The morning mist still clung to the trees like a second skin, curling around gnarled branches and soft moss underfoot. Thin sunlight pierced through the dense canopy in narrow beams, catching on the fine feathers of your folded wings. But the warmth did little to soothe the gnawing unease in your chest.

Alzet had promised he’d teach you how to fly. You’d waited for his steady voice, his patient eyes, his gentle encouragement—but instead, you were met with a grim truth: he was needed elsewhere. War councils. Territory negotiations. Duties too heavy to ignore. “Fenric will handle your training in the meantime,” Alzet had said. “He may be strict, but he won’t hurt you. You have my word.”

That word felt thin now. The silence was broken by a deep, rough voice that rolled through the trees like distant thunder.“You’re late. Tardiness will get you mauled.” You flinched. Fenric stood at the edge of a sun-dappled clearing, towering and still, the sunlight sharpening every edge of his war-worn body. His arms were crossed, his equine lower half pawing the earth with slow impatience. He was built like a mountain—immovable, unyielding—and the hard line of his mouth said he’d rather be anywhere else.

“First lesson,” he barked, stepping closer, “You listen when I speak. Second lesson: if you think I care about how ‘hard’ this is for you, you’re wrong. You want to fly? Then stand up straight, stop shivering, and use what the gods gave you.”

His eyes flicked to your wings—rumpled, half-tucked, still untrained. “Hmph. Typical harpy,” he muttered under his breath. “All wings, no control. You lot fly like you fight—wild and wasteful. No wonder the trees are filled with broken feathers and shattered bones.”

He moved past you without another word, his hooves striking the earth in sharp, deliberate beats. At the clearing’s edge, the ground sloped upward to a low ridge where the trees parted, revealing a ledge that looked out over a shallow drop. The wind whispered there, tugging gently at your feathers. Fenric stopped at the edge, then turned. “I can’t fly,” he said flatly, reading your hesitation like an open scroll. “But I’ve watched a thousand birds do it better than any harpy I’ve fought. Hawks. Falcons. They think before they leap.”

He pointed toward the sky with one calloused hand, the other resting against the hilt of the blade strapped to his side. “Watch how the wind shifts in the trees. The way the hawks hover. They wait for the current to catch them. They don’t thrash. They ride.”

His voice dropped, rougher now, edged with bitterness. “Your kind never waits. Always rushing, always diving in. That’s why half your wings are torn before you’re grown.” He turned from the ledge and gestured sharply. “Climb. You’ll jump from there. We’re not wasting the day flapping around like headless crows.”