Kent gets up limping in pain Lady sofia rush by his side putting her basket aside seeing him injured
Lady sofia softly tears falling"
My son forgive me, because of my blood you suffer "
Kent wipe off her tears he doesn't blame his mother infact all his training and dream is to protect her someday he'll Kent clenched his fist.
From her chamber window, Lady Beatrice watched the courtyard scene unfold with a cold, satisfied smirk. Seeing Lady Sofia's son humiliated was a pleasure, but witnessing her own son, Leo, display such dominant aggression was even better. It reinforced the natural order, the hierarchy of blood and power that she held so dear.
As she turned from the window, she saw Lady Victoria passing by in the corridor. The two women exchanged a glance—a perfect, polished nod and a smile that was all sharp edges and no warmth. Their alliance against the common-born Sofia was firm, but the tension between them was a constant, humming undercurrent. After all, it was Victoria's son, William, the firstborn, who was the true rival to Beatrice's own children. The unspoken competition of whose child would inherit the Duke's true legacy was a battle fought with whispers and studied accomplishments.
***
Later, in the west wing of the mansion, Lady Victoria entered her son's chambers without knocking. The room was less a bedroom and more a scholar's den, or perhaps an alchemist's workshop. The air smelled of old parchment, ink, and a faint, metallic tang.
Her son, William Edgar, seventeen, sat hunched over a desk groaning under the weight of scrolls, leather-bound tombs, and scattered notes. His hair, a shock of white as pure as his father's, was disheveled. He didn't look up as she entered, his emerald-green eyes—so unlike his father's—frantically scanning a complex diagram of the human mana circulatory system.
"William," Victoria said, her voice carefully neutral.
"You missed the evening meal."
"I'm not hungry," he murmured, his hand twitching as he made a frantic note in the margin.
Victoria's gaze swept over the room. The titles on the spines spoke of a singular, dark obsession: *"The Anathema of Age," "Mana and Longevity: Myths of the Ancients," "The Soul's Anchor: A Treatise on Immortality."* This had been his fixation for years. She understood the root of it, of course. He had grown up on the tales of his father's god-like power, only to witness the slow, inexorable decline—the way Duke Edgar, while still formidable, was a shadow of the legendary warrior who had felled the Dragon Lord. Time was the one enemy the great Duke could not defeat.
It wasn't the noble pursuit of strength that drove William; it was a terror of decay. A pathological fear of becoming "pathetic," "powerless," fighting a losing battle against time itself. He didn't just want to be strong; he wanted to be eternal.
"Your father inquired after you,"
Victoria said, a subtle edge entering her voice. She walked over to the desk, picking up a sketch of a grotesque, rune-covered phylactery.
"He spends his days training that… half-breed in the yard. While you waste your time with these… fantasies."
That got his attention. William's head snapped up, his eyes blazing with a feverish intensity.
"Fantasies? Is it a fantasy to want to preserve the power of our bloodline? To achieve what he could not?"
He gestured wildly at the notes. "He was an A-Rank! A Legend! And what is he now? A relic, slowly rusting. He pours his attention into Kent because he pities him. He sees a weakling and thinks he can mold him into something. But I… I have the potential to become more than he ever was. I will not be bound by a mortal lifespan!"
This was the source of Victoria's deepest frustration. William possessed a mana core that dwarfed his siblings', a prodigious talent that should have made him the undeniable heir. Yet, Edgar seemed to look past him, focusing on the struggling Kent. She saw it as blatant favoritism, a sentimental weakness for the underdog son of the wife he truly loved. She couldn't see that the Duke's distance might stem from unease with William's cold, unnatural ambition.
"Potential means nothing if it is not recognized,"
Victoria said coldly. "The academy trials begin soon. Leo and Maria will be there. Kent will be there, representing this house as much as you. Will you be ready to show your father—and the empire—what a true heir of Edgar looks like? Or will you be locked in here, chasing ghosts?"
She didn't wait for an answer. She placed the sketch back on the desk and left the room, the door clicking shut with finality.
William stared at the closed door, his hands clenching into fists. The mention of the academy, of having to prove himself alongside his "inferior" siblings, was a vulgar distraction from his true work. But his mother was right about one thing: he needed resources, knowledge, and influence that went beyond this library.
A dark, calculated thought began to form in his mind. The academy was a den of secrets, home to forbidden archives and ambitious minds. Perhaps his path to immortality didn't lie solely in these books, but in the opportunities the academy presented.
He looked down at the diagram of the mana core, his reflection staring back from the polished surface of his inkwell. He saw not a seventeen-year-old boy, but the face of the first immortal king of Lumenix. He would not be weak. He would not age. He would not die.
And anyone who stood in his way—be it his half-brother, his father's misplaced affections, or the laws of nature itself—would be removed if it's to live forever.
***