The "training" was a joke.
A week after his Awakening, Damian stood in the dusty courtyard of the Snow family's training hall with a dozen other newly-awakened youths from the Vale. Their instructor, a grizzled 3rd Order Earth Mage named Brom, looked like he'd rather be chewing rocks.
"Right! You lot have the spark!" Brom barked, pacing before them. "Now you need the method! Mana control! Basic forms! Without control, your fancy affinities are about as useful as a chocolate fireguard!"
A few of the noble kids snickered. Damian just watched, his face blank. His public Earth affinity was a dull, sluggish thing in his core. His Fire was a barely-there flicker. Working with them felt like trying to write with his off-hand while wearing mittens.
The first exercise was "Mana Sense." They had to close their eyes and feel the energy in a simple, unadorned Low-Grade Earth Mana Stone Brom placed in the center of their circle.
Damian sat cross-legged. He reached out with his Earth sense. It was like listening through mud. He got a vague, rocky impression. Next to him, a stocky boy from a miner family grunted in satisfaction. "I can feel the cracks in it! Like a seam in the deep rock!"
Brom nodded at the boy. "Good, Jorgen! That's the D-Grade Earth sensitivity! You'll make a fine surveyor!"
Jorgen beamed. Damian kept his eyes closed, his expression neutral. Internally, his Monarch's Gaze was screaming at him. It didn't just sense the stone; it analyzed it. He could feel the precise lattice of its energy, the weak points where a tap of force would make it crumble, the pathways to drain it dry. But that was his hidden Darkness affinity peeking, useless for this charade. He had to pretend to be worse than he was.
"Snow!" Brom's voice broke his concentration. "You're as still as a statue. Feeling anything, or did you fall asleep?"
A titter ran through the group. Helena, observing from the sidelines with the older students, looked away, embarrassed.
"I feel its... solidness, sir," Damian said, his voice flat.
"Solidness," Brom repeated, deadpan. "Wonderful. The profound philosophical insight of a rock. Truly, we have a sage among us."
The laughter was louder this time. Damian accepted it like rain. Insults were just noise. He was conserving energy.
The real humiliation came during the first sparring session a few days later. They were using wooden staves, meant to practice channeling a trickle of mana into a weapon for impact.
His opponent was a boy named Tobin, from a family of stone-masons. He had an E-Grade Earth affinity and the build of a young bull. He also had a mean streak and had heard the whispers about Damian's "phantom shadow" and weak grades.
"Ready, Dual-Affinity?" Tobin sneered, rolling his shoulders. "Don't worry, I'll go easy. Wouldn't want to extinguish that precious F-Grade spark of yours."
The fight started. Damian tried to use his Earth affinity to root his stance and strengthen his blocks. It was pathetic. The mana moved like cold tar. Tobin's strikes, enhanced by his own Earth mana, were slow but heavy. Thwack! A blow got past Damian's guard, hitting his shoulder. Pain bloomed.
"Come on, Snow! Where's that famous second affinity? Gonna warm me up with a little fire?" Tobin jeered.
Damian gritted his teeth. He tried to summon his Fire. A pathetic wisp of heat gathered around his hand, doing nothing. Tobin laughed and lunged again.
This is useless, Damian thought, his old survival instincts screaming. In his past life, a fight was won by any means: dirt, deception, exploiting the environment. Here, they fought like they were following a recipe.
Tobin swung a wide, telegraphed overhead blow. "Getting tired?"
In that moment, Damian didn't think. His body, trained by years of secret sword practice and haunted by memories of real battles, moved. He didn't try to block with Earth. He just moved, sidestepping with a fluidity that surprised Tobin. As the stave slammed into the ground, Damian drove his own stave forward, not with mana, but with precise, brutal efficiency, aiming for the solar plexus.
Tobin saw it coming and tried to twist, but his own momentum was against him. He was off-balance.
And then, without Damian's conscious command, a whisper of the Darkness inside him stirred. It was the dark of a deep cave, the sudden loss of light. He didn't project it. He just let a droplet of its essence leak into the space between them, right at Tobin's feet.
To Tobin, for a split second, the solid, familiar training yard ground just... vanished from his senses. It was a sensory blip, a momentary disorientation so profound it felt like the floor had dropped. He yelped, his corrective step faltering badly.
Crack!
Damian's wooden stave hit him squarely in the chest. Tobin went down with a whoosh of expelled air, sprawling in the dust.
Silence.
Then, Brom was there. "Halt! Snow, what was that?"
Tobin coughed, pointing a shaky finger. "He... he cheated! The ground vanished!"
Damian looked down at his own feet, then at Tobin, his face a masterpiece of confused innocence. "I just sidestepped and thrust, sir. He tripped on his own swing."
The other students murmured. They hadn't seen any magic. They'd seen Tobin get cocky, over-commit, and eat a well-placed hit.
Brom scrutinized Damian, then the perfectly flat ground. "Tripped, my foot. You got lucky, Snow. A sloppy win is still a win, I suppose. Tobin, stop whining. You got beaten by a boy who thinks 'solidness' is a magical technique. Let that sink in."
As Brom helped a grumbling Tobin up, Damian caught a movement from the edge of the yard. A man in the deep red and black of the Firepeak Clan stood watching. It was the stern mage-advisor who had come with Kael. The man's eyes were not on Tobin. They were locked on Damian. His expression was unreadable, but his gaze was intense, analytical. He had seen something. Not the shadow itself, but the perfect, unnatural timing of Tobin's stumble.
Damian felt a chill that had nothing to do with his affinities. Witness.
He needed to get stronger. Properly stronger. His pathetic public affinities were a liability. He needed techniques. Real ones.
That night, he went to his father. Lord Arcturus was in his study, reviewing ledgers that spoke of dwindling returns from the Vale's mines.
"Father," Damian said, bowing. "My training... I am struggling. My affinities are weak, but I don't wish to be a burden. I wish to contribute. To protect our house's honor."
Arcturus looked up, his stony face softening a fraction. The boy was showing initiative. "Honor is defended with strength, boy. You have little."
"I know," Damian said, letting a sliver of genuine frustration show. It wasn't hard. "But what I lack in grade, perhaps I can make up for in diligence. I need to understand our heritage. The true methods of House Snow. Not just courtyard drills."
Arcturus studied him. "You want to enter the family vault."
"To study the foundational Earth techniques of our ancestors," Damian pressed. "To understand the sword forms they used with it. Even if my power is small, perhaps their wisdom can make it count for more."
It was the right argument. Appeal to legacy, to making the most of meager resources. Arcturus sighed, a sound like grinding stones. "Diligence is a virtue. Very well. I will give you a pass-key for one evening. You may study the first-tier manuals. Do not touch the relic cases or the older scrolls. They are beyond you."
He handed Damian a small, rune-inscribed stone.
The family vault was not under the manor, but built into the heart of the mountain it stood upon. The door was a slab of seamless granite. Damian touched the pass-key to it. With a deep groan, the stone slid aside.
The air inside was cool, dry, and smelled of old parchment and metal. Shelves lined the walls, holding books and scrolls. Cases displayed old weapons and a few dormant mana stones. His Soul-Sight flared. He saw the auras of the items—mostly dull browns and greys. Nothing like the corrupt reliquary.
He ignored the fancy relics. He went straight to the technique manuals.
"Earth-Sense Primer."
"Foundations of Geomancy."
*"Stone-Skin Technique (1st-3rd Order)."*
"Tremor Strike - A Basic Earth-Enhanced Attack."
He took them all. Then, he found the sword manuals. "Snowpeak Blade Forms: Adapting Earth's Stability to the Sword." Perfect.
But as he gathered the scrolls, his Monarch's Gaze pinged. Not from the shelves, but from a plain, unlocked wooden chest shoved in a corner, labeled "Obsolete." Inside were not books, but old training gear: weighted bracers, a cracked practice sword... and a single, thin manual.
The cover was blank. He opened it. It wasn't about Earth. It was a handwritten treatise called "On Combat Instinct: Fighting When the Mana Runs Dry."
It was written by a long-dead Snow ancestor who had survived a siege by relying on mundane skill, terrain, and dirty tricks when his mana was exhausted. It spoke of using an opponent's momentum against them, of targeting weak points (eyes, throat, joints), of using dust, noise, and fear.
Damian's heart beat faster. This wasn't magic. This was experience. The very thing that had let him "trip" Tobin. He took it instantly.
He left the vault with an armful of legitimate Earth and sword techniques, and one illegal treasure of pure, practical violence.
Back in his room, he laid out his haul. The Earth techniques would give him a believable public skillset. The sword forms would complement his dual-wielding style. But the combat manual... that was the key. That, combined with his old-world survival instincts and the subtle, sensory-disruptive properties of his Darkness, could make him a nightmare for anyone who thought a fight was just about whose mana glow was brighter.
He opened the combat manual. The first line was written in a sharp, uncompromising hand: "The first rule of a real fight: there are no rules. Only the living and the dead."
A grim, genuine smile touched Damian's lips for the first time in weeks.
Finally, he had found something in this house worth keeping.