The snow was too white. That was the first thing twelve-year-old Wanhan realized as he waded through the knee-deep drifts of the Whispering Pines. It was an offensive, blinding white that swallowed the light of the waning moon.

  He shivered, pulling his oversized bear-fur cloak tighter around his narrow shoulders. The cloak smelled of dust and old grease, a hand-me-down from a hunter who owed his mother for a poultice. In his right hand, he dragged his father’s spare felling axe. The wooden haft was thick and crude, chewing into his palm. It was too heavy for him. Everything was too heavy tonight.

  “He should have been back by sundown,” his mother had whispered, staring out the frosted window of their cabin, her hands trembling over a bowl of cold stew.

  Wanhan hadn’t waited for her to start crying. He had grabbed the cloak, taken the axe, and marched into the tree line. He was going to be a Knight of the Realm one day. Knights didn't cower by the hearth while their fathers froze in the dark. Knights faced the winter.

  But as he pushed through a thicket of frost-choked brambles, the illusion of knighthood shattered.

  The pristine white snow ahead was ruined. A broad, violent smear of crimson cut through the clearing, so thick and fresh it was still melting the frost beneath it. The copper stench of hot blood hit the back of his throat, gagging him.

  Wanhan froze. His grip on the axe handle turned white-knuckled.

  At the edge of the clearing lay the logging crew. Or what was left of them. Old Man Toris was slumped against a splintered pine, his chest a hollowed-out cavern of steaming crimson ribs. Beside him, two other lumbermen were tangled together in a pile of severed limbs and ruined leather armor.

  And in the center of the slaughter, kneeling over a familiar wool coat, was a mountain of shadow and silver.

  It was a Silverback Bear. It didn't look like an animal; it looked like a natural disaster given flesh. Knots of iron-dense muscle shifted beneath fur the color of a dull blade. It was currently burying its maw into the chest of the man wearing the wool coat.

  Father.

  The axe in Wanhan's hand suddenly felt a thousand times heavier. His legs shook so violently his knees knocked together. The cold air vanished from his lungs. Every instinct screamed at him to run, to hide, to become invisible.

  Knights don't run.

  A choked, pathetic sound escaped Wanhan’s throat. A whimper.

  The Silverback stopped feeding. It slowly turned its massive, blood-drenched head toward the tree line. Its eyes were black, flat, and devoid of anything resembling a soul.

  Wanhan stepped forward, boots crunching loudly in the bloody snow. He raised the felling axe with both hands, his frail twelve-year-old arms trembling under the weight of the iron head. He stood between the beast and the mangled remains of his father.

  "Get away from him," Wanhan screamed, his voice cracking into a high, reedy pitch.

  The bear didn't roar. It didn't posture. It simply exploded into motion.

  It cleared the distance in a fraction of a second, a blur of silver and predatory intent. Wanhan swung the axe with everything he had, a desperate, clumsy arc fueled by terror and a child's shattered dream.

  He never even saw the claws.

  There was a wet, tearing shhhhk sound, followed by a spray of heat across his face. The impact didn't hurt. It just felt like a massive, invisible horse had kicked him in the shoulder.

  Wanhan spun through the air, crashing hard into the snowdrift. The felling axe landed a dozen paces away with a dull thud. Still gripping the wooden haft was a small, pale hand.

  Wanhan blinked, the snow melting against his cheek. He looked down at his right arm. It ended just below the elbow in a jagged, pulsing ruin of sheared bone and geysering blood.

  The pain didn't arrive instantly. First came the cold, rushing into the void where his hand used to be. Then, the world went dark.

  The stench of stale ale, vomit, and roasting mutton was a far cry from the crisp pine air of Wanhan’s childhood.

  Five years had passed since the snow turned red. Five years since he had buried his father with his left hand, his right arm bound in blood-soaked linen, burning with the phantom ache of fingers that were no longer there.

  "Boy! Table four needs another round! And if you spill a drop this time, I’ll take it out of your salary!"

  Wanhan didn’t flinch at the innkeeper’s roar. He simply adjusted his grip.

  He balanced a massive, grease-stained wooden tray holding six sloshing iron flagons on the flat of his left palm. For a normal man, navigating the packed, rowdy floor of the Boar's Trough during the evening rush was a chore. For a one-armed, seventeen-year-old cripple, it was a death-defying acrobatic act.

  A massive mercenary in boiled leather suddenly shoved his chair back, directly into Wanhan’s path.

  Wanhan didn't miss a beat. His brain didn't even have to process the danger. His body simply reacted. His empty right sleeve whipped backward, throwing his right shoulder out to act as a brutal, sudden counterweight. His feet shifted into a strange, sliding half-step—a crude, uneven rhythm born of pure survival. He pivoted on his heel, letting the momentum carry the tray in a perfect, horizontal arc over the mercenary's bald head.

  Not a single drop of ale spilled.

  It wasn't a martial art. It was just waiting tables. But to Wanhan, the floor of the inn was a battlefield, and maintaining his center of gravity was the only thing keeping him from starving.

  He slammed the flagons down on table four, his left arm corded with thick, disproportionate muscle that strained against his tunic. The patrons didn't thank him. They barely looked at him. To them, he was just part of the furniture. A broken thing.

  Hours later, the hearth embers died down, and the drunks finally passed out or stumbled home into the cold.

  Wanhan didn't sleep. He never slept before his work was done.

  He pushed open the back door of the inn, stepping out into the freezing mud of the alley. He didn't wear a coat. He picked up a length of heavy, seasoned oak from the woodpile. It wasn't a sword. It was just a thick, brutally heavy stick, polished smooth by years of friction and dried blood from his own blistered palm.

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  He stood in the dark, the freezing wind biting at his sweat-soaked shirt. He closed his eyes.

  He didn't see the alley. He saw silver fur. He smelled copper and hot blood.

  Wanhan stepped forward and swung.

  It was an ugly, desperate motion. Without a second hand to guide the swing or pull the lever of a hilt, the heavy oak tried to drag him off balance. But Wanhan's hips twisted violently, his empty right shoulder snapping back to anchor his core, funneling every ounce of his body weight into the singular, downward slash.

  The heavy stick tore through the air with a vicious, hollow whoosh.

  He reset. He swung again.

  And again.

  His lungs burned. The torn cartilage in his right shoulder throbbed with a dull, sickening ache. He didn't care. He swung until his left hand went numb, until the blisters popped and slicked the oak with fresh blood. He had no master to teach him forms. He had no knight to sponsor him. He just had spite, and a singular, manic obsession.

  He brought the stick down one last time, the force of it cracking the frozen mud at his feet.

  Suddenly, the darkness of the alley was pierced by a faint, unnatural light. A translucent blue pane flickered into existence, hovering inches from his face.

  [Skill: Tree Cutter has reached Level 100.]

  [MAX Level Reached.]

  Wanhan stared at the glowing blue letters. He didn't smile. He didn't celebrate. He just slowly lowered the stick, his chest heaving, the blue light reflecting in his dark, exhausted eyes.

  The sun was just beginning to peek over the rooftops when he walked back into the inn. The morning crowd was already piling in, demanding porridge and weak ale.

  "Where have you been, you useless half-wit?" Innkeeper Garris barked, slamming a dirty rag onto the counter. "Grab a tray. The merchants from the capital are here, and if you embarrass me—"

  Wanhan didn't grab the tray.

  He reached down with his left hand, untied the greasy apron from his waist, and let it fall to the sawdust-covered floor. The sound it made was soft, but in Wanhan's ears, it was deafening.

  Garris stopped wiping the counter, his bushy eyebrows knitting together. "What are you doing? Pick that up."

  Wanhan looked the man dead in the eye. The exhaustion of the night was gone, replaced by something hard and cold.

  "Sire, I quit."

  Garris let out a bark of laughter. "Quit? And go where? You're a one-handed orphan, Wanhan. You'll starve in the gutters!"

  Wanhan turned his back on the innkeeper, pushing open the heavy wooden doors and stepping out into the morning light.

  "I'm going to the capital," Wanhan said, his voice steady, carrying over the murmur of the tavern. "I shall join the Knight's tourney."

  His mother did not weep when he packed his meager bindle. She was an herbalist; she knew the difference between a wound that could be poulticed and one that had to bleed itself dry.

  ?Standing in the doorway of their cramped, herb-scented cabin, she pressed a heavy, waxed-leather pouch into his lone hand. It smelled sharply of crushed root and dried blood-clover.

  ?"I cannot sew you a new arm, Wanhan," she said, her voice like dry leaves. "But this will keep the rot out when they cut you open."

  ?She didn't try to stop him. She had seen the bloody, splintered oak stick he kept hidden by the woodpile. She had seen the manic, hollow look in his eyes for five years.

  ?Wanhan gripped the pouch. "I will come back a Knight, mother. Or I won't come back at all."

  ?He turned and walked into the tree line, leaving the village of his childhood behind without a second glance.

  ?The journey toward the capital led him through the Jagged Tooth pass, a dense, unforgiving stretch of wilderness. By the third day, Wanhan's boots were caked in mud, and his stomach was an empty, growling pit. He hadn't brought much food. He figured a Knight ought to know how to forage. He was quickly learning that a waiter from the Boar's Trough didn't know a damn thing about the woods.

  ?He was gnawing on a bitter pine needle when he heard the rhythmic, metallic CLANG echoing through the trees.

  ?Wanhan dropped into a crouch, his left hand instinctively dropping to the heavy oak stick at his hip. He crept through the underbrush, pushing aside a veil of hanging moss, and froze.

  ?Set into the side of a limestone hill was a shallow cave. At the mouth of it sat a roaring forge, spitting embers into the damp forest air. But it was the figure working the anvil that made Wanhan blink.

  ?It was a dwarf. But not just any dwarf. This man was barely two and a half feet tall—a dwarf even among his own stout, mountain-dwelling people. He wore a heavy leather apron that dragged in the dirt, and a pair of thick, soot-stained goggles strapped over his bald head.

  ?Despite his comical size, the muscles on his arms coiled like thick steel cables as he brought a hammer down on a glowing bar of iron.

  ?"No, no, no! The thermal expansion is completely misaligned!" the tiny man roared at the metal, his voice a booming baritone that vibrated in Wanhan's chest. "If I don't shift the centroid by two millimeters, the whole moment of inertia goes to shit!"

  ?Wanhan shifted his weight, and a twig snapped loudly under his boot.

  ?The hammer stopped mid-swing. The dwarf whipped around, pulling a wicked-looking throwing axe from his belt with terrifying speed. He squinted through the soot-stained goggles at the lopsided teenager stepping out of the bushes.

  ?"Who goes there?" the dwarf barked. "Are you a bandit? Because if you're a bandit, you picked the wrong half-pint to mug. I've got a tri-barreled scatter-crossbow under this bench that will turn your chest into a colander."

  ?"I'm not a bandit," Wanhan said, holding up his empty right sleeve. "I'm just passing through. To the capital."

  ?The dwarf lowered the axe, his bushy eyebrows knitting together. He looked at Wanhan's face, then down to his scarred, lopsided stance, and finally to the empty sleeve pinned to his tunic.

  ?Slowly, a wide, predatory grin spread across the dwarf’s soot-stained face. It was the smile of a wolf who had just found a very dumb, three-legged sheep.

  ?"To the capital, eh? Looking to join the tourney?" The dwarf tossed his hammer onto the anvil and strutted forward, wiping his hands on his apron. "The name is Tiny. Master Smith, Chief Engineer, and leading authority on applied kinetic dynamics. And you, my lopsided friend, look like a boy walking to his own funeral."

  ?Wanhan frowned. "I have a weapon." He pulled the heavy oak stick from his belt.

  ?Tiny threw his head back and let out a grating, wheezing laugh. "A stick! Oh, by the Ancestors, he's bringing a stick to a sword fight! Listen to me, boy. You swing that log, the centrifugal force is going to rip your shoulder out of its socket. You don't have a right arm to anchor the torque. You're a biomechanical disaster."

  ?Wanhan blinked. He didn't understand half the words the little man had just used, but they sounded terrifyingly official. "I... I make do."

  ?"Making do gets you gutted on the arena floor," Tiny said, turning back to his workbench. He kicked a stool over, stood on it, and pulled a long object wrapped in oiled cloth from the wall. He turned back to Wanhan and dramatically pulled the cloth away.

  ?Wanhan’s breath hitched.

  ?It was a single-edged sword, slightly curved like a saber, but the hilt was completely strange. The pommel was massive, forged from dark, heavy iron, and the guard was asymmetrical, sweeping up to protect the knuckles.

  ?"This," Tiny whispered, his voice dripping with reverence, "is Fenrir. Custom-forged. The pommel acts as a heavy counterweight. It shifts the center of mass perfectly to your left grip, neutralizing the rotational drag of a one-handed swing. It's not just a sword, boy. It's a localized gravity manipulation device."

  ?Wanhan stared at the gleaming steel. His fingers twitched. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. "How... how much?"

  ?Tiny's grin widened, flashing a row of gold teeth. "For a renowned masterpiece of engineering? It's a bargain. Ten gold pieces."

  ?Wanhan choked on his own spit. "Ten gold? A whole tavern doesn't earn ten gold in a month! I have three copper pieces and a bag of dried roots!"

  ?Tiny sighed dramatically, rolling his eyes beneath his goggles. "Look, kid. I like you. You've got a tragic backstory written all over your face, and I'm a sucker for charity."

  ?Tiny reached under his apron and pulled out a roll of parchment and a charcoal pencil.

  ?"I'll loan you the blade," Tiny said, his voice slick with false sympathy. "You sign this contract. You win the tourney, you pay me my ten gold from the prize purse. Plus a modest, standard-rate interest fee of thirty percent. We'll call it an investment in your future."

  ?Wanhan looked at the blade. He thought of the heavy, clumsy oak stick. He thought of the Silverback bear, and his father's blood on the snow. He didn't know what 'thirty percent interest' meant, but he knew he couldn't walk into the capital with a piece of firewood.

  ?He took the charcoal pencil with his left hand, and signed his soul away.

  ?[System Notification: Debt Acquired - 10 Gold (30% APR)]

  [Title Unlocked: Gullible Bumpkin]

  ?Tiny snatched the parchment back, blowing on the charcoal to dry it, his smile now reaching his ears. "Pleasure doing business with you, kid. Now, since we're business partners... do you know how to skin a deer? Because I'm starving, and my legs are too short to chase the fast ones."