Chapter I – Part One

A trembling hand found her chest. 

‘The wind. That must be why the memory of that night came back.’

Resha pulled her knees close to her chest, drawing warmth from her own body. There was always the other thing — a dull, feverish thump behind her sternum that had lived in her chest for eleven years and refused, no matter the season, to go cold. The monstrous roar still vibrated in her ears, but the frantic thrumming of her own heart drowned it out.

She took a deep breath. 

Then another. 

She scrambled out of bed and crossed to the window. The weight of her body pressed down against the oak panel, forcing it shut against the gale. The latch clicked into place. 

The heavy silence rushed back.

She turned to the window, the glass reflecting the paleness of her face. Her forehead pressed to the glass, the cold biting against her skin, grounding her. She let the fragments dissolve one by one. The howling wind. The clash of steel. The piercing red gaze that found her through the shadows.

But the ache of losing her parents never did.

It never did.

She turned away from the window.

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The morning light had just caught the jagged peaks outside his window, turning them gold. Through the open frame, the breeze carried the last of last night’s wind away — and the first bells of Sol Academy with it.

Headmaster Rean Valerius Alistair sat at his desk with a cup of lavender tea, the steam curling into the morning air. To the world, he was the scholarly anchor of Sol Academy. A man of peace, content to wait. 

But few knew who he really was behind the scholarly mask: a man who had dedicated himself to the heir of the Arcadian throne. A quiet tribute to Regis, a man who had been a dear friend to him.

The young Resha had arrived at his doors eleven years ago — still too small, still speechless. He had never forgotten the look in her eyes that first night. 

He had questions about that fateful night that had never been answered. 

The mahogany door swung open with a loud thud, shattering the quiet. Rean looked up, his expression shifting from a scholarly fog to a patient, fatherly amusement. 

“Ah, Hollie,” he greeted her, watching his assistant scramble in. She heaved and panted as if she had sprinted the length of the academy grounds. “Staying out of trouble now, I suppose?” A chuckle escaped him, knowing full well how she could be a natural lightning rod for chaos.

But the girl didn’t offer her usual sheepish grin.

“H – Headmaster…! A visitor has come for you!” 

The amusement left his face. “A visitor?” 

“I – it’s….” she stammered, her hands fumbling. “A… An Arcadian envoy is here to see you.”

A wave of solemn nostalgia washed over him. He had watched that girl grow from a child still trembling from a blood-soaked night into something that would have made Regis weep with pride. 

He turned his swivel chair to face the window. The cup suddenly felt very heavy.

‘The time has come, huh?’

“Send them in.”

“Huh? Oh! R — Right away, Headmaster!” Hollie responded before hurrying out of the room.

He stayed at the window, watching the flash of movement toward the west wing.

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The spring sunshine caught the training hall’s walls, turning the stone brilliant and warm. The place was empty. The typical whirlwind of activity wouldn’t start until later that day. It was early enough that the first bells had just chimed.

She had come here for a reason.

Resha stood in the middle of the hall, a training rapier in her hand. Sleep had abandoned her after the nightmare, no matter how hard she’d willed it back.

The beast’s wings, blotting out everything — eclipsing her.

Her eyes opened, fixing on a point ahead. She lunged as if to hit a target, the tip singing through the empty air in successive strikes.

Her father’s silhouette. Swallowed by dust and shadows — his steel shrieking against something merciless and unbreakable, tolling like a funeral bell.

Her rapier cut through the air, her feet finding their rhythm without thought.

Her mother’s voice — ragged and breathless. Keep your eyes forward.

She spun, driving the rapier toward the memory of that gaze.

Yet her arm froze mid-swing. Eleven years, and her body still knew. She forced her arm down as she exhaled, her breath the only sound in the hall.

“Rough night, Your Highness?”

Her head snapped up. Keiran leaned against the doorframe with easy grace, arms crossed, that insufferable grin already in place.

“Keiran.” 

Keiran Alexander Halberd. The training hall was his natural habitat. A sanctuary even. She had known him since they were children — long enough to know that grin meant he’d seen everything and intended to make her feel it.

“You know you could have just called for me, don’t you?” His voice filled the hall as he pushed off the doorframe, his footsteps light against the stone. He walked toward her, lifting a training sword from the rack as he passed. “I would have kept you company. You didn’t have to do this alone.”

“You are always there whether I call or not.” She turned away from him. “I don’t see why today would be any different.”

“That’s part of my job.” He circled her, unhurried. “You’re leading with your shoulder. You always do that when something’s bothering you.”

“My form is fine.” She shifted into her stance. “Shall we?”

“Certainly.”

Resha lunged first, the steel ringing through the hall.

Keiran deflected her with a casual flick of his wrist.

But in Resha’s mind, she could only hear the sound of her father’s blade being drawn that night.

“There’s something bothering you.” He stepped back, giving ground without losing an inch of composure. His eyes never stopped watching her. “You seem unusually tense.”

“Nothing to be concerned about.” The smile came automatically — the one she’d rehearsed in every mirror, the one that meant the opposite of what it said.

She drove another strike toward him. He parried. The ring of steel started drawing a crowd to the doors.

Keiran rolled his neck, his bones popping in unbothered unison. His strength was undeniable. She knew he was holding back — more so today than usual. She hated the way he moved with such easy grace: always a step ahead, ‘protecting’ her from a blow he knew she couldn’t land. 

The bitter taste of resentment formed in her mouth. The powerlessness clung like venom in her blood. 

She was that little girl again. 

Small. 

Hidden behind her mother’s golden arcana. 

The winged beast looming over her — its face dissolving into darkness before she could even name what she was losing.

‘No… I won’t ever let that happen again…!’

Then, Resha saw it. There — a flicker of hesitation. A gap in his guard as he pivoted too widely. The opening she had been praying for.

“Eyes in front, Keiran!”

“What…?!”

She feinted left. When Keiran tracked it, she lunged right, the rapier a silver streak aimed straight for his hand. For a heartbeat, the venom in her chest transformed into pure, kinetic energy. 

She was going to land it. She was going to prove she wasn’t helpless. 

Keiran scrambled back, dodging the strike by a hairsbreadth. Resha dropped low and swept his legs. 

“Shardlicker!” He tumbled, his hand catching the floor before the rest of him could. One push, and he was back on his feet, sword up.

“You better—” 

His words  died as the tip of her rapier pressed against the side of his neck.

“Do you yield?” She asked from behind, breath heaving. For the first time, she had slipped past his guard.

For a moment, neither of them moved.

“Keiran, do you yield?”

“…No.”

A faint amber glow pulsed from his gauntlet — the Earth Arcana shard answering his refusal. With a flick of his wrist, he swatted her blade aside. 

Resha fumbled, retracting her blade. The gap between them collapsed fast, his stride swallowing the distance in a single step. She thrust forward, but Keiran caught the blade with his gauntlet — the difference in their strength was always there.

“Resha, you of all people should know that close combat is where I excel the most.” 

He swung his other hand upwards, knocking the blade from her hand. The rapier flew the length of the hall and buried itself deep into the stone wall, narrowly missing a bystander. 

The shockwave of the magical blow vibrated up her arm, numbing her fingers. Keiran stood tall: his breathing even, posture perfect. The amber glow faded, leaving only the bright spring sunshine. 

“Careful, Princess.” His voice dropped to something quiet — deliberate. “You nearly caught me there. But we mustn’t get reckless.” He offered her that same practiced smile. “A queen’s shield must never be broken, after all.” 

The air between them shifted.

Resha stared at her empty hand. The amber glow of his arcana shard had faded, but the truth burrowed in her mind. Keiran hadn’t just defended himself — he had shut her down again.

Power. 

If she had possessed power, even a fraction of her mother’s arcana that night…

If she hadn’t been a cowering child in the dark…

Perhaps the beast would have been the one to fall. And her father wouldn’t have had to buy them those final, desperate seconds.

The realization hit her harder than Keiran’s parry. 

She wasn’t just fighting a would-be knight. She was fighting a world where only those with arcanas decided who lived and who died.

Hushed voices from the sidelines shattered the silence. The murmur rippled through the gathered students.

“Wait… did Sir Keiran just channel his arcana shard?”

“Against the Princess? In a spar?”

Resha didn’t need to hear the words to know what they were saying. She snapped out of her trance, her eyes darting from her punctured rapier to Keiran’s composed face. The playfulness had returned, but she caught the slight tension in his jaw; a crack in his perfect porcelain mask.

“A knight must always be prepared, even in practice,” his voice carried — calm, authoritative — silencing the room.

He crossed the hall, pulling the rapier from the stone with a single effortless tug, sparing only a dismissive scoff for the terrified student beside it. He walked back to Resha, offering the weapon hilt-first with a shallow bow.

“The Princess has grown formidable.” His eyes found hers — that unsettling violet that always saw too much. “I wouldn’t want her to think I wasn’t taking her seriously.”

Resha looked at the rapier, leaving it hanging in his outstretched hand. 

A child’s toy. 

A trinket that could never hope to pierce the shield he claimed to be, nor the wall he had just built between them. 

“Your Highness!” A guard called from the entrance, his voice echoing through the thinning crowd. He wove through the students, stopping only a few steps away from Resha.

Keiran’s voice sharpened. “What is it?”

The guard bowed. 

“Sir Keiran. Your Highness. An envoy has just arrived from the Arcadian capital. The Headmaster requests the Princess’s presence in his office immediately.”

Resha’s heart lurched. 

The frustration from the spar didn’t vanish. Dread simply arrived on top of it — colder and sharper — the way frost doesn’t kill a fire so much as seal it under ice. 

“Regalia…” the name came out as a whisper, masking the sudden chill in her veins. “Thank you,” she nodded to the guard. “I will be there as soon as possible.” Resha turned toward the exit, her eyes already fixed on the hallway leading to the Headmaster’s office.

“I’ll accompany you.” Keiran handed the weapons to the guard and fell into step behind her.

They passed the tall, stained-glass windows of the corridor, weaving through the cacophony of chattering students. Keiran stayed a few steps behind. Their silence hung heavy between them, the rhythmic clink of his greaves sounding like the ticking of a clock. The spring sunshine felt thin and pale, as if the capital’s shadows were already stretching to reach them.

“Who do you think my uncle sent over?” Resha asked quietly, breaking the silence as they approached the Headmaster’s doors.

“We’ll know soon enough.” He stopped just outside the door.

She caught him watching her back — the careful, measuring way he always watched, as if her silence was a problem he could solve if he studied it long enough. 

“I wish you would trust me,” he said, low enough to pass as a whisper. He closed the distance between them, standing inches away, and leaned towards her ear. “I am your shield, Resha. Whatever happens, just remember that you don’t have to bear it alone.”

Resha didn’t answer. 

His words settled in her mind — but so did the weight of what waited on the other side of that door. 

A crown. 

A throne. 

A kingdom that had been holding its breath for over a decade.

No shield could carry that for her.

She took a breath, smoothed her academic clothes, and signaled the guards. 

The heavy wood swung open and she walked through it.