Before the sun has even cleared the horizon, Jean arrives at Lleuad's living quarters and knocks on the door.
Lleuad opens the door shortly after — fully dressed, uniform neat, his sidesword at his side.
"You're... already ready?" Jean asks, his eyebrows lofting in a look of mild surprise.
"Yes." Lleuad's tone carries no particular weight about it. "Thank you for coming by this early to make sure I wasn't late."
Jean clears his throat, his intentions apparently more legible than he had hoped. "Ahem. Well. With the time we have — is there anything you'd like to do?"
Lleuad looks at him for a moment. Jean, for his part, has clearly dressed in some haste — his uniform present and correct, but not assembled with quite the same precision as the day before. "Have you eaten?" Lleuad asks. "I can put together a simple breakfast."
"It's alright, sir Sulienson. Please don't trouble yourself on my account." The words arrive with confidence, only to be undercut by a long, low rumble from within.
Jean stands very still.
"...I suppose," he says, his expression caught somewhere between embarrassment and surrender, "I'll take you up on that."
Lleuad smiles. "Please. Come in."
By the time Jean has crossed the threshold into the living room, Lleuad is already at the kitchen. A few minutes pass — not many — and a plate of scrambled eggs appears on the table before him. Jean, already seated, picks up his fork and sets to work with the focused efficiency of someone conscious of the clock.
He takes his first bite and stops.
Silently, Jean picks up both shakers and seasons the eggs. Curiosity gets the better of him. "Do you cook a lot?" he asks, setting the shakers back on the table.
"Only for myself," Lleuad replies, with a slight apologetic note. "I've been told my sense of taste is unreliable, so I tend not to cook for others — and when I do, I keep it simple enough that they can adjust it themselves."
— — —
Jean finishes his plate and the two set off from Lleuad's quarters.
They descend to the first floor and move through hallways that still carry the quiet of the night, though with each passing minute the stillness gives ground — doors opening along the corridors, more figures appearing, the base stirring itself gradually back into its daytime rhythm.
"How long have you been with the Everwatch?" Lleuad asks as they walk.
"Since I was twelve," Jean replies.
"Do you mind my asking how you came to join?"
"Not at all." Jean replies with warmth. "I was raised at an orphanage, never knowing my parents. That didn't bother me much — the place felt like home. We were a tight-knit family, looking after each other however we could. But…" His expression closes around the word, a quiet anger surfacing beneath. "We were attacked by a Blighted." The word comes out with unbridled anger. "He… I mean it. It killed all of the adults and most of the children. It would have killed all of us if the Everwatch hadn't come. They rescued us and gave us somewhere new to belong."
"Is that why you joined the Warden Corps?" Lleuad asks, his voice soft.
"Yes." The anger settles back into something quieter, more purposeful. "When I learned of the Everwatch's mission — to protect Remnant and humanity from destruction — it moved me." He pauses for a moment. "I'm still a cadet, but one day I hope to fight alongside the others — to stand between the Count and everyone he would take from the world. My placement examination is coming up soon and I can't wait to see where it takes me."
"And the others from the orphanage?"
"Most joined the Warden Corps as cadets, like me. Some have already been promoted. The rest went to the Stewards Corps — they were always the clever ones." A small smile. "We still keep in touch."
"That's good," Lleuad says warmly.
Jean glances at him. "What about you? Are the rumors actually true?"
"Most of what you've heard or said so far is accurate enough." Lleuad considers for a moment. "Gunter did find me when I was young. He's taken good care of me since then, for which I am ever grateful. Although—" Something shifts in Lleuad's expression — a faint, haunted quality that sits just at the edge of comedy. "I wouldn't wish his training methods on anyone. Even recalling some of the drills he put me through sends a chill down my spine."
Jean tilts his head, intrigued. "What kind of training?"
Lleuad's eyes move, scanning his memories as though searching for an example that clears a certain threshold of shareability. "Once, he left me in the middle of nowhere with no provisions — to train my survival skills, he said. The fact that there was a chance of encountering Grimm he mentioned as—" a brief pause, "—extra incentive."
Lleuad's answer stops Jean mid-step for a moment before he recovers. "Why didn't you stay at the Headquarters?"
The haunted expression softens into something more reflective. "Because he was the only one who could handle me back then. I was a troublesome child, to say the least."
"You mean what Ms. Ahwi described?"
"Yes. For a long time I kept everyone at a distance. Refused help. I was too fixed on the past to see anything ahead of it. Only my master could reach me, even if he had to use force to do it."
"What changed?"
A short silence. Lleuad's smile grows warmer. "I found a good friend."
Jean catches the shift in Lleuad's face, and something in the expression finds its way across without needing to be explained. "I'd like to meet them someday," he says — the words out before he has quite decided to say them.
"Yeah," Lleuad agrees quietly. "That would be nice."
— — —
The two pass through the cadet wing, where a handful of the older cadets are already outside running drills in the early quiet. Beyond it, they leave the main building and enter one of the passages running into the mountain.
The testing grounds are not far.
The chamber is large and circular — more than twice the size of the inner courtyard where Yona ran her lecture the day before. A domed ceiling gives it generous vertical space. A colonnade runs the perimeter, lending the place a quiet decorum without softening its purpose.
Lleuad surveys the growing crowd gathered behind the pillars. "That is quite a few people," he remarks.
"But of course," Jean replies, with the ease of someone who expected nothing less. "People come during their spare time to watch promotion candidates — hoping to one day stand where they're standing. But today is something rarer." He pauses for effect. "A Slayer examination. Technically the second highest rank — Keybearer sits above it, but that title belongs to only five people in the world and isn't something you earn through an examination. Those who reach Slayer are considered equal in strength to the Keybearers themselves, which is precisely why so few hold the rank. There are barely a dozen in existence."
"I see you've made it early, Lleuad!" Yona's voice fills the chamber from end to end. She is already inside the arena with Brandur, not far from the center, and carries the expression of someone who has been looking forward to this. "I hope you got some rest. Today I want to see the best you have."
"Thank you for your concern." Lleuad's reply is polite and unhurried, with quiet confidence settled beneath it. "I believe I can give you a worthy demonstration."
Yona's smirk sharpens. "Then let's not waste any more time."
Lleuad steps into the center, leaving Jean behind the colonnade with the rest. He and Yona shake hands.
"I will be your referee today." Brandur states coldly. "There is only one rule: no Aura manipulation. The fight stops when I say so, or when one of your Aura shields breaks."
All three step back from the middle — Yona and Lleuad to opposite sides of the chamber, Brandur to the edge.
"Ready?" His voice carries through the chamber.
Yona and Lleuad settle into their stances without drawing their weapons — the stillness of their hands all the answer Brandur needs.
He raises his hand.
The chamber falls silent. Around the colonnade, no one moves. For those watching, the seconds stretch.
Then, before the tension has had time to fully build, his hand comes down.
"Begin!"
— — —
Without further delay, both Lleuad and Yona draw their weapons and call forth their summons. The Specter rises behind Lleuad and takes to the air, while the Bear materializes at Yona's side with a weight that seems to press against the floor beneath it. Yona breaks into a sprint, the Bear charging ahead of her. Lleuad moves to meet them at a measured, unhurried pace, his sidesword leveled toward the Keybearer, the Specter flying ahead of him.
The Bear and the Specter close on each other first. The Bear drives forward, attempting to break through, but the Specter intercepts — driving spikes into the ground to anchor its position and wrapping itself around the beast. The Bear throws everything it has against the hold. None of it lands. Gradually, the beast is immobilized. The Specter attempts to pierce its hide in return, and fails.
While the two summons clash, Yona covers ground quickly, running around the two to not get caught by the Specter. Lleuad moves to stay close to his summon.
Just before she enters her opponents melee range, Yona hurls her right axe at him with full force. He dodges — and in that moment she crosses the remaining distance and swings her left axe in an uncontested arc, landing cleanly on his right shoulder.
Lleuad does not resist the impact. The moment the axe lands, he thrusts back into Yona, his blade finding her chest, and then rides the force of her blow to carry himself away, using it to reposition into a distance where his blade's reach works in his favor.
Yona does not come at him directly. She moves around his left side, keeping herself clear of the Specter while cutting off his path back to it.
Lleuad answers with a series of thrusts that she reads and blocks with the head of her remaining axe, each one anticipated. He stays measured, patient — aware that nothing she does is without purpose.
His caution proves justified. The thrown axe has curved back. It is coming at him from behind.
The trap becomes clear: Yona had struck Lleuad precisely to draw him into position, then circled to keep him there. Now she presses him into a bind. If he breaks off to intercept the returning axe, she closes in and lands a clean hit. If he holds, the axe takes him from behind. He has a second to decide.
Lleuad ducks. The axe passes over him and he pushes away as far as the moment allows.
Yona catches her axe and resummons the Bear to her side in the same motion — the balance of the fight shifting in an instant. She moves immediately, driving a pincer with the Bear on her right.
With little choice, Lleuad backs toward the colonnade, the Bear closing from one side and Yona from the other, the distance between him and his Specter growing.
The Bear reaches him first. It brings its claws down at his right hand with full force.
Lleuad dashes left — barely clear of the strike — and steps directly into Yona's range. She is already wound up, right axe raised, and brings it down as he comes out of the dash.
Then a tendril from the Specter shoots across the chamber and intercepts the blade, stopping it dead — absorbing the full force of the blow as though it were nothing.
Yona reads the danger immediately. She releases the axe and throws herself back, all her strength into the retreat — and gets clear just as countless rounded staves erupt from the tendril toward where she was standing.
Lleuad recovers his footing but cannot capitalize — the Bear is already charging again. He snaps his blade forward and meets its face, not trying to pierce but using the force of its charge to hurl himself away, buying distance from both the beast and Yona and pushing himself further from the Specter.
He runs a clockwise arc around the chamber, keeping his distance while directing the Specter toward him.
The Bear gives him little time — its pace relentless.
Yona falls in behind it, using the beast as a moving screen against both Lleuad and the approaching Specter. She shifts her left axe to her right hand and releases it in a curved trajectory aimed low, at his feet.
Lleuad catches it late. He avoids it, but loses a step in the process.
Yona draws her remaining pair of axes.
The Bear reaches Lleuad and lunges for his hand. The Specter arrives just in time to intercept, throwing itself between the two — but without sufficient time to drive its anchoring spikes into the ground, it cannot hold the beast. The Bear pushes through, forcing Lleuad to give ground.
In the scramble, he loses sight of Yona. She had been directly behind the Bear — he expected her to emerge on its left. She does not.
Lleuad's focus shifts back to the Bear, which is steadily overpowering the Specter — until an axe catches him from the side. No time to react. He takes it on his Aura shield, the impact breaking his balance and flickering his control over the summon.
The lapse is brief, but enough. The Specter's grip on the Bear loosens for a moment, and the beast uses it to close the distance with Lleuad further.
Then Yona appears from the Bear's left side, already within range. She swings her left axe at Lleuad, who gets his sword up just in time to block it. Before he can recover, she snatches the axe she just thrown out of the air with her right hand and brings it down in a single fluid motion, landing a clean blow.
"That's enough."
Brandur's voice carries through the chamber. Yona and Lleuad separate and sheathe their weapons. The summons dissolve.
Applause fills the arena.
Brandur crosses toward them as Yona turns to Lleuad, her excitement undisguised. "You've matured. Your Specter is as frightening as ever — nothing touches it, and once it has you, there's no getting free. And that's before accounting for the most dangerous thing about it: it bypasses Aura shields entirely. Pulling you away from it is the only viable strategy." She pauses. "Your sword work and combat sense have developed too. No wasted movement. Using your blade to gain distance rather than press — that's Gunter's influence, clearly. If you'd managed to set your Specter's footing at the end, you might have had me. I was working against the clock there."
Lleuad puts his left hand on the back of his head and smiles. "You're too generous. Just like last time, I spent most of the fight on the back foot. Your physical strength is simply too much to contend with directly — I took multiple clean hits, and in a real fight, if my Aura manipulation had slipped even slightly, I would have been cut in half." He pauses, watching Brandur approach. "The Bear having a mind of its own and being resummonable also gave you a significant edge over my Specter. Had I seen you resummon it during my first test, I would have fought differently."
Yona's smirk is satisfied. "It's important not to show your opponent everything you have."
"With that," Brandur says, "the matter is settled." He looks at Lleuad directly. "You demonstrated remarkable skill in both controlling your summon and your swordplay. Your ability to think under pressure and turn disadvantage to your favour is noteworthy." A brief pause. "I will prepare the paperwork for your promotion to Slayer. Bring your after-action report when it is ready and we will update your rank then. Well done."
The words are not spoken loudly, but the chamber is quiet enough that several nearby observers catch them. The information passes outward through the gathered spectators in a ripple, and the colonnade responds — people pressing forward, offering congratulations with the warmth of a community that understands exactly what the rank represents.
Jean reaches Lleuad through the crowd, barely containing himself. "Congratulations on your promotion, sir Sulienson!" He pauses just long enough to add: "We should celebrate. A hearty meal, perhaps?"
"Agreed," Lleuad replies. "All that fighting has made me quite hungry."