Chapter 189: Rhythm of the Ground

Orion leaned a little closer, voice lower now. "Funny enough, this is something I planned to teach you guys tomorrow, but you’ve got me cornered already," he said with a dry chuckle.

"Lies and truthfulness are what you wanted to teach us tomorrow?" she asked him.

"No, shorty. How to read your opponent."

Sophia blinked. "Oh."

"Yeah. It’s one thing to master a weapon, another thing entirely to master the person holding one. Most fights aren’t won because one person’s stronger."

"You sure about that?" Sophia asked him with a smile.

"Really, shorty? Are you going to let me finish so we can get to bed?" he asked her.

Sophia smiled. "I rather like hearing you speak."

"And I like hearing you moan, but we all can’t have what we want, right?" he asked her, and she chuckled.

"Back to what I was saying, contrary to what you think, most fights aren’t won because one person’s stronger," Orion told her. "They’re won because one person saw more. The shift of their weight, the twitch of a hand, the flicker in their eyes before they strike, all of it tells you what they’ll do before they do it. Once you learn that, you can decide whether you want to let them finish the move or stop them before it starts."

Sophia’s eyes glimmered with awe. "So it’s not just about how fast or strong you are, it’s about perception."

"Exactly. You see them, you understand them, and you use that understanding to win."

She opened her mouth to ask another question, but Orion reached over and flicked her forehead lightly.

She blinked in surprise. "Hey!"

He grinned. "Wait until tomorrow. You already have a bit of knowledge before the others. Don’t be greedy."

Sophia rubbed her forehead with a small pout, and Orion’s grin only widened.

"Now, about those anchor steps you mentioned," he said, shifting his weight against the desk. "They’re used to regain rhythm when balance is lost, but there’s more to it than that."

He straightened, his expression taking on that calm focus she’d seen only during training. "Anchor steps are the bridge between chaos and control. Imagine you’re fighting, your footing slips, your stance breaks, or your rhythm’s off. An anchor step lets you reset without losing the fight. You draw energy from the shift, instead of letting it take you down."

Sophia’s brows knit, trying to visualize it.

Orion crouched a little, pressing a boot to the floor. "See, most people think an anchor step means stopping, planting your foot. But it’s not. It’s redirecting. You let your momentum hit the ground, use it to launch yourself back into rhythm. It’s a conversation between your body and the earth beneath you."

He rose again, gesturing lightly. "In battle, the ground is your first weapon. Anchor steps remind you that you don’t have to fight against it; you fight with it."

Sophia’s eyes followed his movements.

She tried to picture it, the way her steps might shift mid-motion, using the fall to drive the rise. But even with all his explanations, the image wouldn’t solidify. "I don’t understand," she admitted finally.

Orion smirked, folding his arms again. "That’s because you need to see it. But I’m not doing that tonight."

She frowned. "Why not?"

"Because," he said, straightening and moving closer to her again, "if I start demonstrating, we won’t stop there. You’ll start asking me about pivot steps, then balance shifts, then blade alignment, and before you know it, we’ll both be too tired to even move to bed."

"I’m not that bad," she said, trying not to laugh.

"You are exactly that bad."

Her eyes softened with amusement. "You say that like it’s a flaw."

He raised a brow. "A flaw I like."

For a moment, silence settled between them again. The snow outside fell thicker now, smudging the world beyond the window into pale silver. Sophia turned back toward the book, her fingers absentmindedly tracing the lines of one of the diagrams.

Orion watched her, his expression shifting into something gentler. "You know," he said after a while, "there’s a reason I told you to stick to the same footwork you used during the ball game."

She looked up. "Because I would’ve won if you didn’t cheat?"

He chuckled softly. "Partly. But mostly because there was something special in it. It wasn’t polished, but it was yours. You weren’t thinking too hard. You were just moving. Every step you made had rhythm, every dodge was instinct. You preserved stamina without even realizing it, and you adapted mid-game like you’d been doing it for years."

Sophia blinked, a faint blush rising on her cheeks. "I didn’t even know what I was doing."

"That’s the point," he said quietly. "It came naturally. You outsmarted me more than once that day, even when I read your rhythm, you broke it just enough to throw me off. That’s what you need to build on. If you polish that, you’ll have something no one else can copy."

Sophia leaned back in her chair, processing his words. "Okay."

"And just so you know, training is going to be harder than it was today. Think you can handle that?" he asked her.

"I wouldn’t be learning if I wasn’t determined. And besides, you said perseverance is key," she told him.

Orion laughed softly. 𝙛𝒓𝒆𝙚𝒘𝒆𝓫𝙣𝓸𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝒄𝒐𝓶

He leaned forward as if to kiss her, but before he could close the space, Sophia spoke again.

"Orion?"

He groaned softly, half into a laugh. "What now?"

She hesitated. "Why am I not training with the daggers? I thought when you said that I learned easily from you when you taught me how to use it, that you meant I was going to be training with them, but instead you gave me shortswords and..."

"...shorty, you are also going to be training with the daggers. You’ll be using both the daggers and the shortswords. The daggers are a good weapon, yes, but you need something that can also help when you are fighting close combat. A dagger isn’t suited for that," he told her.

"Okay."

"Is that all?" he asked her.

"No."

"What else?" Orion asked her with a groan.

"Who was the blonde-haired woman at the training grounds?"