The training yard stretched before him, empty and merciless.
Sweat poured down Noel's forehead, tracing a path to his chin before dripping onto the packed earth below. Each breath came ragged and raw, his lungs burning with every inhale. His legs screamed. His arms trembled. Every muscle in his body cried out in unison, a chorus of pain that seemed to mock his efforts.
*Curse this wretched world.*
He lifted the iron bar again.
*Curse my father.*
Another step.
*Curse—*
The bar hit the ground with a dull thud. Noel doubled over, hands on his knees, chest heaving.
Why am I even doing this?
The question dragged him back to yesterday.
After returning from Velmora, his father had been waiting at the mansion entrance something that almost never happened. Rowan Hendrix was not a man who showed excitement. He was stone. A mountain. The kind of father who measured approval in silence and disappointment the same way.
He had been waiting for them.
As they stepped inside, his father immediately asked about the assessment.
Noel told him. The orange glow. The murmurs. King-tier potential.
When Rowan heard about Noel's talent, he had been overjoyed. His son had potential one of the rising talents in the kingdom.
"Good," Rowan had said. Then the question came, sharp and immediate. "Which path?"
Noel had stood there, the weight of the day pressing against his ribs, and said the only honest thing he could.
"I don't know. I haven't decided."
His father's gaze had narrowed, not in disappointment but in something sharper. Curiosity.
But I do know, Noel thought.
If he was being honest with himself truly honest he had known for a while.
Mage.
He thought about what a mage could do. No need to stand on the front lines with a sword in hand, watching enemies close the distance. No need to feel the heat of their breath or the weight of their steel.
Just distance. Power. A single lifted finger.
One spell. One explosion. One enemy turned to ash before they even knew what hit them.
The thought sent a shiver of excitement through him.
Imagine it. Sitting in a carriage, sipping tea, and wiping out an entire battalion with a wave of his hand.
He started grinning.
Imagine the looks on their faces.
His grin widened.
Imagine….
The cost.
Spell scrolls, rare materials, artifacts… the cost of a single spell was absurd.
But if he became a mage…
He could build his own palace.
Mages devoured money like a black hole.
At some point, he had started grinning foolishly, practically drooling at the thought. It was all clearly visible on his face.
Rowan looked at him, his expression slowly shifting from curiosity to concern.
"Noel."
He didn't respond.
"Noel."
Still nothing.
His father's voice cut through the haze like a blade.
"Noel."
Noel blinked. The world snapped back into focus.
Rowan stood at the edge of the training yard, arms crossed, watching him with an expression hovering somewhere between confusion and concern.
Is he alright?
Noel straightened, snapping fully out of his thoughts.
"Have you decided?" Rowan asked.
Noel looked at him and nodded.
"Yes, I have."
His face lit up.
"I'm going to become a mage."
Rowan stood there in silence. His face stiffened slightly as he stared at his son.
But Noel didn't notice.
He had already started rambling about the greatness of mages.
"They can control the elements, cast powerful spells, destroy enemies from afar….."
Rowan stared at him.
Noel kept going.
"Do you know what it's like to sit a mile away from your enemy and turn them to ash with a single thought? No running, no swinging, no bleeding out in the mud. Just.." he gestured vaguely, grandly "fire from your fingertips. One spell and the battlefield is yours."
He was pacing now, his voice rising.
He stopped and turned back to his father with a bright, almost feverish grin.
Rowan stood there, unmoving.
His face was stiff. Frozen. Like a man who had just watched his son announce he was leaving to join a traveling circus.
*Is he really my son?*
The thought seemed carved into Rowan's expression.
From somewhere behind them, a laugh rang out.
Amelia stepped out from the mansion's side entrance, a cup of tea in her hand and the most smug, self-satisfied expression Noel had ever seen. She had clearly been listening to the entire conversation.
She walked toward them, her eyes fixed on her husband's stiffened, stupefied expression, and her smirk deepened with every step.
"That," she said, stopping beside Noel, "is my son."
She looked at Rowan like someone who had just won a very long, very personal war.
"He wants to become a mage."
Rowan's gaze shifted from his wife to his son and back again. Something unsettling flickered in his eyes a mix of betrayal and disbelief.
"A mage," he repeated, as if tasting something foul.
"That's what I said." Amelia's smirk widened.
Rowan's jaw tightened.
"And what," he said slowly, "is so good about being a mage?"
Noel opened his mouth to answer, but his father was already stepping forward, his voice rising.
"Weaklings," Rowan said. "All of them. Can't lift a sword, can't wear armor, can't stand in a real fight for more than three seconds before collapsing like wet paper."
He crossed his arms, glaring now not at Noel, but at Amelia, as if she had personally corrupted his son.
"Only cowards choose that path. Hiding in the back, trembling behind their little barriers while real soldiers do the bleeding. Sitting in dusty rooms all day, reading books like worms who've never seen grass, never felt the sun."
"Never felt the sun?"
Amelia's voice cut through his tirade like a blade.
She stepped forward, her tea forgotten, her eyes blazing with cold fire.
"Let me tell you about knights," she said, her voice deceptively calm.
Rowan's expression flickered a warning he should have heeded.
"Muscle," Amelia continued. "Just muscle. A sack of meat with a sword attached. Tell me, dear husband, what happens when your knight charges into battle and the ground beneath him turns to mud? What happens when the air fills with fog so thick you can't see your own hand? What happens when—"
"I can cut through fog," Rowan interrupted.
"Can you cut through an arrow from five hundred paces? Can you cut through a firestorm? Can you cut through reality itself when a high mage decides the laws of physics don't apply to you anymore?"
Rowan's eye twitched.
"Knights," Amelia said, savoring the word, "are simpletons. Brute force and blind charging. A knight solves every problem by hitting it until it stops moving. A mage thinks. We adapt. We don't need to swing a sword when we can turn your precious blade into molten slag from a hundred meters away."
"At least I can reach my enemy," Rowan shot back. "Your mages spend ten years learning to light a candle and then call it power."
"I can light more than candles."
"You can't take a hit."
"I don't need to take a hit. That's the point."
"Running away isn't a strategy."
"Tactical repositioning isn't running."
"You hide behind walls."
"You charge into traps."
"You wouldn't know a real fight if it bit you."
"You wouldn't know a thought if it bit you."
They stood face to face, inches apart, neither willing to back down. Rowan's face was red. Amelia's smirk had sharpened into something dangerous.
Noel watched them, his jaw slack, his earlier excitement completely forgotten.
His invincible father the man who had cut down bandits and ogres without flinching was arguing like a child.
His calm, composed mother the woman who had never raised her voice in nine years was practically snarling.
They sounded like street vendors arguing over prices.
Then—
Both of them turned.
Their eyes locked onto Noel at the same time.
"Which path are you going to choose?"
Their voices were perfectly synchronized. Rowan's was hard. Amelia's was sharp. Both were demanding.
Noel's mouth opened.
Nothing came out.
He looked at his father broad, solid, the embodiment of strength.
He looked at his mother graceful, precise, power humming beneath her skin.
Two paths. Two futures.
Two parents who suddenly looked like they might drag him in opposite directions until something broke.
"I—"
His voice cracked.
He didn't know how to answer.
And that was how he found himself in the training yard.
Pain screamed through every inch of his body. His mind felt ready to give out at any moment, but he endured.
Because mages had weakness in their bodies that was the truth everyone knew, the flaw everyone whispered about behind their hands. A mage could level a mountain but crumble under a dagger. Could summon storms but break under a single well-placed blow.
So he trained. Ran until his lungs burned. Lifted until his arms gave out. Pushed until his vision blurred and his stomach threatened to empty itself onto the dirt.
Rowan Hendrix had never given up on making him a knight.
Every morning, the same routine. Every session, the same expectation. His father's voice, steady and unyielding, calling out from the edge of the yard.
"One more."
Noel would grit his teeth and lift again.
"One more."
His arms would shake, his grip would falter, and he would lift again.
"One more."
The words had become a rhythm. A heartbeat. The only constant in a body that seemed determined to fall apart.
His mother was no different.
When evening came and the physical training ended, she would summon him to her study. Books stacked high. Mana theory dense enough to drown in. Incantations that twisted his tongue into knots.
"One more chapter," she would say.
"One more exercise."
"One more hour."
They were both trying to claim him his father forging him into steel, his mother shaping him into something finer. And Noel, caught between them, refused to break.
He would be both. He would be stronger.
Even if it killed him.
The one training him was his uncle, the commander of the garrison Alex Hendrix. His son, Oliver, was the captain of the unit.
Alex Hendrix was his father's younger brother, though the resemblance was only surface-deep. Where Rowan was stone and mountain, Alex was iron and edge leaner, sharper, with a commander's eyes that missed nothing. He ran the garrison on the northern border, a post that had carved lines into his face and a permanent hardness into his jaw.
Beside him stood his son, Oliver.
Oliver was everything a knight's son was supposed to be. Broad shoulders, easy confidence, the kind of smile that made training feel like a game. He was a captain now young for the rank, but no one who had served under him questioned why.
Both of them had come to visit three days ago. Both of them had heard the story.
Noel had made the mistake of telling them everything.
How he had announced he would become a mage. How his parents had erupted into an argument that shook the mansion walls. How he had stood there, frozen, while his father called mages cowards and his mother called knights simpletons.
He had thought his uncle would understand.
Instead, Alex had stared at him for a long moment, his expression unreadable.
Then he had laughed.
Not a polite chuckle. Not a sympathetic smile. A full, unrestrained burst of laughter that doubled him over, his hand slamming against Oliver's shoulder for support.
Oliver had lasted three seconds longer before he joined in.
They were still laughing now three days later, every time they looked at Noel, the memory of that story sent them spiraling again.
Noel's face twisted, not with malice but with irritation, as he cursed them both inwardly without showing it.
Then he heard a small sound.
A groan.
Noel turned.
His younger brother stood nearby, panting heavily, snot running from his nose to his lips. He could barely handle the weight of the training.
This poor soul, Noel thought.
When Noel had come to train, his brother had insisted on joining.
"I want to train too, brother."
Noel had thought he would stop him.
He didn't.
Instead, he welcomed him.
Share the pain with me, Noel thought with a faint sneer
If Noah could read his older brother's thoughts, he would have been crushed—probably calling him a terrible brother.