Chapter 12: Elemental affinity [3]
"Nothing," Aries said. "I didn’t sense anything at all."
The campfire crackled between them. Nobody moved for a moment.
"What do you mean nothing?" Eren leaned forward fast enough to nearly tip off his log. "Not even a hint?"
"Nope." Aries looked at his hands, then back up. "Empty. Nothing reached out."
Nico lifted a brow. "Maybe it’s because he’s truly awakened," he said, with the tone of someone stating the obvious. "If he can walk both paths, maybe he wasn’t given a fixed element to avoid favoritism between mage and knight. Same as Senior Renaris from the academy."
"Please," Valea said immediately, "stop using your brain."
Nico blinked. "What?"
"Every time you do, logic dies."
"You just hate genius."
"I hate stupidity wearing confidence."
Cedric hadn’t spoken through any of this. He was looking at Aries with one hand against his chin, turning something over quietly.
"No," he said finally. "I don’t think that’s it." A pause. "Perhaps you have trouble detecting your affinity rather than lacking one entirely."
Aries frowned. "Detecting issue?"
Cedric nodded. "Actually, I may have an idea."
____
The clearing Cedric chose sat above a drop overlooking a dense treeline. The others spread out behind Aries while Cedric folded his arms.
"Try forcing an attack," he said. "Think of it as the reverse of what we just tried. Instead of waiting for an element to reveal itself, assume you already have one. Channel your mana and let it mix with whatever comes naturally. Don’t think about it."
Aries stared at him.
’Assume you already have one. Don’t think about it?
So the strategy was specifically to stop thinking about the thing he was trying to find. Brilliant.’
He’d survived a cliffside fall, the most emotionally catastrophic night of his life — and he’d landed under a teacher whose core method was to fix unknowns by ignoring them.
This world’s education system was truly something.
Still. It cost nothing to try.
"Okay." He turned toward the treeline. "Here goes nothing."
He raised his hand and pulled mana forward. It came the way it always did — familiar and gold, spiraling around his fingers. He pushed deeper this time, past the warmth, looking for something underneath it.
Nothing. Just mana turning in his palm like always.
"See?" Nico said from behind him. "Told you that method wouldn’t work."
Cedric exhaled once. "Perhaps," he started, quiet disappointment settling in, "either he still hasn’t grasped it, or maybe he truly doesn’t possess an ele—"
"...Wait." Valea’s voice cut in. "Why is it suddenly getting hot?"
"Now that you mention it," Nico said slowly. He wasn’t looking at Valea. "Yeah. What the hell?"
Eren didn’t say anything. He was watching Aries’s hand.
The gold had changed.
Aries hadn’t noticed yet. Still focused, the yellow had begun bleeding toward something deeper.
The air around his palm shimmered with heat that hadn’t been there a moment ago. The edges of the mana curled inward, sparks breaking free in brief violent bursts like pressure finding the only cracks available.
"L-Look at Aries—"
The mana exploded outward.
He didn’t specifically aim at anything or decided to shoot it. One moment it was in his palm and the next it wasn’t — something red and enormous crossing the clearing in half a second before it hit the treeline.
BOOM!!!
Three trees went. Trunks splintered at impact, tops crashed down through smoke, and the sound rolled out across the forest in a slow wave before fading.
Then silence.
Smoke rose in a long, unhurried column from what used to be the treeline’s edge.
"It worked." Valea’s hands were still slightly raised from when she’d stepped back. She looked between the destruction and Aries with wide eyes. "He instinctively manifested a fire spell?"
"That is—" Eren stopped. Started over. "That is insanely cool. So his element is—?"
"Fire," Cedric said, a faint smile touching his face. "The same affinity as mine."
Nobody spoke for a moment.
Aries turned slowly over his shoulder.
The smoke still rose, and all that remained was silence.
Nico’s jaw hung open, staring at what remained of three large trees, had absolutely nothing to say. Not a single word. The person with an opinion on everything sat completely still and stared.
Aries looked back at the treeline. His hand was still raised, still trailing faint heat, the warmth sitting in his palm like an afterthought of something much larger.
"Did I..." His voice came out quieter than intended. "Did I actually do that?"
"That was impressive, Aries. Keep that up and—"
The exhaustion hit all at once.
One moment he was standing, the next the weight arrived from the inside out, strength drained from his legs, vision tilting sideways, the ground rising toward him with committed momentum.
"NO! ARIES—"
Both voices, somewhere at a distance.
Something caught him.
An arm, already there before the fall finished. And then he wasn’t falling anymore. Just still, against someone’s shoulder, the clearing unchanged around him.
"Thank goodness.. Professor’s Flash step saves the day," Valea breathed from behind them.
Cedric adjusted Aries carefully and looked him over once. "He’s completely drained. That spell took everything he had." A brief pause. "A fireball that scale shouldn’t have been possible at his stage."
"He really gave everything," Valea said, looking at Aries’s closed eyes. "Every last drop of it."
"Then we move." Cedric shifted Aries onto his back. "We’ve stayed in this area long enough. We head for Kaelenor."
Camp came apart fast. Within minutes they were moving through the trees beneath a darkening sky, Cedric carrying Aries while the others fell into step around them without needing to be told.
Aries opened his eyes.
Darkness stretched without edges in every direction.
His brows pulled together slowly.
Huh? What is this place? Where am I?
He turned in place, looking.
And something about this darkness sat just below recognition — familiar the way a place is when you’ve been there before but can’t quite remember when.
He knew this place.
And something about it was wrong.
