"Hey! Over here!"
Dan waved from the floor between two mahogany shelves, a leather tome the size of a tombstone spread across his lap.
Down the aisle, 001 looked up.
Nearly a year had passed since the night in the cellar. Under Flynn's stern and unexpectedly patient hand, she had been named Dan's sworn knight. The rags were long gone. She wore a midnight-black tunic with silver trim, and her white hair, clean now and falling to her waist, was tied back with a dark silk ribbon. Her past hadn't gone anywhere. It just stayed behind her eyes.
She crossed the library without a sound and crouched beside him, peering over his shoulder. Dan devoured stories. She had never understood why anyone would want to live inside one.
"What is it?"
"Look at *this*!"
He jabbed a finger at a hand-painted page. A woman stood on a mountain of slain beasts, long hair streaming, a gilded spear in one hand and a tower shield in the other.
"She seems very strong," 001 said. "Am I supposed to know her?"
"Pay attention." He tugged her sleeve until their shoulders touched. "You're a girl, right?"
She blinked and nodded once.
"Long hair. Insane at fighting. Pretty." He counted them off on his fingers, amber eyes shining. "See? You're basically the same!"
"Except I'm not a deity."
"Wow. So disappointingly realistic." He flopped his head back, then propped his chin on his hand and looked at her for a moment. His grin softened. "You don't really have a name, right? What about 'Areia'?"
"I do have—"
"Think of it as a nickname!" He was already flipping pages, talking fast. "It sounds a million times better than 'Number One.'"
'A name.'
Her breath snagged. She looked down at her fingers curling against her knees. She had never once thought of having one.
"If you hate it, I'll drop it." Dan started to shove the tome off his lap.
"N-no!" It came out too fast. Her face went warm, a feeling she had no practice with. "It's fine. It's just that I don't have one for you."
"Huh. True." He cocked his head and stepped closer. "Come to think of it, I don't think you've ever called me by my name."
Areia took half a step back and studied the floorboards.
"Why's that?" Dan pressed, smirking.
'Because I'm too embarrassed to say it,' she thought, panicking. 'I can't tell him that. It's ridiculous.'
"So what are you going to call me?"
"Um. Well. The thing is." Her mind lunged for anything solid and came back with the only title she'd ever been taught. "Master?" she whispered.
Dan blinked. "Master? That's way too formal."
"Then we can scrap it!" Her hands flapped, her shoulders sagged.
"No, no! It's fine!" He caught her face falling and nearly tripped over his own words. "Call me whatever you want. Master's great!"
"Really?" Her purple eyes lit up like cut stones.
"Yeah, sure!" He scratched the back of his neck, laughing.
"YOUNG MASTER!"
A voice like a falling anvil rolled through the double doors at the far end of the hall.
"Where are you?! It is 'time for etiquette and history!'"
Dan went rigid, like a mouse that had spotted a cat. "Oh no. It's Haze."
He grabbed Areia's hand and bolted.
"Master? Where are we going?" She stumbled after him, boots clicking on the polished floor.
"You want to go study?" he said over his shoulder. "You fall asleep in that classroom every time."
At the back of the library, in a shadowed alcove, he found a groove in the masonry and threw his shoulder against it. A stone slab ground aside and revealed a narrow black tunnel.
"Come on! Miss Haze won't mind if we skip one class."
"She will mind," Areia said, and the corner of her mouth twitched. She remembered three hours on how to hold a teacup.
She followed him anyway.
–---
Dan sat on the highest step above the sunlit training grounds, chin in his palms, eyes tracking a blur.
Areia moved like something feral.
Her boots whispered across the dust. Her wooden practice blade came up in a blinding arc at Flynn's jaw, and his bare wrist caught it in midair. She dropped the sword without a flicker of hesitation and used the momentum to throw a whipping kick at his temple.
'THUD.' Flynn's off-hand blocked it. His straight punch was already coming.
She didn't try to stop it. She took hold of his forearm and rode the force, twisted in the air, hit the ground flat on her back, and coiled like a spring. Her boots shot toward his face. Flynn leaned back an inch, and the soles grazed his nose.
She landed on all fours, a panther, and ran at him. She dove under his sweeping kick, slid between his legs, caught his ankle as he spun, and reversed her direction so quickly that the air seemed to stutter. Her fist drove at his sternum.
Flynn's palm opened. It stopped an inch from his chest.
'Versatile.' His blue eyes narrowed as he parried and redirected strike after strike. 'Her instincts are frightening and her speed is top tier. But no one cheats biology. She's human. She'll hit a wall sooner or later.'
Then the air thickened.
Heat rolled between them. Amber light bloomed around Areia's hands as her fingers locked into a tight, oval shape: the Dragon Seal.
Flynn's instincts screamed. He threw himself backward.
A thread of searing orange light tore across the grounds with a crack like splitting sky. It burned a hole through the training wall, punched through a spire of the castle in the distance, and was gone over the horizon before its own sound caught up.
'She doesn't understand magic at all.' His heart hammered. 'She's forcing raw mana through a dangerous shortcut.'
He stepped inside her guard before she could recover from the recoil.
She tried to retreat, boots digging furrows in the dirt. He caught her arm and swept her legs. She anticipated it, lifted both feet, and used his grip as a pivot to aim a double kick at his chin.
Flynn tilted his head. Her boots hit nothing.
"That was stupid," he said cheerfully, holding her upside down by one ankle a few inches off the ground.
Her white hair swept the dust. She stared up at his boots, deadpan.
"I give up."
"Of course you do." He dropped her.
She flipped, landed, and put five yards between them before dusting off her tunic. "So?"
Flynn unclasped his armguards, laid them on the bench by his sword, and sighed.
"I came out here to teach you something. Honestly, I can't find much to fix. Your fundamentals are complete. If I force my own style on you, I'll only box in what you already do naturally." He rubbed the back of his neck.
Areia said nothing. Her face gave away nothing.
'I have no idea how to mentor a child,' Flynn thought, a sweat drop forming. 'She's going to wreck her own body if she keeps pushing like this. And now I understand why Haki struggled. She was enjoying the fight.'
"About that hand sign," he said, and his voice changed. "Would you stop using it? For good?"
"The Dragon Seal?" She tilted her head.
"That one. You don't actually know how magic works, do you?"
She shook her head.
"Thought so. If you try that in front of Arthur, he'll ban you from channeling mana entirely."
"Is it that bad?"
"Listen carefully, Areia." He sat on the stone bench and gestured for her to join him. "People like us aren't born magicians. We've got mana, but shaping high-tier spells isn't in us. Force it, and your channels burst. Centuries ago, someone found a dark workaround."
He watched her face.
"You give up a small piece of your own life force, and your body casts for you. It's weaker than real magic, but it works."
Her eyes were blank. 'Right. She doesn't know what life force or channels are.'
"Think of it this way." He snapped his fingers. "Every time you fight, you pay with a sliver of your soul. Like trading it for skills with a blade."
Her eyes widened a fraction.
"That seal you made? It comes from a self-proclaimed Dragon God who terrorized the eastern continent for decades. Until our party put him in the ground. "Actually, the queen did that. But the point is..."
He leaned in and held her gaze.
"Every time you make that sign, you offer a piece of your life to a dead monster's curse. You're trading years for a flash of light. Understand now?"
Areia looked at her hands.
'But at this point I've used that more times than I can count,' she thought. 'I've never been asked to think about its cost.'