In MoDS, the House of Rameses has only been a passing mention as one of the six Radiance Houses, tucked neatly in the background like lore filler. It was a piece of trivia one could skip over if they didn't care about the world's scaffolding. And I was one of those lore players.
The House of Rameses wasn't just any Radiance House. They were the Elemental Flux House. The same way House of Augustus held its reputation as the bloodthirsty war-machine that raised the greatest Combat Fluxers, Rameses built its prestige on raw, unfathomable elemental mastery.
There were three pillars that made them powerful. And every time I thought about them, I couldn't help but feel like fate had decided to throw me a bone for once.
One, Xana mastery.
No one, and I mean no one on Altera Earth could hold a candle to them when it came to Xana reserves. Their bodies were practically overflowing with the stuff. They spent centuries perfecting techniques that wrung every last drop of potential from Xana. Where most Fluxers wasted half of what they drew in, leaking power through inefficiency, Rameses Fluxers refined it. Every ounce was used, recycled and redirected. To even be considered for training under them was like being handed the keys to the kingdom of energy itself.
The world knew this too. Families from every corner of Altera Earth begged for their children to be admitted into Rameses' Xana tutelage. But Rameses weren't generous saints. They rejected everyone. Their reasoning was cold: Only Rameses teaches Rameses. The bloodline trained itself. Outsiders were liabilities.
Except… here I was, an outsider being handed that training by their ruler himself. Whatever my mother had done to secure this, I couldn't begin to imagine but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't grateful. I needed this badly. My body had been eating itself with Xana for years, corroded by an energy I hadn't learned to channel. I'd almost died because of it. Now, instead of rotting from the inside out, I had a chance to master the very thing that was killing me.
The second thing the House had were the elements.
Elemental Fluxers outside of Rameses were lucky to wield one, maybe two elements. The Rameses bloodline casually juggled three. They had one active elementsm, one support element and one passive. Active was straightforward, combat-ready, destructive and meant for showdowns. Support was subtler, the in-between. And passive was what protected and enhanced them beyond the understanding of normal Elemental Fluxers.
Think about it. Someone outside the House has to fight tooth and nail with one fireball or two streams of water. But a Rameses Fluxer? They could open the fight with Ember and Plasma, buff themselves with stone-skin through a support Terra, and then stand there fireproof because their passive was Frost cooling their body to stop exhaustion.
I didn't even know where I stood yet. My Flux wasn't elemental, but my affinity to void—the affinity Seirath kept eyeing me about—was so strong he claimed it surpassed even his own. That thought made me both proud and uncomfortable. Proud because void was terrifying, and if I really had that edge, then maybe I wasn't the cosmic accident I always feared I was. It was uncomfortable because I didn't know if that made me a prize or a threat.
And finally, they had knowledge.
The Rameses weren't just fighters. They were record-keepers. They looked like elves for a reason. Their longevity came something far more valuable than raw strength. They had records of the Fluxwave Phenomenon seven centuries ago. They had the genealogy of every Radiance House, the hidden wars, the treaties never spoken of outside of hushed council chambers and so on. They mapped the rhythms of Flux like cartographers, tracing its evolution through millennia of battles and disasters.
I would have access to their libraries. That was like handing me the future in pieces, letting me stitch it together before anyone else could. I wasn't stupid. I know the Azure Sword, the disc and the MoDS arcs are all tied into deeper histories. And now, for three whole months, I'd have the chance to dig into it all.
Three months. That was my window. I have a season's worth of sand falling through the hourglass. If I played this right, I wouldn't just crawl into summer prepared. The Pisa Incident, the ruins in the Alps, the Faceless Sovereign, the Outers looming over it all... I'd be walking into hell with armor forged by Rameses itself.
And yet, there was this weight that whispered: Don't screw this up. Because as much as this was an opportunity, it was also a responsibility. The Rameses didn't train outsiders. Ever. If I failed, I wouldn't just embarrass myself. I'd stain my House, my mother, and even the trust Seirath was risking on me.
So yeah, I liked the conditions. They suited me too well. Training under the best Xana masters in existence? Perfect. Having access to a library that could feed me every lore scrap I needed? Even better. The catch was that failure wasn't an option.