The Duke's study felt less like a room and more like a verdict given form.
Walls of blackwood rose high, lined with ancient shelves heavy with leather-bound tomes and scrolls sealed in dark wax. A map of the Aurelia Empire—etched on tanned monster hide—hung behind the great desk, its surface marked with thin iron pins like silent spearheads piercing territories. An enormous window of obsidian glass dominated the right wall, letting moonlight spill in like cold mercury, bleeding pale light across the floor of polished stone.
At the center of it all sat Duke von Arcturus Rosenfeld.
He rested behind his desk carved from a single slab of midnight oak, its surface empty save for a crystal inkstand, a single quill, and a stack of orderly documents. He was dressed in a formal high-collared coat the color of deep night, silver trimming tracing the edges like frost forming at dawn. The Rosenfeld crest—an ash-wreathed sword—was embroidered over his heart in subdued dark thread, barely visible unless one truly looked.
He did not slouch.
He did not shift.
He simply sat, as if the chair had been carved around his presence.
Kel stood before him.
The distance between them felt measured, intentional—too far for intimacy, too near for safety.
Kel's posture was perfectly straight. His hands rested calmly at his sides, gloved in black fabric that clung neatly to slender fingers. His banquet suit had been fixed and realigned; not a crease remained, not a thread out of place. The only color on him besides black and muted gold was his skin—pale as moonlit porcelain—and his eyes.
Those eyes.
Cold-grey, clear, steady.
A boy of thirteen years, yet the gaze he leveled at the duke belonged to someone who had lived—and died—far too many times.
He stared directly at Arcturus.
No flicker, no avoidance, no deference in his gaze.
Only a calm, unblinking quiet.
The Duke looked up from the document he had been pretending to read.
Their eyes met fully.
For a while, there was no sound except the distant murmur of wind pushing frost against the glass and the faint ticking of the ancient clock perched on the far shelf.
Tick.
Tock.
Two generations of Rosenfeld bloodlines watched one another in silence.
Arcturus's expression was inscrutable. No warmth, no anger. Just composure carved into human shape.
Kel's face was emotionless—too emotionless.
Not neutrality.
A deliberate void.
Finally, the Duke's eyebrow twitched. Barely.
His voice, when it came, was low and even. Like the weight of a sword placed gently onto a table.
"Why are you making that face at me, Kel?"
Kel did not look away.
His chin remained level.
His shoulders neither stiffened nor relaxed.
His reply came in a tone that matched the Duke's—steady, devoid of visible heat—but there was steel beneath it, thin and deliberate.
"Then, Father… don't look at me that way, either."
He did not raise his voice.
He did not sound insolent.
It was simply… refusal.
The refusal to flinch.
The refusal to bow where he did not choose to.
The study did not change, yet the air shifted. The silence became sharper, the space between them drawn taut like a string between two blades.
For the briefest instant, something like surprise flickered in Arcturus's eyes.
Then it vanished.
A shadow of a smile curled at his lips—not soft, not gentle. The kind of smile a swordsman might give upon feeling the faintest pressure of a blade that could one day become dangerous.
"Very well," the Duke said, his fingers idly tapping once against the desk. "You have, at the very least, learned something from me."
The curve of his lips remained, faint and dangerous.
"You stare back… instead of lowering your head in fear. That is a start."
Kel's gaze did not soften.
But that void on his face felt less like absence, more like a shield firmly held.
Arcturus leaned back slightly in his chair, though not in relaxation—more like a lion shifting its weight to observe prey from another angle.
His eyes narrowed.
"Let us speak plainly, then," he continued, voice calm. "About the banquet duel."
The words landed like iron dropped upon glass.
Kel's fingers twitched inside his gloves, but he did not move otherwise. Only his eyes grew a fraction more alert.
"You were supposed to be fragile, cursed, unable to withstand harsh training," the Duke went on. "Yet tonight, before over two hundred sets of eyes, you moved like someone who has bled to stand. Not merely practiced… bled."
His gaze sharpened.
"When," Arcturus asked, "and how, did you train yourself to compete in such a duel?"
The question was simple.
It was also a blade.
Kel lowered his eyes just slightly—not in submission, but in thought. The line of his jaw eased, his lips relaxing from their thin, blank state.
Then slowly… the faintest smile touched his face.
Not mocking. Not bright.
A quiet, warm curve.
His expression seemed to open—not fully, just enough for something human to seep through.
His shoulders eased, his posture relaxed by a fraction.
He looked less like a statue now, more like a person who had made a decision long before this conversation began.
"Even if my body is… drying up," Kel said softly, searching briefly for the right word, "even if it is withering, Father…"
He raised his gaze again to meet Arcturus's eyes directly.
The smile remained.
But the calm behind it was dangerous in its resolve.
"I have no intention of dying as a worthless person."
His voice was gentle.
His words were not.
"And I do not plan," he continued, "to allow others to use me as a tool to mock our family."
He spoke the last line slowly, carefully, each word laid down like a weight.
For a moment, the Duke said nothing.
He simply watched him.
The lamplight from the desk lantern reflected faintly in Arcturus's eyes, making them seem like cold embers hidden in ash.
His fingers stilled.
His jaw tightened imperceptibly.
"Worthless, you say," Arcturus murmured at last, his voice deceptively light. "Is that what you believed yourself to be… before tonight?"
Kel's lips barely moved.
"No. That is what others wanted me to accept."
The air thickened.
Arcturus's gaze sharpened further, that faint smile now completely gone, replaced by a calm intensity that pressed against the room like invisible pressure.
"You trained," he said, "under my roof. For how long?"
Kel did not hesitate.
"Since the day I realized I had four years before the star awakening ceremony," he answered. "I began with breath. With will. With the only thing that was still mine."
No mention of the root-core.
No mention of aura experimentation.
Just enough truth to be undeniable.
The Duke's eyes narrowed slightly.
"Your body is cursed," he said. "The physicians warned: excessive strain could worsen the curse's hold. Yet you chose to train in secret, risking collapse."
Kel's fingers curled, then straightened again.
"If I did not move," he replied flatly, "I would die as a footnote. A story mothers whisper to frighten disobedient children."
"If I moved… there was at least a chance someone would be forced to remember my name."
For a second, something ancient flickered in Arcturus's gaze.
Recognition.
Not approval. Not yet.
Recognition.
Of a choice he had once made.
Of a road he knew well.
The Duke's posture relaxed by a faint margin. He steepled his fingers, elbows resting lightly on the armrests.
"Tell me," Arcturus said, voice quieting, "when your opponent revealed aura before you… what did you feel?"
Kel's mind flickered back to the duel—the shifting of weight, the tightening of muscles, the faint luminescence of aura spilling from his opponent, and the eyes of the nobles watching him, all expecting the cursed child to crumble.
He remembered the brief moment when he had called upon the microscopic red core in his body.
Not as a weapon.
As refusal.
"I felt…" Kel began slowly, "nothing new."
The Duke's eyes thinned.
Kel's calm smile returned, this time edged with something sharper.
"I have known death was waiting for me since I was old enough to understand what the word 'curse' meant," he said.
"A single opponent's aura hardly compares to that."
Arcturus stared at him.
The study seemed to quiet further, as if the shadows themselves leaned closer to listen.
Tick.
Tock.
The clock continued its slow watch.
Finally, the Duke exhaled—whether a sigh or a low chuckle, it was difficult to distinguish.
"You speak beyond your years," he said. "That has always been true. But tonight…"
He tilted his head ever so slightly.
"Tonight, you behaved beyond your years."
His gaze swept over Kel's frame, taking in the set of his shoulders, the steadiness of his legs. He knew—he must know—that this boy had collapsed not long before.
Yet Kel stood as if nothing were wrong.
"You are still a child in body," Arcturus continued. "Your bones and muscles are thirteen years old. Your curse has eaten more of your vitality than you realize. And yet…"
He leaned forward.
The faint pressure in the room intensified—subtle, like a storm forming beyond the horizon.
"You chose, in front of nobles eager to mock us, to step forward and fight. You risked everything—not to win a meaningless scuffle…"
"But to silence them."
Kel's smile faded, replaced by a calm, straightforward expression.
"Yes."
The Duke's eyes did not move from his.
"Is that all, then? Pride?" he asked. "The refusal to be looked down upon?"
Kel thought for a moment.
Then shook his head, slowly.
"No. Pride alone dies quickly."
He raised a hand, placing it lightly over his chest—not dramatically, merely marking a point.
"I chose to fight because if I did not take that step now… I would spend the rest of my short life walking in circles."
"The world would decide my value for me."
His eyes hardened.
"I have decided to… interfere."
It was a soft word.
It carried the weight of rebellion.
Arcturus's lips almost twitched again.
Almost.
"Interfere with what?" the Duke asked quietly.
Kel did not look away.
"With what others think I am permitted to be."
The Duke held his gaze for a long, long moment.
Then, at last, he leaned back, the invisible pressure in the room thinning, though not vanishing.
He folded his arms lightly, the black fabric of his coat shifting like a silent wave.
"You do not want to die as 'the cursed disappointment of Rosenfeld,'" Arcturus said. "You do not want to be used as a tool for mockery."
"No," Kel answered, tone firm.
"Then what do you intend to be?"
A simple question.
A heavy one.
Kel's jaw tightened for a heartbeat.
Then relaxed.
His answer came without hesitation.
"Someone whose existence," he said slowly, "forces others to correct their words when they remember how they once spoke of me."
He met the Duke's gaze, unflinching.
"Someone who makes them regret that they ever dared use the Rosenfeld name as a joke."
The lantern flame flickered slightly, as if stirred by an unseen breath.
Silence settled again.
This time, it did not feel hostile.
It felt… weighing.
Measuring.
Duke Arcturus Rosenfeld watched his son—the cursed, weakest heir, the boy who should have broken long ago—and for the first time in many years, the cold line of his expression changed.
Not much.
But enough.
He gave a low, quiet exhale.
"You have changed," he said.
Kel did not deny it.
"Perhaps I have simply started walking," he replied.
Arcturus's fingers tapped once more on the desk.
Then stilled.
"Very well," he murmured. "You do not wish to shame this family. You do not intend to die as something… worthless."
He lifted his chin.
Steel glinted behind his eyes.
"Then understand this, Kel: from the moment you stepped into that duel, you ceased to be invisible."
"The Empire has seen you. Those who hate our house have seen you. Those who calculate from the shadows have seen you."
His tone deepened, colder.
"And I, Arcturus Rosenfeld, will not allow a son of mine to stand in such light with unsteady feet."
Kel's heartbeat thudded once—sharp and loud in his chest.
The Duke's next words fell like a quiet decree.
"From this night onward… if you insist on walking this path…"
His gaze hardened.
"You will no longer train alone."
A pause.
The study seemed to listen.
"I will decide," Arcturus said, "whether you live long enough to regret your own resolve… or fulfill it."
Kel's eyes widened—only slightly—but enough to betray a flicker of surprise before the calm returned.
His fingers, at his sides, slowly curled into a faint fist.
Not in fear.
In acceptance.
And anticipation.
He bowed his head. Not deeply. Just enough to acknowledge.
"Then," Kel said softly, "I will walk it without shame."
Their gazes locked one final time.
Ancestor and heir.
Sword and unsharpened blade.
Outside, the wind howled against the obsidian window, scattering stray flakes of frost like old prayers across the glass.
Inside, something older than the curse… shifted.
An unspoken recognition.
A promise of trial.
And the faintest hint of a beginning.