Arn was busy overseeing the other knights across the yard, as I worked at my own pace, getting more comfortable with the blade in my right hand as I used my left hand to hold on to the thread.
After having gotten better with Spun, I had now almost started using it as a second weapon when I fought, like a second blade in my off hand, turning it into a part of my own fighting style rather than just sticking to what Yun had left me.
I had noticed something. The way Yun used to fight was not quite the same as what actually felt natural to me now. This body had given me strong fundamentals to build from, but I still had to make them mine.
A body that already knew how to fight meant nothing if the mind behind it did not actually understand what it was doing.
That was why I had thrown myself into sharpening my skill with my blade so deliberately, making all that he had left me now actually mine. The pace I was improving at honestly startled me sometimes.
Mid-swing, sweat soaking through the back of my shirt, I caught a flash of movement from the corner of my eye. A figure descending the stairs slowly, stepping into the training grounds.
Why is she here?
A second later, her eyes found mine, and she started making her way over.
I noticed it the second she stepped onto the yard. A visible ripple passing through everyone present, something none of them had clearly expected to deal with this morning.
Only Arn seemed entirely unbothered, already crossing the yard to greet her properly, and I fell into step toward her as well.
"My lady, I did not expect to see you here," Arn said, the same raspiness as always, though this time carrying a faint note of surprise underneath it as he gave a short, formal bow.
This bastard’s never bowed for me once.
Stopping beside them, I caught Aela’s eyes drifting toward me, lingering longer than necessary.
"Do not mind me," she said, her voice carrying its usual light, effortless warmth. "Just came to steal my brother for a bit."
At that, Arn immediately waved the rest of the retainers back to their drills, most of whom had clearly frozen mid-motion the second she walked in, a little too visibly caught by the beauty and poise she carried.
With a short bow, Arn stepped back and left the two of us to it, as I followed her out of the yard.
"You know I leave tomorrow, right?" she asked once we were clear of the others, a small frown already pulling at her mouth.
I gave a slow, slightly confused nod, and her expression scrunched further, somewhere between annoyed and hurt.
"And you are still out here training instead of spending time with me?" she said, crossing her arms. "I have exactly one day left, brother."
Hearing that, something warm settled quietly in my chest.
I had half expected her love for me to fade naturally over time once I got here, the same way grief eventually dulls, as she slowly came to terms with the fact that the brother she had known was not quite the same person anymore.
I had assumed distance would grow between us on its own, gently, without either of us needing to force it.
Instead, over the past week, I had watched her do the exact opposite. Pull closer, not further away.
And honestly, this warmth was never something I resented. I had spent my entire last life wanting exactly this and never once getting it. But spending time with her cut both ways.
However much I genuinely enjoyed it, I felt an equal, constant weight of guilt and disgust underneath it, for lying to her, for deceiving her every single day just by simply existing. It was part of why I had been quietly trying to put some distance between us myself.
That, and maybe my Burden.
Yet she had noticed the distancing, apparently. And instead of letting it work, she had been pushing back against it even harder.
For a moment she just looked at me, quiet, before something shifted faintly at the corner of her eyes.
"Do you really think I have not noticed you pulling away from me?"
I froze, genuinely unsure what to say or do with that.
But before I could talk myself out of it, I stepped forward and pulled her into a hug, not knowing where that had come from.
She stiffened for a second, clearly caught off guard, before her arms came up slowly around me, her face tucking against my shoulder, the tension in her gradually easing the longer I held on.
"I am sorry, sister," I murmured against her hair.
"Do you want to visit the city today? Before you leave."
She pulled back just enough to look at me properly, something in her expression I could not quite name, somewhere between surprise and relief.
Then a real smile broke across her face, and she grabbed my hand, already pulling me toward the manor entrance.
"I never thought you would be the one to suggest going into the city," she said under her breath as we walked the halls together, the same warmth already having returned to her voice, yet carrying a certain surprise underneath. Read the latest chapters at novelping.com.
She was not wrong to sound surprised. Yun had never liked leaving the fortress.
Doing so meant cutting through the main line’s quarters first, then the sub-lines, then the collateral districts, and even once he made it past all of that into the outer city itself, there were always too many eyes on him, all carrying that same dismissive, faintly contemptuous weight.
He had hated every part of it. The forced pageantry, the performance this family seemed to demand from everyone wearing its name. He had always preferred staying indoors, training instead, away from all of it.
Not that it had ever worked in his favour. Every extra hour he spent training harder than anyone his age had somehow twisted, over time, into rumours painting him as a spoiled, lazy brat coasting entirely on his father’s authority.
Yun had always known exactly where that particular rot actually started, though. It had not sprung up on its own. Just being frail, or black-haired, or quiet, had never been enough on its own to earn an entire house’s contempt.
No. That had a name.
Ilsa Claiom. A two-faced woman if there ever was one.
She had been the one actually shaping it, feeding it, tending it with her own hands until it grew into something the whole house simply accepted as fact. Everything had been fine while Yun’s mother, Rhea, had still been alive.
The truth was, Ilsa had hated Rhea from the very beginning.
Also of the main line and married to Harren’s brother, Ilsa had spent years quietly resenting how completely Rhea overshadowed her, how effortlessly Rhea had claimed the exact standing as lady of the house that Ilsa had clearly wanted for herself.
As long as Rhea was alive, Ilsa kept that resentment carefully hidden.
The day Rhea died, all of that changed. Ilsa stopped hiding anything, and threw every bit of effort she had into making sure the rest of the family saw Yun in the worst possible light imaginable.
Why? Because this body probably reminded her too much of the woman she had resented for so long, more than she was ever willing to admit out loud, and because she wanted her own twins to take that seat instead.
And I already knew, without a shred of doubt, that Harren had understood all of this from the very start. It had never exactly been subtle. And yet not once, in all these years, had he lifted a single finger to make any of it easier on Yun.
It had been a confusing thought. From what I had understood, Harren had loved his children; that was how I had written him, after all, at least when Rhea had been alive.
Only after losing her had he tried to bury himself in work, losing the very thing that had kept him attached to this world in the first place.
I glanced sideways at Aela as she pulled me the rest of the way down the corridor, still smiling faintly to herself over nothing at all.
I did not know how many more days like this one I actually had left with her, knowing what awaited her. But that was a problem for some other version of me to deal with, later.
But for some reason I couldn’t push the thought away that all these words and actions I had just given her were nothing but my Burden doing the talking.