Tobias and Mistress Harrow went to their room to rest. Tobias, having returned from his adventure, put down a bigger-than-normal pouch on a small desk in their room.
"Quite the sum," Mistress Harrow remarked.
Tobias had earned quite a bit from the escort quest he had taken on—mostly due to the additional payment awarded for surviving the far longer and more dangerous quest, it had become. Snowstorms, lost supplies, and monster attacks had stretched a two-month mission into six, and while he was lucky to be alive, he carried the price of it on his skin.
She moved closer, gently rubbing some ointment onto one of the new scars that stretched across his back. The skin was still raw in places, tender to the touch, and Tobias winced only slightly under her fingers.
"You've chased coin long enough," she told him one night. "Mari is only nine. She's growing faster than you think and faster than I would like. She needs her father here."
Tobias didn't argue. He couldn't. Not really.
"You're right," he sighed, the weight of a dozen campaigns pressing down on his shoulders. "Fine, I'll go to the adventurer's guild and hand in my resignation tomorrow morning."
He wasn't some famed hero. Just a rank-C adventurer who had seen more than most but achieved less than many. Still, for Greystone, it was something. The guild here wasn't large—its highest-ranked member was a single B-rank who rarely left town anymore. There were a handful of Cs, and plenty of Ds, all keeping the region's roads and trade lines safe enough. His resignation wouldn't send ripples through the guildhall, but it would be noticed.
Word spread a little, but not far. A few nods from old comrades, a slap on the back from the guild master, and just like that, Tobias became a man with no quests ahead of him.
In the evenings, Tobias would sit on the porch with a mug of tea while the children ran drills or sparred with wooden sticks. He'd watch them with a sharp eye, correcting their form, calling out instructions between sips. Occasionally, a neighbor would wander by and shake their head at the sight—"Training already? They're barely out of childhood." But Tobias would only shrug.
"Better now than too late," he'd mutter.
By the time both of them turned ten, Tobias had them training daily. It started with footwork, balance, and posture. Then came wooden swords and padded gloves. Tobias drilled them relentlessly—under the morning sun, beneath light rain, even in the pale mist of early dawns.
"Anyone can swing a blade," he told them, "but not everyone can control it. Control is what keeps you alive."
Kaelen's arms ached most days, and Mara often sported fresh bruises. But neither of them complained. Not seriously. They threw themselves into the training with unshakable determination. Every step, every swing, every dodge was a promise to themselves—that they would one day be strong enough.
Greystone's seasons turned slowly as the training wore on. Summer brought dusty roads and long, sweat-soaked mornings. Autumn gave them crisp air and crunching leaves beneath their boots. By winter, their muscles had grown leaner, their movements sharper. Even Tobias admitted, with a grudging smile, that they were starting to look like proper apprentices.
It was during one of those long winter training sessions, as the snow fell softly across the yard and their breath came out in misty plumes, that Tobias first spoke of aura.
They had just finished a grueling series of forms, and the children collapsed onto the grass, breathless and sweating. Tobias stood over them, arms crossed.
"You two have come far," he said. "Far enough to begin the next step."
Mara propped herself up on one elbow. "What step?"
Tobias knelt, dragging a stick through the dirt to sketch a simple figure—an outline of the human body. "Mana flows through everyone. But with training, you can bind it to your body—to your blood, your muscles. When that happens, it becomes something more. Aura."
Kaelen blinked, sitting up straighter. He had heard many things about aura, about famed swordmasters and knights and heroes. But hearing it from someone he trained with every day made it feel real.
"There are a total of nine seals," Tobias continued, drawing nine small circles along the figure's chest. "Each one represents a threshold. A level of control and power. I'm what they call a Three-Seal Warrior. That means I've formed three seals within my body. Each one took years."
He looked at them both, eyes serious. "But the first seal... that's the most painful, since it's the first time you'll be turning your natural mana into aura. Your body isn't used to it yet. It will resist. It will hurt."
Kaelen winced, not liking the sound of pain. "How do we make one?"
Tobias tapped the drawing. "By forcing mana to settle inside you. Not just letting it flow in and out, but compressing it, refining it, then sealing it within your body. You'll feel like you're trying to press fire into your bones. It takes focus. Discipline. And patience."
He stood, brushing off his hands. "Aura is the foundation of every warrior's strength. It's what lets us strike harder, move faster, endure longer. But it's more than just power. Aura is your will, made real. It's your life, carved into shape."
From that day forward, the training doubled. Physical drills in the morning, meditation and aura practice in the afternoons. Tobias taught them how to feel the mana within themselves—how to slow their breathing, to focus inward, to gather and hold that faint energy like cupping water in trembling hands.
He spoke often of sensation—the burn behind the eyes, the pressure at the core, the tingling at the edge of awareness. Some days, he made them meditate for hours without a word, letting silence be their only company. Other days, he barked instructions through sparring matches, forcing them to call upon mana mid-strike.
"You need to feel it when your muscles scream," he'd say. "When your legs shake and your arms falter, that's when you reach for it. That's when aura answers."
They sat for hours, backs straight, legs crossed, eyes closed. Tobias guided them through visualizations: roots drawing strength from the earth, fire coiling in their bellies, wind moving through their limbs. At first, nothing happened. The mana slipped away, elusive and fickle.
He explained the difference between mana and aura again and again. "Mana flows more freely and more outwardly. A wizard for example can use it to create effects outside their body called spells. Aura stays inside, though some highly skilled individuals can wrap it around themselves like a form of armour.
Days blurred together in a rhythm of sweat, focus, failure, and adjustment. They kept journals—at Tobias's insistence—describing their attempts to sense, guide, and compress mana. Mara filled hers with frustration and sketches of imagined combat. Kaelen's was sparse, but earnest—page after page of single-sentence insights: "I felt it near my ribs today," or "I lost it when I breathed too fast."
They learned breathing techniques to centre their focus, stances to ground their bodies, and mental exercises to calm their thoughts. On some days, Tobias made them run laps until their legs gave out—"A still body cannot house steady energy," he would say.
Weeks became months and months, years. Mara grew frustrated first, snapping at Tobias, snapping at herself. But she kept pushing. Kaelen, quieter, trained longer in silence, clinging to the lessons with quiet stubbornness.
Their dreams began to change too. Kaelen sometimes woke in the night with a warm pulse behind his sternum, like a heartbeat that didn't belong to his body. Mara began to speak in metaphors Tobias hadn't taught her—describing her energy like threads she was trying to braid in a storm.
Then, one early spring evening—just after her twelfth birthday—Mari felt something begin to change deep inside her.
They had been meditating in the backyard. Tobias sat cross-legged nearby; eyes closed. Birds chirped in the nearby hedges, and the grass was still damp from morning dew. Mara's breath slowed. Her mind, for once, stilled. She felt the mana gather in her chest, spiraling tighter and tighter as she screamed in agonizing pain.
Kaelen, seated a few paces away, noticed her face twist in pain and discomfort. Her back trembled, her hands clenched into the earth. He shifted forward, panic rising in his chest. "Mari!!"
"Wait," Tobias said, his eyes opening. "It's fine. She's forming her seal."
Kaelen froze, unsure, but trusted him. He sat still and watched.
Mara's breathing turned sharp and uneven. Her entire body tensed, as though her muscles were resisting the mana's presence. Her body burned, it was like a spear of fire driving itself into her sternum—white-hot and unrelenting. Her jaw clenched. Her body seized, every muscle stiff, as the mana refused to bend easily. Her back arched involuntarily, and her breath came in a ragged gasp. Her heartbeat thundered, ears ringing. For a moment, she thought she might faint—or worse, shatter entirely.
But she didn't.
Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes as she gritted her teeth, gripped the grass beneath her, and forced the spiraling energy to compress. To bind. To seal.
The pain did not go away quickly. It dragged on for what felt like an hour—a slow, burning forge working its way into every fiber of her being. Sweat poured down her face. Her body shook from the effort. Her will screamed against the pressure.
Kaelen watched in horrified awe, his hands trembling in his lap.
Then, finally, like a lock clicking into place, it snapped.
Mara slumped backward onto the grass, staring up at the wide open sky, her chest heaving. Her skin tingled. Her limbs felt light. Alive. Every nerve sang with residual fire, and yet somehow, she was calm.
"I... did it," she whispered, her voice barely audible.
Tobias nodded once, slowly. "You did." His face was clear with pride and happiness.
Kaelen stared at her, wide-eyed and speechless. When she turned to look at him and smiled faintly, he couldn't help but smile back—though something inside him tightened. Not from envy, but from the weight of what was now expected of him.
She had done it.
It took him three more months.
But he kept at it. He meditated in the evenings and woke early to try again. Some days, he thought he felt it—but it always faded.
Until one cloudy morning, sitting alone by the garden fence, it finally began. He had been up since dawn, the air still damp with clinging mist. His breath came slow and steady, eyes half-lidded, the rough wood of the fence pressing into his back as he focused inward. For weeks now, he had felt something stirring deep inside him—like a door that wouldn't quite open, no matter how hard he pushed.
But today was different.
The mana gathered slowly, drawn from every inch of his body, pooling in his core. He concentrated harder, gritting his teeth, and tried to compress it just like Tobias had described. Then came the pain.
His muscles clenched. His vision blurred. He fell to his knees, panting, the pressure building with every heartbeat. Sweat poured down his brow. A strange roaring filled his ears—his own blood surging through his body, pounding like war drums.
He wanted to stop. Every instinct told him to let go, to release the pressure and crawl back to safety.
But he didn't.
He dug his fingers into the grass and grit his teeth harder. He thought of his parents. Of Mari. Of Tobias. Of the wooden fox he once lost, and the promise he made to himself to never be helpless again. He forced the energy tighter, shaping it against every fiber of resistance in his body.
He had done it.
When he told Tobias, the man only smiled and said, "Welcome, Kaelen. From this point on, the real training begins."
Kaelen looked down at his hands, now faintly pulsing with a quiet strength he had never felt before.
He was no longer just a boy with a dream.
He was walking the path to become more.
He was a First-Seal Warrior.