Chapter 3 The Stranger's Test.......

The wind at the southern border was dry and unwelcoming as dust swept through the hills and clung to every thread of clothing Cleora now wore.

It was a strange thing to walk among peasants, and to wear boots she hadn't stolen, to let her hands callous, to smell like smoke and mud.

It wasn't comfort she sought here, it was a past, one that could be traced.

Cleora, they called her, a young widow from a border town long dissolved in an unmarked war.

She had burned the documents, kept only one version of the story, her accent, softened.

Her dialect, neutral, her backstory, boring enough to be believable.

She worked with leather now, mostly belts and utility straps at the forge behind the wooden shed where she coughed black smoke every evening.

She made sure to be seen, to wave at the right people, to complain about the price of salt and laugh with the old women when the market butcher slipped and spilled lamb's blood on his boots.

Her presence was loud enough to be noted, quiet enough not to raise flags. A survivor's rhythm.

It took her exactly sixteen days to catch attention.

They arrived on horses, three of them, all lean and alert.

The man in the center was clearly the one in charge, he didn't ride like a merchant or a lawman.

His back was too straight, his gaze too sharp with dark eyes like polished glass. The others flanked him, one tall with a shaved head and a stare that didn't blink, the other with dark skin, a snake tattoo twisting down his throat.

Her forge happens to be their destination.

She kept her back turned as they approached, her hands dipping iron into water.

Sizzles and steam welcomes the duo team, but her heart did not race instead she welcomed the moment.

"You work alone?" the leader asked. His voice was smooth yet not polite, just confident.

"I'm not in need of help," she replied, straightening.

He looked around her shed, not impressed, not dismissive either.

"You're Cleora right?"

"That's what they call me."

"I've seen your work in the markets. Functional yet prugly, but strong."

"Then it matches the people who buy it," she said, wiping her hands with a cloth.

That made him grin.

He dismounted, walked closer, the dust from his boots settling near her tools.

The man radiated authority, not the forced kind, but like the kind built from years of watching people lie and bleed.

He extended a hand with a slight grin,

"Luciano."

She took it without hesitation. His grip was firm, fingers calloused from blade work.

"You're not from here," he said.

She shrugged. "Nobody truly is, borders don't make homes, they just make stories."

His eyes narrowed. "You lost someone?"

"Haven't we all?" she answered.

The two others dismounted, one of them Bida stood a step behind Luciano, arms crossed, mouth in a firm line. And Vespa froze, just slightly.

That jaw that scar under the left eye.

She'd seen that face before, on the night everything burned to ash.

He had kicked open the side entrance of the Vesper estate, she remembered the moment her equestrian teacher pushed her into the tunnel and slammed the iron hatch.

She turned back and saw a flash of that same scarred face in the hall before darkness swallowed her.

He hadn't seen her now, She turned away from the heat of the memory.

Luciano continued. "You ever think of working for someone else?"

"I already work for the land, and it doesn't pay well," she said dryly.

He stepped closer. "I'm not offering peasant's work."

"I'm not interested in war."

"War's not interested in you either aleast not yet."

She finally looked him in the eyes.

"What do you want?"

Luciano studied her. "I want people who don't flinch nor beg, people who work in the dark without asking what they're building."

She wiped sweat from her brow. "And what makes you think I'm that kind of woman?"

"Because you didn't ask who I am."

"Oh! I figured if you were here to kill me, you wouldn't be talking."

Luciano smiled again, wider this time. "You're right."

Then he gestured to Bida. "You'll train with him for three days. If you survive, I'll take you to the city."

She blinked. "You recruit people like this often?"

"No. Just the ones who feel dangerous."

She narrowed her eyes, leaned slightly forward. "What's the catch?"

Luciano raised an eyebrow. "Catch?"

He leaned against the doorframe of the barn, watching her throw another sack over her shoulder.

"You've got edge, Cleora."

She didn't stop. "Edge doesn't feed me."

"I'm offering something better than bread."

She dropped the sack, wiped her brow, and faced him fully. "Three days, right? That's what you said?"

"Yes three, if you pass, you're in, If you fail, you walk."

She crossed her arms, eyes narrowing. "And if I fail what do I walk out with?

A pat on the back and some bruises for the road?

Three days of my life gone for nothing?"

Luciano smirked. "You won't leave empty-handed."

She waited, staring.

He stepped forward, lowering his voice. "A profiteer who knows her worth, such a lass you are,even failures walk out with compensation. Enough to make you forget the pain atleast."

But pass and you'll earn more than coin, more than comfort.

You'll earn the kind of protection no law can give, the kind of power people like us aren't supposed to touch."

That caught her attention not too much, but enough to make her appear intrigued. Her brow lifted, just slightly.

She scoffed, but there was a flicker in her tone. "That almost sounded like a promise, I don't fling with promises."

"It's more like a warning,no one needs to like warnings now right?" Luciano said.

"Once you taste what we offer, you won't be able to go back to this", he gestured at the rough landscape around her.

She gave a crooked smile, half-skeptical, half-sold. "Alright. You've bought three days of my time."

***************

Day one was fists.

Bida was brutal, he didn't talk much. Just gestures and fists, barking commands like an old war dog.

He tested her reach, her reflexes, her ability to take a punch and not curl, she bled from her lip by noon but refused to wipe it.

"Where'd you learn to block like that?" he asked, finally winded.

She spit blood and said, "Old drunk in the mountains tried to kiss me. I learned quickly."

He grunted, almost like a laugh.

Day two was for the blades.

She handled them better than expected. She used her left hand, not her dominant, making herself appear more average, Bida noticed. "You're holding back."

She said nothing.

He lunged, she disarmed him, turned the blade toward him, and stopped just at his throat, as emotions flickered in her eyes,

He didn't notice or flinch,he smiled.

"You'll do," he muttered.

On the third day, Luciano returned.

Cleora stood under the morning sun, sweat trailing down her back, arms sore, eyes sharp.

Luciano nodded at Bida.

"She's disciplined, smart and dirty when she needs to be,doesn't crack."

Luciano looked at her. "You ready to leave this dump?"

She didn't answer immediately. She turned to her shed, the life she built just to destroy.

"I was never planning to die here anyways."

Luciano's smile was thin this time. "Then get your things."

As she packed, she stole one last glance at Bida.

He sat by the fence, sharpening a blade, the same scar catching sunlight.

She wouldn't kill him yet.

But soon.

The caravan left by dusk, Luciano didn't explain where they were going, and she didn't ask.

He didn't need to know that she had every intention of climbing inside the belly of his world and gutting it from the inside.

For now, she sat beside the man who burned her home and asked him to pass the water flask.

He did,

And smiled.