2025-12-27 06:03:01The smile stayed on Asta's face even as heat crept up his neck. He wasn't embarrassed exactly,more resigned. Of course Kael would single him out, even without naming him directly.
The old man had spent countless hours trying to coax the dragon flame out of Asta's stubborn body, and they both knew how spectacularly those attempts had failed. But Asta had excelled at everything else,the sword work, the hand-to-hand combat, the tactical drills. That had to count for something, didn't it?
Old man Kael's gaze moved on, and Asta released a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The old man's expression softened slightly as he continued addressing the crowd.
"But I want you all to understand something important."
Kael said, his voice growing stronger, more passionate.
"Difficulty is not the same as defeat. Struggle is not the same as failure. Every single person in this room has faced challenges,that's why you're here in the labor section instead of in some prestigious squad, right?"
A few bitter laughs echoed through the crowd, but Kael pressed on, undeterred.
"But you know what? I've trained soldiers, elite guards, royal flame wielders, and I can tell you with absolute certainty,some of the strongest people I've ever met started exactly where you are now. At the bottom. Struggling. Doubting themselves."
He paused, letting that sink in.
"The difference between those who rise and those who don't isn't talent. It isn't a natural ability. It's not even how powerful your flame is or what prestigious clan you come from."
Kael's hand came up, forming a fist that he held high in the air.
"It's this! It's determination! It's the refusal to give up even when everything and everyone tells you that you should! It's waking up every single morning and choosing to try again, even after you've failed a hundred times before!"
His words hit Asta right in the chest, resonating with something deep inside him. Around him, he could see others straightening, lifting their heads, expressions shifting from resigned to something more hopeful.
"You think the elite squads have it easy?"
Kael continued, his voice rising.
"You think Cassian Xavier and his people never struggle, never doubt, never fail? They do! Everyone does! The only difference is they've learned to push through it, to use their failures as fuel instead of letting them become chains!"
"Yeah!"
Someone shouted from the back of the crowd, and suddenly more voices joined in.
"That's right!"
"Tell them, Old Man Kael!”
The energy in the room was shifting, becoming electric. Asta felt it washing over him, felt his own spirits lifting despite the weight of his repeated failures with the dragon flame.
"So when you face your next challenge."
Kael said, his voice dropping slightly but losing none of its intensity,
“When you hit that wall that seems impossible to climb, when you fail at something you've tried a thousand times,I want you to remember that every failure is a lesson. Every setback is preparation for your comeback. Every moment of struggle is forging you into someone stronger than you were before!"
"Yes!"
The crowd was responding now, feeding off Kael's energy, voices rising in agreement and encouragement.
"Can I count on you all to keep pushing, keep fighting, keep believing in yourselves?"
"Yes!"
The response was thunderous now, hundreds of voices united in affirmation.
"Can I count on you to support each other, to lift each other up when someone falls?"
"Yes!"
Even louder this time. Asta found himself shouting along with everyone else, his fist raised in the air, his heart pounding with renewed determination.
"Then show me! Show the entire academy! Show everyone who's ever dismissed you or underestimated you what the labor section is really made of!"
The crowd erupted, cheering, shouting, whistling. The noise was deafening, filling the quarters and probably echoing throughout the entire complex. Asta was grinning now, genuinely grinning, the smile reaching his eyes for the first time in weeks.
Around him, people were clapping each other on the back, exchanging excited looks, feeding off the collective energy that Kael had sparked.
Old Man Kael stood on the platform, letting the moment build, a satisfied smile on his weathered face.
He raised his hands gradually, calling for quiet, and slowly the noise began to die down, though the energy remained, crackling in the air like lightning waiting to strike.
"Now."
Kael said once he could be heard again, his tone shifting to something more serious.
"I have an announcement to make. And I'm sorry to say, it's not entirely good news."
The mood shifted immediately, excitement giving way to tension. Murmurs rippled through the crowd
“What now? What could possibly dampen the moment they'd just shared?”
"The tournament."
Kael said, and groans erupted before he could even finish. He held up a hand, waiting for silence.
"The tournament has been postponed again."
"Not again!"
Someone shouted
from the left side of the crowd.
The murmuring grew louder, voices overlapping in frustration and disbelief.
"This is ridiculous!"
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Chapter 597
Max Voss walked out of the shadows at the tree line. The same ease. The same cloak. The same expression,the smile that had never fully left, the specific comfort of someone who had known where they would be needed and had been there before the needing.He looked at the portal.At Elara and Eren, still maintaining the chant, the portal is still growing behind them.At Asta."Not one of you steps through that.” he said. His voice was pleasant. It was always pleasant. The specific pleasantness of someone who does not need to raise their voice because volume is what you use when you are not certain of the outcome and he was certain of the outcome. "The Empress's order is the Empress's order. And the only way any of you is going through that portal tonight…" He looked at the group with the calm, patient look of someone who has done this calculation and knows the answer."...is if you defeat me first."He looked at Asta."Which you are not going to do.” He said. "Not tonight. Not in th
Chapter 596
The forest at this hour was its own thing.Not the daytime forest, not the layered light and the visible depth of it. The night forest, the closed-down version, the one that operates on different senses because the visual ones have been mostly removed. The specific sounds of it. The specific smell, the cold version of the forest smell, the one that comes when the temperature drops and the damp rises from the ground and the trees breathe their different night-breath.Asta moved through it with Flora on his left and Mira on his right.They moved in the specific way of people who need to be quiet and know how to be quiet,not the slow, overcautious movement of people trying to be quiet, the practiced movement of people for whom quiet was a thing they had learned to do properly. The camp behind them was still. Nothing had shifted. Nothing had called out.The trees thickened.And then, in the small clearing that the thick trees made between themselves,the specific organic clearing of a for
Chapter 595
The space that was not quite dark and not quite light but had its own specific quality of illumination, the source of which was the dragon himself, the vast, scaled presence that occupied the far end of it the way certain things occupy far ends, with a completeness that made the far end feel closer than it was.The Emperor Dragon was looking at him.Not the patient look. Not the measured look of their usual conversations, the look of something that has been waiting, that has been in the specific frustration of a thing that cannot move on its own and has been waiting for the thing that can to become available again."You're awake.” The dragon said."What happened." Asta said."What happened." The dragon said. "Is that a man put his hand on your throat and spoke seven words of the Dimming Incantation into you, and your body received those words and acted on them because that is what bodies do when the Dimming Incantation is applied correctly, which it was." He looked at Asta with t
Chapter 594
Not running to get there, simply there, the arrival so fast that the between had not been visible, the specific movement of something that had been given its full expression and the full expression was this.His hand found Asta's throat.Not the grip that Asta had used on Eren,something more deliberate than that, more positioned, the hand of someone who knows exactly where they are putting it and why. The specific placement of fingers that has been practiced until the practice has become automatic.And then his lips moved.Low,barely above breath, the volume of something that was not meant for anyone standing at a distance, only for Asta at the distance of the grip. The words were not language in the conversational sense, they were the older version, the incantation version, the words built for function rather than meaning. Ancient and rhythmic, the cadence of them specific, the specific cadence of a technique that required the words in a specific order at a specific pace.They took
Chapter 593
He stopped. "When I made contact with Loki directly, when I tried to reinforce Jabber's resistance and give him the leverage to push back…" He looked at his hands again. "Loki looked at me. That is all. He looked at me. And he told Jabber,in the voice that things use when they speak inside someone's consciousness, the voice that is felt rather than heard, he told Jabber to remove me."The clearing was quiet."And Jabber.” Eren said, his voice going lower."Threw me out. Not because he wanted to. Because when Loki said it with the full weight of what Loki is, the full ancient weight of a god-class dragon speaking to the vessel it has possessed,the vessel does not have the capacity to disobey. Not at this stage of the possession. Not yet."He looked at Asta."I'm sorry." He said.Asta stood there.He looked at Eren for a long moment. At the expression on his face, the genuine, specific sorrow of someone who has tried and has not arrived at the outcome the trying was for and is stan
Chapter 592
The pallor of it. The eyes, not red, not wet, not any of the conventional expressions of grief, just hollow, the specific hollow of someone who has had something taken from the inside rather than the outside, the particular empty quality of a space that was occupied recently and is not occupied now.He was looking at Eren.Eren was looking back at him.The Elf Chief's expression had the quality of someone who has been waiting for this arrival and has been carrying the weight of the waiting in the knowledge that the arrival was going to be this. The specific expression of someone who knows that something that happened was partly a consequence of their involvement and is standing in the presence of the person who has paid the most for the consequence.Asta looked at him.And then his hand came up.Fast, the specific speed of something that had been building in him the whole walk back and had arrived at the expression of itself without the mediation of decision, the body acting on what
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