From Deadbeat noble to Top Rank Swordsman-Chapter 57: Sparks That Do Not Fade

The Southern Yard was quiet.

Not with silence—with breath held. With footfalls slowed. With eyes that lingered longer than usual.

Leon stood before the line of cadets, the same ones who had stepped through his trial when it bore no name, only purpose. Their shoulders had squared since then. Their gazes didn’t wander.

"Again," he said.

Steel met steel.

This was not sparring. This was rhythm. Form. Control. Each motion a word in a language they were still learning.

Marien stood at the edge, arms folded, but not watching Leon. She watched the ripple he caused—how every nod or correction became gospel in the eyes of the cadets.

Kellen approached from the far archway, scrolls in hand. His pace quickened as he reached her side.

"We got word," he murmured. "The Glass Order didn’t just send messages. They moved. East and West. Simultaneously."

Marien frowned. "You think they’re testing something?"

"Or someone."

Below, Leon adjusted a cadet’s grip, then paused. Not because of anything visible—but because he felt it. A hum beneath the ground, faint but present, like the Citadel itself listening.

Marien noticed. "You feel that?"

Leon nodded. "Something woke with the flame."

She didn’t ask what. They both knew the answer wouldn’t come in words.

Later that evening, as the yard cleared and the torches were lit, a figure waited beyond the gate. Hooded. Cloaked in grey.

Leon approached without hesitation.

The figure bowed slightly. No weapon. No threat. Just presence.

"The Glass sees what others refuse," the stranger said.

Leon didn’t blink. "And what do you see?"

The figure lifted a small object. A shard—mirrorlight encased in crystal.

"A memory not yours. A trial not yet determined."

Leon reached for it. The shard pulsed faintly in his hand. Cold. Then burning. Then still.

Images danced across his vision—a mountain without a name, a child with eyes like flame, and an oath spoken in a dead tongue.

Then gone.

He opened his hand. The shard had vanished.

The figure spoke again. "What you lit was not just a flame. It was a signal. And others have seen it."

"Then let them come."

"They will." The figure turned to leave. "And not all will want to follow."

Leon watched the gate close behind him.

The stars had begun to rise. There was no wind. No banners. Just the quiet crackle of firelight behind him.

And somewhere beyond the edges of the Citadel, footsteps moved in silence.

Not toward the flame.

But toward its bearer.

Leon didn’t return inside that night. Not immediately. He stood alone in the training yard long after the last torch had guttered low, the embers casting fractured shadows on the ground. The dirt beneath his boots was still marked from drills, footprints of the cadets who no longer looked away when he spoke.

He looked down at his hand—the one that had held the shard. No mark. No burn. But something lingered. Like weight. Like promise.

Behind him, Marien reappeared, cloak drawn against the chill.

"You didn’t say what you saw," she said.

Leon didn’t turn. "I don’t think it was meant for me to explain."

"But it was meant for you."

He nodded once.

A pause.

"They seem to have chosen you for something," she said. "And they didn’t ask you first?."

"No one ever does."

She stepped closer. "Do you trust them?"

Leon’s jaw clenched slightly. "I don’t know them well enough to distrust them at least."

"That’s not the same as trusting them."

"I’m not looking for trust," he said quietly. "I’m looking for trustworthy."

Marien watched him a moment longer, then handed him a folded slip of parchment. "This came from the Western Watch."

Leon opened it. The seal was faint—burned partially by magic. But the words were clear.

The Hollow Road has opened. Riders in black. A Thorne mark was seen among them.

His breath stilled.

Marien tilted her head. "You think it’s a trick?"

"maybe," Leon murmured. "Or it’s a trap."

He crushed the parchment and turned back toward the Citadel gates.

"Prepare a travel detail," he said. "Small. No banners. We leave by dawn."

"South or west?"

"Both."

Marien frowned. "That’s not how travel works."

"It is now," Leon said. "If the Hollow Road’s open, we’re not the only ones who’ll try to reach it."

"And if the Thorne mark is real—?"

Leon’s voice was steel. "Then I need to know who it is ."

Elsewhere, beyond the Vale of Broken Teeth, two figures stood before a ruined stonework altar. One wore a chain of runes across his chest. The other carried a blade with no hilt, only a wrapped grip of scorched leather.

"They’ve moved," said the man with the blade.

"The Conclave voted," the other replied. "The Rite stands."

"Then the prophecy was wrong."

"No," the runed man whispered, kneeling before the cracked altar. "It’s begun. This isn’t rebellion. It’s the return of a forgotten legacy."

Above them, the clouds thinned. Moonlight pierced down.

And far, far below, in catacombs still sleeping, the ancient vaults began to stir.

Not open.

Not yet.

Humming.

Waiting.

In the library sanctum beneath the Citadel, a low candle burned beside pages that hadn’t been turned in a century. A young scribe—barely past initiation—held a trembling hand over a passage.

"Look at this," she whispered, calling another to her side.

The second scribe leaned in. Ink scrawled across the parchment, dated in an age long before the current rites.

When fire meets shadow, the Third Oath shall awaken.

She swallowed. "That’s the symbol that flared over the Southern Yard."

They shared a look. Then ran.

Meanwhile, Leon stood in his quarters, unsheathing the blade he rarely touched. It was old. Unnamed.

He ran a cloth over it once. Twice.

And then placed it back in the scabbard.

Not for show.

For use.

Tomorrow, he would walk the Hollow Road.

And this time, it wouldn’t be as a cadet.

It would be as a warrior with a name no one had yet dared to say aloud.

But soon would.

Outside, the wind had shifted.

It wasn’t storm-wind or battle-wind, but something older. A tide pulling at fate’s edge. The southern banners didn’t flutter—they bowed.

In the armory vault, Marien selected gear in silence. Not the polished plates of the Orders, but leathers, dark stitched and scorched from older fires. She ran her hand along the inside seam of her gauntlet—where her father once etched a phrase only her and Leon knew:

"Stand where none remain."

When Kellen arrived, she didn’t look up. "How many volunteered?"

"More than we asked for," he said, voice soft. "Half the instructors. A dozen cadets."

Marien smirked faintly. "He lit something more than just flame in them."

Kellen held up a map, edges curled. "There’s a route through the Breach Hills. Hidden, but steep. It’ll cut days if the Hollow Road’s truly open."

Marien nodded. "Then that’s where we go first."

Elsewhere, in a fortress of white stone layered in mirrored windows, a figure watched the Citadel through a disc of ice and runelight. Her hands trembled slightly, not from fear—but anticipation.

"The boy walks a path that should be closed," she murmured.

An acolyte behind her spoke, "Should we intervene?"

"No," she said. "We’ll see how far he goes."

And the mirror darkened.

Back in the Southern Yard, Leon stood once more beneath the flame altar. The fire no longer roared—it waited. Quiet. Knowing.

He closed his eyes.

Not in prayer. In remembrance.

The boy he had been.

The dead he had buried.

The truths no longer hidden.

And the road now calling.

When he opened his eyes, there was no doubt.

Only direction.