#Aiden
The training floor didn't feel real. It wasn't stone—it just wore its shape. Air thickened with voltage, twisted into angles that hurt to look at too long.
Rufus stood before us draped in priestly war-gear, robes that shimmered like smoldering ash, a longsword strapped across his back. His eyes held the flat shine of a blade—clean, polished, but cruel in the reflection.
"You children think awakening makes you strong? That touching a crystal buys you life?" His eyes gleamed like wet steel. "No. Walking outside now would be no different than throwing yourselves into a pit."
He stepped forward, drawing the sword from his back. The steel caught the light—and then unraveled, fire licking along its edge until nothing of metal remained.
"Since you're still breathing, I'll give you something better than false hope. A lesson." His smile was thin, cruel. "The eleven sides of mana. The difference between a spark that dies in your hand and a flame that can raze a kingdom."
"I know you've all heard of Cerin Holt—the guy who discovered them, living in Aurellia, that floating country."
I squeezed my hands into the tightest fists I could make.
Rufus started mumbling. "I used to live there… and why are your eyes glowing?"
"Aurellia is not that good of a place."
He clicked his tongue. "Well, Cerin made us understand that there are eleven sides of mana, but historically, when the awakened first appeared, people only knew how to use Force—or what you could call Intensity and Duration. Most of you weren't born then. Even I wasn't."
He drew the sword, and with a breath, it unraveled into fire. The steel wasn't steel anymore—it was Form, the first side of mana. He said it so easily, as if explaining nothing at all.
"Form is shape," Rufus told us, his voice low and clear, like a sermon. "Whatever you conjure, it must have a vessel. A sword, a shield, a wall of flame—Form decides what it is."
The fireblade lengthened, stretching in his hands until it was far too long, a tower of burning light. Scale. He rolled the word in his mouth like bitter wine.
"Size, reach. The difference between a torch and a wildfire. And every choice costs you mana." His gaze slid over us, as though measuring which of us would burn quickest.
Then the blade deepened. Its edges sharpened into a dangerous blue, so bright it hurt to look at. Force.
"The strength of it. The pressure. Form without Force is nothing but smoke. But add too much, and you will scorch yourself before your enemy." He smiled at that—smiled like he'd seen it happen.
The sword remained, steady in his hand. The fire did not flicker. "And this," Rufus went on, "is Duration—the length to which you can stretch your Sage Path's action. Most of you already naturally know how to use Duration and Force, but to open the other sides for unlimited customization, you must break in and push further. That is part of what makes the strongest, the strongest. This blade lasts only because I feed it—small points, quick and wasteful. Were I wiser, it would endure without constant bleeding."
He raised the sword, and we felt its weight on the air itself. "You think I'm explaining everything? I am not. I am showing you enough. Enough to know that every awakened burns through eleven sides of mana, and mastery is nothing but learning to cheat."
He lowered the sword. "Now then." His tone shifted—less sermon, more challenge. "Come at me."
None of us moved. Not me, not the others. His smirk widened. He sighed, almost theatrically, and from his sleeve pulled a small bronze bell.
The sound it made was soft, harmless, almost sweet. But the instant it rang, something stirred in my chest. My legs—my will—betrayed me. The others too. All of us lurched forward, driven not by choice but by the compulsion he'd set in the air.
We charged him, unwilling and unstoppable, the fire-sword gleaming blue as it waited to meet us.
The room froze.
A sword—thin, silver, pointed directly at my chest.
Rufus's voice sharpened like a knife. "Shall we use the fat boy here to demonstrate?"
"Me?" I looked around, stepped back. Tried to vanish. No luck—the girl behind me was too short.
He mouthed the word yes like it was law.
Rufus raised the sword. I stepped into a guard stance without thinking. Mom had taught me what to do in the face of a vastly stronger opponent. Dad gave me books. If I was going to get wrecked, I'd at least recognize the move.
"One swing. Your goal: dodge it. Maybe touch me."
The sword flashed—a silver line aimed straight for my chest.
[ External Hostile Contact Detected ]
[ Elevated Heart Rate: 142 bpm ]
[ Emotional spike detected. Activation recommended. ]
!!!!!!!!
[Activation Failed: Emotional Instability Detected]
My body moved before my mind did. I seized the girl behind me and dragged her forward, shoving her into the blade's path. Not to harm her—never that—but because her boundary would hold where mine would not.
Steel hissed against the unseen barrier. Sparks burst and died. The girl gasped, small and startled, but she lived.
Rufus's eyes widened for a heartbeat, then curved into a smile that made my skin crawl.
I lunged, three quick strides, swinging clumsy but desperate. If I could just touch him—
Pain detonated in my shoulder. I crashed sideways into the sand, ribs screaming.
Gasps erupted around us. A boy shouted, "That's cheating!"
Rufus didn't even look at him. His boot snapped into my side, knocking the air from my lungs.
"You used a child as a shield," he barked, loud enough for everyone to hear. "Coward."
The girl was crying now, hands pressed to her mouth.
And Rufus smiled, the blade still glowing in his grip.
At the edge of the circle, someone pushed a boy forward.
"Roan did it!" someone yelled.
Everything stopped.
Roan stumbled into the ring, eyes wide, confused.
The twitch. The little smirk on Tharozh how many people had he offended!
"Not bad," he'd said, scratching his head. "I... I meant I'm sorry."
Then he bowed. Got too close and smiled with teeth.
The room cracked open at the edges. Whispers snapped into silence.
Then Bola stormed into the room.
---
They stripped me of my coat first.
Mama had seen my result. Whatever she believed I was, it meant Rufus couldn't quietly erase me anymore or anybody for that matter till reassessment I raised my hands and my cloth came off– this was the first time luck was playing in my favor in a long time.
My boots came off.
Then my name.
I stood alone in the sanctum of Mergehold—a hall that curved like a question the gods had long forgotten how to answer. Pillars rose like petrified trees, their roots cracking marble in slow defiance. Moss grew upward toward the light, greedy, as if it remembered an older sun.
The air stank of incense and stale breath, the kind that lingers too long in holy places. On the ceiling, words written in bloodspell floated, shifting shape and meaning—script to metaphor to prayer and back again. Watching them hurt, but I couldn't look away.
A mirror leaned to the left, fractured into puzzle pieces forming the face of Tharozh. Or maybe not a face at all. Maybe only the idea of one. Something sacred and wrong, all at once.
It smelled like power. Not spent power.
The kind that waits.
Then she came—robed in a color not white but bone. In one hand, a curved blade. In the other, a bowl of iron water.
She said nothing. Just set her palm on my shoulder.
I flinched. Reflex. My body still lived on the edge of survival.
She didn't scold me. She only nodded, as if she understood, then lifted the blade to my scalp.
The sound began soft. Steel parting hair.
But each stroke felt heavier. Like she wasn't just shaving me—she was peeling something deeper, a layer of self I hadn't known I carried.
No chant. No ceremony. Just the slow unmaking of familiarity.
I didn't cry. I didn't ask why.
I watched the strands fall, black feathers circling my feet.
"When you held the knife," I whispered, "I thought you were going to behead me. Like they did my father."
Her hand froze. Only for a moment. Then she set the blade in the basin and knelt before me.
"May the Lord confront your heart," she murmured, and drew me into an embrace.
I didn't return it. Didn't push her away either. I simply endured it, as I always did.
Eventually she left. Left me alone with silence.
As if silence knew better than people what to do.
I felt it before I heard it: a stillness not mine.
I felt smaller without the hair. Or maybe just more visible.
The doors opened.
I kept my head down, but the air shifted.
Bare feet whispered across stone. A girl. Tiny, younger by maybe a year. She carried a presence like that didn't care for numbers.
She wore plain linen, stained with turmeric and soap. Her braids were thick, her skin a deep obsidian glow carved by sun. She didn't look at me, but her presence folded the room in on itself.
At the basin she dipped her hands, red from scrubbing, wrists marked with domestic scars—the kind made from doing too much with too little. She wrung a cloth, turned, and for the first time her eyes brushed over me.
She smiled.
A whisper: "I heard you're the new kid?"
I rose, startled. "You're the girl from the—"
Her fingers pressed gently to my lips before I could finish.