Doran processed that without having full context for what it meant and still understood from the tone that it mattered. "Good," he said, and went to get his wooden sword with the straightforward practicality that was his default response to information he couldn’t fully categorize.

The stag was at his side.

Seven days old as a contract. Still forming, still unhurried, still looking at everything with those silver eyes that catalogued and retained. In a week it had grown noticeably. Not large yet, the antler formation still clearly incomplete, but the velvet was developing structure and the dark coat had deepened.

It looked at Orion when he approached for the footwork session.

Looked at him the way it had at the ceremony. Like it was taking notes.

"Still doing that," Orion said to it.

The stag’s ear moved forward.

"It does that to everything," Doran said. "I’ve started calling it data collection."

"Smart name for a smart beast," Orion said.

Doran looked at his stag with the particular expression of someone who was still adjusting to the reality of having contracted something and finding it considerably more than they’d anticipated. Not overwhelmed. Just recalibrating at a steady pace.

They ran footwork for forty minutes. The stag observed.

On the third sequence Orion stopped Doran and said, "let it move with you."

Doran looked at him. "It’s not trained for that."

"Neither were you when we started," Orion said. "Move together. Don’t direct it. Just move and let it follow its instinct."

Doran ran the sequence.

The stag moved.

Not perfectly. It was seven days into a contract and the coordination wasn’t there yet. But it moved with the same quality it had in everything, unhurried and deliberate and placing its feet with a precision that suggested the instinct was genuinely there. It just needed the repetition.

"It’s going to be a combat beast," Orion said.

"The assessment said Abyss Stags are primarily long-range," Doran said.

"The assessment was written for standard Abyss Stags," Orion said. "Your stag has Silver rank mana volume and Elite irregular classification and silver eyes that read every space it enters before committing to anything." He looked at it. "That’s not a long-range archetype. That’s a tactical archetype."

Doran looked at his stag.

The stag looked at Orion.

"It’s agreeing with you," Doran said.

"It’s taking notes," Orion said. "There’s a difference."

The stag’s ear moved forward.

Doran made the not-a-laugh sound.

Astra arrived as they were finishing. She looked at Orion, did the thing where she read the change in how he was standing, and said, "Stage One."

"This morning," he said.

She was quiet for a moment. "Seven days to trial." She looked at him steadily. "And Stage Two starts now."

"Stage Two is qualitative," he said. "Not linear progression. Different work."

"Meaning."

"Meaning I can’t measure it in percentages," he said. "Meaning the cultivation is running autonomously now and Stage Two refines what’s already circulating rather than building the foundation." He looked at her. "It’ll be working in the background continuously. I don’t need to dedicate sessions to it specifically."

She processed that. "Which frees your training time."

"Which means the next seven days are entirely combat preparation," he said.

Something in her expression settled into a specific gear. The one she wore when there was a concrete objective and a defined timeframe and she knew exactly what to do with both.

"Then we stop going easy," she said.

"We haven’t been going easy," Orion said.

"We’ve been going measured," she corrected. "Protecting the cultivation sessions from disruption." She picked up her sword. "No more protecting. Seven days, full pressure."

He looked at her.

She looked back.

"Full pressure," he agreed.

She came at him immediately and the difference was apparent in the first exchange. She was holding more back than he’d known. The speed was higher. The feints were deeper. The switching combination she’d been developing had a fourth element he hadn’t seen before and it caught him clean on the shoulder and knocked him back two steps.

"There it is," she said.

He reset. The physical enhancement was present and real and the shoulder hit that would have been more disruptive yesterday was simply a hit today. Present. Registered. Not destabilizing.

He went at her.

Sovereign Step inside her guard. She was already reading the pre-movement better than anyone except Luna and she adjusted fast. Not fast enough. He caught her ribs on the arrival and disengaged before the counter came.

She stepped back.

"Ribs," she said.

"Shoulder," he said.

"Fair," she said. And came again.

They worked for two hours.

By the end of it Orion had a specific catalogue of what seven days of full pressure could produce, what gaps remained, what was solid, what needed the most work. Astra’s fourth combination element was the current hardest read. The way it disguised the final commitment until the last fraction of a second made the Combat Instinct uncertain.

Uncertain wasn’t unusable. But uncertain in the trial, with a mechanism in the ground and Crane watching from the control point, was a gap he wanted closed.

"The fourth element," he said.

"The commitment disguise," she said.

"How long did it take you to develop it."

"Three weeks," she said.

"Show me the mechanics," he said. "I don’t need to replicate it. I need to understand how it works."

She looked at him for a moment. Then she walked him through it, slowly and technically, the same way she’d walked Doran through the shoulder sequence. The specific weight transfer that made the final direction unreadable until the last instant. The way the eyes had to not lead, which was against natural instinct, which was why it was hard to read.

"Eyes lead for most people," she said.

"Eyes lead for me," he said.

"In this sequence specifically," she said. "You read threat vectors primarily through the passive skill but you supplement with visual for close range. Which means when the visual gives ambiguous data and the passive skill gets the ambiguous version." She looked at him. "The read degrades."

"So the fix is either don’t rely on visual supplement," he said.

"Or trust the passive skill over the visual when they conflict," she finished. "Which means actively ignoring what your eyes are telling you in favor of what the instinct is telling you."

"That sounds like a fast way to get hit."

"It sounds like a fast way to get hit until it works," she said. "Then it sounds like the correct call."

He thought about that.

Trusted the system’s Combat Instinct over his own eyes. Deliberately.

"How do I practice that," he said.

She looked at him with the expression of someone who had an answer they were mildly pleased about. "You close your eyes."

Doran looked up from where he’d been working with the stag nearby.

"You spar with your eyes closed," Astra said. "Force the instinct to operate without the visual input. It’ll be terrible at first."

"It’ll be terrible for a while," Orion said.

"Then it won’t be," she said.

He closed his eyes.

She hit him in the ribs immediately.

"That was fast," he said.

"You were standing still," she said.

"Fair," he said.

He kept his eyes closed.

She moved.

The Combat Instinct picked up the footfall and the weight transfer and the quality of displaced air and assembled it into a directional read that was less precise than visual but more honest about what was actually happening.

He moved to meet it.

Caught half of the combination before the fourth element slipped through.

But only half.

The system appeared.

◈ COMBAT INSTINCT ◈

[Basic] >> Training Input Registered

New data: Visual suppression drills.

Processing: Instinct isolation under reduced sensory input.

Effect: Will become apparent with repetition.

◈ ◈ ◈

He opened his eyes.

"Again," he said.

She raised an eyebrow. "You’re enjoying this."

"I’m not enjoying getting hit," he said.

"You’re enjoying the problem," she said.

He thought about it honestly. "Yes," he said.

She looked at him for a moment with the expression that had stopped trying to recalibrate and just lived there.

"Again," she said.

They ran closed-eye drills for forty minutes until his ribs had a thorough and detailed understanding of the fourth combination element and the Combat Instinct had begun, in the last ten minutes, to deliver reads that were catching the commitment disguise slightly before it resolved.

Not reliably. But beginning.

He opened his eyes after the final exchange and Doran was watching with his arms crossed and his stag sitting at his feet with the silver-eyed cataloguing expression.

"The stag is taking notes on the blind fighting," Doran said.

"What’s it going to do with them," Astra said.

"I have no idea," Doran said. "That’s what I find interesting about it."

Mist materialized at the training ground edge, stepping in from wherever it went when it was in storage, and sat with its three tails arranged and its amber eyes performing their ambient room-read.

Orion looked at his team.

Doran with his stag and his compound knowledge and two weeks of movement work that had turned into something real. Astra with her formation analysis and her technical precision and the fourth combination element that was making him better by being something he couldn’t read yet. Mist with its concealment and its mirror sense and the particular quiet of something that operated below detection. Luna who was presumably in the manor sleeping with the utter guilelessness of a creature that had decided mornings before eight were optional now that training had other participants.

He thought about Serath watching the trial.

About Crane at the control point.

.