Chapter 68: Flames and Whispers

The aftermath of the mana resonance crystal’s destruction hung in the air — a delicate snowfall of shimmering dust settling over the marble floor, each spark catching the light before fading into nothing.


Nerissa didn’t flinch. Dressed like a court lady about to make some nobleman lose an argument, she simply brushed the glowing ash from her sleeve.


“You just obliterated a crystal worth more than this entire tree,” she deadpanned, eyes sliding to meet mine.


I didn’t look away. “...It glowed too softly.”


Her lips quirked. “You glow softly. Should I break you or the crystal?”


“You overfed it,” I said evenly, “like a starving beast at a royal banquet.”


She let out a soft laugh, shaking her head. “Congratulations. You’re officially my most expensive student.”


The sarcasm was almost a greeting with her now — volley met by volley. Beneath it, I could see she was already dissecting me the way I dissected the shards at our feet.


Magic here was arcane for them, but to me it had rules. The crystal’s composition was not mystical whimsy but a patterned reactive lattice. Crystalline, yes, but behaving like piezoelectric material — storing mana as potential energy under magical ‘pressure,’ like a capacitor waiting for release.


*Energy input to structure → resonance excitation → containment up to a threshold → release as visible glow and data-rich energy pulse.*


Arcadia called it ‘magic.’ My mind called it **energy transformation efficiency under archaic branding**.


Nerissa flipped her palm upward, eyes glittering. “Shall we try something that doesn’t bankrupt me if you wreck it?”


A flame shimmered into being above her hand, curling in lazy arcs, contained yet alive.


“Focus your mana into your palm,and imagine” she instructed smoothly. “Let it spiral, curl tighter, and ignite.” She angled the orb so the reflection danced in my eyes. “Like this.”


The fireball hovered for a breath, then unraveled into sparks with deliberate grace.


I raised my hand. Mana flowed — a controlled current. I let it fail on purpose. The flame sputtered, gasped, and extinguished with nothing more than a puff of warm air.


“A for effort,” Nerissa said with a smirk, “C for combustion.”


*When she says ‘spiral,’ she means clockwise rotational flow, compressing the mana into a vortex field. Compression raises the energy density of the core until the local temperature spike ionizes airborne particles — ignition from reaction, not creation. It’s a plasmoid, held by cohesion fields until release. Change the rotation, alter the temperature curve, change the flame’s color, heat, or destructiveness.*


I tried again — still feigned the struggle — before finally producing a tiny, steady flame about the size of a coin.


Her brow rose. “Suspiciously fast... you’re either a quick study or a menace.”


“Why not both?” I murmured.


She gestured for me to enlarge it. Instead, I refined it, tightening the glow to a needle-point orb, stable as steel.


“Why smaller?” she asked, curiosity slipping through her calm.


“Fire isn’t always about power,” I said. “It’s about control.”


Next, she summoned a clean arc of wind magic, slicing the air so a soft breeze ran over the hedges.


“Wind is pressure and displacement. Feel it. Don’t force it.”


Bernoulli’s principle immediately came to mind — pressure drop here, motion spike there. I mirrored her and sent a crisp gust tearing a leaf from a branch.


Her eyes narrowed. “Beginner’s luck?”


I didn’t answer.


We squared off for a simple clash. Her fireball roared forward; my wind spun sideways, slipping under it and bending the flame’s path off-target mid-air.


She blinked. “You redirected my spell...?”


*Fire feeds on oxygen. Control the wind, control the fire.*


A pause — then she masked her intrigue with a light laugh and a conjured tea cup.


“You’re more interesting than I expected. Most noble brats just want to blast trees.”


“Trees don’t fight back,” I replied, sipping without looking at her.


__________


The shift in the garden’s atmosphere was subtle at first — like an invisible rope tightening around the lungs. The leaves of the hedge stilled mid-rustle, their edges trembling under a pressure they should not have felt. Even the enchantment-birds overhead faltered in their cheerful chorus, their synthetic chirps thinning into metallic silence.


My fingers twitched slightly at my side, mana coiling instinctively along my palm.


“Someone’s coming,” I said under my breath, low enough to be mistaken for thought.


Nerissa didn’t move. She took a long, unhurried sip of tea, as if the air hadn’t just grown heavier. Only when she set her cup down on the small marble table between us did she glance over with that unreadable, fox-eyed smile.


“Mm. Yes. I know.”


The weight in her voice wasn’t surprise — it was recognition.


The presence was still distant, cresting along the edge of my awareness like a wave approaching shore. Not mana — heavier, more grounded. **Aura.**


Where mana flowed like an electric current, Aura was a different beast entirely — dense, oppressive, demanding the space it occupied. If mana was air, Aura was gravity. It didn’t just exist; it *bent* the environment around it.


*Pressure fields… localized. Similar to high-density electromagnetic compression.*
*If I can feel the gradient at this distance, the user’s refinement stage is high, possibly above Stage 3.*
*Not raw force — the edges are too clean. This is disciplined output.*


I hid the evaluation behind the same quiet stillness I carried through every conversation.


Nerissa broke the moment with a slow stretch of her arms. “Before ‘our guest’ arrives, let’s see if you can hold this next exercise without embarrassing yourself.”


With a snap of her fingers, a circular mark shimmered onto the ground five meters away — two concentric rings glowing faint amber against the trimmed grass.


“Your task,” she said, “is to cast fire and wind together… without either one eating the other alive.”


“Both share volatile elements,” Nerissa began, pacing to my side. “Fire hungers for fuel, wind *is* fuel. Mix them carelessly, and you’ll get uncontrolled expansion. Boom.” She widened her fingers in a mock explosion gesture.


*She means spontaneous ignition from uncontrolled oxygen infusion.*
*Airflow variables: vector, velocity, turbulence. Manage them, and you can feed or starve the flame at will.*


Nerissa pointed at the rings. “Center ring — fireball. Outer ring — wind ring. Keep them separate but resonating together.”


I stepped closer, extending my right palm for fire.


Mana spiraled inward — clockwise compression, heat spiking in the core. Controlled ignition.


Left palm for wind — anticlockwise flow, rapid pressure drop along the forward arc, pulling air inward in a steady stream.


Both orbs floated a pace apart: a miniature sun and a sphere of shimmering distortion.


“Now… let them *dance*,” she said with a predator’s grin.


I let the wind arc around the fireball in a thin sheath, feeding it steady oxygen in controlled increments. The flame brightened — not exploding outward, but crisping into a white-hot core ringed in gold. The air shimmered with heat waves.


In my head:
*Stable plasma state achieved. Wind sheath acts as both fuel delivery and containment barrier. Efficiency… higher than expected — minimal bleed.*


Nerissa’s eyes glinted. “Not bad. Most rookies just blow up in their own face.”


Without warning, she flicked her hand — a whip of her own wind magic cutting toward mine. I adjusted instantly: contracting the wind sheath on instinct, dragging the fireball upward and out of collision range.


Her brows arched. “You adapted faster than you realized you needed to.”


“Wind pattern shift,” I said simply. “Obvious adjustment.”


For a beat, she studied me, lips pressing faintly together as though deciding whether or not to keep believing the act.


“Alright, scholar,” she said with mock formality. “Lesson break. Let’s talk efficiency.”


She lifted her palm, conjuring a harmless mana spark. “Every time you convert MP… some of it bleeds away. Residual heat, unstable pulses, atmospheric dissipation, you name it.”


I nodded silently, already running the numbers in my head.
This means no one ever operates at 100% yield. Even grandmasters suffer conversion loss. Entropy as a hard magical law.


Nerissa sighed. “Most mages ignore it. They say it’s trivial. Harmless.”


Most mages were short-sighted.


To me, inefficiency wasn’t waste — it was unharvested output.


I glanced up at her. “If someone could figure out how to capture that leftover mana… it would change everything.”


She smiled, eyes glinting with a spark of excitement. “A breakthrough like that? It would shake the foundations of magic itself.”


Her hand rested lightly on my shoulder. “But… that kind of innovation takes more than talent. It takes obsession.”


Floating porcelain drifted over again under her casual flick. Warm tea scented with cinnamon-rose.


“You’re more interesting than I gave you credit for,” she murmured between sips. “Most nobles think magic’s just about making oversized fireworks.”


“Fireworks are inefficient,” I said. “And trees don’t fight back.”


She choked on a laugh.


That was when the Aura pressure crested into full proximity.


The garden went still — *truly* still. No hedge leaf moved, no bird sang. It pressed down, subtle but immovable.


My hand lowered to my side.


Nerissa didn’t look toward the source. She didn’t need to.


She smiled faintly at her tea. “Lesson’s over for now.”


And I knew why.




The wind did not blow, but the garden bent.


It began as low pressure—the kind of weight you feel in your joints before a storm—but it escalated with every breath. Vines stopped swaying. The plush hedges lining the open-air training alcove froze under invisible pressure. Even the enchantment-bound songbirds above fell silent, their floating paths pausing midair like puppets who’d forgotten their cues.


I stood from the marble bench slowly. The teacup, still warm in my palm, rattled once before I placed it gently on the table.


There was no threat in sight.


But Aura doesn’t need a shape to announce itself.


It arrives first as presence, then as purpose.


Then the intention folds in.


I turned my gaze toward the western tree line—where the air thickened most.


> “You still owe me a second crystal, by the way.”


I didn’t respond. My eyes were fixed on the approaching distortion.
It was like watching heat ripple across the surface of a frozen lake—barely visible but utterly wrong.


*Mana pulses dissipate. Aura asserts.*


Aura was living pressure. It didn’t just ‘arrive’—it saturated. Unlike mana, which radiates in channels and disperses naturally, Aura clings. It manipulates mass. Your body recognizes it as threat even before your mind does.


A light rustling of leaves gave it form:
One figure, moving silently down the slope between the hedges. Even his footsteps didn’t rustle the grass beneath.


He wore no emblem.


Dark cloak, traveler’s boots, wide shoulders.


But the Aura was his banner.


Unfiltered. Unspoken.


His presence seeped into the open space like mist into cold lungs—coating everything.


I watched his gait carefully.


> Controlled… not boastful. No aggressive spikes in pressure. A master, but restrained.
> Stage 4 at least. Possibly purified core. Measured Aura density per step. Pulse count: seven over ten seconds. He’s conserving.


His shadow finally met the first circle of light cast from the enchanted crystals around the training ring.


Nerissa looked up as if finally acknowledging the world again.


She smiled faintly — no tension, no surprise.


> “Corvin.”


Ah.


That name.


I narrowed my gaze.


**Corvin Draxler.**


The Sword Tutor . The famous weapons master.


He stopped just short of the circle, folding his arms across his chest.


His voice could have been chiseled from stone.


> “I apologize for the delay.”


Nerissa raised her teacup and bowed her head just slightly.


> “It’s fine. We were just discussing energy casualties and noble hubris.”


She gestured casually to the open scorch marks on the training field.


Corvin’s eyes landed on me.


I didn’t shift. I let him examine the image I'd become:
A quiet young noble with unburnt clothes and unflinching posture standing at the exact center of a blast radius.


He said nothing.


I said even less.


The air between us was not tense — it was diagnostic. He viewed me not as a student, nor a child, but as a potential weapon with unknown specifications.


> *He’s testing for ripple delay,* I thought, watching the subtle flare in his Aura reverb.


His Aura brushed the edge of my own passive flow. The moment it did, I fed a trickle of controlled mana into my palm, converting just enough into passive heat.


He would feel the resistance.
Not as aggression.
As insulation.


A silent message: I don’t submit. But I do respond — intentionally.


His chin tilted just slightly.


> He understood.


No further words were necessary.


Then Nerissa cracked through the stillness like a silver bell in a tomb.


> “Alright, soldiers.why don’t we demonstrate something more advanced?”


Corvin didn’t answer, but I saw the ghost of a smile crack his hard features.


> “Fine,” she added, adjusting the tight silk gloves over her wrists. “Let’s go beyond the basics.”


She turned to me and raised a brow.


> “Aren. You now have an audience. Impress or die trying.”


I raised one hand again, already visualizing the next maneuver:


Small flame spiral at the palm.
Wind compression field along the wrist.
Split-directional twist to invoke twin helix effect.


The resulting orb spun faster, pulled tighter, whiter core, thinner shell—


Then, I let a slight unstable vibration echo through the spiral, halting just before ignition failure.


Controlled chaos.


> “Stability’s higher than before,” Nerissa commented, one hand on her hip. “Color shift suggests phase transition upfield. Compressed plasma, not just standard combustion.”


Corvin looked almost amused.
> “Elegant. But do you fight with it or just pet it?”


I let the orb flicker, then expanded it outward twofold and collapsed it into a compressed column. It launched past the hedgerow, tearing through three wooden targets Nerissa had conjured earlier.


The crater smoked, stark and clean.


I lowered my hand without a word and turned back to face them.


Corvin raised a brow. “...Mn.”


Nerissa blinked. “That’s his way of saying ‘not bad.’ Which, by his standards, is equivalent to a standing ovation cut short only by emotional starvation.”


I exhaled silently, watching the Aura in the air around him retract like a tide.


The tension slowly bled from the garden.


The enchantment birds sputtered back to life, hesitantly resuming their mechanical songs. Wind returned to the hedges in soft waves.


Corvin sheathed the invisible pressure like slipping a sword back into mist.


“You’ll train with me at dawn,” he said simply. Then walked away.


Once his presence disappeared behind the spray of hedges, Nerissa flopped dramatically onto the nearest bench and sipped the last of her tea.


“Remind me again why I’m here and not sipping chilled wine in the southern courts,” she groaned into the cup.


I gave her a look. “You asked to be assigned somewhere 'interesting.’”


“Right. I forgot disturbing counts as interesting.”


I returned my attention to the field.


The spell damage hadn’t impressed him. I didn’t need it to.


Let them think I’m sharp.


Never let them know I’m precise.


> Precision wins wars.


Not just by cutting deeper.


But by knowing precisely when not to swing at all.




To be continued