The inner courtyard of the Graycastle castle in Border Town was covered by a thick layer of untouched snow, a white, bright, and absolutely silent carpet that repelled most inhabitants during those cruel mornings.
The ancient stone statues of past kings wore crowns of ice, and the once-vibrant rose bushes were now just twisted skeletons under the frost. But, on that specific day, the courtyard housed a scene that blatantly defied all natural laws, rudimentary physics, and the theological beliefs of that oppressive world.
Arthur walked slowly through the frozen flowerbeds, his leather shoes sinking with a crunchy sound into the snow, his hands thrust deep into the pockets of his inseparable dark overcoat.
The air was so cold that it formed small, dense clouds of steam with every breath or word he uttered. Beside him walked Anna, wrapped in a heavy wool cloak, listening to every syllable of the strategist with devoted concentration, her deep blue eyes fixed on him as if he were the source of truth in the universe.
And, about two meters off the ground, floating gracefully through the freezing air as if the force of gravity were a mere optional suggestion and not a universal law, was Nana.
The sweet young healer laughed softly, amazed and with her cheeks flushed from the cold and excitement, while Arthur's invisible power supported her without the slightest apparent effort. She felt no ropes, felt no hands holding her; it was like lying on an invisible cloud, a cushion of solid and incredibly stable air that cradled her across the courtyard.
Up until that fateful moment on the wall, the existence of magic in the two outsiders was a closely guarded secret, known intimately only to William, Anna, Nightingale, and now, Nana.
Prince Roland, in his engineer's mind, had logical awareness that they possessed a "skill budget" granted by an interdimensional entity, but he didn't know the minutiae or the exact visual nature of their magics.
Discovering that the serious, polite, and always-suited Advisor was also a magic user—and of such spectacular magic—had left Nana in a state of absolute euphoria.
— "You need to immediately deconstruct the archaic idea that fire is an esoteric substance or a pure element, Anna." — Arthur explained, his professorial voice cutting through the icy wind with surgical authority. — "As a witch, you might think that the fire you release with magical power is a mystical power, but completely forget that. What you control, in its most fundamental, scientific, and pure essence, is heat, and heat is not an entity. Heat is pure molecular activity."
Anna frowned slightly, absorbing the completely new term into her vocabulary. She repeated the word softly, tasting its sound.
— "Molecular activity, Mr. Arthur? What are these... molecules?"
Arthur stopped walking and turned to face her.
He raised his gloved hand, and with a slight wave of his telekinesis, a single, perfectly symmetrical snowflake floated up from the ground and stopped in the air between them.
— "Imagine that absolutely everything around us," — Arthur continued, pointing to the suspended snowflake. — "The air we breathe, the stone of that castle, the steel of the militia's swords, the water of the river, and even ourselves, our skin and our bones... Everything is composed of microscopic particles, invisible to the keenest human eye, called molecules. They are the tiny bricks that build reality."
Anna looked at the snowflake, her mind working furiously to visualize the invisible.
— "When something is cold, like this snowflake or this garden," — Arthur proceeded, his didactics sharp — "these invisible particles are almost completely still. They are bound together and rigid. However, when you apply your magic, Anna, you are not 'creating fire' out of nowhere. Your will is ordering these particles to vibrate, agitate, and crash into each other at an insane and chaotic speed. The fire, the smoke, and the green light you see are just the visual consequence of that extreme friction. That is why heat is just movement, but on an invisible scale, Anna."
Anna's blue eyes widened slightly as the curtain of medieval ignorance was torn from top to bottom by modern physics.
A silent epiphany illuminated her face.
— "That is why I can melt clay and iron so quickly in the Prince's kilns..." — she whispered, more to herself than to him, instinctively reaching out her hand. A small speck of Green Fire appeared at the tip of her index finger, and the snowflake suspended by Arthur immediately melted, turned into a drop of water, and evaporated with a hiss of steam. — "I am not burning the stone; I am making the stone's particles move so fast that they lose their consistent shape..."
— "Exactly." — Arthur broke into a rare and genuinely intellectually approving smile. — "If you understand and internalize that your power is to dictate and control the degree of movement of these particles, you will never again be restricted to merely spewing chaotic flames like a rustic dragon. You will be able to master the states of matter; you will manage to melt hardened metal without producing a single visible spark; you will be able to weld microscopic structures by cutting and pasting iron with atomic precision."
Arthur took a step closer, the intensity of his gaze rivaling the cold of the winter.
— "Your Green Fire no longer suffers the penalty of physical exhaustion because of my instruction. But if you focus on the vibration of molecules, if you train your mind to see heat as movement and not as flames, your power will evolve long before any 'ancient book' predicted. You won't just be a weapon, but rather, the very forge of civilization."
Anna looked at her own pale hands, feeling her mind expand beyond the limits of Graycastle.
The Green Fire on her fingers seemed to dance with a new, disciplined purpose. The knowledge Arthur was passing to her was infinitely more valuable than gold or gems; it was the cognitive shortcut to the true mastery of her own being.
Above them, interrupting the dense thermodynamics lesson, Nana did a funny twirl in the air, laughing with satisfaction and drawing the attention of the two.
— "This is simply incredible!" — exclaimed the girl, looking down, her hair swaying with the movement of levitation. — "You also have magic, Mr. Arthur! I confess I never imagined... I thought only women were cursed, I mean, graced by god with this."
— "The universe is vast, Nana, and it is full of statistical anomalies and fascinating exceptions." — Arthur replied, casting a sidelong glance at the floating girl without taking his hands out of his pockets. — "And I assure you that my magic is much less noble than yours. Your light regenerates dying cells, whereas my mind merely moves blunt objects from one side to the other."
Nana suddenly stopped laughing.
She looked anxiously at the distant walls, where the militiamen patrolled, and then at the high windows of the castle. The excitement gave way to a sharp trace of worry and residual fear from years of persecution.
— "Mr. Arthur, are you absolutely sure it's okay to use your power so explicitly out here in the open?" — she whispered, lowering her voice, even though she was five meters off the ground. — "Shouldn't we be careful so no one sees your ability? We've been hunted our whole lives; if they find out you're a male witch... The Church could come after you too."
— "It is perfectly safe, Nana. You can breathe easy." — Arthur cut through her worry with absolute calmness, his voice sounding almost bored at the possibility of discovery. — "Any militia soldier, castle servant, or patrolman who looks out the window right now and sees you levitating happily will immediately avert their gaze to the one walking beside me. They will see the unshakable heroine who forged spears and saved the eastern wall from the hybrid buffalo."
He pointed at Anna.
— "Automatically, an ordinary human's mind in this world assumes the most obvious answer within the rules they know. They will think it is the powerful witch Anna who is conjuring some new variation of magic to play with you in the yard. My secret remains invisible and untouched, comfortably hidden in the gigantic shadow of her brilliance and fame."
Nana blinked, understanding the dark genius of the disguise, and the worry evaporated as quickly as it arose, giving way to her former childish joviality.
— "In that case..." — Nana broke into a wide, mischievous, toothy smile. — "Lift me higher, Mr. Arthur! Please! I want to see over the cement wall of the courtyard! I want to see the Redwater River! I want to fly higher!"
Arthur silently complied with the request, his expression remaining inscrutable.
With his level ten Telekinesis acting like a colossal, gentle hand, he lifted the girl to seven meters high and began to spin her in a wide circle through the cold air. Nana stretched her arms out like a cross, flapping them up and down, imitating a bird flying joyfully over the frozen winter, laughing at the top of her lungs as she described the militia tents and the forest in the distance.
While watching her friend play in the leaden sky, Anna narrowed her eyes, noticing a subtle, but absolutely astonishing detail.
Arthur had returned his gaze to the snowy flowerbeds in front of him.
He casually analyzed some stones on the ground, kicking the snow occasionally, with his hands firmly tucked in his overcoat pockets. He wasn't looking at Nana; he wasn't even paying attention to the direction the girl was flying in circles above their heads, but her flight remained perfectly stable and fluid, without any jolts.
— "Mr. Arthur..." — Anna called out, her voice laden with keen curiosity, taking a step toward him. — "How are you able to exert your continuous magic and control it so perfectly without needing to look at where the target is going?"
Arthur kicked a small snow-covered stone before answering, his tone casual, as if discussing the weather.
— "Telekinesis does not require the primitive sense of sight to operate, Anna." — he explained, adjusting the glasses on his face. — "Our biological eyes only serve to capture the reflection of light on objects; but my magic is a vectorial mental force. I don't need to see an object with my eyes to know it is there; my mind acts like a pressure radar. I feel Nana's mass, weight, density, and spatial coordinates in the environment like a nervous extension of my own brain."
He made a vague gesture with his head toward the empty space.
— "It's as if all the space within a radius of many meters around me were a thick ocean, and I could feel every ripple in the water, every displacement of air. I feel where she is, where she is going, and her weight against gravity, regardless of whether I am blindfolded or turned away. Sight would only confirm what my brain is already processing."
Anna absorbed the dense information, her thoughts spinning in pure fascination and an admiring reverence.
What impressed her the most was not just the absence of the visual need, but the terrifying control and the immense range of action he possessed.
Her own Green Fire, however lethal and concentrated it was after the painless transition to Adulthood, would dissipate in the air rapidly if she tried to maintain it or mold it more than five meters away from her own body.
Arthur's power, however, operated absolutely, continuously, and overwhelmingly at a frighteningly superior range. He was manipulating an entire person up to ten meters away and high with the same biomechanical ease as someone breathing—an action radius twice as large as hers—and he was doing it without a drop of sweat, focused on explaining molecular theories.
He was a monstrous strategist with an unparalleled mind for Town politics, yes.
But magically speaking, Anna concluded with a tremble of respect, he was a god walking among mortals.
.
.
.
Hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away from there, at the southern tip of the vast Kingdom of Graycastle, the winter breeze was bearable and even pleasant.
In the prosperous and luxurious Silver City, the snow didn't even cover the dark ceramic roofs, but the political coldness and the conspiracies of the nobility froze hearts much more mercilessly and relentlessly than the northern blizzard.
In the sumptuous office of the largest mansion in the city—which had been temporarily requisitioned and redecorated with refined tapestries to accommodate royalty—Tilly Wimbledon sat behind an immense, solid mahogany desk.
The Fifth Princess of Graycastle, famous throughout the kingdom for her brilliant intellect, sharp intuition, and beauty with pale, serene features, was reviewing extensive parchment scrolls of supply logs, port fees, and city defense balances with an elegant silver quill pen.
The weight of ruling a territory filled with treacherous nobles was exhausting, but Tilly worked with the efficiency of a well-calibrated machine.
Leaning against the frame of the heavy double oak office door, maintaining a relentless defensive posture, with her arms crossed over light crafted leather armor and the hilt of her greatsword always within reach, was Ashes.
The Extraordinary warrior, Tilly's unbreakable sword and shield, had long, straight black hair and eagle eyes fixed on the Princess, ready to slaughter, slice, and crush anyone who posed the slightest shadow of a threat to her ruler and beloved.
— "The final tally from the dawn patrols has arrived, Tilly." — Ashes reported, her deep, raspy voice breaking the focused silence of the room, filled only by the scratch of the quill on paper. — "We found six more this week."
Tilly stopped writing immediately.
She looked up, and an incredibly soft smile, laden with maternal relief, softened her noble and often inscrutable features.
— "Six? That is truly wonderful news, Ashes." — the Princess said, genuine joy shining through her tired voice. — "Are they safe and hidden? How are they doing physically?"
— "Yes, all safe." — Ashes uncrossed her arms, clenching her fists tightly, the anger toward the Church's religious fanatics always bubbling like hot pitch beneath the surface of her calm. — "They were hiding in the filthy slums of the lower city, almost dying of starvation and cold in a basement, terrified of the guard patrols. One of them was just a little girl who could barely make a cup of water glow in the dark. I personally led the rescue tonight and broke the two arms, jaw, and legs of three lowlife mercenaries who tried to collect the Church's bounty on them. All have been transported under the cloak of night and are well settled in the temporary hideout at the old smuggler docks."
— "You did well, as always." — ordered Tilly, her expression returning to seriousness. She dipped her quill into the crystal inkwell again. — "Personally ensure they have hot food, nutritious soup, clean blankets, and winter clothes. Treat their injuries with the mansion's herb reserves. We cannot stay in Silver City for much longer. Six more witches swell our ranks, yes, but they also make our concealment in a city full of the clergy's eyes and ears enormously difficult."
Before Ashes could reply and start a discussion about the complex difficulty of making a sea escape toward Sleeping Island, which they had been planning for weeks, three sharp, rhythmic, and excessively polite knocks sounded on the heavy wood of the office door.
Ashes immediately fell silent.
She brought her right hand firmly to the leather grip of her greatsword, her relaxed posture evaporating and being replaced by instant killer instinct.
— "Come in." — Tilly's voice sounded firm, authoritative, and regal, masking any secret.
The door opened with a slight creak of the lubricated hinges, revealing the thin figure of Edgar Vance.
The old, elegant, and pale butler, whom Tilly had personally recruited when she took bureaucratic control of the city, entered the room with his eyes glued to the marble floor.
Edgar brought with him a polished silver tray, but, curiously, he was not carrying the usual chamomile teapots or warm afternoon cookies.
In the center of the gleaming tray rested, menacingly, only a single dark parchment envelope. The envelope was sealed with the dense, oppressive, and unmistakable gray wax of the royal capital of Graycastle, stamped with the seal of the Towers.
Ashes narrowed her eyes dangerously.
Her limited life experience had already taught her that letters dispatched directly from King's City never, under any circumstances, brought fair winds for anyone who possessed royal blood.
Edgar advanced with slow, trembling steps, stopping at a respectful distance before the large mahogany desk. He made a deep, exaggerated bow, which increased the tension in the room.
— "Your Highness..." — the butler began, his voice failing slightly, openly betraying that he knew the color and the tragic meaning of the royal messenger's seal. — "An express missive, brought by knights riding nonstop, has just arrived from the hands of the palace's Personal Guard. The grim content of the document is no longer a secret; it whispers like a gale through the corridors and squares of the entire continent."
The old man hesitated, wringing his gnarled hands in front of his body. His eyes filled with genuine sorrow.
— "I offer my deepest and most sincere condolences to Your Highness Tilly and the entire house of Wimbledon."
Ashes tensed every muscle in her body in an almost painful way, her hand gripping the leather of the sword so tightly that her knuckles turned white.
The word "condolences" sounded like a funeral gong.
Tilly, for her part, remained paralyzed like an ice statue.
Her breath stopped in her chest. The elegant silver quill pen slipped from her numb fingers, falling onto the desk and irreparably staining the accounting paper with a thick drop of black ink, which expanded like dark blood.
With a terribly sad and compassionate smile, trying at all costs to maintain the royal mask of unshakable composure before one of her civilian subjects, Tilly swallowed hard and gave a slight nod to the man, acknowledging his respect.
— "Thank you, Edgar. That was very kind of you. Leave the letter on the desk and you may retire to your quarters." — the Princess's voice was incredibly controlled and polite, although it sounded in a deep tone that Ashes had never heard before.
Edgar carefully deposited the envelope on the mahogany desk, made one more solemn and reverent bow, and withdrew silently. He closed the heavy double door behind him with a metallic click that seemed to resonate in the souls of the two women like the slamming of a sealed tomb's latch.
Once the door was fully sealed and she found herself completely alone and safe with Ashes, the majestic, cold, and calculating posture of the Fifth Princess crumbled into emotional ruin.
With trembling and faltering hands, which did not match the legend of the Intellectual Princess, Tilly reached out and picked up the heavy envelope. She broke the royal seal unceremoniously, her gray eyes quickly scanning the cruel and merciless handwriting of the court scribe.
The words slammed against her brilliant mind: the brutal assassination of the King, the supposed treason of the firstborn Gerald, the forced ascension of Timothy Wimbledon to the bloodied throne, and the order of immediate compulsory return.
The official parchment slipped and fell from her hands back onto the desk, the sound of the paper hitting the wood sounding deafening.
Tilly leaned forward, rested her elbows on the table, and covered her pale face with both hands. The thin, delicate shoulders, which carried the destiny of so many witches, began to shake uncontrollably.
Ashes, who never feared facing battalions of mercenaries, demonic beasts, or the judgment of armies in open fields, felt her own heart squeeze in an excruciating way, as if invisible hands were crushing it. She hurried forward, walking around the large desk with long, heavy steps.
Tilly could no longer hold back the barrage of tears.
The dammed-up pain burst the wall of her composure; the tears overflowed through her fingers, falling heavily onto the polished wood and staining the edge of the letter signed by Timothy.
To Roland in the distant west, the King was an indifferent person with even bitter memories inherited from the fourth prince. To Garcia in the south, their father was just a political obstacle in the path of her burning ambition. But to Tilly... Wimbledon III had been the man who saw her true worth. He had been the father who recognized her unparalleled ability, who gave her free access to the most restricted libraries on the continent, who hired formidable tutors and gave her unique opportunities in a patriarchal world that actively devalued women.
He had been a flawed king, often severe, and an absent and manipulative father to the others, but in the rare and silent corridors of the palace during her childhood, when she was nothing more than a curious little girl, he had been a father.
The memories came like a biting flood.
The afternoons when she saw him reading calmly in the castle's hanging gardens, the warm nights when he debated ancient history tactics with her as if she were a general of equal rank, and the secret pride in his eyes when she solved mathematical equations.
All those luminous memories flooded her mind, horribly and violently contrasting with the disgusting image of her own brother Timothy's dagger brutally plunged into his chest.
— "He is gone, Ashes..." — Tilly sobbed, her voice completely broken by the deep, suffocating pain and the monstrosity of the familial betrayal; the mask of the unshakable and stoic ruler was shattered on the office floor. — "My father... My father is gone."
Ashes said nothing.
The warrior knew that empty words and comforting jargon did not cure the acute grief of an aching heart, nor did they bring the dead back.
The imposing Extraordinary warrior simply knelt beside the Princess's upholstered chair, ignoring the scraping of her iron greaves on the marble floor. And, with a delicacy and reverence that totally contradicted her brutal strength and destructive fame, Ashes enveloped Tilly in a long, protective, and absolutely silent embrace.
She rested her head on the Princess's shoulder, being the emotional shield and safe harbor needed, allowing the unparalleled leader of the witches to bitterly cry the cruel silver tears of her bloodline shattered by power.