Five hundred years ago, when their people were burned under the Elysians, everyone had a surname as per tradition of their homelands. Over time however, the survivors of what the Cinefra call ‘the battle of the Falling Sun’ or more simply the ‘Fallen Sun’ would slowly remove their surnames of their own volition, deeming them reminders of a time and place that abandoned them. The only person who still carries an ancient surname is Falenval, bearing the name Duskfrel.

“And.. Why does he keep it?”

“Duskfrel was the Royal Surname of the Duskfrel Kingdom. By technicality, he is Elysian Royalty. His eyes are golden much like yours.”

“Mine?”

“Yes. Your golden eyes are a trait that a majority of Elysian mages and people possess, but not all did. The only outlier were the Duskfrels, as theirs were dark gold.”

“Is that why they were used as bait?”

“I don’t know.”

After the unfortunate accident of Sigmar somehow nearly burning Ryke alive, the Lanista sat him down in the green clearing to rest. He himself wasn’t sure what happened, and the feeling went away so fast he could hardly remember what happened beyond the feeling of being burned alive from the inside out. He quickly forgot that though, as Sigmar seemed to be in a good enough mood to answer his all too curious questions.

“.. What’s a Kingdom?”

“Imagine if one family owned every single city in Cinefra, and everyone in it belonged to them, everything in it belonged to them, and everyone was beneath them.”

“So how are we..different? If Falenval is the strongest, who’d stop him?”

“Falenval seeks a loose manner of control. The only thing he owns is his city, Velum. Everything else is owned by their respective Castellan. Cinefra is better described as an alliance than a kingdom. The only thing Falenval has absolute control over..”

“The frontlines?”

Sigmar raised a brow and turned to the boy, giving him a subtle nod and looking to the sky. His hands had wrapped around a small black glass bottle, threatening to crush it into dust. It took a few moments to pass before his hands loosened and his gaze relaxed.

“Yes. Falenval can theoretically draft anyone he wants; and every city must send their most promising Centurions to one of the frontlines after their training is over.”

“Would that include me?”

“If you’re still in the top ten by the end of your training.”

Ryke sat in the clearing, his legs huddled against his chest with his arms wrapped around them, watching Fromir lazily frolic in the grass, his eyes a little clouded. He didn’t realize the world was so.. complicated until now. Even something as simple as names had such history to them. Would he be sent to the frontlines?

“Do you think my father was sent to the frontlines?”

“Your father?”

“Fairrin.. Leghan knew him..”

Ryke kicked at the grass, just missing the way his instructor's eyes constricted at the name.

His countenance quickly recovered by the time Ryke looked back at him, the usual stoic yet slightly disdainful expression in his eyes. The man stood, grabbing one of the staves. “Most likely. Sounds like he was drafted.”

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“Drafted? Why-” His words were cut short as a staff came flying his way, knocking him onto his back and sending him rolling a few feet with a groan. The staff was incredibly hard and fairly heavy, smooth from top to bottom and maybe only an inch thick

“First I will teach you how to use every part of the glaive except the blade. Then, when you are ready, I’ll teach you how to use its edge.

The staff was a fairly well used weapon, and many of its intricacies carry over to other polearm weapons like spears, halberds and glaives. While ultimately each weapon was different, Sigmar taught based on the approach that the staff was its foundation, and in doing so would create a sturdy set of movements and stances that would allow one to fully harness their weapon.

Sigmar wanted the staff carved into Ryke’s bones. Wanted every movement to become instinct, every strike a natural part of him. The boy was talented, curious, and reckless. He’d turn those things into as many advantages as he could.

And try to make sure Ryke forgets about today’s incident before he meets his father again.

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Ryke went home that day filled with aches and pains, his hands holding a book nearly the size of his head and a new weapon on his back, yet another he needed to learn. He even had a list of stretches and exercises he’s meant to do every day when he woke up and went to bed, designed to help strengthen flexibility in his arms and legs, Most focused on whole body movements. He foresaw many days of exhaustion ahead.

He was right.

A month of this went by, meeting Gaeldir everyday to expand his Runic vocabulary and nothing else. Every symbol had different meanings, and even more went put together with another. The rune for Stone was made up of the runes for Earth and Hard, Blood was Life and Water, while Fire was Burst and Heat. Yet you could then add Water to the rune for Fire, and you would get something new. The concepts were often too many for him to memorise reliably, but the Runesmith found ways to force the memory onto him. If he learned enough words that week, he’d be given a cup of tea. He wasn’t sure why that motivated him so much.

The first week, he didn’t get it. The second week, it clicked together like a puzzle. A lot of it, he realised, was just stripping things down to bare essentials and concepts, and then potentially reusing them for more unique things. The only thing he had yet to even understand a fraction of was their application.

Gaeldir said runes were a method of giving life to something. He portrayed Runesmithing to be a sacred art that could not be used casually, but didn’t quite expand upon it further than that. It left him wanting to learn more, but also slightly upset that he wasn’t considered ready- he was hardly through a quarter of the book, and the concepts only grew more and more esoteric as he got deeper and deeper into it’s pages.

Many things pertaining to the spirit were mentioned, and many of the runes required more and more effort to memorise. They became more and more complex in the ways they were drawn, and the different mixtures of base concepts became difficult to handle. That’s why he only earned a cup for the second and third week, but not the rest.

Training with Sigmar was a different situation entirely. No memorisation was needed, nothing needed to be ‘learned’ but it was rather fought. For two hours every day, Sigmar would fight him with the staff. Force him to learn how to defend different strikes, different attacks, how to get around different defences. Not once had the boy landed a strike.

It was purely being taught through combat, but the boy could tell he was improving. He was learning the different stances and movements related to a staff, but he was learning them in the most flexible way they existed. Ryke didn’t know if he should be thankful to have a teacher so well-versed they can teach like this, or swearing at the heavens for the hell it was putting him through every day.

The greatest miracle was that he had moved on from refining his stomach to his heart. No threats to his progress came up beyond the occasional challenge for his place in the ranking, but he was learning from Sigmar too fast- he had quickly brought himself up to speed in combat experience, and he had by far the strongest body, bar a few exceptions. He was starting to think Maximus was simply born with divine strength, as his body was slowly growing even bigger- and the boy was working his way well up into the ranks at alarming speeds.

He wasn’t the only one, though. Most if not all candidates had long entered the Ignitio Realm, while he wasn’t the only one to fully refine an organ- Kievra being the second. Lycus did so shortly after, which caused his heartbeat to resonate in a weird way with others. All Ryke knew about it was that the boy went with refining his heart first, which he thought made sense in some strange way.

His daily schedule included three square meals, four hours of lessons, four hours of sparring and self-practice, and the rest of the day he would spend back home, either sitting with the Aurum Tree or fulfilling the orders left for him and making himself some money. He didn’t really want to spend what was left for him, so the spare pocket change helped. Most didn’t even know Fairrin wasn’t the one making things anymore, and the rest didn’t care. The quality was still up to par.

Ryke didn’t want to stay at that house otherwise, though. It felt too empty to him. Foreign. A warmth was lacking from the place that still bothered him a couple months later. One day while he walked down it’s halls, the boy turned to the wall that held so many of his family's memories, pictures and mementos. The first ingot he made, the first weapon, pictures of his mother his father had drawn and portraits of the father son duo. He looked up-

The chained up glaive- it was missing.