Part I : The Brutal Truth

  As Lyra and Alistair walked off, their easy laughter fading toward the lake, Faelan turned his attention to the two children.

  He leaned against the oak, his arms crossed, his gaze falling on Arthur with the critical eye of a weapon inspector.

  "Tybalt trained you well," he began, his voice a low, analytical rumble.

  "Your form is perfect. Textbook, even."

  Arthur stood a little straighter, a flicker of pride warming his chest.

  "It's too perfect," Faelan continued, extinguishing the flicker instantly.

  Arthur's face fell, confused. "That's a compliment, right?"

  "Against a man who also reads the same books? Maybe," Faelan said, pushing off the tree.

  "But you're not going to be fighting men in a dueling ring. You're going to be fighting monsters. A Thornback Grazer doesn't care about your perfect longpoint stance. It's just going to charge. Out here, 'perfect' is predictable, and predictable is dead. You need to learn to be messy. You have to be willing to take any opening you can get, not just the one the textbook tells you is proper."

  Arthur nodded, the lesson landing with the weight of hard truth.

  Faelan then turned his gaze to Ingrid.

  "Ingrid. Raise an earthen pillar. Eight feet high. Make it as dense as you can."

  Ingrid, though curious, obeyed without question.

  She placed her palms on the ground, and with a few seconds of silent concentration, a smooth, thick column of earth rose from the ground, its surface hard and polished as concrete.

  "Arthur," Faelan commanded. "Break it."

  Arthur stepped forward and swung his sword. The blade met the pillar with a jarring clang that sent a shockwave up his arm, leaving nothing but a faint scratch.

  He tried again, taking a few steps back and using a burst of wind to add momentum to his lunge.

  Again, the impact recoiled through him, the pillar unmarred.

  Frustration began to bubble in his chest as he struck it again and again, each failed attempt a fresh wave of humiliation.

  Faelan let him tire himself out before stepping forward. "Many creatures have hide harder than this pillar," he said quietly, nodding toward the distant Blightwood. "What do you do when you face something you can't cut?"

  Arthur, breathless and defeated, had no answer.

  "You could spend years saving up for a Dwarven-forged blade that might do the trick," Faelan continued, his tone matter-of-fact. "You could join an army and hope you never have to face a real monster. Or..."

  He paused, holding his right fist up. A low hum filled the air as a violent, purple energy crackled to life, wreathing his hand in a shimmering gauntlet of raw power. "...you learn to do this."

  He didn't swing.

  He simply slammed his fist into the pillar.

  There was no clang of impact, only a deep, percussive boom.

  The pillar didn't crack; it disintegrated, exploding into a cloud of dust and gravel.

  Arthur's eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated awe.

  He had seen Aura before, a shimmer on Lyra's hand, but this was different. This was raw, untamed force. "What... was that?

  "A neat little trick," Faelan said, the Aura fading from his hand.

  "Levels the playing field. It's called Aura." A faint smile touched his lips as he saw the look on Arthur's face.

  "Can you teach me?" Arthur asked, his voice full of a child-like wonder that had been absent for weeks.

  "That's why I showed you," Faelan replied warmly.

  Ingrid watched, waiting.

  She wouldn't admit it, even to herself, but she yearned for his assessment, for some word of guidance.

  Faelan turned to her, and even through her impassive mask, he seemed to read the unspoken question.

  "I'm no mage, Ingrid, so I can't speak to the theory. But tactically... why use a canon to kill a bird?"

  She looked at him, confused. "Raise the pillar again."

  She did.

  Faelan simply raised a hand, and a blade of pure wind, no wider than his thumb, hissed from his palm.

  It didn't shatter the pillar; it sliced through it with a high-pitched whistle, a perfect, clean line that sent the top half toppling to the ground.

  This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

  Chantless. Effortless, Ingrid's mind raced, deconstructing the feat with a professional's awe.

  The raw power to do that was one thing.

  But the control... the precision to shape raw wind into a blade that fine, without a word, without a wasted drop of mana... that was the work of a master.

  It was a level of control that would take most mages decades to achieve.

  Faelan turned to Arthur. "You did something like that in the fight with Alistair, didn't you? With your sword?"

  Arthur, still dazed,nodded.

  "That's the instinct," Faelan said with a nod of approval. "Keep chasing it."

  He looked at both of them, his expression turning serious again. "I assume you two still have laps to run?"

  They nodded, the grim reality of their regimen returning.

  "We'll be here," Faelan said. "When you're done, we're paying a visit to the Blightwood Forest"

  Arthur's face lit up with a thrill of genuine excitement, but Ingrid was lost in thought.

  As they began their jog along the base of the city wall, Ingrid running a few paces ahead, their internal worlds began to spiral.

  He's not even a mage, Ingrid thought, the rhythmic pounding of her feet on the packed earth a drumbeat for her crumbling pride. The boy, Arthur—the mana infant—was already displaying an instinct she couldn't learn from a book. And Faelan, a swordsman, wielded magic with a casual precision that made her own formidable power feel clumsy and brutish. Her achievements at Pond Annoy, which had felt so hard-won, now seemed like a child's game.

  Arthur jogged behind her, his own excitement fading into a familiar, creeping anxiety. The fight with Alistair replayed in his mind. He had landed the final blow, yes, but how? He had been propped up by Ingrid at every turn—the ramp, the pillar, the fiery distraction. He saw her again, weaving through the storm of rock pellets with a grace he could only dream of. She's a ghost, and I'm a stone wall waiting to be broken. He was a liability. The fear was a cold knot in his stomach. There's no guarantee she'll always be there. What happens then?

  A few hours later, as evening began to bleed across the sky, they returned to the training field, their bodies screaming, their minds heavy with doubt.

  Faelan and Aeris were waiting, the dark, menacing line of the Blightwood Forest beckoning them from the horizon.

  Part II : The Herald's passage and The Elven Way

  After Lyra and Alistair departed, a comfortable quiet settled under the oak tree.

  Faelan watched them go, a faint, fond smile on his lips, before his attention was drawn by a subtle shift in the air beside him. Aeris had closed her book.

  He turned, surprised.

  In all the time since they'd met, he couldn't recall having a single conversation with the elf that lasted more than a few words.

  She was a silent, placid presence, a beautiful, ancient statue.

  "I cannot accompany you," she said, her voice as soft and dispassionate as the rustle of leaves.

  It was not an apology; it was a statement of fact.

  Faelan's smile faltered, "The Blightwood is dangerous, I get it. We might need your healing,—"

  "Not the forest," she clarified, her gaze fixed on a small, purple wildflower growing near the tree's roots.

  "The hunt for the beastfolk. When Lyra decides to leave Qesh."

  "Oh." Faelan rubbed the back of his neck, feeling suddenly awkward. "Right. Of course. We wouldn't ask you to—"

  "The rest of the Dawnbreakers have agreed to follow Lyra," he found himself explaining, "except for Thorgar, I suppose. I haven't asked."

  He trailed off, then curiosity got the better of him. "So, what's next for you?"

  Aeris plucked the wildflower with delicate, precise fingers, studying its petals as if they held the secrets of the cosmos.

  "The Herald's Passage is in six months," she said. "I have an obligation to return home."

  Faelan knew the name.

  The Herald's Passage was a celestial event, a comet shower of such rarity that a human was lucky to witness it once in a lifetime and no human lived long enought to witness it twice.

  It was a cornerstone of Elven culture.

  "An obligation?" he inquired gently. "I wasn't aware your people were bound by laws."

  "We are not," she replied, her focus entirely on the flower. "It is a moral imperative. To keep our numbers from dwindling."

  The subtext was clear. The Passage was a time of renewal, of birth.

  "Ah," Faelan said, a warm, genuine smile returning to his face. "Well, congratulations in advance, then."

  For the first time, Aeris looked at him directly, her ancient, placid eyes filled with genuine confusion. "For what?"

  "You're... going to be a mother, are you not?" he asked, suddenly unsure.

  Her confusion didn't fade; it simply shifted, as if she were a scholar trying to understand a perplexing human custom.

  She chose her words carefully, not wanting to challenge his worldview, but simply to state her own. "That is the biological outcome, yes. Thank you."

  The quiet, clinical acceptance was jarring. "Have you told the others you'll be leaving the Dawnbreakers?"

  "Who said I was leaving?" she asked, her gaze returning to the flower.

  Faelan was utterly baffled. "Wait, what? You just said you have to go home. You'll have a child... how can you still be an adventurer?"

  Aeris finally seemed to grasp the source of his astonishment. "The one who births the child does not necessarily raise it," she explained calmly.

  "The growth of an elven child is a charge for the entire community. Those who remain behind are the ones who teach. Those who wander, like me, are the ones who gather the knowledge to be taught."

  Faelan tried to process this.

  The idea was so alien, so contrary to every human instinct.

  "It's hard for me to imagine birthing a child and not raising it yourself", he said,

  his mind immediately flashing to his own mother, Sybill—to the pressure, the disappointment, the anger, and the fractured love that had defined his entire life. Their bond, for better or worse, was everything.

  "What difference does it make," Aeris asked, her voice a soft, logical inquiry, "which bloodline raises which child? You humans adopt children who share none of your blood, after all."

  "That's different," Faelan said, a weak, forced smile on his face.

  "How so?" she asked, her head tilted with genuine, academic curiosity.

  He opened his mouth to explain, to speak of the bond, of a mother's love, of the unique and unbreakable connection... and found he had no words.

  He was trying to describe the color blue to a person who saw the world in pure, unwavering logic. "Nevermind," he sighed, letting it go.

  A comfortable silence fell between them.

  "Are you hungry?" Faelan asked after a long while.

  Aeris gave a single, slow nod. Faelan left to hunt for fish in the lake, and Aeris, her inspection of the local flora complete, returned to her book, falling asleep on her branch.

  When Faelan returned, he started a small fire.

  The scent of roasting fish woke Aeris, and they ate together in a quiet that was no longer awkward, but companionable.

  Part III : The Plan's cancelled

  Dusk was painting the sky in shades of orange and purple when Arthur and Ingrid returned.

  They looked like drowned rats who had lost a fight with the river, their bodies slumped with exhaustion, their faces smudged with dirt and sweat.

  Faelan looked from their sorry state to the darkening woods. "We can't enter the forest like this," he said, his tone gentle but firm.

  A flicker of disappointment crossed Arthur's face, but his body was too weary to protest.

  "We'll go tomorrow morning," Faelan continued. "Get some rest, you two. You've earned it."

  As the sky deepened to indigo, Aeris, Ingrid, and Arthur began the slow, aching walk back to the Guild.

  Faelan, however, turned in the opposite direction, his steps lighter as he headed toward the distant, welcoming lights of Greyoak Manor—his sanctuary.