The Overlord power inside her broke free, escaping her control, shooting from her in a geyser of shadows.

And she snapped out of the book. The power faded, the book sliding shut.

Mercy’s real body was panting and sweaty, her madra churned, and she felt like she might be sick.

“Fear of the mind can be conquered,” Charity said, picking up on her previous lecture as though she had never stopped talking. “The Dream of Darkness technique attacks the heart, mind, and soul as one. You must first endure it in order to control it, and enduring fear is a skill. I will teach you.”

Mercy could have forced the technique out on her own, but squeezing it out of her Book in the event of an emergency and really learning to wield it were two different things.

She had finally gotten her breathing under control.

She could see ways to improve her command over her own madra and even push back against the shadow and dream madra that filled her with such fear, but she wasn’t sure she could do it while fighting her own terror and the phantoms born in that space.

But her mother hadn’t chosen this technique because it was easy to learn. She had chosen it because it was the perfect technique for Overlords.

“Dream of Darkness is in the Book of the Silver Heart, isn’t it, Aunt Charity?”

“It is my sixth technique,” Charity confirmed. “I didn’t have to learn it until I was an Archlord. But the Monarch expects great things from you, Mercy.”

The Monarch did…and so did Mercy herself. If she didn’t earn the ability to defeat Sophara herself, that meant she was leaving the task to Yerin or Eithan, and she couldn’t allow that.

She had spent too much time trapped at Lowgold, letting them fight on her behalf.

Not anymore.

As anybody without a chipped head would expect, the headquarters of the Frozen Blade sect was in the snow.

Yerin had never liked it here. Not only was she not especially eager to see the place where she had shivered for hours while blood froze on her skin as she tried to sense sword aura for the first time, it was also just freezing cold.

Why would anyone choose to live here?

…because they were a bunch of ice artists, and she knew that, but that didn’t make her enjoy it any more.

Jagged blades of razor-sharp ice stuck out at chaotic angles from every snowbank, gathering the power of ice along with a silver edge of sword aura. These blades pressed close even to the network of wooden huts where Yerin stayed, making sure the aura was present for harvesting everywhere.

And ensuring that every inch was as cold as possible.

The Frozen Blade School owned a huge stretch of land, and over time had come to protect an entire nation’s worth of people from invaders, the deadly environment, and each other.

This little complex of huts, tucked away at the foot of a mountain, was the Sage’s personal home. Each hut was connected by a raised walkway covered by a roof, so you could walk around without trudging through hip-deep snow.

Yerin just didn’t understand why the walkways didn’t have walls.

The icy wind was literally cutting, slicing away the ends of her hair and taking scraps from the edges of her outer robe before she spared enough attention to push away the aura. The Sage’s home was no place for most Golds; only Truegolds on the Path of the Frozen Blade were allowed to visit, as anyone below could not protect themselves.

Yerin had been allowed to settle into a hut of her own, though that mostly meant looking at the room, confirming that everything was where it should be, and leaving. She didn’t believe in weighing herself down with belongings.

She wandered around the compound, familiarizing herself with it. This was more painful a trip than she’d expected, because the last time she’d been to the Frozen Blade School, she was with her master.

He had pushed her Rippling Sword by challenging her to break a chip off one of these bladed ice formations.

When she had been knocked off her feet by a fever, he had sat with her for a day and a night, feeding her medicinal broth and telling her stories.

She had tried to follow him to this compound one night after being explicitly told not to, only to be shredded by the sword aura in the frozen wind. The Winter Sage had found her and moved her back to the Iron guest housing, shouting and weeping in equal measure.

It had put Yerin off. If the woman cried over a girl she’d just met, her tears came too easily.

She was more comfortable with her master’s reaction. When he’d seen her covered in blood, he’d cracked a grin and said, “I bet my soul against a rat’s tail that you won’t be trying that again.”

Now, here she was, staying in a house that she’d been too weak even to touch before.

She liked that feeling, but it wasn’t enough.

Not only was she alone, but the Winter Sage was going to act like they were family. Yerin wasn’t sure how much of that she could take.

But she’d be a fool to pass up the training of a Sage, especially when the Blackflame Empire could be on the line. Although…even her master hadn’t made it past the first match of the top eight.

What chance did she have?

Yerin found that her pacing feet had taken her to a wide training room, where the Sage was giving hasty instructions while cradling what looked like a baby rabbit.

“Yes, you can meet her, but later. I need the room. Can you hand me the…yes, the bottle. Right next to that one. Perfect.”

Yerin stopped watching through a window and pushed the door open. The Winter Sage didn’t look up at her entry, but the two students bowed.

Both were Underlord, and both looked older than she did.

One was the shaky-looking man who had filled in at the Uncrowned King tournament and had failed in the first round. He clutched a sheathed sword to his chest, staring at the ground as though imagining he was somewhere else.

The Underlady next to him bowed more quickly, but she kept shooting glances at Yerin with wide eyes.

“Go, you two! Go away! You can meet the Uncrowned later!” They scurried away, and the Winter Sage smiled over the rabbit in her arms. “Everyone wants to meet you.”

The tiny sacred beast squirmed, and Yerin saw it had a bandage around one of its haunches. It had a sharp horn of frozen ice, so Yerin had no doubt that it was native to the area.

It squirmed as it suckled on the bottle the Winter Sage held.

Yerin kept watching the rabbit as she spoke. “If I had a bent copper chip for everyone that wanted to meet the Sword Sage’s disciple, I could buy one of your mountains.”

The Winter Sage looked astonished, and it occurred to Yerin that there might be an advantage to dealing with someone who wore her feelings so openly. “What? No! They want to see how someone so young could be stronger than the twins.”

Yerin didn’t know who the twins were, but she didn’t particularly care. “Don’t have so much time that I’m looking to make new friends.”

The Winter Sage watched her seriously, and for once she wore an expression that Yerin thought befit a woman of her wisdom and accomplishment. She nodded slowly.

“You want to hold the bunny?” Min Shuei suggested.

Yerin took back all her compliments. How could anyone become a Sage without taking the sacred arts seriously?

But the rabbit had finished drinking from the bottle and was burrowing down to sleep in the Sage’s elbow.