Chương 123: Chapter 56: The Gift of Illumination

Then, as the practical period began, the first part consisted of four intense hours with Alistair. The bishop, setting aside his devout demeanor, transformed into a demanding and meticulous master. He taught them the principles of a martial art based not on brute strength, but on the mastery of one's center of gravity, the redirection of force, and the utilization of the opponent's own momentum.

Fluent, almost dance-like movements turned a ferocious attack into an elegant loss of balance, and a powerful charge into a humiliating fall. —Do not fight against the force —Alistair repeated in a serene yet relentless voice. —Use it. Guide it. Turn it into your ally. Selena and Astrid, lighter and more agile, found a certain affinity with these principles, though they struggled to apply the technique against Magnor's pure mass. Afterward came two exhausting hours fighting with wooden weapons against Magnor.

The giant, armed with an enormous staff that he swung as if it were a reed, was a mobile fortress. Astrid and Alistair, armed with practice daggers, barely dared to draw near; their attacks were deflected with minimal movements of the staff, and a single blow from him, even controlled, sent them rolling. But Selena, with her growing mastery of the short scimitar, the fruit of months of sweat and corrections under Fjora's gaze, achieved the unthinkable.

In a moment of distraction, following a series of rapid feints, she managed to slip her wooden blade past the defense of the staff and graze one of Magnor's ribs. It was a light contact, barely a tap, but in the sudden silence that followed the snap of the wood, everyone understood its meaning: with a real weapon, that movement would have been fatal. Magnor stopped, lowered his staff, and a slow smile of genuine respect spread across his weathered face. —Well done, Countess —he grunted in his cordial voice.

—Very well done. Exhausted and bruised, but with a new and faint thread of camaraderie forged in their shared effort, they were called by Cassian for the final part of the day. —Now, the artifacts —he announced, without a change in the monotony of his voice. He then gathered them in the center of the courtyard, which was already bathed in the orange light of the sunset. His tone was that of a technician explaining dangerous tools.

—You must know that each artifact you possess has a unique effect, intrinsic to its nature and to the essence of the resonant who created it. He pointed to each of them with a precise gesture. —Alistair's sword. He pointed to it, indicating the wide blade with its strange reflections. —It is a distorter of perception. It does not attack matter, but the mind. Through the air and the light it reflects anomalously, it can confuse the enemy's senses, create illusions of movement, and disorient.

It is a weapon of controlled chaos. He pointed to Magnor's chain mail gloves and continued, looking at the giant's metallic hands. —Those do not protect you; they turn your hands into weapons. They channel and amplify the strength of the bearer. Your blows, Magnor, whether with a fist, a weapon, or even a simple shove, will carry the heavy impact of a war hammer. It does not increase your strength; it focuses it and makes it devastating. He looked down at Astrid's shoes, his eyes locked on them for a few seconds.

—The shoes will make her light as a feather. Not only will they increase her speed, but her steps will be nearly inaudible, and her agility will be multiplied. It is the gift of stealth and evasion. He finished by looking at Selena's ring, and for the first time, his gaze seemed to linger on her for an extra moment. —That ring will create light. Not ordinary light, but a pure and constant light that emanates from the object itself.

A crucial fact: it does not matter if the cursed space of the dungeon bends, twists, or annuls the physical laws of natural light. This ring will shine. Always. Did you know this text is from a different site? Read the official version to support the creator. He paused, running his fingers across his chin in a thoughtful gesture. —You cannot use them together right from the start. The resonance of multiple artifacts in inexperienced hands can cause catastrophic interference or attract… unwanted attention.

You must learn, on your own, to activate them, to feel them, to comprehend their internal mechanism. It is important that you do so. His gaze grew more intense, directing itself specifically at Selena and Astrid. —Especially for the new resonants. An artifact is not a toy. It is a fragment of someone else's soul, of condensed power. Treat it with respect, but also with firmness. You must be its master, not its servant. Then, Cassian took a step back, his silhouette cutting against the purple light of the twilight.

—Today's class ends here. Know your artifacts. In private. In silence. A resonant's perception is what guides them to their destiny, which is why the Void plays with our hearts, tempting us with shortcuts and mirages. His words, for the first time, sounded almost poetic, but his face remained impassive, as if he were reciting a manual of grim instructions. —But we, by wielding these objects, possess the legacy of another. Of someone who, before us, already lost their battle, paid their price.

A legacy that now forces us to move forward. For the general good of the population. For the good of those we love. For the good of the kingdom. There was no emotional emphasis. He did not raise his voice. The words, grandiloquent and heavy with meaning, left his lips with the same coldness with which he would have described the mechanism of a lock.

Then, he turned around and vanished into the lengthening shadows of the courtyard, leaving them with the weight of their new deadly toys and the burden of an imposed duty. Back in her room, with the palatial silence enveloping her, Selena sat on the edge of the bed. The bronze ring engraved with the words "To my beloved daughter" remained on her index finger. She remembered then, with a sudden clarity, one of her previous dreams at university. In it, she had also turned a ring. The same one? A similar one?

she thought, and light had poured from it. A cold light that chased away shadows. She took a deep breath, concentrating, trusting in the halom. Not in words, nor in writing, but in intention. In need to see, to illuminate the darkness, both the physical kind and the other. She turned the ring deliberately, just as she had done in the dream. At first, nothing. Then, a faint pulse of warmth in the metal. And suddenly, from the center of the simple bronze band, light emerged. It was not a blinding flash, nor a flame.

It was a light like that of the morning sun, clear, golden, and constant. It burst forth in a first concentrated ray that illuminated a specific spot on the opposite wall, and then, as if adapting to her unconscious will, it stabilized, expanding to illuminate the entire room uniformly and perfectly. There was no visible source, no shadows, no glare. It was as if the very atmosphere of the room had become imbued with serene and impossible daylight, coming from everywhere and nowhere.

The effect was reassuring and, at the same time, deeply magical. Selena kept it that way for an hour, observing, growing accustomed to the sensation of power flowing smoothly through the ring. After the hour had passed, the ring did not turn off all at once, but rather extinguished slowly, like an accelerated twilight. Only then did the side effect arrive. When the arcane light disappeared completely, Selena saw everything much darker.

It was not that the room was pitch black; the embers of the fireplace and the moon outside the window provided a faint clarity. But her eyes, adjusted to the perfect and unnatural light of the ring, now perceived the normal world as a place of dense shadows and dull colors. It was relative, temporary, but disconcerting blindness. Instead of growing uneasy, Selena, with her characteristic pragmatism, took advantage of the amplified darkness of her own vision. She undressed, put on her nightgown, and got into bed.

The gloom, now deep and welcoming to her deceived eyes, felt wonderfully conducive to sleep. Without fighting it, she closed her eyes and let herself drift. And, against all odds, it worked. Sleep came quickly, deeply, and for the second consecutive night, it was a dreamless rest, a restorative void. The days passed with overwhelming speed, a succession of freezing dawns, sweat, bruises, and constant learning that left scars on the body and furrows in the mind.

Selena improved day by day, assimilating the principles of Alistair's martial art until making them her own. She was no longer just capable of landing that single practice strike with the wooden scimitar on Magnor; now she could graze him up to four times in different areas during a single encounter, exploiting millimetric openings, deflecting his enormous staff with circular movements, and recovering with an agility that would have been unthinkable weeks ago.

Her reflexes were faster, her reading of the giant's movement, more precise. Astrid and Alistair were also making notable progress with their wooden daggers. The blonde resonant, in particular, had incorporated the innate lightness suggested by her ancient shoes into her combat style, moving with a spectral fluidity that made it difficult to anticipate her attacks.

Alistair, for his part, applied the principles of redirection even when wielding a weapon, causing Magnor's blows, when they managed to get close, to lose part of their devastating force as they were deflected with tactical elegance. Everyone's learning was finally bearing fruit, slow and constant. Barely perceptible to those who were most demanding, but they were enormous steps for the future that awaited her.

On nights when she rested peacefully, she used the ring to illuminate, guided by the curiosity of unraveling how that arcane artifact worked. She did not succeed, but with each passing day she felt more comfortable; it was almost as if the ring had been waiting for her for millennia, just to remind her that she had to illuminate her own ignorance.