Ivel was still outside when he felt the strange device Vas had given him vibrate in his pocket. He pulled it out cautiously and then a voice broke through the quiet of the early morning.
"Hey kid, it's me."
Ivel jumped back slightly. "Vas? Is that you?"
"Yes it's me. This is a communication device, you can use it by channelling mana."
Ivel stared at it dumbfounded. Things like this existed he thought to himself, genuinely lost for a moment.
"So have you made up your choice?" Vas asked.
Ivel took a moment, then steadied himself. "Yes. I've made my decision. I'll go to the Isles of Rom."
"Well alright then," Vas replied, his tone carrying that familiar dry weight. "Though we won't go straight there. Frankly you'd probably die the second you set foot on that island, kid."
Ivel couldn't argue with that. He was right.
"So I'll come get you in a month. Give you time to see if you change your mind and to put your affairs in order."
"Alright. I'll be ready by then."
The device went quiet. Ivel stood there for a moment longer in the stillness of early dawn then sighed and headed back inside.
The house was warm. Leom was at the fire making dinner while Aniya and Elia sat nearby sharpening their swords, the slow rhythmic scrape of stone against steel filling the room. Aniya noticed him come in.
"What were you doing in town?"
"I went with Aldrius," Ivel said, pulling off his coat. "To see if he could make me a new sword. Well, two actually."
Aniya looked at him with a crooked expression. "Why two?"
"In case one breaks again. The second would be a dagger, just as a backup."
Aniya and Elia exchanged a glance and laughed. Ivel blinked.
"What? What's so funny?"
Elia shook her head still smiling. "It's just the way you fight. It's reckless. That's why your sword suffers so much."
"We don't blame you," Aniya added, her tone softening. "Your opponents were good, genuinely good. But you can't keep throwing yourself at them like that. Stick to what you know. Don't clash just for the sake of clashing."
Ivel listened without interrupting, taking it in.
Leom spoke up from across the room without turning from the fire. "And remember this, Ivel. Against humans, fighting wild can work. It can even unsettle them, like it did with Lom of Light. But monsters are different. They can feel fear yes, but they fight wildly too. You meet that with more chaos and you'll lose yourself in it. You have to stay calm."
Ivel stood quietly for a moment. "I understand," he said, and meant it.
He went to his room and sat on the edge of his bed, looking at his battered sword propped against the wall.
They were right.
The only reason he had walked away from the nightcrawler was his quality. Raw mana output had carried him through, but if he had run dry, if Elia hadn't been there, the ending would have been different. He knew that. He had known it even then, somewhere underneath the heat of the fight, and had chosen not to look at it directly.
He set the sword aside, sat cross legged on the floor and closed his eyes.
He tried Lom first. The image came apart almost immediately, too many gaps, too many moments that had been pure reflex with no understanding behind them. That fight had been a storm he survived more than a battle he won. Every time he tried to reconstruct it the pieces refused to sit still. He let it go, frustrated.
Vern was clearer.
He understood Vern, the rhythm of him, the way he used his height and reach to control space, the versatility that made him shift pace mid exchange without warning. Ivel let the imagining settle and began.
The mirage of Vern moved first, a clean horizontal slash. Ivel didn't clash. He parried lightly, just enough to redirect the line, and stepped inside. Then without warning the mirage reached for its quality and water tentacles erupted outward forcing Ivel to roll clear. He came up at a distance and cursed under his breath.
He had lost the inside position.
The water slashes came next, faster and from wider angles, layered high and low, forcing him to choose. He took a graze along the ribs from the lower one and used the turning momentum to close back in rather than retreat. At close range the tentacles were too unwieldy, the mirage shifted to short sharp thrusts instead. Ivel slipped outside one, redirected it with a touch rather than a block and kept his body pressed in tight, making every exchange uncomfortable, giving nothing room to breathe.
When the quality surged again he didn't run. He dropped low, let the tentacle pass over him and drove his shoulder into the mirage's midsection, breaking its posture entirely.
The imagining dissolved.
Ivel opened his eyes slowly and exhaled.
Stay inside. Don't give him room. That was the thread. It wasn't complete, a real Vern would adapt, already had in the actual fight, but it was something to build from. A direction at least.
Lom remained a wall he couldn't climb. He left it alone for now.
He looked at the sword again.
One month.
He lay back and stared at the ceiling, not to sleep, but to think. There was still a great deal of work ahead of him.