ShadowBound: The Need For Power

Liam did not answer immediately. He moved toward the desk, adjusted the document case he had retrieved from Tactical Espionage, and placed it properly beside his notes. The assignment was already irritating enough without Mabel making it sound more important than it needed to be. Observe one person for a week without being noticed. Record habits, routes, repeated behaviors, blind spots, emotional triggers. Do not get discovered. Do not lie about it if discovered. Simple in structure, unpleasant in implication, and exactly the sort of thing Seraphina would use to turn half the class into fools.

"Whoever seems easier to deal with," Liam said.

Mabel’s head tilted slightly. "What do you mean?"

"It means exactly what it means."

"That is not an explanation."

"There are only seven students in that class," Liam said, turning back toward her. "That leaves a large number of people outside it to pick from. I have no intention of treating this like a life-or-death assignment."

Mabel studied him for a few seconds. There was no judgment in her gaze, only evaluation. "That is a little new coming from you."

"How?"

"I expected you to choose someone difficult," she said. "Someone whose habits would be harder to uncover. Someone worthy of valuable discovery."

Liam gave a faint shrug. "I am still doing that."

Mabel’s brows shifted slightly beneath the edge of the mask. "By choosing someone easy?"

"Everyone has something valuable to discover," Liam said. "Ease does not mean useless."

Mabel went silent for a moment, then gave a small nod. "Fair enough."

Liam walked toward the bed and sat briefly on the edge, rolling one shoulder as the heat inside him finally balanced out. "Besides, I don’t need to waste effort proving I can make the assignment harder for myself."

"That sounds almost healthy."

"It isn’t."

"I know. That is why I said almost."

He ignored that.

Mabel reopened her book, though she did not return fully to reading. "Then do as you please."

"I intended to."

"I am aware."

A short silence settled between them, comfortable in the way silence with Mabel usually was. She did not fill space because she feared emptiness, and Liam did not speak unless he felt words were needed.

Outside the window, the last traces of daylight had vanished. The academy grounds below were now lit by lamps and moving shadows, and the cold pressed faintly against the glass.

After some time, Liam said, "Since I’m not putting much effort into this assignment, I can redirect my attention elsewhere."

Mabel’s eyes lifted from the page immediately.

She gave him a knowing side-eye.

Liam noticed.

Mabel sighed. "I have told you countless times already. You are wasting your time."

"You’re wrong."

"I am not."

"As a matter of fact," Liam said, "it helps with the assignment."

Mabel stared down at him.

Liam’s expression remained completely serious.

She closed the book again. "You are not writing your report on me."

"I didn’t say I was."

"You implied it."

"No. I said it helps with the assignment."

"Liam."

"It doesn’t matter anyway," he said. "As long as it benefits me, I don’t care. Moreover, why would I write my assignment report on Mabel when she is not supposed to be known in this academy?"

Mabel stared at him for several long seconds.

He was not wrong.

That was the irritating part.

Writing a report on her would be foolish for several reasons, the most obvious being that her presence in the academy was not meant to be openly acknowledged. She moved unseen because that was her duty, and while certain authorities knew of her, the wider student body was not supposed to.

Liam knew that perfectly well, which meant he had not even been attempting to make a legitimate argument. He had simply taken the practical truth and used it as a shield for the thing he actually wanted.

And she knew exactly what that was.

Over the past month, Liam had decided, seemingly out of nowhere, that he wanted to learn her sword-fighting style.

It had not been the first time the subject came up. The first time, they had discussed it properly, and Mabel had explained to him that her swordsmanship was not something anyone could simply learn because they admired it. It was a family art, built over generations and shaped around the Shyrien, her curved, single-edged family blade.

It was not merely technique. It was lineage, body structure, balance, breathing, Myst alignment, and a kind of movement philosophy passed through blood, training, and permission. Even if she wanted to teach him outright, she could not do so without family approval.

Liam had listened.

Then, in the way only Liam could, he had decided that if he could not be taught, he would observe and mimic.

At first, Mabel had assumed the interest would fade after a few failures. Liam had countless other things to refine: his dark magic, his fire techniques, his swordwork, his Myst control after Ascension, his physical conditioning, and whatever other impossible concept he was slowly dragging out of himself through stubbornness and repeated injury.

But instead of letting the matter go, he had begun watching her more closely during their training sessions. Not in the careless way students watched a skilled fighter and copied the obvious motions, but with a predator’s patience and a scholar’s irritation. He studied her foot placement, the way her shoulders remained loose even when striking, the way her hips guided the blade before her hands did, the way she seemed to change direction without breaking rhythm, the way defense and offense blended until the distinction became useless.

That was what had captured him.

Mabel’s fluidity.

Among the fighters Liam had seen, there were many who possessed extraordinary skill. Professor Kaine was precise, brutal, and efficient, a man whose movements carried the certainty of someone who had killed enough times to remove hesitation from the act. Lady Seraphina was deceptive and graceful, her body language itself a weapon even before a blade entered her hand. Percy had been refined, controlled, and terrifyingly disciplined in the way he shaped combat around calculation. Liam’s father, Marcus, had moved like death through shadow, while his mother, Serah, had carried the kind of battle presence that made power feel elegant and inevitable.

Yet none of them moved quite like Mabel.

Her swordsmanship had a quality Liam could not ignore. It was not simply speed or grace. It was not softness, nor was it the absence of force. It was continuity. Every action seemed to flow into the next without waste, as if her body never truly stopped moving even when she appeared still.

Blocks became turns. Turns became cuts. Cuts became steps. Steps became evasions. Her blade did not interrupt her motion; it completed it. Against her, Liam had found that even predicting the next strike did not always help because the path toward it changed too naturally to punish.

He wanted that.

Not her family art in full. Not her name. Not her inheritance.

He wanted the principle beneath it. The combat fluidity. The ability to move with that kind of uninterrupted control, to let his body transition between offense, defense, evasion, and positioning without the small fractures even skilled fighters carried between decisions.

It would strengthen his swordwork, his dual daggers, his shadow movement, and even the developing framework of Unified Flow. Liam knew that much, and once he knew something could benefit him, leaving it untouched became difficult.

So he had forced the issue in the most Liam-like way possible.

For a month, he had repeatedly pushed Mabel into sparring with him. Sometimes with real blades dulled by protective enchantment. Sometimes with practice weapons. More recently, with Shadow Solidification shaped into a rough replication of Mabel’s Shyrien, not perfect in balance or soul but close enough in form for him to test movement. He had poured attention into it with the same relentless focus he gave anything he deemed useful.

And for once, the result had been almost nothing.

That had surprised Mabel more than it had surprised him.

Normally, when Liam set his mind on a skill, improvement followed. Not always quickly, not always cleanly, but it came. He observed, adjusted, failed, corrected, and repeated until the gap began to close. But with Mabel’s movement, he remained almost exactly where he had been on the first day. He could copy pieces. He could reproduce certain angles. He could imitate the surface of a turn, the arc of a cut, or the timing of a step.

But the moment he tried to connect them, the style fell apart in his hands. It became stiff where hers flowed, segmented where hers continued, forced where hers seemed inevitable.

Mabel had told him several times to be patient. She had said she would seek approval properly when the time was right. She had reminded him that some things were not meant to be stolen through observation, not because they were impossible to understand, but because understanding them without the foundation could twist them into something useless.

Liam had ignored the spirit of every warning while technically acknowledging the words.

To him, the fact that something had not been done before did not mean it could not be done.

It only meant no one had found the method yet.

Mabel looked down at him now from atop the wardrobe, the book forgotten in her hand. "You are still going to keep trying."

"That was obvious."

"It is not going to work that way."

"You’ve said that."

"And you ignored it."

"I considered it."

"No," Mabel said. "You heard it and continued doing what you wanted."

"That is a form of consideration."

"It is not."

Liam rose from the edge of the bed and turned toward her. "Are you going to help me or not?"

Mabel’s eyes narrowed slightly.

There it was.

Not hidden. Not subtle. He had not even pretended to disguise the card he was playing. He knew she would not teach him the art directly without permission, but he also knew she would not refuse to train with him. Sparring was allowed. Observation was allowed. Correcting dangerous mistakes during sparring was allowed.

And Liam, irritatingly precise when it suited him, had built his entire approach around staying just close enough to the boundary to benefit from it without forcing her to break it.

Mabel stared at him for a moment longer before exhaling through her nose.

"I will train with you like always," she said. "That much I cannot deny you."

Liam nodded once, as if the answer had been expected, then turned toward the washroom. "Good."

Mabel watched him cross the room.

There was nothing dramatic in his movement. He did not smile, did not laugh, did not look back with obvious triumph. But she saw it anyway. The slight ease in his shoulders. The quiet satisfaction in the way he moved after getting the answer he wanted. To anyone else, it would have been invisible. To Mabel, who had spent enough time watching him to notice the smallest shifts, it was smugness clear as daylight.

He had won another verbal battle, at least in his own mind.

Mabel leaned back slightly atop the wardrobe and sighed.

"At least," she murmured to herself as Liam disappeared into the washroom, "he is showing signs of growth since that talk."

The sound of running water began a moment later, and Mabel looked down at the small book in her hand without immediately reopening it. Her eyes remained thoughtful behind the mask, fixed not on the page, but on the quiet change she had been noticing in him little by little.

Liam was still stubborn, still difficult, still far too willing to drag himself through problems better solved with patience. But he was calmer than before. Not softer. Not weaker. Just less likely to turn every unanswered thing into a blade against himself.

For Liam Hunter, that was something.

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