The day blurred.
Eudora trained. He bled. He broke. And he healed.
Not instantly. Not cleanly.
But faster than he should.
A bruise that should've lasted a week vanished in a day.
A split lip sealed overnight.
Kavel assumed it was just youth. Ragna didn't notice. No one did.
But Eudora did.
Because after every wound faded, he felt that hunger again—worse, deeper. Like something had fed from the pain.
He tried to test it.
On the third night, he drew a blade across his palm. Slowly. Watching.
The blood welled—then stopped.
Before his eyes, the skin stitched together, trembling, not with magic, but instinct. Muscle, tendon, flesh—it pulled itself closed as though commanded by something older than logic.
Eudora fell back, clutching his hand.
"What the hell am I?"
There were no answers.
Only the whisper.
"You are the door."
---
The Next Day
The fields were cold with dew, the training ground misty in the pale dawn. Ragna stood grinning beside Father, already swinging his wooden sword like it weighed nothing.
"Come on, Eudora!" Ragna shouted. "Last one to ten strikes cooks tonight!"
Eudora moved slower.
Not from fear.
From calculation.
His body was still small, still limited. But something inside wasn't.
And it frightened him more than any enemy.
Kavel crossed his arms, frowning. "You're hesitant again."
"I'm watching," Eudora said.
"Watching doesn't win wars. Move."
They trained harder. Kavel had always pushed Ragna, but now he pushed Eudora too—maybe out of disappointment, maybe hope.
Then it happened.
A slip during drills. Ragna's wooden blade cracked across Eudora's finger at the wrong angle. Bone snapped. Blood splattered.
Ragna froze. "Oh sh*t—!"
But the scream never came.
Instead, they all watched as the blood stopped flowing… and the bone twisted back into place.
The flesh closed.
A scarless hand remained.
Eudora looked at it, heart pounding. Ragna stepped back.
Kavel's jaw clenched. His voice was quiet.
"…That wasn't aura."
Eudora said nothing.
What could he say?
Kavel turned, the silence heavier than steel. "Training's over."
Ragna didn't speak on the way back. He didn't laugh. He didn't tease.
And Eudora knew.
The gap between them had just begun to grow.