"Hey, look who decided to grace us with his presence."
"Who?"
"The kid with the crazy spells. I bet he's going to pull something again today."
The other one laughed, leaning against the narrow window of the room that overlooked the training field.
"It'll probably be another one of his extravagant antics. Seriously, I don't get why you waste your time trying to copy that bastard's spells. Most of them seem made to draw attention, not to actually work."
"I know…"
the first one replied, with a crooked smile.
"But something tells me that kid is still going to show us something interesting."
"Good luck with that, then,"
the other shrugged, turning his gaze back to the horizon.
"I'm waiting for someone more relevant to show up. The high-ranking teams should train at some point, and I doubt they'll come down to Vybor. This is going to be a unique opportunity to see them in action — and, if all goes well, to steal a formation or two."
The rooms with views of the arena were packed. It was impossible to find a free window. And everyone knew why.
The high-rankers were on the move — forging, training, preparing. Those who hadn't been at the Triad meeting only knew one thing: something big was about to happen. The ones who stayed at the top of the rankings rarely spent time in the dorms. They usually spent their days in Vybor, hunting, testing new weapons, feeding their thirst for battle. But now… they were all there, silent, waiting.
Even the blacksmiths were working non-stop, the forges roaring day and night. The quotas were off the charts. It was as if all of Svarog were holding its breath, ready to plunge into something huge.
But in the morning, it wasn't the high-rankers they found — it was the flashy spellboy. The same one who defied the laws of magic with an Ashen bear — he walked into the arena alone.
Silence. Not a whisper. Only the cold wind passing through the stone cracks.
Northern magic was divided harshly — between the useful and the useless. And the line between them was as thin as it was unfair. A spell could be powerful, magnificent, able to tear mountains apart… and still be considered useless. For most people, it wasn't about power, but efficiency. Spells had to be fast, practical, cheap. No waste. No spectacle.
Ekaterina knew this better than anyone. She had always said that a simple, continuous spell was infinitely more valuable than any flashy one-shot spell. And yet, when she looked at Nikolai, something inside her wavered. Because he was different.
She couldn't explain — but Marya Sobolev had known. The crazy old woman, as everyone called her, had seen something in Nikolai that took her weeks of expeditions to understand: his spells didn't follow the rules of the world. The spells he cast seemed to ignore the natural magical capacity of a northern tamer. They were simple in concept, yet impossible to execute — at least not without a magical reserve well above the norm.
Everyone in Svarog knew: casting a single Arrow of Light already required absurd control. Now, to multiply it and guide it at the same time… that was madness. Madness that, somehow, worked in Nikolai's hands — whether due to management or raw reserves, everything seemed to be too much.
Ekaterina always watched him, silently. She knew that if she told him how extraordinary it all was, he might lose his humility — and with it, the instinct that made him dangerous. But there was another reason for her silence. Kuzma, Daria, Andrei, and she had made a pact of secrecy. They would protect Nikolai — from himself, and from others. Those who watched too closely, who sniffed out power with hungry eyes. Because in Svarog, power drew attention.
Kuzma's group, aware that they wouldn't be sent to war after Kolya's announcement, decided to make use of their time differently. They secretly rented one of the rooms facing the training grounds. Kuzma was the first to wake up. He had paid a hefty price for the room — an amount that would have made him think twice under normal circumstances — but he believed it would be worth it. If he managed to learn any formation used by the great clans, any cheap trick that gave him an edge, that would already be a victory. Something he could carry with him for the rest of his life.
When he looked out the window and saw who was down below, a tired smile formed on his face.
"So the boy… even knowing he's not going to war, still chose to train,"
he murmured, with a mix of admiration and concern.
* * *
Nikolai flipped through the notebook one last time, his gaze shifting between the old notes and Ashen's warm back under his hands. The bear let out a low grumble, clearly annoyed, and turned his head in protest — but didn't move away.
"Alright then…"
Nikolai murmured, forcing a nervous smile.
"We've done this a few times in the rehearsal room. It shouldn't be a problem out here… right?"
Ashen gave a short, low growl that didn't exactly sound like confirmation. Still, Nikolai took a deep breath.
The training field was empty, and that made it the perfect opportunity. If he was going to test that spell, it was now or never.
The spell in question was in the forbidden section of Marya Sobolev's notebook. There, the notes changed color, and above them there was always a warning in big, crude letters: "High-level spells, caution."
For anyone else, that would mean danger. For Nikolai, it meant a personal challenge.
He had already tried several spells from those pages. Most of them simply… didn't work. Some drained his energy to the last thread, as if each word written sucked the soul out of him. Others left him bleeding from the eyes, body trembling, fingers stiff as though the ink used to draw the symbols had poisoned his veins.
But there was one — one in particular. Kalabam. The name still echoed in his mind like a dissonant note, impossible to forget. That page had knocked him out for hours, maybe a whole day — he never knew for sure. When he was found, the floor was covered in burned symbols, the rehearsal room completely destroyed, and the metallic scent of blood hung in the air, as if the spell had tried to carve into him the price he had to pay. For some reason, Alexandra and her granddaughter had forbidden him from ever using it again. Not with mild warnings, but with a fear far too great to ignore.
But there was one that reacted differently. One that not only worked… but seemed relatively easy. At first, he thought it was useless for his position as an archer. But the more he practiced, the more he realized: that spell had a purpose. A purpose that only he and Ashen seemed to understand.
"Alright then…"
he murmured again, raising his hands into the air.
"I think this is how it goes."
Nikolai began the invocation. The gestures were slow at first, then faster and faster — precise, aggressive, almost violent. Lines of energy drew themselves on the ground in circles pulsing in bluish and silvery hues.
In the rooms above, heads began to turn with interest. Onlookers crowded together to see what the "crazy magic kid" was up to this time.
"Oh, here it comes! Looks like something big!"
someone shouted.
And everyone saw. The wind stopped. The torch flames flickered silently. And then Nikolai shouted — with all the strength in his lungs, his voice slicing through the air like thunder:
"RAZ-KAI!"
The ground shook. The circle beneath his feet shone like a trapped sun. Ashen roared in response, and the air exploded in a whirlwind of light and smoke.
When Nikolai finally managed to speak the final sound of the invocation, something happened. A flash burst around him, followed by a wave of energy that swept across the entire field. The ground trembled, the air cracked with jolts of raw magic — and for a moment, everything turned white. A dense white, almost solid. Mist made of melting snow turned into light.
For several seconds, no one could see anything.
In one of the upper floors of the tower — a large, luxurious, and overly perfumed room — a group composed only of women observed the scene below.
"Leader… I think the kid blew himself up."
"Damn it, boss, I told you it was a waste of time watching this commoner,"
another replied, crossing her arms.
"A waste of time and sleep."
Two of the watchers were pressed up against the room's window, trying to figure out what they had just witnessed. The two women fought for space in the window frame, their large bodies nearly blocking the view. Anyone who saw them on the street would look away — out of fear, not desire.
Behind them, a third woman lay on the bed, staring at the ceiling with a tired sigh.
"Damn it… and I really thought I had found a treasure."
All three wore identical outfits — dark leather pieces, short and uncomfortably tight. The look was provocative, but no one in their right mind would call it "sexy." They were known, above all, as the second highest-ranked group in Svarog — an all-women team of brown bear tamers who lived in the shadow of the champions. The leader had never been good at finding decent recruits. But one of her rookies had insisted there was a name worth watching.
"I thought you were right about this boy, Zoya…"
the leader murmured, eyes still fixed on the ceiling.
"Now tell me, where is the strength you swore he had?"
Leaning against the wall on the other side, with no room to see the arena, Zoya sighed. She couldn't explain it herself. Her friend's words, spoken before departing for the Empire, still echoed in her mind like a curse.
"Friend… if you can, trust and help Nikolai. He's much stronger than you think."
At the time, Zoya had dismissed it as pure sentimentality — the words of someone in love, maybe. But deep down, she wanted to believe Irina hadn't been wrong. Perhaps recommending the boy to her leader had been the last promise she could fulfill for her missing friend.
She barely had time to finish the thought before the same voices that had mocked Nikolai seconds earlier turned into shouts of surprise.
"No way…"
"Holy shit… he did it! The bastard actually knows how to metamorph his bear!"
"What?!"
Zoya yelled, shoving aside the two teammates blocking her view.
"Move, I want to see!"
The women didn't respond. They stood frozen, staring down with expressions that blended awe and disbelief. When Zoya finally leaned out the window and looked into the arena… her heart nearly stopped.
The flash had faded. And at the center of the field, amid the steam still rising from the cracked ground, stood Nikolai. But he was no longer the same boy. His body looked bigger, furrier, muscles outlined beneath his torn shirt. His hair, now longer, fell over his shoulders with gray at the tips. And his gaze… his gaze held something ancient, almost animalistic.
In his hands rested a massive scythe — black and silver, with a long, curved handle and a blade so large it dragged along the ground, cutting a path through the snow.
Absolute silence fell over the three women as they stared at the boy in stunned disbelief. Until the voice of the woman lying down finally broke the air, a smile forming on her lips:
"So… the boy really does know how to use that spell."
She turned her head, amused.
"This is going to be interesting."