Lyriq Raveline-The Time Swordsman

The gates of Carcel loomed ahead stone-carved and weathered by age, manned by guards in copper-dipped armor and green-crested helms. Smoke curled from the chimneys of forges, and the air smelled of metal, sweat, and burning coal. Horses clattered by, pulling carts of weapons and raw iron ore.

It was a city built not for beauty—but for war.

Lyriq, his face bruised and eyes heavy with fatigue, walked beside the man. His arms ached, his legs were sore, and sleep had become a rare luxury, stolen only in fragments between pain and tension. Yet his eyes, though weary, held a sharp glint.

He didn't stumble anymore.

In the weeks before Carcel, the man had added forging to Lyriq's brutal routine.

At first, Lyriq's hands blistered from the heat of the forge and the weight of the hammer. Sparks danced across his arms like angry fireflies. But the boy listened. Carefully. Not as someone remembering his past life, but as a student respecting a master who wielded pain as both lesson and punishment.

"A weapon," the man had said, "must feel like part of your body. Its weight, its curve, its sound through air—you must know it better than you know your own name."

And so, Lyriq learned. How to heat. How to bend. How to shape. Slowly, he forged his own knife—short, curved, light enough for his small grip, but dense at the base for balance. The man called it crude. But Lyriq had made it. And it felt right.

The journey had turned violent. The man never spared Lyriq a moment's softness.

"Once you fall down, it's over," he would say.

So Lyriq learned not to fall.

Each time he dropped to a knee during sparring, the man struck harder—not out of cruelty, but to forge instinct. When Lyriq paused mid-hunt, the man would strike from the shadows. At night, when the boy finally closed his eyes, the man's boot or hand would jolt him awake with a blow.

"A swordsman doesn't get to sleep easy," he'd whisper. "Assassins don't knock. You'll die before you even dream."

It was hell. But Lyriq stopped flinching. He stopped crying. He stopped expecting comfort.

He adapted.

But nothing challenged Lyriq more than the man's new focus:

"How many squirrels in the last kilometer?"

"How many trees in the last two hundred meters?"

"Which direction was the wind blowing when we passed the ravelinora?"

At first, Lyriq was too tired to answer. His vision blurred. His mind felt heavy with too many tasks—running, fighting, forging, remembering. One day, Lyriq finally snapped.

"Why are you making me do everything at once?!" he shouted.

The man looked at him—not angry, not disappointed, but still.

"Because the world doesn't wait. And if you want to become more than just a swordsman… you must be undeniable."

"Mastering one thing is easy," the man continued. "You do it over a lifetime. But to be good at many things, all at once, and to adapt quickly? That makes you something else entirely."

Lyriq, panting and soaked in sweat, nodded in silence.

Be undeniable.

The phrase carved itself into his mind like an oath.

And so, as they passed through the gate into Carcel, Lyriq wasn't just a boy from Ravelinora anymore. He was something in between half-broken, half-formed, a blade in the early stages of tempering.