"Caretaker Wing B. Row Three. You'll be briefed at the stable office. Young miss, you will be on Wing A. In the student dormitory."
With no other instructions, they passed through the gate and stepped onto the grounds.
The courtyard was wide and cracked, lined with training sheds, grooming barns, and a low-roofed central hall. Students moved back and forth between pens and buildings, some leading beasts on leashes, others shoveling hay or studying feed charts. It looked less like an academy and more like a work camp.
"This place is…" Fenna trailed off.
"Everything I expected," Zephyr finished grimly.
But she took his hand."It'll get better. We have each other's company." After that they parted ways. She left for wing A, students dormitory.
Zephyr rooms were in the Caretaker Dormitory, separated by only a hallway. His quarters were as plain as his future, narrow bed, chipped desk, and a trunk with one working latch. A small pamphlet sat on the bed.
'Caretaker Orientation: Feeding Protocol, Beast Behavior, and Cleaning Rotations'
He didn't even touch it. The real work began the next morning. "UP! Thirty minutes till the feeding shift!" came a voice from the hall.
Zephyr dressed in the cold, fingers numb. He pulled on his coat, looped his red scarf around his neck, and grabbed his assigned wooden token pouch.
"Ready?" a man asked him.
"Don't think anyone's ever ready for manure duty," he said.
They made their way through the snow-covered paths toward the stables. The fog clung low and thick, hiding much of the academy grounds in muted gray.
Stable Row Three stank.
The first pen held some Scruff Horn boar. Rank E beasts. Hardy herbivores with aggressive attitudes. Used in footwork drills. Known to charge at anything red. Looked same as wild boars with horns.
Zephyr quickly realized he had made a mistake wearing the red scarf. Fenna came to check on him. She laughed as he ducked a tusk swipe.
The second pen held Silver Claw pika. Rank D beast. Speed-type rodents. Sensitive to noise. Eat five times their body weight in a day. It practically looked like a ball with a silver claw.
"Why do they all look like they're on fire?" Zephyr asked, staring at the twitching furballs bouncing off walls.
"They're stimulant-fed," said a voice behind him. A short man stood beside a grain pile, arms folded, sleeves rolled up to reveal claw scars.
Name: Grent. Age: 29 Rank E Skill: Muck Manipulation. Veteran beast caretaker. Known for sarcasm, stamina, and secretly liking kids with backbone.
"You're the new feeder, right? The manure prince himself."
Zephyr sighed. " Call me Zephyr."
Grent nodded, then looked at Fenna. "You?"
"A-rank. I'm here to help my friend, I am an academy student. My class starts next week." she replied.
Grent let out a low whistle. "Fancy. Well, you can do whatever you want."
He tossed Zephyr both a bucket. "Start with the pikas. If they pile on, scream. If they chew your pants off… still scream."
The next six hours were a blur of heat, smell, kicks, and curses. Zephyr chased down runaway goats, scrubbed fur clumps from stable walls, and nearly got gored by a bored Rockhide Lizard. Rank D beast. Defense-type. Prone to tail slaps. Immune to fire magic. Hates being stared at.
Fenna wasn't spared either. One of the boars tried to eat her herb pouch. She swatted it with a ladle. By midday, they sat beside the pikas' pen, panting.
Huff! Huff!
Zephyr leaned back against the fence, letting the cold numb his spine. "This is hell."
Fenna sipped water from her flask. "You mean heaven."
He raised an eyebrow.
"Because," she said, holding out her palm, "watch this."
She dropped a few sprigs of her cultivated leaf mix into the feed trough. The pikas, jittering seconds ago, suddenly stilled. Their ears twitched. Their noses twitched. Then they sat in a neat line… waiting.
Zephyr started. "How did you do that?"
"My herb resonance. It calms basic instincts." She smiled. "They like my scent."
He shook his head in disbelief. "You're scary."
She poked his shoulder. "You're the one who made the grain glow earlier."
He blinked. "You saw that?"
"I did," she said softly. "The moment you poured it in, the feed shimmered. It resonated. Your skill is not useless, Zephyr. You just don't see what I see."
He looked away, unsure how to answer. Her words stuck with him longer than he expected.
That evening, the caretakers gathered in the dining hall. Rough-hewn benches, wooden bowls, dull chatter. Zephyr and Fenna sat at the edge of a table. No one acknowledged him. Yet for once, Zephyr didn't feel the ache of being alone because Fenna was with him.
He had a job. A bed. And a companion who hadn't left his side even when the world turned its back. As he spooned lukewarm broth into his mouth, the something inside him, the one hidden, sealed, and silent still remained dormant moved.
A shift? A change? He doesn't know. And when it will awaken… he wouldn't be a loser. He will change the world.
Couple of days later… The wind carried the sharp scent of iron and earth as Zephyr entered Stable Row before dawn, a lantern in one hand and a bucket in the other. His muscles ached with every step, but there was a rhythm to the routine now, something steadying about repetition.
He'd learned the way each beast chewed, the way their eyes followed his every movement when hungry, or how some of them, like the clawed buckers, reacted violently to unfamiliar scents. He still had to dodge more than one spitball of half-chewed greens each day, but at least now they missed his face.
This morning, however, the usual quiet was broken.