House of Blood

Healing in the deep caverns wasn’t an act of quiet rest.

It was a violent, grueling process.

Every morning began with Shaman Orok smearing a thick, burning paste made of crushed snow-bear marrow and volcanic sulfur directly over my fractured collarbone and ribs.

The heat was blinding, forcing my double-capacity dragon heart to beat frantically, pushing mutated blood through torn muscles to rebuild them from the inside out.

Once the salve settled, Shaman Orok brought out a heavy, dark band of treated leather, studded with deep-blue northern silver runes that hummed with a quiet, icy pulse.

"Your old silk cloth was burned in the crevasse," Orok said in his gravelly, low voice, stepping behind me to wrap the leather tightly over my eyes.

"This is carved from the hide of a Frost-Stalker and blessed in the pool of our ancestors. It does not merely block the sun, little dragon. The runes will anchor your wild heat so your core does not consume your young vessel while you mend."

The moment the knot tightened at the back of my head, a cool, soothing sensation washed over my burning eyes.

" EQUIPMENT EQUIPPED: RUNE-CARVED FROST-HIDE BLINDFOLD "

" SOVEREIGN EYE SUPPRESSION: STABILIZED "

" DRAGON CORE BACKFIRE: REDUCED BY 60% "

" SPECIAL EFFECT: TERRAIN ACOUSTIC SENSING "

The blindfold wasn’t just a piece of cloth anymore—it felt like an extension of my very flesh.

The northern runes acted as a sieve, filtering out the blinding glare of my Sovereign’s Guilt Eyes and converting the excess dragon heat into a steady, rhythmic pulse that hummed along my spine.

"Stand, dragon-boy," a voice boomed from the cavern entrance.

Chief Borka walked in, throwing a long, stripped piece of solid ironwood at my feet.

It was thick, unpolished, and heavy—a primitive northern bo staff.

"The Sanguis fight like gods when their veins are full of blood-aura," Borka growled, leaning on his massive battleaxe.

"But what happens when your mana runs dry? What happens when a demon’s rot-curse seals your veins? You die like a pig in the mud."

I picked up the ironwood staff with my uninjured right hand, testing its weight.

"I was taught that a weapon is merely a vessel for aura."

"Your soft southern teachers were idiots," Borka spat.

"In the North, the wind lies. The snow hides the pitfall. The beast does not wait for you to gather your blood-heat.

"You will learn to move without aura. You will learn to kill with leverage, balance, and weight."

He gestured toward the wide, stone-paved training pit in the center of the cavern.

Standing there, spinning a pair of heavy bone-weighted bludgeons, was Kaelen.

She wore sleeveless leather hunting furs, her green-bronze shoulders glistening with sweat, her small tusks bared in a cocky, predatory grin.

Her physical body was fully intact, her muscles dense and primed for raw, explosive power.

"He can barely hold the stick, Father," Kaelen called out, her golden eyes locking onto my blindfolded face.

"If I strike his left shoulder, his bones will snap again."

"Then don’t let her strike you, Valerian," Borka grunted, sitting on a high stone bench at the edge of the pit.

"Kaelen, break him until he learns to step."

The first three weeks of training were an absolute humiliation.

Without using my Stage 1 Dragon-Vein Ignition, my ten-year-old physical frame was vastly inferior to Kaelen’s raw barbarian strength.

Every time I tried to use refined, high-society sword footwork, Kaelen simply stepped inside my guard, used the rough terrain to throw snow into my face, and slammed her heavy shoulder straight into my sternum.

CRASH!

"Too stiff!" Kaelen barked, her bone bludgeon pressing hard against my throat as I lay flat on my back in the slush, coughing up cold air.

"You’re predicting where my staff should go based on formal form!

"Look at the ground, Sanguis! The snow under my left heel compressed before I swung.

"Read the terrain, not my shadow!"

’She’s right, kid,’ Wren giggled, perching on a wooden beam above us.

’Your past-life martial arts were designed for clean duels on stone arenas. She’s fighting like a mountain wolf.’

I gritted my teeth, ignoring the stinging ache in my ribs as I forced myself back up using the ironwood staff as a crutch.

"Again," I rasped through the rune-carved leather blindfold.

Kaelen lunged forward, executing a heavy, overhead downward strike meant to crush my guard.

Instead of stepping back into a classic parry, I remembered her footwork.

I swept my staff low, digging the ironwood tip straight into the loose gravel beneath her lead foot, flicking a spray of sharp stone into her eyes while shifting my weight onto my right hip—the Frost-Tooth Low Glide.

Kaelen’s footing slipped on the loose gravel.

In that split second, I didn’t use aura.

I used simple, mechanical leverage.

I jammed the middle of my staff behind her knee, stepping into her center of gravity, and leveraged my entire upper body to pivot her weight over my hip.

THUD!

Kaelen smashed back-first into the dirt, her bone bludgeons clattering across the pit.

She lay there for a second, wide-eyed, staring up at the roof of the cavern in absolute shock, before spitting out a mouthful of grit and glaring up at my blindfolded face.

"That... was dirty," she growled, a dangerous, thrilling spark igniting in her golden eyes.

"That was terrain," I replied, resting the ironwood staff across my shoulders with a faint, sharp smile.

"You taught me."

Kaelen stared at me for a long moment, then let out a loud, booming laugh that echoed off the stone walls.

She reached up, grabbing my staff to pull herself up, her grip tight and burning with newfound respect.

"Alright, dragon-boy," Kaelen smirked, sweeping her bludgeons back into her hands.

"Now let me teach you how we fight when three of our ribs are cracked."

As the weeks bled into months, the training shifted from brutal humiliation into a terrifyingly synchronized dynamic.

Kaelen taught me how to read the subtle shifts in mountain wind, how to hunt shadow-beasts in complete whiteout blizzards without relying on mana perception, and how to use the weight of a staff to shatter the joints of enemies three times my size.

In return, I broke down her chaotic barbarian instincts, teaching her the precise, deadly geometry of internal mana circulation, showing her how to strike the weak structural points of armor and bone with minimal effort.

Where I was broken, she was my shield and raw force.

Where she was unrefined, I was her edge and lethal precision.

By the second month, the warriors of the Frost-Tooth no longer saw a fragile noble child sitting in their hall.

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