Ash lowered his head in a respectful bow, wings folding with quiet grace. The lingering echoes of the Vault still clung to his thoughts — the illusions, the silence, the mirror. Yet his voice was calm and composed when he spoke.
"Lady Elara," he said, lifting his gaze to meet hers, "my training — where will it begin? When? And what will it demand of me?"
Lady Elara studied him for a long moment, her silver eyes reflecting the quiet wisdom of uncounted centuries. Her hands, gloved in abyssal silk, folded gently at her waist.
"Questions asked with clarity," she said softly, "are the first signs of true readiness."
She turned, leading him slowly away from the Vault's threshold, her steps soundless on the glassy floor.
"Your mental training will begin tomorrow at first shadow," she began, her voice as smooth and steady as falling dusk. "You will come to the Noctis Hall, a chamber deep within the eastern wing of the palace. It is warded against all distraction, and sealed from outside influence. Only thought and focus will walk with you there."
Ash nodded, committing the name and location to memory.
"You will study ancient Abyssal scripts, engage in meditations beneath the Mind Obelisks, and undergo memory trials to refine discipline, recall, and clarity of purpose," she continued. "We will hone your inner world — until no illusion, no manipulation, no fear can shake you."
She paused, turning to face him fully.
"The body may break," she said, her voice low. "But the mind… must not. That is what we will forge."
Ash felt the weight of her words settle into him like gravity.
"And Master Thalor?" he asked. "Will I continue training with him as well?"
A rare, faint smile touched the corner of Elara's lips. "Yes. Each morning will begin with him — at the Lower Crucible. Each evening, with me."
She tilted her head slightly, the light catching the edge of her silver hair.
"You will have no idle days, Prince Ashteron."
Ash straightened, his expression resolute. "I do not want idle days."
"Good," she said simply. "Then your path may yet be worthy of the Abyss."
Ash's days began with fire and ended in silence.
In the Lower Crucible, beneath the Abyss Palace, his muscles screamed and his lungs burned under Master Thalor ruthless regimen. The weighted harness never left his body — even as he climbed burning walls, dragged chained stones across the molten-black ground, or held his stance under the endless barrage of Thalor shadow-forged illusions.
He bled. He bruised. But he never begged.
Thalor watched with a predator's gaze, speaking only when needed. "You learn fast," he muttered once. "But it's not speed that builds a warrior. It's what remains after everything else is stripped away."
When the fire had burned enough to blacken his bones, Ash was dismissed — not with words, but with a sharp nod.
And so, at the first shadow fall, Ash would climb the stairs to the Noctis Hall, high in the palace spires, where silence hung heavier than heat.
There, in the veiled sanctum of obsidian mirrors and silver runes, Lady Elara awaited.
She greeted him with a slow, graceful bow, eyes like starlight glinting beneath her silver lashes. "You have burned the flesh," she said softly. "Now you must shape the mind."
Ash knelt, wings folding neatly behind him. "I am ready."
"Are you?" she asked, and gestured for him to sit upon the central sigil — a pale glyph carved into the floor, pulsing faintly with inner light. "Then still your thoughts."
From there began the mind trial.
Unlike Thalor brutal precision, Elara's training was slow — suffocating in its stillness. Ash sat for hours, unmoving, surrounded by whispering runes and ever-shifting illusions. She pierced into his thoughts, his fears, his memories — unraveling them one by one.
"You must learn to navigate your own mind," she said. "Control your emotions, or they will control your power. Face your truths. And then, let them go."
At times, she summoned visions — his mother's voice, his father's command, Lyseria's quiet gaze. Shadows twisted them. Ash learned not to flinch.
Each night he descended from Noctis Hall exhausted, not in body, but in spirit. And each morning he returned to the Crucible, his body once more subject to the forge.
And just like that… days passed.
Pain became rhythm. Silence became strength. The prince who once only read and wrote in gilded chambers now moved through the palace like a tempered blade — quieter, harder, honed.
The real trials, he understood now, were not only of body and mind — but of becoming.
The days flowed into weeks, and weeks into years.
At the age of six, Prince Ashteron Vael'Abyss stood at the threshold of transformation.
Within the Lower Crucible, under the watchful eye of Master Thalor, his body was forged through relentless trials — running through burning corridors, enduring weighted chains in shadow-flooded chambers, and standing unmoved in the heart of the crucible's iron heat. Each bruise became a lesson, each drop of blood a testament.
At dawn and dusk, he crossed the halls into the silent expanse of Noctis Hall, where Lady Elara awaited like a sentinel of thought. There, beneath the flickering braziers of cold flame, Ash learned stillness. He faced fear not in battle, but within — walking labyrinths of illusion, breaking through traps of false memory, holding his breath as whispers clawed at his mind.
By his six year, Ash had mastered what few ever touched.
He did not simply endure — he transcended.
And in the quiet of a moonless night, deep in the Lucent Vault, something awakened within him.
A whisper of power stirred in his blood — not borrowed from his lineage, but claimed through pain, focus, and resolve. It surged through his limbs, lit his eyes with a subtle burn, and pulsed in rhythm with his breath.
Tier Two: Awakened No longer just the son of gods and demons. Now, a soul with power of his own.