It hurt. Not with the same unrelenting intensity as the last time he had used it, but enough to make his jaw tighten and his fingers curl into his palms until the knuckles blanched. Every muscle in his body urged him to move, to shake the pain away, yet he forced himself to remain still.

Jacob had never liked pain, but dislike was not the same as inability, and if enduring it brought him closer to what he wanted, then he could bear it.

For now, this pain was useful. It was a price worth paying, because every wave of discomfort was an investment, an ugly, grinding step toward the moment when he could return the beating Dawson had given him today, strike for strike, until the boy understood what it felt like to be broken down.

It wasn't about some noble concern for family pride or the Skydrid name; those things mattered far less to him than people imagined. No, it was simpler than that, Dawson had made him hurt, in ways both physical and personal, and that was something Jacob could neither forgive nor forget.

In its own way, this was a fortunate turn. Before today, his main goal had been to surpass Arthur, a goal he had been committed to, but not desperate for. He would have worked toward it, certainly, but there would have been limits to how far he was willing to push himself. After all, there had been other avenues, other solutions. There was no need to crawl, bleeding and grasping, toward a single outcome.

But now? Now there was no second option. The possibility of humiliating Dawson had lit something sharper and colder in him. He still wanted to learn how to wield a true rune, still intended to push his understanding of it, but there was a new hunger layered over the old, one that demanded Dawson's defeat.

The pain intensified, pulling him out of his thoughts. It felt as though his flesh was subtly shifting, his bones pressed inward as if space within his own body was being rearranged. Even in its reduced form, Knights' Glory still had enough bite to make him groan.

Then, without warning, there was a faint stirring in his right hand, a tingle, followed by the unmistakable sensation of something alive moving beneath the skin. He didn't need to guess. Yggdrasil's seed was feeding, using the Knights' Glory as fuel to grow.

Worry flickered in him. It was, after all, nothing more than a foreign growth planted inside him, a piece of something ancient and vast, entirely beyond his control. He had no way of knowing what Yggdrasil intended for it, or for him. And yet… wasn't this exactly what he needed?

Yggdrasil had claimed that, as the seed matured, it would purify his bloodline. Until now, Jacob had assumed that growth would only happen through mana absorption, but if it could also thrive on this, then he had two paths to strength instead of one.

And purifying his bloodline could only make him stronger. He didn't doubt that for a moment. Humans were pitiful when compared to most other races, strange creatures with no defining gifts, like an empty canvas placed beside a gallery of finished masterpieces. Other races were born into power; humans were born plain, with no particular advantage and no inherent excellence.

It wasn't even a case of hidden potential or miraculous adaptability, as romanticized in stories. That was a lie people told themselves to feel important. The truth was simpler and less flattering: humanity was weak, and would always remain so.

That was why, as Jacob felt that strange, almost nauseating sensation of something shifting and writhing faintly beneath the skin of his hand, mingled with the lingering ache that radiated through every muscle and bone in his body, he chose not to resist it.

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He accepted it, welcomed it even, because if enduring this discomfort meant gaining the strength he lacked, then so be it. Strength would ensure that Dawson could never again lay a hand on him, never again press him into the dirt with casual cruelty, never again meet his eyes with that smug look of superiority.

This had all happened because he was weak; while others trained their bodies and learned to wield steel, he had buried himself in books and in the slow, suffocating weight of his own guilt.

He didn't regret having chosen knowledge, he was still dealing with matters that no one his age should ever have had to face, and those burdens had shaped the path he took, but even so, there was no comfort in the truth that weakness came with a price far heavier than he had imagined.

The pain began to subside by degrees, ebbing away like a tide retreating from the shore, leaving him exhausted but not broken. Sweat clung to his skin and dampened his clothes, making him feel as though he had just finished an hours-long training bout, though all he had done was lie still and endure.

Without delay, he reached for the healing potion Arthur had given him and drank it in steady swallows, feeling the warmth spread through his body as the bruises faded, the cuts sealed, and the lingering sting in his joints dulled into nothing.

"Belemir," he said after a brief pause for thought, "where's the blacksmith Isaac mentioned?" A weapon, he needed a weapon that was truly his own, one that he could wield without straining against its weight or risking his body each time he swung it. Something balanced, suited to him. Isaac, of course, had likely already considered all of this.

"In the Barchend District, sir," Belemir replied.

Jacob exhaled slowly and rose from the bed, stretching his arms experimentally, as though hoping to find some miraculous difference in his strength. Naturally, there was nothing obvious, whatever changes had taken root would remain hidden until he had endured this process many more times. Strength, as always, would come slowly, piece by piece.

He crossed the room to his desk and pulled a book from the stack. For once it was not on rune theory; instead, the title on its worn spine marked it as a work of history, chronicling the exploits of Akashic and the five founders of the great noble houses in the days before they established Eterna.

What had brought him to read this particular book hardly needed to be spoken aloud; it was obvious enough to anyone who knew him what thoughts had taken root and refused to leave, no matter how often he tried to bury them beneath other matters.

The volume itself was brief, its pages containing only fragments of knowledge about Akashic and the others who had stood beside him. Their origins were lost to history, though speculation was plentiful, with some believing they had been refugees fleeing from a distant kingdom consumed by war.

What was recorded, at least, was that they had slain a god, and before that, faced and defeated a number of beings of considerable power, their names echoing across the world, from the lands where Eterna now stood to the frozen reaches of the north and the arid stretches of desert.

Yet for all the weight such deeds carried, the actual detail in the book was disappointingly thin, so lacking in substance that Jacob, with a sound of irritation, tossed it toward the wall and leaned back heavily in his chair.

"Belemir," he said after a moment, his voice more thoughtful than angry, "do you think I could get access to any records on the founder?" The book he had just discarded might have been lacking, but the family archives were another matter entirely; those would hold the kind of information worth reading.

"Those records," Belemir replied evenly, "can only be accessed and read by the family head."

Which, of course, meant he would not be seeing them. Jacob exhaled quietly, the fight leaving him as he rose and crossed to the bed, letting himself fall onto it without ceremony.

This time, he welcomed the prospect of sleep, not the fractured, restless kind that so often claimed him, but something closer to the real thing, free of the shadows that usually followed him into his dreams.

And he slept deeply, so deeply that waking felt like an inconvenience, his mind untouched by Yggdrasil's presence, his dreams straightforward and within his control, a small pleasure he was beginning to appreciate.

Eventually, though, he forced himself to rise, moving to the bathroom to wash, change into fresh clothes, and prepare himself for the day. When he was ready, he glanced toward his shadow and spoke in a low, matter-of-fact tone.

"No use wasting time, let's go get a sword."

Without waiting for a reply, Jacob stepped forward and vanished into the darkness at his feet.

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