Sword mistress Velanica clearly had no intention of letting me rest.
"Training starts now," she said, tapping her wooden sword against her shoulder with that same dangerous glint in her eyes. "Your muscles are still warm. Perfect time to break them properly."
I opened my mouth to answer, but the arena door creaked open before I could speak.
Butler stepped inside, his posture as composed as ever, not a single crease on his uniform disturbed by haste. Yet the timing alone said enough. He would never interrupt without a reason.
"Mistress Velanica. Young master," he said with a small bow. "A message has arrived."
Velanica clicked her tongue. "If this is about lunch, it can wait. I just got him to stop looking like a broom."
Butler's gaze shifted to her, respectful but unwavering. "The house master has returned from the capital and requests the young master's presence. Immediately."
The words settled Into the air like a stone dropped into still water.
House master. Theodore's father.
I swallowed. "Right now?"
"Yes, young master."
Velanica rested her sword across her shoulders, expression tightening in annoyance. "Of all the timing… Fine. If the big man wants you, I'm not stupid enough to argue."
The three of us left the training arena together, Velanica walking with her uneven, deceptively lazy gait, butler striding with measured steps, and me in between them, still feeling the phantom sting of cuts along my arms and the lingering echo of her earlier blows in my muscles.
The castle where the house master stayed felt different from the wing I had been living in. The atmosphere was calm and careful, like a room where a conversation had just ended and no one wanted to be the first to speak again. Servants moved quietly along the corridors, their eyes lowered, but there was no heaviness In the air, no suffocating sense of intimidation. If anything, the space felt… restrained. Controlled.
House master presence wasn't that much intimidating.
When we entered his audience room, he was already seated at a modest desk, stacks of parchment arranged with geometric precision on either side. He wasn't surrounded by guards or draped in jewels. No crown. No ostentatious display of power. Just a man in his late thirties or early forties, with Theodore's dark hair cut shorter and streaked at the temples, eyes that seemed to measure a room in a single glance, and a calm expression that revealed nothing.
"Theodore," he said, as if we had been in the middle of a conversation instead of days apart. "You are going to attend the academy in the capital. You cannot deny it like always."
Like always.
So the old Theodore had fought this before. Refused. Pushed back.
I opened my mouth, then closed it again. I had no idea what he had said in the past, no memory to lean on. Anything I said now would be mine, not his.
Before I could decide how to respond, Velanica's jaw clenched. Her face, usually animated by sharp sarcasm or fierce focus, twisted into something caught between outrage and wounded pride.
"Hold on a second," she snapped, stepping forward. "What is the point of me being summoned here? You are the one who called me from my post to train your son, and now you are sending him to the academy? Explain."
Her tone wasn't respectful, not really, but it wasn't insubordinate either. It balanced on a strange line between professional complaint and personal frustration. She looked less like a servant speaking to her employer and more like a specialist after being told her project had just been scrapped.
The house master regarded her with an almost bored calm, as if he had been expecting this reaction from the moment she entered the room.
"Hm… It is good of you to be concerned," he said. His voice was steady, unhurried. "But I summoned you a month ago, when my son's black bone was still active. You came a month later. And now you want me to explain."
The silence that followed was almost comedic.
Velanica's mouth opened, then closed again. Her gaze drifted to the side, then to the ceiling, then to a completely uninteresting spot on the far wall. She started to whistle under her breath, the universal sound of someone pretending they had not just been hit with a very inconvenient truth.
I had to fight the urge to laugh.
So, I am going to the academy in a world of magic, huh.
The thought settled into my chest with a strange mixture of dread and excitement. This really was a fantasy world. Magic, divine symbols, sword masters, noble houses, and now an academy in the capital.
As I had known from stories in my old world, academy events were often the starting point for everything. The place where plots kicked into motion. Where protagonists met allies, rivals, enemies. Where destinies tangled.
And now I was walking straight into one.
Not as Leon.
As Theodore Valtair Roosevelt.
I bowed my head slightly, more out of instinct than decision. "I understand," I said quietly. "I will prepare for the academy."
The house master gave a single, approving nod. His gaze lingered on me for a heartbeat longer, as if searching for something he hadn't quite seen before, then returned to his papers.
"You leave in three days," he said. "Butler will see to what you need."
Velanica crossed her arms, huffed once, then looked at me with a sideways glance that held irritation, curiosity, and something that almost resembled reluctant respect.
"Three days, huh?" she muttered. "Then you are mine until you step into that carriage."
Her eyes sharpened. "Do not think going to the academy gets you out of training, kid. If you show up there weak, they will chew you up and spit you out before the first term ends."
A small smile threatened to tug at my lips. "So you are not done with me yet?"
"Done?" She scoffed. "We have not even started."
She turned on her heel, wooden sword resting against her shoulder, and jerked her chin toward the door. "Come on. If you are going to survive the academy, your foundation better not be trash."
As I followed her out of the room, Butler's footsteps steady beside mine, one thought pulsed quietly at the back of my mind.
An academy In the capital. A world of magic. A borrowed life with missing answers.
If academy is where everything starts in stories, then maybe,
This is where everything starts for me too.