Blood and Mud

Chapter 7: Chapter 7

As soon as the first light of the day shone from behind the ruined, smoldering remains of Oakhaven, we packed everything that could be useful for the voyage and left. Because there were no means to move the heavy wooden cart for long distances over broken terrain, we were forced to abandon it near the edge of the square. Instead, we fashioned crude backpacks from the bundle of barbarian hides I had salvaged. We brought with us some rope, a heavy iron cooking pot, a few waterskins filled with clean water, and the salted meat and hardtack—enough food to last us maybe three days if we heavily rationed it.

”Where are we going now?” I asked the now fully clothed Miklas. He had discarded his ruined, blood-soaked plate armor, keeping only his dark scale mail trousers, a sturdy leather gambeson, and his massive two-handed longsword slung across his broad back.

”We will move towards the district capital of Shepfold,” he replied, his amber eyes scanning the horizon with practiced military caution. ”The 7th Legion is stationed there. It is a fortified city with high stone walls and a permanent garrison of at least three cohorts. It should be the safest place until we understand better what the hell is going on with that barbarian coalition.”

The scenery we walked through was a repetitive, almost idyllic tapestry that violently contrasted with the trauma of the previous day: endless rolling grassy hills dotted with small, dense patches of deciduous forests. The road we were walking on was a marvel of imperial engineering, paved with massive, tightly fitted rock tiles that had survived centuries of harsh winters and heavy merchant wagons. Every now and then, we met some lone travelers—mostly terrified farmers fleeing their homesteads or peddlers rushing their mules toward the safety of the capital. Miklas always stepped forward, offering a charming, disarming smile that completely masked his exhaustion, and politely inquired for information.

I listened closely, analyzing every word the travelers spoke. It seemed no other attack had happened besides the total annihilation of my village. The horde was moving silently, or perhaps gathering its strength in the deep woods before striking the next major settlement.

By mid-afternoon, the adrenaline that had kept me going through the massacre had completely evaporated. Every step sent a jolt of white-hot agony shooting up my leg. My makeshift splint was holding the dislocated ankle in place, but the swelling was pressing painfully against the tight leather cords.

I hated showing weakness. Every time Miklas looked back to check on me, I forced a bright smile and threw a witty remark his way. I can do this. Just put one foot in front of the other, I told myself. Mind over matter.

But reality rarely cares about positive thinking. My body was physically failing me. I calculated that pushing further would result in permanent tissue damage, effectively making me a cripple for life. I could not risk it.

”Can we stop here? I cannot walk anymore; my ankle desperately needs rest,” I finally admitted, pointing at a massive, ancient oak tree that stood proudly a few dozen yards off the side of the road. Its sprawling branches offered a thick canopy of deep green shade, surrounded by tall, soft grass.

”Is the tough girl already tired?” Miklas said, turning around. He offered that same familiar mix of shameless humor and genuine care I had quickly learned to appreciate. It was his coping mechanism, and honestly, a bit of lighthearted banter was exactly what I needed to keep the darkness at bay.

”No, Captain,” I replied, flashing him a tired smirk. ”But if you do not want me to permanently lose the ability to walk and become dead weight you have to physically carry to Shepfold, I need to rest my foot.”

”Sure, Elvit. Let’s rest until you feel better,” he said softly. Strangely, no rebuttal or sarcastic remark came out of his mouth this time. He looked at my pale, sweaty face and immediately understood the severity of the situation.

Leaning heavily on the rough bark of the big tree, I sat down and let out a long sigh of relief. I started to unwrap the splint I had made, wincing as the pressure released. I positioned my leather bag under my foot to elevate it, maximizing blood flow away from the swelling. I wanted to talk to Miklas, to ask him more about Shepfold, but the absolute, crushing fatigue of the last twenty-four hours took hold of me. My eyelids fluttered, and before I could even say goodnight, I fell into a deep, dreamless sleep.

I woke up to the smell of roasting meat and the comforting crackle of a small campfire.

The sun was high in the sky, filtering through the thick canopy of the oak tree in beautiful, golden rays. I blinked, momentarily disoriented, before the harsh reality of my situation settled back into my mind. I was an orphan. Again. I sat up slowly, my ankle throbbing with a dull, persistent ache, but the sharp, stabbing pain had subsided significantly.

Miklas was sitting a few feet away, casually turning a wooden spit over the fire. A plump rabbit was roasting over the flames. He looked better, too. The deep exhaustion in his amber eyes had lessened, replaced by a calm, focused energy.

”Good morning, sleepyhead,” he said, offering his trademark roguish grin. ”Or should I say, good afternoon? You slept for almost eighteen hours.”

”Eighteen hours?” I rubbed my eyes, feeling a sudden wave of embarrassment. ”You should have woken me up. We need to reach the capital.”

”And carry you the rest of the way? No thanks, I value my spine,” Miklas chuckled, pulling the spit away from the fire. ”Besides, we are off the main road, hidden by the brush. We are safe here. I did a perimeter check this morning. No tracks, no patrols, no barbarians. Just us and the squirrels.”

He tossed me a waterskin. ”Drink. You were dehydrated. I re-set your splint while you were dead to the world. You did a decent job tying it, but you tied it like a butcher preparing a roast. You were cutting off your own circulation.”

”Thank you,” I murmured, taking a long drink.

That first day under the tree turned into two. Then three. Then five.

We didn’t move. Secretly, I reveled in the isolation. Despite the underlying danger of the barbarian horde somewhere in the east, this quiet patch of forest felt like a sanctuary. I dreaded the idea of arriving in Shepfold. A district capital meant crowds, noise, Imperial bureaucrats, and the overwhelming pressure of surviving in a complex society as an orphaned teenage girl. Here, it was just me, the crackling fire, and the Captain.

I spent my days sitting against the trunk, mapping out my future in my head. I will go to Shepfold. I will find a job in an archive. I will use my knowledge of the Dilemdic Code to become an essential clerk. I will save enough fairs to buy a small house, stay out of politics, and live a quiet, comfortable life.

It was a flawless plan. But the moment I finished drafting it, a heavy wave of self-doubt washed over me. Who am I kidding? I thought, tossing a pebble into the grass. I’m completely clueless about how city life actually works here. I get distracted easily. I’ll probably argue with my first boss and get fired on day two. I can map out a ten-year strategy perfectly, but executing step one is a whole different story.

While I battled my own insecurities, Miklas proved to be an excellent survivalist. Every morning, he would disappear into the woods for an hour and return with a rabbit, a brace of wild birds, or a handful of edible roots, preserving our salted rations. When he wasn’t hunting, he meditated. He would sit cross-legged near the fire, his eyes closed, his breathing slow and rhythmic. During these sessions, the intricate, violent lines of the Ancient Rune on his neck would faintly pulse with a pale blue light.

It fascinated me. Magic in my old world was a fantasy, a trick of the light or a sleight of hand. Here, it was a tangible, measurable force. A biological and physical reality. It didn’t rely on prayers or moral beliefs; it relied on energy.

On the afternoon of our seventh day under the tree, my curiosity finally won out. When I encountered a system I didn’t understand, an itch in my brain wouldn’t stop until I had dissected it.

”Captain,” I said, breaking the long, peaceful silence. I was sitting with my back against the tree, absentmindedly whittling a small piece of wood with one of the scavenged daggers. ”Can you teach me?”

Miklas opened his amber eyes, the faint blue glow on his neck slowly fading away. He looked at me, an amused eyebrow raised. ”Teach you what? How to roast a rabbit without burning the fat? Or how to properly clean a longsword?”

”Magic,” I said bluntly. ”The Ember. The Magister in my village taught me history and law, but he was just a scholar. He couldn’t use magic. You are a Knight-Mage. You understand the mechanics of it. I want to know how it works.”

Miklas chuckled, stretching his muscular arms and leaning back on his hands. ”Mechanics, she says. You talk about the divine spark of life as if it were a watermill. But alright, little tactician. You saved my life, and we have time to kill while your ankle finishes knitting itself back together. I suppose a theoretical lesson won’t hurt.”

He picked up a long, charred stick from the edge of the fire and smoothed a patch of dirt in front of him.

”The core concept is simple,” Miklas began, his tone shifting from his usual lighthearted banter to the precise, measured cadence of an academy instructor. ”Every living organism in this world contains an internal energy source known as an Ember. It is seated right here.” He tapped the center of his chest, just below his sternum. ”Through dedicated martial arts and mental meditation, an individual can condense this internal Ember. This process permanently elevates your physical functions, reflexes, and senses well beyond normal human limits.”

He drew a small, tight circle in the dirt.

”Since the collapse of the barrier dividing the Northern and Southern continents, the Empire established a universal classification system to measure this power. Five stages. The first is the Dormant Bud.”

”Is that when you start shooting lightning from your fingertips?” I asked.

Miklas snorted. ”If a Dormant Bud tried to summon lightning, they would instantly cook themselves from the inside out and explode in a shower of highly conductive meat. No. The Dormant Bud is the baseline. It is achievable even by those not blessed with the talent to manipulate external magic. It just means you have condensed your internal energy enough to gain heightened senses and a significantly stronger, more durable body. A Dormant Bud is roughly three times stronger and faster than a regular, untrained human.”

He drew a larger circle around the first one.

”The second stage is the Swollen Bud. This is where things get dangerous. At this stage, the user learns to actively manipulate the Ember inside them. You become capable of superhuman feats, like running at the speed of a galloping horse for short bursts. You are six times stronger than base fitness. More importantly, this is the stage where users can finally manifest external Ember based on their culture. This is where a human can first activate a rune.”

”And the third stage?” I asked, leaning forward, genuinely enthralled.

”Bud Burst,” Miklas said proudly, tapping his chest. ”My current stage. It requires total mastery over the circulation of Ember inside the body. At this level, I can freely coat my entire body in a protective aura of Ember as tough as steel. It makes me twenty times stronger than a normal man. But the real leap is projection. A Bud Burst can project their Ember out into the world, with a maximum range of about a hundred feet.”

”So when you were incinerating the barbarians with lightning...”

”I was projecting my internal Ember to ignite the atmospheric Ember within a hundred-foot radius, yes,” he confirmed.

He drew a fourth, much larger circle. ”Shoot Elongation. This is where you cross the line from mortal weapon to walking natural disaster. The user breaks past their physical boundaries and connects deeply with the world’s natural energy. Range constraints vanish. You don’t just project your power; you essentially ’borrow’ the Ember of the world itself to do your bidding on a massive scale. Fifty times stronger than base fitness. Entire armies can be wiped out by a single Shoot Elongation Mage.”

”And the fifth?” I whispered.

Miklas’s amber eyes grew solemn. He drew a final, massive circle that encompassed all the others. ”Lignification. The absolute pinnacle of power. The user’s entire body achieves perfect harmony with both their internal Ember and the world around them. They achieve biological immortality. They will never die of old age. They no longer need to eat, drink, or sleep to function. They gain terrifying regenerative capabilities—able to regrow entirely severed limbs in just three days. A Lignified being is four hundred times stronger than a base human. They are, for all intents and purposes, demigods.”

If I could reach Lignification, I would never be helpless again, I thought. I would never have to fear barbarians, or starvation, or injury. It is a mathematical progression of power. I just need to start meditating, condense my Ember, progress through the stages...

Then reality hit me like a brick.

Yeah, right. I complain when my soup is too cold. The Swollen Bud stage alone probably requires years of agonizing physical torture and boring meditation. I’d give up after a week. Who am I trying to fool? I’m not the protagonist of an epic saga; I just want a comfortable bed.

”You mentioned projecting your power into the world’s Ember,” I said, steering my thoughts away from my own inadequacy. ”How does that actually work? Is Ember just floating in the air?”

”Ember is omnipresent,” Miklas explained. ”It resides not just within living creatures, but in every single aspect of the world. But it’s divided into domains. There is Physical and Elemental Ember—wind, water, thunder, light, darkness, blood, flora. And then there is Abstract and Metaphysical Ember—emotions, thoughts, atmospheric concepts.”

”I assume throwing a fireball is easier than manipulating someone’s sadness.”

”Exactly. We call it the Law of Intuitiveness. Tangible, straightforward elements are easier to grasp. Abstract concepts require a much higher level of mental discipline and esoteric study. But brute force isn’t enough for either. To manipulate the Ember inside an external object, you must achieve perfect Attunement. You must deeply comprehend the fundamental nature of what you are trying to control. You must study every property, every behavior of your chosen element until it becomes second nature to your own mind.”

He pointed the stick at me. ”And that, Elvit, is humanity’s greatest flaw. Humans lack the natural, passive absorption of the world’s magic. We aren’t born attuned to nature. So, our ancient pioneers had to invent a workaround to artificially achieve Attunement.”

”The Ancestral Runes,” I guessed, remembering the strange, sharp symbols I had seen in old books at the Magister’s court.

”Bingo,” Miklas smiled. ”An Ancestral Rune is a meticulously crafted carving that represents the purest, rawest conceptual expression of a specific element. Aesthetically, they are composed of sharp, angular, geometric lines. When a human etches an Ancestral Rune onto their body and utilizes unique internal circulation methods, they attract that specific element from the environment.”

”But there’s a catch, isn’t there?” I asked. ”Logically, artificially forcing a connection like that usually comes with a bottleneck.”

”A massive one,” Miklas sighed, a hint of bitterness in his voice. ”Once a human chooses a rune, they are permanently restricted to manipulating only that one single element for their entire lives. If you etch the rune of Fire, you will never bend a single drop of Water. Ever.”

”Who designs the runes?” I asked, my curiosity fully peaked. ”Can you just draw a new one?”

”The original runes were drafted by the ancient pioneers, acting as blueprints for us. Creating an entirely new Ancestral Rune is a monumental, incredibly difficult task. It requires unparalleled genius and a god-like understanding of an element. But if a human successfully creates a new, functioning Ancestral Rune, their name is forever cemented in history. They are immortalized as a legend.”

I could do that! I thought, a sudden rush of excitement hitting me. I have the knowledge of a modern earthling. I understand physics, chemistry, thermodynamics. I could invent the Ancestral Rune of Radiation, or Gravity. I would be a legend, a Pioneer!

And how exactly are you going to express the ’purest conceptual essence of gravity’ in a geometric drawing? reality quickly shot back. You can’t even draw a symmetrical stick figure. You’d probably draw the rune wrong, etch it on your arm, and accidentally invert your own gravity, launching yourself into the stratosphere to die of asphyxiation. Stick to the plan: become a clerk in Shepfold.

”What about the barbarians?” I asked, remembering the horrific battle that had brought us here. ”They didn’t use runes. They didn’t shoot fire or lightning. But they were monstrously strong.”

Miklas’s expression darkened. ”Barbarians don’t project elemental magic. They use a horrific ritual called Blood Bathing. They soak their bodies in vats filled with the fresh blood and bodies of their hunted prey, absorbing the residual Ember from the remains. It’s incredibly painful.”

”And it mutates them,” I realized out loud, shuddering as I remembered the corpse I had struck with the axe. ”That man... he had patches of scales on his skin.”

”Yes. They take on traits of the animal used in their first ritual. Scales, horns, animal ears. It gives them massive, animalistic physical buffs. A Barbarian at the Swollen Bud stage is a physical nightmare to deal with in close combat, even for a Knight-Mage.”

”And what about Elves and Dwarves?” I pressed on. ”Do they use runes or blood?”

Miklas laughed, shaking his head. ”Elvit, humanity’s greatest scholars have spent centuries trying to figure that out, and they have failed miserably. We know absolutely nothing about the internal workings of their systems.”

”Nothing? How is that possible?”

”Because they don’t share their secrets, and their physiology is fundamentally alien to ours. We know they don’t use our geometric runes. We know they don’t limit themselves to a single element—rumor has it Elves and Dwarves can manipulate all elemental types with enough training. Some say Elves etch gentle patterns of tree leaves on their skin using sunlight, and Dwarves carve runes on their teeth to chew the magic out of metals. But it’s all hearsay, tavern tales, and borderline mythology. As far as the Empire is concerned, human magic is the only magic we need to understand.”

I leaned back against the tree, my mind reeling with the sheer complexity and scale of the world I had been reborn into. It wasn’t just a generic medieval setting. It was a world governed by strict laws of energy, cultural rituals, and ancient mysteries. I loved the rigid structure of it all. But the thought of actually having to step out and participate in that world terrified me.

By the morning of our tenth day under the oak tree, my ankle was completely healed. The swelling was gone, and I could jump on it without a wince. Miklas’s magical burnout had also subsided; the Ancient Rune on his neck pulsed with a steady, vibrant blue energy once again.

We had run out of excuses to stay in our sanctuary.

I packed my crude hide backpack in silence, feeling a strange knot of anxiety forming in my stomach. The bubble was bursting. We were re-entering the world.

”Are you ready, tough girl?” Miklas asked, adjusting the strap of his longsword. His amber eyes were bright, the charismatic Captain fully restored and ready to face the Empire.

I looked at the ashes of our small campfire, then out toward the paved road leading east. I don’t want to go. I want to stay here, where it’s quiet. Where there are no expectations, no politics, no barbarian hordes.

But I couldn’t back down. Not now. I took a deep breath, forced a bright smile onto my face, and nodded.

”Lead the way, Captain,” I said, stepping out from the shade of the great oak.