An Unfamiliar Warmth
Yelena had challenged Sian with utter confidence, only to suffer a clean, unequivocal defeat. Her footsteps as she trudged back to the dormitory weighed heavily on the stone floor.
She had truly believed her skills were no longer second to anyone. She had been certain that, at the very least, no one among her peers could ever match her.
Had that all been nothing more than arrogant delusion? Despite the boundless backing of the Frost Grand Duchy, despite striving relentlessly without a single moment's rest... In the end, had she merely been a frog in a well?
"Welcome back, my lady."
Leaving behind the maid who greeted her with an impassive expression as always, Yelena collapsed listlessly onto her bed.
The moment she lay down, a strange, hollow lethargy enveloped her entire body. Rather than fighting it, she simply loosened her uniform jacket and closed her eyes.
"Haaah..."
When she shut her eyes with a troubled heart, the image of Sian leveling her sword immediately surfaced. Even trapped within Winter's Boundary, that girl had held her blade steady, her Stigma gleaming bright.
A bitter, unshakable regret swirled endlessly in Yelena's head. What if she had dodged instead of trying to parry when Sian swung? What if she had gathered her wits just a fraction of a second faster? What if she had leapt backward the moment she unleashed her Stigma?
"..."
Pointless hypotheticals kept bubbling up. No matter how much she tried to think of something else, every thought inevitably circled back to the same lingering regret: What if I had done this in the duel?
And at the very end of those regrets, there was always the student named Sian.
A girl with a delicate, undeniably cute face. An uncommon mane of pitch-black hair and striking amethyst eyes.
Yet, in direct contrast to that harmless appearance, the sword she wielded was forged through countless life-or-death battles. An adorable exterior masking a brutally refined mastery of the blade.
That stark dissonance seemed to have branded Sian indelibly into Yelena's mind.
And then there were the words Sian had uttered during their first encounter. The compliment that she was so beautiful Sian couldn't tear her eyes away—praise Yelena had never heard before in her entire life.
Am I... really that pretty?
Yelena was certainly aware that her appearance leaned toward the attractive side. But having dedicated her life entirely to the way of the sword, she had never understood that someone could be so purely captivated by mere physical beauty. For a long, quiet moment, she stared blankly at her reflection in the mirror.
"...Ah."
Then, half a beat late, mortification struck.
Remembering how she had reacted upon hearing that compliment, an inexplicable heat flushed across her cheeks.
Ugh...
In front of others, Yelena Frost had to be absolute perfection.
The world devoured the weak. Neither law nor wealth nor armies could protect her at every hour. The law of the jungle did not apply solely to beasts and monsters.
So why? Why did the fragile parts of herself she had kept buried for years keep spilling out whenever she was around Sian?
Worse still, even while agonizing over that humiliation, her obsession with the duel refused to fade.
After lying there for thirty minutes with an arm draped over her eyes in a vain attempt to shake the thoughts away, Yelena finally ruffled her silver hair in frustration and sat upright.
It was a truly bizarre sensation. By all rights, this was a situation where she ought to feel disgraced and furious. Yet whenever her mind drifted to that student named Sian, an incomprehensible emotion stirred in her chest.
Somehow, she felt as though a girl who looked at her with such pure, untainted goodwill would never push away someone like her—
Slap!
Gritting her teeth, Yelena struck her own cheek.
"Pull yourself together, Yelena Frost."
Her cheek stung, throbbing with sharp heat. Along with the pain, the soft, fluttering sensation welling inside her heart vanished without a trace.
Staring into the mirror with her trademark icy detachment, Yelena muttered under her breath,
"You just lost a duel. What right do you have to fool around like this? If only for the sake of your late parents, you know you cannot afford to be soft."
Closing her eyes brought back the memories of her childhood.
Her mother had sacrificed her life to shield her weak, helpless daughter. Her father, alongside her mother, had thrown his life away to lure the monsters away from Yelena's hiding spot.
The family knights guarding their carriage had gladly laid down their lives just to buy her a few precious seconds to hide.
Left behind as the sole survivor, she had sworn an oath before their corpses. Exactly as her parents had wished, she would become an unyielding protector of the North whom no one could ever break.
If the world ran on the merciless logic of the strong preying on the weak, she would become stronger and more ruthless than anyone else.
She would hunt down the monster that devoured her parents and tear it to pieces. She would prove that the sacrifice they made to keep her alive had not been in vain.
"After swearing such an oath... you cannot afford to break."
A faint edge of madness trembled beneath her cold voice. Clenching her teeth, the girl slowly pulled open her desk drawer.
A soft, metallic friction of interlocking gears echoed through the quiet room. Yelena's calloused fingertips traced along the upper rim of the hidden compartment, pulling out an ornate key.
"My lady. It is time for your medicine."
"...I know. Say nothing more."
Unlike the standard dormitory furniture, this desk was something she had personally brought to the Academy by flexing her authority as the eldest daughter of the Frost Grand Duchy. Turning the key in the concealed lock nestled in the corner, Yelena carefully retrieved a small glass vial.
Inside the phial, barely the size of a fingernail, a mysterious pink liquid sloshed with an ethereal shimmer. A miraculous panacea said to bring even those hovering on the threshold of death back to life—an Elixir.
Downing the Elixir in a single gulp, she furrowed her brow at the searing, violent heat coursing through her chest.
"About three years left... is that all?"
Tossing the empty vial listlessly into the wastebasket, the girl spoke of the time she had left without the slightest hint of emotion.
Her parents, Alicia Frost and Evan Frost, had by no means been weak. They had been the rulers of the Frost Grand Duchy, a household built entirely on absolute meritocracy.
In a monster raid that even those two formidable masters could not survive, there was no way a nine-year-old child could have escaped unharmed.
Though she had miraculously survived the slaughter, she had suffered devastating internal trauma. Wounds so fatal that even the miracle known as an Elixir could do nothing more than prolong her borrowed time.
"...I don't have enough time."
Yelena muttered softly as she slid the drawer shut.
With the boundless influence and wealth of the Frost Grand Duchy, they might have found a way to cure this ailment. But Yelena could never let them know she was terminally ill.
The Frost family was the sword that guarded the North. They had no reason to invest their resources into an heir marked for death who would collapse soon after graduation.
That was why Yelena had never told a soul about her condition—except for Beatrice, the personal maid who had stood by her side for ten years.
Which meant she had almost no time left.
"So please... wake up, Yelena Frost. You've held on just fine for the past ten years."
For a nine-year-old child who still desperately needed warmth and affection, cutting away every tether of human emotion just to swing a sword had been pure torment.
And so, young Yelena had swung her blade with obsessive frenzy. Whenever her limbs trembled and she wished to rest, she forced herself to remember the wretched deaths of her parents right before her eyes.
If I drop my sword, I will end up like them. Trampled and torn apart by the strong, dying a pathetic, horrific death. If you stop now, that is the fate waiting for you.
If you don't want to die like that, swing your sword.
Yelena had repeated those words to herself like a hypnotic curse until she had stripped away every single desire, every vulnerability that was unnecessary for growing stronger.
"...That is why I cannot stop."
If only for the parents who gave their all so she could live this twenty-year-long borrowed life, Yelena had to claim her vengeance.
She had to prove that their agonizing deaths had never been in vain.
"In the end, the only thing that can protect me is my own sword."
Chanting the mantra she had drilled into her soul countless times over the past eight years, Yelena slowly pushed herself up from the bed.
"Beatrice."
"Yes, my lady."
"Turn away anyone who comes looking for me. If it's an emergency, tell them to meet me at the training grounds."
"Understood."
Yelena washed up quickly and changed into crisp training attire.
Just as she had done for the past eight years, she buried the soft, fluttering warmth that flared up whenever she thought of Sian deep within the darkest recess of her heart.
Oblivious to the fact that her suppressed emotions were already creaking under the weight of their limits, Yelena stepped out of the dormitory with an expressionless face, swearing to herself that she would never waver again.
...Or so she had firmly resolved.
"Ngh..."
Staring at Sian's outstretched hand, Yelena felt heat surging into her face all over again.
It was that feeling once more. An unblemished, pure warmth transmitting straight through the air—a bizarre sensation she had never experienced in all her days.
To a girl who had cast away everything after losing her parents in the carriage ambush, pure, unconditional goodwill was terribly foreign.
Without realizing it, the tips of Yelena's ears flushed a vivid crimson.
A neutral expression. I have to keep a straight face... But she could not suppress the burning heat crawling up her cheeks. Her lips trembled faintly at the tangled knot of emotions she was feeling before another person for the very first time.
In that flustered silence, she carefully turned over Sian's words in her mind.
"Friends..."
Friends.
It was an alien word to a broken girl devoid of social graces, someone who had lived with her eyes locked exclusively onto the edge of a blade.
Yet, for reasons she could not fathom, she found herself yearning for the gentle warmth that word seemed to promise.
Making the excuse to herself that she was only taking it so she could cross swords with Sian again...
"Ah, um... if that made you uncomfortable..."
"No."
Yelena Frost took the outstretched hand.
The hand of another girl her age, grasped for the first time in her life, was remarkably, disarmingly soft.