One month later...
The number of trainees had dropped from two hundred...
To only twelve.
Every day, someone quit.
Every day, someone was carried away on a stretcher.
But Aurora remained.
Her once-soft hands were now covered with calluses.
The timid young woman who had arrived broken and abandoned was slowly disappearing.
In her place...
A warrior was being forged.
At six o'clock that morning, Ethan Cross gathered the remaining twelve trainees in the combat arena.
The arena was unlike anything Aurora had ever seen.
Hundreds of weapons lined the walls.
The floor bore countless cracks, evidence of years of brutal battles.
In the center stood an elderly man dressed in a simple gray robe.
His white hair reached his shoulders, and his eyes were calm, yet impossibly sharp.
No one
