Steel sang and clashed.
Not the clean ring of blades crossing in ceremony, but the dull, punishing sound of iron meeting iron again and again, until the echo stopped sounding like metal and started sounding like bone.
My wrists burned.
My shoulders screamed.
My breath came out uneven, scraped raw by dust and heat as Sir Adranous knocked my sword aside for the fifth time in a single exchange and planted the flat of his blade against my chest.
"Dead," he said calmly.
I staggered back, boots carving crooked lines into the sand. My knees trembled, but I stayed upright.
Sir Adranous stepped away and lowered his sword.
"That wasn't aura," he said. "And it wasn't your lack of skill."
I swallowed, wiping blood from my lip. "Then what was it?"
He looked at me for a long moment, the sun haloing his silhouette like a judgment passed without words.
"That," he said, "was your will collapsing before your body did."
We were far from Lionhearth now.
The road back had taken us through open plains and scorched ridges, then into a barren training valley marked by ancient cut-stones and weathered scars in the earth—places where knights had once tested themselves until the ground itself remembered.
The air here felt heavy, like something unseen pressed against my chest the moment I stepped inside the basin.
Sir Adranous called it a will-field.
"Places like this," he explained, "don't amplify aura. They amplify intent. Every doubt weighs twice as much. Every conviction burns brighter."
I had laughed nervously back then.
I wasn't laughing now.
We trained from dawn until the sun climbed high enough to punish us, then trained again until evening dragged the light down with it. No rest days. No ceremony. Just repetition and correction.
Always correction.
My aura responded easily enough. Water gathered when I focused. White thunder sparked when I swung with enough intent. Those parts were familiar—almost comfortable.
Will was not.
Will did not move when I asked.
It moved when I meant it.
And meaning something was far harder than saying it.
"Again," Sir Adranous said.
I raised my sword.
My hands shook—not with exhaustion alone, but with the quiet, creeping realization that everything I'd relied on before was insufficient here.
We clashed.
I poured aura into my blade instinctively, water sheathing the edge, lightning crackling in thin, erratic arcs. Sir Adranous didn't even answer with aura. He stepped into my strike, blade rotating once, redirecting the force into the ground.
The shock traveled up my arms.
Before I could react, pressure slammed into my chest—not physical, not magical.
Will.
It felt like standing in front of a wave tall enough to blot out the sky.
I was thrown backward, skidding across the sand until my back hit stone.
I gasped.
"What—" I choked. "What was that?"
Sir Adranous rested his blade on his shoulder. "That," he said, "was will applied through steel."
I pushed myself upright, chest tight. "It didn't feel like aura."
"Because it wasn't." His eyes narrowed slightly. "Aura is what you have. Will is who you are when everything else has been stripped away."
He walked closer, each step deliberate.
"Will does not come from strength," he continued. "It comes from refusal."
I clenched my jaw. "Refusal to what?"
"To break," he said simply.
Later—much later—I lay flat on my back, staring at the sky as sweat dried on my skin and the world slowly stopped spinning.
Sir Adranous sat nearby, sharpening his blade with slow, steady strokes.
"You misunderstand will," he said without looking at me.
"I'm trying to understand it at all," I muttered.
"That's the problem." He paused the whetstone. "You're thinking about will as power. It isn't."
He met my gaze.
"Will is pressure," he said. "The soul pushing back against reality."
I thought of Azazel.
Of how the chamber had felt smaller the longer he'd been inside it. Of how my aura had shaken, not because it was weak—but because something greater had refused to let the world proceed as normal.
"Then how do I use it?" I asked quietly.
Sir Adranous rose.
He sheathed his sword.
"Stand."
I obeyed.
He stepped close—so close I could feel the heat radiating from him, not from flame, but from presence.
"I'm not going to attack you," he said.
I frowned. "Then what—"
"Break me," he said.
The words landed heavier than any blow.
I stared. "That's impossible."
Sir Adranous smiled, not kindly.
"Exactly."
He didn't move.
Didn't raise his guard.
Didn't flare aura.
He simply stood there and was—like a mountain that had decided it no longer cared about gravity.
I swung.
My sword stopped inches from his chest.
Not blocked.
Not deflected.
Stopped.
Pressure flooded my arms, my core, my mind. My vision blurred as something unseen crushed down on my intent and smothered it like a hand over a flame.
I roared and pushed harder.
Nothing.
"Feel that?" Sir Adranous asked calmly.
My teeth rattled. "Y-Yes."
"That's the world telling you no," he said. "Now answer it."
I didn't understand.
But I remembered.
The Dratonian Forest.
The ocean.
Azazel towering over my broken classmates.
The moment I'd stood when logic said I should have fallen.
I stopped trying to overpower him.
Stopped trying to win.
Instead, I narrowed everything down to a single thought.
I move.
Not because I should.
Not because I'm allowed.
Because I refuse to accept stillness.
My core burned—not with aura, but with something deeper. The space behind my ribs throbbed, as if the shape of my soul was pressing outward, testing the limits of flesh.
The air shook.
Sir Adranous' brow lifted.
My blade trembled.
Then—inch by inch—it pushed forward.
Sir Adranous stepped back.
Once.
Silence swallowed the valley.
I collapsed to my knees, coughing, blood spotting the sand.
Sir Adranous laughed.
Not mockery.
Approval.
"There it is," he said. "Crude. Dangerous. Unstable."
He knelt in front of me. "But real."
The next days blurred together.
I learned how will manifested—not as constant force, but as bursts. Short, decisive assertions of intent that bent reality just enough to matter.
A single step forward when the ground wanted me still.
A strike that cut because I decided it would.
A shield that formed not from aura, but from refusal.
Each attempt left me shaking.
Each failure burned something deeper than muscle.
I learned restraint too.
"Will without control is suicide," Sir Adranous said after I nearly ruptured my core by forcing another burst. "Power isn't proven by how loud you burn."
He placed a hand on my chest.
"It's proven by how long you can keep standing when burning no longer helps."
At night, I dreamed of waves crashing against cliffs that never yielded—and realized, slowly, that the cliffs weren't failing.
The sea was learning their shape.
On the seventh day, Sir Adranous finally drew his blade again.
"Show me," he said.
We fought.
Not aura against aura.
Not speed against strength.
But intent against intent.
Every strike I made was answered by pressure—not to stop my sword, but to stop me.
My arms bled.
My legs faltered.
But I didn't retreat.
I shifted.
Redirected.
Refused collapse.
When his blade finally tapped my throat, I was still standing.
Sir Adranous lowered his sword.
"You lost," he said.
I nodded. "I know."
He smiled faintly.
"But you didn't yield," he added.
I met his eyes.
"Bravery isn't the absence of fear," I said hoarsely. "It's deciding fear doesn't get the last word."
He studied me for a long moment.
Then he turned away.
"Good," he said. "Because this path doesn't reward the fearless."
He glanced back once.
"It devours them."
I watched the sun dip toward the horizon, my reflection trembling faintly on the blade resting in my hands.
For the first time, aura felt secondary.
Steel felt honest.
And will—
Will felt like the beginning of something I could no longer walk away from.