Doran showed up at five forty seven in the morning.

Orion knew this because Night Domain was still running from his pre-dawn cultivation session and he felt Doran’s approach from the moment he turned onto the path leading to the manor. Specific signature. Slightly heavier footfall on the right side than the left, same as the tired guard from yesterday, except Doran’s was structural rather than fatigue. The right shoulder carried more tension. A dominant side imbalance that had probably been there long enough he didn’t notice it anymore.

He filed that. Useful later.

He opened the door before Doran knocked.

Doran stood on the step with his hand raised and looked at Orion with the expression of someone whose prepared entrance had been removed from under them.

"You heard me coming," he said.

"Perception skill," Orion said. "Come in."

Doran came in. He was dressed practically, not the noble clothes from yesterday, something closer to training wear. He’d thought about this. He’d come ready to work rather than ready to be seen working, which was a better sign than Orion had expected.

Luna was in cat form on the hallway shelf, watching Doran with the focused patience of something that hadn’t decided yet whether he was interesting or furniture.

Doran looked at her.

"Is she going to be a problem," he said.

"Probably not," Orion said. "Don’t make sudden movements and don’t touch her without asking and you’ll be fine."

"Those are instructions for a dangerous animal."

"They’re instructions for Luna," Orion said. "Which is the same thing."

Luna’s tail flicked once.

Doran wisely said nothing else about it.

They went to the training ground. The morning was early enough that the light was still deciding what color to be, grey-gold at the edges, the twin moons both visible but pale, losing ground to the coming sun. Nobody else was out here at this hour. The main estate was quiet. The guards were changing shift which meant the brief window where attention was distributed and nobody was specifically watching anything.

Good time to work.

Orion handed Doran a wooden sword.

Doran took it. Held it. Looked at it with the expression of someone who’d held one before but not recently or consistently.

"You’ve had basic training," Orion said.

"Standard noble curriculum. Stopped at twelve." Doran turned the sword over. "My tutor said I had no aptitude."

"Your tutor was measuring the wrong thing," Orion said. "Show me your stance."

Doran put his feet at what someone had taught him was shoulder width, raised the sword to what someone had told him was guard position, and stood there looking like someone who’d been given instructions and followed them exactly without understanding what the instructions were for.

Technically correct. Functionally wrong.

Orion circled him slowly. Doran’s eyes tracked him which was instinct, not training. Eyes should track the threat. Good. His weight was too far back, defensive rather than mobile. His sword hand was gripping too tight, the knuckle tension would become arm fatigue in under a minute of active exchange. The dominant shoulder was high, protecting the right side at the expense of the left exposure he’d already clocked.

"What did your tutor tell you about stance," Orion said.

"Stable base. Guard up. Eyes forward."

"All correct. All missing the point." Orion stopped in front of him. "Stance isn’t a position. It’s a starting place. The difference is one is where you stop and one is where you begin."

Doran frowned. "That’s the same thing."

"A position is where you want to be. A starting place is where you can move from." He tapped Doran’s back foot with his own. "Your weight is here. Which means before you can do anything you have to transfer it forward first. You’ve added a step you don’t need."

Doran shifted. Redistributed. Better.

"Grip," Orion said.

"What about it."

"Loosen it."

"Loosening it means I can be disarmed."

"A tight grip tires your arm in two minutes and makes every movement half a second slower. A controlled grip gives you speed and you can tighten for impact when you need it." He looked at Doran’s hand. "You’re holding it like you’re afraid it’ll escape."

Something moved in Doran’s expression. He loosened the grip.

"Your right shoulder is high," Orion continued.

"I know," Doran said quietly. "It’s always been like that."

"Old injury?"

"Old habit. I fell badly at eight and favored it for long enough that it became default."

Orion nodded. Filed it. "We’ll work around it for now and address it as a separate thing. Compensating for an existing pattern is faster than trying to delete it."

Doran looked at him. "You sound like you’ve taught before."

"I haven’t," Orion said.

"Then how do you know how to do this."

Orion thought about it honestly. "I pay attention to what’s actually happening instead of what should be happening." He shrugged. "Most instruction is designed for the average case. You’re not the average case. Nobody is."

A pause.

"Right," Doran said. "So what now."

"Now you move," Orion said, and stepped back. "Just walk. Normal pace. Across the training ground and back."

Doran stared at him. "Walk."

"Walk."

"With the sword."

"With the sword."

A long pause that communicated eloquently what Doran thought about this instruction. Then he walked. Across the training ground. Back. Wooden sword in hand, not really sure what to do with it, slightly self-conscious in the way everyone was self-conscious when told to do something simple and watched while doing it.

Orion watched his feet. His center. The way his arm moved with the sword versus against it. The rhythm of his breathing.

"Stop," he said.

Doran stopped.

"The sword is fighting your natural arm swing," Orion said. "Your body knows how to walk. The sword is confusing it because you’re treating it as a separate object instead of an extension." He walked over. "Hold it loose. Let your arm swing naturally. Don’t force the sword to stay still."

"Won’t it look sloppy."

"It’ll look like someone who isn’t carrying a foreign object," Orion said. "Walk again."

Doran walked again. Better. Noticeably better. The tension in his shoulder dropped slightly as soon as he stopped fighting the sword’s presence.

"There," Orion said. "That’s the starting point."

Luna had relocated from the hallway shelf to the perimeter wall of the training ground at some point, sitting up there in cat form watching with the air of a supervisor who hadn’t decided if the project was viable yet.

They spent an hour on basics.

Not dramatic basics. Not the kind of basics that made good stories. Just the fundamental groundwork of someone learning to exist with a weapon instead of tolerating it. Movement. Weight transfer. How to fall without the sword becoming a liability. How to stand up from the floor with something in your hand without it catching on anything or slowing you down.

Doran was a careful learner. He made mistakes and accepted correction without defensiveness, which was both rarer than it should have been and more useful than most other qualities. When something didn’t work he asked why. When he understood the why he applied it without needing to be told twice.

"You’re a fast processor," Orion said, after the third time Doran integrated a correction in under two attempts.

"I’ve had to be," Doran said, not elaborating.

Orion didn’t push. He had a reasonable guess. Growing up in the shadow of Seth’s performance and Celia’s composure and Astra’s reputation, in a family that measured everything by the single metric of summoning capability, watching and processing quickly was probably a survival skill.

At the end of the hour Orion called it.

Doran sat on the perimeter wall catching his breath. He wasn’t badly winded, he was fit enough, but an hour of concentrated movement work was different from normal physical activity and it showed in the way he was sitting.

"Same time tomorrow," Orion said.

Doran looked at him. "That’s it? No sparring?"

"Not yet."

"You sparred with Astra on day one."

"Astra had a decade of formal training and showed up with a wooden sword in her hand," Orion said. "You showed up having not practiced in two years with a dominant side imbalance and a grip habit that would get you disarmed in thirty seconds." He looked at him. "I’m not going to spar you before you’re ready. There’s no point."

Doran was quiet for a moment.

"Most people would just throw you in and let you fail," he said.

"Most people are teaching to feel like teachers," Orion said. "I’m teaching to actually produce something."

Another pause. Then Doran said, with the specific care of someone asking a question they’d been sitting on for a while: "Why does it matter to you what I produce."

Orion thought about it.

"Because you pay attention and you’re not Seth," he said. "And in about three weeks we’re both going to be in a situation where having someone useful nearby isn’t optional."

Doran looked at him. "The selection trial."

"Among other things."

"You know something’s being planned."

"I know people in this family have reasons to want me to fail publicly," Orion said. "I know you’re not one of them. That’s enough for now."

Doran absorbed this. Stood up. Picked up his sword and held it in the natural grip they’d been working on instead of the tight one he’d arrived with. Small thing. He probably didn’t notice he’d done it.

Orion did.

"One more thing," Doran said, before he left. He reached into his jacket and produced a small folded paper. "I looked into the medicinal supplies we have in the estate stores. There are three compounds that interact badly with standard cultivation techniques at beginner level. They can slow mana circulation development if taken within six hours of cultivation work." He held out the paper. "I wrote them down. In case you’re using anything from the stores."