Prologue
This was a dream.
Skáviðr realized that fact immediately.
He was having a dream of a day long ago, a dream born from his feelings of regret.
“Gotcha!” With a spirited shout, a golden-haired young man swung a wooden sword to meet the attack of his opponent, another boy his age. His swing made the other boy’s sword slip off-course.
By applying force at an angle perpendicular to the vector of his opponent’s attack, he elegantly turned it aside.
It was the willow technique, which Skáviðr had spent ten years devising and mastering on his own. Yet this young man of only fifteen or so had been able to mimic it so easily.
It was astonishing to see such talent in someone his age.
And martial arts weren’t the only area the young man excelled in. He was able to absorb any and all knowledge and techniques from other people and make them his own, without any difficulty.
Eventually, he had begun to demonstrate extraordinary ability in political, military, and religious studies, as well as various other fields. It hadn’t taken long for Skáviðr to see the young prodigy as the future hope of the Wolf Clan.
And so Skáviðr did not hold himself back from hammering his own knowledge and techniques, everything he knew, into the boy.
And he did so while telling him, “You will be the one who saves the Wolf Clan in these difficult times.”
But looking back on it now, there were much more important things that he should have taught him.
Rather than teaching the boy a wide assortment of things because he could easily learn them all, he should have focused much more time on teaching him the fundamentals that should underpin them.
And more than anything else, he should have striven to train the young man’s heart.
If only he had done that, perhaps both of them would now be living in a very different present.
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