POV: Cain

  Let me begin with a little-known truth about magical education: nothing prepares you for it. Not being reborn, not living in a shack with nothing but boiled roots and sarcasm for years, not even having a high-ranking spirit as your borderline-violent life coach. Nope. None of it helps.

  Because nothing — absolutely nothing — could prepare me for Elemental Magic Manifestation css.

  We were ushered into a massive open-aired training hall on the second floor of the academy. Floating stone tiles glowed softly beneath our feet, humming with dormant enchantments. The pce looked like someone tried to build a temple, then gave up halfway and just spped runes on everything until it started working.

  The instructor, Professor Elrin Dawnspark, was an old elf who looked like he’d personally invented arrogance. Long, braided silver hair, golden eyes that sparkled like he knew everyone else was wrong, and a staff taller than my will to live.

  “Elemental Manifestation,” he began with all the enthusiasm of a man expining taxes, “is the art of aligning your internal mana with the elemental ley-lines of the world.”

  Transtion: point at the air and hope something happens.

  He raised his hand, chanted something that sounded like an eldritch throat exercise, and a pilr of fme spiraled up from the ground.

  Everyone gasped. I looked at Luna, who didn’t even blink.

  “Pretty basic fire spell,” she said. “It’s more for show.”

  Right. Basic. Totally casual inferno. No pressure.

  “Now repeat after me,” Dawnspark said, gesturing to the script behind him — a floating sb of ancient text that looked like someone had sneezed while writing with a knife.

  The css began repeating the chant. I squinted. “This is... dragon script?”

  “Draconic,” Luna corrected. “Half butchered by elven revisions. But yes. It’s old. Real magic prefers intention over vocabury, but chanting gives focus. Just... don’t chant without knowing the intent. You might accidentally incinerate your liver.”

  “Helpful.”

  She leaned in close. “Say this instead, and visualize wind pulling from your core—‘Veylun’shara enorith’. Then imagine pressure building and release it through your hand.”

  I gnced at Dawnspark, who was still trying to get a noble kid to manifest a water droplet.

  Nodded. Took a breath.

  “Veylun’shara enorith.”

  Wind exploded from my palm with a concussive whump, knocking over two desks and sending a noble girl’s perfectly arranged braids into complete rebellion.

  I coughed and offered an awkward wave. “Uh. Oops?”

  Dawnspark turned slowly. “...Passable,” he said. “Control it. Don’t just vomit wind at random.”

  “Yeah, I do that socially too.”

  Mana Control was next. Or for me, it was just “Luna’s Personal Hell Circuit.”

  While Dawnspark expined to everyone how to breathe, channel mana, and visualize threads of energy flowing through their spine, Luna grabbed me by the back of the colr and dragged me to the side of the hall.

  “You already formed your core,” she said. “No need to waste time.”

  She smmed her palm against my chest. I felt magic jerk into motion like an unwilling cat in a bath.

  “Focus on your diaphragm. Pull air into your core. Feel it gather at your center.”

  I did. Slowly. The bck-solid core inside me pulsed in rhythm with my breath. It felt... heavy. Like liquid mercury swirling around my bones.

  “Now refine,” she said. “Strip away impurities. You want crity, not chaos.”

  Easy for her to say. She was made of literal elemental harmony. I was just some reincarnated half-elf with PTSD and a sense of humor that upset dinner tables.

  Still, I managed. My core settled, pulsing smoother than before. Luna gave the tiniest of nods.

  “That’s it. You’re learning.”

  “Yay me.”

  Next came Magic Combat, which sounded cooler than it actually was.

  Instead of learning how to roast enemies like a bad rotisserie chicken, we got lectured for an hour on duel etiquette.

  Professor Tholric Bravestone, a dwarf who looked like someone carved a boulder into a man, barked out instructions in between correcting noble kids’ stances and eye-rolls.

  “When challenged to a formal duel, you must accept within three days, unless there's interference by a House, in which case—”

  I leaned toward Luna. “So it’s magical HR paperwork?”

  She didn’t answer. Probably because her soul was dying from boredom.

  And finally... Physical Training.

  This was supposed to be light stretching and foundational combat movement.

  Keyword: supposed to.

  But my personal spirit drill sergeant had other pns.

  While the other students ran mild ps and practiced light sword drills, Luna marched me to the far end of the training ground, handed me a weighted staff that felt like it was forged from pure spite, and said:

  “Swing it. Five hundred times.”

  “Five. Hundred.”

  “Fast. Clean. No cheating.”

  “I haven’t recovered from breakfast.”

  “You’ll earn your dinner, then.”

  And thus began Cain’s Personal Suffering Saga?.

  Professor Bravestone raised an eyebrow as I wheezed through my third hundredth swing.

  “She’s thorough.”

  “She’s homicidal.”

  “She’s seen more battles than you’ll ever imagine. Do what she says.”

  Noted. Dwarves don’t argue with murder wolves.

  POV: Vera Ashthorn

  In her private quarters atop the Arcanum Spire, Vera watched the boy through a floating crystal orb, her finger tapping rhythmically against her staff.

  He was exhausted. Raw. Fwed. But… promising.

  “A solid bck core after only a few days,” she murmured. “Spirit-bound. Emotionally detached. But sharp.”

  She flicked the orb to another angle. Cain, shirt half-clinging to his sweat-drenched frame, struggling to swing again under Luna’s direction.

  “The others were pampered. This one? Burned from birth. He might just survive.”

  POV: Cain

  When I finally dragged myself into the cafeteria, every muscle in my body was filing a wsuit.

  I colpsed into the nearest chair, face buried in the tray of food like a starving beast. There was stew, bread, roasted root vegetables, and some pastry thing I didn’t recognize but devoured anyway. Best. Meal. Ever.

  If this was prison food, I would commit a crime just to stay here.

  “Do not overeat,” Luna warned, sipping tea like she hadn’t turned me into a training dummy for four hours.

  “Says the immortal spirit who doesn’t need digestion.”

  She gave me a bnk stare. “Weakness is temporary. Growth is permanent.”

  “Yeah? Well, this bread roll is permanent now. It’s living in my soul.”

  After food, I barely made it back to the dorm, colpsed on the bed, and promised myself I wouldn’t move for the next century.

  Too bad Luna wasn’t done.

  “You still need to memorize chants,” she said, dropping a scroll on my face.

  “I’m illiterate.”

  “You’re not.”

  “I was happier before knowledge.”

  She dragged a chair and began teaching me Draconic pronunciation. Again.

  This was my life now.

  Magic, pain, food, more pain, dry chanting, colpse. Rinse. Repeat.

  And, for some reason I couldn’t expin, I didn’t hate it.