Chapter 1.5: The Body Remembers
In the afternoon, I went to the courtyard behind my estate.It was a place filled with memories—some painful, others humbling.
This was where I had once collapsed, over and over again.Where I gritted my teeth and clenched my fists like a stubborn child trying to stand on wobbly legs.
Like a baby learning to walk.
Hah... How pathetic I must have looked back then.
It was right after I had returned from two long years of traveling—a broken man, ashamed and cast aside. No magic. No pride. Just a name and a past. But in that ruin of myself, I found something else: a path.
A way to regain my power—or at least, a part of it.
This courtyard became my crucible.
*****
The courtyard behind the Kafher estate hadn't been touched in years. Overgrown vines clung to old pillars, and weeds snaked across the stone tiles like a forgotten battlefield.
This was perfect.
If my mind couldn't wield mana anymore, then maybe my body could.
The first day, I stood barefoot on the cracked stone, the morning dew chilling my skin. I shut my eyes. I inhaled deeply. My body had once held power. Now, it felt like hollowed meat.
Sasha leaned against the wall, arms crossed. "Are you seriously doing this?"
I didn't answer.
She sighed. "There's no shame in letting it go."
"There's shame in accepting death while standing."
---
DAY ONE
The cold was unbearable. I sat half-submerged in a water barrel just before dawn, breath hitching in my throat. My entire frame trembled.
"Still yourself," I whispered to no one.
The goal was simple: endure. Let the cold force my mana out. The shock would awaken what had gone dormant.
At first, I felt nothing.
Then—pain. Deep in my chest. A dull throb where my core had once pulsed.
It was working.
---
WEEK SIX
I began the breathing forms taught by the eastern warrior monks centuries ago—Sanjah's Flow. Every morning, I moved through thirty-six stances, holding each for thirty seconds, then a minute, then five.
Muscles screamed. Bones popped.
At night, I trained with an old, dulled blade. Ten thousand strikes per day. Each slash purposeful, deliberate. The weight burned my arms. My vision blurred. But the rhythm brought clarity.
My body began to feel… different. A faint buzz in my limbs, like static before a storm.
Not magic yet. But something.
---
ONE YEAR
I collapsed after a kata.
Face-first into the gravel, hands bleeding from sword blisters.
Sebastian brought bandages without a word. Sasha, against all odds, watched silently. Sometimes she left food. Sometimes just tea.
I appreciated the silence.
That night, I stood beneath the stars with my sword. One last cut. One last breath.
As the blade swung, I felt it—a flicker. A resonance.
The sword hummed faintly. A shallow glow along the edge, then gone.
But it had happened.
---
YEAR TWO
I struck the training post, the same motion I'd done thousands of times.
This time, a shockwave cracked the pillar.
I froze. Dust swirled around me. The hairs on my arm stood up. The old pain surged in my chest—but I stood through it.
Mana. Not imagined. Not borrowed. Mine.
The flow was wrong. Not smooth. Not controlled. But it flowed.
My body was no longer just recovering—it was becoming something new.
---
YEAR THREE
I trained through storms.
Rain lashed against my skin. I held poses in the downpour, standing on one leg above the training spring, wind howling.
Balance. Flow. Breathing. Rhythm.
Each part of my body remembered a fragment of magic. Each movement called it forth.
I could feel the scattered pieces syncing, converging—not at the heart, not at the liver, but everywhere at once.
No more central core.
I was building something else.
A body of mana.
---
YEAR FOUR
I sparred with Kevin for the first time in years.
He wielded wind magic, precise and relentless.
"Are you sure?" he asked.
"Try me."
He struck fast. A burst of wind from his palm aimed straight at my chest.
I didn't cast a spell—I moved.
Mana surged into my legs. My muscles tensed. I stepped past the strike in a flash, blade drawn, stopping at his neck.
Kevin's eyes widened. "What was that?"
I exhaled. "Pulse Step."
I had done it. My mana wasn't gone.
It had evolved.
---
THE RETURN
At dawn, I stood shirtless before the family's training mirror.
Scars lined my body like war paint. The sword rested at my hip. I closed my eyes, focused—and drew.
A flash. Mana burst through my muscles, igniting my blade.
No incantation. No circle. Just movement.
The gravel beneath me cracked.
From behind, I heard Sebastian whisper to Sasha, "He's awakened the Resonant Core…"
She smiled faintly. "He always was stubborn."
*****
"Young master! You're here—I was looking for you," a familiar voice called out from behind while I was reminiscing my struggling past.
I turned.
It was Kevin.
When I first met him, he was little more than a malnourished soldier, pale and trembling, barely able to lift a sword. Weak to the bone, with nothing but dull eyes and quiet resolve.
But not anymore.
Now, standing in his early twenties, he had grown into his frame—broad-shouldered, steady, and precise. Muscles where there had once been ribs. Confidence where there had once been silence. A refined man forged by hardship, and the best training companion I could ask for.
"Oy, Kevin! Wanna spar one more time?" I called out, smirking.
He hesitated, glancing sideways. "No, my lord. I'm fine."
"Why? You scared?" I let the taunt slip with a grin. I knew this brawn-headed idiot couldn't resist.
He frowned. "I... Fine. One time only."
"Good. Get the swords."
Kevin tossed one to me and drew his own, spinning it once in his hand.
We stood facing each other in the courtyard, the afternoon sun slicing across the moss-covered stones.
"Ready?" I asked, my smirk still lingering.
"Yes, my lord."
"Okay then—Start."
Huyp—!
We both dashed forward.
And in that single motion, time seemed to slow.
Kevin's figure blurred as he came at me with perfect footwork, but I saw everything. Every breath, every shift in weight, every flicker of movement.
My body moved without thought, my mana pulsing through muscle, not core.
Not cast—but called.
Not spelled—but forged.
> I wasn't the mage I once was.
But I was no longer broken.
> They took my magic.
I forged it into muscle.
> They shattered my core.
I carved a new one from pain.
> Arcadia Academy would see the man they tried to bury.
And they would learn:
> You cannot kill the will to rise.