The Temple…
A school that had for generations, produced the talents that carried the Empire on their shoulders through the ages.
And the current generation was no exception.
Inside one of the training halls ..nothing more than a square arena of solid ground ... a different kind of chaos unfolded.
Within such a confined space, twenty young men and women moved at breakneck speed, constantly bombarded by dozens of attacks launched from beyond the arena's boundaries.
The sounds of explosions and destruction hadn't stopped for over an hour now.
Three instructors, led by Bonatiro, had surrounded the elite class students and relentlessly attacked them from afar.
Their only task was Survive until the end .. without stepping outside the arena.
Everyone was drenched in sweat, either fending off or dodging the terrifying waves of a master-class Wave Controller like Bonatiro.
Among the students, naturally, the crowned champion, Snow Lionheart, stood at the front, with Daemon Valerion pushing alongside him, as expected.
The others were making their mark in their own ways.
Everyone ... except one.
A student like them sat off to the side, watching from afar, with nothing better to do during the hours of free time granted to him.
Frey Starlight leaned against the wall, watching them with a scowl.
Of course, they'd noticed him.
Danzo and Ragna immediately began shouting the moment they saw him lounging around doing nothing ... but the rainstorm of magical bombardments from the instructors didn't give them the luxury to speak for long.
Frey smirked behind a clenched laugh, mocking their misery.
"You're moving that ass pretty well, Danzo."
With a satisfied grin, Frey raised a thumb toward his struggling friend.
"Full marks."
Danzo probably couldn't respond, but the throbbing veins crawling across his forehead like worms from sheer rage said more than any words ever could.
The arena began to shrink ..slowly but surely .. forcing many out of bounds.
It was absurd watching so many students run around in such a confined space, to the point some crashed into one another.
The training continued for a full three hours.
By the time it ended, only ten students remained within what was now barely a few meters of ground.
They were all drenched in sweat, each to varying degrees.
Among them, one might have thought Ghost, who'd elegantly slipped through every attack, was in the best shape ... but that wasn't true.
Both Frey and Bonatiro realized it at the same time.
Among the twenty students, one person hadn't moved since the beginning. She blocked everything ... without lifting a finger.
It wasn't the Hero Snow, nor any of the other so-called monsters.
It was the princess.
She had deflected and even retaliated against every single attack effortlessly.
Her shadows crawled across the ground like a living creature ... rising instinctively to shield her while countering with jet-black spikes at blistering speed.
Reading her body language revealed the truth: she wasn't even trying.
And yet, even in that idle state, she made the hair beneath Bonatiro's robe stand on end ... a man ranked S.
The first description that came to the mad professor's mind was likely the same any sane person would think:
"What a demonic power…"
Sansa was changing ... slowly, but steadily.
Bonatiro grumbled as he declared the session over.
The class ended, and on the other side of the room, Frey couldn't hide his interest in the princess, who had clearly undergone… no, revealed… a great deal since he last saw her.
He tried to approach her ... but some familiar faces stood in his way.
Danzo alone was enough to completely block his path with that massive frame.
He grabbed Frey by the shoulder, still dripping sweat, his expression wild.
"Tell me, Frey ...how did you do it?"
"Do what?"
"Did you bribe him?! Give him something rare, maybe? Tell me ... how did you get that Motherfucker to exempt you from training?!"
Danzo shook Frey violently, gripping his scrawny frame.
Meanwhile, Sansa had already left the room.
Frey sighed and gently pushed Danzo away to reclaim some breathing space.
"Stop yelling in my face. I didn't do anything to him."
"That's impossible…"
"Consider it a privilege of being the Victoriad champion."
Frey hadn't been serious with his words ... but it seemed Danzo partially believed him, muttering under his breath:
"So the winner really gets privileges like that...?"
They were just empty words, yet they were enough to spark something inside Danzo ... a flare of regret. Regret for not training harder, for not performing better in the Victoriad .
That moment of silence from Danzo allowed Frey to turn his attention elsewhere.
His eyes met those of the silent assassin ... Ghost.
The latter simply nodded without a word.
Next to him stood Dawn and Snow.
At that moment, Frey and Snow locked eyes ... an unspoken reunion since the final battle where they'd staked everything.
Frey often wondered: had that battle really happened? Or was it just a fever dream?
If he were shown the fight from afar and told:
"That's you."
He would've shaken his head, denying everything.
If someone asked him to do it again, he likely wouldn't even know how he pulled it off the first time…
Had he truly defeated the Hero?
But he had no choice but to accept the truth. The memory of that day ...the ecstasy of battle ...was still carved into his body.
And he wasn't the only one who felt that way.
Deep inside, Frey held nothing but respect for the man standing before him.
"I thought you weren't coming back."
It was Snow who broke the silence first.
"It's been a while, hasn't it? But here I am, standing before you again."
"A few months for me... but I imagine it felt like a few years for you."
Snow smiled as he said it, extending his hand.
"It really did."
Frey clasped Snow's hand, and immediately he felt the iron-hard grip ...the coarse skin marked by calluses earned through endless swings of the sword.
By contrast, Frey's hand, thanks to his unique body, was much smoother and cleaner.
They each put a bit of force into the handshake ...an unspoken acknowledgement before releasing at the same time.
"I heard you stood up for me. I owe you one."
Frey spoke first, grateful. If not for Snow's intervention, the Church would've pressed much harder, likely demanding his execution.
"No need to thank me. I did it because I felt it was the right thing to do. That's all."
Snow was someone who acted without expecting anything in return. A trait befitting a true hero.
But was it really the proper action for a hero to take? For a champion of the Lord of Light who was meant to deliver justice wherever he went?
No matter how you looked at it ... Frey had been guilty. Yet Snow defended him anyway, without a solid reason.
Simply because he wanted to. He wanted to face Frey again. He wanted to keep someone like Frey close.
It was a selfish desire. One that clashed with his role as a hero.
Excited, Snow tried to talk about their last battle, to revisit every moment, every detail…
But he couldn't unleash those emotions freely. An awkward tension born of time and distance hung between him and Frey.
"Hey, enough with the formal tone! What's wrong with you two?"
Danzo cut in.
"One of you sounds like a depressed girl who just hit puberty, and the other like a damn priest. Keep this up and I'll kick both of you!"
"A depressed girl who just hit puberty..."
Frey chuckled at the absurd metaphor.
Is that how they saw him?
"And don't you sound like a kid who just hit puberty yourself?"
That unexpected jab came from Ghost—calm, expressionless, and precisely what irritated Danzo the most. He exploded as usual while Snow and Dawn instinctively stepped aside.
Frey found himself standing in the middle of a group that reminded him of his high school days.
It was an experience no one was meant to live through twice… yet here he was.
He smiled faintly. In moments like this, Frey felt grateful for their straightforward, uncomplicated personalities ... people who didn't judge him like the others did.
He found himself fitting in with them easily. If he had gone back in time to the days before the Victoriad, he probably would've rejected such relationships outright.
But now... maybe he could let it be.
Maybe the answer he'd been searching for was right here.
The answer to what his father truly wanted for him ... when he asked him to live.
Frey spent the entire day surrounded by his peers, letting himself drift into the student life he had long denied himself.
From time to time, he clashed with people like Daemon, though a number of others kept a clear distance from him.
Among the most notable were Prince Aegon, who remained locked in his own world as usual, and the princess, who appeared lost in thought. Others like Seris Moonlight and Clana Starlight had their own reasons for keeping away.
Amid all that, Frey's first official day back at the temple came to an end as he completed everything on his schedule.
But just as he was about to leave, Phoenix appeared out of nowhere and stopped him at the edge of the training fields.
"Where do you think you're going?"
"To my room... I guess?"
"Not anymore."
Phoenix grabbed Frey by the shoulder and led the way.
"Your real training begins now."