Blood Resonance

Chapter 9 – Paths of Steel and Fire

The war hall of the Virein estate breathed an old, solemn power. Its stone walls, veined with threads of dormant mana, echoed faintly with the whispers of long-forgotten duels and blood-bound vows. Maps of ancient campaigns lined one side of the room, enchanted to shift when touched, while a massive blackstone table dominated the center—a relic carved from obsidian and bound by runes older than most records.

Caelus stood at the far end of the table, arms folded. His posture was unshaken, yet there was no defiance in it—only calm indifference, as though he were carved from the same obsidian as the floor beneath his feet.

Elaris sat across from him, her hands pressed neatly into her lap. She avoided her brother’s gaze, though her eyes flickered toward him more often than she’d admit. Her jaw was tight, her spine too straight.

The doors groaned open.

Thalor entered, the sound of his cane against the stone marking each step with slow finality. His coat trailed behind him like a battle standard—worn, practical, and edged with the faint glint of defensive spellwork. Despite his injury, the pressure that followed him into the room weighed heavier than the silence.

Without a word, he unfurled a scroll onto the table. It snapped open by itself, symbols glowing faintly as the ink responded to Thalor’s mana.

“You’re both going to train,” he said, skipping past pleasantries. “But not the same way.”

He looked first to Elaris.

“You hesitate. You hold back. That might keep you human... but it will get you killed.”

She didn’t speak. Her fingers twitched beneath the table.

“And you—” he turned to Caelus.

Their eyes met. Thalor’s gaze was sharp, but Caelus’s was sharper. Cold. Measuring. Unshaken.

“You don’t hesitate at all,” Thalor said. “That’s worse.”

A second flick of his hand sent the scroll shifting, ink reforming into diagrams—two dueling sword styles, each built from contrasting philosophies.

“I’ll teach you both,” he said. “One to kill without mercy. The other to stay your blade without breaking your stance.”

He paused, eyeing Caelus again.

“I watched your fight.”

Caelus didn’t respond.

“Your footwork was raw. Your edge too wild. You didn’t fight like someone trained—you fought like something cornered.”

He paced slowly around the table.

“You have instinct. But instinct without control is just animal strength. And that only takes you so far.”

Another scroll rolled out beside the first—this one marked with red seals. Thalor peeled one open.

“Mana sensitivity: exceptional. Core volume: barely passable.”

Elaris’s brow furrowed. She looked to her brother, who remained motionless.

“He’s dangerous because he feels mana better than most,” Thalor said, tapping the parchment. “But the moment a fight goes long—he runs dry. That sensitivity won’t save him when there’s nothing left to use.”

Caelus blinked. That was his only reaction.

Thalor raised a brow. “Don’t bother thinking about core expansion. It’s a myth. One lunatic tried it in my generation—he didn’t survive long enough to explain what went wrong.”

He folded the scroll back with finality.

“Let’s hope you aren’t that foolish.”

With a wave, he summoned a projection globe into the air. Mana sparked along the edges, and sigils from each of the seven great families appeared, rotating slowly in a ring.

“The academy trials are in less than a year. Every five cycles, the great families send their heirs. You’ll be among them.”

He tapped the Virein crest at the center.

“And whether you like it or not, so will the weight of your name.”

Training Day One – Elaris

The rear kitchens were humid and stifling, the air thick with the iron scent of blood and something older—age, tradition, and expectation. Elaris stood beneath a low-hanging mana lamp, the dull glow highlighting the tension in her arms as she gripped a cleaver too heavy for comfort.

Before her, in a simple wooden pen, stood a row of caged chickens. Their feathers twitched nervously; even they seemed to sense the gravity of what was to come.

“You’re hesitating again,” Thalor’s voice rang out from behind her, calm but not kind.

Elaris swallowed hard. Her knuckles whitened as she raised the cleaver. Sweat rolled down the back of her neck.

“I’m not a butcher,” she murmured.

“You’re a Virein,” he replied flatly. “And this is the difference between mercy and delusion.”

Her first swing came down with too little force. The chicken shrieked, flapped violently, and escaped her grip. Blood sprayed across her arm, and she stumbled back, eyes wide with horror.

Thalor moved with practiced ease. One fluid step, one precise strike—and the animal dropped without another sound.

He turned to her, his expression unreadable.

“You're not sparing them,” he said, cleaning the blade with a cloth that had seen hundreds of stains before. “You're only making them suffer longer.”

She didn’t answer. Her shoulders trembled as she set the cleaver down.

“You’ll return here every morning,” Thalor continued. “Until your hands stop shaking. Until you can end a life without pity—and without cruelty.”

Elaris stared at the floor.

“I understand.”

Training Day One – Caelus

The stone courtyard was silent, save for the occasional hiss of wind brushing against the tall perimeter walls. Mana-reactive glyphs were embedded in the tiles, long faded from years of use but still potent. Caelus stood at the center, facing his uncle.

“Show me your stance,” Thalor ordered.

Caelus drew the training blade slowly, methodically. His posture was straight, knees slightly bent, arms relaxed. Balanced. Functional. But without intention.

“Too neutral,” Thalor muttered. “It’s like you’re waiting for the fight to come to you.”

Caelus didn’t reply. He simply moved—one strike forward.

Thalor caught the blade mid-swing with two fingers, the mana around him flaring just enough to hold the impact.

“You strike to kill,” Thalor said. “But not to win.”

“Is there a difference?” Caelus asked.

“There is. And you’ll learn it.”

The drills began. Step, pivot, slash. Parry, withdraw, advance.

Again.

Again.

Caelus followed instructions without complaint. Yet the longer the session ran, the more it became obvious: he wasn’t learning the form—he was dissecting it. Each movement was stripped down to its barest function, absorbed like data, then rebuilt in his own image.

By the end of the first session, sweat clung to his back like armor. His eyes, however, remained as cold as they had when they began.

“You’re not learning to fight,” Thalor muttered to himself. “You’re learning how to destroy more efficiently.”

Instructor’s Reflection – That Night

Later, in the quiet of his chambers, Thalor sat before an open flame and reviewed both of their performance logs.

“They’re so different,” he murmured. 

He marked Caelus’s file.

“High sensitivity. Low volume. Dangerous if he runs out—more dangerous if he doesn't.”

He marked Elaris’s.

“Sharp instincts. Heavy conscience. She'll have to learn that hesitation kills more often than steel.”

He closed both folders.

“They're ready to be broken—and reforged.”

The morning sky was a curtain of soft gray, thick with clouds that hadn't yet decided whether to rain or retreat. Dew clung to the tiled courtyard, making each step slick, unstable—a subtle hazard that went unremarked upon by the one already standing at its center.

Caelus waited in silence, his wooden training sword resting across his shoulders. He had arrived before dawn.

Thalor approached from the far end, a steaming cup of dark herbal brew in one hand and a wrapped package tucked beneath his arm.

“You’re early,” he said without looking up.

“I don’t sleep much,” Caelus replied.

“Good,” Thalor said, setting the cup aside. “Then you’ll be tired enough by midday to listen.”

Caelus tilted his head. “A different lesson today?”

Thalor tossed the package toward him. Caelus caught it easily—heavier than it looked. When he peeled the cloth back, he found not a training sword but a short wooden staff, smooth and polished but without an edge.

“No blade?”

“your not going to kill,” Thalor said. “Today you fight to control.”

Caelus glanced at the staff. “What for?”

“You’ve already shown you can end things quickly. That’s easy.” Thalor moved to stand opposite him, raising a similar weapon. “Now show me if you can stop something without ending it.”

Caelus frowned faintly, but didn’t argue. He shifted into stance—adjusted for the staff’s balance—and waited.

Thalor attacked first.

The blow was swift and low, testing his footing. Caelus deflected it with the narrow side of his staff. A second strike came, then a third. He blocked both, but his grip tightened unconsciously.

“No counters?” Thalor asked between motions. “Afraid to hit without cutting?”

“I don’t like holding back.”

“That’s the problem,” Thalor snapped. He increased the tempo, his strikes sharper, closer. “You don’t restrain. You repress. That’s not control—it’s bottling chaos until it explodes.”

Caelus growled and stepped in, staff swinging toward Thalor’s ribs.

The older man caught it with a twist of his own weapon, pushing the boy back.

“Control isn’t silence. It’s direction.”

Caelus’s brows knit. 

Thalor pressed forward.

They clashed for another five minutes. Caelus blocked everything. Moved properly. But never once struck back. Not truly. Not like he meant it. More like he was just entertaining Thalor instead of truely trying to understand.

When Thalor ended the session, Caelus stood in the center of the court, breathing hard.

“That’s your limit,” Thalor said. “You’ve mistaken stillness for composure. But I can see it—behind your eyes. That storm is growing.”

Caelus turned his gaze skyward. The clouds above had thickened, the wind rising.

Training Day Two – Elaris

Meanwhile, inside the estate kitchens, Elaris worked through her tasks with mechanical rhythm. Slaughter. Drain. Clean. Repeat. The smell no longer made her flinch. Her hands no longer trembled.

But something else had started to creep in: silence.

Not the silence of focus. The silence of disconnect. The robotic silence of cutting off emotions.

Thalor entered without speaking, observed her from the doorway as she dispatched another chicken. Quick, efficient. no emotions.

“You’re dissociating,” he said.

She blinked.

“You’re doing the job. But you’re not feeling it anymore. And that’s just as dangerous as feeling too much.”

Elaris stared at the blood-streaked tiles, then at the cleaver in her hand.

“I don’t know what else I’m supposed to feel,” she whispered.

“Nothing,” Thalor said. “But you need to be aware of the nothing.”

Later That Night – Thalor’s Journal

“Day Two. Caelus refuses to strike unless allowed to kill. Elaris kills without hesitation but may soon forget what it means to do so. Both are balancing on edges—one leaning toward madness, the other toward numbness.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll test their instincts further. Not with drills. With choices.Training Day Three – The Test of Choice

The morning air was unusually cold, sharper than the past two days. A crispness clung to the courtyard stones, almost ceremonial.

This time, Thalor didn’t wait at the center.

Caelus and Elaris arrived together, summoned just before dawn, and found a new arrangement awaiting them.

Five straw dummies had been erected in a semi-circle. Each wore a different mark on its chest—colored crests of fictional factions: blue, red, gold, black, and green.

In the center stood a sixth dummy, smaller, with no markings at all.

Thalor stood off to the side, arms crossed.

“Today,” he called, “you’re going to show me something more important than reflex.”

Elaris shifted uncertainly. Caelus said nothing.

“These five targets,” Thalor gestured to the larger dummies, “represent enemies. Real ones. Their colors are random. You don’t know who they are. You don’t know what they’ve done.”

He tapped the unmarked figure.

“This one is innocent. Guaranteed. Your job is simple: choose who to strike. You each have one blow.”

Elaris’s lips parted. “But we don’t know who’s guilty—”

“You don’t,” Thalor agreed. “But you do know one is not. So... do you risk killing the innocent to stop the guilty? Or risk letting the guilty live to keep your hands clean?”

Caelus looked at the dummies, then at Thalor.

“This isn’t a combat test.”

“No,” Thalor said. “This is a Virein test.”

Silence followed.

Then Caelus stepped forward.

He approached the line, eyes scanning each target. There was no logic in their arrangement. No clues. Just paper men and what they symbolized.

His grip tightened on the wooden blade.

Then, with the same quiet force he always carried, he struck—not one of the five—but the sixth.

The innocent.

The unmarked.

Thalor raised a brow.

Elaris gasped softly behind him.

Caelus stepped back, lowered his blade, and said nothing.

“You knew that was the innocent,” Thalor said carefully. “Why?”

“If I didn’t know who was guilty,” Caelus said flatly, “then none of them deserved a quick death.”

He turned his back on the test and walked away.

Elaris stared, frozen.

Thalor didn’t stop him.

That Evening

Thalor stood alone in the estate’s upper observatory, watching the clouds roll in over the city. The mana field shimmered faintly in the distance—layers of power woven across the skyline like glass-threaded veils.

Behind him, Dravin’s voice broke the silence.

“He didn’t pass your test.”

“No,” Thalor said. 

“You expected him to pick one of the unknowns.”

“I expected him to play it safe,” Thalor admitted. “But instead, he made a decision that punished certainty. Thats something 

He tapped the edge of the balcony rail once.

“He doesn’t want to be a hero. Doesn’t even want to be right. He just wants to decide—and be the one to carry it. and he might even enjoy inflicting pain on others ill have to look into it more.”

Dravin was quiet for a moment. Then, “And Elaris?”

“She hesitated. Froze.”

“She’ll get better.”

“She has to.”