Auracore Sphere

Morning came with thunder.

Not the kind born of storm clouds, this rumbled from within Ares' very bones as he sat up in bed, muscles screaming their protest from last night's encounter with Eras. Phantom pain trailed behind every breath like invisible chains, and his left shoulder felt as if it had been reset by an overly enthusiastic blacksmith.

He recalled the echo's impossible fluidity, the way Eras had moved with liquid grace, turning raw strength into willing surrender. Flow and Counter wasn't just a technique, it was poetry written in motion. Now that he had felt it directly, muscle memory seared into his flesh, he realized what even the novel's flowery prose could never fully convey: this wasn't merely a fighting style. It was instinct forged in the crucible of countless battles, refined until it became as natural as breathing.

He was nowhere close to mastering it yet. But he would get there. Failure, after all, was just another word for "incomplete success."

– – –

In the mess hall, the boys ate in a silence thick enough to spread on bread. The morning light filtering through tall windows seemed somehow more subdued, as if even the sun was recovering from yesterday's trials.

Rowan poked at his porridge with theatrical dismay, constructing tiny fortifications with his breakfast in what appeared to be an attempt to lighten the oppressive mood. "You know," he said conversationally, "I'm starting to think the cooks are actively trying to punish us. This porridge has achieved a consistency I didn't know was possible in nature."

Caelum continued reading at the far end of the table, his book held at precisely the angle that discouraged conversation. His pages turned with mechanical regularity, though Ares noticed his eyes hadn't moved in several minutes.

Evandor remained a study in controlled stillness, a coiled spring wrapped in flesh and bone, radiating quiet menace with every measured bite. Even his chewing seemed somehow threatening.

– – –

Today's session took them to the training yards, where morning mist still clung to the weapon racks like ghostly fingers. Velna led them through single-edged sword forms, her movements crisp as autumn air. The practice blades were deliberately dull but heavy enough to build strength, their weight designed to punish poor technique.

"Form before speed," she called out, her voice cutting through the clash of steel. "A perfect technique performed slowly will save your life. A sloppy technique performed quickly will end it."

Ares struggled initially, his shoulders protesting every overhead strike. But gradually, something began to click. Every shift in stance brought half-remembered echoes, not his own memories, but ghostly reflections from battles he had studied obsessively in the webnovel. The legendary duels of Sigmund the Ironwrought. Alaric's desperate last stand at Thornwick Bridge. Even the movements of unnamed soldiers whose techniques he had memorized through sheer, obsessive devotion to the story.

'Strange,' he thought as his blade work grew more fluid, 'how reading about something a thousand times almost feels like muscle memory.'

Caelum executed his forms with surgical precision, each cut and parry calculated to mathematical perfection. When Velna called for sparring partners, his pale eyes found Ares immediately.

"Again?" Ares muttered, but stepped into the ring without hesitation.

This time, Caelum pressed harder from the start. Gone was yesterday's probing caution, this was a test of limits.

Their blades met with a resonant clang that sent vibrations up Ares' arms. He felt his muscles strain against Caelum's relentless pressure, technique meeting technique in a deadly dance. Drawing on his fragmentary understanding of Flow and Counter, Ares tried to redirect rather than resist.

Then he pulsed mana to his legs, a crude approximation of Pulse Step, but effective enough. He flickered forward, not clean but purposeful, blade seeking the gap in Caelum's defense.

Caelum's eyes sharpened with genuine interest. In one fluid motion, he swept Ares' legs, sending him tumbling to the packed earth with a satisfying 'thud.'

"Better," Velna called from the sidelines, clapping once. "Tomorrow, we'll work on not telegraphing your mana bursts quite so obviously."

Caelum extended a hand to help Ares up. He didn't smile, that would have been asking too much, but his nod carried something that hadn't been there before. Respect, perhaps. Or at least curiosity about what other surprises the sixteenth son might be hiding.

– – –

Afternoon brought an unexpected deviation from routine. Junia met Ares at the shrine gate as usual, but instead of leading him toward the familiar path to the Hall of Sealed Echoes, she turned east.

"You're not facing an echo today," she said, her tone carrying an undercurrent of something that might have been anticipation.

"No?" Ares fell into step beside her, curiosity prickling at his thoughts.

She handed him a scroll sealed with Veltrissa's personal mark, a stylized flame wreathed in shadow. "You are more than echoes now. Come prove it."

The Hall of the Storm-Worn Blade perched atop the Cradle's eastern cliff like a predatory bird, where howling wind and driving rain were not weather but constant companions. Built from blocks of midnight-black stone, its walls were etched with ancient Eisenklinge sigils, each one a vow carved in steel and sealed in blood. The very air around it seemed to thrum with barely contained power.

Inside, the hall was surprisingly sparse. No elaborate decorations or ceremonial braziers, just raw stone and the whisper of wind through hidden passages. But at its center, suspended in mid-air by invisible forces, hung something that made Ares' breath catch.

A blade. But not just any blade.

Beside it sat a pedestal holding a faintly glowing orb that pulsed with inner light like a captured star. Even from across the hall, Ares could feel its presence, a warmth that seemed to reach directly into his chest and squeeze.

'An Auracore Sphere.'

Veltrissa stood between both artifacts like a guardian of ancient secrets, her arms folded, her expression unreadable as carved stone.

"You've proven you can survive an echo," she said without preamble. "Survival is the minimum requirement for breathing. Legacy requires considerably more than bruises and stubborn pride."

She gestured toward the floating weapon with something approaching reverence. "This blade was forged specifically for the Storm-Worn technique. You'll need to match its resonant frequency. If it accepts you, it will align with your mana signature and become an extension of your will." Her voice dropped to something barely above a whisper. "If it rejects you, it will cut you apart from the inside out."

'Well,' Ares thought, stepping forward despite the sudden dryness in his mouth, 'that's encouraging.'

Lightning cracked overhead, whether from the storm outside or some property of the blade itself, he couldn't tell. The weapon dropped from its floating position, falling with deceptive grace.

He caught it.

Mana flared along the hilt like liquid fire, searing his palm with exquisite agony. His veins began to glow with pale blue light visible through his skin, and for a terrifying moment he thought he might be dying. But despite the pain, or perhaps because of it, he didn't let go

.

The sword hummed in his hand, a sound like distant thunder given voice.

Veltrissa nodded, and was that... approval in her eyes? "It has accepted your resonance. Interesting. Most candidates require three attempts before achieving synchronization." She paused. "Some never manage it at all."

Then she turned toward the orb, and her expression grew almost hungry. "Now, this, this is considerably rarer. An Auracore Sphere containing the foundational imprint of Pulse Flow Combat. One of the original roots from which all Mana Burst techniques eventually grew."

Ares' eyes widened as recognition hit him like a physical blow. In the novel, such spheres were artifacts of legend, appearing perhaps three times in the entire sprawling narrative. They were fragments of ancient masters' understanding, crystallized into a form that could be absorbed by those with sufficient potential.

"You're... giving me this?"

"Not giving," Veltrissa corrected, her smile sharp as winter wind. "You've earned the chance to see if it accepts your neural pathways. Whether you survive the process is entirely up to you."

'Why,' Ares wondered as he approached the pedestal, 'does everyone in this place seem so fond of potentially lethal tests?'

He placed a single finger against the orb's surface.

It erupted in light.

Heat surged up his arm like molten metal in his veins, followed by a flash so brilliant it seared afterimages into his retinas. The hall, Veltrissa, even his own body, everything disappeared.

He stood on a battlefield painted in shades of blood and shadow, wind howling like the voices of the dead. Rain lashed his face with stinging intensity. Before him, a phantom Eisenklinge warrior, surrounded by enemies, bleeding from dozens of wounds, suddenly burst forward with mana flowing through his spine and limbs in perfect synchronization.

Each movement cracked the very air. Bones shattered with sounds like breaking branches. Enemies fell like wheat before the scythe, their forms dissolving into mist as the vision played out its ancient drama.

But this wasn't just observation, Ares felt every pulse, every surge of power. His lungs strained as if the phantom's breath were his own. His bones screamed as if they had fractured and been reforged in the space between heartbeats. The warrior's heartbeat became his heartbeat, the rhythm of power flowing through alien-familiar limbs.

He found himself breathing in the same pattern, his chest rising and falling in perfect synchronization with the ancient technique.

When consciousness finally crashed back into his body, he found himself on his knees, the orb nothing but glittering ash between his fingers.

Veltrissa's eyes locked onto his with laser intensity. "You just absorbed the entry-level framework of Pulse Combat. Your Limb Burst techniques will be more efficient now, and your Pulse Step should achieve greater precision with less mana expenditure."

Ares, still gasping like a fish dragged onto dry land, managed a nod. The burning sensation in his limbs felt oddly familiar now, as if his body were remembering something it had always known.

That hadn't been learning in any conventional sense.

That had been 'imprinting,' knowledge carved directly into muscle and bone and nerve, bypassing the slow accumulation of traditional training.

And this was only the beginning.

He rose shakily to his feet, one hand instinctively moving to the blade now sheathed at his hip. The weapon felt warm against his side, like a living thing content to rest until called upon.

"Let's see where this path goJhes," he whispered, though whether to himself or to the blade, he wasn't entirely sure.

Veltrissa's smile was sharp enough to cut glass. "Indeed. Let's see."