The next morning, Atlas opened his eyes before the bell.
Not because of habit. Not from discipline.
Because the **dream had followed him back**.
Even now, the memory of it coiled in his chest like something too large for his body. He lay still in the pre-dawn darkness, the ceiling above him lost in black.
He remembered every detail.
Not just feelings. Not just images.
**Movements.**
A sword form with no name in this world—six strikes, one breath. No wasted energy. No imbalance.
It was fictional.
It shouldn't work here.
But he remembered the blade's weight. The stance. The breath timing. The pivot.
Atlas sat up in silence.
Cedric was still asleep in the second bed across the room, curled in a tangled pile of blankets, a book half-dropped on the floor beside him. One of the knight fairy tales about silver lions and glass swords.
Atlas swung his legs out of bed, barefoot on cold stone. He moved without noise. Without hesitation.
The manor was still asleep.
---
He crossed the hall barefoot, passed the cold sconces, and pushed open the side entrance that led to the **overgrown back courtyard**. This part of the estate had long been abandoned—too uneven for hosting, too cracked for dueling, but Atlas liked it better than the polished courts.
Here, the vines grew unchecked. The broken tiles shifted when stepped on. The air smelled of moss, dust, and iron.
A place forgotten by tradition.
A place where *mistakes could be made quietly*.
He stood in the clearing at the center, unsheathing his training blade.
Then waited.
The white room returned.
Only in his mind—but vivid.
He stood again in the mental space from the dream: blank sky, groundless floor, and the duel that had played itself out behind his eyelids for nights.
Two warriors. One feinting right. One stepping into the feint. A trap hidden within a trap.
Atlas let the memory unspool. Then stepped into the rhythm.
His right foot slid back—his hips coiled. Sword lowered in an unnatural guard. Then, from that bent stance, he pivoted. Twisted. The blade arced upward across the air like a scythe hidden behind smoke.
It felt *wrong*. Stiff. His foot dragged.
He reset.
Tried again.
Step. Pivot. Slice. Delay the arm rotation. Let the wrist hang slack until the last instant.
Again.
Again.
Again.
Each repetition refined the edge of it. Each mistake shaved something useless away.
By the twelfth attempt, he could feel it happening.
His body wasn't just remembering—it was *reconstructing*.
Not mimicking. Not guessing.
**Translating**.
The air hissed as the blade passed through it, cutting at a nearly invisible angle—a strike designed not to clash, but to pass inside an enemy's guard. Too close to parry. Too early to predict.
Atlas stopped, panting lightly.
Sweat ticked down the back of his neck.
His hands were trembling—but not from pain.
From *awakening*.
This movement didn't belong in Roaring Pulse. It didn't belong in any noble style he'd ever read about.
And yet it had cut cleaner than anything he'd ever learned.
---
Later that morning, he sat in the family study, a book open in front of him, but unread.
His thoughts were elsewhere.
There were seven fangs. The dream had said so.
This… technique… this phantom slash he was crafting—it was the **first**.
**Ghost Fang.**
He didn't know what the others were yet. He didn't even know how to *earn* them.
But something told him the number mattered.
Seven fangs to a tiger's kill.
Seven steps to a Swordmaster's throne.
---
Dame Liora found him in the lower training court near noon, where the midday light fell sharp through the archways and painted long lines on the floor.
She didn't speak at first.
She just watched.
Atlas had been practicing standard Roaring Pulse strikes, nothing unorthodox. But even then—his control was tighter, his weight distribution more efficient.
She saw it immediately.
"You're holding back," she said.
He didn't answer.
"You learned something," she added.
Still, he said nothing.
But he paused after his next strike.
Then asked, "What would you say if I said our family style was incomplete?"
Liora arched one brow. "I'd say you're arrogant."
"And if I said it could be corrected?"
"I'd say prove it."
Atlas sheathed his blade.
Stepped into the stance he'd practiced under moonlight.
Low. Coiled. Blade forward, but relaxed.
Liora narrowed her eye. "That's not Westenra."
"No," he agreed.
And then he moved.
It was a single, clean strike—Ghost Fang at half-speed. But even slowed, its shape was unmistakable.
Liora stepped back before he could finish.
She didn't say anything for a moment.
Then, quietly: "You didn't invent that."
"I did."
"No. You didn't." Her voice was harder now. "That's not new. That's something… older."
Atlas frowned. "You recognize it?"
"I've seen its ghost," she said. "Once. In a war I wasn't meant to survive."
He stepped back into a neutral stance. "Then I must be hallucinating."
Liora looked at him long.
Then turned.
And walked away.
---
That evening, as the manor prepared for the evening bell, and the sky turned the color of dying embers, Atlas returned to his room.
Cedric was gone—likely dragged off to etiquette lessons or history scrolls.
Atlas sat at his desk, blade across his lap.
He opened a blank parchment scroll.
Picked up his inkpen.
And wrote:
> **Fang I – Ghost Fang**
> A false rhythm. A blade that cuts not where it should, but when it must.
> Triggered by stillness. Executed with misdirection.
> Fatal only when forgotten.
>
> Origin:
> Fiction.
>
> Now real.
He paused.
Then added beneath it:
> Six remain.
---
As the second bell of night rang through the manor—short, faint, distant—Atlas closed his eyes.
In his mind, the white space returned.
This time, it was no longer just memory.
It was becoming a *place*.
A realm.