The first few weeks at the Rodwell estate blurred into a haze of sensory overload. For Octavia, the transition was a struggle of a different kind. Despite the servants' frantic pleas for her to rest, she refused to be a decorative fixture in the mansion. She could be found in the kitchens or the gardens, her sleeves rolled up, working alongside the staff. Her excuse was always the same. "I cannot know a house until I have felt the soil in its garden and the heat of its hearth."
Eventually, Count Leyhwin ceased his attempts to restrain her. He recognized that for a woman who had spent sixteen years in the dirt of the North, idleness was its own kind of prison. As long as she was comfortable, he allowed her to move through the mansion like a gentle, domestic ghost.
For Athel, however, there was no such leniency.
He had foolishly imagined that a Mage's training consisted of quiet libraries and the soft turning of pages. The reality was a grueling, bone-deep exhaustion that bordered on torture. Under Leyhwin's tutelage, seconds stretched into minutes, and hours felt like eternal days.
His routine began before the dew had even settled on the grass. The mornings were dedicated to brutal physical conditioning, pushing his body until his muscles screamed. When the sun reached its zenith, the physical labor was traded for mental strain, hours of pouring over complex magical theory until his head throbbed. As twilight fell, he was forced to manifest those theories into reality, practicing until his mana felt like dry sand in his veins.
To Leyhwin's visible surprise, Athel did not break. By the end of the first week, the boy had not only survived but was beginning to adapt at a terrifying rate.
Athel lived in a constant state of trance. Even in the depths of sleep, his senses remained tethered to the world. He could feel the heartbeat of the mansion, the scurrying of mice in the walls, and the shift of the wind outside his window. It was the direct result of Leyhwin's "Internal Circulation" method.
The Count paced the training hall, his presence heavy and suffocating. "It makes me easy to find—like a bonfire in a dark forest—but it ensures I am never vulnerable. It bridges the gap between the Mage and the Knight."
He explained that while Mages store mana in their Circles to project it, Knights take mana from the atmosphere and "combust" it within their bodies to create Aura Stars. These stars act as temporary engines for incredible feats of strength, but they lack the versatility of true sorcery.
Athel looked at his master, his curiosity piqued despite his exhaustion. "Then... how is it that you fight, Master? Are you a Mage who acts like a Knight?"
Leyhwin offered a sharp, predatory smirk. He reached to his hip, his hand resting on the pommel of a sword Athel had rarely seen him draw.
"I do not choose between the two, Athel. I fight with both steel and sorcery in equal measure."
The revelation struck Athel with the force of a physical blow. In the Kingdom of Rividia, the roles were rigid, you were either a master of the robe or a master of the blade. The concept of a "Magic Swordsman" was a myth whispered by traveling merchants, a legend of foreign lands that Rividia had never managed to replicate.
Standing before him was the living embodiment of that legend. Athel realized then that Leyhwin wasn't just training him to be a mage, he was training him to be a weapon that the Kingdom wasn't prepared to handle.