On the second-floor bed of the lakeside cottage, Yuna coughed awake, like a reed sparrow startled from mist.
A familiar scent reached her, floral as spring, fresh as streamwater, blossoms opening over a glassy brook.
She followed that scent and slowly turned her head, finding her master keeping vigil like a quiet lantern by her bed.
“Master… I…”
Fear pressed first, then fact: a minute of stopped heart had broken her body like ice under a boot.
Her breath was thin as drifting silk; her voice, a gnat’s tremor.
Her pretty face held little color, winter porcelain without dawn.
Golden eyes, clear as a lake, half-open and shimmering like sun on ripples.
She moved her lips, frail as a butterfly wing. “Master… I… what…”
Fulin didn’t answer at once; her voice came gentle as a spring wind through bamboo. “Since you can talk, can you swallow?”
Yuna loved that tone—no command’s cold edge, just a clear throat’s song, every word like soft teasing that warmed the chest.
She had dreamed of Fulin coaxing her; now happiness pooled like sunlight melting frost.
“Can…” Yuna swallowed her own saliva, a drop falling into a dry well.
“Then…” Fulin cleared her throat, turned slightly in the chair, and called toward the door, “Klein!”
A hearty voice answered like a bell across water. “Here, my Valkyrie!”
“I order you—drop ‘my Valkyrie,’ use ‘Blazing Fire Knight,’ and bring the porridge in.”
“No problem, Blazing Fire Knight!”
The Mountain Wind Knight’s voice had shed its old gravel and gained broad sky—like a knight crossing storms and finally seeing his homeland’s plains.
To the Mountain Wind Knight, Fulin was the Valkyrie who gentled his pain; regrets fell away like leaves after autumn wind.
But life still flows on, river after river. So—
“Seeing what you cooked, I thought you’d feed her blood.” He came in carrying pig’s blood congee, steam curling like pale dragons.
Fulin took the bowl and set it gently on the bedside table, her answer dry as flint yet warm as embers. “Blood? Hardly. Haven’t you eaten blood-based dishes?”
He squinted at the dark red cubes floating among wheat grains, eyes narrowing like a hunter judging tracks. “So this is a blood-based dish?”
“It is,” Fulin said, voice steady as a shoreline.
She lifted a spoonful, gaze settling on Yuna’s lips like a leaf on still water. “Can you open your mouth?”
Pale lips stirred, snow petals in wind. “Master… I can feed myself…”
“Then open your mouth. I’ll feed you.” Her tone held no iron, only silk with a steel thread.
“How can I…”
“Open your mouth.”
“Okay…”
Yuna opened; the spoon came like a small moon. She accepted, and swallowed the porridge, warmth rising like a spring bubbling under stone.
Fragrance and heat flowed through her, gentle as rain spreading over thirsty fields.
Is this happiness? she thought, like a lantern lighting in deep night.
After the porridge, sleep folded over her like a soft quilt. Yuna drifted off.
Fulin watched her quietly, stillness like frost on pine needles.
Then the happiness was shattered—
“Lance Morrison, get out here!”
The apprentices’ roar tore the cottage’s peace like thunder breaking a porcelain sky.
Fulin stood from the chair, cold settling first like a blade’s shadow. “Klein.”
He entered with a knife, steel humming like a cicada. “Blazing Fire Knight, your orders?”
“I order you to protect Yuna.”
Unlike Yuna’s secretary-like obedience, the Mountain Wind Knight kept his own compass, rock under river. “Shouldn’t you stay with Yuna and I drive them off?”
“This is my matter.” Her voice was iron within silk. “And if ‘Lance’ doesn’t show, those townmates will keep pestering forever.”
“I understand.” His nod was an oak’s bend in wind.
“Good.”
As Fulin reached the door, the Mountain Wind Knight, shoulder to the wall, watched her back like a lone watcher on a ridge. “Don’t keep forcing yourself.”
Her steps paused, a feather catching on a thorn. “Ah… I’ll try.”
In the next heartbeat, ink-black mire rose from nowhere and climbed her small frame, shadows pouring like night tide.
“I’ll try not to force myself,” Lance said, and he walked forward, a new mask settling like moonlight on water.
Outside the villa, the male apprentices from Mubay City churned the air into noise, their shouting a swarm of hornets.
“Lance Morrison! Degenerate!!”
“Lance Morrison! Scum!!”
“Lance Morrison! A fraud!!”
“Lance Morrison! Wolf-hearted!!”
Their chants hit in lockstep, drilled rhythm like drumlines; they were elemental apprentices, storm-bred and pride-bright.
They spread Lance’s early thug antics like cheap gossip, smearing his academy image with tar and smoke.
Not just smearing—clever hands turned his exile’s “Blazing Fire Knight” fame into a blade, recasting him as a hypocrite with dirty methods, frightening out-of-province apprentices like owls at noon.
For half a year, Maple City nobles backed their campaign, coin and coat-of-arms like wind behind sails.
Now, after six months, Lance’s name stank like rot in a well.
When the rumor of him hurting a teacher spread, they grew bolder, anger frothing like overboiled milk.
“Lance Morrison! Get out here!”
Impatient, they ignored the academy’s ban on trespassing in the cottage district and vaulted the fence, mud clinging to boot soles like swamp leeches.
Two kicks each, and the neat lakeside garden became wreckage—order shredded like paper in rain.
A tulip waiting to bloom was trampled to shreds, a spring promise broken under chaos.
“Lance Morrison! Get out here!”
Then Lance stepped out.
He looked at the “men of purpose” who had turned the front court to ruin, his gaze flat as slate under snow.
“I am the Blazing Fire Knight. What business do you have?” His words fell like stones into a boiling pot.
The target’s appearance cut the clamor; silence climbed like frost. But silence isn’t peace.
They stared at Lance with poison in their eyes, hatred coiled like vipers, their gaze biting like acid.
They stared, they held, then the silence burst—
“Scum! Degenerate! Bastard! Villain! Traitor! Wretch! Liar! Coward!”
Words were knives; they threw every blade they owned, a hailstorm of curses, uglier than the day Lance was exiled.
Most people would drown in that sound and break, a sandcastle under a tide.
Lance didn’t.
Because Lance was no longer “Lance.”
He was a role Fulin wore, a mask on a steady spirit.
Fulin, for all her dainty vampire grace, held power like a mountain and a mind like tempered steel.
Six months of storms had hardened her; her will stayed clean as snow, her hopes bright as lanterns, her resolve unbending as bamboo.
How could a Lance played by such a person fall to a mob’s barking?
Lance dug at his ear, feigning deafness like a bored cat. “Okay, okay, I heard you.”
That only stoked their fire, tinder flashing into blaze.
“You bastard!!”
They surged forward, wave on wave, eager to smash the cottage like raiders in harvest.
Lance drew the Sirius Sword, the blade’s Battle Aura flashing cold, moon-ice on steel.
“If you barged into my home just to spit empty words—”
“Don’t blame me for showing no mercy.” Cold light blinked, then fire rose, heat shouldering aside winter.
He unleashed a thick, rolling flame, a crimson tide crashing like a storming sea.
Faced with that glare and heat, the angry apprentices lost their nerve, hearts scattering like sparrows in a hawk’s shadow.
But their anger wasn’t play—it was carved with family crests and schooling, noble etiquette and inherited honor, oaths fit into tailored sleeves.
They prided themselves on effort and restraint, polish and rigor, and they despised Lance, that idle wanderer, like silk despises mud.
Despised the man who laughed outside all day, free as wind and twice as careless.
On that “despise,” they built their honor like a tower, brick by brick.
They were sure Mubay City’s hero would be born among them—
Not some street-bred boy.
Why should that loafer be blessed by the patron of talent?
Why should that loafer’s name thunder across provinces?
Why should that cowardly braggart claim Alice’s heart?
Countless Why became a single grinding injustice, a wheel chewing up their world’s order.
If the collapse had to stop—
Then Lance Morrison had to vanish.
Driven by jealousy’s blaze, the townmates turned to moths flinging themselves at fire, and attacked.
“You punk!!”
They swore as they cast, elemental spells fanning out like storm-feathers—
Flame, lightning, ice spears, wind blades—
A dense barrage, a Gatling’s sweep across canvas.
Rat-tat-tat!
Rat-tat-tat!
Under that flood, the lovely lakeside cottage turned to a riddled ruin, holes like mouths in plaster.
And that damned punk should be riddled too.
When the volley ended, satisfaction settled like grease—until a voice sounded behind them.
“Is this what you wanted to do?”
Shock hit like cold water; they turned in a scatter of boots—
Lance Morrison.
He was alive, shadow-solid and breath-steady. Why?
Lance offered no answer. He didn’t strike back.
He stood with the Mountain Wind Knight, and a big cat carrying Yuna like a soft bundle, and watched.
Silently, like winter watching men chop at a tree.
The blazing spelllight called nearby mages like moths to lanterns; on seeing apprentices in the front court, they understood in a glance.
Head Instructor Bordeaux landed, breath hard as bellows, and roared, “Look at what you’ve done!”
“You’re all from Mubay City—I had high hopes for you! But—”
His voice climbed like a storm up a cliff. “I was wrong! I made a huge mistake!”
“You care too much about things outside magic! This world is muddy and complex!”
“Your eyes are childish and simple—what do you even see clearly?!”
The apprentices fell silent, a field before hail.
Not for philosophy or lesson; the reason was almost laughable.
They simply didn’t dare backtalk a high mage. Bordeaux’s words slid off like rain off oilskin.
Seeing the stubborn eyes, Bordeaux sighed deep as a cavern. “Enough! All of you, withdraw from the academy!”
Then a girl’s urgent voice rose behind him, a sparrow’s flutter. “Please wait!”
Alice had rushed over, breath quick as needles; she hadn’t noticed Lance, and went straight to Bordeaux to plead.
She begged, voice trembling like string. “Sir, for the Iron Duke’s generosity to this academy, could you grant them mercy?”
Angry, Bordeaux had no kindness, his reply a snapped bowstring. “This isn’t about money!”
He shoved Alice aside, fury hard as a shove, and threw the next words to Lance, present and steady. “The Iron Duke’s youngest daughter wants me to forgive these idiots who committed attempted murder and wanton destruction…”
“Blazing Fire Knight, what’s your opinion?”
