The sun sat low over Floralines, warm enough to cast gold on the trees but not strong enough to banish the chill. Aldric sat on the porch steps, turning a rune-carved stone over in his hands.

  It had been a slow day.

  Veylor sat beside him with a whetstone and his longsword across his knees. He worked methodically, metal rasping with every pull. They’d barely spoken for over an hour.

  “You ever wonder what makes it work?” Aldric asked finally.

  Veylor didn’t look up. “The blade?”

  “No. Luminance.”

  A pause.

  “Sure,” Veylor said. “Doesn’t mean I came up with a better theory than 'hope and stubbornness.’”

  Aldric smiled faintly. “See, that’s the problem. Everyone acts like it’s unknowable. But it’s not. Not entirely.”

  Veylor looked at him now. “You’ve been scribbling again.”

  “Always.”

  “I don’t even know what’s more to it besides the basics.” The knight sighed, then looked back down to polish his sword, “Radiance burns, Aegis blocks, Resonance stitches, Judgement for… whatever Judgement is. The rest? Depends who’s lying to you.”

  Aldric put on a smug look.

  “You have more experience than I do, that’s a given. But now I’m sure you don’t know more about Luminance than I do.”

  Veylor’s expression hardened. “Big talk.”

  “I’ve spent years tracing how Luminance really works. ”

  “You want it to be a machine,” Veylor said. “Inputs and outputs. But it’s not. Luminance is alignment. You don’t control it. You harmonize. You’re explaining miracles. Luminance is faith. It’s will. Alignment. But Essence—Essence doesn’t fail. Essence is. The law beneath the law.”

  Aldric frowned. “That’s assuming Luminance doesn’t work the same.”

  Veylor’s gaze narrowed. “...Explain.”

  “The more you look into it, the more it stops being divine.” Aldric paced now, as if his thoughts had been waiting for permission to unravel. “It’s not some holy mystery. It’s just amplified chemical signaling. Belief is only the trigger, not the engine. Once you’ve internalized the pattern, Luminance obeys neurology.”

  “Big talk,” Veylor said.

  Aldric didn’t stop. ““Radiance? Just adrenaline conversion. Aegis? Emotional stress triggers turned into shielding reflexes. Resonance? Neural override for forced tissue—”

  “Okay, okay,” Veylor cut in. “You really think belief has nothing to do with it? By that logic, Essence is instant calculus.”

  “No,” Aldric said. “Essence is calculus. But it’s honest about it.”

  That earned a bark of laughter. “You’d talk the sun into rising backwards if you could cite the right thesis.”

  “Because I’ve read them all.”

  “Oh yeah?” Veylor stood and stepped inside the cottage.

  When he returned, he held a dull iron knife in his palm.

  He flipped it once, catching it by the handle.

  “Catch.”

  Without warning, he threw it.

  Aldric’s instincts kicked in before he thought. His hand snapped up and golden light shimmered into a shield—the familiar curve of Aegis blooming between him and the incoming blade.

  The knife passed through it.

  Not fast. Not even forceful. It simply slipped through the barrier like smoke through a sieve.

  The blade clattered to the porch behind him.

  Aldric recoiled, stunned. “What the hell?!”

  Veylor crossed his arms. “Aegis blocks kinetic impact, not inertia. The knife had almost zero velocity by the time it hit.”

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  “You slowed it down?”

  “Essence manipulation,” Veylor said. “I didn’t need to destroy your shield. Just changed the knife’s speed midair. To Aegis, it was no more dangerous than a falling leaf.“

  Aldric turned, staring at the blade. His shield was still glowing faintly. Pointless. Decorative.

  “You can do that?”

  “You can learn that.”

  He stared a moment longer.

  It was simple. It made his years of refinement feel like child’s play.

  His mouth tightened. “Years I’ve spent tuning the frequency, layering Luminance flow into my defenses. All of it…”

  “Still useful,” Veylor said, picking up the knife. “But a tower built on soft ground falls first.”

  Veylor went on his patrol again.

  Aldric sat now on the steps, boots discarded, a chipped slate in one hand and Veylor’s knife in the other. His other hand was outstretched, palm up, fingers twitching in ritual memory.

  Aegis.

  Golden light bloomed into existence. The barrier formed, crisp and seamless. He stared at it until his eyes hurt.

  “There’s got to be a way…”

  Energy needed to break a shield is always lower than the energy needed to maintain it.

  Then what if he... didn’t maintain it?

  Aldric exhaled through his teeth.

  He reached deeper. Not for more power—but for less. He unshaped the construct, peeled back the firm wall, loosened the inner lattice of Luminance that held Aegis rigid.

  The barrier shifted.

  It shimmered now like a curtain instead of a wall.

  His pulse kicked up.

  He picked up a rock and threw it. The stone flew toward the barrier—

  —And curved. Arcing around the shield, momentum redirected.

  Aldric stood frozen.

  Then a grin cracked his face.

  He laughed. Quiet, unsteady. For the first time since arriving in Floralines, Luminance had done something new in his hands. Not just obeyed. Adapted.

  “Big talk,” he muttered to himself, echoing Veylor’s voice.

  The next morning, Aldric found Tomas sitting alone on the chapel steps.

  The boy looked pale. Not crying. His arms wrapped around his knees, eyes locked on nothing.

  Aldric crouched beside him.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked gently.

  Tomas didn’t look at him. His voice came out like dried leaves.

  “They took her.”

  Aldric’s gut dropped. “Who?”

  “My mom.”

  A blink.

  “She went to gather herbs yesterday. She didn’t come back.”

  He didn’t say it loud. Didn’t sob. But his fingers were digging into his sleeves now.

  “They called it quiet. But she never took their oath. Never could.”

  Aldric reached for his shoulder, but the boy flinched and looked away. Not scared. Ashamed.

  “I should’ve gone with her. I should’ve—”

  Aldric’s throat tightened. He couldn’t say the one thing he wanted to—that it wasn’t Tomas’s fault. Because Tomas wouldn’t believe it. Not yet.

  So instead, he asked, “Who told you?”

  “My dad.”

  That got Aldric on his feet fast. He went first to the workshop.

  Sawdust still lingered in the air, but inside, the place was cold.

  Tomas’s father—Merrin—stood behind the workbench, a half-carved chair leg lying abandoned near the chisels. He was silent when Aldric entered. His hands were rough with calluses, shoulders hunched over his bench. Without a word, he handed over a crumpled piece of parchment.

  “Unregistered caster. Failed the Oath. Heretic.”

  “They wanted it quiet,” Merrin said. “And she didn’t fail any oath. She never even took it.”

  Aldric stepped forward. “Has anyone spoken to the Sanctum?”

  Merrin’s eyes were bloodshot. “You think I’d go to them?”

  “No bells,” Aldric murmured.

  That mattered.

  Every Sanctum decree came with bells. This didn’t.

  “Have you asked anyone?” Aldric asked. “Mirla? Wenrik?”

  Merrin didn’t answer.

  So Aldric did.

  Lysa, sorting bundles of herbs behind the cottage: “She came by last week for dried jessan root. Told me she’d be back tomorrow. She wasn’t.”

  Mirla, at the tavern, wiping down mugs without a word: “Didn’t see her. Didn’t hear her.”

  Wenrik, the old carpenter with clouded eyes: “I saw robed shapes near the edge of the woods. No torchlight. They moved like they knew where they were going.”

  Aldric brought the poster to Veylor that afternoon.

  They stood beneath the tall pine at the center of town, just far enough from the square to avoid Karnak’s gaze.

  “She’s gone,” Aldric said. “And no one saw it happen.”

  Veylor took the parchment, fingers tightening as he read.

  He said nothing for a long moment.

  “That boy’s mother helped me when I arrived. Fed me. No questions.” Aldric added.

  “I know.”

  “This poster was placed without sanction. No chapel bells, no registration call.”

  “I know.”

  Aldric’s voice cracked.

  “They’re not just watching anymore. They’re testing.”

  Veylor wiped the sword clean with a cloth and sheathed it with a click.

  Aldric didn’t let him turn away.

  “You knew this would happen.”

  “I suspected.”

  “So you let it?”

  Veylor’s jaw tensed. “I’m not their warden, Aldric.”

  “No. You stalled. While they took her.”

  Veylor didn’t move.

  Aldric’s voice rose.

  “She’s gone. And a child had to read ‘Heretic’ under his mother’s name. We’re past waiting.”

  Veylor’s gaze didn’t waver. But the line between his brows deepened.

  “They’re probing us,” Aldric said, quieter now. “Seeing what they can get away with. You know that.”

  “I do.”

  “Then we push back.”

  Veylor exhaled, slow. “You’re not read—”

  “Don’t say it!”

  Aldric stepped forward, fists shaking.

  “You always say that. Not ready. Not yet. When? When there’s no one left but you, me, and a smoldering tree stump? When they take Tomas? When you’re digging graves instead of sharpening blades?”

  Silence again.

  “Aldric—”

  “I’ve spent my life reading every paper, dissecting every deployment theory. I’ve memorized resonance stacks, collapse patterns, sigil logic loops. I don’t just cast Luminance—”

  “And yet,” Veylor said, voice quiet, “your Aegis failed you.”

  That stopped him cold.

  “Let that be a lesson. You ever get crushed by Judgement while holding someone you love, knowing your Resonance failed to reach deep enough to save them?” Veylor continued.

  Veylor took a step closer.

  “You read papers. You draw diagrams. You name things. But when the sky falls, none of that holds weight unless your bones remember what your mind forgets.”

  Aldric opened his mouth, but Veylor cut him off.

  “You want to lead. Fine. Then learn to bleed without panicking.

  Tomorrow.”

  Aldric blinked. “What?”

  “You want to be ready?” Veylor said, stepping closer. “Then you start at dawn. No more theory. No more diagrams. Just you, your breath, and the laws beneath your bones.”

  He tapped Aldric once, gently, just over the heart.

  “I’ll teach you everything I know about Essence.”

  Aldric didn’t smile.

  But his shoulders dropped a fraction.

  And he nodded.