Chapter 2: The Sound of Splintering Wood

The dawn in House Vance did not begin with the song of morning birds, but with the cold, rhythmic clanging of steel against steel from the central courtyard.

That was where my older brother, Leonard, trained. At fourteen, Leonard was already hailed as the family’s bright future—a spell-blade prodigy who could coat a steel broadsword in a shimmering sheath of wind mana, cutting through training dummies with elegant, effortless arcs.

I didn't train in the central courtyard. I stayed behind the abandoned carpentry shed near the rear fence, where the dirt was soft from dry rot and the smell of wet manure drifted from the stables.

Thwack.

The blunt head of the ironwood block slammed into the center of an old oak target post. The impact echoed with a dull, heavy thud, vibrating violently up through my wrists. My forearms throbbed with a dull, nauseating ache.

Wrong line.

I stepped back, my breath dragging through my raw throat in ragged, whistling gasps. Sweat ran down the bridge of my nose, dripping onto the collar of my thin linen shirt, which was already stained with damp earth.

In my past life as Eden, combat had been an equation of pure logic. Magic was geometry, calculus, and spatial alignment. You drew an array in your mind, channeled mana through your gate, and directed the output.

Physical combat, I was rapidly learning, was far more unforgiving. There were no geometric shortcuts. If your ankles weren't rooted, your hip rotation was weak. If your hip rotation was weak, your strike carried no weight. And if your strike carried no weight in front of an Abyssal beast, you didn't just miss—you died.

"Your left heel is lifted," a voice chimed from above.

I didn't break stance, though my lungs screamed for me to collapse into the mud.

Perched on the low stone wall surrounding the courtyard sat Clara, the chief stablemaster’s daughter. She was thirteen, with freckles scattered across a sunburned nose and straw-blonde hair tied back in a messy braid. She held a half-eaten green apple in one hand, watching me with wide, bewildered eyes.

"You've been hitting that post since the sun was a gray smudge," Clara said, taking a loud, crisp bite. "And you're doing it wrong. Young Master Leonard holds his blade high, like a swan's wing, before he sweeps the wind."

"Leonard fights with air," I gritted out, lowering the ironwood block by a few inches to align it with my sternum. "I am fighting gravity."

Clara snorted, nearly choking on her apple. "You sound like a tiny old man. And that block of wood isn't even a sword. It's firewood, Young Master Julian. The carpenter was going to burn it for the winter stoves."

"Then he'll have to find another piece," I muttered.

I shifted my weight back, digging my toes into the cold dirt. I locked my core, felt the strain in my lower back, and drove forward—putting the entire weight of my frail, forty-kilogram body behind the flat nose of the timber.

CRACK.

The sound wasn't the dull thud from earlier. It was a sharp, explosive snap.

The dry oak post didn't split cleanly—the ironwood block sheer-cut right through the middle, sending the top half of the post tumbling into the damp weeds behind it.

The recoil jarred through my entire frame. A sharp bite of pain flared in my right palm as a thick wooden splinter tore through my skin, blood immediately welling up and dripping onto the dirt.

I stood there, panting, my chest heaving up and down, staring at the shattered post.

Clara stopped chewing. Her apple hovered mid-air, her eyes wide as she looked from the snapped oak to the small, shivering boy holding a blunt slab of timber.

"That..." Clara swallowed hard, her voice losing its cheeky edge. "That didn't have any mana in it."

"No," I said, my voice barely above a whisper as I looked down at my bleeding hand. The pain was sharp, real, and grounding. "It didn't."

Mana was a gift, but it was also a crutch. In the Great War, when the Abyss unleashed its mana-draining mists, hundreds of high archmages were slaughtered like cattle the moment their spells flickered out. They had forgotten how to stand on their own two feet.

I wouldn't make that mistake again.

"Julian."

The voice was cold, heavy, and unmistakable.

I turned slowly. Standing near the entrance of the stables was Lord Reinhardt. He was dressed in his formal dark blue military coat, silver buttons gleaming under the morning light. Beside him stood Leonard, holding a polished steel sword encased in a scabbard decorated with gold leaf.

Leonard looked at the shattered target post, then at me, his brow furrowing in disdain. "Father, why is he playing with scrap wood in the dirt? He's making a mess of the estate grounds."

Reinhardt ignored his eldest son. His gray eyes, hard as flint, locked onto the raw, bleeding tear in my palm, then drifted to the shattered oak timber lying in the mud.

"You broke an oak post with unrefined ironwood," Reinhardt said. There was no praise in his voice, only a strict, probing intensity. "Who taught you that form?"

"No one," I lied smoothly, keeping my tone flat and respectful. "The sword instructors teach how to flow with mana. My body cannot hold mana. So I taught myself how to transfer weight."

Leonard let out a short, mocking laugh. "Transfer weight? Julian, you look like a farmhand shoving a plow. That isn't swordsmanship. It's ugly."

"Swordsmanship isn't meant to be pretty, Leonard," I replied, looking my 'older brother' straight in the eye. "It's meant to kill."

The air around us went dead silent.

Clara slid off the stone wall and quietly scampered away toward the horses. Leonard’s laugh died in his throat, his hand instinctively tightening around the hilt of his golden sword, offended by the quiet authority in a voice that belonged to a sickly twelve-year-old.

Reinhardt stepped forward, his heavy leather boots crushing the frost-covered grass. He stopped three feet away from me, towering over my small frame.

"Two months," Reinhardt spoke, his voice carrying the absolute weight of a commander issuing an ultimatum. "In two months, the Imperial Academy entrance evaluations begin. Every child of House Vance must present their sword arc to the grand examiners."

He looked down at the bleeding block of wood in my hands.

"If you present this barbaric swinging in front of the nobles, you will humiliate this house," Reinhardt continued. "Show me you can pass the physical trial without fainting, or I will strip your name from the registry and send you to the southern estate as an administrator. Do you understand?"

"Understood, Lord Vance," I said without hesitation.

Reinhardt searched my eyes for a flicker of fear, hesitation, or tears. He found none. After a long moment, he turned and walked away, his heavy coat snapping in the cold wind. Leonard gave me one last glare before trotting after our father.

I stood alone in the quiet yard.

I lowered the ironwood block, letting it rest against my leg, and squeezed my injured hand into a tight fist. The warm blood trickled down my fingers, staining the damp earth below.

Two months.

They thought they were threatening me with exile. They thought the Academy evaluation was a mountain I couldn't climb.

They had no idea that three hundred years ago, I commanded armies of archmages while bleeding out from the gut.

"Two months..." I murmured, a faint, cold smile touching the corners of my lips for the first time in this second life. "Plenty of time to build a weapon."