The estate no longer felt like a place Lance lived.

  It felt like a battlefield he returned to every morning.

  Sir Darvish made sure of that.

  What once were empty courtyards or quiet corners of the grounds had become familiar arenas, each one a scar etched into Lance’s memory and muscle. Dawn was no longer the beginning of a day; it was the first command of war.

  The first sign of morning was always the sting of cold air inside Lance’s lungs. Then the sensation of stone beneath his feet as he stepped into the courtyard before the sun had fully crested the mountains.

  Darvish was always there.

  As still as a sentinel, arms folded behind his back, gaze sharp even in half-light. No greetings. No warmth. Only:

  “You’re late.”

  Even when Lance wasn’t.

  The training began before thought could settle. It always did.

  Darvish circled him, watching the way Lance’s stance shifted, the angle of his hips, the position of his wrists. Every morning started with structure. Bone alignment. Breath control. Mana circulation. Without it, Darvish said, weapons were just metal, mana was just noise, and movement was just flailing.

  “Foundation first,” he said. “Foundation always.”

  The mantra sank deep.

  And so he drilled Lance until foundation became instinct.

  Feet planted.

  Hips aligned.

  Shoulders loose.

  Breath steady.

  Lightning in.

  Frost out.

  Every. Single. Morning.

  Today was like no other. Rolled out of bed determined to grow myself just a bit more than the previous day. Passing the usual earlier risers within the estate, always giving a small nod of acknowledgement when I pass by.

  I reach the training ground. Scars blotted all over the area of our previous Mana infused intense training. It has been 5 months since I started. Day in and Day out. Nothing else consumed my time besides training, or studying better ways to-train.

  Darvish greeted me, “You’re Late.”

  Before I could get my usual quip out with our daily banter, Darvish dashed, closing the distance between us, wielding a long pole of some kind.

  I rose my hands and pressed my forearms together, reacting too late to dodge.

  My core blazed and Mana frosted my arms up my gauntlets, reinforcing my defense.

  Darvish stopped his bull headed strike inches from my wrists that surely would have shattered.

  “Today, we will chance the pace a bit.”

  Still blinking the dust and wind out of my eyes from the pressure behind his strike, I tilted my head.

  “Change it how?”

  I watched Darvish twirl his pole around, well not a pole. I could finally get a clear look at it now.

  “You will begin training in several different weapons, This here is a Staff.” he finished the sentence promptly by slamming the butt of the staff on the ground. Sprawling vortex of wind pulsing outwards at the impact.

  “You have trained hand-to-hand with me, duel wielded daggers by your mother, so now we will incorporate some more variety.”

  He walked forward and thrust the staff within arms reach.

  “In battle, sometimes you won't always have your preferred weapon, or best piece of gear to depend on.”

  “Close combat. Something both of your previous trained styles of fighting had in common. Today, we will begin to learn how to control the distance between an enemy. Such is the speciality of an item like a staff, or spear.”

  I took in everything he was saying.

  Darvish forced Lance to perform endless patterns, strikes, thrusts, sweeps, spins, until his wrists burned and his fingers ached from gripping the wood. The staff punished every imbalance. If his hips were misaligned, the recoil twisted his spine. If his arms were too stiff, the tip dragged him off-center.

  When lightning surged too quickly through him, his swings overextended and Darvish flicked the staff aside with a single slap.

  When frost overcompensated, his movements slowed and Darvish swept his feet.

  “Center,” Darvish barked. “A staff is not a weapon of aggression. It is a weapon of timing, Momentum."

  So Lance learned timing.

  He learned to spin the staff low to divert an attack, then redirect momentum into a rising strike. He learned to use the entire length of the weapon, not just the ends. Most importantly, he learned how frost mana let him tighten every rotation, smoothing movements, anchoring stances, refining flow.

  By the end of the month, he could spar with Darvish using only a staff and hold his ground for more than ten seconds.

  That, apparently, was progress.

  “Better,” Darvish said at the end of one session.

  Lance collapsed onto the dirt and accepted the compliment like it was a warm meal.

  Lance sat alone on the training field after Darvish left, the last rays of evening light settling over the estate grounds in long golden streaks. His palms throbbed. His wrists buzzed with that familiar ache that came from forcing himself past where his body wanted to stop. Sweat cooled on the back of his neck in a slow trickle.

  He didn’t move.

  He just breathed.

  And thought.

  Every session with Darvish left bruises—not just on his skin but on his understanding. Each day peeled back another layer of his weakness, his assumptions, the sloppy habits he didn’t know he had. Lance learned to sit with that discomfort, to replay each mistake in his mind until the lesson beneath it surfaced.

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  Tonight, it was the staff.

  He replayed the way the recoil dragged him sideways when he tightened his grip too much.

  He replayed the moment his lightning flared and the staff nearly ripped itself from his hands, overextending him completely.

  He replayed the cold correction of frost slowing him too much, his arms moving like he was fighting through water, Darvish sweeping him to the dirt before he realized the flaw.

  Lance rubbed his wrist, staring down at the faint red ring where the staff had bit into him.

  Timing, Darvish had said.

  Not strength.

  Not speed.

  Timing.

  The staff wasn’t meant to overpower.

  It was meant to guide.

  And every weapon he touched, every technique he learned, kept teaching him some version of that same truth. Lightning gave him momentum, but not direction. Frost gave him control, but not purpose. The weapon in his hands determined the rhythm, and his mana shaped only how he moved through it.

  So Lance picked apart the day in his head, as he always did.

  If he let the staff’s momentum pull him instead of fighting it…

  If he used lightning after the spin instead of at the start…

  If he let frost focus on his core instead of his limbs…

  Small things.

  Tiny things.

  Adjustments a person might never notice unless they lived inside the weapon the way he had to.

  He tested each idea in slow motion, twirling an invisible staff through the air. The motion still hurt, but the ache grounded him. It reminded him he lived through the lesson.

  Somewhere between his breath and the fading sunlight, Lance felt it, the smallest shift in his stance, something closer to stable, closer to centered. He worked through the movements again, slower this time, exploring how lightning could sit behind the strike like a spark waiting for ignition… how frost could tighten his rotation without freezing him in place.

  He tried it again.

  Again.

  And again.

  Until the bruises stopped mattering. Until the Frostbite on my fingers got too numb.

  Months went by, our spars getting more aggressive, sometimes starting with the Staff then ending just using my first.

  Months went by then a new weapon was introduced on my eleventh birthday.

  Lance approached sword training the same way he approached a storm, cautiously, with a healthy respect for how quickly things could spiral out of control.

  Darvish didn’t ease him into it. The first day they trained with blades, the knight handed him a practice sword with no explanation and immediately attacked.

  The shock of steel meeting steel rattled all the way up Lance’s arms.

  He barely blocked the second strike, stumbled on the third, and ate a mouthful of dirt on the fourth.

  Darvish stood over him, unimpressed.

  “Your sword isn’t a shield,” he said. “It’s an extension. So extend.”

  And then the lesson truly began.

  Swordwork demanded a different part of Lance’s mind, more deliberate than spear, more assertive than staff. Every movement carried weight, consequence. A sword wasn’t meant for teasing distance or guiding momentum. It was meant to end a fight.

  That terrified him.

  Which meant he had to master it.

  After each session Lance would return to that quiet spot on the training field, just as he had with the staff, lowering himself to the grass slowly, feeling the day’s bruises map themselves across his ribs and forearms.

  He’d set the practice sword across his knees and think.

  Replay.

  Dissect.

  Learn.

  He recalled the heavy sensation each time he overcommitted, the blade dragging his shoulders too far forward. Darvish exploited that instantly, stepping inside his guard and tapping Lance’s chest with the flat of the blade, every time with the same warning:

  “Do not chase. Control the line.”

  So Lance replayed the footwork in his mind.

  How the forward step broke his posture.

  How his hips opened too much on the diagonal cuts.

  How lightning, when used at the wrong moment, turned controlled pressure into reckless lunging.

  Lightning wanted to leap.

  A sword demanded direction.

  He closed his eyes and traced the movements again, slower this time.

  finding where the storm fit.

  Where it didn’t.

  He lingered on the memory of when frost anchored him, stopping his slide just enough to let him pivot and redirect a cut. That moment stayed with him, the perfect balance where neither mana dominated, where the sword felt like part of his spine.

  He’d whisper to himself under his breath:

  Less force. More intention.

  Less speed. More aim.

  Let lightning sharpen—not pull.

  Let frost correct—not freeze.

  Next step was then to integrate his lightning Mana just like his bo staff. Frost to anchor, Lightning to amplify.

  He practiced the motions in the dim light of dusk, the blade humming gently as he executed slow arcs across the air.

  He pictured every correction Darvish had barked:

  “Keep your elbow tight.”

  “Don’t let the blade pass your shoulder.”

  “Your stance is too wide.”

  “Strike with purpose, not hope.”

  Each phrase carved another guideline into his memory.

  Each bruise is another reminder.

  Lance breathed deeply, letting the rhythm settle into him, not the rhythm of his mana, but the rhythm of the sword itself.

  He repeated the cuts until the soreness blurred into something familiar, something earned.

  He adjusted angle after angle, feeling which motions aligned with lightning’s quick precision and which resonated with frost’s centered discipline.

  And somewhere between repetition and reflection, he found it

  That subtle harmony where the sword no longer felt heavy.

  Where lightning didn’t rush ahead of him.

  Where frost didn’t anchor him in place.

  A balance that only lasted a heartbeat.

  But it was enough.

  Enough to show him what it could become.

  Enough to chase tomorrow.

  Throughout this training, Darvish instructed to not obsess over the System interface. Not too hard since I spent the first 10 years of my life without it, and with how intense the training has been I dont even think about it most of the time.

  I decided after the Sword training to take a peak. I didn't expand the other sections, just my Skills section. I would get a pop-up, or I guess something like a notification from the system whenever I unlocked something new.

  ─── SYSTEM STATUS ───

  Name: Lance Loren // PRIME

  Family: House Loren, Knighthelm Frostwall

  Tier: 1

  Core: Pre-ascension Lightning Core

  Expanded: Core: Pre-ascension Lightning Core

  Condition: Stable

  Integrity: INTEGRATED (PURITY REFINEMENT NOW AVAILABLE)

  Visibility: System-Limited

  Designation: Heart of the Tempest (Legendary)

  CLASS: Tempest Knight (Legendary)

  Expanded: ─ Class Details: Tempest Knight

  Rarity: Legendary

  Type: Martial Spellbland hybrid

  Recommended Pathways: Stormbound, Arclight, Frost March

  Passive Effects: Lightning-Resonance, Minor Mana-Conduction, Weather Sense,

  Minor weather manipulation

  Active Skill Slots: 1/3 unlocked (DROP DOWN TO SELECT)

  Core Attunement Required: Stage 1 Advancement

  AFFINITES: Lightning: Touched // Snow: Awakened // FrostFire: Sealed

  BOND: StormSoul

  Expanded: ─ Bond: StormSoul

  Variant Type: Draconic-Proto

  Growth: Dormant

  Elemental Composition: Lightning 62% / Snow 21% / Unknown 17%

  Bond State: Slumber

  Integration: Partial

  Notes: Further resonance required for awakening.

  BLESSINGS: Royal Snowmother’s Blessing [REDACTED] (Ancient, Bloodline)

  -Effects: Cold-mana resilience, passive protection, Good Fortune

  Skills:

  Lightning Lense - novice

  Hand-to-hand Combat – Apprentice (New)

  Staff – novice (New)

  Sword – novice (New)

  ─── SYSTEM STATUS ───

  Well, there are several new items on the System Panel.. I am overdue for a good sit down talk with the parents anyway, lets see what these mean.

  I sat drenched in sweat, laying flat on the training ground looking at my system interface. Taking in all the growth I have had recently.