The Headmaster's words still echoed in Kael's mind as he stood before the vast skyline, where the sun bled gold and scarlet across the horizon. "You'll be dispatched to the Wraith Front once your paperwork is cleared. A skyship will come for you in a few months' time. Use this time well."
He had accepted the Empire's offer, not for loyalty, but for purpose. The frontlines would be chaos—and chaos, Kael believed, was the greatest crucible for growth. If he were to master the Void Crest, if he were to survive the tightening noose of the Obsidian Circle, he needed more than secrecy and talent. He needed strength. True, tempered strength.
The next day, his reinstatement was announced. The Arx Memoria reopened its doors to him, unrestricted. His upgraded rune workshop—now twice the size, equipped with imperial-grade crystal matrices and aetheric conductors—hummed with power. He was no longer a hidden asset. The academy, and by extension the Empire, acknowledged his potential.
And they would test him.
---
Training began at dawn, and each day blended into the next, a symphony of fire, steel, ink, and will.
Kael stood in a domed sparring chamber ringed with crest-inscribed walls. Across from him, Captain Ryven of House Ignis summoned a swirling inferno in the shape of a lion.
"Control the flame, don't just block it," Ryven barked.
Kael stepped forward, drawing runes into the air with his fingers. He no longer needed the gloves to channel the String. His skin itself was a lattice of runes now, branded into him by the awakening of the Void. Still, he wore gloves out of habit—and caution.
A water sigil flared beneath his boots as he redirected the flaming beast with a sweeping counterwave, steam exploding between them. The lion dissipated, and Ryven nodded once. "Again."
---
Days passed, and Kael rotated through all eight houses, training under each captain.
Captain Lira of House Glaciem taught him the elegance of stillness—how water adapted, deflected, then consumed. Captain Dorn of Petra made him fight blindfolded within stone mazes. Zeff of Caelum had him levitate for hours, weaving winds to keep arrows from ever touching ground.
From Verra, the shadow captain of House Umbra, he learned silence. "Not every blade must sing," she whispered once during a stealth mission simulation. "Some must whisper and vanish."
Light. Stone. Wind. Shadow. Time.
Each house brought a truth, a fragment of the whole.
But it was Selai who taught him integration.
"Spirit is the bond between elements, Kael," she said, guiding his hands over a rune circle etched with multicolored energy. "When you shape runes with intent, the spirit within answers."
With her, Kael learned to imbue his enchantments with emotion—rage, serenity, despair. Each altered the runes' effects. A barrier shaped by sorrow became dense and impenetrable. A sword inscribed with righteous fury cut through illusions like thread.
---
At night, he returned to the workshop, scribbling through books from the Arx Memoria, cross-referencing ancient scrolls and soul-forged diagrams. He no longer studied just to understand. He studied to create. To innovate.
Instructor Hallen appeared often now, more ally than skeptic. Together, they developed new combat glyphs, some even capable of mimicking Crest-like effects.
"Anti-crest strategy will be vital where you're going," Hallen said over coffee and burning parchments. "Wraithborn don't play fair. Neither should you."
---
But his greatest teacher remained Senn.
Every morning, before the academy awoke, Kael met him at the edge of the eastern cliffs. There, in silence, they danced with blades.
"You still rush," Senn said, parrying Kael's upward slash with a fluid crescent. "The Void isn't a flood. It's a tide. Let it come to you."
Kael dropped to a crouch, flipped back, and summoned Kurozan. The blade whispered as it formed, flickering with shadows.
And sometimes, it spoke.
In dreams and flashes, Kurozan showed Kael a sword style that had no name in current annals. A shadow technique older than Empire or Circle. The Tenebris Kenjutsu. Swift. Precise. Almost dancing.
Kael was barely scratching its surface.
---
Weeks passed. Muscles grew leaner. Reflexes sharper. And with every elemental session, every rune etched with purpose, Kael began to understand not just how to fight—but why he fought.
The skyship would come soon.
But until then, he would forge the soul the world had tried to shatter.
And when it arrived, he would not be a student or a secret.
He would be a weapon.