Chapter 26
"Pa...pa..."
"E-Eyya wan' to twain too."
The declaration echoed softly through the corridor, small and high-pitched, yet carrying a fragile, unyielding firmness despite her trembling voice. A heavy, stunned silence immediately blanketed the space, settling over them like a weighted cloak that no one dared to break.
Damnern stared down at his daughter, for a split second convinced he must have suffered a temporary auditory hallucination. Training? Elyra had never shown even the slightest, most distant inkling of interest in physical combat, let alone rigorous training, not even once in her two short years of life.
Slowly, carefully, he bent his knees, crouching down until his cold blue eyes were level with hers.
"Why do you want to train, Elyra?"
"Because Eyya wants to pwotect Mama and Eden."
The answer was instantaneous. It came without hesitation, without a millisecond of internal debate, as if those exact words had been quietly sitting in the back of her mind, waiting for the right moment to be spoken aloud.
The encouraging smile on Damnern's face instantly froze, a sharp, suffocating ache contracting tightly around his chest. His daughter wanted to become stronger—not out of a child's innocent fascination with warriors, not because she dreamed of glory, but because she felt a burning necessity to shield the people she loved from harm.
Have I failed to make her feel safe? Before the heavy silence could curdle into a suffocating vortex of paternal guilt, Eldern burst forward.
"No!"
The boy stepped directly into the gap, cutting through the emotional tension without a shred of hesitation. "Eldern should be the one protecting Elyra!" he declared, puffing out his narrow chest with a fierce, proud dignity as if that single argument completely settled the debate. "Because Eldern is the big brother!"
You still need another hundred years of growth before you can protect me, kid, Elyra thought dryly.
Aloud, she merely offered a placating sigh and nodded. "Otay."
Eldern's chest swelled up even further with victorious pride, looking as though he had just conquered a mountain.
Meanwhile, standing off to the side, Damnern experienced a sudden, profound spike of feeling entirely uninvited and left out.
"Elyra..."
"Y-Yes?!"
She spun around and answered so fast it nearly gave him whiplash.
Damnern assumed an expression of genuine, heartbreaking injury. "What about Papa?"
"...Huh?"
"If Elyra is protecting Mama and Eldern..." His features contorted into an increasingly pathetic, woebegone mask. "Then who is going to protect Papa?"
Elyra blinked once. Then twice. Her head tilted to the side, her face slowly dissolving into a mask of pure, unadulterated bewilderment as she attempted to process the logic of a grown man demanding protection from a two-year-old.
"But Pa...pa is already stwong."
She tilted her head further, her sapphire eyes wide with innocent confusion. "Why would Eyya need to pwotect Pa...pa?"
Every single time she was forced to choke out the word "Papa," it felt like swallowing dry glass—a foreign, unnatural syllable she had to physically drag out of her throat against her will.
Her expression shouted a completely different question entirely: Why on earth would you want me to protect you? What a remarkably strange old man... Critical hit. Damnern froze, taking invisible psychological damage.
Elina immediately threw both hands over her mouth, muffling a loud, explosive snort of laughter.
After a long, hollow moment of defeat, Damnern helplessly scratched the back of his silver hair and let out a dramatic, exaggerated sigh. His broad shoulders slumped forward as he tacitly surrendered a battle he hadn't even realized he was entering.
"Fine."
He reached out, gently patting the top of her head. "If Elyra genuinely wants to train..."
A small, fond smile curved his lips. "...Then come meet Papa in the backyard tomorrow afternoon."
Elyra's eyes lit up, a genuine spark of excitement catching in her chest. "Really?!"
"Really."
That evening, Elyra crawled into bed with an unfamiliar, restless flutter of anticipation humming through her veins. For the very first time since her violent rebirth into this world, she was actively taking a concrete step forward on the path toward genuine power.
The following morning, no sooner had she climbed out of bed and rubbed the sleep from her eyes than she was ambushed by an exceptionally hyperactive Eldern.
"Elyra!"
Before she could even process the morning light, he grabbed her small hand. "Come with me!"
Curiosity winning out, Elyra allowed herself to be dragged along the corridors. A few minutes later, they arrived at the heavy double doors of the family library.
The private library was a colossal sanctuary of knowledge. Towering mahogany bookshelves stretched upward from floor to vaulted ceiling, crammed to the breaking point with ancient tomes and bound scrolls. Morning sunlight speared through massive stained-glass windows, illuminating the polished oak flooring and the lazy dance of golden dust motes floating in the air. The heavy, comforting scent of aging parchment, dried leather, and beeswax filled the room, creating an intellectual oasis that Elyra immediately fell in love with.
Given her voracious appetite for reading, refusal was entirely out of the question. Eldern eagerly trotted over to a lower shelf, tugging a thick, heavy volume from its slot. The embossed lettering on the cover read: Introduction to Fue and Sigils.
He hauled it over to a reading table, plopped it down with a dull thump, and cracked the cover open with a look of supreme academic authority.
"Since Elyra wants to start training, Eldern will teach Elyra what Fue and Sigils actually are."
Elyra leaned in, resting her chin on her small hands. "What is Fue?"
In her past life as an elite assassin, nobody had ever used that terminology. Energy manipulation had been measured in raw, brutal output—never by a mystical-sounding native noun.
Eldern proudly flipped to a page displaying an intricate anatomical diagram of the human body's internal pathways. "Every human is born with an internal source called Fue."
He pointed a stubby finger toward the chest cavity, right near the heart. "It's located right here. The core constantly generates Fue Energy and circulates it through specialized channels across the entire body—kind of like how Papa's heart pumps blood, but for magic."
Elyra narrowed her eyes, deep in thought. Could it be structurally identical to the Energy Stone from my past life? A sudden, ghostly memory flickered across her mind—a sterile, subterranean training room. A young girl with long, midnight-black hair and cold obsidian eyes standing before a row of nine trembling children, including a young Ryudien. She looked no older than nine, bearing the brutal distinction of being the sole female survivor of Ferwel Noxes's nightmarish selection trials.
"You all need to engrave this into your bones," the girl had instructed coldly. "There is an Energy Stone buried deep inside your core. Nobody is going to hold your hand and teach you how to ignite it. You have to claw the method out of your own flesh." Then, right before the deadly sparring began, a brief, hauntingly sad smile had crossed her lips. "Promise me... that all of you will come back alive." The memory dissolved like smoke, swept away by Eldern's enthusiastic voice pulling her back to reality.
"Fue Energy is what allows humans to tap into and command the natural elements," Eldern explained, his green eyes shining.
As if to punctuate his point, a tiny, flickering bud of orange flame materialized right above his palm, dancing gracefully in the air. "Fire, water, ice, earth, wind, lightning, light, and darkness... all of them can be manifested and controlled through concentrated Fue."
The miniature flame sputtered out with a soft pop. "Fue can also be used to physically reinforce the human body."
Eldern puffed out his chest, clearly relishing his role as the knowledgeable older brother. "People who train their internal pathways consistently can become exponentially stronger, faster, and infinitely more durable than ordinary mortals. That's the foundational reason why warriors push their Fue limits every single day."
Elyra listened with absolute, unblinking focus, absorbing every syllable.
"Advanced practitioners can even channel Fue for cellular regeneration and healing," Eldern turned the page, tracing a line of text. "Elite combatants can stem heavy arterial bleeding or accelerate recovery times from catastrophic trauma. However, completely knitting back together severely damaged organs requires microscopic control."
He pointed a finger at a bolded name stamped on the page. "Only a tiny handful of legendary figures in the entire kingdom possess that level of mastery. One of them is the First Strongest Warrior, Matthias Crae."
Eldern eagerly flipped forward. "But occasionally, a rare anomaly occurs."
"What kind of unyooal ting?" Elyra tilted her head, her curiosity piqued.
"A genetic mutation."
Eldern's voice dropped to an excited whisper. "On very rare occasions, a person's core Fue undergoes a permanent, volatile shift, evolving into a unique manifestation known as a Sigil."
"Unlike standard elemental manipulation, Sigils completely shatter the normal rules of physics and combat."
"Like Pa...pa's Semi-Angel abiwity?" Elyra asked, recalling the terrifying aura Damnern had unleashed during the raid.
"Exactly!" Eldern nodded furiously before suddenly freezing, his brow furrowing as he blinked at her. "Wait... how do you know about that?"
A cold jolt of panic shot through Elyra's chest. Damn it.
"E-Eden, it'th... you'we the one who told me b-befowe!" she stammered hastily, trying to mask her slip-up behind a timid, child-like innocence.
"Owh... did I?" Eldern scratched his cheek, readily brushing the suspicion aside. "Never mind, then."
Including my old Clone Manifestation ability... the one that completely vanished the moment my soul was recycled into this newborn body...
A sharp pang of nostalgia and bitter frustration pierced Elyra's heart. She sorely missed the sheer utility of the power she had once wielded as a master operative—a lethal tool now reduced to nothing more than a memory.
"Scholars believe most Sigils are passed down exclusively through bloodline inheritance," Eldern continued, turning another crisp page of the tome. "That's why Papa suspects one of us might awaken his specific Sigil lineage someday."
He proudly thumped his own sternum. "My bet is on me."
Elyra completely ignored his boast.
"Even though Sigils are abnormal and specialized, they still ultimately draw from the same well," Eldern concluded, sounding like a miniature professor. "At the end of the day, both basic Fue and advanced Sigils rely on the exact same kinetic energy flowing through the human meridians."
He slammed the textbook shut with a dramatic, dusty thud. "So, in summary... Fue is the absolute source of power. And Sigils are just rare, mutated flowers grown from that source."
Elyra nodded slowly, the intellectual puzzle pieces finally clicking neatly into place within her mind. Now the nomenclature made sense—it was merely a regional, linguistic difference for the exact same foundational phenomenon. The mystical 'Energy Stone' burned into her anatomy in her past life was, without a shadow of a doubt, identical to the 'Fue' of this world.
With the introductory lecture concluded, Eldern didn't stop. He scurried off to the shelves, returning with an armload of heavier, thicker volumes, stacking them neatly on the table as if building a defensive fortification.
Elyra remained seated beside him, resting her chin on her hands, watching with sharp, analytical eyes. While she didn't flip through the dense pages herself, Eldern took it upon himself to read aloud.
He parsed every complex sentence with patient diligence, pausing constantly to translate archaic terminology into simpler concepts whenever he caught Elyra tilting her head in confusion. Occasionally, he would re-read a difficult paragraph twice, ensuring she had fully digested the theory before turning the page.
Elyra listened with relentless concentration, treating the tutoring session with the same deadly discipline she once applied to master-class assassination files.
Hours bled away into the afternoon. The library gradually quieted down, swallowed by the steady, soothing drone of Eldern's reading voice and the gentle whisper of turning pages. Outside, the bright afternoon sun slowly dipped toward the horizon, casting long, golden amber shadows that stretched across the scattered books and polished floorboards.
Gradually, the pile of read texts grew taller around them, forgotten in the warm, quiet cocoon of the moment.
By early evening, Eldern's voice had grown softer, his reading cadence slowing down as exhaustion caught up with him. Across the table, Elyra had already succumbed to the heavy weight of sleep, her forehead resting gently against her crossed arms.
Moments later, Eldern's head bobbed forward, and he too drifted off to sleep right where he sat, maintaining an upright posture amidst the sprawling fortress of open books and fading daylight.
"Eldern... Elyra..."
A low, familiar voice echoed softly through the quiet expanse of the library.
Both children stirred, slowly blinking their heavy eyelids open. Standing right beside their table, bathed in the dim evening light, was Damnern, a soft, amused smile playing across his face.
"Didn't you two say you wanted to train?"
The lingering remnants of sleep vanished from Elyra's system in an instantaneous flash.
The long-awaited moment had finally arrived. Training day was here.
To be Continued...