It seemed to rain gloom everywhere, especially around one individual in the Azure Imperial Palace: Prince Aetherion. Fifteen years of being addressed as Worthless Prince were now engraved onto his very soul, something that inflicted a much worse kind of wound than any normal physical scar. In an empire with such thick air vibrating with the sounds of magic energy, in which even babies displayed some hints of power and nobles sought to be masters or even over masters of arcane arts, Aetherion was obviously an oddity, an openly visible hole in a world filled with power where not even a flicker of spiritual talent was in him; his meridians as barren as a desert.
"Look at him," a hushed whisper, sharp as shattered ice, would often follow his solitary walks through the sprawling courtyards. "The shame of the Imperial Family. How can such a one ever rule?"
He kept hearing them. All the time. He could hear the little snide remarks from his distant cousins, the pitying looks the servants threw his way, the barely masked contempt in his own siblings' gazes Prince Kaiden, who had enough heat in his very soul to melt steel, and Princess Lyra, who had enough grace to command the winds were the stars, but he was the forgotten shadow. Aetherion smiled inwardly at the whole charade, masking his thoughts and feelings with an indifference he had perfected over decades of hellish rejection. Within him, though, resentment simmered at times, kindled by a haze of distant memories.
There were flickering visions of another world now and then in the heavy silence that filled that neglected room of his: arenas appearing into view, with no escape from scorching glare, the thudding sounds of the punching bag, sweat mouths on determination. He was someone else in this world, a martial artist who knew no equal, who had turned his own body into a weapon of slaughter; he had conquered mountains with empty hands and indomitable will. He was perhaps the sole reservoir of that ancient knowledge, a legacy from the hidden past, the greatest power he guarded with a vengeance more vehemently than any imperial treasure.
He was aware of their spiritual arts. They could even chop the cities down and tear the armies apart into shambles. But he knew at least one thing that they didn't know. That spiritual energy can be exhausted. It can be countered. A perfectly timed strike, a perfectly executed maneuver, and a body honed to absolute precision-these will be eternally unwavering. And, Aetherion was nurturing the tangible, hard, and real in a world that prides itself in the ethereal. His path was solitary and his regimen stringent, but the whisperings of his past self drove him relentlessly to seek mastery. He wouldn't just survive in this spirit world; he would master it, one punch, one kick, one calculated movement at a time. The scorn would become his forge.
Aetherion's private training ground seemed to be a silent testimony to his defiance. Tucked away in some quiet corner of the palace grounds, where creeping vines strangled the old statues and moss carpeted the stone ways, was the single, weather-worn training dummy. Here, between a cover of twilight and pale light of moon, the "Worthless Prince" became someone else. Deprived of royal robes, dressed only in simple, functional linen, his movements were not those of a prince but the ruthless efficiency of a predator.
The way he moved was a dance of destruction: a quick low sweep to the dummy's base, followed by a blur of punches that came crashing in one after another with precision, each blow icily calculated to shatter bone and rupture organs. He practiced old forms and old katas...his body had not forgotten the muscle memory gleaned from a hundred battles. No flashing spiritual energy or cosmic glowing auras were seen, just the raw, profoundly satisfying crack against hard wood and the soft wheeze of his own ragged breaths. It was, however, total concentration; his mind was an iron trap, blocking out the cacophony of wretched embarrassment at the reality all around him. Pain in the knuckles and a burning in the lungs-he relished every moment, a physical sign of his thoughtless advancement contrasted with the void of an aching heart.
One evening under a moonrise, he halted mid-kata, with heaving breaths. His senses, all trained to a fine point after years of fighting, caught something - a faint rustle of leaves, followed by the sound of something soft hitting against stone. His gaze, as keen as a hawk's, locked onto the figure lurking behind a giant, ages-old oak. It was none other than his youngest sister, princess Elysia-a quiet, timid girl with giant, fearful eyes and the touch of healing magic. She was so shy that she would sketch by herself in the gardens and would never talk to him for fear of her older siblings.
For an instant, a flicker of apprehension passed across his face. Had she come to make fun of him too? Or, far worse, would she expose his concerns? The thought of having his martial arts revealed to the spiritual practitioners, who would no doubt consider it an ancient, barbaric display, gave him a rare sense of discomfort. Slow in coming from the blackness, hands cradling a small leather-bound sketchbook, he saw not hatred but pure admiration and confusion in her gaze. But she was not there to scorn him; she was there to see. For the first time in fifteen years, she met him with a shy expression that held no pity but instead carried a quiet, powerful wonder.
Elysia's arrival was like a silent question. Aetherion numbly observed her timidly stepping forward, his defensive body gradually relaxing. His fists fell lower, his breathing now relaxed and steady. The close air between them, filled with the power of his own determination, was now permeated by a fragile, unspoken curiosity. The scent of faint gardenias and ink from her sketchbook had replaced the muskiness of the training ground in the air.
She held the book to her chest, her eyes darting between his scabbed knuckles and the battered training dummy. "I...I just wanted to see," she whispered, and her voice was barely a breath. "Everyone says you do nothing but...nothing. But I didn't see that."
Aetherion did not speak in answer. Words were a currency seldom expended by him, particularly with those who could offer little in return. But there was a naive, unpretentious innocence in her gaze, and that innocence disarmed him. Her awe was not a prologue for ridicule as it might be in others; it was untouched by such things. She wasn't looking at a "Worthless Prince," or a "scapegoat." She was simply looking at something that was utterly foreign to her. Remembering her in the gardens, he had watched her sketching frail butterflies and flowers with an intensity that had mirrored his own in the arena. They were two outcasts with the same deep sense of loneliness.
He didn't say anything, but the vibe wasn't clear-the-room-now, so Elysia shrugged and cracked her sketchbook, riffling through a bunch of half-finished drawings and ink smears. Then she hit upon that one a sketch in charcoal so crisp you could hear the scuff of his boot. It seized him in midskulk, the clothes twisted up, muscles almost buzzing for you off the page. No frills, nothing cleaned up. The jagged, wild charge of his body just then.
She caught a glimpse of the sketch and muttered, "It's … wow, it's beautiful," in a voice just loud enough that only she could hear over the sound of her own nerves. "It's real, you know? Not like that summon-an-ancestral sort of trick. This just… it's got weight. Doesn't float away, it just hangs."
Her words had a profound impact on him unlike any other compliment. Heavy. It's unavoidable. The essence of his strength had never described a fleeting burst of energy; rather, a physical weight, sculpted with sweat, anguish, and unfaltering resolve. It was the first individual in his life who had truly seen him in all his reality, rather in all that he was missing. He gazed at the sketch, at the contours and shades of the artwork that enveloped the spirit of his martial arts. A thin, true smile, which was virtually nonexistent on his face, appeared. He had endured the disdain of an entire empire, but in this moment, the courage of a timid little princess had revealed to him that he was never completely alone. His secret did not escape him, a new and rather surprising friend had come to light. A little deeper did the glow of defiance shine within him.