Morning lay over Vanhart Estate like a thin, colorless veil.
The sky outside the narrow windows was a pale, washed-out gray—neither fully bright nor truly dim, as if the sun itself hesitated to commit. Frost clung to every stone edge, every windowsill, every silent rooftop tile.
The estate breathed slowly.
Servants moved in hushed patterns.
Fireplaces woke, one by one.
And in a quiet room on the east wing, something else had finished waking.
Kel fastened the last clasp of his shirt.
The fabric felt… different today.
Not because it was new.
Because he was.
He stood before the narrow iron-framed mirror fixed to the wall, its glass slightly warped at the edges from age. Enough to distort. Not enough to lie.
For a long time, Kel had avoided mirrors.
When the curse was active, they'd shown him a body that deserved the title "Cursed Heir" in every line—thin to the point of fragility, wrists like hollow stems, a neck that seemed too slender to bear the weight of his head. Skin too pale, too stretched, like some beast had been slowly draining him.
A walking omen.
A child that looked like the promise of an early grave.
Now…
He studied the reflection with quiet, detached focus.
His face was still the same in outline.
Sharp jaw.
High nose.
Dark eyes, long lashes casting shadows he couldn't erase.
But the rest—
His shoulders were broader now, the lines of his collarbones clean but less stark; they no longer jutted out like accusations beneath the skin. His arms, once narrow and brittle, held slender muscle now—defined, not bulky. Not the mass of a knight who lived for sword drills, but the kind of lean strength built from survival, control, and precision.
The faint swell of biceps shifted beneath his rolled sleeves as he flexed his fingers slightly, testing.
His chest had filled out.
Not heavy.
Structured.
The shirt hugged closer than it had weeks ago, catching on the firmness of pectoral muscle, draping less loosely around the ribcage.
His waist had slimmed—not from frailty, but from tension.
The curse, once a gnawing rot, was gone.
In its place, there was something sharper.
A body refined by aura, hardened by constant strain and recovery, threaded by Sairen's blessing and his own relentless will.
His legs—hidden beneath dark trousers—didn't look like a child's anymore. The shape at his thighs showed trained muscle, the quiet readiness of someone who had walked long distances, climbed, braced in battle stances, danced with bow and blade alike.
He turned sideways.
The mirror caught the curve of his back.
Once too visible spine now lay beneath a layer of firm strength. His posture, always straight, now looked less like forced discipline and more like… natural alignment.
He looked less like someone the world expected to break.
More like someone it should be careful trying to.
And yet—
He was still small.
Still thirteen.
Not tall enough yet.
Not broad enough yet.
But the impression had changed.
The boy who once looked like illness now resembled a blade in its early forging—slender, but impossible to call fragile.
Kel let his gaze travel up to his own eyes.
They were the one thing curses and cores had never managed to change.
Dark.
Calm.
Heavy with things no thirteen-year-old should know.
He studied himself for a few more breaths.
Then he narrowed his eyes faintly.
"…Adequate," he murmured.
Not satisfied.
Not impressed.
Just an acknowledgment.
His hand rose, fingers brushing his neck where the high collar settled against his throat. He fastened it properly this time, covering the faint line of his collarbones.
No need to invite attention.
Even though he already knew:
He would.
The Walk to the Hall
The corridor was cool.
His boots pressed soft echoes into stone as he walked, coat falling around him like a quiet shadow. The servants he passed along the way glanced once—then twice—before bowing quickly and stepping aside.
They didn't do that before.
Once, they had glanced with pity.
Or fear.
A noble heir cursed to die early was a walking omen, even if etiquette forbade saying so aloud.
Now their eyes flickered over his figure with something like confusion.
Their minds struggled to reconcile memory with present.
Thin, sickly child.
And this.
One of the younger maids, arms full of folded linens, nearly stopped entirely as he moved past her. Her gaze dropped to the line of his shoulders, to the fluid precision of his walk, then darted away as if burned.
Kel said nothing.
He did not quicken his pace.
His aura, carefully suppressed, hummed faintly beneath skin. Not flaring, not suffocating, but present in a way it never had been when the curse distored his channels.
Sairen's voice brushed faintly at the edge of his mind.
"…You are heavier now."
In mana? he asked lazily.
"In presence."
He thought about that for half a second.
Unavoidable.
"You say that as if it were not dangerous."
He did not answer.
Danger was a given.
Blurred.
Like breath in cold air.
He reached the doors of the dining hall.
A servant, already stationed there, straightened and pulled them open.
Kel stepped inside.
Eyes at the Table
The hall was neither grand nor small.
It was a noble family's main room—long wooden table, thick support beams, stone walls decorated with modest banners bearing the Vanhart crest. A fire crackled in a side hearth, warmth spreading unevenly.
Count Vanhart sat at the head, posture composed.
Viscount Malloren at his left.
Reina, Landon, Sera, and Lysenne were already present.
Conversations were low.
Cups in hand.
Knives cutting bread.
It all stopped, for a breath, when Kel crossed the threshold.
Not visibly.
Not rudely.
Just—
Something shifted.
Like the air remembered too late that it was supposed to move.
Kel walked with his usual, unhurried stride, as if unaware of the subtle silence. He pulled out the chair where he'd sat every morning since his arrival.
He could feel it.
The looks.
He ignored them, sat, and reached for the tea.
Only after he began to pour did their thoughts begin to catch up.
Reina
Reina's hand froze halfway to her cup.
Her gaze, reflexively tracking Kel's entrance as always—guard habit, not curiosity—stopped.
He looked…
…different.
Before, he had always seemed like a contradiction. His presence was sharp, his gaze steady, his mind dangerous—but his body was that of someone the wind might topple if it grew impatient.
Fragility wrapped around iron.
Today—
Her eyes traveled, almost against her will, from the way his coat rested against his shoulders—filling the fabric now instead of wearing it like oversized cloth—to the subtle lines at his arms when he lifted the teapot.
Sinew.
Lean muscle.
No wasted movement.
No visible softness.
His neck no longer seemed too thin for his head; the shadow of his jawline looked stronger, like it had been carved with intention, not eroded by illness.
His posture hadn't changed.
But now it looked like his body had finally caught up to it.
He set the teapot down, fingers steady.
Reina blinked once.
Her lips pressed into a flat line.
So, she thought, not without a faint, reluctant note of satisfaction.
The body has stopped betraying the will.
A knight's evaluation.
Nothing else.
She forced herself to look away.
But she remained more aware now of the way he occupied space than before.
Less like a boy forced into fights beyond his level.
More like someone built for what he was doing.
That didn't mean she was any less wary.
It meant the world had just gained one more unfair variable.
Sera
Sera tilted her head slightly, eyes narrowing with obvious, shameless scrutiny.
Unlike Reina, she didn't bother to hide her stare.
She watched him walk.
She watched the way his clothes fit.
Her gaze snagged on details—how the line of his shoulders no longer curved in the slightest slope of hidden weakness, how his arms, when he shifted his sleeve to reach for the bread, flexed subtly.
She remembered the boy she first met in the barbarian lands.
Light steps.
Slender frame.
A body that screamed of curses and half-starved resistance, even when he smiled.
Now—
Her lips quirked.
…Hn.
It wasn't amusement.
More something like a quiet acknowledgment.
A predator recognizing that another creature had grown sharper teeth.
When he sat, when he lifted his cup, when he answered Count Vanhart's morning greeting with simple, polite words—
his presence pressed more.
Not with aura.
With weight.
She leaned back, the faintest flicker of anticipation stirring in her chest.
If this was how much he had changed so soon after lifting his curse and forming a second core…
What would he look like at fifteen?
At twenty?
What would he be?
Her fingers drummed lightly against the table.
"This will be fun," she whispered under her breath, too low for anyone but herself.
Not the situation.
Not the politics.
Him.
Growing.
Shifting.
Breaking the pattern of what people called possible.
She smirked faintly and looked away, tearing into her bread as if nothing had happened.
Landon
Landon didn't stare.
He watched.
Quietly, steadily, like someone measuring distance with every heartbeat.
Kel's steps.
Kel's shoulders.
Kel's breath.
The shift of his weight as he pulled the chair back and sat.
Where once there had been an imbalance—soul older than body, will heavier than bones—
now, the gap had narrowed.
Not gone.
But less lethal.
He still looked young.
Still smaller than most boys his age who trained with the sword from dawn to dusk.
But now, when Landon imagined him on a battlefield—
He didn't see a figure that needed protection to function.
He saw a piece that could move on its own.
And that…
relieved him.
Only slightly.
Kel was changing too fast.
But at least now, when the world tried to bite him, his flesh would not tear as easily.
Landon's grip on his spoon relaxed just a fraction.
He'd need to adjust.
The way he guarded.
The way he stood near him in crowds.
The way he acted as a shield.
Kel was less… breakable now.
Good.
That meant Landon could prepare for the threats that went past the body and straight for the heart.
Those would come, too.
His eyes lowered to his plate.
Let the world see a stronger boy, he thought calmly.
I will see the places still unguarded.
Lysenne
Lysenne felt her stomach lurch for a moment when Kel walked in.
Not because of something as simple as girlish reaction.
Because when she looked at him—
she saw, in one frame, both the boy who had knelt at her useless legs for hours…
and someone she barely recognized.
The difference struck her more sharply than for anyone else.
She had watched him up close.
When he massaged her ruined veins.
His wrists had been slender then, cords of controlled tension beneath skin. His arms had felt steady, but thin, like he was constantly forcing his body not to shake.
Today, those same arms looked… filled.
Her eyes followed unconsciously.
She noticed the way his shirt tightened slightly against his chest when he moved. The way his shoulders seemed more solid when he reached forward. The way his throat looked stronger when he swallowed a sip of tea.
A heat crept up her neck.
She pressed her hands together in her lap until the feeling cooled.
No, she scolded herself quietly.
He had changed.
So had she.
He had given her back her legs.
The least she could do was stand properly in front of him.
She inhaled slowly.
And though her legs trembled faintly—she shifted her feet beneath the table and straightened her back a little more.
If he was walking forward like this…
She refused to be someone who stayed seated while he did.
Count Vanhart and Lorian Malloren
Count Vanhart's gaze, sharp and trained, caught the change instantly.
It wasn't just the muscle.
It was the balance.
The way Kel's center of gravity settled lower. The way his movements were no longer entirely economical out of necessity, but out of choice. The way he seemed less like a brittle shard and more like a blade forged with the right heat and hammered correctly.
The Count lifted his cup, hiding the faint shift in his expression.
This boy, who had already broken expectations with words and wit and terrifying political instinct…
…now had a body that could keep growing into the threat his presence promised.
A creature like that, the Empire would eventually name.
Either as weapon.
Or as enemy.
He did not let his face reveal any of that.
Only nodded.
"You look well," he said mildly.
Kel replied with a simple, "The curse was always the weight, not the body. It's only catching up now."
Vanhart's eyes glinted faintly.
Noted.
Lorian Malloren, on the other hand, felt a different sort of dissonance.
He had first seen Kel as a boy walking in with the calm of someone who'd gambled his life on a promise.
Now, that boy looked closer—
just a step—
to what a future lord of a Great House should resemble.
Not yet fully formed.
But undeniably in motion.
Lorian bowed his head slightly, more to himself than to anyone else.
This was the one who healed Lysenne.
A body like this was not what he used to see when he thought of "the cursed Rosenfeld heir."
He'd now have to adjust.
And perhaps, when he returned to Malloren territory, he would recall this image—
whenever someone spoke of the seven great houses as old stones, unchanging.
One stone, at least, was moving.
Kel
Kel ate in silence.
He was not oblivious.
He felt every gaze.
Every moment of pause.
Every heartbeat of reconsideration around him.
He did not bask in it.
He did not bristle.
He simply noted it.
A more structured body means fewer liabilities, he thought.
Means better aura containment. Less strain. Higher tolerance for mana flow. More options in battle.
He took a bite of bread, chewed, swallowed.
It also means more attention. More… noise.
He sipped tea.
Sairen whispered faintly.
"You dislike being seen."
I dislike being misread, he corrected calmly.
"They see a boy becoming a man."
They should see a tool tempering itself.
There was no self-loathing in that.
Just function.
He lifted his gaze once, briefly.
Reina quickly looked away.
Sera didn't.
Lysenne's fingers tightened in her skirt.
Landon's eyes met his briefly, steady as stone.
The Count and Viscount watched with the kind of gaze men reserved for storms they'd once thought far away and now realized might break on their rooftops.
Kel looked down again.
Continued eating.
His body was no longer fragile.
His path was no longer hidden.
Both facts were inevitable.
And yet—
Quietly, beneath all of that, he acknowledged something else.
If I am to change this story, he thought, this vessel needs to endure until the final page.
He flexed his fingers beneath the table.
The second core pulsed within him, golden and steady.
The first at the root, red and irrational.
He exhaled.
Then, as if the entire room were nothing more than another piece on a far larger board, Kel von Rosenfeld continued his breakfast—
while winter watched the shape of the boy it had failed to kill…
become the man it would have to contend with.