Chapter 28: Ashford City (1)

The morning light that filtered through the dark clouds was gray and muted, offering little warmth to the cold stone room.

Arthur sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at his own chest. His hands hovered over the thick linen bandages wrapping his torso. There was an agonizing itch beneath the wrappings, a deep crawling sensation he recognized from his past life as the final stages of cellular repair.

But it had only been a few days since the Alpha werewolf claws had practically caved in his ribs.

Slowly, Arthur unrolled the linen. The blood soaked poultice fell away, hitting the floor with a dull thud. He looked at his skin; it was pale, unblemished, and entirely whole. There wasn’t even a ridge of pink scar tissue. He pressed his fingers hard against his ribs, expecting the sharp, blinding agony of a fractured bone. But to his surprise, there was nothing. Only the steady, strong rhythm of his heartbeat.

Arthur traced the smooth skin, his brow furrowing in deep concentration.

“This is just impossible…” he muttered.

Flesh does not mend this quickly on its own, he thought.

Could it be a side effect of unsealing my core, or is it linked to the void mana I absorbed? Arthur fell deep in thought, trying to piece things together, but he couldn’t form any proper conclusions as he lacked information about this strange phenomenon. Though he knew one thing with absolute certainty: if the estate physician saw this, it would raise too many dangerous questions.

Moving methodically, the young heir picked up a fresh roll of linen and tightly re-wrapped his perfectly healthy chest. “I would need to fake pain for a little while,” he sighed.

With his secret secured, he closed his eyes and turned his focus inward, wanting to recreate the hyper-concentrated blue spark from last night.

Arthur visualized the conduit in his right index finger; drawing upon the intent of pure combustion, he invited the mana to flow.

Sputter. A weak, pathetic wisp of black smoke leaked from his fingertip, accompanied by a wave of sharp nausea that twisted his stomach. He opened his eyes, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead.

At the same time, high above the wardrobe, the majestic owl averted its eyes as if struggling not to laugh.

Arthur didn’t curse or strike the floor in frustration this time. Instead, he closed his eyes again and began to systematically isolate the variables of failure.

Pathway integrity? He mentally checked the micro-vessel in his arm. It hadn’t ruptured, and the wiring was fine.

Intent? His mental visualization of the combustion process had been flawless.

Fuel?

He turned his focus inward, probing the center of his chest where his core rested. It felt entirely hollow; the dense pool of energy he had tapped into last night was reduced to a faint, irregular pulse.

The realization settled over him, frustrating but perfectly logical. He had treated his mana like a permanent energy source, assuming the flow would simply answer his call. Alas, he was operating on a nearly dead battery. He could engineer the internal circuitry perfectly, but if the central power source was dry, the machinery simply wouldn’t run.

Arthur let out a long, tired breath. There were no shortcuts here; he would have to build his endurance slowly, draining and refilling his core to expand its capacity through grueling daily repetition.

Pushing himself off his bed, he walked toward the bathroom to rinse the metallic taste of nausea from his mouth. As he splashed cold water on his face, a deep, rhythmic boom rattled the glass of his bedroom window.

━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━

Down in the valley, thick plumes of black smoke were rising into the gray morning sky; the air smelled of sulfur, lye, and boiling water.

The deafening boom of the blast furnaces echoed off the sheer canyon walls. Lord Roderick Ashborn stood on a raised iron grate, his silver hair tied back tightly, his face streaked with black soot and grease. He was watching the massive cooling troughs below, completely ignoring the suffocating wall of heat radiating from the open forge doors.

“The ore is stabilizing, my lord!” the chief forge master yelled over the roar of the fires. The massive, barrel-chested man wiped a thick layer of sweat from his brow, gesturing to the heavy iron tongs lifting a glowing, white-hot ingot from the water. “The lye wash succeeded! The impurities crack right off the surface!”

Roderick stepped closer, his crimson eyes narrowed against the intense glare. As the ingot cooled, the color deepened, settling into a dark, mesmerizing violet-black.

True Umbral Iron.

“It is pure,” Roderick murmured, the crushing weight of the past few weeks briefly lifting from his broad shoulders. He turned to the Forge Master, his expression hardening again. “How much can we produce before the royal messenger returns? We have only five days now.”

“The men are working in shifts, my lord. They are exhausted, and their hands are blistered, but seeing the pure iron has given them fire. We are also stripping the local forests bare just to harvest enough charcoal to keep the furnaces at this temperature.”

“Do whatever it takes,” Roderick ordered, his voice echoing with absolute authority. “Buy the timber on credit from the eastern merchants if you must. Double rations for the men. And just keep the fires burning at all costs.”

Enjoying the story? Show your support by reading it on the official site.

Master Smith nodded and went back to work, while the lord continued monitoring the situation. Time was tight, and every second mattered.

━━━━━━━━━━━━ ◦ ❖ ◦ ━━━━━━━━━━━━

Back within the quiet, cold stone walls of the estate, Arthur dressed on his own today in a simple dark tunic and trousers; Layla’s had the day off. He left his room, intending to join the breakfast table as usual.

As he passed the arched windows overlooking the indoor courtyard, he paused. Aria was there, bathed in the pale morning sun. She wasn’t casting fire today; instead, she was moving through a series of slow, physical martial stances.

Arthur stepped into the archway, watching quietly. She finished a complex sweeping motion and exhaled, her crimson eyes opening to lock into his.

“Oliver!” she said, her rigid posture softening instantly as she quickly grabbed a cloth to wipe her face. “You shouldn’t be walking the halls so early. The physician said—”