But Roy Ferrum hadn't been a complete fool. He'd been paranoid, perhaps, or just pragmatic. Days before the attack, during a strained lesson on Ferrum history in the dusty family archives – one of their rare, awkward attempts at father-son bonding – Roy had paused, his gaze distant.
(Flashback - The Archive)
"Pay attention, Lloyd," Roy had snapped, rapping his knuckles on a heavy, leather-bound tome detailing Ferrum military victories – the public version. Lloyd had flinched, his mind wandering as usual.
Roy sighed, a rare crack in his stern facade. He ran a hand over his face, looking suddenly weary. "This… this is just metal, boy. Hardness. Useful, yes. But limited." He leaned closer, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper Lloyd had never heard before. "True strength lies deeper. In the foundations." He tapped a specific, unadorned section of the stone wall behind a towering bookshelf. "Remember this spot, Lloyd. Knowledge is the sharpest steel. Know your foundations." He'd straightened up then, the moment of vulnerability gone, the Arch Duke mask firmly back in place. "Now, about the Siege of Blackwood Ridge…"
(End Flashback)
Lloyd hadn't understood then. Not until after the funeral, adrift in a sea of grief and hostile political currents, desperate for anything, any anchor. He remembered his father's cryptic words, the specific spot. He'd waited until the dead of night, slipped into the archive, heart pounding. Behind a false panel, just where Roy had indicated, lay another book. Smaller, older, bound in dark, unmarked leather. The Book of Ferrum: True Lineage.
Reading it by flickering candlelight felt like having scales ripped from his eyes, the world reconfiguring itself page by agonizing page. The Iron Body, the clumsy Iron Manipulation – a lie. A deliberate, centuries-old deception, a shield against enemies who would covet their true strength. The real Ferrum power, inherited only by the direct main line… Steel. Infinitely malleable, impossibly strong. And the Fire. An innate affinity, drawn from their very bloodline, allowing them not just to shape metal, but to forge it with thought, to imbue it with incandescent heat, to command it with silent will. Weaving defenses, deadly snares, whisper-thin blades from nothingness. It explained the legends, the fear, the power his father wielded so effortlessly.
Gods, Father, Lloyd thought, the old grief mingling with a fresh wave of awe and regret. You tried to tell me. You tried to prepare me.
The knowledge became his lifeline, his secret weapon in a court designed to chew him up and spit him out. Grief morphed into cold fury, a burning need for vengeance, for survival. He threw himself into mastering the true Ferrum power, hidden away in forgotten corners of the estate, practicing while his uncle consolidated power. His single Spirit Core remained a frustrating bottleneck for cultivating Spirit Power – still like trying to fill a bathtub with an eyedropper compared to Rosa's firehose. But the Void Power, the Steel and Fire… it was different. It wasn't about raw energy reserves; it was about precision, understanding, control. Less metaphysical muscle, more deadly finesse. Like learning intricate surgery versus swinging a sledgehammer.
And Lloyd, the overlooked heir, the quiet student forced into a lethal corner, discovered he had a terrifying, chilling aptitude for it. His 'below-average' status became utterly irrelevant when wielding a power designed for surgical lethality. Hours spent meditating, feeling the minute vibrations of metal, coaxing threads of steel finer than spider silk from the ambient potential, heating them to near-invisible incandescence with focused will.
He wasn't a battlefield powerhouse like his father. He became something else. A scalpel moving through the shadows of court intrigue. A ghost assassin.
Those three years… he'd learned to weave whispers of superheated steel through the air, unseen, unheard until the snap of severed sinew or the hiss of cauterized flesh. He'd practiced shaping micro-thin edges capable of slicing through hardened armor like parchment. He'd bypassed magical wards, not by overpowering them, but by threading slivers of heated metal through their energy matrix, causing subtle disruptions, short-circuits. He'd delivered poisons via nigh-invisible steel needles guided through keyholes. He'd caused 'accidents' – collapsing chandeliers, malfunctioning carriage wheels, sudden 'illnesses' – that left no witnesses, only whispers and growing unease in his uncle's and killer faction.
(Flashback - The Transcend User)