Once Ritsuzen Gensai's imposing figure disappeared down the hall, Ren's paralyzed state finally broke. Frantic and distressed, he carefully gathered Kon's limp body into his arms, intending to sprint to the staff quarters. Surely, one of the servants had to know some basic healing arts.
But before Ren could even push himself off the floor, Kon's little body began to shimmer.
The fox's silver fur slowly turned transparent, breaking apart into a beautiful, terrifying flurry of warm, golden sparks. Before Ren could react, the glowing lights rushed directly into his chest, sinking beneath his skin.
"Ah!" Startled by the sudden phenomenon, Ren cried out. His eyes widened, filling with an entirely new level of dread and sheer panic. Kon was disappearing! This had never happened before.
Suddenly, a weak voice echoed directly inside his mind. 'Ugh... um...'
Ren whipped his head around, frantically searching the empty, marbled hallway for the source of the sound.
'Um? Ren-chan?' the voice called out again, carrying that unmistakable, familiar drawl, though it was strained with pain.
"Kon?!" Ren shouted aloud, his hands hovering over his own chest in disbelief.
'Ah... it seems I got injured a little too heavily,' Kon reassured him, his mental voice growing fainter by the second. 'Don't worry, Ren-chan. This fox just needs to sleep inside your body for a while to heal.' With that final explanation, the fox's presence quieted down, fading into a deep, silent slumber.
"Ah..." Ren sat frozen on the cold floor, taking a full minute to process Kon's words. Slowly, the crushing weight of his panic lifted, and he let out a profound, shuddering sigh of relief. He hadn't lost his friend.
**********
It took a moment for Ren to fully steady his racing heart. Once he did, he pushed himself up from the cold marble floor and made his way toward the staff quarters. Since it was already late into the night, the winding hallways were completely deserted, leaving him to walk the long, oppressive distance alone.
Standing outside the heavy wooden door of the servants' wing, Ren swallowed hard, trying to clear the nervous lump in his throat. He closed his eyes, took a deep, fortifying breath, and raised his small fist.
He knocked twice.
After a long, agonizing moment, the door slowly creaked open.
A young woman in her mid-twenties stood in the doorway, dressed in simple, pale sleepwear. She had long, straight black hair, but it was her eyes that always froze Ren in place—they were completely hollow, dark, and utterly devoid of life. She stared down at him without a single blink.
"Ritsuzen Ren. Is there anything you need?" the young woman intoned, her voice chillingly calm and flat.
"Ah... um..." Ren trembled. Of all the emotionless servants in the estate, this woman terrified him the most. Her name was Sato Tsumugi, and she was the caretaker who had raised him since birth. Yet, in all those years, she had never once shown him a shred of warmth.
"T-Tsumugi-nee," Ren stuttered, his voice practically vibrating with nerves. "C-c-can I... r-request a l-longsword?"
Tsumugi looked deeply at Ren. Her hollow gaze seemed to pierce right through him. Then, without missing a single beat or questioning why a young boy was asking for a weapon in the middle of the night, she replied in that same, robotic tone.
"It will be sent to your quarters tomorrow."
"Ah... Th-thank—"
Before Ren could even finish the word, the door gently but firmly clicked shut in his face.
"—you..." he whispered to the closed wood.
He let his shoulders drop, letting out a long, shaky sigh of relief. He had survived the encounter.
**********
The next morning, a sharp knock at the door pulled Ren from his sleep.
"Who is it?" Ren mumbled, groggily sitting up in bed.
When no reply came, Ren slipped his bare feet onto the floor and slowly padded toward the entrance. He slid the door open and immediately froze. His spine snapped perfectly straight, any lingering sleepiness vanishing in a heartbeat.
"T-Tsumugi-nee!"
Completely unbothered by his tardiness, Sato Tsumugi stood in her crisp, black-and-white maid uniform. Without a word of greeting, she held out a long, heavy object securely wrapped in strips of white cloth.
"The longsword you requested."
Remembering his terrifying late-night visit, Ren quickly bowed and accepted the bundle. "Th-thank you, Tsumugi-nee!"
Tsumugi didn't reply. She just stood there menacingly—or, at least, it felt incredibly menacing to Ren's traumatized mind.
Ren swallowed hard, the silence stretching uncomfortably. "I-is there something else you need, Tsumugi-nee?" he asked, realizing she had made no move to leave.
"Your breakfast," Tsumugi replied evenly.
Stepping slightly to the side, she revealed a silver trolley she had been keeping out of sight. Atop it sat a sumptuous, full-course traditional Japanese breakfast, the steam still gently rising from the miso soup and freshly grilled fish.
"Ah..." Ren let out a small sound of pure shock. Usually, he had to go to the estate's shared dining hall to eat. He rarely ever received personal meals from the staff; the last time that had happened, he had been far too young to walk.
"I was just passing by," Tsumugi added flatly, offering a rare, unprompted explanation for her unusual behavior.
Of course, Ren was far too terrified to realize the truth. Behind her stone-cold exterior, Tsumugi missed taking care of him terribly. In an estate filled with the gloomy, ruthless members of the Ritsuzen clan, baby Ren had been a rare ball of sunlight. She was a relatively normal person, and ever since he had grown old enough to walk and act independently, her daily interactions with him had plummeted.
Delivering this sword was simply the perfect excuse to prepare a lavish meal, all so this secret kuudere could quietly linger by his side just a little bit longer.
Without waiting for his reply, she pushed the silver trolley straight into Ren's room, leaving the boy completely shell-shocked.
"Eat," she commanded simply.
"Uuu... okay," Ren replied hesitantly, obediently sitting down.
Seeing his slightly fearful but incredibly cute expression, the faintest ghost of a smile tugged at the corners of Tsumugi's lips before vanishing just as quickly.
**********
Ren quickly devoured the sumptuous meal in suffocatingly awkward silence—at least, it felt suffocating to him. Tsumugi merely stood by the wall like an elegant statue, watching his every bite.
Seeing her still lingering after he set down his empty chopsticks, Ren nervously asked, "Is there anything else you need, Tsumugi-nee?"
Noticing he had finished, Tsumugi fired back a question of her own. "Do you know how to use that sword?"
Ren blinked, his face twisting in confusion. "Um... no."
"Do you have anyone to teach you?" The follow-up came startlingly fast, clipping the end of his sentence.
"Ah... no." Hearing the question dragged Ren's mood down. Remembering his one-month deadline to duel Riku, and the fact that his only "Sensei" was currently comatose inside his body, a heavy wave of depression washed over him.
"Hm."
Without another word or prompt, Tsumugi grabbed the handle of the empty trolley and turned toward the hallway. Just before stepping out, she tossed one final sentence over her shoulder.
"Four in the morning. Come to the staff quarters every day from now on."
Ren's eyes widened to the size of saucers as the unspoken meaning behind her words finally clicked. She was offering to train him!
"Ah! Th-thank—"
Click.
For the second time in twelve hours, the heavy door shut cleanly in his face before he could even finish the word.
**********
After cleaning himself up, Ren made his way back to the secluded clearing in the woods. He figured that after yesterday's humiliating events, Riku and his lackeys wouldn't dare show their faces around here for a while.
He took a deep breath, the cool forest air filling his lungs. He didn't want to waste a single second of his one-month deadline. With Kon forced into a deep slumber to heal, Ren had no one to hold his hand. If he was going to survive the upcoming duel against a fully trained heir, he needed to figure out how to actually wield his newly awakened spiritual power on his own.
Summoning a speck of silver light to his palms, Ren focused entirely on the faint glow. It felt warm, yet strangely weightless, like holding a captured star. He tried to force it to contract, attempting to squeeze the loose, drifting energy into a dense, solid ball.
It immediately rebelled. The moment he applied mental pressure, the light flickered wildly. It felt like trying to hold rushing water inside a fishing net. Before the light could fully gather together, it dispersed, vanishing into the air with a soft hiss.
Unbothered by the initial failure, Ren simply took a breath, reset his stance, and tried again.
He remembered what Kon had said yesterday: discipline was the most efficient way to grow the soul. True discipline wasn't just doing something once; it was repeating a task until muscle memory took over and the mind achieved a state of absolute clarity. So, he was going to apply that exact philosophy to his training.
First, he needed to set a clear, repetitive goal for himself. His objective for today was simple: successfully compress his raw spiritual power into a dense, stable sphere that could actually be used as an attack.
Ten attempts turned into fifty. Fifty turned into a hundred.
The physical toll of manipulating raw spiritual energy began to show. Sweat beaded on his forehead, stinging his eyes as it rolled down his cheeks. His hands trembled violently with every attempt, the invisible strain making his muscles ache and his eyes burn with a dull, throbbing heat. Yet every time the light shattered and faded away, Ren simply bit his lip, summoned another wisp of silver energy, and started over. He used the terrifying memory of Gensai's heavy, crushing mana from the hallway as a mental blueprint for what true "pressure" should feel like.
He kept at it until the afternoon sun began to dip below the treeline, steadily improving with every single attempt. There was a clear, deliberate shift in the way his spiritual power moved. Every time he tried to compress the energy now, the silver light drew tighter and tighter, no longer slipping through his invisible mental grasp, until it finally coalesced into a glowing sphere.
Yet even though he succeeded in forming the shape, Ren felt no sense of accomplishment. The sphere felt far too loose, completely lacking the heavy density needed to cause any real damage. It was like holding a ball of cotton rather than a weapon.
Despite his growing exhaustion and the sharp headache pounding behind his eyes, Ren gritted his teeth and pushed forward.
What Kon had failed to mention was that the constant, exhaustive depletion of spiritual energy also forced the soul's capacity to expand. By entering a state of repetitive discipline akin to deep meditation, Ren was inadvertently combining the two most effective methods of growth. With every cycle of compression and release, he could feel his spiritual capacity stretching and growing slightly, the raw exercise forcing his core to adapt and naturally replenish the energy he was spending. If Kon had been awake to witness this, the little fox's jaw would have hit the dirt. To show such visible, tangible progress in a single afternoon was virtually unheard of in the world of Onmyōji. What took most seasoned practitioners days, or even months, of gruelling discipline, Ren was achieving through sheer, stubborn repetition and an iron will fuelled by desperation.
The shadows in the woods grew long and dark. He kept at it until, finally, a result he was actually satisfied with appeared in his palm.
It was a tiny, concentrated sphere of glowing silver, no larger than a plum. But unlike the loose cotton balls from an hour ago, this one felt dangerous. The dense energy inside constantly fought to escape his grasp, emitting a high-pitched, vibrating hum. Through sheer force of will, Ren kept it tightly compressed. Its surface continuously distorted and rippled, vibrating like a miniature ball of pure chaos trapped within a fragile glass boundary. The friction of the compressed energy was so intense it actually stung the skin of his palms.
Eager to test his creation, Ren stepped forward, his legs shaking slightly from fatigue.
"Whooo..." Exhaling a long breath he hadn't realized he was holding, he walked toward a thick, ancient oak tree. Slowly but deliberately, he pulled his arm back, bracing his stance. With a sharp exhale, he thrust his palm and the violently vibrating sphere directly into the wooden trunk.
Crack!
With a sharp snap that echoed through the quiet clearing, a chunk of bark splintered and flew off the trunk. A harsh recoil shot up Ren's arm, making his shoulder throb.
He lowered his hand, panting heavily as he inspected the damage.
Seeing the result, Ren frowned in deep dissatisfaction. The attack power was still far too weak. Even with all that agonizing compression and hours of straining his mind to the limit, hitting a real opponent with this would cause skin-deep damage at most.
"Sigh..." Feeling a little downcast and utterly drained, Ren slumped onto the cool grass to rest. He let the chill of the evening air soothe his overheated body while his depleted strength slowly replenished. Once he had recovered enough to stand, he brushed the dirt off his clothes and made the quiet, lonely trek back to his room in the estate. He needed to sleep. 4:00 AM was going to come very quickly.