Cel’s head snapped toward the source of the sound.
Then, movement exploded across the stone.
Zara launched herself from the couch with speed that shouldn’t have been possible from a resting position. One moment sprawled and half-asleep. The next, moving like a predator whose prey had just exposed its throat.
She crossed the distance before Cel could process what was happening.
Her hands clamped onto his shoulders - not grabbing, crushing. Her fingers dug into muscle hard enough that pain flared immediate and sharp. Her face was inches from his, blue eyes burning with an intensity that went beyond anger into something closer to violence barely restrained.
“Play along.” The words came in a whisper that somehow carried more threat than a shout. “If you don’t, I will break your neck.”
Behind her, Silas had gone still. His spear remained manifested but lowered, green eyes sharp and assessing.
The manor’s door opened.
Esrin stepped through, presence alone pressing the air into stillness. Her ruby eyes swept across the scene.
Zara’s hands released immediately. She stepped back, putting proper distance between them, her expression shifting from threat to something that might pass for professional focus.
“Your weight distribution is still wrong,” she said, voice carrying across the open space with practiced authority. “You’re committing too early again. Telegraphing every strike before you throw it.”
Cel blinked. He'd never once heard Zara sound like an instructor.
The performance was flawless. Her tone held exactly the right mix of frustration and instruction.
Then she turned, as if only now noticing Esrin’s presence. Surprise flickered across her features - calculated, believable.
“Lady Esrin.” She inclined her head in acknowledgment. “We weren’t expecting you.”
“Lady Esrin,” Silas echoed, his greeting carrying its usual warmth despite the tension threading through the air. “What brings you here?”
Esrin said nothing immediately. Her gaze tracked past them, across the open stone, landing on something specific.
The couch.
It sat exactly where Zara had dragged it weeks ago. Cushions still bearing the impression of her body. Positioned with clear sight lines to where training happened, or would have happened, if training had been the primary activity.
Silence stretched. Esrin’s expression remained carved from stone, but her attention on that piece of furniture spoke volumes.
Zara noticed.
Her hand shot out, shoving Cel toward the couch with enough force that made him stumble. “Time for your pause. Like usual.”
Cel’s feet carried him two steps before uncertainty locked his joints. Was he supposed to actually sit? Play along completely?
His gaze cut toward Zara.
She stared back with an expression that promised death.
“How is the training progressing?”
Esrin’s voice cut through the tension like a blade through silk.
Silas opened his mouth. Hesitated. His usual easy confidence had evaporated, leaving something uncertain in its place. “The progress is… slow.” He searched for words. “Celvian is....”
“Shit,” Zara finished.
“He doesn’t get better at all. No matter what we try.” She crossed her arms, glare shifting from Esrin to Cel with open contempt. “He’s of no help to anyone like this.”
Heat crawled up Cel’s neck. Annoyance flared sharp and immediate - the same reaction he’d had every time Zara opened her mouth to deliver some cutting assessment of his worth.
But beneath the annoyance sat something worse.
Truth.
The admission burned. Pained even. Made him want to argue just to avoid accepting the obvious truth.
But denying it wouldn’t change reality.
What had he accomplished in nearly a year at the Academy?
The question circled through his mind with merciless precision.
He’d grown accustomed to his new body. Could control his strength now, mostly. Didn’t accidentally break things when he forgot to measure his grip. That counted for something.
What else?
The silence in his own thoughts provided the answer.
Nothing else.
His technique remained fundamentally flawed. Every sparring sessions with Silas and the nobles at the Academy proved it. Every exchange where superior skill dismantled his attacks before they landed.
He hadn’t raised the affinity of a single paragon. Heir of the Moon and White Death sat at one out of ten, exactly where they had been since his first blessing. No progress. No growth.
He still had no answer for why he lacked Divine Energy. Couldn’t sense corrupted or divine essence. Couldn’t feel the sixth sense every other Chosen took for granted. The impossibility of it remained unexplained, unresolved.
And Selina’s question - the task she’d given him, to discover the essence of his true self - remained unanswered. He’d thought about it. Circled it during quiet moments. Come no closer to understanding what she’d meant or how to find it.
So what exactly had he been doing this whole time?
The problem was that he hadn’t been lazy. Hadn’t been avoiding work or taking the easy path.
He’d tried. Gods, he’d tried.
Non-stop training. Hours spent drilling basic movements until his body moved without conscious thought. Meditation sessions attempting to feel even a thread of divine essence within his body. Conversations with Selina searching for insight that never materialized.
And nothing had happened.
No breakthrough. No sudden understanding. No measurable improvement beyond basic body control.
This was a serious problem.
His goal - the purpose driving every decision since resurrection - was to grow stronger. Strong enough to take revenge on the people who’d wronged him.
The Sun Clan nobles who’d enabled his father’s abuse. Who’d looked the other way when Lord Aldric beat his son bloody. Who’d considered a Moon mark sufficient justification for discarding a child like trash.
His family. Lord Aldric specifically, but also Darian who’d watched and done nothing. The mother who’d remained silent. Everyone who’d chosen comfort over intervention.
The Children of the Voidmother. The cult that had tortured him for a year. That had used him as a living key to seal a rift. That had treated his suffering as a resource to be exploited for their twisted reasons.
He needed strength to face them. To make them pay for what they’d done.
But he wasn’t growing stronger.
Months of work. Months of effort. And he stood in essentially the same place he’d started.
“Veyron wanted him to join us.”
Esrin’s voice cut through his spiral of thought with surgical precision.
“He was never wrong before, was he?”
The question seemed rhetorical, but Silas answered anyway.
“Never,” he said quietly. The playfulness had drained from his voice entirely, leaving something more serious. More genuine. “If our leader saw something in him, it’s there. Even if we can’t see it yet.”
Zara made a sound that might have been disgust.
Esrin’s gaze turned on Cel.
“You also possess a Divine Oracle as your guide. The Moon Goddess herself chose to grant you that level of support. That means she saw potential in you that neither Silas nor Zara has been able to develop.”
A pause. Something in her posture shifted slightly, a fractional easing, like she'd reached a decision.
“Which means the failure lies not with you, but with the approach to your training.”
‘Wrong approach?’
Cel’s thoughts scattered again.
If the approach was wrong, then what was right?
Silas and Zara were strong - undeniably strong - but strength earned through paths built for them. Paths shaped around talents he didn't have. Maybe drilling the same forms others once drilled was never going to work.
Maybe he needed something else entirely. He just had no idea what that something was.
“Either way,” Esrin continued, her tone shifting to something more clipped, “the training must end now.”
Silas’s head snapped toward her. “End? But we’ve barely—”
“Veyron has a mission for you.” Esrin’s interruption carried finality. “Both of you. You leave tonight.”
Silence pressed across the open space.
Then Silas’s expression transformed. The seriousness melted away, replaced by that familiar mischievous grin. “A mission. Together.” He turned toward Zara, his smile widening. “Just the two of us. How romantic.”
“I will kill you.” Zara’s words came flat and certain. “Slowly. Painfully. And I will enjoy every moment.”
A curved short sword materialized in Zara’s hand. The blade gleamed in the strange light, point aimed directly at Silas’s throat.
He raised both hands in mock surrender, though his grin never faltered.
Esrin’s attention shifted away from them, tracking back to Cel.
“You will return to the Academy. Your mission remains unchanged - protect the other students.”
Cel nodded once, understanding the continuation of his Reckoning assignment.
But Esrin wasn’t finished.
“Until now, that mission has been largely theoretical.” Her ruby eyes held his with uncomfortable intensity. “The students were safe within Academy walls. Protected by instructors, by the institution itself, by the boundaries of Stella’s defenses.”
She took one step closer. Then another. Each movement deliberate.
“The final examination changes everything.” Her voice dropped lower. “You will travel through wilderness where rifts open without warning. Through territory where creatures hunt anything that moves. Past villages that may or may not offer shelter.”
Another step. She stood perhaps an arm’s length away now.
“Keep them alive.”