Take Me Away, Dark Lord!

”Pick me up, Papa,” she demanded.

Kaelus hesitated for a fraction of a second, his pride warring with his desperate need to hold her.

Pride lost instantly.

He reached down, scooping her up into his arms, settling her securely against his chest.

He immediately adjusted his posture, ensuring no part of his armor was poking her, wrapping his warm cape around her shoulders.

Seraphina wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her face into his collar.

”Auntie Lysa is very nice, and she smells like vanilla and milk,” Seraphina declared loudly, ensuring Leonidas and Lysandra could hear her.

Kaelus’s jaw clenched. ”Indeed.”

”But she doesn’t smell like cold iron and pine trees,” Seraphina added, rubbing her cheek against his shoulder. ”And she doesn’t have a cool sword. And she can’t freeze fire mages. I like cool metal better.”

The oppressive, freezing tension radiating from Kaelus evaporated instantly.

The glow of his violet eyes softened into that of a warm affection. The metaphorical broadsword of jealousy was pulled away from his heart.

He let out a soft, huffing laugh, pressing a kiss to the top of her dark hair.

”I am superior,” Kaelus murmured smugly, shooting a victorious, arrogant glare at Leonidas over her head.

”You are just a baby, more so than your own daughter,” Leonidas laughed, shaking his head. ”But fine. You win this round, you damned son of icicle!”

As they stood in the sunlit solarium, the pink puppy snoring in her arms, Seraphina smiled secretly into Kaelus’s cape.

She had a ghost to exorcise, an ancient subterranean doom to deal with, and an entire Empire of political assassins to navigate.

But as long as she occasionally validated her terrifying, overprotective, emotiona​lly volatile father’s ego... she was pretty sure they could conquer it all and above.

The aftermath of the Verdant Gate incident had left an indelible, deeply etched scar upon the psychological landscape of Duke Kaelus von Nacht.

To the rest of the Empire, the Archduke of the North was an unfeeling monolith of ice and iron, a man who viewed the world through the cold, calculating lens of military strategy and conquest.

beneath the mythril plating, no one knew the fatherly paranoia had reached a critical intensity.

He had almost lost her.

The image of the Trickster’s spatial portal, the empty space where his daughter should have been, the unimaginable terror of arriving in the grand hall to find her facing down an ancient anomaly, it played on a continuous loop behind his eyelids every time he tried to sleep.

Yes, Seraphina had survived.

She had not only survived, she had miraculously deployed her Supreme Dark Core to crush a high-tier demon into a puddle of bloody juice.

It was a staggering display of raw power.

But it was exactly that— raw.

Kaelus had spent the last two days pacing the obsidian floors of his guest chambers, his mind running relentless simulations. Seraphina was a walking, talking, six-year-old magical singularity.

She possessed the raw output of a catastrophic natural disaster, but absolutely none of the refinement, control, or martial discipline required to wield it safely.

When she attacked the Trickster, she had essentially swung a metaphysical sledgehammer; it was devastating, but it was also incredibly inefficient, leaving her physically exhausted and vulnerable to counter-attacks from faster, more experienced enemies.

If she was going to be the Sovereign of the North, if she was going to survive in a world filled with assassins, corrupt nobles, and lurking demons, she could not remain a defenseless child relying on instinct.

She needed training.

She needed to learn how to actively command her core, how to compress her dark mana, and how to defend herself when the Vanguard was breached.

And there was no better place in the Southern Empire to begin martial conditioning than the legendary training grounds of the Obsidian Gate.

Archduke Leonidas Valen’s military facility, known affectionately as The Crucible, was not a place for the faint of heart. It was a massive, open-air amphitheater carved directly into the jagged, black volcanic rock of the caldera.

Rivers of sluggish, glowing orange magma flowed through reinforced trenches along the perimeter, providing a natural heat that tested the endurance of every soldier who stepped foot on the ash-covered training floor.

It was an environment designed to forge soft men into hardened weapons of war.

It was here, on a particularly sweltering Tuesday morning, that Duke Kaelus von Nacht marched his tiny, dark-haired daughter.

Seraphina had been dressed for the occasion.

The frilly, silver-threaded navy gowns had been temporarily retired.

Sir Gallahan had commissioned the local tailors to construct a miniature, practical training uniform: a dark gray, breathable linen tunic, fitted trousers, and tiny, reinforced leather boots. Her hair was pulled tightly back into a high ponytail.

She looked absolutely adorable, like a very small, very determined, highly aggressive storm cloud.

Kaelus stopped at the edge of the ash-covered arena. Standing before him were the three commanders of the Black Bastion, Sir Lucas, Sir Boris, and Sir Gallahan, along with the Obsidian Gate’s Chief Instructor, a heavily muscled Fire Mage named Captain Pyros.

Captain Pyros was a man who looked like he chewed on hot coals for breakfast. He wore no shirt, his torso covered in tribal burn-scars, his arms crossed over his chest as he glared out over the training grounds.

”Commander Lucas. Captain Pyros,” Kaelus addressed them, his voice echoing with the authority of the Reaper.

The men snapped to attention, saluting sharply.

”The Lady Seraphina possesses a mana core of unprecedented density,” Kaelus began, his violet eyes sweeping over the harsh, unforgiving landscape of the Crucible. ”However, she lacks the fundamental physical conditioning and mana-compression techniques necessary to wield it safely. The incident in the Verdant Reach proved that instinct is an insufficient substitute for discipline.”

Kaelus looked down at Seraphina, his expression hardening into the stoic, unyielding mask of a military instructor.

”Today, she begins her training,” Kaelus declared, his voice ringing across the volcanic rock.