Selma Koller walked with a cane and moved faster than Elias.
Daniel had arranged the meeting without arranging the outcome. He sent Selma the public certification record, Elias's released exam modules, and the two dispatch clips. He sent Elias a time, a municipal-hall address in Giesing, and one warning.
Elias arrived eighteen minutes early. Daniel was already beside the equipment lockers in response-unit training clothes, pretending this did not count as sponsor access. The hall belonged to a public pension programme and municipal rescue association, not his unit. His introduction could open the door. It could not keep Selma in the room.
He learned this during the first thirty seconds.
“Catch me,” she said.
Then she crossed the municipal training floor while Elias remained beside Daniel, waiting for the explanation.
By the time he followed, Selma had reached the far wall.
She had not run. The cane landed, right foot crossed, left followed without wasted rise, and the next step began before Elias decided whether the instruction was literal. His delay cost more distance than her injured gait.
“Dead,” she said.
Elias stopped. “From what?”
“Delay.”
She was sixty-two, short, and built like someone who had once carried injured people until her joints submitted a collective complaint. The cane stayed in her left hand. An old Gate scar silvered the skin below her right ear.
Her public record listed twenty-seven years in municipal rescue, fourteen as an endorsed operative trainer, and a final field level of Thirty-One. A tunnel collapse during a rescue had damaged the left hip, ended loaded deployment, and left every licence except instruction marked inactive. The cane was not evidence that technique defeated attributes. It was evidence that surviving long enough to teach could still cost a body.
Selma caught Elias reading the record.
“Relevant question?” she asked.
“Whether the injury affects your demonstrations.”
“Yes. I do not demonstrate full-speed pursuit, loaded ground recovery, or anything that requires pretending my left hip is historical. If you need those, Daniel demonstrates. If you need judgment, I can remain upright long enough.”
She did not treat disclosure as a concession.
Daniel attempted an introduction.
“Selma, this is—”
“F-Potential, Level Four, Analysis Six, qualified harvester, failed threat score once before passing at minimum, poor mana tolerance, one live dispatch.”
Elias looked at Daniel.
“I sent the file,” Daniel said.
“You sent a summary,” Selma corrected. “He sent the release forms. That is why we are speaking.”
Daniel accepted the correction. “I can stay for the first review or leave.”
“Stay until I dismiss you. He should see what help looks like when it stops being yours.”
Elias almost objected on Daniel's behalf. Daniel moved to the wall and said nothing.
She held out her hand.
“Status.”
Elias shared the approved professional view.
Selma read it without reacting to the F.
She read longer than most people who tried not to react. Level Four. Qualified Interior Harvester. Escorted T1. No mana-active tools. Low tolerance. Analysis Six. Load Bearing. First Aid. Spearwork One. The status view showed recent stabilisation, medical limits, and no Mana Sense.
“Escorted T1 is a site-access condition,” she said. “The endorsement you want is role authority assessed at T0. It does not advance your site access. Do not let anybody—including yourself—describe one as advancement to the other.”
“I know the distinction.”
“Then say what happens if you pass.”
“Approved defensive tools inside assigned resource work, under a named leader or immediate emergency. No independent entry. No security role. Any T1 use still requires an escorted pass and task-specific approval.”
“Good. We are training for that sentence, not the word armed.”
Then she opened the non-System record. Threat-reaction failure and retest. Mana screen recovery. Needle-Rat dispatch. Crawler dispatch. Sillglass Analysis overrun. Farid's shield line. Klara's evaluations. Georg's remarks on fatigue.
“You disclose failures well after someone forces the first disclosure,” Selma said.
“That has improved.”
“Your file says it has become less slow.”
She did not confuse honesty under pressure with a stable habit.
“Your attributes are ordinary for Level Four and low where the exam punishes you. Power. Agility. Mana.”
She placed the endorsement matrix beside his status. Casualty extraction demanded power over time. Threat breadth demanded attention while moving. Mana recovery punished his lowest tolerance. Tool control was the only station where technique might buy enough margin to compensate.
“Your best attribute is Focus,” she said. “The exam uses it against you if you turn focus into a tunnel.”
“Analysis can compare attention states now.”
“After you survive enough bad ones to supply samples.”
“Analysis helps technique.”
“Technique buys margins. It does not repeal physics.”
She pointed to a weighted rescue dummy.
“Move it to the blue line.”
Elias fitted the drag harness, shortened the straps, and used the pace that had passed Alpenkern clearance.
He crossed in forty-nine seconds.
Selma checked the heart-rate trace before resetting the dummy. Elias had reached the blue line within standard, but his final ten metres cost as much as the first twenty. Power was not one number applied evenly. His drag mechanics deteriorated as fatigue rose, and each correction increased friction.
She moved the harness attachment two centimetres and made him repeat only the first ten metres at three angles. The shortest-feeling angle was not fastest. It lifted the casualty high and overloaded his grip. A slightly lower line let the frame slide while keeping the dummy's shoulders clear.
“Your instinct is to make weakness disappear through technique,” she said. “Technique redistributes cost. It does not make cost vanish.”
The dummy's heels struck the mat twice. His shortened harness kept the torso high, but his first backward step crossed too narrowly. He corrected before falling and spent three seconds doing it. Without threat, route change, or mana, he still passed by only three seconds.
“Again,” Selma said. “Watch the red marker.”
A padded arm swung from the wall halfway through the drag. Elias saw it, adjusted, and lost six seconds.
He moved around the arm instead of moving the casualty line first. The dummy clipped the red boundary. In a real route, the casualty's shoulder would have struck the hazard he successfully avoided himself.
“Again. Mana field.”
Low pressure filled the floor. Nausea tightened beneath his ribs. He crossed in sixty-three seconds and needed both hands on his knees afterward.
Selma did not let him recover in the posture his body chose. “One hand available. Look at the exit. State symptoms.”
“Nausea four. Metallic taste one. Vision stable.”
“Breath?”
He had been holding it against the pressure. He exhaled and the nausea rose before falling.
The exam standard was fifty-two.
“You are not close,” Selma said.
“I passed forty-nine without interference.”
“The examination contains interference.”
She reviewed his spear stance. Daniel’s donated armour had been refitted, but the shoulder line still tightened when Elias extended. His rear foot turned outward beneath load. His recovery step crossed too narrowly.
Selma measured each restriction rather than accepting his description. The right forearm guard stole four degrees of rotation. The neck seal held. The shoulder panel pulled only at full extension, which meant it would encourage him to shorten exactly when a valid dispatch required follow-through.
She marked his usable ranges with tape on the floor. Long stance irritated the knee. Short stance reduced reach. Turning the rear foot outward gave temporary distance and transferred rotation into the joint. The body presented trade-offs, not a hidden correct form waiting for discipline.
Daniel's donated armour solved different problems. It had been manufactured for more shoulder mass and a longer torso. The refit made it safe, not neutral. Selma sent the forearm guard back to Equipment and prohibited spear work in armour until the rotation returned.
“That loses a week,” Elias said.
“It prevents you learning a shortened line around a removable restriction.”
“The municipal exam uses standard loan equipment.”
“Which is another reason your technique cannot depend on this suit.”
“Refit again or train inside the shorter range,” she said. “Do not call equipment expensive enough to ignore.”
Analysis identified deviations.
Selma struck his shaft with the cane while he studied them.
The cane moved less than twenty centimetres. Its rubber foot caught the spear below his forward hand while his attention sat on the Analysis box. She turned her wrist and used the shaft as a lever against his open thumb.
No Power contest. No dramatic speed. Geometry entered while attention was elsewhere.
The spear left his hands.
“Dead,” she said.
“The skill narrowed my attention.”
“You narrowed your attention. The skill assisted.”
Daniel watched from the wall with the careful neutrality of someone who had arranged a collision and hoped both parties survived.
Selma pointed her cane at him. “Show the same thrust.”
Daniel took the practice spear. His stance was longer. The front leg accepted force Elias's knee could not. He drove through the target and recovered forward, reclaiming distance with Level Twenty attributes.
“Correct?” Selma asked Elias.
“For him.”
“Transferable?”
“Shoulder line and target verification. Not the recovery force.”
Daniel returned the spear without offering to make himself smaller.
Selma played the Needle-Rat footage, then the tunnel crawler.
Daniel remained at the wall until Selma asked for his assessment.
“He does better after a command,” Daniel said. “Before it, he keeps trying to preserve every option.”
“And?”
“He watches the threat as if looking away will make it less real.”
Elias said, “You watched the Needle-Rat too.”
“I was assigned contact.”
The answer carried no superiority. Daniel's role had made fixation useful. Elias's role required him to keep the lane, Farid, Nika, and withdrawal call present at once.
Selma played Daniel's first training dispatch beside Elias's. Daniel moved faster, hit harder, and also chased a retreating crawler two steps beyond his instructor's line before stopping.
“High attributes purchase recovery from errors,” Selma said. “They do not turn errors into doctrine.”
Daniel watched his younger self cross the line. “I lost that assessment.”
“You should have.”
The comparison did not make Elias equal. It made the lessons transferable without pretending the bodies were.
On the first clip she froze the frame before entry, not at the shallow wound. Elias's spear was aligned. Farid's shield controlled the head. Nika's target call had ended. His hands still made two small adjustments after the decision should have been complete.
On the crawler she froze the dry-footing request, Nika's plate correction, and the pause while the animal moved. Preparation looked slower than the failed strike. It produced a faster outcome because no negotiation remained after contact.
She watched each twice.
“First failure was not fear,” she said.
“Nika said resistance felt alive.”
“That is true. Your operational error was failing to choose before beginning. You entered the motion while still negotiating with yourself.”
“The second time I chose.”
“Yes.”
The approval meant more because she did not soften anything around it.
“Will you train me?” Elias asked.
“Why?”
“I need the endorsement.”
“Why?”
“It opens field responsibility.”
“Why?”
He recognised the trap and answered anyway.
“Because I want to become a delver.”
“You are a delver. You work in dungeons.”
“An operative.”
“Then say the specific thing. You want legal responsibility for violence.”
The phrase stripped away every training montage he had imagined.
“Yes.”
“Then understand the endorsement,” Selma said. “It will authorise you to use violence inside a resource role when command or immediate emergency requires it. It will not make you the person who seeks contact. If what you want is prestige, this credential is a poor purchase.”
“I want responsibility when the lane reaches me.”
“Better.”
Selma nodded. “I will coach the exam. I will not promise the profession.”
Her terms occupied one page.
Three coached sessions weekly at most. Two strength sessions. Mobility daily. One full recovery day. Sleep minimum. Pain log. Medical disclosure. No added repetitions after a stop. No training while post-level stabilisation restricted integration.
“Your fee?” Elias asked.
She named an amount below the commercial rate and above what was comfortable.
“Why so little?”
“Daniel’s unit pension fund covers this hall. I dislike wasting public infrastructure.”
“And because I’m F?”
“Because you are poor. Do not make everything mystical.”
The fee covered her planning and coached sessions. Hall access came through the pension programme. Elias paid municipal insurance and consumables separately. Missed sessions inside the cancellation window still cost money unless Medical removed him.
Selma opened a twelve-week calendar and made Elias place fixed obligations before training. Early shifts. Analytics day. Anna's infusion appointments. Lena's pickup on alternate Wednesdays. Sophie's school meeting. Required field recovery. The open spaces shrank before a spear appeared.
“I can move family blocks if needed,” Elias said.
“Can the family?”
He left them.
Two coached sessions fit reliably. A third fit only in weeks without interior load or clinic transport. Strength work could occur at the terminal under Medical's plan. Mobility happened in short daily blocks. One entire day remained uncoloured.
The schedule was less training than the commercial course advertised and more than Elias could sustain honestly.
He read the sleep minimum twice. Eight hours before coached physical work. Seven on ordinary nights. No trading sleep for unsupervised practice.
“My early shifts begin at five forty.”
“Then bedtime moves.”
“I have family responsibilities.”
“Then training volume moves.”
“The exam date does not.”
Selma leaned on the cane. “There it is.”
“What?”
“You are afraid that respecting recovery proves the road is too long. So you treat every stop as somebody stealing time.”
Elias looked toward Daniel. Daniel studied the floor with suspicious concentration.
“Potential already makes it long,” Elias said.
“And injury makes it longer. Fatigue makes bad repetitions cheap to acquire. I am not interested in helping you fail faster.”
Elias signed the training conditions.
Selma signed after him and photographed the page into a shared log visible to Nika and, with Elias's consent, Anna. Coaching stopped if pain crossed the stated line, sleep fell below the minimum twice, Medical imposed restriction, or Elias added hidden work after a stop.
“Disclosure is part of the skill,” she said. “Not administration surrounding it.”
“First assignment,” Selma said. “Sleep eight hours. Measure ankle dorsiflexion. Fifty slow weight transfers. No spear.”
“That’s all?”
“You cannot transfer weight without turning your rear foot. A weapon will only let you make the mistake farther away.”
Daniel collected his coat.
“How did it go?” he asked outside.
“I died four times.”
“That is below her average.”
“You could have warned me.”
“Then delay would have killed you before the lesson.”
At home, Elias set his alarm for eight hours before morning.
Before he did, he showed Anna the coaching agreement. She read the shared-log clause, the cancellation cost, and the threshold that allowed Selma to stop training.
“Can I stop it?” Anna asked.
“If a household condition is violated, yes. Selma owns the physical programme. Medical owns clearance.”
“And you?”
“I own disclosure and whether to continue within all three.”
Anna tapped the sleep line. “This changes when you prepare breakfast.”
“Tonight.”
“Not just tonight.”
They moved morning tasks. Elias prepared food before bed. Sophie agreed to start the kettle on early-shift days but not to manage his alarm. Lena received no job at all. Training entered the household as logistics, not inspiration.
First he measured ankle dorsiflexion against the wall. Right knee reached seven centimetres before the heel lifted. Left reached nine. He recorded both without stretching until the numbers looked equal.
Then fifty weight transfers. No spear, no armour, bare feet inside two strips of tape. At repetition thirty-eight, the right heel tried to turn outward. Elias reduced range and finished at the shorter distance Selma had assigned.
At 21:46 he stopped. The old version of training would have used the remaining fourteen minutes to practise something impressive.
He put the log on the kitchen table, prepared breakfast for the early shift, and went to bed.
For the first time since Assessment, the first step toward combat required him to do nothing at all.