Aurelia paused mid-chug.

She slowly lowered the heavy glass bottle, licking her lips and wiping a stray drop of dark crimson wine from her chin with the scarred back of her hand.

Her sharp piercing eyes locked onto her granddaughter.

"Sylvia," Aurelia greeted.

She didn’t sound surprised in the slightest.

"To what do I owe the pleasure? Finally got tired of watching the peacocks preen at the main estate? Or did your father bore you to death with another lecture on tax logistics?"

"I need a sparring partner," Sylvia stated tightly.

She walked toward the base of the terrace, unfastening the silver clasp of her dark cloak and letting the heavy fabric drop to the mossy ground.

She didn’t bother folding it.

"Julian is too slow... His forms are rigid, the guards hold back because they are terrified of hurting the heir and facing the executioner so I need someone who won’t hold back. I need a real fight."

Aurelia raised a single thin silver eyebrow.

She didn’t immediately respond.

She just looked at Sylvia... She looked at her granddaughter’s rigid trembling posture, the tight white-knuckled clenching of her jaw, and the exhausted heavy shadows lingering beneath her beautiful eyes.

"What a hassle..."

The old woman let out a long sigh, leaning the back of her head against the velvet chair.

She slowly brought the bottle back to her lips and took another casual agonizingly slow sip.

"No," Aurelia declined smoothly, waving a dismissive hand in the air. "I am retired, little bird. I am currently busy enjoying the fruits of my long life... I have no desire to sweat today... Go find one of the Royal Guard captains in the inner city if you want to swing a stick around."

"Please," Sylvia insisted.

Her hands balled into tight, shaking fists at her sides with her fingernails biting painfully into her palms.

She took a step closer to the stone base of the terrace.

"I need to hone myself... I feel sluggish... My footwork is degrading... I need to push my Aura to the limit, and you are the only one free right now."

Aurelia stopped drinking.

The air around the terrace suddenly felt heavy, as if the atmospheric pressure of the clearing had doubled in a fraction of a single second.

Aurelia wasn’t casting a spell... It was the weight of the old woman’s physical presence... The passive leakage of an Aura so dense and lethal it caused the leaves on the nearby oak trees to shudder and wilt.

’I knew she was really strong but not like this.’ Sylvia thought, after her Husband died... she used to train a lot.

Aurelia leaned forward, resting her sharp elbows on her knees.

Her piercing eyes seemed to bypass Sylvia’s flesh entirely, looking straight through her head and directly into the festering wounds of her soul.

"You don’t want to hone yourself, Sylvia," Aurelia cut straight to the bone. "You aren’t here for a lesson in footwork... You want to use me as a punching bag to get over that Commoner boy. ..You want me to beat you half to death so the physical pain finally drowns out the pathetic guilt eating you alive. Isn’t that right, huh?"

Sylvia violently flinched, her entire body jerking backward as if the old woman had just slapped her directly across the face with an iron gauntlet.

The mention of him caused a massive defensive spike of panic to erupt in her chest.

"That is not true!" Sylvia denied immediately. "This has absolutely nothing to do with him! I am the First Heir of the clan! I have a duty to maintain my absolute peak strength for the succession! Klaus is... Klaus is in the past! I left him there because it was the logical choice! I did what I had to do!"

Aurelia stared down at her trembling pale granddaughter.

She listened to the frantic desperate rationalizations of a girl who was pathetically lying to herself to survive her own decisions.

"If you think so..."

The old woman let out a low chuckle that vibrated her chest.

She stood up from the velvet chair, moving with a fluid grace that belied her age.

She set the expensive bottle of wine down onto a nearby stone table and then Aurelia rolled her shoulders and cracked her neck.

"Alright," Aurelia agreed. "If you want to lie to yourself to sleep at night, that’s fine but you don’t get to lie to me in my own forest. We spar."

Aurelia didn’t take the stairs.

She vaulted effortlessly over the stone railing of the terrace, dropping a full twenty feet down into the clearing.

She landed on the soft moss without making a single perceptible sound as her knees bent to absorb the impact flawlessly like a hunting cat stalking prey.

"Sylvia~ Come here~"

Aurelia walked over to a weathered wooden weapons rack leaning against the mossy base of the terrace.

She bypassed the live steel and picked up a simple, unremarkable, heavily dented wooden training sword.

She weighed it in her hand for a second, then picked up a second wooden blade and tossed it casually through the air toward Sylvia.

Sylvia caught the hilt out of the air as she descended.

WHOOSH!

The rough wood scraped against her palms and her knuckles instantly turned a bloodless white as she gripped the weapon with her jaw setting into a hard line.

They walked slowly to the center of the clearing, entirely surrounded by the towering oaks.

"There is only one rule for this spar, little bird," Aurelia stated.

She didn’t even fall into a formal combat stance as she simply stood there, completely open with the wooden sword resting casually against her shoulder.

"Every single time I hit you... you are going to open your mouth, and you are going to spill the pain out loud... You are going to tell me exactly what is rotting inside that chest of yours... If you stay silent, I will break your bones until you speak. Do we have an understanding?"

Sylvia gritted her teeth.

The unabashed arrogance of the demand infuriated her.

Her pride as the First Heir bristled at the humiliation of the condition, but the desperate need for physical violence completely overrode her ego.

"Understood..." Sylvia hissed with her eyes narrowing into lethal slits.

She didn’t waste another second.

WHOOSH!

Sylvia exploded forward.

She didn’t use a single drop of mana to advance her movement since she possessed no talent for spells or elemental conjuration.

She was a warrior, a once-in-a-generation prodigy born into a lineage that specialized entirely in the absolute manipulation of Aura... the pure internal life force that flowed through the boiling blood and marrow of living creatures.

She forced her heart rate to spike, flooding her cardiovascular system with burning pressure.

SHHHHH!

A visible heat-haze shimmer enveloped her entire body, distorting the air around her like a mirage on a scorching desert road.

Her speed doubled astronomically as she crossed the twenty feet separating them in a fraction of a heartbeat, pivoting on her heel and bringing her wooden sword around in a vicious two-handed arc aimed directly at her grandmother’s neck.

WHOOSH!

She put her entire back, her hips, and her shoulders into the swing.

It was a flawless textbook strike that carried enough kinetic force to cleanly decapitate a heavily armored knight HOWEVER Aurelia didn’t even blink.

The old woman didn’t raise her sword to block the strike.

She didn’t even parry.

Aurelia simply shifted her weight half an inch to the left, leaning back just enough that Sylvia’s wooden blade whistled harmlessly past Aurelia’s ear with the velocity of the swing creating a sharp crack of displaced air, cutting nothing but empty space.

Before Sylvia could even begin to recover her balance or pull her weapon back into a defensive guard, Aurelia stepped directly into her completely exposed center.

THWACK!

The old woman snapped her wrist.

She brought the blunt heavy edge of her wooden sword up in a lightning-fast short strike that slammed directly into Sylvia’s exposed lower ribs.

BOOM!

The impact was devastating.

It wasn’t just physical force in that strike... Aurelia had pushed a concentration of her own aura directly into the tip of the wooden sword for the exact millisecond of the impact.

The strike completely bypassed Sylvia’s natural muscular defenses, sending a shockwave of agonizing vibrating pain directly into her ribcage, bruising the bone instantly.

"Augh!"

Sylvia stumbled backward, her eyes bugging out of her head, coughing violently.

A thick spray of saliva flew from her lips as the breath was violently, forcefully expelled from her lungs.

She dropped to one knee in the dirt, clutching her burning side with her free hand with her vision swimming with black spots.

’I could barely see her...’

"The rule, Sylvia," Aurelia demanded coldly, pointing the blunt tip of her wooden sword down at her gasping granddaughter.

Her voice was devoid of pity. "Speak."

Sylvia glared up at the old woman, her blue eyes watering heavily from the sheer, blinding pain in her ribs.

Her chest heaved, desperately trying to pull oxygen back into her lungs.

The physical agony acted like a master key, forcefully unlocking the heavy iron vault she had trapped her festering emotions inside for weeks.

"I miss Klaus!" Sylvia screamed.

The confession tore from her throat in an ugly sob that echoed loudly through the silent trees. "I miss him!"

"Good," Aurelia nodded slowly with her expression completely unfazed by the outburst.

She lowered her sword. "Again."

Sylvia pushed herself up from the dirt.

She was no longer fighting with the refined precision of a noble heir she was... Instead she was fueled by a burning mixture of adrenaline and rage.

’I want to hit her...’

She gripped the hilt of her sword with both hands, squeezing so tightly the wood groaned.

She pushed her Aura even harder, forcing her power force to burn hotter in her veins.

The heat-haze around her body grew exponentially denser with the pressure causing the loose dirt, small pebbles, and damp moss around her boots to literally levitate slightly into the air.

She charged again.

She completely abandoned her standard predictable clan forms for a relentless, aggressive, wildly complex flurry of high-speed thrusts, feints, and devastating overhead strikes.

She aimed to completely overwhelm the old woman with sheer speed and power, utilizing the legendary Phantom Step technique to blur her movements.

She struck twelve times in the span of three seconds!

CLANG! CLANG! CLANG! CLANG!

Aurelia parried the first strike with a bored millimeter-precise flick of her wrist.

She deflected the second, gracefully ducked under the third, and casually swatted the remaining nine strikes away as if she were swatting an annoying swarm of flies with her own wooden sword becoming a blur of impenetrable defense.

"You’re really trying to attack me with a technique I perfected?"

Sylvia overextended on a desperate lunging thrust which caused her balance to be compromised for a fraction of a second.

That was all the time Aurelia needed...

THWACK!

Aurelia swept her wooden blade low, executing a flawless brutal sweep that slammed the dense wood brutally against the side of Sylvia’s left thigh, striking the exact cluster of nerves above her knee.

"Fuck!"

Sylvia’s leg instantly went horrifyingly numb.

The muscle cramped violently, seizing up entirely.

Her leg buckled, sending her crashing hard onto her side in the damp dirt.

She gasped, dropping her sword and grabbing her thigh with both hands as a searing hot electric pain shot straight up into her hip joint.

"Speak!" Aurelia barked with her voice cracking like a whip over the clearing.

"I-I was a coward!" Sylvia sobbed as her fingernails dug desperately into the damp dirt. "Hic... I wanted s-so badly to be just like you! I wanted to throw away this s-suffocating title, take his hand, and r-run away with him and the rest of the girls! Hic... I wanted us to just d-disappear somewhere far away and live a simple, happy life together where the clan’s politics could n-never reach us! B-But I was terrified! Hic... I couldn’t handle the crushing uncertainty of being h-hunted! I couldn’t stomach the thought of losing my warm bed, my safety, my s-status... s-so I ran away! Hic... I chose this golden cage because I-I was too s-scared to face the world without my family’s name shielding me!"

"Pathetic," Aurelia scoffed, stepping slowly around her fallen granddaughter, kicking a loose pebble aside. "Is that all the heir to this clan amounts to? Get up. Again."

Sylvia screamed in raw, unadulterated frustration.

She forced herself onto her trembling legs, breathing heavily while severely favoring her right side as her left leg dragged slightly.

Sylvia couldn’t rely on speed anymore so she picked up her sword.

She lunged forward, feinting a low strike to draw Aurelia’s guard down, before twisting her hips and executing a desperate spinning backhand strike aimed at the old woman’s temple.

Once again, Aurelia didn’t even raise her sword to block.

She casually stepped backward, letting the spinning blade whistle mere inches past her nose.

As Sylvia’s back was turned mid-spin, Aurelia stepped forward and brought the heavy pommel of her own sword down in a vicious, hammer-like blow directly onto Sylvia’s exposed right shoulder.

CRACK!

The sickening sound of bone fracturing echoed clearly. Sylvia’s collarbone groaned and cracked under the intense aura-fueled pressure of the blow.

Her right arm instantly went completely limp with nerve damage shooting down to her fingertips.

The wooden sword slipped from her deadened grasp, clattering to the ground.

She fell hard to her knees, clutching her ruined shoulder with her left hand with her golden hair clinging to the mixture of sweat and hot tears covering her pale face.

"I chose politics over him!" Sylvia wailed, the absolute, crushing, devastating realization of her catastrophic mistake pouring out of her lips like a ruptured dam. "I chose this stupid suffocating clan! I thought I could come back and be the perfect heir, but it all tastes like ash! It means nothing!..."

She wanted to make her parents proud, but Julian was there too... They carried the same blood so why? Because she was a genius?

"Again," Aurelia demanded as she raised her sword while waiting.

"Umph..."

Sylvia didn’t pick up the sword. She couldn’t. Her right arm hung uselessly at her side, and her left leg was trembling violently.

"RAHHHHH!"

She let out a desperate cry and launched herself forward with her bare, uninjured left hand, trying to physically tackle her grandmother.

Aurelia easily, almost gracefully sidestepped the sloppy pathetic charge.

As Sylvia stumbled past her, completely off balance, Aurelia brought her wooden sword up, slapping the broad, flat side of the blade squarely and brutally against the exact center of Sylvia’s spine.

THWACK!

Sylvia hit the moss face-first.

The impact knocked the remaining air completely, entirely out of her lungs, leaving her gasping silently like a drowning fish with her face pressed deeply against the damp earth.

"T-the silence in my room is deafening!" Sylvia choked out with her tears turning the moss to mud beneath her cheeks. "The silk of my sheets is so soft, and the manor is so quiet but it’s so damn cold! I just lie there awake, and I think about the house! The place we bought... the clothes he picked for me and the way he held me while we slept, his arms wrapped around me so tight I could feel his heartbeat against my back... hic... I keep closing my eyes and trying to feel his skin against mine again, trying to remember the way he touched me and the way he made me feel when he was inside me... hic... I can’t sleep! I haven’t slept in weeks because every time I drift off, I’m back there, in his arms, and then I wake up alone and this place feels like a tomb!"

"One more," Aurelia said softly, stepping over her granddaughter.

Sylvia pushed herself up onto her trembling hands and knees.

Her entire body was a brutalized picture of throbbing bruises. Her linen tunic was stained dark with sweat and damp earth.

Her Aura was flickering erratically, responding violently to her completely devastated emotional state.

The golden light that usually hummed around her was spitting and sparking wildly, like a dying campfire desperately struggling against a freezing rainstorm.

"Haah... Haah..."

She threw herself upward, ignoring the screaming protests of her fractured collarbone.

Sylvia abandoned her footwork once more as she aimed a desperateAura-infused punch directly at Aurelia’s face, putting the last pathetic dregs of her physical momentum behind her knuckles.

Aurelia simply raised her left arm.

SMACK!

Aurelia caught Sylvia’s fist perfectly in the center of her open palm. The energy of the desperate punch was instantly absorbed and grounded, traveling down Aurelia’s arm and dispersing harmlessly into the damp moss beneath her dark boots.

With Sylvia’s arm fully extended and her forward momentum completely trapped, the old woman stepped directly into the opening.

She drove the blunt, flat tip of her wooden training sword directly forward, burying it deeply into the exact, unprotected center of Sylvia’s solar plexus.

THUD!

"Ugh!"

It was a sharp hit but it didn’t break the skin or fracture a rib... It was a horrific strike that bypassed her surface muscles entirely and completely, instantaneously shut down Sylvia’s diaphragm.

The application of Aurelia’s dense Aura penetrated deep into the nerve cluster beneath the ribcage, causing an immediate misfire in her respiratory system.

Sylvia collapsed backward, her knees giving out completely.

She hit the damp earth hard with her mouth opening wide in a silent agonizing scream.

She gasped like a fish pulled violently out of the water and thrown onto a dry deck.

Her jaw strained, her throat clicking, but her paralyzed lungs refused to draw in a single ounce of oxygen.

She clutched her chest with both trembling hands and her fingernails tore into her own linen shirt as she stared up at the thick overlapping canopy of the massive oak trees.

The gray sky was spinning in wild nauseating circles. Black spots danced aggressively at the very edges of her vision, threatening to drag her into unconsciousness.

"I left him a letter..." Sylvia whispered.

The final confession broke from her trembling lips in a pathetic breath as her diaphragm finally twitched back to painful life.

The words tasted like ash.