His body moved. Lifted the tool. Brought it down against earth that gave beneath the blade with surprising ease. The motion repeated itself without thought, muscles finding rhythm like water finding channels, and Cel stopped trying to understand what he was doing and just let it happen.

His enhanced body made the work trivial. Each swing carried force that bit deep into soil, turning, breaking and clearing space for whatever would be planted there.

Minutes accumulated. Rows appeared behind him - neat lines where his hoe had passed. He’d expected someone to correct him by now. To point out whatever fundamental mistake a noble pretending to be a commoner would inevitably make.

But no one approached.

The other workers moved through their own sections with steady efficiency, occasionally glancing his way but never stopping to offer instruction or criticism. Which meant either he was doing something so catastrophically wrong that they’d already given up on him, or…

Or he was doing it right.

He straightened slowly, staring down at his own hands.

Did he… have a talent for field work? If it wasn't that, then what was it? His body understood the motion instinctively, found the proper angle and force without needing to be taught.

The irony was vicious enough to make him laugh, though nothing came out except a sharp exhale that might have been pain.

His resurrection had granted him a body that exceeded normal human limits, even that of other Chosen Ones. Enhanced strength. Enhanced speed. Enhanced endurance. But all of it was worthless without technique to direct it, without the skill that separated wild flailing from actual combat.

And now here he stood, demonstrating natural aptitude for work that would never save his life, would never help him kill the people who’d wronged him, would never matter beyond filling his stomach with food he couldn’t even taste.

The hoe rose and fell in a steady rhythm.

Around him, conversations drifted - villagers talking in low voices, sharing observations about weather or discussing what needed planting where. The other students present moved with varying degrees of competence, some clearly familiar with the labor while others fumbled through it with determination that compensated for inexperience.

And gradually, Cel became aware of gazes pointing in one direction.

Not toward him. Toward something else. Someone else.

He straightened, letting the hoe rest against the ground while he tracked the lines of attention.

Hestia stood perhaps twenty steps away, working her own section.

Or… at least trying to.

Her movements looked wrong. The hoe came down at angles that wasted force, blade skipping across the surface instead of biting properly. She’d lift it too high, then bring it down without leverage, accomplishing maybe a third of what each swing should produce. Her black robes and wine-red ribcage frame made the whole scene surreal - divine armor designed for combat, worn while struggling with basic agriculture.

By now, everyone seemed to have noticed. Gazes cut toward her periodically, expressions carrying the particular discomfort of people who saw a problem but didn't want to address it. Because she was a noble. A Great Clan heir. The kind of person you didn’t correct even when they were obviously wrong.

Cel watched her for another few moments. Watched her reset her grip, adjust her stance, try again with the same ineffective result.

Then he exhaled and started walking.

Hestia looked up. Crimson eyes found his with immediate wariness.

“You’re doing it wrong,” Cel said.

Her expression hardened. “I’m not.”

“You are.” He gestured toward the ground she’d been working, at the shallow and uneven disturbances that barely qualified as proper tilling. “Look at what you’ve accomplished compared to everyone else.”

Hestia’s jaw set. She planted the hoe against the ground with more force than necessary, blade sinking deep. “I know what I’m doing.”

“Then why does it look like you’re trying to kill the earth instead of turn it?”

Her glare intensified, and for a moment he could've sworn he was looking at Zara.

Cel moved closer. “Let me help you.”

Something shifted in her expression. The defensive edge softened fractionally, replaced by uncertainty that she probably hated showing. Her grip on the hoe loosened slightly.

“If you insist,” she said finally.

Cel stepped behind her. Close enough that the heat from her body registered against his chest despite the armor between them.

His hands found hers on the hoe’s handle. Warm skin beneath his palms, her fingers surprisingly delicate for someone who spent so much time training with weapons.

“The angle’s wrong,” he said quietly. His breath stirred the black hair near her ear. “You’re trying to force it straight down. But the blade needs to come in like this—”

He guided her hands, adjusting the hoe’s position.

“And the motion isn’t just your arms.” His chest pressed against her back as he demonstrated, his body moving with hers through the proper swing. “Your whole body drives it. Weight shifts forward, momentum carries through. It’s just like fighting.”

They moved together. The hoe rose with combined effort, then fell - clean and sharp, blade cutting deep into earth that gave properly this time. Turning over. Creating the kind of disturbance that would actually prepare soil for planting.

Hestia went still. Not pulling away. Just frozen in place, awareness of their proximity apparently catching up to her.

“See?” Cel’s voice came rougher than intended. “Like that.”

Her head turned slightly. Not enough to make eye contact. Just enough that he could see her profile - the elegant line of her jaw, the faint color rising in her cheeks that might have been exertion.

Around them, the field had gone quiet - extremely quiet to be precise. All gazes fixed on them. At a commoner standing pressed against a noble lady's back, hands covering hers.

The wrongness of it was profound. Visible on every face that had turned their direction.

Hestia’s gaze cut sideways. Found the watchers.

Work resumed immediately. Heads bent back to their tasks, conversations restarting with forced normalcy, the moment dissolving like it had never happened.

Cel released her hands and stepped back, putting appropriate distance between them again.

“Try it,” he said.

Hestia nodded once. Then she lifted the hoe, positioned it the way he’d shown her, and brought it down with the proper angle and force.

Earth turned. Clean and deep. Exactly right.

She looked at the result for a moment. Then at him.

Cel inclined his head slightly. "You've got it now. I'll, uh—" He gestured vaguely toward his half-finished rows. "Get back to work."

Then he turned and walked back to his own section, acutely aware of her gaze following him.

The rest of the day passed without incident. Sun tracked across the sky in its patient arc, shadows lengthening and shifting direction as morning became afternoon.

Eventually someone called that the work was finished for the day.

Tools were collected, returned to their storage near the field’s edge. The group began the walk back toward the village, conversation resuming with the particular energy of people whose bodies were tired but whose obligations had been fulfilled.

The village gates appeared ahead. And beyond them, gathered near the well, stood the scouting group.

They’d returned already. Calder and Saren stood at the formation’s center, the selected students arranged around them in loose clusters.

Their expressions carried the particular frustration of people who’d spent the day searching for something that refused to be found.

“Anything?” someone from the field work group called out.

Instructor Calder shook his head. “Nothing. We covered the reported areas. No creatures, no tracks, no evidence of recent activity.”

“Maybe they already moved on,” he added. “But we will stay for a few more days - just to be sure.”

Then he dismissed the group with a gesture, and they dispersed toward their respective lodgings.

Cel found Lior. Wheat-blond hair catching afternoon light, sky-blue eyes bright with whatever the day had brought him. His mother stood beside him, a cloth bag slung over her shoulder that bulged with gathered herbs.

“How was it?” Cel asked.

Lior smiled. “Good. We found a lot. Mother knows all the best spots.” He gestured toward the bag.

His mother’s expression held contentment that went deeper than successful foraging. She’d spent the day with her son. That alone seemed to make everything worthwhile.

They walked back to the house together.

Dinner was simple. The same grain porridge from breakfast, supplemented with some preserved vegetables that added color if not much flavor.

Then the evening wound down. Darkness settling over the village.

Cel lay on the pallet, staring at wooden beams he couldn’t actually see in the darkness.

He wouldn’t sleep. Couldn’t risk it. The thought of surrendering consciousness to the nightmare again made his chest tighten with something close to panic.

So he lay there instead. Counting the minutes.

Eventually, his thoughts started to circulate.

Selina’s words from their last conversation returned with uncomfortable persistence. The distinction she’d drawn between “who” and “what” he was. The insistence that identity wasn’t defined by divine blessing, social position or the roles other people assigned.

But if that was true, then who was he?

The question had no satisfying answer. Every time he tried to grasp something concrete, it slipped away like water through his fingers.

He was a survivor. That felt true. He’d endured his father’s abuse, the cult’s torture, the trial of the Moon Goddess, the Ashlands. Had refused to die when dying would have been easier.

But surviving wasn’t an identity.

He was a weapon, maybe. Shaped by violence and pointed toward targets - his father, the cultists, whatever threats the Reckoning assigned him to eliminate.

But then again, that was “what” he was, not “who” he was.

The answers kept circling without resolution. Each one true in some limited way, none of them complete enough to feel like the truth Selina wanted him to find.

Frustration built in his chest.

So he let his thoughts shift. To the fighting style problem.

Selina had told him it wasn’t time to think about it yet. That he needed to focus on finding out who he is.

But the question wouldn’t leave him alone.

Hestia’s assessment had been brutally clear - creating an effective style from scratch required genius-level understanding combined with extensive experience. He had neither.

And yet Selina wouldn’t have suggested it without reason.

She was a Divine Oracle. The Moon Goddess’s voice. She’d always been right.

So why would she direct him toward something impossible?

Unless it wasn’t actually impossible. Unless there was something he was missing, some approach he hadn’t considered, some truth about himself that would make the task achievable instead of absurd.

But what?

He had no answer. Just circular thinking that led nowhere except back to the same conclusion - this was beyond his capability.

Time passed. How much, he couldn’t say. His thoughts continued their spiral. Identity. Fighting style. The gaps in his understanding that felt like chasms he couldn’t cross.

Eventually, noise emerged from the sleeping room. Movement. The rustle of fabric and quiet voices that suggested Lior’s family was waking.

Cel stood from the table. Moved back to his pallet and arranged himself like he’d been sleeping all along. No reason to explain why he’d spent the entire night sitting alone in darkness.

Morning light crept through the walls. Grey and thin, gradually strengthening as the sun actually rose.

Lior emerged first, hair disheveled from sleep, moving with the particular sluggishness of someone not quite awake yet. His parents followed shortly after. They moved through morning routines with practiced efficiency - tending the fire, preparing breakfast, setting the table.

They ate mostly in silence. The same porridge. The same quiet efficiency.

Then, cutting through the domesticity, a bell rang from outside.

The fist caught him across the jaw. His head snapped sideways, teeth cutting the inside of his cheek, blood flooding his mouth with copper warmth. Another blow landed before he could recover - knuckles driving into his ribs with force that compressed his lungs, drove air from his body in a sharp gasp. His father’s face loomed above him, features twisted with disgust that went deeper than anger could ever be..

“Worthless.” The word came flat. “The Moon Goddess’s mark. Of all the humiliations you could have brought on this house.”

Cel tried to speak. Tried to explain, apologize, say anything that might stop this. But all he managed were choking and pathetic sounds that had no meaning.

The beating continued. Methodical. Thorough. Fists raining down without pattern or pause, as if his father meant to erase him entirely.

Cel gasped. Air rushed into his lungs too fast, making him cough, which made his ribs scream with renewed intensity. His hands pressed against the floor, trying to push himself upright.

But the floor wasn’t stone anymore.

Straw crackled beneath his palms. Rough cloth instead of polished marble.

Understanding crashed through.

‘Not real. Not real…’

He opened his eyes.

Grey light greeted him. Not full morning yet - the pale, thin kind that crept through gaps in the walls before the sun properly rose. The sleeping room where Lior had grown up. The pallet beneath him. The single blanket that had fallen to the side during whatever thrashing he’d done while dreaming.

His breath came too fast. Heart hammering against his ribs like it was trying to escape. Sweat slicked his skin despite the cool night air.

He forced himself to slow down. Breathe deeper. Count the inhales and exhales until his body remembered it wasn’t actually being beaten, wasn’t actually in danger, wasn’t actually anywhere near his father.

It was just a memory, feeling the familiar weight of Cinderward’s armor still manifested around him - he’d kept it summoned through the night, unwilling to be caught vulnerable even here.

Light leaked around the curtain separating his sleeping room from the main space. Movement sounds filtered through - quiet footsteps, the scrape of wood against wood, low voices speaking too softly for him to make out words.

Surprise flickered through him. He'd expected the nightmare to have jolted him awake in the dead of night, same as always. But apparently he'd slept through till morning this time.

Cel moved to the curtain and pushed it aside carefully.

Lior and his parents moved through practiced morning routines - his mother tending something over the fire, his father checking equipment near the door, Lior setting wooden bowls on the table with the particular care of someone trying not to make unnecessary noise.

They looked up when the curtain moved. Three sets of eyes finding him simultaneously.

“Good morning,” Lior’s mother said, her voice carrying enthusiasm despite the early hour. “Did you sleep well?”

The question was innocent. Casual. But Cel’s chest tightened anyway.

Had they heard him? The nightmare might have made him thrash or cry out. Raven had mentioned once that he talked in his sleep.

But their expressions held nothing except polite concern. No pity. No awkward awareness of having witnessed something private.

Relief settled over him with unexpected intensity.

“I did,” Cel said, avoiding her eyes. “Thank you.”

Lior smiled, gesturing toward the table. “Mother made breakfast. It’s not much, but...”

“I’m sure it’s fine,” Cel said.

He crossed to the table, settling onto one of the stools. The others joined him - Lior beside him as always, his parents across from them. His mother distributed bowls, each containing what looked like grain cooked in water. Porridge, maybe.

They ate mostly in quiet, spoons against wood, a murmured comment now and then about the day ahead.

Lior’s father finished first. Set his bowl aside and stood, moving to gather equipment from near the door. His mother followed suit moments later, collecting empty bowls and stacking them for later washing.

“We should head out,” Lior’s father said.

They moved through final preparations with practiced efficiency. Cel and Lior collected their own items - nothing much, just themselves really, since whatever work awaited wouldn’t require the supplies they’d brought from the Academy.

Outside, morning light had begun asserting itself over the village. Other students emerged from the houses where they’d stayed, joining the families who’d hosted them in a gradual convergence toward the village center.

The crowd grew. Perhaps thirty students total, accompanied by an equal number of residents. Conversation remained muted - people still shaking off sleep, not quite ready for the day’s full energy.

Instructor Calder and Saren stood near the well, waiting with the patient stillness of people who’d already been awake for hours. Their postures carried the particular alertness that never quite faded even in safe locations.

When everyone had gathered, Saren’s voice cut across the ambient noise.

“Students selected for scouting duty - step forward.”

Heads turned. Bodies shifted as certain people pushed through the crowd toward the instructors.

Nobles.

Only Nobles.

And Theron of course, who everyone assumed was the emperor’s child.

Cel watched them arrange themselves before the instructors.

The message was clear enough. Either the instructors were sparing nobles the dishonor of manual labor, or they were prioritizing the students who already had combat experience from family training.

But it created an obvious divide. Nobles doing important work while commoners stayed behind to help with farming and whatever other tasks the village needed.

Saren dismissed the selected group with a gesture. They departed immediately, following Calder toward the village’s main gate.

Lior’s father stepped closer, his weathered face friendly despite the early hour. He looked at Cel directly.

“Would you like to help me work the field today?”

“Yes,” Cel said immediately. Because what else could he say? That he’d prefer to stand around uselessly while everyone else contributed?

Lior’s father nodded, pleased. Then he turned toward his son.

Lior’s mother had moved closer during the exchange. She touched Lior’s arm lightly, drawing his attention. “Would you like to come gather herbs with me? A merchant should arrive any day now. We could trade what we find for something nice to eat.”

Lior’s face brightened. “Of course.”

His father’s expression shifted into something more serious. “Don’t go too far from the village. Stay within sight of the walls if you can.”

Both Lior and his mother nodded.

Then they were moving. Separating into their assigned tasks. Lior glanced back once, catching Cel’s eye, offering a small wave before disappearing around a corner.

Cel followed Lior’s father. Joined the loose group of other villagers and students who’d been assigned field work.

Movement caught his attention. Hestia walked perhaps five steps away, her black robes and wine-red ribcage frame standing out starkly among the simple clothes everyone else wore.

Cel adjusted his path, falling into step beside her.

She glanced at him. Crimson eyes acknowledging his presence without surprise.

“Why are you the only noble who didn’t go with the instructors?” The question emerged before Cel could consider whether asking was appropriate or not.

Hestia’s pace didn’t falter. “The instructors wanted me to stay behind.”

“Why?”

“To take the lead if something happens.” Her tone carried the same clinical precision it always did. “They needed someone capable of organizing a defense if the village comes under attack while they’re gone.”

That made sense. Hestia had already demonstrated leadership capabilities far beyond her age. The instructors would be fools not to utilize that.

“Then why are you going to the field?” Cel asked.

Hestia's expression didn't shift. “If I have to stay behind anyway, I might as well help with the work.”

The group continued walking. Away from the village center, toward a gate Cel hadn’t noticed the previous day.

The forest pressed close beyond it. Trees crowding each other, undergrowth thick between their trunks. The kind of density that made Cel wonder where exactly a field was supposed to exist in this environment.

They walked for perhaps ten minutes.

Then the trees opened.

Abruptly. Completely. One moment surrounded by dense growth, the next emerging into a space so large and clear it looked wrong.

The field stretched ahead. Massive. Rich earth showed in neat rows, some already planted with crops that had begun sprouting, others lying fallow and ready for work.

And surrounding it on all sides - the forest. Trees pressed close to the field’s edges like they were waiting for permission to reclaim the space. The contrast was striking. Almost surreal.

“How did you make this?” Cel asked, turning toward Lior’s father.

The man chuckled. Warm and genuine. “We didn’t. A Chosen from the Life Clan made it for us.”

Divine power used for agriculture. Not combat. Not glory. Just practical application of abilities to help people who needed it.

Lior’s father reached into a pile of tools that had been left at the field’s edge and pulled out a hoe.

He held it out toward Cel.

“You know how to do this, right?”

The question was rhetorical. Delivered with the assumption that of course Cel knew basic field work. Because what commoner didn’t?

Lior’s father moved away before Cel could formulate a response. Joined the other villagers who were already spreading across the field, selecting their sections to work.

Cel stood frozen. The hoe felt alien in his grip.

He had a problem. A significant one he hadn’t considered until this exact moment.

As a noble, he’d never done manual labor. Never been expected to understand how farming worked beyond the abstract concept that crops grew in fields and servants harvested them. His childhood had been spent learning etiquette, studying clan politics, training with weapons he’d been terrible at wielding.

Not learning how to work a field.

His gaze swept across the space. Other students had already begun working. Their movements carried the practiced efficiency of people who’d been doing this since they were old enough to hold tools. Hoes rose and fell in steady rhythm, breaking earth and clearing space for planting with effortless competence.

Cel turned.

Hestia stood perhaps ten steps away, also holding a hoe. Also looking distinctly uncertain.

She looked almost comical. A Great Clan heir in full divine armor, holding a farming tool like she’d been handed a weapon she didn’t know how to use.

“Do you know how to do this?” Cel asked.

Hestia’s crimson eyes met his. Something defensive flickered through them. “Of course I know.”

Then she turned and walked away.

Cel watched her go.

Apparently House Mortveil taught their heirs practical skills. Or at least taught Hestia. Maybe it was connected to that family tradition she’d mentioned while cooking - some Mortveil philosophy about understanding all aspects of life, even the mundane ones.

Cel looked at his own hoe. At the field stretching before him. At the other workers moving through their sections with steady progress.

‘Screw this.’

He lifted the hoe.