After accepting Stormhold Academy's invitation, Damian went straight to the training room and closed the door behind him.
The room was built for serious work. Heavy equipment lined the walls – reinforced machines, resistance systems calibrated for awakeners far stronger than him, and a weapons rack that held training variants of every common combat tool.
His parents were both high-ranking awakeners. A training room designed for their use was more than sufficient for his current needs.
In the center of the room sat a meditation mat. It was clean, simple and positioned away from the equipment. A space meant for stillness in a room built for training.
Damian walked towards it and sat down without wasting time.
For the first time since regaining his past life's memories, he had silence. Just him, his thoughts, and the weight of two lives pressing against the inside of his skull.
'Is my world really just a novel?'
The thought had been circling since last night, and now, without distractions, it sank its teeth in.
'No… I don't know what's happening to me or how I even gained these memories in the first place. But there is no way my entire life, my family, this world, everything I've experienced, was just a damn story written for someone's entertainment!'
His jaw tightened.
'And even if it was… what changes? My parents are real. Luna is real. The love I feel for them is real. That's not something a novel can fabricate.'
He exhaled slowly, forcing the spiral to stop.
'One day I'll get my answers. But worrying about it now gains me nothing.'
He shelved the existential crisis the same way Alessio used to shelve emotions – not resolved, just stored somewhere it couldn't interfere with what needed to be done.
'Now then… the Federation only allows students to begin breathing exercises and Aura training after accepting an academy invitation. They even made it law.'
He didn't know the reasoning behind that restriction. Perhaps there were dangers to unsupervised awakening that justified it.
Or perhaps it was simply about control, ensuring every awakener was tracked and accounted for from the moment they generated their first spark of Aura.
Either way, it didn't matter now. He had his invitation. The restriction no longer applied.
'But before the breathing exercises… I need to deal with this body first.'
Ever since gaining Alessio's memories, something had felt off. It was not pain or weakness, just a persistent disconnection between intention and execution.
His mind would reach for a movement that belonged to a six-foot adult and find itself operating a fifteen-year-old frame that didn't match.
Alessio's muscle memory said one thing. Damian's body did another.
The result was a subtle clumsiness that would be invisible to anyone watching but felt maddening from the inside, like wearing gloves two sizes too large.
He needed to recalibrate. Map Alessio's instincts onto Damian's frame until the two stopped fighting and started cooperating.
Right now, he was neither fully Damian nor fully Alessio.
He was becoming something new.
****
Damian changed into training clothes and started with a light jog on the treadmill.
The rhythm came easily, legs finding a pace, breathing settling into pattern, heartbeat stabilizing. Simple enough.
But when he shifted to the machines and equipment, the disconnection became obvious.
A punch thrown with Alessio's timing but Damian's shorter reach, missing the target by centimeters.
A dodge that Alessio's hips would have executed perfectly but Damian's narrower frame overcompensated, sending him stumbling.
A grip on a pull-up bar that Alessio's calloused hands would have held for minutes but Damian's softer palms burned against after thirty seconds.
He corrected, adjusted, failed and corrected again.
Training went on for hours. By the time his clothes were soaked through with sweat and his muscles were trembling, the disconnection had faded from a scream to a whisper.
"Huff… huff… I finally feel somewhat familiar with this body. Time for the breathing exercises."
He peeled off his soaked shirt, grabbed a towel, and moved to the meditation mat.
****
Breathing exercises were taught in every school across the Federation – the theory, the technique and the warnings. Students memorized the process years before they were allowed to practice it.
The exercises generated Aura within the body, drawing ambient energy from the surrounding environment and concentrating it into a core, a reservoir where all Aura could be stored and channeled.
Damian closed his eyes, steadied his breathing, and began.
Inhale, hold, direct and exhale.
The pattern was simple. What wasn't simple was what happened next.
He could see inside his own body.
Not with his eyes, but with something deeper. His awareness sank inward, perceiving the flow of energy through his veins, the rhythm of his organs, the pathways that breath carved through his system.
'This must be because of my Will being so high… I can perceive and manipulate my own Aura with far more precision than a normal beginner should.'
He watched as his body began drawing in Aura from the air around him.
The particles were invisible to the naked eye but vivid to his inner perception. Sparks of bright, colorless light drifted through the training room like dust motes caught in sunlight.
They flowed inward with his breath, entering his body, traveling along pathways that seemed to already exist, as if his body had been built with channels waiting to be filled.
And as they entered him, they changed.
The bright, neutral sparks darkened, shifted and became a deep crimson-black that pulsed with each heartbeat.
It was said that the color of a person's Aura reflected their essence… who they truly were at their core, stripped of pretense and performance.
Damian stared at the crimson-black energy flowing through him and didn't know what it said about him.
But he didn't dwell on it.
The particles concentrated below his navel, gathering, compressing, swirling into a denser and denser point of energy until –
Something clicked.
A small dark crimson core crystallized inside him. Tiny, fragile, barely a seed, but unmistakably there.
Aura began generating from within it, flowing outward through his body in steady pulses, each one stronger than the last.
"Phew… It's finally done."
His eyes opened. A grin spread across his face.
"I've officially awakened."
The Aura coursed through him like electricity… warming his muscles, sharpening his senses, making the air itself taste different. Every nerve ending felt amplified. Every heartbeat resonated with new power.
It was intoxicating.
It wasn't like alcohol or adrenaline, those dulled as much as they enhanced. This was pure, clean and addictive in the way that breathing fresh air after years in a cage was addictive.
He wanted more.
The grin widened as he reveled in the sensation for a long time, letting the Aura flow freely, getting used to the feeling of power living inside him.
Then he composed himself.
"Status."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Name: Damian Valcor
Age: 15
Rank: F-
Talent: S
Core Attributes:
Strength: 9 → 12
Speed: 8 → 13
Stamina: 9 → 15
Vitality: 10 → 20
Aura: F
Will: 120
Skills: —
Shooting: C+
Hand Combat: B
Aura Control: E
Weapon Arts: —
━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His physical stats had jumped noticeably, not from the Aura itself, but from hours of intensive physical training followed by the awakening flooding his body with energy that enhanced everything it touched.
He was already far stronger than he had ever been as Alessio, where human limits were absolute and unbreakable.
Here, those limits were just the starting line.
His Aura stat had changed from 0 to F, the baseline of a newly awakened individual. And a new entry had appeared.
'Aura Control at E rank… even though my core is only F rank.'
He studied the discrepancy.
'It has to be because of Will. High willpower means finer control over Aura. The benefits aren't direct… Will doesn't make my Aura stronger. But it lets me use what I have with far more precision than someone at the same rank.'
It was a small advantage. But small advantages, compounded over time.
Alessio had known that better than anyone.
****
By the time Damian stepped out of the training room, the house was dark.
'No wonder I'm starving… I trained straight through lunch and into dinner.'
He rushed to the dining room where, as always, his family had gathered before him.
Unlike the tense morning, the room was warm. The conversation he interrupted sounded light. Luna laughing at something, Lyandra's voice animated, even Alaric contributing more than his usual two sentences.
"Sorry for being late. I was training and lost track of time."
Damian took his seat, and his family's attention shifted to him immediately.
"Start eating before the food gets any colder, Damy!"
Lyandra's concern overrode any curiosity about his training. She remembered he hadn't eaten lunch either.
"I told you this morning to eat on time. I know you're excited about the future, but you need to take care of your body! Skipping meals is not acceptable, especially when you're training!"
Damian apologized and promised to be more mindful. Apologized again when the first apology wasn't convincing enough. Promised a third time when she narrowed her eyes.
Alaric watched the exchange with quiet amusement. Luna hid a smile behind her glass.
The nagging continued through the first half of dinner before gradually softening into normal conversation – Luna asking about academy life, Alaric offering occasional dry commentary, Lyandra oscillating between pride and maternal worry with impressive speed.
Damian found himself relaxing into the rhythm of it. The tension from yesterday was still there, a faint undercurrent beneath every interaction, but his family was trying to act normal.
And maybe, by acting normal long enough, normal would become real again.
As the meal wound down and laughter filled the spaces between words, a thought surfaced quietly in Damian's mind.
'Sigh… I wonder why a person like me even got this second chance.'
He looked at his mother's smile, his father's steady presence, Luna's silver eyes catching candlelight.
'But I won't waste it.'