Fivefold Fury
The Academy's training yard lay under a cold dawn sky, frost silvering the practice dummies and worn stone tiles. Breath fogged the air as students gathered, drawn by rumor and the promise of spectacle: today, Arthur, the cursed heir, was to demonstrate controlled casting before assembled peers and magisters alike.
Yet none could know what power slumbered between the Grimoire's covers—or what price might come from waking it.
Arthur stood at the yard's center, Fenrix watching from the sidelines, golden eyes wary. The Grimoire weighed heavy in Arthur's hand, its black leather worn from hours of silent study. Across from him, the magister in charge of combat casting—Master Tareth—waited, runes glowing faintly along the silver haft of his staff.
"Today," Tareth intoned, voice carrying over the gathered students, "you will demonstrate your command of mana beyond mere curses. Show us control. Show us precision."
Draven and Lilith stood among the watchers; Draven's arms crossed, eyes cold, while Lilith's expression wavered between fear and fierce hope.
Arthur nodded once, breath slow and steady. "As you will, Master."
"Begin," Tareth commanded.
---
Arthur drew a breath that tasted of frost and memory. Fingers brushed the Grimoire's edge, feeling inked runes pulse faintly under skin. His mind dove into its depths, past simple wards and cantrips, to the pages written in a script only half his own.
*Fivefold Fury* — a spell of ancient making, a curse and blessing twined into one. In the quiet of sleepless nights, Arthur had studied its curves, traced the way his mother's hand had shaped each line. Today, for the first time, he would speak it aloud.
Mana stirred, cold and dark, drawn not from rage but from resolve.
Arthur whispered the words, syllables as old as the throne itself.
The Grimoire's runes ignited, black-violet light coiling around his arm like a living serpent. Gasps rippled through the students, whispers turning frantic.
"By the old words and the blood that binds," Arthur murmured, "I summon the wrath of five shadows."
---
Power flooded him, sharp and bitter, yet alive. Arthur's hand swept outward, and five threads of dark energy erupted from his palm, twisting and splitting in midair.
Each thread struck a separate target: five practice dummies scattered across the yard. The first thread rotted wood and straw in an instant; the second turned iron bracers brittle as ash; the third exploded into splinters; the fourth coiled around a dummy's head, crushing it flat; and the fifth wreathed its target in withering black flame that consumed but left no smoke.
The yard fell silent, the only sound Arthur's ragged breathing and the crackling of dying magic.
Tareth's staff lowered, runes dimming. "A spell cast not in rage," the magister observed, "but in will. Impressive—and dangerous."
Arthur's heart thundered, sweat cold on his brow. Yet in the quiet, he felt not triumph, but the raw edge of something unbound: a truth too long hidden now revealed to every eye.
---
Draven's voice cut the hush, sharp as a drawn blade. "Is this what you bring to the Academy? Rot and ruin? You call that mastery?"
Arthur turned, voice calm despite the tremor of spent power. "I call it choice, cousin. Magic answers will, not birthright."
A flicker of something—anger, doubt, or fear—crossed Draven's gaze, but he turned away without answer.
Lilith stepped closer, voice low so only Arthur could hear. "They saw, Arthur. Not the curse alone—but the control."
"And what will they remember?" Arthur murmured. "The shadows—or the hand that shaped them?"
---
By midday, the yard had emptied, leaving only trampled frost and the smell of scorched straw. Arthur lingered by the broken dummies, Fenrix at his side, fur ruffled by a cold wind.
Mara approached from the archway, cloak drawn tight. "Word travels fast," she said. "Some fear what they saw. Others… see a spark worth kindling."
"And you?" Arthur asked.
She studied him a long moment. "I see a choice yet unmade. Power can break chains—or forge new ones."
"I know," Arthur replied. "And I won't wear another's chain."
---
In the library that night, Arthur turned the Grimoire's pages by candlelight, Fenrix dozing by the hearth. His hand traced the spell's name, ink faded at the edges by time and touch.
*Fivefold Fury*—power multiplied, but never without price.
He remembered the weight of mana flooding his veins, the raw temptation to push further, to burn through walls and names alike.
But he had stopped. Will, not rage, had shaped the spell.
And in that restraint, Arthur saw the first glimmer of who he might yet become.
---
Beyond the library walls, winter deepened, burying courtyards in silence and snow. Yet whispers stirred beneath stone and frost: of an heir who commanded forbidden magic without losing himself, of shadows cast not by malice but by choice.
Arthur closed the Grimoire, the leather warm beneath his palm.
He whispered into the quiet, a vow to memory and to tomorrow: "Not by fury alone—but by the will that holds it."
Fenrix stirred, eyes half-open, as if in agreement.
And so the night held them both: a boy born of exile, and a beast bound by loyalty—not to blood, but to bond.
**To be continued...**