Chapter 130: Training [5]

That caught Alden’s attention. His eyes moved back.

"Every selected human cadet participates. You’ll fight each other and demonstrate everything you’ve learned during the week." Ulvakor watched him. "The strongest performer receives the title of Spire."

"Only one?"

"Only one. Ten cadets enter each year. One becomes a Spire."

Alden stared at him. "That’s a brutal ratio."

"The title is not given lightly," Ulvakor said simply.

Alden thought through the names. Nicholas, Roselle, Leon, Claire, Adrian, Cecilia, himself. Seven from Astral and Calyndor. Plus now Seris joined as well.

"So instead of going anywhere," Ulvakor said, "you should be spending every hour of this week on training. After the tournament, you can go wherever you want within Apothesis. Visit who you want. I won’t stop you."

Alden looked at him sideways. "Then why do I feel like there’s another reason you’re pushing me this hard?"

"...What?" Ulvakor’s expression flickered for just a moment.

"You’ve been talking about training me to my absolute limits since the moment I arrived," Alden crossed his arms, leaning back slightly. "And now there’s suddenly a tournament where only one person becomes a Spire." He stared dead into Ulvakor’s eyes. "You want something from me."

Ulvakor awkwardly scratched the back of his head, looking away. "Well... you know there are ten Spires, right?"

"Yes."

"And five of them belong to Windsky."

Alden’s eyes narrowed into slit-like daggers. "That it! And now you want me to become another Spire and get good name for the Assemby right?"

Ulvakor offered a sheepish, highly embarrassed smile.

"I knew there was some hidden intention behind all this!" Alden called out.

"It’s not the only reason!"

"But it is a reason."

Alden stared at him flatly.

Ulvakor cleared his throat, adjusted his coat, and stood straighter. "I train every student to their highest possible level. That is my genuine commitment. Whatever happens in the tournament is what happens." He looked at Alden directly, and for a moment the sheepishness dropped completely. "But I do want to see how far you can go. Because you’re interesting and I want to find out what you become."

Alden held the look for a moment.

Then he exhaled and looked away. "Whatever."

Ulvakor laughed, short and bright. "That’s basically agreement from you, isn’t it."

"Don’t push it."

The laugh faded slowly. They stood side by side at the edge of the training ring, the cloud ocean spreading in every direction below the Skyland’s edges, the light overhead doing its particular Apothesis thing where it seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere at once.

Alden was still thinking about the tournament. About the week ahead. About the fact that Seris was here, in a different Skyland he couldn’t visit yet, and about what he was going to say when he finally could.

Ulvakor was quiet beside him.

After a moment, he did something unexpected.

He raised one hand, open, above Alden’s head.

Alden noticed and looked up at it. "What are you doing?"

Ulvakor’s expression had softened.

"How tall are you?"

"Why does that matter?"

"Just answer."

"Five-nine. Maybe five-ten." Alden watched him. "Why are you asking? And what is your hand doing?"

Ulvakor lowered it slowly. He turned his eyes back toward the clouds.

"Nothing." A pause. "You just remind me of someone."

"Who?"

"My little brother."

Alden looked at him.

Ulvakor’s profile was still. Not tense, not performing composure. He was genuinely still, in the way things are still when there isn’t any performance left to give.

"You have a brother?"

"I had one."

The past tense was quiet. Alden felt it land.

He didn’t say anything right away. He waited a few seconds before asking.

"What happened?"

"The Asura’s had him."

Alden went still.

He had heard of the Asura the way you hear about a distant storm. An enormous threat, kept at arm’s length by the Mantle Layer. Something that existed at the edge of the world, and stayed there.

But standing beside a person who had lost someone to it made the distance disappear entirely.

"He was kind of unique," Ulvakor said. He didn’t look at Alden. He looked at the horizon, at the cloud ocean and the faint shapes of the other Skylands visible in the far distance. "He wasn’t like me. He was quieter. Stubborn in his own way, but not about fighting. He was stubborn about the people he cared about. About doing things properly even when it cost him something."

He smiled faintly, and there was grief in it that didn’t try to hide.

"He snuck out of Apothesis once. During a patrol cycle, when the Mantle Layer had a gap that needed closing. He went down to the lower world on his own." A pause. "We don’t know exactly what he was trying to do. He didn’t leave a note. But where they found him afterward, there were humans he had been protecting."

Alden looked at him.

"He died doing something that wasn’t required of him," Ulvakor said. "That no one had asked him to do. That was just completely his own decision."

The wind moved through the training ground.

"I’m sorry," Alden said.

It was the only thing that was actually true in that moment, so he said it plainly.

Ulvakor looked at him.

The grief was still there but the smile was more real now. Not bright like his usual ones. Something smaller and warmer and harder to put down.

"Your stubbornness reminded me of him," he said. "When you were arguing about cheating earlier. The way you argued even knowing you had no ground to stand on."

Alden thought about that.

"He would have done the same thing," Ulvakor said, and the warmth in it came through clean. "He would have called it cheating and then turned around and immediately started figuring out how to win anyway."

A beat of quiet.

Then Ulvakor clapped his hands together once, and the energy shifted. The brightness came back, like something was being put back in its proper place instead of replaced.

"Right." He turned toward the center of the ring. "Back to work."

Alden blinked. "Already?"

"Three days," Ulvakor said, "I’ll have you sensing Basic Rai within three days. Then we spend the remaining four days reinforcing it and starting the entry work for Advanced." He stretched his arms overhead, joints cracking audibly. "By the time the tournament arrives, you will have something to show them."

Alden looked at the training ring.

Everything that had been building since he woke up this morning, the pressure in the corridors, Severian’s contempt, the ache of knowing Seris was somewhere in this sky he couldn’t reach yet, Ulvakor’s story sitting quietly in his chest alongside his own reasons, all of it sharpened into something clear and forward-moving.

He straightened his posture.

"Yes, sir."

"That’s more like it."

And just like that, the real training began.