The training yard was a desolate stretch of grey stone, slick with the morning's frost.
Kael didn't give me a wooden practice sword.
He simply tossed a blunt iron bar at my feet—heavy, rusted, and balanced like a nightmare.
"Pick it up,"
Kael commanded. his voice was a low growl that cut through the howling wind.
"If you're going to that woods, you don't need form. You need to learn how to survive being broken."
My hand throbbed in its bandages, the pain radiating up to my shoulder. I gripped the iron bar with my good hand, my legs shaking. I looked like a child trying to wield a fallen tree branch.
"Again,"
Kael barked, before I could even settle my stance.
He moved like a blur of steel and shadow. His practice blade slammed into my ribs, sending me sprawling across the frozen stone.
The air left my lungs in a ragged gasp.
I tasted iron—the copper tang of blood mixing with the cold.
"Is that the 'Player' the Duke spoke of?"
Kael sneered, circling me like a wolf.
"A boy who hits the dirt after one blow? Alisa is fading in that room because she trusted someone this fragile. Every second you spend lying on this floor, her heart withers a little more."
"Shut... up,"
I wheezed, pushing myself up.
I didn't have a HUD. I didn't have a health bar.
All I had was the memory of the game's mechanics—the Perfect Parry, the Frame-Data. But my body was too slow. It was like trying to run a high-end game on a broken processor.
CLANG.
He struck again, aiming for my bandaged hand. I rolled, the stone scraping the skin off my knees.
"You think the Behemoth will be kind?"
Kael's voice followed me, relentless.
"It is a creature of seven hundred years of concentrated agony. It doesn't fight with honor. It eats souls. If you can't even touch my cloak, you aren't a savior, Leo. You're just a suicide note."
I forced myself to stand, my vision blurring. I stopped trying to move like a knight. I closed my eyes and reached into the mental library of the game—the Lords of the Fallen logic.
In the game, Kael's AI had a tick. Before a heavy overhead strike, his left shoulder dropped by two inches.
There.
As Kael swung, I didn't retreat. I stepped into his guard, the iron bar braced against my forearm.
The impact nearly shattered my arm, but the bar caught his hilt. For a heartbeat, we were locked chest-to-chest.
Kael's eyes widened, a flash of genuine surprise breaking through his arrogance.
"You're a fast learner, Shadow," he whispered, his breath hot against my face. "But the Woods don't care about tricks."
He kicked me back, but this time, I landed on my feet. My breath was coming in ragged, shallow bursts, but the hopelessness was being burned away by a cold, sharp focus.
"I leave at dusk,"
I said, spitting blood onto the frost.
"Give me everything you've got left. Break me if you have to. Just make sure I'm strong enough to bring her back."
Kael didn't smile, but he settled into a real combat stance.
"Fine. If you want to play at being a hero, I'll treat you like one. Pray your 'Fate' is as strong as your mouth."
The sun climbed higher, indifferent to the wet thuds echoing across the training grounds. My world had shrunk to the size of a few paving stones, most of them stained with my own sweat and the occasional drop of blood.
Kael was no longer holding back. He wasn't trying to kill me, which was somehow worse—he was precisely dismantling me.
Every time I tried to use a "Frame-Data" exploit, his experience trumped my knowledge.
I knew the animation for his sweep started at the hip, but my sluggish, un-leveled body couldn't translate the thought into action fast enough.
CRACK.
"Again,"
Kael's voice was like grinding gravel.
I felt a sickening snap in my left hand. Another finger. The pain was so sharp it turned the edges of my vision white, but I didn't drop the iron bar. I couldn't. If I let go of the rusted metal, I was letting go of her.
Images flashed through my mind between the strikes—not as memories, but as the lore entries I'd read late at night back in my own world. I saw the Alisa from the game's "True End": a girl standing in the center of a burning cathedral, her eyes hollow as she asked the Hero why no one ever came to save her. I saw the way the NPCs talked about her in the markets—calling her a "curse" and a "monster" before she'd even committed a single sin.
She's in that room right now, dying alone because she tried to protect a lie named Leo, I thought. The rage was a cold, buzzing thing under my skin.
It was the only thing keeping my legs from folding.
"You're staring into space, boy,"
Kael said, his shadow falling over me. He swung a horizontal strike aimed at my temple.
I didn't duck. I knew the reach of his practice blade was exactly 4.2 feet. I stepped back four and a half feet, the wind of the blade whistling past my nose, and then I lunged.
It was a "Trade-Hit" mechanic—letting myself get hit to land a blow.
He caught me in the shoulder with his forearm, a blow that felt like a falling hammer, but I managed to swing the iron bar upward. It grazed his cheek, leaving a thin, red line.
Kael froze. He touched the scratch on his face, his eyes narrowing.
The air around him changed; the mocking tone disappeared, replaced by a deadly, quiet focus. He just came at me like a storm.
By mid-afternoon, the world was a blur of grey and red.
My left hand was a mess of purple swelling—three fingers were definitely broken now, dangling at useless angles. I was breathing in heavy, wet rattles, my chest heaving so hard it felt like my ribs were trying to escape my skin.
I was still holding the iron bar with a death grip, my knuckles white through the grime.
Kael stood five paces away, his chest barely heaving. He looked at me—truly looked at me—and saw the way my eyes had gone glassy.
"Enough,"
Kael said, his voice strangely quiet.
"You've crossed the line of 'training.' If I hit you again, your heart will stop from the shock. Call it a day, Leo. You've proven you can bleed. Go get patched up."
I didn't move. I didn't even blink. I just stood there, the iron bar held high, my legs locked in a stance I'd seen a thousand times on a 4K monitor.
"Leo?"
Kael stepped forward, his hand reaching out.
"I said we're done."
I didn't hear him. Inside my mind, I was still counting the frames.
One... two... parry. Three... four... strike.
I was already gone, lost in a trance of sheer, stubborn refusal to fall.
Kael reached out and placed a hand on my shoulder.
"Hey, kid? Can you even hear me?"
I didn't respond. I didn't even tilt my head.
My body was still standing, but my consciousness had finally flickered out, leaving only a shell held upright by the ghost of a command I'd given myself.
Kael let out a long, slow breath. A small, genuine smile touched the corner of his mouth—not the smirk of a superior, but the grim respect of a soldier.
He caught the iron bar as it finally slipped from my unresponsive fingers and slung my limp arm over his shoulder before I could hit the frost.
"That was good,"
he murmured, his voice softened by the wind.
"Stupid... but good. Maybe you won't die in those woods after all."
The sun began to dip behind the jagged peaks of the North, casting long, bloody shadows across the stone.
As Kael carried me back toward the manor, the gates of the estate loomed like the mouth of a tomb,
The darkness of unconsciousness didn't bring rest; it brought a vision bathed in an unsettling, ethereal light.
I was standing in a field of lilies that bled silver into the air. In the center of the clearing stood Alisa. She was wearing a dress of woven starlight, her back turned to me, her posture delicate and heartbreakingly familiar.
Her hands were clasped behind her back, fingers entwined in a way that suggested a secret she was waiting to share. Her long, pink hair cascaded down like a waterfall of silk, catching a wind that didn't exist.
"Alisa!"
I gasped, the weight of the training and the copper taste of blood vanishing. A wave of pure, unfiltered relief washed over me.
"Hey, Alisa! You're okay. You're awake."
She didn't move for a long beat.
Then, with an agonizingly slow grace, she tilted her head. Her crimson eyes weren't filled with the warmth of the 'Monster of the Tran' lie; they were cold, piercing through the dimensions of the dream and into the rot of my soul.
"Why... are... you... lying... to... me... Leo?"
The question wasn't spoken; it vibrated through my bones.
I bolted upright in my bed, a strangled cry dying in my throat. My heart was a frantic bird trapped in a cage.
I didn't wait for the butler or the pain in my shattered fingers.
I sprinted toward her chambers, my vision blurring.
Inside, the air felt like ice. Elian was kneeling by her bed, his hands trembling as he poured a glowing emerald fluid down her throat.
Alisa's skin was no longer grey; it was turning a bruised, necrotic purple.
Dark veins of mana were crawling up her neck like strangling vines.
"She's rejecting the mana,"
Elian whispered, his face etched with pure terror.
"The Sun-Blade's curse is accelerating. At this rate... she won't last the month. If you're going, boy, you go now."
I looked at her, the echo of her dream-voice still haunting my ears. The lie was killing her, and only a miracle could save her.