“Lloyd,” she began, her voice calm, yet devoid of its usual light, melodic quality. It was the voice of the Duchess, the matriarch, the wielder of a different, more ancient, kind of power. “Thank you for coming so promptly.”
“Mother. Father,” Lloyd acknowledged, bowing respectfully, his senses on high alert. “You summoned me.”
“I did,” Milody confirmed. She gestured to a chair opposite her desk. “Please. Be seated.” It was a command, not an invitation.
Lloyd sat, the silence stretching, thick with unspoken purpose.
“We have watched you, Lloyd,” Milody began finally, her fingers steepled before her, her gaze unwavering. “Over these past few months. We have seen the… changes.” She paused. “The tournament. The emergence of your Ferrum Steel Blood, a power you awakened through means we still do not fully comprehend. The incident in Galla Forest. Your… newfound… business acumen, which, I confess, continues to be a source of profound, if profitable, bewilderment.”
She took a slow, deliberate breath. “Your paternal heritage, the power of Ferrum, has manifested. Unexpectedly, yes. But powerfully. It is a strength you are beginning to learn, to control. And that is good. It is necessary.”
Her eyes narrowed, the focus of her gaze intensifying. “But that is only half of your inheritance, Lloyd. Half of your potential. You carry my blood as well. The blood of the Austin lineage.”
Lloyd’s heart began to pound a slow, heavy rhythm in his chest. He knew where this was going.
“In the tournament,” Milody continued, her voice dropping, becoming almost a whisper, yet resonating with a strange, ancient power, “during your final confrontation with your cousin, we all witnessed it. A flash of it. The awakening.” She leaned forward, her eyes seeming to pierce right through him. “The Black Ring Eyes.”
She held up a hand, forestalling any denial or deflection he might have been formulating. “Do not feign ignorance, Lloyd. I know what I saw. I know the legends of my own house. I know the power that sleeps in my own veins, however diluted. What manifested in you… that was the true power. The pure power. Undiluted. Potent.”
She looked at her own husband, a flicker of something—shared history, old secrets—passing between them. “Your father and I have discussed this at length. And we are in agreement. This… this is a development of immense significance. A ‘heaven-blessed’ opportunity, as the old texts would say. To have a single heir inherit and awaken the true, potent forms of both the Ferrum and the Austin bloodlines… it is a convergence of power not seen in generations. Perhaps never.”
She turned her gaze back to Lloyd, and her expression was no longer just serious; it was fierce. Determined. “And we will not allow such a gift to be wasted. We will not allow that power to lie dormant within you, uncontrolled, misunderstood, a half-remembered party trick you stumbled upon by accident.”
She rose from her desk, her movements fluid, graceful, yet imbued with an undeniable, almost terrifying, authority. “Your father has overseen your training in the Ferrum ways. Or, he would have, had you not apparently decided to learn it all yourself through sheer, baffling instinct.” A hint of her dry humor momentarily surfaced. “But the Austin power… that is a different matter. That is my heritage. My responsibility.”
She came around the desk, stopping before him, looking down at him, not as his mother, but as his new master. “It is time to address your other, more mysterious, heritage, Lloyd. It is time for your true education to begin.”
She declared, her voice ringing with the finality of a royal decree, “Allowing your Austin bloodline to lie dormant, to remain a crude, instinctual weapon, would be a monumental waste. Therefore, effective immediately, I, Milody Austin Ferrum, will personally oversee your training. I will teach you the true nature of the Black Ring Eyes. I will guide you on the path to awakening the third, unique Void Power that is your birthright. The power born from the fusion of our two lineages.”
She held out her hand. “Come, Lloyd. Your lessons in soap and economics are concluded for the day. Your lessons in the true nature of power… are about to begin.”
Lloyd stared at her outstretched hand, then at her fierce, determined face. This was it. The next step. A path to power he hadn't even known how to walk, now being laid out before him by the most unexpected of teachers. His mother. The quiet, elegant Duchess was about to become his drill sergeant in the arcane, terrifying arts of his own blood.
The decision, once made by his mother, was not up for debate. It was an imperial decree wrapped in maternal concern. Lloyd found himself agreeing, a mixture of apprehension and burgeoning excitement swirling in his gut. The Black Ring Eyes were a potent, if terrifying, new weapon. To learn to control them, to understand their true potential under the guidance of someone who actually knew their secrets… it was an opportunity he couldn't refuse.
“Very well, Mother,” he had said, rising to his feet, a new kind of student before a new kind of master.
She led him not to the dusty archives or a quiet study, but to the main family’s private, indoor training hall. It was a space Lloyd had rarely used, even in his first life. It was smaller than the Grand Hall’s sparring circle, its stone walls unadorned, its floor marked with the faint, overlapping lines of a thousand different training patterns. It was a place of serious, focused work, reserved for the Arch Duke, the Duchess, and, occasionally, a particularly promising heir. The fact that he was being brought here now, for this purpose, was a statement in itself.
As they stepped through the heavy oak doors, the smell of polished wood and old, honorable sweat greeting them, Lloyd’s eyes immediately fell upon a figure already occupying the center of the hall. And he froze.
His wife, a vision of deadly grace in stark, practical black training leathers that clung to her form like a second skin, was a whirlwind of silent, precise motion. Her silver-threaded veil was gone, her face bare, beautiful, and etched with a look of absolute, cold concentration. A slender, wickedly sharp practice rapier, its steel gleaming in the light from the high windows, was a blur in her hand, tracing intricate, lethal patterns in the air. She moved with a fencer’s perfect balance, her footwork swift, silent, economical. She was not just practicing; she was a predator, honing her killing craft.
Her presence here was an unexpected, and distinctly uncomfortable, complication. This was supposed to be a private family lesson, a secret initiation into the mysteries of his maternal bloodline. Now, they had an audience. A silent, analytical, and probably deeply judgmental, audience of one.
Rosa, sensing their entrance, faltered in her routine for only a fraction of a second. Her obsidian eyes flickered towards them, registered their presence, then dismissed it, her focus returning instantly to her practice. There was no surprise in her gaze, no curiosity. Just a silent, almost contemptuous, acknowledgment that her private training space had been invaded. She continued her deadly dance, the whisper of her blade the only sound in the room, making it abundantly, uncomfortably, clear that she had no intention of leaving.
Lloyd glanced at his mother, expecting her to perhaps dismiss Rosa, to request privacy for this… sensitive… family matter. But Milody’s gaze was fixed on Lloyd, her expression serious, focused, utterly unconcerned by Rosa’s presence.
“Pay her no mind, Lloyd,” Milody said, her voice calm, commanding. “Your wife is dedicated to her own training, as is her right. Her presence is irrelevant. Your focus must be here. On me.”
She walked to the center of the hall, her elegant gown a stark contrast to the functional space around her. She turned to face him, her usual maternal warmth completely absent, replaced by the cool, appraising gaze of a master assessing a new, untested apprentice.
“The power of the Austin lineage, the Black Ring Eyes, is not like the Ferrum Steel,” she began, her voice crisp, didactic. “The Steel Blood is a force of will imposed upon the external world. It shapes, it burns, it projects. It is… loud.” She paused. “The Austin power is a force of will imposed upon reality itself. It does not project; it defines. It does not shout; it whispers. And its whispers can shatter worlds. To wield it, you must first understand it. See it. Feel its true nature.”
She met his gaze, and her own began to transform. “Observe closely, Lloyd.”
It happened with a smooth, silent, almost liquid, speed. The sclera of her left eye, the one facing him, dissolved from white to a pool of pure, unnerving, pitch black. And in its center, where her iris and pupil should have been, a single, luminous ring of pale, bluish-white light blazed into existence, pulsing with a cold, controlled, ancient power.