Morning light streamed through the tall windows of Kael's new palace quarters, painting golden stripes across the polished floor. He woke slowly, the unfamiliar luxury of the massive bed taking a moment to register. This wasn't the Silver Griffin Inn. This was the royal palace.
His companions were already stirring. Vera sat by the window, her violet eyes reflecting the morning sun. Ember flickered between the bedposts, her curiosity about their new environment evident in how she examined every detail. Fulminus perched atop an ornate wardrobe, preening his feathers with meticulous care. Mushy swayed gently in a corner, their cap bobbing peacefully. And Spritz, their newest bonded family member, stretched near the door like a cat waking from a nap.
Good morning, Vera's mental voice carried warmth. Sleep well in your fancy new bed?
"Better than I expected, honestly," Kael replied aloud, sitting up and stretching. "Though I had weird dreams about becoming royalty through marriage. Wonder what that was about."
The King's suggestion, probably, Vera observed dryly. Your subconscious is processing the absurdity of that first option.
Kael laughed and swung his legs out of bed. "Alright, everyone, we need to discuss training. The tournament is coming up soon—we don't have an exact date yet, but it can't be more than a few days away."
We should keep training hard. Fulminus projected immediately, his fierce determination evident even through the mental bond. Every day of preparation matters.
"Agreed, but we need to be smart about it." Kael stood and began his morning stretches. "We can't use the healing-assisted training method where people might see us. Too many questions, too much exposure of my abilities. We already revealed the healing power itself to the royal family—no need to show them the strategic advantages it provides in training."
So normal training then? Ember asked, sounding slightly disappointed. Just regular practice without the exhaustion-heal-repeat cycles?
"In public, yes. But..." Kael paused mid-stretch, an idea forming. "Maybe we can find somewhere private on the palace grounds. The place is huge—there must be training areas that aren't used regularly. If we could find somewhere isolated, we could continue the intensive training without being observed."
Good idea, Vera approved. Seraphina would probably know the palace layout better than anyone. Ask her.
"That's the plan. Let's get ready and find Sera and Lyssa. We can discuss training plans over breakfast."
Kael quickly washed and dressed, his companions following as he left his quarters and knocked on Lyssa's door. She answered within moments, looking like she'd been awake for a while. Granite rumbled a greeting from inside her room.
"Morning," she said. "Still getting used to waking up in a palace. It's surreal."
"Tell me about it. Ready for breakfast? I want to talk to Sera about training arrangements."
"Lead the way."
They found Seraphina's quarters easily—just down the hall as she'd indicated. When Kael knocked, Ripple's mental presence touched the edges of his consciousness, recognizing him before Seraphina even opened the door.
"Kael! Lyssa! Good morning!" Seraphina beamed at them, already dressed for the day in an elegant but practical outfit. "I was just about to come find you. Breakfast is served in the family dining room—the smaller one, not the formal hall we used last night."
"Perfect. I wanted to ask you something about training," Kael said as they began walking. "Is there any place on the palace grounds where we could practice without being observed? Somewhere private, away from the main training areas?"
Seraphina's expression turned thoughtful. "Actually, yes. There's an old training courtyard in the eastern wing. It was once used by the royal guard decades ago, but they have since built newer, better facilities closer to their barracks. Now almost no one goes there—it's basically abandoned. The equipment is still there, and there's plenty of space."
"That sounds perfect. Could you show us after breakfast?"
"Of course! I'm curious what kind of training you do that requires such privacy."
They reached the family dining room—considerably smaller than the formal hall from the previous evening, but still impressively sized. The table could seat perhaps twenty people comfortably, though this morning only a handful of chairs were occupied.
King Aldric sat at the head of the table, looking remarkably different from the previous night. Gone was the ancient, pain-wracked man who could barely move. In his place sat someone who looked exactly his actual age of thirty-one, vital and healthy, eating breakfast with obvious enjoyment.
Queen Catherine sat beside him, and Kael noticed they were holding hands beneath the table—a small gesture of intimacy that spoke volumes about their relief and joy.
Duke Hadrian occupied another seat, reading what appeared to be official reports while eating. And two new faces sat across from him—young people who could only be the twin prince and princess Seraphina had mentioned.
They were both around twenty years old, as Seraphina had said. The young man—Prince Harald, presumably—had his father's sharp features and his mother's dark hair. He wore military-style clothing and carried himself with the bearing of someone who had been trained in combat.
The young woman, Princess Jasmine, had softer features but the same intelligent eyes as her mother. She wore an elegant dress in royal blue and watched the newcomers with open curiosity.
"Ah, good morning!" King Aldric greeted them warmly. "Kael, Lyssa, please sit. Join us for breakfast."
As they took their seats, Prince Harald immediately spoke up, his tone carrying an edge of aristocratic entitlement. "Father, why are these... people dining with the family? I thought this was meant to be a private breakfast."
Kael felt his heart sink slightly. Oh no. Please don't be the typical stuck-up spoiled brats.
"These 'people,' as you put it," the King replied with a hint of steel in his voice, "are Kael Veyrin and Lyssa Thornwood. As of last night, they are officially employed as your sister's personal bodyguards. They are also her friends, which means they are welcome at this table."
"Bodyguards?" Princess Jasmine looked confused. "Seraphina doesn't need bodyguards. She has Ripple, and she's perfectly capable of defending herself."
"It's more of a formality," Seraphina explained quickly. "Kael and Lyssa are my friends who also happen to have official positions. It gives them access to palace resources and legitimizes their presence here."
"How convenient," Harald said, his tone making it clear he found it anything but. "Random tamers from the frontier suddenly elevated to palace positions. I'm sure there's no ulterior motive there."
Kael bit back his initial response—something sarcastic about entitled princes who'd never had to work for anything. Instead, he kept his voice level and polite. "We're competing tamers who happened to help your sister when her carriage overturned. We became friends, and when offered positions that would let us continue that friendship while also being useful, we accepted. That's all."
"How noble," Jasmine said, though her tone suggested she didn't find it noble at all. "Two frontier tamers just happened to rescue a princess. Sounds like quite the fortunate accident."
They really are spoiled brats, Kael thought with resignation. Great.
"They saved my life and asked for nothing in return," Seraphina said, her voice taking on an uncharacteristic edge. "When Kael was offered a reward, he turned down marriage proposals and asked only to be allowed to continue being my friend. He insisted Lyssa be hired alongside him because they're a team. These are good people, and I won't have you treating them like opportunists."
The King cleared his throat. "Seraphina is correct. Kael and Lyssa have proven themselves trustworthy. More than that—" he touched his now-youthful face meaningfully "—Kael is responsible for healing my curse. Something no healer in the kingdom could accomplish. They have earned their place here."
Harald and Jasmine exchanged glances, clearly surprised by this information. Their skeptical expressions didn't completely disappear, but they moderated somewhat.
"The healer everyone's been talking about?" Harald asked. "The mysterious one at the sanctuary?"
"The same," the King confirmed. "Kael has been healing the sanctuary mythbeasts every night, asking nothing in return. He healed my curse, restored my youth and health, and again asked for nothing. These are not the actions of opportunists."
Breakfast continued in somewhat awkward silence after that, though the twins seemed less openly hostile. They still watched Kael and Lyssa with suspicion, but at least they'd stopped with the snide comments.
Kael focused on his food—which was, admittedly, incredible—and tried to ignore the twins' scrutiny. He'd dealt with worse than suspicious royalty. At least they weren't actively trying to kill him.
After breakfast concluded, Seraphina practically dragged Kael and Lyssa away from the lingering tension of the dining room.
"I apologize for my nephew and niece," she said once they were out of earshot. "Harald and Jasmine are... well, they're not bad people, but they're very protective of the family and suspicious of outsiders. Especially after some incidents with people trying to take advantage of royal connections."
"It's fine," Kael assured her. "We're strangers to them. Suspicion is natural."
"Still rude though," Lyssa muttered.
"Anyway!" Seraphina's brightness returned. "Let me show you that training courtyard I mentioned. Follow me!"
She led them through a maze of corridors, taking several turns that Kael tried to memorize but quickly gave up on. The palace was simply too large and complex to navigate without significant practice.
Eventually, they reached a section that looked distinctly older than the areas they'd been in before. The stonework was more weathered, the decorations less elaborate. Seraphina pushed open a heavy wooden door, revealing a courtyard beyond.
The space was perfect. Roughly fifty square meters, enclosed by high stone walls that would block any view from outside. Training equipment stood along one wall—practice dummies, weight racks, weapon stands—all clearly aged but still functional. The ground was hard-packed earth, ideal for combat practice.
"This is amazing," Kael said, genuine appreciation in his voice. "You're right—this is exactly what we need."
"What kind of training are you planning that needs such privacy?" Seraphina asked curiously.
Kael exchanged a glance with Lyssa, who shrugged—the decision was his. He turned back to Seraphina.
"I'm going to tell you, but it needs to stay secret. The royal family knows about my healing ability, but they don't know about the strategic advantages it provides for training."
"I can keep a secret," Seraphina promised.
"My mythbeasts train until complete exhaustion," Kael explained. "Push themselves far beyond what would normally be safe or sustainable. Then I use my healing ability to restore them to perfect condition. Then they train to exhaustion again. And repeat, over and over, for hours."
Seraphina's eyes widened as she grasped the implications. "You can fit multiple days of training into a single day. Without the recovery time that normally limits how much mythbeasts can push themselves."
"Exactly. With my healing cooldown, I can restore everyone multiple times per day. It's how we've gotten so strong so quickly."
"That's... that's actually brilliant," Seraphina breathed. "And it explains so much about how your companions are so powerful despite your relatively low rank and young age. You've been training at an accelerated rate that no one else can match."
"Which is why it needs to stay secret," Lyssa added. "The healing ability itself is already making us notable. If people knew we could also train at that accelerated rate, we'd have every ambitious tamer in the kingdom trying to either recruit us or eliminate us as competition."
"Your secret is safe with me," Seraphina assured them. "And this courtyard is perfect for it—I really don't think anyone comes here anymore. You should have complete privacy."
"Thank you, Sera," Kael said warmly. "This is exactly what we needed."
"When does your tournament actually start?" Seraphina asked.
"We have a few days still," Kael replied. "Enough to get in some good training sessions."
"Then I'll leave you to it. Come find me when you're done—I'm usually in the eastern gardens in the afternoons if I'm not busy with court obligations."
After Seraphina departed, Kael turned to his assembled companions and Lyssa with Granite.
"Alright, everyone, let's make the most of the days we have left. Standard intensive training—push to exhaustion, heal, repeat. We're going to arrive at that tournament as strong as we possibly can be."
What followed were several days of the most intense training Kael had ever supervised. Each mythbeast pushed itself relentlessly, knowing that healing was available to erase the consequences of overexertion.
Vera worked on her telekinetic strength, lifting progressively heavier objects and maintaining multiple complex manipulations simultaneously. By the third day, she could lift Granite completely off the ground and hold him suspended for nearly a minute—a feat that would have been impossible just weeks ago.
Fulminus drove his aerial speed to new heights, literally. The thunder eagle pushed his lightning-enhanced flight until he was moving fast enough to create sonic booms, leaving trails of ionized air in his wake. His precision improved, too—he could now execute impossibly tight maneuvers at full speed without losing control.
Ember mastered flame compression to an art form. She could now create fireballs compressed to nearly invisible points, so hot and dense they could punch through solid stone like it was paper. Her control had grown sophisticated enough to create multiple compressed flames simultaneously and direct them independently.
Mushy developed their poison manipulation into something genuinely dangerous. They'd learned to condense poison into semi-solid projectiles that could be launched with considerable force. The gentle mushroom had also mastered varying their poison's properties—fast-acting paralytic, slow corrosive damage, sensory disruption, each tailored for different tactical situations.
Spritz, despite being the newest member, made remarkable progress. The small dragon's water manipulation grew from simple sphere creation to sophisticated attacks—high-pressure cutting streams, defensive water barriers, and even creating obscuring mist for tactical advantages. The defect that had held Spritz back was completely gone, and his natural talent was finally expressing itself.
Lyssa and Granite trained alongside them, though without the healing advantage that was being saved for now for Kael's mythbeasts for the tournament. Still, they pushed hard, Granite's defensive capabilities and raw strength growing noticeably even in just a few days. Lyssa herself improved her coordination with Granite, their bond deepening through the intensive shared effort.
And Kael worked on his own abilities. Five elements now—psychic, fire, lightning, poison, and water. He practiced maintaining all five simultaneously, building his mental endurance. He experimented with new fusion combinations, testing what happened when he mixed water with his other powers.
Water and lightning created electrified attacks with stunning properties. Water and poison made toxic liquids that could seep through defenses. Water and fire created steam that could be superheated into scalding clouds. Water and psychic energy allowed him to manipulate liquid with telekinetic precision beyond what water control alone provided.
Each day followed the same pattern. Wake early, train intensively in the abandoned courtyard, heal through multiple cycles, push until evening, then rest. Kael still made his nightly trips to the sanctuary, continuing to heal mythbeasts there until every major injury had been addressed.
The days blurred together—training, healing, eating, sleeping, repeat. Time lost meaning in the focused push for improvement.
Until finally, one evening, a palace servant found them in the courtyard.
"Kael Veyrin?" the servant called. "I have a message from the tournament organizers. The Royal Tournament begins tomorrow morning. All registered competitors must present themselves at the Grand Arena by dawn for the opening ceremonies."
Kael felt his heart rate spike. Tomorrow. The tournament was tomorrow.
"Thank you," he managed to say. "We'll be there."
The servant departed, leaving them in the courtyard as evening shadows lengthened.
"Tomorrow," Lyssa said quietly. "After all this preparation, it's actually tomorrow."
"We're ready," Kael replied, more to convince himself than her. "We've trained harder than anyone else probably has. We've grown stronger than we were even a week ago. We can do this."
You can do this, Vera corrected gently. This is your tournament, your competition. We'll fight with you, but ultimately, you're the one making the decisions.
"We're a team," Kael insisted. "Win or lose, we do it together."
Then we'll win together, Fulminus projected with absolute confidence. I haven't trained this hard to lose to anyone.
We've got your back, Ember added, her warmth suffusing through their bond. Whatever happens tomorrow, we're with you.
All of us, Mushy agreed softly.
To the end, Spritz confirmed.
That night, Kael lay in his palace bed staring at the ceiling, too keyed up to sleep despite his exhaustion. Tomorrow morning, he'd step into the Grand Arena and face the best young tamers in the kingdom. Competitors who'd been training their entire lives, who came from prestigious families with legendary mythbeasts, who had resources and connections he could barely imagine.
Could he really win against all that?
Yes, Vera's mental voice cut through his spiraling thoughts. Stop doubting. You have five powerful companions who've trained harder than anyone. You have tactical intelligence and strategic thinking. You have abilities your opponents don't know about—five elemental powers, fusion techniques, and the healing that's made our training possible. You have every advantage except name recognition and political connections.
And those don't matter in the arena, Fulminus added fiercely. Only strength matters. And we're strong.
Kael smiled in the darkness. They were right. He'd done everything possible to prepare. Now all that remained was to execute, to fight with everything he had, to show the kingdom what a frontier tamer from Thornhaven could accomplish.
Tomorrow, the Royal Tournament would begin.
Tomorrow, Kael would find out if all his training, all his preparation, all his growth had been enough.
Tomorrow, he'd discover whether he could really win.
I hope I can do this, he thought to his companions. I hope we're ready. I hope...
Hope is good, Vera interrupted gently. But belief is better. Believe in yourself the way we believe in you. Then go show them what you can do.
Kael closed his eyes and let that conviction settle into his bones. Belief, not hope. Certainty, not doubt.
Tomorrow, he would win.
Because anything less was unacceptable.