Three days passed without progress.
Each morning, Violet waded into the freezing pond. Each evening, she emerged shivering and defeated, the pot's water long since gone cold.
She tried everything she could think of—different channeling patterns, varying the intensity of her mana, attempting to create barriers of compressed air instead of ice.
Nothing worked.
By the third evening, she stumbled home so exhausted she could barely stand.
Maria took one look at her and immediately began fussing—pulling off wet clothes, wrapping her in blankets, heating water for tea.
"This is too much," Maria said, pressing a warm cup into Violet's trembling hands. "You're going to make yourself sick."
"I'm fine, Mama." The words came automatic despite Violet's chattering teeth.
"You're not fine. Look at you." Maria's hands cupped Violet's face, checking for fever. "Maybe you should take a few days off. Let your body recover."
"I can't." Violet pulled the blanket tighter. "I need to figure this out."
Garrett watched from his chair near the fire, expression unreadable.
After Maria bustled off to prepare dinner, Violet turned to him. "Papa... can you help?"
He was quiet for a moment, fingers drumming once against his knee.
"Are you sure you want my help?" His voice was careful. Measured.
Violet opened her mouth to say yes—
Then stopped.
She thought about Kari's words. *That's your job to figure out. That's what training is. Not me giving you answers, but you discovering them yourself.*
"No," she said finally. "No, I need to do this on my own."
Garrett nodded once, something like approval crossing his weathered features. "Good answer."
***
Day four dawned cold and grey.
Violet returned to the pond, pot in hand, determination warring with growing frustration.
Kari didn't appear when she arrived. That was new.
Violet scanned the tree line but saw no sign of the snow leopard's spotted fur.
*She's not coming today?*
Part of her felt relief. No one to witness another failure.
Another part felt strangely abandoned.
She waded into the water anyway. The cold was almost familiar now—still brutal, but expected. Her body had stopped trying to fight it quite so hard.
She sat. Settled the pot in her lap. Began channeling.
An hour passed. The temperature dropped.
Two hours. Still dropping.
Three hours. Her fingers had gone completely numb.
By noon, Violet wanted to scream.
*What am I missing? There has to be something I'm not seeing.*
She tried again. Failed again. The pattern repeated until it felt like a cruel joke.
Finally, exhausted and freezing, Violet let herself fall backward.
The water closed over her head—not deep enough to be dangerous, just enough to submerge completely.
She floated there, staring up through the rippling surface at the grey sky above.
The cold pressed in from all sides. The pot drifted from her numb fingers, settling somewhere on the pond bottom.
*What should I do?*
The question echoed in the silence underwater.
She closed her eyes, letting the pond's darkness envelope her.
And in that darkness, a memory surfaced.
Not from this life.
From before.
***
The cave in the Realm of Night. Training with Luciel while Mr. Raven watched.
She'd been struggling with a particular spell—trying to compress ice into a solid form without letting it shatter.
"I can't do it," she'd said, frustration bleeding through. "It keeps breaking."
Luciel had looked at her with those cold red eyes. "What will you do, then? Give up?"
"No, but—"
"Then try differently." His voice had been flat, emotionless. "You're approaching it as if ice is solid. It's not. It's water that forgot how to flow."
He'd demonstrated—his own darkness magic shaping ice with impossible precision. "Stop trying to force it to be still. Let it move while holding its form. Contradiction, yes. But possible."
The memory faded.
Violet's eyes snapped open underwater.
*Let it move while holding its form.*
She surged upward, breaking the surface with a gasp.
Her hands fumbled in the murky water, finding the pot and pulling it close.
*I've been thinking about this wrong. I'm trying to keep the temperature static—frozen in place. But temperature is movement. Heat is molecules dancing. Cold is them slowing down.*
She placed her palms against the pot.
*I can't stop movement. But maybe I can control it.*
This time, instead of trying to insulate or heat directly, she focused on the water molecules inside the pot.
Her mana reached out—cold, precise, familiar.
But instead of freezing them, she tried something different.
She tried to guide their movement. To slow them where they moved too fast, to nudge them faster where they slowed too much.
Like conducting an orchestra. Not playing the instruments, just directing the tempo.
For a moment, nothing happened.
Then—
The temperature stabilized.
Not perfectly. It fluctuated—warming slightly, cooling slightly, never quite steady.
But it wasn't dropping. Wasn't rising. Just... hovering around a central point.
Violet's concentration nearly broke from shock.
She held it. Fifteen seconds. Twenty.
Then her focus slipped and the temperature began dropping again.
But it had worked. For those precious seconds, it had actually worked.
***
In the trees beyond the pond, Kari watched.
Her yellow eyes—capable of seeing heat signatures as clearly as shapes—had tracked Violet's every attempt over the past days.
She'd seen the failures. The frustration. The exhaustion.
And now, finally, she saw the shift.
The pot's heat signature had stabilized. Just briefly, just imperfectly, but unmistakably.
A small smile crossed Kari's scarred face.
*There it is. Finally.*
She'd been about to intervene—to give Violet a hint, some small nudge in the right direction.
But the girl had figured it out herself.
That was better. Harder, yes. More painful. But the lessons learned through struggle stuck deeper than those given freely.
Kari watched as Violet tried again. Failed. Tried again. Managed five seconds of stability this time.
Each attempt was slightly better than the last.
*She'll get it,* Kari thought. *Maybe not today. But soon.*
She melted back into the forest, leaving Violet to her practice.
The girl had earned the right to work without eyes watching. To fail and succeed in private.
Tomorrow, Kari would return with the next lesson.
But today belonged to Violet alone.
***
By the time the sun began to set, Violet had managed to hold the temperature stable for almost a full minute.
Her entire body shook from cold and exhaustion. Her mana reserves were nearly depleted.
But triumph sang through her veins despite the pain.
She'd done it. Not perfectly. Not consistently.
But she'd proven it was possible.
That was enough for now.
She waded out of the pond on legs that barely functioned, clutching the pot against her chest like a prize.
The walk home was long and difficult. Several times she had to stop and rest, leaning against trees, gathering strength to continue.
But when she finally pushed open the cottage door, Maria took one look at her face and smiled.
Not with worry this time.
With pride.
"You figured it out," Maria said. Not a question.
Violet nodded, too tired for words.
Maria pulled her into a warm embrace. "My clever girl."
Garrett looked up from sharpening his knife. Their eyes met across the room.
He nodded once—warrior's acknowledgment.
That night, despite the exhaustion, despite the lingering cold in her bones, Violet fell asleep smiling.
Tomorrow, she'd do better.
And the day after that, better still.
The path forward was clearer now.
One small victory at a time.