Once, she tried to reach the limit of cooling, and the mist in her palm suddenly crystallized into countless ice shards, instantly draining the surrounding heat.
Piercing cold seeped into her palm, and her entire arm remained numb for several hours.
She understood that every leap in power had to be measured against the boundaries of her own body.
The high-intensity training left marks on her body.
Sometimes at the dinner table, Robin would see her fingertips gripping the soup spoon, trembling uncontrollably.
Late at night, she would hear Seraphilia making faint gasps in her sleep due to muscle fatigue.
This evening, when Seraphilia returned, her face was even paler than usual, and a fresh bruise on her left temple was particularly striking.
That was left by the "Cloud Lock" snapping back out of control while she was practicing its swing.
She prepared food silently as usual, but her movements were a beat slower.
Robin put down her book, walked to the fireplace, and took the soup spoon from her hand.
"I'll do it."
Two words, very soft, yet carrying an undeniable force.
Seraphilia was stunned; she didn't insist and stepped aside to sit down.
She watched Robin's somewhat clumsy but incredibly serious profile; in the flickering firelight, that face was daily regaining its vitality.
"Are you..." Robin didn't look back, her voice very low, "doing something dangerous?"
Seraphilia was silent for a moment.
"Just practicing," she replied flatly. "Getting familiar with my tools. In this place, the sharper the tool, the better."
"A tool that hurts yourself?" Robin's hand stirring the soup spoon paused for a moment.
"A small price is unavoidable."
Robin didn't ask further.
The soup was ready; she ladled two bowls and pushed the one with more ingredients toward Seraphilia.
The night grew deep.
In her sleep, Seraphilia felt a cool, soothing sensation on the wound at her temple.
She struggled to open her eyes.
By the Moonlight seeping in from the window, she saw a palm-sized hand, supported by the phantoms of four tiny arms, hovering in front of her forehead.
From the phantom hand, a cool breeze with the scent of herbs was gently blowing against the bruise.
On the other side of the room, Robin had her back to her, breathing steadily, seemingly fast asleep.
Seraphilia watched the hand quietly.
A few seconds later, the hand quietly dissipated.
In the darkness, her ice-blue eyes softened for a fleeting moment.
Winter in Black Iron Town arrived as expected, bringing with it the piercing chill unique to a seaport.
The price of firewood skyrocketed.
Seraphilia found The Steward and proposed a new "high-end service": precise "Cloud Mist environmental control" for special cargo.
For example, building a mobile constant-temperature cold storage for potions that needed low-temperature preservation.
Or creating an absolutely dry isolation space for ancient parchment scrolls that feared moisture.
The Steward gave her a test task: keep a batch of rare powder absolutely dry while left out in the open overnight.
That night, the north wind was like a knife.
Seraphilia guarded the cargo all night, her mental power spreading out in an unprecedented way.
Above the powder, she constructed a complex Cloud Mist system: warm clouds flowing slowly on top to carry away moisture; dense cloud walls on the sides to block the cold wind; and at the core, a "Dry Isolation Layer" that approached zero humidity.
This drain on her mental power was like opening a floodgate.
By dawn, she was nearly collapsed from exhaustion.
But the powder was as dry as before.
She received two silver coins and a promise: "If there's similar work in the future, I'll look for you."
This money bought thick felt to block the window cracks, a mountain of firewood, and a small, precious jar of honey.
The cold also became her best training ground.
On a morning where breath turned to frost, she pushed a mass of highly compressed mist to the limit of cooling in an unprecedentedly aggressive way.
Inside the mist, countless white ice crystals appeared out of thin air, swirling, colliding, and condensing!
Finally, an ice spike about twenty centimeters long, rough in shape and constantly dropping ice chips, hovered in her palm.
It was unstable, and its hardness was far from that of real ice.
But when the first light of dawn hit it, reflecting a cold and piercing glare, Seraphilia knew that a brand new path had opened before her.
Clouds could not only protect and deflect force.
They could also condense into blades.
She gripped the rapidly melting ice spike, the piercing cold and the burning sting in her palm intertwining.
Her ice-blue eyes, however, were strikingly bright.
The Soft Cloud Shield was not yet solid, and the Cloud Lock was far from taking shape.
But the hearth fire was lit, and the path ahead was clear.
She shook off the icy water from her palm, turned, and walked toward the small house where a wisp of cooking smoke was rising.
There was someone there she wanted to protect.
And a bowl of hot soup waiting for her return.