Zara turned toward the door and spoke without looking back.
"Well, my little prodigy, now follow me to the training grounds,"
"I am going to teach you one more thing,"
"Another application of the Shadow Element,"
"Once you learn this, you will have the starting basics,"
"I mean the real fundamentals,"
"Shadow vision was the first,"
"This will be the second,"
"I learned these two applications before I ever moved on to formal skills or anything more complicated,"
"Everything else I can do with the element built on top of them,"
"So pay attention to it."
"Alright Zara, let’s go."
Alex fell into step beside her without argument.
The residual satisfaction of the successful activation still sat in the back of his mind, mixed with the low awareness of the mana cost he had started training down through repeated cycling.
The bond carried both without interference.
They left the sealed room and entered the long hallway.
Morning light from the high windows cut clean lines across the polished floor.
Maids and servants moving in both directions saw them coming and immediately stepped aside, heads bowed in the practiced deference of palace staff who had long since learned not to linger when the third prince and his Shadow Guard walked together.
Alex nodded to each of them in turn.
The gesture had become automatic years ago.
No one expected conversation, and so, one offered any.
The quiet rhythm of the palace simply parted around them and closed again behind their steps.
The walk continued in comfortable silence until curiosity won.
"Hey Zara," Alex said.
"What exactly are you going to teach me now?"
"You already showed me how to settle the element behind the eyes and see in complete darkness,"
"That alone is already useful,"
"So what comes after that?"
Zara glanced down at the floor between them, specifically at the dark shape stretching from his feet across the sunlit boards.
"Hmm, I am going to teach you how to use the Shadow Element and apply it to your own shadow," she said.
Her gaze stayed on the outline of his shadow for a moment longer than necessary, as if she were already measuring what it could become.
"The element does not only live inside the body,"
"It can extend into the shadow that already belongs to you,"
"The shadow you cast,"
"Once you learn that connection properly, a lot of other applications become possible, like control, reach, presence,"
"Things that stay difficult if you only ever keep the element locked inside your own pathways."
Alex felt a spark of genuine excitement cut through the residual fatigue of the earlier cycling.
’My own shadow? My Own?! Damn, that sounds so obvious yet so wrong at the same time...’
Applying the element to his own shadow sounded far more interesting than simply seeing in the dark.
The idea of the shadow at his feet answering the same way the filament behind his eyes had answered made something sharp and forward-leaning settle in his chest.
’I wonder what it would feel like...’
He looked down to examine the shape at his feet more carefully.
His gaze caught Zara’s shadow instead.
For a single clear heartbeat her shadow had its tongue stuck out toward his.
The dark outline on the floor was making a face.
A deliberate, childish, unmistakable face, the kind of expression no ordinary shadow should have been able to form.
The tongue was extended, or whatever looked like the tongue of a shadow.
The head shape was tilted just enough to sell the mockery.
’What. The. Actual. Fuck?!’
He blinked hard.
The tongue was gone.
’Huh...?’
The shadow lay perfectly ordinary against the floorboards again, matching her posture and the angle of the light with clinical accuracy.
No distortion or leftover shape.
Nothing that should not have been there.
’This...’
Alex looked up.
Zara’s expression was completely neutral.
Not a twitch at the corner of her mouth.
Not a hint of amusement in her eyes.
The same calm, composed face she wore when she was about to correct his stance in the training hall or deliver a lecture on proper attribute allocation.
Through the bond, however, he felt something else entirely.
A deliberate dampening.
She was trying to block the transmission of whatever she was actually feeling in that moment.
The block was crude and incomplete.
Thin enough that he could have forced through it with almost no effort if he wanted to, it was like the same way a hand could push through thin cloth.
The fact that she could attempt a block at all after only a few hours of clear speech through the link was still mildly impressive.
And mildly suspicious.
’I just need to get a few more levels...’
’...then when the time is right...’
’Soon.’
He narrowed his eyes at her.
She continued walking as if nothing had happened, the oversized fur coat shifting slightly with each step, the dark scarf still high around her neck.
They reached the open training grounds.
Sunlight lay across the packed earth and the weapon racks in clean bright patches.
A few of the regular guards were already running drills at the far end of the main circle.
Zara did not stop there.
She kept moving past the marked boundaries and into the treeline beyond, where the palace woods thickened and the light dropped into a cooler, denser shade.
She led him deeper still, until the canopy overhead turned the space into something closer to true dimness and the sounds of the training grounds faded behind them.
She finally halted in a small clearing where the shadows under the trees sat heavy and uninterrupted.
The air was cooler here.
The ground was soft with old leaves.
There was room to move without immediately putting a hole in a wall or a rack of practice weapons.
"This place will give you enough room and a better environment for what comes next," she said.
"If we tried this back in the room, you would probably destroy it Again."
Alex’s mouth twitched.
The word "Again" landed with deliberate, precise aim.
He knew exactly which incident she was referencing.
The early mana formation accident that had left his first room missing most of a wall and a significant portion of its ceiling.
The incident had become a quiet running joke between them, and she had never once let him forget it.
She was rubbing it in on purpose, and the bond made the quiet amusement she was still trying to dampen even more obvious than the word itself.
’Ignore it, you can ignore it...’
He ignored the bait...mostly.
Zara turned to face him fully.
The fur coat shifted with the motion.
The scarf remained in place.
"Now," she said, "focus on what I am going to do next."
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End of Chapter 113: Shadow Play
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