Sol-Regis Royal Academy – Sword Training Grounds. Late Afternoon – After School Hours.
The setting sun cast long, crimson shadows across the vast erald lawn behind the Knight’s dormitory. Usually, this place was a sanctuary for diligent students to practice their footwork or engage in friendly sparring. Today, however, the atmosphere had shifted into sothing far more sinister. It didn’t feel like a training ground anymore; it felt like an execution square.
Raphael Sudrath stood in the center of a tightening circle, his breath coming in ragged, painful gulps. His black-and-red uniform, a gift of fine Iron-Spider Silk that Rumina had grumbled about the cost of, was now caked in dust and stained with the green of crushed grass. His hands, though calloused from Riven’s hellish training back in the North, trembled with sheer exhaustion as he gripped a blunt wooden practice sword—a Bokken.
Surrounding him were five senior students, all third-years whose physiques were fully developed, their gazes filled with the casual cruelty of those who felt untouchable. They were Prince Caelus’s loyal dogs, chosen for their lack of conscience as much as their skill with a blade.
And there, sitting comfortably on a stone garden bench a few yards away, was Prince Caelus himself. He swirled a glass of vintage red wine, watching the scene with the detached amusent of a boy watching an insect struggle in a spider’s web.
"Co now, Sudrath," Caelus drawled, his voice dripping with boredom. "Aren’t you the brother of the great General Riven? The ’War Lion’ who supposedly eats iron for breakfast? It’s embarrassing to see his flesh and blood gasping for air against a re five opponents. Your brother is said to be able to face an entire army alone. Where is that fire now?"
Raphael spat a mouthful of blood-tinged saliva onto the grass. His ribs ached, likely bruised from a strike he hadn’t quite parried. "They... five people... all seniors..." he managed to choke out between breaths. "And I’ve... only been here... a day..."
"Excuses," Caelus said, snapping his fingers with a sharp click. "The world doesn’t care about your seniority or your age. It only cares about results. Break him down again. But rember—no broken bones. I just want him decorated in bruises. A colorful reminder of his place in this city."
Raphael shifted his weight, lowering his center of gravity just as Riven had taught him. He clenched his vibrating fists, trying to force the adrenaline to dull the ache in his muscles. He was acutely aware of the power gap. He was fourteen; they were seventeen and eighteen. He was outnumbered, outsized, and outmatched in raw mana capacity. Every move they made was calculated to wear him down, to humiliate him before he could even draw a second full breath.
But the Sudrath pride burned in his chest like a branding iron. It was a stubborn, irrational resolve that forbade him from dropping his wooden sword. He wouldn’t give Caelus the satisfaction of seeing him beg.
WUSH!
Senior 1 lunged from the left, a horizontal sweep aid at Raphael’s kidneys.
TAK!
Raphael parried, the vibration rattling his teeth.
Before he could reset, Senior 2 delivered a heavy front kick from the right. Raphael twisted his body, the air from the kick ruffling his hair, but Senior 3 was already behind him. A wooden blade slamd into the small of his back.
THUD!
"Argh!" Raphael collapsed forward, his knees hitting the dirt with a jarring impact.
The world spun. He tasted iron and dust. Before he could even begin to push himself up, the tips of two wooden swords were pressed against the back of his neck, cold and mocking.
"Ga over, Newbie," one of the seniors sneered, leaning down so his hot breath hit Raphael’s ear. "What now? Going to cry? Go ahead, call for your big brother. Maybe he can send a letter of complaint to the Headmaster."
A chorus of cruel laughter erupted from the circle. Caelus smiled, raising his glass in a mock toast to Raphael’s defeat.
Suddenly, a deep, relaxed voice cut through the laughter, coming from the direction of the main gate.
"Mind if I join the fun?"
The laughter died instantly. Heads turned.
Leaning casually against the wrought-iron gatepost was a man who looked entirely out of place in the refined, academic atmosphere of Sol-Regis. He was massive—standing nearly two ters tall with shoulders so broad they seed to block the fading sunlight. He wasn’t wearing armor or a formal military tunic; instead, he wore a simple, loose-fitting linen shirt with the sleeves rolled up, revealing forearms corded with thick veins and crisscrossed with white battle scars.
In his left hand, he held a greasy brown paper bag that slled strongly of street food—deep-fried fritters from the city market.
"Who the hell are you?" barked the largest senior, the leader of the group. "This is a restricted student area! Parents and visitors wait in the carriage lot!"
The man—Riven—offered a friendly, almost charming smile. But his eyes remained as cold and predatory as a lion watching a herd of unsuspecting gazelles.
"Oh, I’m not a parent," Riven said, pushing off the gatepost and strolling onto the field with a languid, dangerous grace. "Just a... Family Visit. Thought I’d check in on my little brother. I heard he was doing so ’extra-curricular training’."
Riven’s gaze drifted down to Raphael, who was still kneeling in the dirt, bruised and battered. The smile on Riven’s face widened, but the temperature on the field seed to plumt twenty degrees.
"Raph, you’re looking a bit dusty. Did you forget how to use your feet?"
"B-Brother Riven?" Raphael’s eyes went wide. He looked like he’d seen a ghost. "What are you doing here?!"
"Brother?" The seniors exchanged confused glances. They had heard the na General Riven Sudrath ntioned in hushed tones in history and strategy classes, usually accompanied by descriptions of a man clad in terrifying black armor and wielding a chainsaw-axe. They didn’t recognize this giant in a civilian shirt who was currently munching on an oily fritter. They thought he was just so thuggish uncle who had wandered off the streets.
"Hey, Old Man!" Senior 1 stepped forward, emboldened by his peers. He pointed his wooden sword directly at Riven’s nose. "Get out of here before I call the campus guards! You’re disrupting the Prince’s personal training session!"
Riven stared at the tip of the oak sword inches from his face. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even stop chewing.
Crunch.
"Kid," Riven said, his mouth half-full. "Pointing sticks at your elders is very poor etiquette. Did they not teach you that in this fancy school?"
With a movent too fast for a student’s eye to track—a movent that was little more than a lazy, flicking tap—Riven’s right hand struck the side of the wooden blade.
KRAK!
The practice sword, made of seasoned Northern Oak and reputed to be as hard as a Wyvern’s horn, shattered into a dozen jagged splinters that flew through the air like shrapnel.
Senior 1 stared at the pathetic stub of a handle left in his hand, his face turning a sickly shade of white.
"H...huh?"
"And as for the five of you..." Riven raised an eyebrow, looking them up and down as if assessing the quality of low-grade at at a discount market. "Ganging up on a fourteen-year-old freshman? Ck-ck-ck. In my unit, soldiers who think there’s honor in a five-on-one fight are usually given the ’privilege’ of cleaning the Wyvern stables with their toothbrushes."
"ATTACK HIM!" Senior 2 scread, his voice cracking under the weight of sudden, primal panic.
The remaining four seniors charged simultaneously, their boots thumping against the turf like war drums. It was a coordinated strike, the kind they had practiced for years.
Raphael didn’t move. He didn’t try to help. He knew his brother wasn’t fighting. He was teaching.
Riven didn’t shift his feet an inch. He used only his right hand, his left still firmly gripping the bag of fritters as if he were waiting in a lunch line rather than being attacked by four trained combatants.
BUGH. PLAK. DUK.
The sounds of the impacts were clean, muffled, and terrifyingly efficient. This wasn’t a brawl; it was a technical execution. Riven moved with the economy of a man who had killed thousands and didn’t want to waste a single calorie on "trash."
He caught the collars of Seniors 4 and 5 mid-lunge, his fingers like iron talons. With a casual flick of his wrists, he knocked their heads together.
DUNG!
The sound of skulls colliding echoed across the grounds. Within ten seconds—less ti than it took for the dust to settle—the five strongest seniors in the dormitory were sprawled on the grass, groaning in agony. They looked like a pile of discarded, dirty laundry.
Riven checked his paper bag. Not a single drop of oil had spilled onto his shirt.
"Weak," Riven murmured, his tone one of genuine disappointnt. "Is the current generation suffering from malnutrition? Or is the Capital just raising porcelain dolls?"
Riven then turned his head toward the stone bench.
His gaze locked onto Prince Caelus, who was now standing frozen, his wine glass trembling in his hand. The golden boy’s face was as pale as the listone buildings behind him. Caelus finally recognized the face. He had seen this man standing next to the King during the Morvath tribunals.
"Your Royal Highness, Prince Caelus, I presu?"
Riven began to walk toward him. Every step Riven took made Caelus take a stumbling step back, until the Prince’s back hit the cold stone wall of the equipnt shed.
Riven stopped directly in front of him. The height difference was staggering. Riven didn’t just tower over him; he seed to consu the very space around the Prince. He leaned down, bringing his face inches from Caelus’s.
"W-Who do you think you are..." Caelus stamred, trying to summon his royal authority, but his voice broke into a high-pitched squeak. "You dare threaten a Prince of the blood?"
"Threaten? Heavens, no, Your Highness," Riven smiled. It was a wide, friendly grin that didn’t reach his eyes. He reached out and patted Caelus’s shoulder—a pat that felt like being hit by a falling anvil.
"I am Riven Sudrath. Raphael’s big brother. I just wanted to stop by and say... thank you."
"T-Thank you?"
"Yes. Thank you for keeping my little brother company. He’s always been a bit lazy with his cardio, so a good run-around with five seniors is exactly what he needed," Riven’s voice dropped into a low, guttural whisper that made the Prince’s knees buckle.
"But Your Highness... a word of advice. If my brother ever cos ho with a broken bone... or if I ever hear that my little sister, Raveena, has been bothered by anyone..."
Riven squeezed Caelus’s shoulder just a fraction harder. Caelus winced, his face contorting in silent pain as he felt his collarbone groan under the pressure.
"...I might just forget that you’re a Prince. And my hands... well, they’ve spent twenty years on the battlefield. Sotis, they tend to slip. Mistakes happen. Even to Princes."
Riven released his grip and casually smoothed out the wrinkles in Caelus’s expensive silk tunic as if nothing had happened.
"Good evening, Your Highness. Study hard. The Kingdom needs its leaders to be... sturdy."
Riven turned his back on the Prince—the ultimate insult to royalty—and walked back to Raphael. He reached down and pulled his brother to his feet with a single, effortless jerk.
"Co on, Raph. Let’s go get so real food. I’m starving after that hospital trip."
Raphael stared at his brother, his eyes sparkling with a mixture of awe and disbelief. He looked at the five seniors still moaning on the ground and then at the Prince trembling against the wall.
"Brother... that was... you’re amazing."
"I was just taking out the trash," Riven shrugged, a thin smirk playing on his lips. "Let’s move before the instructors show up and start asking for paperwork. I hate paperwork."
They walked off the field, moving with a relaxed stride as if they hadn’t just humiliated the Royal family’s Seventh Prince and his elite guard.
Behind them, the only thing that dared to move was the wind.
That day, Prince Caelus learned a vital lesson: The Northern Lion never allows his cubs to be touched.
And from that mont on, his obsession with Raveena began to mutate. It was no longer just a simple attraction; it was sothing tangled, darker, and forever haunted by the shadow of a brother he could never cross.
The seeds of trouble had been sown.
And the world of the Academy could only wait for them to grow into a storm.
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