They had lined his bags like soldiers on the gravel path, trunks and straps gleaming under the courtyard lamps. The butlers carried them out in silence, the maids straightened collars and stepped back so that only the Akio family stood at the gate. Yuki kept his hands in his pockets like he owned nothing and everything at once. The chill in the air felt less like weather and more like a fact: the world was changing around him.
Hayate watched him with the same measured calm that had become armor. When Yuki spoke, it was small, brittle around the edges. "I believe I can't come home for breaks, right?"
"Yes," Hayate said, the single-syllable answer that settled like iron. It was the simplest, cruellest truth Yuki could receive. He folded it into himself and kept his face neutral; you learned quickly that showing panic gave other people things to solve.
"When next will I see you?" Yuki tried. The hope in his voice was thin but honest.
Hayate's eyes were steady. "We don't know yet. Something's changed. Seeing you vanish in the clearing confirmed more than you can understand. Your aura acted like a fault in a net. You're awakening a power you aren't meant to unlock yet — an old legacy from your ancestor. There was an old rule: don't show signs of that power until you reach a certain level. You've been here too long. That rule doesn't save a man when his soul flares. The academy is a semi-domain — controlled, protected. We'll send you where they can teach you control and where we have reach."
For a moment Yuki's mind burned with shame — had his father read his thoughts? Had the man seen straight into him? He hadn't. Hayate continued with dry amusement. "No. Just your body language. Work on your expressions; in a city, a careless face gets picked clean."
It should have stung. Yuki only blinked and let a small grin leak out. He was easier to read than he liked, but there was something steadier beneath that now. He had disappeared; they had noticed; they were acting. That knowledge was strange medicine.
Suzume's eyes were bright with tears and resolve at once. "I didn't want to agree. I was scared of losing you to the world," she said, voice breaking. "But seeing Shadow — seeing him shake — I understood. Staying would let something find you. We send you where people can teach and watch."
Shadow met Yuki's eyes like a man who'd been holding a knife he never wanted to point. "I'll arrange the trip. I promised Hayate I would watch. I'll not leave you alone."
Something like acceptance crawled through Yuki. He had wanted to leave the old life once and had been denied; this time, it was strategy, not exile. He nodded. "Alright. I'll go to get stronger. I won't be a problem."
Hayate's mouth curved as if the muscle had rediscovered its use. He did what not many fathers do in public: he gave a proclamation with the weight of tradition behind it. "Yukiharu Akio," he called, voice even and firm, "come forward."
Yuki stepped without thinking. The courtyard felt cold, the air taut; the servants watched with bated faces. Hayate reached into a small box at his side and drew out the family crest — an icy phoenix whose wings wrapped around a burning core. He had made sure Yuki would carry the symbol of the Akio blood.
"I declare you the Akio heir," Hayate said. "I bestow the family crest upon you. Hold your actions accountable to the clan at all times. Act with honor and restraint." There was a tremor of something softer underneath his formal tones. "You cannot use this title publicly until we deem it safe." He paused. "Do not let it be a chain. Let it be a reminder of what you protect."
Yuki felt the metal cool against his palm, heavy and real. He swallowed an emotion he'd never been taught a name for and let the crest sit like a cold coin at his chest. It mattered. It mattered that Hayate believed he could be entrusted. That belief carried more weight than any armor.
Then Hayate surprised him again. "Attack me. Train the fire and ice in your veins. I want to see what you can do."
The invitation hung there — half command, half dare. Shadow's jaw tightened at the edge of the gate; Suzume paled slightly and made the smallest noise. Hayate pushed something into the world by smiling just once. "This is a one-in-a-lifetime chance."
A voice — not audible to anyone else — rasped in his head: Faunus. "Hush. Do not shout out loud. Focus."
Yuki blinked away the urge to respond. The last thing the family needed was to hear a name they didn't understand. He centered himself. The training, the academy, even the farewell: everything funneled into that breath.
He stepped out onto the packed earth. The courtyard was wide enough; servants gave them a respectful circle. Hayate's stance was relaxed but primed; his hands were the hands of a man who'd raised armies not to kill but to hold. Yuki had always known his father was the Ice Phoenix — the nickname for a man who looked like stone and moved like winter — but he'd never seen Hayate actually move against him.
"Begin," Hayate said.
Yuki pushed his breath to the base of his spine and let heat rise along his right arm, cold bloom in his left. The lattice filament he'd trained with the void braided itself into his palms — crimson-ice, brittle and hungry. He stepped forward with Vanishing Movement, not a blur but a disciplined slide. He aimed a Vanishing Palm at Hayate's chest — a narrow, sharp pulse meant to scorch then numb.
Hayate didn't flinch. He didn't need to. He stepped into the strike with the kind of calm that made the air feel heavier. Then he brought both hands up: one cupped like a forging bell, the other a blade. Fire and ice, perfectly timed, met Yuki's attack like two master smiths catching a miscast spark. The Vanishing Palm slammed into a column of heat and a sheet of cold that folded it aside rather than stopped it. The sound was a clap — not loud, but the kind that vibrates through bones.
Yuki's forearm burned with the aftershock. He tasted metal on his tongue and felt the wrongness of a strike redirected instead of meeting its mark. Hayate smiled, just a cold little smile. "Again. You have speed, but you lack timing and pressure control. Don't shove your weave. Thread it."
They went again. This time Yuki pulled the weave in at the ribs and released it as a layered smear instead of a shove. He braided the crimson-ice into a thin ribbon that hit Hayate's left shoulder; it hissed into steam and chilled the muscles. Hayate adjusted in the motion, the heat in his palms flaring into a stream of molten light that licked at the webbing Yuki left behind. Where the two met, a small ring of steam rose and then condensed into hoarfrost at Hayate's feet.
Hayate stepped back, then forward in a pressure that felt like the tide. He moved with both fire and ice as if he had sewn them together decades ago. "Your weave is jagged," he said, voice flat. "You panic and pile. Stop imagining death. Imagine rhythm. Heat is pressure and will; cold is control and patience. Use both to make a trap, not a grinder."
They trained until the courtyard was marked with the ghosts of power: circles of frost, scorched patches of tile, the smell of singed hair and ozone. Hayate drilled him with everything from basic footwork to breathing sequences that synchronized the weave with his pulse. He made Yuki hold a stance until his legs burned and then demanded he push the weave without relying on the shakiness of tiredness. The old man taught with a teacher's cruelty: push until technique fails, then hold until control returns. It was the fastest way to learn where limits truly sat.
When Yuki's left arm trembled uncontrollably, Hayate knocked him a light, controlled blow across the chest and then steadied him with a palm on his sternum. "Feel your steady center. If your center wavers, the weave wavers. Everyone's power echoes through the core. Build the pillar before you build the cathedral."
Once, Yuki overreached and threw the lattice too wide. The near-fatal mistake ripped at his shoulders; the weave answered with a backlash that shook his teeth. He stumbled, vision trailing. A chorus of regret rose in his head, and Faunus's voice slid through the static: Breathe. Smear. Don't smash.
Hayate watched him as though weighing bone and resolve. Then he cupped Yuki's chin and forced him to meet his eyes. "You will grow stronger," he said simply. "But strength without discipline eats its owner. I trained you because I trust you to not burn the village. Learn to use your fire to protect, your ice to preserve. We are not demons; we are a clan."
The words felt like a benediction. For the first time, Yuki understood the depth of Hayate's reputation: this man could be cold as tundra but could kindle a fire that survived the worst winters. Hayate moved like a commander and fought like a maker — both crafts bound by the same rulebook of patience.
When the sun dipped and the shadows lengthened, Hayate gave Yuki the last set of exercises: breathwork synchronized to eight counts, weave threading along the sternum, a sequence of vanishing steps and reappearing slashes. Shadow stood quietly at the edge of the circle, the worry still there but smoothed into something like pride.
Suzume stepped forward then, carrying a wrapped parcel — herbs, a small charm, the things mothers always hide in palms. She pressed it into Yuki's hands. "For the road," she said. Her eyes were wet, but she forced a smile. "Don't make me worry more than I already do."
Yuki wrapped his fingers around the small bundle and felt the steady pressure of family close — not as a shackle, but a soft rope he could use to steer himself when storm winds came.
Hayate placed a hand on his shoulder, firm and warm. "Tomorrow you leave. Shadow will take care of the logistics. Remember: you go to learn control. You return a different man, or you return not at all."
Yuki looked up into his father's face, and for once the Ice Phoenix's cold exterior thawed into something between pride and fear. "I'll train. I'll come back knowing how to hold the weave."
Hayate nodded. He stepped back and announced, not to boast but to seal fate, "By dawn, prepare. We have the carriage ready. Travel light. Be discreet."
Faunus's voice, a muted thread inside Yuki's head, murmured: "Good. Foundations lay cities. Learn to be one."
That night Yuki packed with hands that had learnt the taste of blood and ash. He slept like a man who'd taken the first bricks to begin a fortress. The crest hung cold at his chest; his father's words echoed in his bones; the promise to Shadow and Suzume sat like a vow.
Morning would take him across a map he'd only seen in studies. Yamauchi's academy would be a crucible. He would meet teachers who were sharper than he was yet kinder in the way that tempers steel. He would disappear from the Akio courtyard and step into a city that devoured careless boys. He would not go alone. Shadow would be at his side. Hayate's hand had placed the clan's trust on his shoulders — heavy and honest.
He closed his eyes one last time beneath the eaves and let the quiet settle. The world felt large and hungry. He felt small and ready. When dawn split the horizon, he would walk out of the gate carrying the Akio name and the weight of a new destiny.
This was not exile. This was the first stroke of the map he would redraw with his own hands.