The training yard was quiet in the way only controlled places ever were.
The measured rhythm of breath and motion, bodies moving in deliberate repetition beneath a pale sky that never quite decided what it wanted to be.
Lux finished the last sequence slower than usual.
Not wrong. Just slower.
Instructor Caelis noticed immediately.
"Again," Caelis said, voice calm, hands folded behind his back.
Lux adjusted his stance and repeated the breathing pattern. In through the nose, controlled hold, release through the mouth. His chest rose and fell, muscles tightening in practiced alignment. Sweat clung to the back of his neck despite the cold.
When he finished, Caelis didn't correct him.
They moved to the edge of the yard where stone benches were half-buried beneath frost. Caelis sat first. Lux followed a moment later, wiping his hands against his sleeves.
"You're distracted," Caelis said.
Lux stared ahead. "I don't think so."
Caelis didn't challenge it. He simply waited.
Lux had learned by now that silence, with Caelis, was rarely empty. It pressed. It asked questions without voicing them. Eventually, Lux exhaled.
"I'm fine," he said, less certain this time.
Caelis turned his head slightly, studying Lux from the corner of his eye. His hair—dark and streaked faintly with silver—was tied back loosely. There were old scars along his forearms, thin and pale, the kind left by burns that had healed cleanly but never vanished.
"You've been 'fine' for three sessions," Caelis said. "That usually means you're thinking too much."
Lux huffed quietly. "Isn't that the point?"
Caelis's mouth twitched. Not quite a smile.
"Thinking is useful," he said. "Drowning in it is not."
They sat for a moment longer. Wind moved across the yard, stirring snow in thin lines along the ground.
Lux spoke again, softer. "Can I ask you something?"
"You're asking already."
Lux hesitated, then committed. "What is Hlyr… really?"
Caelis didn't answer immediately.
He leaned back slightly, eyes lifting toward the sky as if checking something only he could see. When he spoke, it wasn't with the tone of a lecturer. It was quieter. Personal.
"Most people who wield it will tell you it's a tool," Caelis said. "Something to protect with. Something to fight with. Others—usually those who've benefited most from it—call it the peak of human evolution."
Lux glanced at him. "And you?"
Caelis lowered his gaze.
"I think Hlyr is the strength one feels when the world is trying to kill you," he said. "The thing that lets you take one more step when logic says you shouldn't. In winter, especiall… Hlyr is proof of humanity's tenacity and will to survive through even our worst tribulations."
Lux felt something settle in his chest.
The pressure he'd felt. The heat that surged when fear peaked. The thing Vincent had measured him for without naming. He had seen this strange power of him as a curse but hearing Cealis' words made him rethink.
Caelis continued, "That's why we don't start with power. We start with restraint. Focus. Endurance. A body that can survive what the mind demands."
Lux nodded slowly.
After a pause, he asked, "How strong is the Patriarch?"
Caelis didn't laugh—but his expression changed.
Respect, yes. But also something sharper.
"Vincent Achrion," he said carefully, "is not someone you measure by spectacle. He doesn't need to show power often because everyone around him already understands the cost of making him do so. He is "
Lux absorbed that in silence.
Then, almost reluctantly, he asked, "If he's that strong… then why doesn't he just take control of th entire city? The few times I've see him he's always busy with paperwork. Wouldn't someone as strong as him be free to do whatever he wants."
Caelis exhaled through his nose. "Strength alone doesn't make you free."
He stood, brushing frost from his gloves.
"In all honesty, everyone is a slave to something," Caelis said. "Fear. Duty. Legacy. Even power answers to something else eventually. True freedom is being able to choose your own chains. Anyone who deceives themselves into thinking otherwise is either a madman or dead."
Those last words struck lux like a bolt of lightning. He looked down at his hands then looked back up and asked, "Then—what are your chains Instructor Caelis?"
Cealis stared at the demure boy with eyebrows raised.
"I won't answer that question."
Lux felt a bit of coldness in his voice that sent a slight shiver down his spine. He was about to apologize before the austere man cut him off.
"Today's session is over, rest well for tomorrow Young Lord."
With that he left the training grounds, leaving Lux alone with his thoughts.
Lux remained seated for a moment longer, the cold seeping through stone and cloth alike. He felt like he had asked something he shouldn't have. As he arose and began to head to his room he couldn't help but constantly repeat the words his instructor told him in his mind.
Lux sighed, "Now I have more to think about."