CHAPTER 233: UNABLE TO CALM DOWN

The frustration was a caged beast roaring in her chest. Meditation had banked the coals of her prana, but it had done nothing to quell the storm of her emotions. The image of Khione’s cold, defiant eyes, the memory of her absolute declaration—"He is mine"—echoed in the cavern of Eltreth’s mind, fueling a fire that threatened to consume her from within. She needed an outlet. She needed to feel the cathartic release of a true clash, to push her body to its limits until the mental noise was drowned out by physical exertion.

Closing her eyes, she reached out through a unique, shadowy bond—a connection woven with blood and oath.

"I require your presence," she whispered into the psychic link.

From the deepest shadow cast by a nearby shattered ice pillar, a figure emerged. It was not a sudden apparition, but a slow coalescing of darkness, as if the shade itself were knitting together into human form. The woman who stepped forth was tall and lithe, clad in form-fitting, matte-black armor that seemed to drink the light. Her face, partially obscured by a sleek helm, was impassive.

This was Kaelen, the captain of Eltreth’s personal Shadow Guard, a knight who had long since transcended the rank of Red and moved in the rarefied air of power where titles became simplistic. In her hand, she held a simple, unadorned longsword, its blade dull grey.

"Your Highness," Kaelen greeted, her voice a low, calm monotone, devoid of deference but filled with a profound respect. She did not ask why she had been summoned; the agitated fire in Eltreth’s aura was answer enough.

"I require a sparring partner, Kaelen," Eltreth said, her voice tight. "Do not hold back. I need to... remember my own strength."

A slight, almost imperceptible nod was her only reply. Kaelen fell into a ready stance, her sword held in a middle guard. No flame erupted from her blade. No grand aura of power radiated from her body. She was stillness incarnate, a void waiting to absorb any and all light and heat.

That silence infuriated Eltreth further. With a guttural cry, she exploded into motion.

"Crimson Lotus Barrage!"

Her spear became a blur. Dozens of fiery thrusts, each one capable of piercing solid steel, shot towards Kaelen from every angle. It was an offensive that would have overwhelmed any Red Knight, a beautiful and deadly dance of incineration.

Kaelen moved. Her responses were so economical they were barely perceptible. A slight shift of her weight, a minute adjustment of her wrist. Her grey sword met each fiery thrust not with a block, but with a precise, almost gentle tap. Ting. Ting. Ting. Each contact was a punctuation mark in Eltreth’s furious sentence, and with each one, the fiery head of Eltreth’s spear was subtly, inexorably, knocked off its true course. The flames licked harmlessly past Kaelen’s shoulders, singeing the air but finding no purchase. She was a rock in a torrential river, parting the flow without ever opposing it directly.

Eltreth snarled, flipping backward to create space.

"Solar Dominion!" She slammed the butt of her spear into the ground. A wave of palpable heat radiated outwards, intending to disorient and weaken her opponent. The very air wavered, and the few remaining patches of ice on the field instantly vaporized.

Kaelen simply stood within the inferno, unbothered. The heat seemed to part around her, as if repelled by an invisible field. Her Law of Fire was not one of explosive display; it was one of absolute control, of contained potential that made the external chaos seem childish.

"Anger is a spark," Kaelen stated, her voice cutting cleanly through the roar of the flames.

"It can ignite a forge or burn down a forest. You are currently burning the forest, Your Highness. You see only the blaze, not the metal you wish to shape."

"Silence!" Eltreth roared. She launched herself forward again, her movements becoming wilder, more desperate. She mixed thrusts with sweeping, fiery arcs, using the spear’s length to its fullest. "Phoenix Wing Slash!" A crescent of fire roared forth.

Kaelen didn’t dodge. She stepped into the attack. Her sword moved in a small, perfect circle, and the massive crescent of flame was drawn into it, spiraling and compressing until it was sucked into the tip of her grey blade with a sound like a dying sigh. The blade glowed a dull red for a moment before returning to its inert state.

Eltreth stared, her breath coming in ragged gasps. Her prana was depleting rapidly, spent on these grand, ineffective techniques. The frustration was now a physical pain, a knot of pure, white-hot agony in her gut. She was giving everything she had, and her opponent hadn’t even broken a sweat.

"Again!" she screamed, charging once more.

This time, Kaelen did not simply defend. As Eltreth committed to a powerful overhead smash, Kaelen finally moved with intent. She sidestepped with a speed that defied vision, her left hand shooting out to grab the shaft of Eltreth’s spear just behind the head. At the same time, her own sword swept forward in a disarming arc.

There was no brute force. It was a masterful application of leverage and timing. Eltreth felt the weapon ripped from her grasp. It clattered to the scorched earth, its flames sputtering out. Before she could react, Kaelen’s foot hooked behind her ankle. Eltreth was thrown off balance, landing hard on her back, the wind knocked from her lungs.

She lay there, staring up at the artificial sky of the pocket dimension, utterly defeated. The fight had been taken out of her, not by overwhelming power, but by infuriating, absolute superiority. The beast of her frustration, having raged and expended all its energy, now lay dormant, leaving only a hollow, aching exhaustion.

She expected a lecture. She expected Kaelen to stand over her and list her failures.

Instead, the Shadow Guard captain knelt beside her, placing the retrieved practice spear gently on the ground next to her. "The fire that forges a legendary blade is not the hottest," Kaelen said, her voice softer now. "It is the one that is controlled, that is sustained at the perfect temperature for the perfect amount of time. You possess an inferno, Princess. But you let it control you. You must learn to be the smith, not the fuel."

Eltreth closed her eyes, the words seeping into her like a balm. The humiliation of the loss began to fade, replaced by the stark clarity of the lesson. Her battle with Khione... she had been all fuel, a raging wildfire trying to consume a glacier. She had been trying to overpower, to dominate, to prove a point through sheer, unrefined force. And it had ended in a stalemate.

She saw it now. Kaelen, with her perfectly controlled, internalized fire, was far more powerful than Eltreth in her most furious state. It was a revelation that cooled her temper more effectively than any ice spell.

Taking a deep, shuddering breath, Eltreth sat up. The frantic energy was gone. The frustration had burned itself out, leaving behind a bed of warm, glowing coals—a focused, determined heat.

"Thank you, Kaelen," she said, her voice quiet but steady.

"The honor was mine, Your Highness," Kaelen replied, bowing her head before melting back into the shadows from whence she came.

Alone once more, Eltreth picked up her spear. She did not ignite it. Instead, she began to move through her forms again, but this time, it was different. Her movements were slow, deliberate, precise. She focused on the flow of prana within her, not as a torrent to be unleashed, but as a river to be channeled. She focused on her footwork, on the minute adjustments of her grip, on the economy of motion Kaelen had demonstrated.

The desire for Nero had not lessened. If anything, seeing Khione’s power and now understanding her own deficiency had made her resolve more steeled. But the way she would pursue that goal had fundamentally shifted. She would no longer be the raging, entitled princess demanding submission. She would become the cunning, controlled, and irresistibly strong queen who inspired loyalty. She would become a force so refined, so potent, that he would have no choice but to see her worth.

She trained until her muscles trembled with a new kind of fatigue—not the exhaustion of blind rage, but the satisfying weariness of true progress. The fire was still within her, but now, for the first time since the clash with the ice queen, it was finally, perfectly, under her command.

•••

In the meantime, Khione who had left the pocket world stopped and sighed, from her shadow someone dressed in black materialized, like the princess she also had a shadow guardian, in fact every single powerful heir had one to secretly protect them and report everything that happened.

The shadow guardian who appeared lowered her head before inquiring. ´´Should I report what happened to the patriarch?’’

She was obviously talking about the Ice Queen losing her purity, her relationship with Nero.

´´No, I’ll handle it.´´ Khione responded calmly, born in such prestigious family come with many restraints, for example being unable to personally choose their life partner but she wasn’t concerned, nobody, absolutely no one could force her do what she didn’t want to do.

The shadow guardian nodded before melting back into her shadow.