Chapter 35: Resolve

The air was brisk in the early hours of the morning, clinging to the skin like dew, clean and cool, tinged with the faint scent of earth and mist.

The manor grounds were still asleep, cloaked in gentle fog that hung low along the grass and wove itself lazily around the old hedgerows and marble statues.

Two figures walked quietly along the gravel path, boots crunching against scattered stones and fallen leaves.

Sir Richardson, coat draped loosely over his shoulders, hands behind his back in his usual disciplined gait, strolled beside Terrin, who rubbed the back of his neck and stifled a yawn.

“Feels like the whole estate’s been walking on a sword’s edge,” Terrin muttered, his voice low.

“Between the runes acting up, the harvest, and the break in-”

“At least you have the harvest under control,” Richardson interjected flatly.

“Barely. And even if it's going well and about, we still have no idea what we are supposed to do with the damn fruits after they get from the tree to the baskets.”

Sir Richardson huffed a rare, tired chuckle.

“Fair point.”

They walked in a comfortable silence for a few moments, the kind of silence born of men too old and too used to the weight of their responsibilities to need to fill the quiet.

The fog had begun to lift slightly as they rounded the bend to the western side of the estate, the side often reserved for solitude.

Gardens left half-tamed, open fields of dew-frosted grass, and the occasional decorative stone archway that no longer led anywhere.

It was there, beyond a hedge of lavender and faded rose thorns, that they saw him.

Lucien.

Running.

Shirt clinging to his back with sweat, face flushed, hair matted and wild from the damp.

He sprinted like something was chasing him, his footfalls uneven, not with inexperience but with sheer exhaustion.

He completed the circuit around the grass path before staggering to a stop, bending over, hands on his knees as he gasped for breath.

And then.

A yell.

A raw, guttural cry of frustration that tore through the stillness like a blade.

Not one of rage or madness.

But pain.

Unfiltered.

Terrin blinked, eyebrows climbing toward his barely existing hairline.

“What in the hells…”

Before he could finish, Lucien launched forward again, arms pumping, teeth grit as he forced his legs to move.

The run wasn’t graceful.

It wasn’t fluid.

It was desperate.

Richardson raised a brow, saying nothing at first.

They stood silently, hidden partially by the thick hedgerow, watching the boy push himself like a condemned man trying to outrun fate.

Terrin turned to Richardson.

“What’s gotten into him?”

Richardson’s silence stretched for several long seconds.

Eventually, he shook his head slowly.

“I haven’t the faintest idea.”

There was no discipline in Lucien’s movements.

No military form or structured interval pacing.

This wasn’t training.

This was something else, something private and volatile.

A storm trapped in the skin of a teenage boy.

Terrin tilted his head slightly.

“Should we… check on him?”

Richardson hesitated, then stepped back from the hedge and motioned for Terrin to follow.

“No. Whatever that is, it’s not for us to interfere with. Let the boy be.”

Terrin gave one last look over his shoulder before nodding and following Richardson back toward the main path.

“Well, if he keels over, I’m not dragging him to the infirmary.”

Richardson smirked.

“You will. We both know it.”

They walked in silence for a few more minutes, the quiet of the estate settling back over them like a blanket.

But the image of Lucien running, pushing himself to collapse, clung stubbornly to both of their thoughts.

Eventually, Terrin spoke again, his voice lower now, more serious.

“Any progress on the rune tampering?”

Richardson’s expression hardened.

“Some,” he admitted.

“But not enough.”

Terrin frowned.

“You think it was one of ours?”

“That’s the problem. I don’t. I hand-picked every staff member under this roof. Most of them I’ve worked with for years, some since before Lady Seraphina even arrived. They’re competent. Loyal. And if I had so much as a sliver of doubt about any of them, they wouldn’t be here.”

Terrin nodded slowly.

“So if it wasn’t them…”

“Then it was someone else,” Richardson finished grimly.

They stopped by an old, weather-worn statue of a weeping angel.

Moss had claimed her feet.

Her wings were chipped.

But she still stood, hands cupped as if holding something that had long since vanished.

Terrin turned to Richardson.

“That only leaves the outsiders.”

“Vaelira and Thalia,” Richardson said quietly.

Terrin glanced at him.

“You really think neither of them had motive?”

Richardson didn’t answer at first.

His gaze lingered on the angel.

He looked tired again, older somehow.

He exhaled through his nose.

“If it were Thalia,” Terrin continued, “I could maybe see it. She always has that look of like she got something behind those eyes. Always watching too carefully. Always speaking in half-phrases. But Vaelira? I don’t see it.”

“And neither do I,” Richardson agreed. “Even if Thalia had motive, the means and timing still don’t add up. And Vaelira, whatever else she may be, is not a backstabber.”

Terrin crossed his arms.

“So what makes you so sure it’s not them?”

Richardson looked at him finally, and a faint smirk tugged at the corners of his lips.

“My gut?”

Terrin raised an eyebrow.

“Again with the malfunctioning gut of yours?”

But Richardson shook his head.

“No,” he said, and this time, his voice was clear.

Certain.

“It’s actually something more simple… and grounded.”

***

The first light of dawn crept lazily through the heavy velvet curtains of Vaelira’s chamber, casting soft amber across the wood-paneled floor.

A gentle breeze teased through the cracked window, fluttering the gauzy inner drapes and stirring the scent of the garden dew into the room.

Vaelira stirred beneath her covers, one eye opening reluctantly, then the other.

She lay there in the half-light for a moment, groggy but alert in that soldier-born way of waking.

A quiet exhale left her lips before she blinked up at the canopy of her bed.

It was too early.

And yet, something tugged at her senses.

A faint, rhythmic pounding.

The kind that one wouldn’t notice immediately unless they were already listening for the world.

Frowning slightly, she pushed herself upright and swung her legs over the side of the bed.

The polished wooden floor was cold under her feet, but she didn’t flinch as she padded quietly toward the tall window.

She pushed the curtain aside, gaze falling across the estate grounds.

There, in the still-golden hush of morning, she saw him.

Lucien.

Running laps across the dew-slicked grass, his form hunched forward slightly, movements ragged but determined.

His shirt was clinging to him with sweat already, and even from here she could tell, he wasn’t just exercising.

He was punishing himself.

Vaelira’s brows knit in confusion.

“What in the Stars’ breath are you doing now?”

She muttered under her breath, her voice still thick with sleep.

She leaned a little closer to the window, as if proximity would explain the madness unfolding below.

He ran like something was chasing him.

And it was only then, as her mind began to stir awake fully, that the memories of last night flooded back.

The paper.

The folding.

The impossible.

Her gaze drifted automatically across the room, to the desk where the crane still sat, quiet now, inert.

Its delicate wings were frozen mid-flutter, poised as if waiting to be brought back to life again.

She stared at it for a long moment.

It hadn’t moved since the night before, but something about its presence still unsettled her.

A piece of folded paper should not command this much attention.

And yet, it did.

As if by simply existing, it challenged everything she thought she knew about magic and mana and the limits that bound them.

And he had made it.

Without effort.

Without knowledge.

Without intent.

Her eyes flicked back down to Lucien.

Who now looked like he was on the verge of collapsing in the mud out of sheer bloody-minded determination.

She sighed, long and deep, before turning from the window and grabbing her robe from the chair.

“If he keeps going like that,” she muttered as she slid her arms through the sleeves, “his heart is going to explode before breakfast.”

She made her way to the door but paused at the threshold, glancing once more toward the crane on her desk.

There was a weight to that moment.

A thought she hadn’t spoken aloud, not even to herself.

She shook her head, banishing the thought as she opened the door and stepped into the hall.

As she walked, her footsteps steady and soft, she grumbled under her breath, but there was the faintest curl of a smile at the edges of her mouth.

“Stubborn little idiot,” she muttered.

“But I’ll give you this… stubbornness has its perks.”

Her pace quickened slightly.

After all, if someone didn’t stop him soon, he’d either unlock the secrets of the universe, or run himself into an early grave trying.

And both were equally possible.

***

“The body is the conduit. The soul is the source. The mind is the governor.

To strengthen the body is to widen the path through which mana flows.

To master the mind is to shape its current.

And to understand the soul… is to know where it all begins.”

[A Practical Guide to Mana Infusion and Control, Chapter 2: On the Union of Flesh and Flow]

Lucien’s feet pounded against the grass, each step sending a dull shockwave through his calves, up to his hips, all the way to the base of his spine.

Sweat clung to his skin like armor left to rot, heavy and suffocating.

His breath came in ragged bursts now, sharp stabs of air dragging through his throat like knives.

‘Faster. Just a little more.’

His legs screamed in protest.

But he didn’t stop.

He couldn’t stop.

That passage, it hadn’t left his mind since he read it, scrawled in fine, looping script on brittle parchment in the library of his memories.

He hadn’t even meant to read that book.

But the words had burned themselves into his mind, etched deep like a spell circle carved into flesh.

“To strengthen the body is to optimize the flow of mana.”

He clenched his teeth as he pushed through another lap, the side of his ribs aching where the bandages still wrapped him tight.

The healing wasn’t finished.

The bruises beneath still sang a quiet, miserable song with every step.

“To optimize the mana is to let magic flourish.”

Magic.

That word still felt foreign in his mouth.

Unreal.

Something that belonged in his sister’s games and not in his reality.

And yet.

There was that.

The crane.

That impossible act of quiet magic, born not of incantation or technique, but of something else.

Something deeper.

Something terrifying.

He hadn’t tried to cast a spell.

He didn’t even know what spell it could’ve been.

And yet it moved.

It breathed.

It flew.

He let out a long breath that turned into a dry laugh, hoarse and exhausted as he stumbled to a stop.

He bent over, hands on his knees, trying to steady his pulse.

“You think you’re gonna survive this world with a trick like that?”

He muttered bitterly to himself.

“You think that’s enough?”

It wasn’t.

He knew it wasn’t.

A single show of wonder wasn’t going to save him from Leonardo.

From fate.

From the slow, grinding jaws of a story that wanted to chew him up and spit him out.

No.

That wouldn't do.

He had to become stronger.

Not just magically.

Physically.

Mentally.

Completely.

Because he knew, deep down, how pathetic his body was.

Too thin.

Too slow.

Too fragile.

Every burst of strength he’d felt before, when panic surged, when instinct screamed, had come from adrenaline, not mastery.

Mana pouring recklessly through an untrained vessel.

Like trying to force a river through cracked pipes.

It was unsustainable.

Dangerous.

He’d seen the signs.

How it burned on the edges of his nerves.

The moments after those bursts where his body failed him, shivered and gave out.

If he wanted to wield his mana properly, control it… his body had to be more.

He had to rebuild himself, brick by bloody brick.

But then came the doubt.

That familiar voice.

‘Can you really do it? With this… peculiarity of yours? Your mana doesn't even follow the norms set up by the rules of conventional magic. Sure you can do fancy tricks but how useful is it where it actually matters?’

His jaw tightened.

Even Ms. Celeste, odd and whimsical as she was, had admitted as much.

There were others before.

Those with mana flows that didn’t follow the typical channels.

There must be more people who manifested magic like him.

Through instinct.

Through the soul.

‘The soul…’

Was this magic his?

Or was this of Lucien Crowley’s.

Did it matter?

A condition, Ms. Celeste had called it.