Night had settled fully by the time Trafalgar returned to his room.

The door closed behind him without ceremony, the soft click echoing briefly before silence reclaimed the space. Moonlight slipped in through the narrow window, pale and distant, casting long shadows across the floor. It was quiet enough to hear his own breathing.

He lowered himself to the ground and set his stance.

The weight came next.

A simple item, almost laughably plain for the world it existed in.

[Personalizable Weight Plate – Common Rank]

Nothing legendary. Nothing rare. Just a slab of enchanted metal capable of adjusting its mass at will.

He set it to one hundred kilograms and rested it across his back.

Then he began.

The floor met his palms. His arms bent. His body moved with steady rhythm, controlled and precise, like a machine that had long since learned its limits and decided to ignore them anyway. The strain registered, but it did not slow him. Muscles engaged. Core locked. Breath measured.

Eighty.

Eighty-one.

Eighty-two.

His body advanced without hesitation.

His mind did not.

Everything Aubrelle had told him threaded together now, one piece slipping into place after another until the picture was uncomfortably clear. Too many coincidences had stopped being coincidences.

The vision.

The battlefield drowned in bodies.

The air thick with death.

And the flames.

Blue flames that never went out, curling through the field like living things.

At the time, they had felt distant. Symbolic. Another fragment of a future he did not yet understand.

Now he did.

Those flames were hers.

Pipin's, more precisely.

The realization settled into him with the weight of inevitability, like armor clicking into place piece by piece. Heavy. Restrictive. Necessary.

Ninety.

Ninety-one.

He exhaled through his nose as he pushed himself up again.

So that was it.

The war was not something he might brush against on the edges of history. It was something that would wrap around him completely, drag him forward whether he wanted it or not. And when it did, the numbers would stop meaning anything.

Kills would blur together.

Faces would fade.

Names would vanish first.

That was how it always went.

And Aubrelle would be there.

Not on the other side.

Not as an enemy.

That mattered more than he wanted to admit.

Ninety-four.

His arms flexed again, steady as ever.

She had trusted him. Not with power, not with strategy, but with something far more fragile. The parts she did not show on the battlefield. The parts she had no reason to share with someone outside her House.

Not as a Rosenthal.

Not as a Summoner.

Just as herself.

The thought lingered longer than the burn in his muscles.

Ninety-eight.

Ninety-nine.

One hundred.

He paused at the top of the motion, holding himself there for a heartbeat longer than necessary before lowering down again.

Gratitude stirred quietly beneath everything else.

Not for her strength.

Not for her talent.

But for her trust.

And for the simple, dangerous truth that now sat clearly in his mind.

Whatever future awaited him, whatever war he would be forced to walk through, the blue flames in his vision were no longer a mystery.

The motion continued.

Down. Up.

The weight pressed into his back again, unmoving, unforgiving, as his arms locked and released with practiced control. The strain was familiar now, almost welcome.

One hundred and one.

One hundred and two.

The floor creaked softly beneath him as he continued, the adjustable weight plate pressing firmly against his back. One hundred kilograms. Enough to matter. Enough to keep his body honest, even if his mind refused to slow down.

'So it really was SS…'

The revelation settled differently now that time had passed. Not as shock anymore, not as disbelief, but as something that simply fit. Aubrelle au Rosenthal. Blind. Summoner. The girl who carried herself gently and yet commanded a Unique familiar capable of turning battlefields into oceans of blue fire.

One hundred and three.

'One of the ten legendary characters.'

He exhaled slowly as he lowered himself again.

'A supernatural talent on the level of Valttair.'

People like that reshaped eras. Became reference points. Names spoken long after wars ended. And yet, when he thought of Aubrelle, what stayed with him wasn't Pipin's flames, nor the scale of her power.

It was the way she hesitated before speaking.

The way she chose him.

One hundred and four.

'Only monsters like Icarus… or me… stand above that.'

The thought came without arrogance. Just fact. He'd long since stopped lying to himself about what he was.

And that was precisely why the shift between them felt strange.

'We're not just senior and junior anymore.'

Not in the way the academy defined it.

Something quieter had taken its place. Something closer. Not romantic. Not yet perhaps or maybe... But undeniably more personal than before.

One hundred and five.

'Is that appreciation?'

He tested the word internally.

'Or is it the same as Mayla?'

That one slowed him down.

His arms trembled—not from weakness, but from strain layered atop distraction.

Mayla wasn't a question he could dodge. She never had been.

'She matters.'

She already did.

Garrika crossed his mind next.

'Friend. Reliable. Straightforward.'

Zafira followed, inevitably.

'Dangerous territory.'

Not emotionally—but politically. Strategically. A mess of expectations and consequences he had no intention of walking into blindly.

One hundred and six.

'They're not the same.'

That was the conclusion.

Garrika and Zafira occupied places he understood. Defined. Contained.

Mayla didn't.

And Aubrelle…

Aubrelle was something else entirely.

Not a threat to Mayla. Not competition. Not confusion.

But a presence that had quietly carved out space by offering trust instead of demanding anything in return.

One hundred and seven.

'That changes things.'

Not everything.

But enough.

He lowered himself again, breathing controlled, muscles burning in steady rhythm.

'I need to talk to Mayla.'

That, at least, was no longer negotiable.

Not because of guilt. Not because of pressure.

But because letting things remain unspoken was how rot began.

One hundred and eight.

The future pressed closer, clearer now.

War. Bodies. Blue fire.

And somewhere within that vision, Aubrelle stood—not as an enemy, not as an obstacle, but as someone who would be there when everything burned.

'That matters more than I expected.'

He finished the motion and held himself there for a moment longer than necessary, arms shaking, thoughts finally aligning instead of colliding.

Some answers could wait.

But honesty couldn't.

He didn't stop.

One hundred and twenty-five.

One hundred and forty.

One hundred and sixty.

By the time his arms started to truly protest, his breathing had evened out, the burn turning distant, mechanical. Trafalgar pushed through it anyway, not because he needed to, but because he wanted the noise in his head gone. Just motion. Just strain.

One hundred and seventy.

One hundred and seventy-four.

He finally let himself drop to the floor, chest rising and falling steadily. Sweat ran down his spine, soaking into the fabric beneath him. For a few seconds, he stayed there, staring at nothing.

'That's enough.'

He reached back and adjusted the item resting against him, willing the weight down until it barely existed. One kilogram. Useless for training. Perfect for ending it. The plate shimmered faintly before breaking apart into particles of mana and slipping into his inventory.

'I'll return it to Caelum tomorrow.'

His body felt light now, empty in the good way. His mind, however, had settled into something sharper.

'Seventeen… soon.'

The thought lingered.

In this world, that number mattered more than it should have.

'And my family is moving.'

He didn't know the full shape of it yet, but he could feel it. Pieces shifting. Decisions being made without him in the room, but very much about him. The Morgains didn't sit still when war approached. They never had.

'We're being pulled in.'

Not might. Not eventually.

Soon.

He pushed himself to his feet and headed for the bathroom. The moment the cold water hit his skin, his breath caught for just an instant. It was sharp, biting, unforgiving. Exactly what he wanted.

The water washed away sweat, heat, exhaustion.

It didn't touch the thoughts.

'The war isn't slowing down.'

If anything, it was accelerating.

They would return to the academy soon. Classes. Training. Normalcy pretending to exist.

'Aubrelle will be there.'

That alone shifted the equation.

'She's an advantage.'

A real one.

And that vision… the bodies, the battlefield, the blue flames.

'The probability of that future vision becoming real grew even higher—now that I know those blue flames belong to Aubrelle, and that my family will enter the war one way or another.It means that maybe… destiny really is written for me.And I don't like how that sounds.'

The water continued to pour over him, cold enough to numb his skin, not cold enough to dull his resolve.

When he finally turned it off, the silence felt heavier than before.

Later, lying in bed with the lights extinguished, darkness closed in around him like a familiar cloak. His body relaxed at last, muscles sinking into rest. His eyes stayed open for a few seconds longer.

No fear surfaced.

Only readiness.

'Whatever comes… I won't look away.'

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