He started training. Quietly. During breaks when Hollen left for the village, or late at night past the edge of the houses. Not learning — excavating. Digging through the rubble of whoever he'd been before.
It wasn't study. Study implies a book, a teacher, a curriculum. This was different. His body already knew things his mind had lost. The gestures lived in his fingers the way the fighting stance had lived in his legs — buried, waiting. He just had to find the right lock for each key.
He focused on the sensation that accompanied the rare moments of success: a light pressure in the chest, a brief void behind the eyes, a strange tension in the fingertips. He experimented with gestures that surfaced on their own — a circular motion of the index finger, a sharp snap of thumb and middle finger, cupping both palms together. Each gesture pulled its own syllable from the dark: Ignis — fire. Ventus — wind. Terra — earth.
Words he hadn't been taught. Words that had been in him all along.
Nine out of ten attempts ended in nothing. Just faint dizziness, like standing up too fast. But once, annoyed by a mosquito, he snapped his fingers with a mental bark of Ignis! — and a spark flared at his fingertips. Small, bright, hot. It burned a pinhole in his sleeve and vanished, leaving the smell of singed cloth.
He stared at his fingers. Not wonder. Recognition. The way you find a coin in an old coat pocket — right, that was there.
The success was microscopic. But it was real.
He fed that internal forge. Concentrated not on desire but on image. Not "I want fire" — he pictured the spark itself, its birth, its trajectory. Connected image to gesture to syllable. It was like smithing: the right heat (image), the right strike (gesture), the right quench (exhale, closing syllable). Hollen's rules, applied to something Hollen would never understand.
His body remembered more than he expected. Some gestures came cleaner each time, as if the rust flaked off with use. A two-fingered flick from the temple, paired with Ven, could push a directed gust of air — enough to scatter dust or dry sweat from his brow. A circular thumb motion with Star-en steadied air currents — he'd already used that once at the bellows without knowing what he'd done.
These weren't new abilities. They were old ones, surfacing through the cracks in his amnesia like water through broken stone.
Within days he could summon a small, brief flame on his palm on command. It barely warmed. But it was his. Controlled. A piece of evidence that whoever Marshal had been, he'd known this craft well enough for the body to carry it when the mind let go.
* * *
Then came the breakthrough.
A week after the patrol news. Late evening, the waste ground behind the smithy.
In his mind — the image of an arrow. Sharp, fast, flying. Not a concept. A memory of motion. His right hand extended, index and middle fingers together, as if holding a bowstring. Left hand raised, as if holding the bow. He inhaled, felt the pressure in his chest concentrate, gather into the "string."
The syllables came without searching. They'd been waiting.
He released.
Not a mental command. A letting go — the knot of pressure set free, accompanied by a sharp, exhaled: Sagatta Ignis!
From the space between his fingers, with a quiet whistling sound, a bolt of fire tore free. Not a spark. A flame arrow — a forearm's length, bright and dense like molten glass. It flew straight for ten paces and struck an old, rotting stump.
The stump didn't explode. It caught fire. Cracking, roaring, bright hot flame that lit up the entire waste ground and threw a huge, dancing shadow onto the smithy wall.
He stood, arms lowered. Watching the burning stump. Heat against his face.
And then, slowly, like water filling a vessel — pleasure. Pure, simple, animal satisfaction from a job done well. The same thing he felt when a hammer blow landed perfectly on the anvil and the iron bent exactly right. Not joy. Not triumph. The quiet contentment of a mechanism working.
He'd known this once. He was sure of it now. This wasn't a talent discovered — it was a skill recovered. And somewhere in the wreckage of his past, there were more. Bigger. Sharper.
He didn't hear the footsteps.
* * *
"Holy saints!"
The shrill voice made him flinch. He turned.
Old Serafima stood at the edge of the waste ground — the oldest resident of Riverside, wrapped in a dozen scarves, cane shaking in her hand. Her faded eyes bulged first at the blazing stump, then at him.
"Empty? Is that you? What have you done?"
"I was... practicing."
"Practicing?!" Her voice climbed an octave. "Practicing burning things? That's a sign! A fire sign from the heavens! Or — or it's you!" She jabbed her cane at him. "You set it on fire! With black magic! I saw you waving your hands around like some kind of sorcerer!"
"It's not black —" he started, but she was already turning toward the village.
"Goblins prowling the forest and now we've got our own homegrown fire-worshipper! People! Over here! Look at what the smith's boy is doing!"
Her screaming woke half the village. A dozen sleepy, frightened men with pitchforks crowded the waste ground within a minute. They saw the dying stump and Marshal standing next to it, his face showing nothing but dull irritation.
Hollen arrived among the last, shirtless, hammer in hand. One glance — stump, crowd, Serafima jabbing her cane.
"Serafima, shut it," he growled. "He was stacking wood for drying, a spark fell from the chimney."
"A spark? He was waving his hands! I saw it! Like he was praying!"
"You're old, your eyes are cloudy." But there was tension in Hollen's voice. He looked at Marshal. "Empty. Did you light this?"
"Yes. I lit it."
Murmur in the crowd.
"Why?"
"I wanted to see how it burns."
The worst possible truth. But the best one wasn't available.
Serafima wailed. "See! A lunatic! An arsonist!"
"Enough!" Hollen thundered. "A stump burned. Nobody got hurt. Everyone go home." He grabbed Marshal by the shoulder. "You. Come. Explain without an audience."
He dragged him into the smithy and slammed the door.
* * *
Dark inside. Quiet. Hollen didn't light anything. He turned.
"How?" One word.
Silence.
"Not 'a spark from the chimney.' Not 'wanted to see it burn.' You did something. Something you shouldn't know how to do. Like that blue witch."
"I don't know how to explain it," Marshal said. "It comes back. Pieces. My hands remember things I don't."
Hollen stared at him for a long time. Then exhaled through his nose. "Damn. So it's true. There's something in you. And now Serafima knows, which means tomorrow the whole valley knows." He rubbed his face. "Listen. Tomorrow morning, you leave."
Marshal didn't respond. He waited.
"Not because I'm throwing you out. Because you can't survive here anymore. Some will be afraid and beg you to protect them from the goblins. Others will blame you for every misfortune and want you burned. Others, like those adventurers, will want to use you. You're a walking problem. And as long as you're in my smithy, the problem is mine."
"Where do I go?"
"North. Ashford — it's a town. There's a Mages' Guild, run-down as it is. And a Mercenary Guild. Ask around. Maybe they'll figure out what kind of fruit you are." He paused. "Maybe not. But here — you're done."
Silence. Then Hollen reached behind the workbench and pressed something into his hand — a small, well-balanced smith's hammer.
"Not a weapon, but heavy. And don't tell anyone what you can do until you understand who you are. Clear?"
Marshal took the hammer. The weight was familiar. Steadying.
"Clear."
* * *
Before dawn, he stepped out of the smithy. On his back — a bundle of food from Hollen. The hammer at his belt. The coins in their pouch. The wooden token with the broken wheel in his pocket. To the east, the sky was just beginning to grey.
He turned and looked at the sleeping village. At the smithy chimney, cold and smokeless. The place where he'd learned what a cog was. The place a spark from his own past had driven him out of.
Hollen hadn't come to say goodbye. The door was shut. But on the threshold, next to where he'd slept, he'd found a pair of old boots. Worn, cracked leather, but whole. They fit.
He turned north. The road stretched ahead through the fields, past the forest edge, into the grey morning.
He walked. Not fast, not slow. Steady. The boots were stiff but warm. The hammer bumped against his hip with each step.
Behind him — Riverside, coal dust, stew, Hollen's growl, Lira's wave, the creak of the bridge.
Ahead — Ashford. Guilds. Answers. Or at least better questions.