "Next time, maybe warn us before you kick us into the floor."
"That was the warning," he said, deadpan.
Elira slid Lumeveil home and felt the last hum of Consecrate ring like a far bell under her sternum. "Then we start now."
"After water and bread," Mira said.
"After water and bread," Haco allowed—a small, real line of a smile. "Then we make sure you learn to fight for living."
The yard smelled of old iron and first light. Training would hurt. Good. They were done breaking just to breathe.
It was time to breathe so they wouldn't break.