Steven’s POV
I woke up angry.
Not the kind of angry that made me throw the blankets off and storm out of bed like the world had personally offended me.
It was quieter than that.
Heavier.
The kind that sat behind my ribs before I even opened my eyes, already awake, already waiting, like it had spent the whole night pacing in my chest while the rest of me tried to sleep.
For a few seconds, I lay there staring at the ceiling.
The room was dim and soft around me. Morning light slipped through the curtains in pale strips, touching the floor, the dresser, the edge of the blanket Aqua had pulled halfway over herself during the night.
She was still asleep beside me.
Her hair spilled over the pillow in pale waves, some of it caught against her cheek. One hand rested near her face, fingers curled loosely, her breathing slow and even.
Peaceful.
Too peaceful for what I felt inside.
I turned my head and looked at her longer than I meant to.
Aqua made sleep look like trust.
Like she had let the world go quiet because she believed, at least for a few hours, that it would not hurt her.
My chest tightened.
I wanted that.
Not sleep.
Trust.
The kind where I could close my eyes and believe I was not falling behind in my own body.
The kind where I could believe the fire inside me was mine, and not something I had to fight every day just to keep from becoming someone else.
But the anger pressed harder.
Yesterday’s training sat in my memory like a bruise.
The fire had come.
The targets had burned.
My hands had known what to do.
And still, my core had given me almost nothing back.
Almost.
That word had started to feel like a hand around my throat.
Almost deeper.
Almost stronger.
Almost there.
Then nothing.
I turned away from the ceiling and sat up carefully, trying not to wake Aqua.
The mattress shifted anyway.
She made a soft sound behind me, then settled again.
I paused, waiting.
She did not wake.
Good.
I swung my legs over the side of the bed and rubbed both hands down my face.
Today had to be different.
It had to.
I could not keep walking into that field, burning through targets, sweating through my clothes, dragging myself home, and pretending the problem was patience.
I was being patient.
I was trying.
And apparently trying was not enough.
The thought made my jaw tighten.
I got dressed quietly.
Shirt.
Pants.
Shoes.
Water container.
My hand brushed the center of my chest as I pulled my shirt into place.
The Beast Core sat under my ribs, quiet and stubborn.
Still there.
Still mine.
Still refusing to become what I needed it to be.
I dropped my hand.
No.
Not today.
Today, I was not going to stand around thinking in circles.
Today, I was going to train until something finally gave.
I slipped into the small hallway outside our room and moved quietly toward the open space of the house.
The living room and kitchen were still dim, soft morning light stretching across the floor in pale strips. The back door waited on the far side, close to Fang’s cat perch.
I had almost made it there before I felt it.
Fang’s stare.
I looked toward the perch near the back door.
He was awake, black body coiled tight, yellow stripes catching the dim light. His yellow eyes were fixed on me like he had been watching for a while.
Probably had.
Because my life now included a snake who judged my emotional stability before breakfast.
“I’m fine,” I whispered.
Fang’s tongue flicked once.
It did not feel supportive.
I narrowed my eyes. “You could at least pretend.”
He did not move.
That was answer enough.
I turned left toward the back door before his silence could follow me any farther.
The back door opened with a soft creak.
Cool morning air touched my face.
I stepped outside and shut the door behind me before I could change my mind.
The walk to the field felt too familiar now.
Trees on both sides.
Dirt under my shoes.
Thin shafts of sunlight cutting through the leaves.
Birds calling somewhere above me like the world had no idea I was trying very hard not to lose my mind.
The anger walked with me.
Not wild yet.
Not burning over.
But there.
Steady.
Useful.
At least anger knew what it wanted.
It did not ask me to understand anything. It did not ask me to be patient. It did not ask me to stand there with my hand over my chest, waiting for some tiny sign of growth that always slipped away before it became real.
Anger said move.
Anger said burn.
Anger said prove it.
By the time I reached the field, I was ready to listen.
The barrier shimmered faintly as I stepped through it.
The targets stood in their usual places, lined up across the clearing like they had no idea how tired I was of looking at them.
The grass was damp.
The air smelled like earth and leaves.
Peaceful.
I hated that too.
I set my water container near the bench and walked to the center of the field.
My hands curled at my sides.
The Beast Core pulsed beneath my ribs, answering before I even reached for it.
Fast.
Eager.
Like it had been waiting too.
Fine.
I pulled.
The heat rose quickly, rushing up through my chest, shoulder, arm, wrist, palm. Fire opened above my hand in a sharp, bright flare.
Too big.
Too fast.
I knew it immediately.
But for one second, it felt good.
Relief shot through me so suddenly I almost smiled.
There.
That was the part I hated admitting.
Anger made the fire easy.
It gave the heat a path. A purpose. A shape with teeth.
I aimed at the nearest target.
The flame stretched forward, hungry, brightening at the edges.
Then Aqua’s voice moved through my memory.
Not loud.
Not scolding.
Soft.
That made it worse.
Don’t let revenge be the thing that teaches your fire how to breathe.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
My hand twitched.
The flame wavered.
I could see her face as clearly as if she had stepped into the clearing with me.
Aqua standing close.
Aqua looking up at me with those blue eyes that always saw the wound beneath the anger.
Aqua not afraid of my fire, but afraid of what I might let it become.
My throat tightened.
I lowered my hand.
The flame snapped out.
Smoke curled from my palm.
For a second, I just stood there, breathing harder than I should have been after doing almost nothing.
“That’s not training,” I whispered.
The words felt bitter.
But true.
Throwing fire because I was angry was not training.
Burning targets because I wanted to feel powerful was not training.
Pretending revenge was discipline because it made the flame stronger was not training.
Aqua would know the difference.
Fang would too.
I hated that they would be right.
I rolled my shoulders and forced my hands open.
“No anger,” I said, even though anger was still there, listening. “Not first.”
I stepped back into stance.
Left foot angled.
Right foot steady.
Knees loose.
Shoulders down.
Breath low.
Core first.
Heat second.
Hands last.
I closed my eyes and found the Beast Core.
It pulsed beneath my ribs, hot and restless.
I did not grab it this time.
I waited until my breathing slowed, then drew from it carefully.
The heat rose again, but cleaner.
Thinner.
Less like a wild rush and more like a thread being pulled through my body.
Chest.
Shoulder.
Arm.
Wrist.
Palm.
A small flame appeared above my skin.
Controlled.
Obedient.
Mine.
I held it there.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
Then I compressed it into a bright bead and released.
The fire struck the target cleanly.
The wood cracked.
Smoke lifted in a thin black line.
A good hit.
Not dramatic.
Not satisfying in the way the wild blast had been.
But good.
I lowered my hand and waited.
That was always the worst part now.
The moment after.
The quiet after the fire left me.
The place where growth should have returned.
I focused on the Beast Core and waited for the warmth to settle back into it.
For a second, it did.
Almost.
A faint pulse brushed through my chest, deeper than surface heat. It moved toward the core like the training had actually gone somewhere.
My breath caught.
Then it thinned.
Slipped.
Vanished before it became anything I could hold.
My stomach sank.
“No,” I muttered.
I reset.
Again.
Breath.
Core.
Heat.
Hands.
Release.
The second strike landed clean.
Again, the warmth returned halfway.
Again, it disappeared before settling.
I tried a third time.
Then a fourth.
Then a fifth.
Each one clean.
Each one controlled.
Each one almost useful.
By the tenth release, my shirt clung to my back with sweat.
By the fifteenth, my wrist ached.
By the twentieth, my jaw hurt from how hard I had been clenching it.
The targets were marked with neat burns.
My form had improved.
My breathing had stayed mostly steady.
The fire obeyed.
Everything was working.
Except the part that mattered.
I stared at the newest burn mark on the target.
It was centered.
Clean.
Controlled.
Worthless.
A bitter laugh left me before I could stop it.
“Great,” I said to the empty field. “I can aim.”
The field did not answer.
The core under my ribs pulsed once.
Hollow.
Not empty exactly.
That would have been easier to name.
It was more like standing in front of a locked door and feeling warmth under the crack.
Something was there.
Something should have opened.
But it did not.
I trained until my arms felt heavy and my thoughts started losing their shape.
When I finally stopped, the sun had climbed higher, the dampness had burned off the grass, and the air smelled like smoke.
I stood with my hands on my hips, staring at everything I had done.
Better control.
Cleaner shots.
No real growth.
I swallowed against the tightness in my throat.
Maybe one good day was not enough.
Maybe I was expecting too much.
Maybe growth did not happen every session.
That was reasonable.
I could be reasonable.
I grabbed my water and drank slowly this time, because apparently I was trying to prove I could be mature even to a field.
Then I went home.
Aqua was in the kitchen when I stepped inside.
She looked up immediately.
She always did.
The second the door opened, her eyes found me like she had been listening for it.
“Hey,” she said softly.
“Hey.”
Her gaze moved over my face, then my shirt, then my hands.
I tried not to curl them.
“How was training?”
Fine.
The word came too quickly in my head.
Too easy.
Too familiar.
I almost said it.
Instead, I shrugged and looked toward the sink. “Not bad.”
It was still a lie.
Just a smaller one.
Aqua’s expression shifted like she heard the difference.
“Not bad?” she repeated.
“Yeah.” I forced a tired smile. “I mean, I’m not suddenly amazing, but I got through the drills.”
That was true.
Mostly.
Fang was on the back of the couch, head lifted, eyes fixed on me.
I looked at him.
He looked back.
I knew that look.
Coward.
I turned away first.
“I’m going to wash up,” I said.
Aqua nodded, but I felt her watching me as I passed.
I hated that I wanted her to stop.
I hated more that I wanted her to follow.
---
The next day, I told myself the problem was repetition.
One serious session was not enough.
That had to be it.
I had been expecting a door to open because I knocked once like an idiot.
So I went back to the field and did not let myself start angry.
Not really.
The anger was there, but I kept it behind my teeth.
I treated it like noise.
Breath.
Stance.
Core.
Movement.
Again.
Again.
Again.
I worked through the first sequence until my legs burned.
Then the second.
Then the release drills.
Then compression.
Then moving compression.
Then release from movement.
I broke everything into pieces because pieces felt easier to control than the whole.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Breathe.
Pull.
Hold.
Turn.
Release.
Wait.
Nothing.
Again.
Left foot.
Right foot.
Breathe.
Pull.
Hold.
Turn.
Release.
Wait.
Almost.
Nothing.
By midday, I was better at the sequence.
By afternoon, I hated the sequence.
By the time the sunlight turned warmer over the tops of the trees, I could hit the target from the turn without thinking about it.
That should have felt good.
It did not.
Because the problem was not the target.
The problem was me.
I stood in the field with sweat dripping down the side of my face, staring at the blackened posts.
“What am I missing?” I asked.
No one answered.
I almost wished Fang was there to insult me.
At least then the silence would not have felt so personal.
My hand drifted toward my chest before I could stop it.
Not to the necklace.
Lower.
To the place beneath it.
The Beast Core pulsed there, stubborn and unreadable.
I dropped my hand and forced myself through one more sequence.
Then another.
Then another.
By the end of the day, my body was exhausted, my aim was sharper, and my core felt exactly as stubborn as it had that morning.
When I went home, Aqua had tea waiting.
I did not know if that made me feel better or worse.
She had made the kind with the light floral smell I liked but never admitted I liked because then she would smile too much and make me feel seen.
I sat at the table.
She placed the cup in front of me.
Fang watched from the windowsill.
For a while, none of us said much.
That was how I knew they were worried.
Aqua was trying not to press.
Fang was trying not to look like he wanted to press.
I was trying not to break in half over a cup of tea.
Eventually, Aqua sat across from me and wrapped both hands around her own cup.
“You’re working hard,” she said.
I looked down at the tea.
“Trying to.”
“You don’t have to prove that part to me.”
My throat tightened.
I gave a small shrug. “I know.”
She was quiet for a second.
Then, softer, “Do you?”
I looked up.
That one hit differently.
There was no accusation in her voice. No frustration. Just concern.
The kind that made me want to be honest and run away at the same time.
I leaned back in the chair and tried to smile.
“I’m okay, Aqua.”
Fang made a faint sound from the windowsill.
Not quite a hiss.
Not quite a scoff.
I pointed at him without looking. “Don’t start.”
Aqua’s mouth twitched like she almost smiled, but the worry stayed in her eyes.
I drank the tea because it gave me something to do.
It was warm.
Gentle.
Too gentle for the way my chest felt.
---
By the third day, the field already felt like a place I had lost something.
That was dramatic.
I knew it was dramatic.
But knowing did not make it less true.
I stepped through the barrier with my water in one hand and irritation crawling under my skin.
The targets had been replaced overnight by Fredrick’s magic or some Worth repair system I did not understand and did not feel like appreciating.
Fresh wood.
Clean surfaces.
Waiting for me to mark them all over again.
“Must be nice,” I muttered.
Everything here got reset except me.
I set my water down harder than I needed to.
The Beast Core pulsed.
I breathed in.
I tried not to snap.
Today, I changed the order.
Maybe I had been too focused on release. Maybe I was training the fire outward too much and not enough inward.
So I started with holding.
No targets.
No blasts.
Just flame.
I drew the heat up carefully and let it open in my palm.
Small.
Steady.
Then I held it.
One breath.
Two.
Three.
Ten.
Twenty.
My arm trembled.
The flame flickered but stayed.
I tried to feel the connection between the fire and the core. Not just the path out, but the path back. The cycle. The way the power moved through me instead of leaving me like smoke.
For a few seconds, I thought I had it.
The warmth in my palm sank inward.
My core answered.
A faint depth opened beneath my ribs, so small I almost missed it.
My heart jumped.
Then the feeling thinned.
The depth collapsed into nothing.
The flame in my palm flared too high.
I cursed and snapped my hand closed, crushing it out.
Smoke slipped through my fingers.
I stood there breathing hard.
The field was quiet.
Too quiet.
My hand moved toward the center of my chest before I could stop it, but I froze halfway there.
No.
Blaming anything else was too easy.
The problem felt lower than what I wore around my neck.
Under my ribs.
In the place that was supposed to make me Salvatore and somehow still did not know how to hold what I gave it.
My Beast Core pulsed once.
Hot.
Hollow.
Wrong.
My throat tightened.
Maybe that was the truth I had been avoiding.
Maybe the core was the problem.
Maybe I was the problem.
I had lived eighteen years as human. Eighteen years without training, without cultivation, without anyone teaching my body what it was supposed to become. Other people from the Four Families probably grew up with this. They probably learned before their power had to be dragged awake by grief, fire, and a necklace I still barely understood.
Maybe their cores grew with them.
Maybe mine had been forced open too late.
Maybe it had awakened crooked.
The thought made something cold move through my stomach.
For a moment, I thought about turning around.
Going home.
Telling Aqua.
Telling Fang.
Saying, Something feels wrong when I train.
The thought opened in front of me like a path.
Then pride stepped into the way.
Not yet.
I needed more than a feeling.
I needed proof.
I needed something besides I think my core is broken.
Because that sounded pathetic even in my own head.
So I trained again.
This time, I mixed everything.
Control first.
Then movement.
Then release.
Then holding.
Then compression.
Then anger, when I got too frustrated to pretend I was above it.
The angry blasts were stronger.
They always were.
That was the cruel part.
When I let frustration into the flame, it answered like an old friend.
The fire got bigger.
Hotter.
Sharper.
One blast cracked a target down the center.
Another struck the ward hard enough to make the air shimmer green for half a second before fading.
For one moment, I almost convinced myself that was progress.
Almost.
But after each release, I waited.
And each time, the answer was the same.
Power out.
Nothing kept.
Heat spent.
Core unchanged.
By the time I stopped, my arms were shaking.
Not badly.
Enough.
I stood in the middle of the field, staring at the ruined targets and blackened dirt.
Smoke drifted low around my shoes.
The air smelled like scorched wood and failure.
I hated that thought.
I hated how quickly it came.
Failure.
No.
Not failure.
Not yet.
I pressed my hands against my knees and bent forward, breathing through the heat still trapped under my skin.
Maybe tomorrow would be different.
The thought came automatically.
Then another thought followed it.
And if it isn’t?
I closed my eyes.
I did not have an answer.
That scared me more than the fire.
---
I went home slower that evening.
Not because I was hurt.
Not exactly.
I was sore, and tired, and overheated, but that was normal now.
The slowness came from somewhere else.
A heavy place.
A place inside me that had started to understand something I was not ready to say.
This was not one bad day.
It was not one bad session.
It was not one bad mood.
It was becoming a pattern.
The thought stayed with me as I walked through the trees.
My shoes dragged more than they should have.
The late afternoon light slipped between branches, gold and broken. The path looked the same as always, but it felt longer. Like the house had moved farther away while I was in the field.
I rubbed at the center of my chest.
The Beast Core pulsed faintly.
Still there.
Still mine.
Still not growing the way it should.
My hand curled lightly over the place where the necklace rested beneath my shirt.
For one second, I wanted to blame it.
The chain.
The pendant.
The thing I could not remove.
But the thought felt too familiar now.
Too easy.
The fear underneath it was worse.
Maybe the problem was not something sitting on top of my skin.
Maybe it was deeper.
Maybe it had always been deeper.
I let go.
“Stupid,” I muttered.
I did not know if I meant the thought.
Or myself.
By the time the house came into view, I had already decided what face I needed to wear.
Not happy.
That would be too much.
Aqua would see through happy before I made it two steps inside.
Normal was better.
Tired normal.
Training-was-hard-but-I’m-fine normal.
The kind of normal that bought me one more night before anyone asked too many questions.
I climbed the back steps and stopped at the door.
Through the kitchen window, I saw Aqua near the counter.
She was cutting fruit into small pieces, probably for me, because she had noticed I was eating less after training and had decided not to make it obvious by calling it a snack.
My chest hurt.
Fang was on the back of the couch, head lifted toward the door before I even touched the handle.
He knew I was there.
Somehow, he always did.
I closed my eyes for one breath.
Pull it together.
For her sake.
For one evening.
Then I opened the door.
Aqua looked up immediately.
Her face softened first with relief, then tightened with concern before she could hide it.
That tiny shift nearly broke the whole act.
“Hey,” she said. “You’re back.”
“Yeah.”
I stepped inside and shut the door behind me.
The house smelled like tea, fruit, and whatever Aqua had warmed earlier. Safe things. Gentle things.
Things that made the smoke in my clothes feel louder.
Aqua’s eyes moved over me.
“You look tired.”
I gave a small laugh and rubbed the back of my neck. “That’s because I am.”
It came out close enough to normal that I almost believed I could survive the conversation.
She set the knife down carefully. “Long day?”
I nodded.
“Yeah.” I looked toward the table instead of her face. “But tomorrow might be better.”
The words sounded harmless.
Normal.
Almost believable.
I wanted them to be true so badly that my chest hurt.
Fang lifted his head higher from the couch, yellow eyes fixed on me like he had already heard the part I refused to say.
Aqua did not answer right away.
That was worse than if she had.
She only watched me with that quiet, aching softness that made me feel like she was standing at the edge of a locked door, waiting for me to decide whether to let her in.
I forced a small smile.
It failed.
I knew it failed because her expression changed.
Not much.
Just enough.
“Steven,” she said softly.
My name in her voice almost undid me.
I looked away.
“I’m going to wash up.”
I moved before she could stop me.
Before she could ask.
Before Fang could slither down from the couch and block the hallway like some tiny, judgmental guard.
I made it halfway down the hall before my steps slowed.
My hand pressed against my chest.
The core pulsed once beneath my palm.
Quiet.
Stubborn.
Still not enough.
Tomorrow.
One more day.
If tomorrow did not change anything, I did not know how much longer I could keep calling this training instead of losing.
I took another breath.
Then I kept walking.