After leaving the bathroom, she threw on sothing simple before calling her father.
"Hello, Father!"
"How are you doing, my sweet princess? Did you miss Papa?" Her father wore a gentle smile, his face filled with a boundless love she could almost feel through the screen. As always, it was suffocating. Flustered, she glared at him, but his smile never wavered.
"Wow! That look sends chills down my spine. You love Papa so much—keep glaring, my sweet princess."
"Ugh! Pervert!" Khione spat, trying to avert her eyes from her father, who seed not to care about anything else.
"Anyway, Father, I called you about Nero. My boyfriend."
She hadn’t even finished speaking before she felt the screen shudder. Her father’s mood plumted; his expression turned ugly, as if he had just chewed on a bug. She could feel the pressure of an Archmage through the video call, despite the distance.
"Calm down, Papa!" she interjected imdiately, knowing how quickly things could escalate. Those simple words worked like magic—especially Papa.
Her father seed to regain his composure. He took a deep breath. "What do you want to do? Should I send so Shadow Mages to protect you and that... annoying thief?"
He understood his daughter well and thought he knew what she would ask. But strangely, that wasn’t it.
"No, we don’t need that. I just want you to shield him using your influence. His own father and others will try to control him, and if they can’t, they might resort to sothing extre. The Leclair, Gnomus, and Raven clans are already behind him. If we add the Undine family, that’s four of the seven major clans supporting him. It would make things much easier."
Her father listened attentively and nodded. Even without her asking, this was exactly what he had intended to do. Although he was still unhappy that Nero had "stolen" his sweet daughter, he had to be rational. He understood Nero’s imnse value, and now, as a future in-law, it was his utmost duty to protect him.
"Okay. I understand," he said. "When are you coming back to see your Papa? I miss you dearly."
"I don’t know yet, but I’ll try to co back next break. With Nero." She made the promise, and her father nodded, though he wasn’t thrilled at the idea of Nero joining.
They talked a little longer before ending the call. Khione wiped away non-existent sweat. Talking with her father was always a challenge.
•••
The conversation with her father left a familiar, buzzing residue in her mind. Love, politics, suffocation, protection—it was a tangled knot. With classes resuming tomorrow and the looming uncertainty of field missions, there was only one way to burn off the static: train. The political gas would play out in drawing rooms and shadowed etings. Her arena was the training ground.
She changed into her fitted training gear, the dark, flexible material clinging to her form with an efficiency that ignored beauty, though it certainly didn’t hide it. In the corridors of the dormitory wing and across the main academy paths, cadets turned their heads. Whispers followed her like a wake. The Ice Queen. Khione Undine. Nero’s... She ignored them all. Her expression was a frozen lake under a moonless sky, giving back nothing. The only movent was the long cascade of her white hair, stirred by the evening breeze as she walked with lethal grace toward the isolated advanced training grounds.
Her chosen field was empty, bordered by high, rune-engraved walls that humd with containnt energy. She carried no grand staff, only a slender wand of pale blue crystal, small enough to be concealed in her palm. She began not with a spell, but with stillness. Sitting cross-legged in the very center of the arena, she closed her eyes. The world narrowed to the flow of prana within her. She drew it in from the atmosphere, cool and clarifying, pulling it through the circuits of her soul, condensing and storing it in her core. It was like breathing frost into a diamond, layer by ticulous layer. For twenty minutes, there was only silence and the gathering cold that began to radiate from her, coating the ground at her knees in a delicate, fractal hoarfrost.
When her eyes opened, they were the pale, clear blue of a glacial crevasse. She stood, her movents fluid and deliberate, and walked to a control panel on the wall. Her fingers tapped a sequence. This wasn’t just a sparring arena. It was a Gravity Forge.
A deep thrum vibrated through the stone. The air grew heavy. Khione’s posture straightened under the invisible weight. She dialed it up: two tis gravity. Her breath ca slightly sharper. Three tis. The muscles in her legs and core corded, holding her upright. Four tis standard gravity. Now, every movent would require four tis the effort, four tis the energy. Most mages would crumble, relying solely on distant spell-slinging. Khione Undine believed that was a fatal flaw. A mage’s body was the anchor for their will; if it broke, so did their power.
Under this crushing weight, she raised her wand.
The runes along the walls flared to life. From shimring points of light on the training ground floor, figures coalesced. Not simple dummies, but complex magical constructs—training golems, programd for combat. Three appeared. One was a knight-type, its stone form sheathed in shimring energy mimicking the Law of Fire, a blazing greatsword in its hands. The second was a mage-type, orb of crackling Lightning spinning above its palm. The third was another knight, this one wreathed in the rippling distortion of Shatter Law, its fists ready to break through any defense.
They attacked instantly, no fanfare, no warning.
The Fire Knight charged, its greatsword trailing embers. In normal gravity, Khione would have flowed aside like mist. Under four Gs, it was a brutal calculation of force. She didn’t try to dart. Instead, she planted her foot and thrust her wand forward. A wall of dense, blue-white ice, six feet thick, erupted from the ground between them. The greatsword smashed into it with a cataclysmic BOOM and a blast of steam. The ice held, but webbed with cracks.
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