Six months.
Six months in this frozen hell, and it had reforged me.
The girl who had sobbed over a spilled coffee cup in Lundenburg was gone, burned away in the crucible of my father's training yard. I felt her absence like a phantom limb, a memory of weakness that no longer fit the body I inhabited.
The training sword in my hand was no longer a clumsy, foreign weight. It was an extension of my arm. My body, once soft and unremarkable, was now a landscape of hard muscle and taut sinew. A lattice of faint, silvery scars crisscrossed my arms and back, a testament to every failed parry and misstep. My hands were calloused, my knuckles were scarred, and for the first time in my life, I felt solid. Grounded. Dangerous.
Commander Andorra lunged, her movements a blur of red hair and black steel. Six months ago, her speed would have been unthinkable, her attack an inevitability. Now, I saw it. I met her blade with a ringing clang that sent a shockwave up my arm, not of pain, but of power. My Aether, once a sluggish trickle, now surged at my command, a current of icy energy reinforcing my block.
I twisted, using her momentum against her, and drove my elbow hard into the gap between her pauldron and breastplate. The blow landed with a solid thud. She grunted, stumbling back a step, a flicker of genuine surprise in her eyes. It was the first clean hit I had landed on her in all this time.
"Better," she growled, a feral grin splitting her scarred face. "You are beginning to move like a predator, not prey."
"My father is a patient teacher," I replied, my voice level, my breath coming in controlled bursts despite the exertion.
We circled each other on the packed, frozen earth, our breaths pluming in the frigid air. The fight was no longer a lesson. It was a duel. We exchanged blows, the ring of steel a constant, brutal music. I was still outmatched in experience, but no longer in strength or speed. My body reacted on instinct, the endless drills hammered into my very bones. I could feel the thrum of the Citadel around me, the latent power in the ancient stones, and I could draw on it. The blood of the Pendragons was finally waking up.
The spar ended when my father's voice cut through the air, sharp and imperious as a whip-crack.
"Enough. Seraphina. My study. Now."
Commander Andorra immediately stepped back and bowed. I nodded to her, my chest heaving, every muscle burning with a clean, satisfying fire. Wiping sweat from my brow with the back of a leather gauntlet, I followed the summons.
Yuri Pendragon's study was a monument to the nature of his house. The walls were not lined with books, but with maps of the treacherous North, the skulls of slain monsters, and display cases holding relics from forgotten ruins—glowing crystals, crowns of petrified wood, and blades that hummed with a malevolent energy. He stood before a massive table carved from a single slab of black stone, a detailed map of the Wyrmfrost Peaks spread across it.
He did not look up as I entered. "Your academic training is complete. Your physical conditioning is… acceptable."
Coming from him, that was the highest praise.
"I have a mission for you," he said, finally raising his icy eyes to meet mine. He tapped a point on the map, a desolate, uncharted region deep within the mountains. "Here. The Frost-Veil Barrow. It was a tomb for one of the ancient Jarls who ruled these lands before our ancestors arrived. It has long since been corrupted. It is now a dungeon."
Dungeons. I had read about them in my studies. Wounds in the world, places where the veil between realms was thin. They festered, spawning monstrous life and magical anomalies, growing around a nexus of power like a pearl forming around a grain of sand. They were death traps, sought out only by desperate sell-swords or nobles with more courage than sense, hunting for relics and glory.
"The Order of the Hydra has confirmed it is a Class-Three delve," he continued, his tone flat. "Infested with Grendelkin, their brood-mother, and plagued by pockets of Whispering Ice. Your task is to enter it, clear it of all hostile life, and retrieve its heart."
My blood ran cold. "Alone?" The word was a whisper.
"Yes."
"But… a Class-Three… that's a task for a full party of knights."
"Knights do not carry my blood," he said, dismissing my protest with a wave of his hand. He looked at me, his gaze so intense it felt like a physical weight. "This is not a request, Seraphina. It is your final exam. You will go to the heart of the barrow, you will find the Dungeon Core—the Heartstone—and you will consume it."
I stared at him, my mind reeling. "Consume it? What do you mean, consume it?"
"Just what I said," he replied, a cruel smile touching his lips. "You will absorb its power. Make it a part of you. It is the birthright of our line. How do you think the first Pendragon conquered this unforgiving land? Not by asking nicely. We take our power. We devour it. We are not shepherds, Seraphina. We are dragons."
The air crackled with the weight of his words. This was the dark secret of their strength. Not just Aetheric might, but a primal, predatory ability to absorb the power of the world itself.
The newly forged strength in my limbs felt like a fragile shell around the terrified girl still huddled inside me. "Father… I can't. I don't know if I can conquer a place like that. Not alone."
His expression hardened into granite. He crossed the room in two long strides, his presence so immense he seemed to blot out the light. He stopped before me, close enough that I could see the faint, ancient scar that cut through his left eyebrow.
"I did not waste six months of my time to forge a coward," he hissed, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "I have beaten the weakness out of you. I have sharpened you into a weapon. That barrow is your whetstone. The monsters within are nothing more than practice. You are a Pendragon. Your blood craves this. The power is waiting for you."
He reached out and gripped my shoulder, his fingers like iron talons. The Aether in him flared, and I felt a jolt of raw power, cold and invigorating, shoot through me. It was not gentle. It was a brand.
"Every Pendragon has their first Heartstone. It is the ritual that marks us. That makes us who we are."
He released me, his eyes burning into mine.
"This one is yours. Go and take what belongs to you. And do not dare return to my sight without it."