Lorn Kael's Arc

Chapter 3 of 6

The academy had everything but people. Lorn walked its stone hall at dusk. Rows of mats waited. Swords hung clean on the walls. The captured Imperial war machine stood in the yard, its plating cracked and scorched, proof that the Empire could bleed. But no one had come to see it. A school with no students was just a building full of rust and grain. Lorn shut the gate and went to find warriors where broken men drank. He found the tavern by its purple light. Stone walls fused with old metal. Inside, veterans slumped over cups, pensions spent, eyes dead. Lorn scanned the room. In the far corner sat a man he knew by reputation and dreaded to need: Aldric Voss, the Empire's old torturer. Glasses low on his nose, gray beard, a soldier's vest. Every drinker gave his table a wide berth. Lorn sat across from him. "You broke men for the Empire," he said. "Now I want you to fix them." Aldric did not look up. "I know how a man falls apart. That's all." He turned his cup. "You think these fools will train under my hands? They'd sooner cut my throat." "They need someone who knows fear from the inside," Lorn said. "I have a school. I have that." He nodded at the window, at the wrecked war machine visible in the yard beyond. "I dragged that here myself. The cause is real." Aldric studied it a long moment. Something shifted behind his tired eyes. "Real," he said. "Then it will get people killed." Before Lorn could answer, a chair scraped. A young woman crossed the room, black jacket, dark hair over one eye. She stopped at their table and stared at Aldric. "I know your face," she said. Her voice was quiet and hard. "You worked the cells at the fortress. My brother went in whole. He came out in a box." She turned to Lorn. "They said a man was gathering fighters against the Empire. I want in. But not with him." The tavern had gone silent. Every veteran watched now. This was the moment, Lorn saw. Cassandra Vex wanted blood. Aldric knew how to make soldiers. If they walked out, the room walked out. "Sit," Lorn told her. "Both of you hate the Empire. That's enough to start." He looked at Aldric. "You train them. She learns from the man who once broke people like her brother. Then she uses it against the ones who ordered it." Cassandra's jaw tightened. She sat. Aldric set down his cup and nodded once. Lorn stood and faced the room. "My school is open. Come see what killed your friends. Come learn to kill it back." A grin cracked his scarred face before he could stop it. Three veterans rose. Then four more. By dawn, Lorn led eleven fighters to his gate. The academy had students at last. But he had bound a grieving sister to the man who broke her brother, and one of them meant to kill the other.