The villa was gone.
Instead, the biting chill of the compound's outer ring rushed into his lungs. He was fourteen years old and achingly small—the center of gravity entirely wrong, carrying a different distribution of weight than the woman he knew. His hands—her hands—gripped the rough leather of a training hilt. The skin was already thick with calluses, but the reach was frustratingly stunted.
Above the northern wall, the mountain loomed like a suffocating shadow. And across the ring stood a towering silhouette she was never supposed to be fighting alone.
Vane felt her body shift, running the first form.
It was her mother's. She didn't know that yet—wouldn't know it until Ryuken finally told her years later—but Vane felt the absolute truth of it in her bone memory. It was a foundation absorbed so early in life that she had built her entire martial identity on top of it without realizing. The first form flowed the way a heartbeat pulses. Below thought. Below decision.
