The first days in the stone hut passed in a fog—a fog of pain, exhaustion, and the bitter adaptation to being an Apprentice, slowly sharpening my understanding.
"Master," as I now called him, was a man of few words and spare movement, yet every action was deliberate.
I was no longer chained, but the boundaries he set were stricter than any iron shackle or rope bond. My sphere of movement was confined to the hut and a small surrounding area, a circle marked by specific stones in the forest. To step beyond was to break the first rule, and though the Master never directly threatened or scolded me, the cold stare from his grey eyes was warning enough.
Instruction began, as promised, but not in the way I had imagined.
Yet, the first lesson was not reading the ancient letters in his books, nor defensive stances, nor even further explanation of my Hunter's Sight. His first lesson was silence.
"Sit here," he commanded on the second morning, pointing to the wooden floor in the centre of the main room, away from the window and hearth. "Close your eyes. And be still."
"What am I to do?" I asked, confused.
"Nothing. Only be still. And listen."
I obeyed, sitting cross-legged on the cold floor. At first, there were only obvious sounds. The hiss of burning wood in the fireplace, the sound of the Master turning a page, the wind rustling outside. Then, my body rebelled.
The wounds on my back began to throb. Stiff muscles demanded to be moved. My mind leapt from memories of the lash, to Leon's terrified face staring at me, to the cold of my body wandering aimlessly for days after my father was killed. The restlessness writhed like a living thing in my chest and head.
"You are not still," the Master's voice cut in, flat. "Even your breath is noisy. Calm it."
I took a deep breath, trying to mimic his stillness. But it was impossible. After what felt like an hour—time felt terribly pliant in that silence—I shivered and opened my eyes.
"I'm cold," I protested.
He nodded, as if that was the expected answer. "Cold is a sensation. Sound is a sensation. Pain is a sensation. They are information. You must learn to listen to that information, not be enslaved by it. Tomorrow, you will sit longer."
"But—"
"Be still!" the Master interrupted. "You are nothing like your people's progeny. Try to be obedient and speak less," he continued, not coldly, but firmly.
The meditation was its own special torture. Sitting in silence, battling every discomfort, every flash of memory, every hiss of fear.
But—slowly, after several days, something began to shift. I learned to separate myself from those sensations. The cold remained, but it was as if it was happening to someone else. The pain became merely a signal, not a command to flinch. And in the space that created, I began to hear other things.
I heard the difference between the wind sweeping the treetops and the wind rustling dead leaves on the ground. I heard my own heartbeat begin to slow, matching the rhythm of nature outside. I heard a small mouse scratching behind the stone wall, and an owl perched on the roof. And, most strangely, I began to sense their presence not as sound, but as faint points of warmth in the darkness of my closed eyes. Like the heat trails I saw at night with my Hunter's Sight, but subtler, deeper, and coming not through sight, but through something else.
"Adequate progress," the Master murmured one morning, when I could finally sit motionless for nearly half a day. "You are learning to separate awareness from sense. That is the foundation. Without it, the Hunter's Sight will only master you, bombard you with information until your mind shatters."
The second lesson began, now directly involving the power of my eyes.
He took me into the forest at dusk, to a place where giant trees formed a dense canopy, leaving the world beneath in a quiet twilight.
"Look around," he commanded now. "Tell me what you see. But not with the words of a guard or a hunter. Tell it with the words of an… observer."
I observed. "There is an old beech tree there, its bark peeling. There are boar tracks in the mud, still fresh. There is a bird's nest on the broken branch…"
"Superficial," he cut in. "That is what anyone with half-functioning eyes sees. Use your gift. See its colour. See the flow of its life."
I frowned, then let my focus soften, as I had always done instinctively when foraging or avoiding danger.
The world shifted. Ordinary colours faded, replaced by a different layer of hues, dimmer but deeper.
The beech tree was not merely brown; its trunk emitted a faint, pale green glow, like foxfire, brighter near the roots and fading upwards. That was its 'life', I guessed. The boar tracks were not just imprints in mud; there was a fading reddish-orange warmth trail marking its passage. Even the air seemed layered, with cold, blue-green patches near the ground and faint, warm yellow currents rising from the last sunlit spots.
"I… I see the light," I said, sounding awed despite trying to remain flat. "Green light on the tree, orange on the trail. Warm currents in the air."
The Master nodded, satisfied. "Good. That is the vital flow, the basic life energy that moves through all living things, and even dead things that once lived or have absorbed it. That tree is strong, its roots deep. That trail is less than an hour old. The wind from the west carries warmth from the grasslands." He stepped closer.
"Now, look at me."
I turned my gaze to the Master. And I nearly stumbled backwards.
Normally, with my ordinary sight, he appeared a pale-faced, slender man with grey eyes. But with my Hunter's Sight fully focused… He was almost entirely invisible. There was a faint silhouette, a human shape, but it was terribly dim, like a shadow overwhelmed by bright light. Around him, there was almost no colour. No green of life, no orange of emotion, no blue of cold indifference. Only grey, like a dense, cold mist, and at its centre, where a heart should be, there was… an absence. A small void, pitch dark, that seemed to absorb the light around it.
"What… what is that?" I whispered, my voice trembling.
"That is myself," he answered, his voice calm. "I have learned, over many years, to cloak my vital flow, to leave no trace readable by sight like yours or certain tools of the Order. To be a ghost." There was a faint, peculiar pride in his tone.
"This is defence. And one day, if you last long enough, I will teach you to do it. For as long as your life-force shines like a torch in the night to those who can see, you will always be quarry."
The warning settled in my gut like a stone. I had always known my eyes made me different, cursed. But to hear it described as a 'beacon' calling all predators… it made my vulnerability a new, stark reality.
"The Thymolt Order! The ones with the white rose?" I asked. "Can they see like this?"
"Some of them. The most trained. The Inquisitors, particularly. They call it the 'Sight of Truth'. They use it to detect deviation, forbidden sorcery, cursed blood." The Master turned away, then broke the illusion of his absence, appearing an ordinary man again.
"But their sight is rigid, dogmatic. They see the world in black and white, cursed and holy. Your sight, if trained, can be far sharper. It can see nuance, flow, falsehood."
"Falsehood?"
"Every living being emits subtle shifts in its vital aura when lying, fearing, or plotting betrayal. A calm killer may have a cold heart, but his intent emits a distinct, dark red hue, like congealed blood. A traitor may smile, but there is a pale yellow tremor, like shame, around his hands." He looked at me. "You have felt it, have you not? Before that filth Gashed-Nose laid the lash on your back, you knew his rage was peaking."
I nodded slowly, remembering the nearly blazing red aura around Gashed-Nose before the first strike landed.
"That was your instinct. We will make it a science."
Days turned into weeks. A routine formed. Meditation at dawn, sight lessons at dusk, and in between, physical labour. The Master taught me how to move quietly—not just carefully, but with full awareness of every muscle, every shift of weight, so I could walk over dry twigs without snapping them.
He taught me the basics of using a knife—not to fight like a knight, but to survive, to kill quickly and silently if needed. "Noisy violence is failure," he said. "True violence is something that happens before the victim realises it."
The food was simple but filling: roots, vegetables from the small garden behind the hut, occasionally rabbit meat I trapped.
My gauntness slowly faded, replaced by lean, hard muscle. The wounds on my back healed into slightly rough scars, a physical reminder I would carry forever.
One night, as heavy rain beat against the roof and we sat near the fireplace, my courage crested.
"Who are you, truly?" I asked, looking directly at him. "You are no noble. No priest. Not a sorcerer like in the tales either. What do you seek?"
The Master regarded me for a moment, unangered. He set down the thin book he was reading. "I was once like you. A tool. In a different war, of course… but that is not your concern and is of no use for you to know now." His eyes, reflecting the flames, lost focus for a moment, looking into the past. "The point is, I was trained by a group. Not the Order, something—more hidden.
"Hidden? They are more dangerous than the Order's knights?"
"This group—they believed only knowledge, all knowledge, is neutral. All knowledge is a coin to them. To them, the Thymolt Order's prohibitions on sorcery, divination, and other ancient arts are acts of stupidity to control the masses.
They have no ambition to conquer the world. They only wish to collect coins in a different way, by studying, and sometimes they practice what the world calls—dark arts." The Master snapped his fingers, and in an instant, a small flame appeared at his fingertip for a fraction of a second, not yellow-orange, but a pale green like the light of the tree I had seen, then it winked out.
I held my breath. That was magic. It was real.
"But," he continued, his voice flat again, "I found these people to be as dogmatic as their enemies. To them, knowledge is everything, the humans holding it are unimportant. They would sacrifice an entire village for an ancient scroll. I… disagreed. I left them. Took a few interesting items." He glanced at his old bookshelf. "And since then, I have preferred to be an observer. A collector of private truths."
"And me? Am I one of those 'valuable items' you collect?" I asked, a challenge implicit in my tone.
He measured me with his grey eyes. "You are a question. An experiment. Varsian blood is potent, but always wild, uncontrolled. Those who have it usually go mad or die young, hunted by the Order and others. I... wished to see if it could be tamed. Refined. Made into a proper instrument, not a crude sword that eventually wounds its wielder." He leaned forward slightly.
"You have lasted longer than I anticipated. You have tenacity. And something else… a stillness within you, beneath all that pain and fear. That is why I paid the coin."
The dark coin. "Ahh yes that coin... but—what does the coin truly mean?" I asked. "Why were the smugglers so afraid?"
He stood, retrieving a small box from a high shelf. Inside, on black velvet, lay a coin exactly like the one used on the dock. It was made of an unfamiliar metal, not silver, not iron. It was pitch black, yet reflected light in a strange way, like oil on water. On one side was etched the same symbol as on his robe. An empty circle with a point at its centre. On the other were scratches that seemed random, but as I looked, they resolved into the shape of a very simple eye.
"This is a Bargain Coin," he explained. Certain organisations use them in the black markets, the underworld. One coin represents an absolute debt. Whoever accepts it acknowledges the bearer has an absolute claim on whatever, or whomever, was purchased. To refuse to surrender the purchased item… is to declare war on those groups. And they, though I have not associated with them for a long time, still have long and quite lethal fangs."
"So they still seek you? The collectors?"
"Possibly. But they prefer to wait and watch. Like me." He placed the coin back in the box. "They may have heard of you. A potential new instrument." A thin, almost-smile touched his lips.
A chill not from the rain crept down my spine.
"Then why do we not hide somewhere better? Why here?" I said. The Master did not answer immediately but stood and looked at me.
"Because sometimes, the open place is the most hidden. The Thymolt Order would not expect a bearer of Varsian blood to live so close to Blackwater, in a forest they consider 'blessed' by the Goddess of the White Rose. And the collectors appreciate elegance in boldness." He looked at me again. "Fear is a prison, Apprentice. We must be careful, not afraid."
That night, I slept fitfully, plagued by dreams of dark coins with blinking eyes and grey shadows that swallowed light.
The lessons continued, and grew deeper. The Master began teaching me basic sigils. Some were old Veridian script. Others were signs from the Art of the Arkh, symbols for elements, for warnings, for traps. "Knowledge is defence," he said. "A trap you do not understand is more likely to kill you than a sword."
He also began testing the limits of my sight. He would hide small objects—a pointed stone, a key—somewhere within the hut or just outside, and command me to find them using only the Hunter's Sight.
It was difficult at first. I was used to using my sight passively, as a way to navigate a hostile world. Now I had to actively direct it, to focus like an observer. But slowly, I began to distinguish between the natural light of a tree and the faint glow emitted by a stone that had absorbed the sun's energy for hours, or metal that held the cold of the earth.
My life in the stone hut, which ran with a feeling of vulnerability. It felt as fragile as snow. I knew my old life had taught me 'trust no one,' but it brought me to a dilemma. Fear and doubt always crept within me each time I secretly watched the Master. Perhaps in all my life, he was the only one who had shown any care after my father, even though he openly bought me and sought to make me a tool—for his satisfaction.
Yet now, a feeling like a bond was beginning to form again, faintly, alongside the wariness within me. 'What is his true purpose in all this?'