After dinner finished, Damian quietly stood up as his family continued their conversation and evening chores.
He slipped back to the training room, pushed the door open, and was about to close it behind him when a hand stopped it mid-motion.
Alaric stood there with a small smile. "Let me in, kiddo."
Damian stepped aside and watched as his father closed the door behind himself.
"…Everything alright, Dad?"
The confusion was genuine. Alaric wasn't the type to interrupt someone's training unless it was important, and his smile suggested it wasn't urgent, which made the visit even stranger.
"What? Don't tell me you've already forgotten what you asked me to get you this morning?"
Alaric's expression turned mischievous.
"You mean…"
"Yes. I've got your license and gun with me."
Damian's eyes dropped to his father's hands, which were completely empty.
"But… where is it?"
His brows knit together. The request from this morning hadn't slipped his mind. What confused him was watching his father walk in with nothing visible.
Alaric chuckled.
"Kiddo, it seems you're still not fully back to normal. Your mother and I both use space rings. Remember?"
Damian's face flickered with realization, then frustration, not at Alaric, but at himself.
Space rings... Of course. Every awakener of sufficient rank used them. His own parents had them. He'd seen them access those rings hundreds of times growing up.
But Alessio's memories didn't contain space rings. His past world had no such thing. And for a brief moment, his mind had defaulted to Alessio's expectations rather than Damian's lived experience.
That was worrying.
The two lives were supposed to coexist, not overwrite each other. But small details like this, things he should've remembered instinctively, kept slipping through the cracks of Alessio's dominant instincts.
"Ah… yes, sorry about that, Dad. I'm still getting used to… everything."
He rubbed the back of his neck, then offered a small, rueful smile.
"To be honest, the magical side of our world feels almost new to me again. Like I'm experiencing it for the first time while also remembering that I've lived here my whole life."
Alaric's expression softened.
"It's alright, kiddo. Take your time. You're handling this better than I would have."
There was something beneath his words, not pity, but quiet respect.
He chuckled, then waved his hand.
A dark wooden box materialized in his grip, shimmering into existence as it exited the space ring.
"Here. Inside you'll find your gun, your license, and two types of bullets – standard rounds for practice and Aura bullets that you can infuse with your own Aura. There are also rubber bullets for non-lethal training."
He held the box out.
"Try filling the Aura bullets with your Aura and getting used to the feeling. It'll take time to develop proper control, but it's worth starting early."
Damian reached for the box. Then froze.
"…I know you've already formed your Aura core."
Alaric's voice was casual. His smile was not.
Damian's eyes snapped up to meet his father's.
He hadn't used Aura at dinner. He hadn't shown any outward signs. Even Lyandra, who was as sharp as her husband, and far more protective, hadn't noticed anything different.
"…How did you find out?"
The question came out slower than Damian intended, carrying a note of unease he couldn't fully hide.
"Hehe…" Alaric winked. "Let's keep that a secret. Just like you have your secrets, like how you managed to form your core in a single day when most awakeners take weeks."
Damian's mouth opened, then closed.
Alaric patted his shoulder once, gave him the same mischievous grin, and walked out of the training room without elaborating further.
The door clicked shut behind him.
****
Damian stood in the silent room for a long moment, staring at the door his father had just walked through.
He was the one who was supposed to be behaving differently. He was the one carrying forty years of secrets and hidden depths.
But somehow, in the span of a two-minute conversation, his father had become the mysterious one.
"…Since when did he start teasing me like that?"
The question was rhetorical. He muttered it to himself with something between annoyance and grudging admiration.
Then his face grew serious.
'I was getting overconfident. Assuming I was the most experienced person in every room and my parents were just… my parents.'
'That was Alessio's arrogance talking, and that kind of assumption that gets people killed.'
Alaric had detected his core formation without him noticing. Which meant either his father had sensing abilities Damian didn't understand, or Alaric had been quietly monitoring him ever since the memory incident, watching his son with a depth of awareness that belonged to someone far more dangerous than a simple "high-ranking awakener."
Probably both.
'This isn't my old Earth. The rules I relied on in my past life don't apply here. I need to stop assuming I understand the people around me, even the ones I love most.'
He stood in quiet contemplation for a while longer, letting the lesson sink in.
Then he turned his attention to the box his father had left.
****
He opened it slowly.
And fell in love instantly.
The gun inside was a work of art. Matte black, nestled in a black leather holster, its surface inscribed with silver engravings that caught the light like veins of liquid metal.
The material wasn't any steel or polymer he recognized. It was something denser, lighter than it should be, and humming faintly with what he assumed was residual Aura conductivity.
He lifted it from the box.
The weight settled into his palm with satisfying heft. It wasn't too heavy or too light. Perfectly balanced for his grip, but solid enough to feel like a real weapon.
The barrel was rectangular rather than cylindrical, a design he'd never seen before but instinctively appreciated. Below the grip was a magazine slot, and beside the weapon in the box sat three magazines, neatly arranged.
If Damian had to describe the gun in one word, it would be:
"Beautiful."
A small license card sat inside the box with his name embossed on it. He slid it into a compartment built into the holster and then strapped the holster itself around his waist, testing the draw motion once.
Alessio's muscle memory approved of it.
He took two magazines and filled them with rubber bullets from the box, loaded the third, and raised the weapon without ceremony.
Without aiming deliberately, without even fully focusing on the target across the room, he fired.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three shots. Barely a second between them.
He walked over to the target.
Three rubber bullets were embedded in it. One in the head. One in the heart. One in the…
Damian's lips twitched.
"…Still got it."
The precision was intact. Alessio's decades of shooting experience had transferred directly into Damian's body.
The skill on his status screen wasn't just a number. It was embedded deep enough to function without conscious thought.
"I can already shoot with near-perfect accuracy at this rank. I wonder what higher skill levels would let me do."
He thought back to the morning, when Lyandra had scolded Alaric about shooters who could change bullet trajectories mid-flight.
That wasn't just aiming. That was manipulation.
'Mind control over physical objects. Telekinesis, or something close to it. And the mind is directly tied to willpower, the stronger the will, the more powerful the mental influence.'
'My Will stat is 120. That should be enough to try something.'
Without waiting another moment, he raised the gun again and pulled the trigger, focusing his mind on the bullet the instant it left the barrel.
BANG!
The bullet struck the wall beside the target. Nowhere near where he'd tried to redirect it.
'…That was pathetic.'
He tried again, focused harder and the bullet hit even further off-target.
His mind simply couldn't keep up with the speed of a bullet in motion. By the time his thoughts reached the projectile, it had already traveled past the point where redirection would matter.
"Sigh… let's start with something easier. A still object."
He holstered the gun, walked over, and set a rubber bullet on the ground in front of him. Then he sat cross-legged, focused his will on it, and tried to move it.
Nothing happened.
He tried again, and again and again.
One hour passed… Two…
On what felt like the hundredth attempt, the bullet twitched, barely a millimeter, and rolled half an inch to the left before stopping.
"Finally!"
It wasn't much. But it was proof of concept. His willpower could move objects through sheer mental focus. The scale and speed would come with practice.
He threw himself into it.
The rest of the night passed in a blur of concentration, moving the bullet an inch, then two, then across the mat.
Experimenting with filling Aura bullets and feeling the strange resistance as his crimson-black energy seeped into the specialized metal. Practicing his draw and practicing his aim with and without Aura infusion.
He didn't notice the sky outside turning from black to grey to pale gold.
He didn't notice the exhaustion building behind his eyes.
He didn't notice anything until –
Knock knock.
"Brother?"
Luna's voice came through the door, tentative.
"Mom and Dad went outside saying something urgent came up. Can you give me a ride to school?"
Damian's head snapped up, bloodshot eyes meeting the sudden reminder that the world outside this training room still existed.
He glanced at the window.
Sunrise.
He'd trained through the entire night without realizing it.