Ten Minutes to Midnight - The First Target Hit

The wind sweeping down from

The wind sweeping down from

Ridge didn’t just blow—it howled like a trapped beast through the narrow stone gullies of the

Terraces.It was late dusk, and the pale orange lanterns along the

Apothecary paths flickered wildly against the gathering dark.

Torin stood fifty paces away near the edge of the lower rock wall, his single flint-grey eye locked on the moving target frame—a crude wooden mannequin mounted on a greased iron track, sliding rapidly from left to right across the terrace slope under the push of an automated water-wheel.”Ten arrows,” Torin rasped, his voice cutting cleanly through the whistling draft. “The wind-shear is surging at thirty knots from the northwest.

Adjust your thumb-anchor, feel the

Aether pressure in the valley, and loose.”Hazel

Brier stepped up first.

Her pale face was set in grim concentration.

Three-Finger

Feather-Grip, she loosed three arrows in rapid succession.

Two of them clipped the edge of the wooden mannequin’s torso, deflected by a sudden, violent gust of valley air.

She bit her lower lip in frustration and stepped back.”Lin,” Torin barked. “Your turn.”Felix stepped up to the firing line.He didn’t rush.

He slipped his fingers into the soft python-leather ring-guards, pulled a black-feathered shaft from his hip quiver, and slotted it against the grey tendon string.He closed his eyes for two seconds, letting his mind quiet down.

Inside his chest, the double-chambered

Aether core pulsed with a steady, amber hum.

He could feel the cold mountain wind pressing against his knuckles—not as an obstacle, but as a current, a living vector of pressure he needed to ride.In.

Out.He drew the bow back in one fluid, uncompromising motion, his thumb anchoring firmly against his jawbone, the

Three-Finger grip locking the fletching in place.Whoosh.A sudden, violent squall of wind swept down the terrace, rattling the nearby moon-vine trellises and nearly tearing the cap off his head.Felix didn’t hesitate.

He loosed.Thwack.The first black arrow vanished into the gathering gloom, striking the moving wooden mannequin with a sharp, hollow crack right in the center of its painted iron chest-plate.Before the target could slide back behind the stone barrier,

Felix drew again. Twang.

Thwack.Arrow after arrow left the yew stave in a rhythmic, unhesitating storm.

He didn’t look at where they landed; he trusted his fingers, his back muscles, and the strange, mathematical precision of the wind-shear vectors he had calculated in his head.Twang.

Thwack.Ten arrows fired in less than fifteen seconds.The clearing went dead silent, save for the whistling wind and the squeak of the distant water-wheel.Torin walked slowly down the terrace path, his boots crunching on the gravel.

He stopped in front of the sliding wooden mannequin and stared at the target board for several long, unbroken seconds.Eight black-fletched arrows were clustered tightly together in a hand-sized circle right over the mannequin’s painted iron heart.

Only two had veered outward, catching the shoulder edge due to a sudden micro-burst of air.Torin raised his single grey eye, looking past the target toward

Felix.”Eight out of ten,” the veteran rasped, a rare, grim smile finally breaking through the scarred skin of his face. “In a blinding storm, against a moving border scout at sixty paces… you just put eight holes through his breastplate,

Not bad for a boy from a grain-merchant’s shop.”