Chapter 28—Spring

The air over the training grounds shimmered faintly in the noon heat, though the stone beneath Raiden’s boots remained cool from the night’s dew. Another week had carved its weight into his body, bruises healed only to be replaced by new ones, soreness a constant companion. Yet today felt different.

He sat cross-legged in the open field, eyes shut, Liana’s voice steady in his ear.

“Don’t chase it. Let it rise,” she said. Her tone was calm but firm, more command than invitation. “Mana is not a bird you snatch from the air. It’s the breath already in your lungs. The water already in your veins.”

Raiden exhaled slowly. He had heard these words every day since she had introduced meditation, but for the first time he believed he could almost touch what she meant.

At first there was nothing—only the dull ache in his thighs from sitting too long and the distracting itch of sweat at his temple. He pushed past it, following Liana’s rhythm: breathe in, count four; breathe out, count six. She wanted him to slow until the rest of the world blurred.

And then—something.

Not sight, not sound, but a pressure beneath his ribs, a restless coil. His pulse beat against it, and suddenly he realized it wasn’t pressure at all—it was movement. Flow. Like water pressing against the banks of a dam.

Raiden’s eyes snapped open. He gasped and clutched his stomach.

Liana crouched beside him at once, her eyes sharp. “Well?”

He struggled for words. “It’s… there. A—gushing. A well, overflowing.”

Her lips curved faintly. “Finally.” She turned, raising her voice toward the others loitering near the bench. “He’s found it.”

Randall, stretched out with his bow across his lap, raised a skeptical brow. “Found what? Looked like he was about to vomit.”

Grenald leaned forward, interest flickering in his usually cool gaze. “His core. The furnace.”

Ophelin tapped her stick against the ground, studying Raiden as though seeing him new. “Took you long enough.”

Raiden wiped his brow with the back of his arm. His heart still raced, but it wasn’t from strain—it was from the strange vitality that surged through him. His limbs felt lighter, sharper. The constant fatigue that had dogged him seemed, for a moment, pushed aside.

He rose to his feet, rolling his shoulders. Even Tadari, arms crossed, was watching him with the faintest narrowing of eyes.

“Show us,” Tadari said simply.

Raiden blinked. “Show what?”

“Move. You said it feels like water. Let’s see if you swim or drown.”

They armed him and set him opposite Tadari. The duel began as always—with Tadari striking fast and merciless. But this time, Raiden met the first blow not by stumbling, not by bracing too stiffly, but by letting the force roll through him. His wrists bent, his shoulders followed, his feet shifted with the rhythm instead of against it.

Steel rang.

And Raiden was still standing.

A cheer burst from Randall before he caught himself. “That’s new.”

Ophelin leaned forward on her bench, her eyes narrowing in calculation.

Tadari pressed harder, and Raiden moved faster than he thought possible. His muscles no longer screamed at him—they responded, as though fueled by the well inside him. He wasn’t winning; Tadari still outmatched him in precision and strength. But he was no longer prey.

When the bout ended with Tadari’s blade at his throat, Raiden’s chest was heaving, but his stance hadn’t collapsed. Sweat streamed down his face, but behind the exhaustion was something fiercer—awareness.

“That,” Tadari said, lowering his sword, “was closer to fighting.”

Raiden almost smiled.

Liana stepped forward then, her expression unreadable. “You’ve learned to drink. Now we see if you can pour.”

He frowned. “Pour?”

She snapped her fingers, and a small flame flickered above her palm. “Mana isn’t only for your flesh. It bends the world when you shape it. And that requires the Framework.”

Her gaze sharpened. “We start today.”

They gathered in the center of the field. The fog of morning had burned away, leaving stark sunlight on the pale stones.

Liana drew a circle in the dirt with the tip of her staff, then four runes inside it. “Four phases of magic. Remember them. Visualization. Catalyst. Framework. Release. Miss one, and you have nothing but wasted breath.”

She looked at Raiden. “Close your eyes. Visualize wind. Feel it.”

Raiden obeyed. He thought of gusts in the valley where he had grown up, the way storms bent trees nearly double, the sharp whip of air against his cheeks. The memory came easily—he had lived his childhood under skies that never stilled.

“Good,” Liana said. “Now the Catalyst. Use yourself. Breathe deep. Draw from the well you found.”

He inhaled sharply. The gushing returned, a flood pressing against his ribs.

“Framework,” she commanded. “Use the chant. Simple. Fhurian.”

The word stumbled off his tongue, awkward in his mouth.

The air before him shimmered—mana, faint and unformed, gathering like mist. His heart leapt.

“Release!”

He opened his hand, willing the energy forward.

It collapsed.

The shimmer died with a sigh, leaving nothing but still air and the sound of Randall’s half-smothered chuckle.

Raiden’s shoulders tensed. “I felt it.”

Liana’s brows knit. “Again.”

They tried. Again, again. Each time the mana stirred, swirled weakly, then unraveled before it could take shape. His chants grew harsher, his frustration thicker.

Randall muttered to Grenald, “Maybe he’s allergic.”

Grenald ignored him, eyes narrowed. “No. The flow’s there. I can see it. It’s just… knotted.”

Liana finally raised a hand. “Enough. He’s not ready.”

Raiden looked up sharply. “But I—”

“You pulled the water from the well,” she interrupted. “But your bucket has no bottom. It spills before you can drink.”

The words stung.

Ophelin, silent until now, tapped her stick against the stone. “So what does that make him? A cripple in magic?”

Liana didn’t flinch. “Not crippled. Different. His core is potent, but the strands are tangled. Like a skein of yarn dropped and kicked across a floor.” She turned to Raiden. “That’s why you survive what should kill you. The mess inside you fortifies your body instinctively. But it also refuses the order needed for spellcraft.”

Raiden clenched his fists. He thought of Garid, of the ice blades conjured with ease, of Yuka’s elegant twin swords. He thought of his own empty hands.

“So I’ll never—”

“You’ll fight.” Liana’s tone was sharp enough to cut him off. “With or without spellcraft. You’ve already bent mana to your flesh. That alone makes you dangerous.”

But her eyes lingered on him as she turned away, troubled.

They sparred again in the afternoon, but Raiden was distracted. His movements sharper than before, yes—his muscles fueled by the energy he had finally touched—but his mind churned with failure.

Liana rained spells upon him—gouts of fire, whips of water, sudden bursts of gale. He dodged, sometimes cleanly, sometimes only by inches. Once he slipped past three attacks in a row, and his friends cheered. But when the earth erupted beneath his heel, he was too slow. The spike hurled him sprawling.

Pain flared in his ribs, but he forced himself up. His sword trembled in his grip.

“Better,” Liana allowed, lowering her hand. “But still prey.”

Randall jogged over and hauled Raiden upright. “At least he bleeds slower now.”

Ophelin scowled. “That’s not funny.”

Grenald only murmured, “His step was cleaner. He dodged me once earlier, clean as glass. It’s working.”

Raiden tried to hear their words, but his mind was still on the failed chant. The taste of the word Fhurian on his tongue, the shimmer that had collapsed into nothing. The sense that something had almost, almost broken through.

That night, long after the others had left, he sat alone on the bench beside the storeroom. The training field was quiet, the lamps flickering against the dark. He held his sword across his knees, staring at the blade’s edge.

He whispered the word again. “Fhurian.”

Nothing stirred.

He gritted his teeth, shut his eyes, and pressed his palm flat against his chest where the well churned. The energy was there. Real. Alive.

Why wouldn’t it obey?

His answer came not from the night, but from Liana’s voice earlier in the day, echoing in his memory: Not crippled. Different.

Different.

He didn’t know if that meant cursed or blessed. But as the lamps guttered low and the city bells tolled midnight, he made a vow.

Whatever this tangled mess inside him was, he would learn to wield it. If not as spells, then as strength. If not with chants, then with steel.

Because when the duel came, Garid Barowen wouldn’t care how Raiden’s mana flowed. He would only care if Raiden lived long enough to strike back.