The nursery was a cavern of ink and silver moonlight. Elma sat motionless on the edge of her bed, her small frame swallowed by the shadows of the high ceiling.

  Her fingers were cramped into stiff, aching claws—the physical tax of faking a child's clumsy script for hours.

  She replayed the morning's failure in her mind like a tactical debrief.

  Why didn't I just say I wet the rug? It would have been the logical move.

  It would have reinforced the mask. But today, the "child" had felt like a suit of armor that had grown too small.

  Her identity was already exposed to the woman in the mask. The secrecy felt redundant.

  Yet the friction with Christa felt... wrong.

  She tried to brush the feeling off as residue of Christa’s poison—another compliance tool, carefully dosed.

  She needed an anchor. Something soft.

  She reached her hand out to the side, searching the darkness for the plush toy.

  Her fingers brushed against something.

  It was cold and smooth beneath her fingers, fabric woven tight enough to feel like armor.

  Her heart slammed against her ribs with the violence of a caged beast.

  Standing less than an inch from her hand, towering over the bed like a monument of bone and shadow, was the woman in the black-and-red cat mask.

  "You are late in your reflections, D—66," the woman whispered.

  Elma pulled her hand back, her breath hitching in her throat.

  When did she—? The thought died in Elma’s mind. Her senses had failed to detect a single footstep, a single shift in the air.

  The woman didn't offer an explanation. She simply turned and glided toward the far wall of the nursery. Elma found herself following.

  As they approached the wall, the floor glowed. Luminous green veins, identical to the ones that had snaked across Elma's skin, erupted from the ground beneath them.

  They formed a jagged, pulsating circuit that hissed with cold energy.

  "What is this?" Elma asked, her hand flexing instinctively, as if claws still laced her fingers.

  "A shortcut," the woman replied, her ceramic mask reflecting the sickly emerald hue.

  Before Elma could process the words, the light surged.

  There was no sensation of movement, only a violent, silent flash that turned the world white.

  Elma blinked, her vision clearing.

  The nursery was gone.

  She stood in the center of a vast, open field. In every direction, trees loomed like jagged teeth against a sky she didn't recognize.

  The only sound was the wind whistling through the branches and the low, rhythmic hum of the green light fading into the grass at her feet.

  "Where are we?" Elma demanded.

  "Far from veraxys," the woman answered, her mask reflecting the starlight.

  "Why?" Elma asked, her eyes scanning for threats in the tree line.

  "To train you."

  Unease coiled in Elma’s gut. The woman’s Presence was not just heavy; it was a suffocating inversion of space, making the vast field feel as cramped as the nursery.

  With a casual flick of her fingers, a series of torches ignited around the perimeter of the clearing. The flames hissed with a strange, violet heat, casting long, dancing shadows across the grass.

  "First lesson," the woman said, the metallic distortion in her voice sharpening. "You need to gather your Aegis."

  "Gather?" Elma asked, her hands tightening into fists.

  "It is all over these plains, roaming unrestrained," the woman replied. "You are not fully connected to it."

  The woman stepped closer, the air seemed to thicken, pressing against Elma’s chest.

  "You must learn to pull it into yourself. To use it fully."

  Elma looked at her hands, then at the stones scattered in the grass. With a sharp tug of her will, three jagged rocks rose into the air, hovering with clinical precision around her head.

  "I don't understand," Elma said, her voice small but firm. "My Aegis is here. I am using it."

  The woman in the cat mask didn't move. She didn't even seem to breathe. “You are only using a fragment.”

  Before Elma could formulate a rebuttal, the world vanished.

  The air was replaced by a crushing, freezing weight. The torches, the grass, the trees—all of it disappeared as a massive sphere of water materialized around her, suspended in mid-air.

  This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it

  Elma’s lungs hitched, a reflex she couldn't suppress. She was trapped.

  Panic tore through her mental discipline. Suddenly, she wasn't on a field far from the capital. She was back in the facility.

  Back in the Boiling Tanks, submerged in high temperature water meant to test the limits of her skin’s thermal resistance and her lungs’ capacity.

  She could see the blurred faces of researchers through the reinforced glass, waiting for her to drown.

  I will not drown.

  The memory burned hotter than the freezing water.

  Pop.

  The orb splattered. Elma slammed onto the wet grass, the impact knocking what little air remained out of her chest.

  She sat in the mud, soaked to the bone, coughing violently as she dragged air back into her starved lungs. Her golden hair, once pristine, now clung to her face like a shroud.

  The woman stood over her, a silhouette of absolute silence.

  "Imagine if that had been fire," the woman said, her voice devoid of pity. "That is how easily you go out."

  Elma looked up, her green eyes shivering with a mixture of cold and cold-blooded fury.

  "Gather your Aegis," the woman commanded. "Pull it back together. If you do not become a fortress within yourself, the next lesson will be your last."

  Elma sat in the wet grass, the mud seeping into her silks, but she didn't feel the cold. Her eyes, sharp and verdant, pinned the woman where she stood.

  She needed to master this force—to control her Aegis with such absolute authority that she could put this woman back in the shadows where she belonged.

  Elma pushed herself up, her movements fluid despite the damp weight of her clothes.

  "I still don't understand," Elma said, her voice a low rasp. "What do you mean it's all over here?"

  The woman didn't argue. She simply raised a gloved hand and pointed toward a massive, gnarled tree at the far edge of the clearing.

  “Move it,” the woman commanded.

  “Isn’t it too far?” Elma asked.

  “Try,” the woman said.

  Elma shifted her focus to the tree.

  Her eyes widened. A faint resonance answered her attention—subtle, but undeniable. She felt the space the tree occupied, the volume it claimed in the world.

  She hadn’t known her reach extended this far.

  She planted her feet, her jaw locking as she gripped the very heart of the tree’s presence. With a violent tug of her will, the ground groaned. The massive trunk shrieked as it was ripped from the earth, roots snapping like dry bone as soil rained down in a dark curtain.

  With a guttural growl and clenched teeth, Elma didn't just lift it. She hurled it.

  The massive weight vanished into the distance, a crashing wake of broken branches marking its path before it disappeared into the night.

  "Now try that with me," the woman offered.

  The invitation was dangerously enticing. Elma’s gaze sharpened. "Are you sure?" she asked, making sure she hadn't misheard the challenge.

  "Very sure," the woman answered, her posture relaxed, almost insulting in its stillness.

  That was all the permission Elma needed. She pivoted her focus, ignoring the distant tree line and narrowing her entire focus onto the woman.

  She reached out with her Aegis, seeking the "anchor" of the woman’s presence, ready to hurl her into the dark sky just as she had done with the timber.

  But as she reached, she felt… nothing.

  Her eyes swept over the woman, but there was no weight to grab, no center to pull. It was like trying to catch a shadow with a net.

  "What?" Elma whispered, her brow furrowed in genuine confusion. "Why can’t I—"

  "Your Aegis is extended, stretched to its thinnest limit," the woman said, stepping forward as if Elma’s power were nothing more than a light breeze.

  "That gives you reach, but it robs you of your teeth. It weakens the core."

  The woman stopped just inches away, her cat mask looming over Elma like a nightmare.

  "You need to compress it. Bring it back to your center until it is a solid wall. You must protect your own space and strengthen your internal control before you can hope to dominate another's. Do you understand now?"

  Elma stood motionless, her mind retreating into the cold, analytical sanctuary of her training. She needed a plan. She didn't even know where her reach ended.

  She projected her awareness outward. She felt a distant tree, then one further, and then another beyond that. To her shock, her Aegis continued to ripple outward far beyond the reach of her physical sight. It was a sprawling, invisible kingdom of sensory data.

  The woman sat on a jagged rock, a silent observer in the dark. She didn't offer guidance, but she didn't interrupt either. Her silence was a tacit agreement with Elma’s method.

  An hour passed. Elma remained deep in the trance of the hunt, searching for the final boundaries of herself.

  It was absurdly vast—a staggering reach that defied logic. Her consciousness was now three kilometers away from her physical body, and still, the hum of her Aegis continued.

  Finally, at the edge of a distant ridge, the connection tapered off into nothingness.

  She opened her eyes, her breath coming in shallow, ragged bursts. The woman lifted her head, the ceramic mask catching the violet flickering of the torches.

  "Hold it," the woman commanded.

  Elma focused, mapping the invisible perimeter in her mind. It was a circle nearly 7.5 kilometers in diameter, and her Aegis was saturated through every inch of it.

  She was lost in the sheer scale of her own presence, her mind struggling to process the thousands of variables—the swaying of grass, the scuttle of insects, the rustle of leaves—all happening at once.

  "Is it always... this hard?" Elma asked, a drop of sweat tracing a cold line down her temple.

  "Only for someone of your caliber," the woman answered, her voice a low, distorted rasp. "Now, pull it in."

  Elma reached out to the edges of her invisible kingdom and tugged.

  The retraction was slow at first, like pulling in a massive, heavy net. As the 7.5-kilometer boundary began to shrink, distant trees and territories slipped out of her awareness one by one.

  Yet the data itself did not lessen. Instead, it thickened.

  She wasn't just aware of the trees anymore—she was beginning to feel deeper. She felt the sap crawling beneath the bark; she felt the friction of leaves rubbing together in the wind.

  By the time the circle collapsed to fifty meters, Elma’s world had become a claustrophobic nightmare of detail.

  Every grain of sand beneath her feet felt like a mountain. A cricket’s wings three yards away struck her like a thunderclap.

  "Too much," she hissed, her teeth grinding so hard she feared they might shatter.

  She didn't stop. She forced the Aegis smaller. Thirty meters. Twenty.

  At ten meters, the density became lethal. The sheer volume of information—the weight of the air, the heat radiating from the torches, the moisture in the soil—was about to blow her consciousness apart.

  "Disengage!" the woman’s voice cut through the static.

  Elma released her Aegis.

  She collapsed to her knees, her forehead hitting the damp grass. Her vision failed in flashes of white and fading emerald.

  The woman approached, her boots silent as ghosts on the mud. She stood over the trembling child, her presence looming.

  "You don't need to feel everything within your Aegis to mend it," the woman said. She let out a small, rare sigh—a sound of weary frustration.

  "You were trying to process the entire world at once. You must focus only on what is vital..." She paused, the cat mask tilting. "That is a lesson for another night. Now, you must return."

  Elma didn't answer immediately. She stayed on her knees, her breath coming in ragged, shallow gulps.

  But beneath the exhaustion and the lingering pain of the mental "crush," a grim satisfaction took root in her heart.

  For the first time since they had met, the woman was no longer a shadow. Within that ten-meter radius, Elma had felt it.

  The "weight" of the assassin.

  She turned toward the woman. "What should i call you?" She demanded.

  The woman was silent for a beat, her head tilting as if weighing whether Elma had earned the right to know.

  "You may call me Sable," the woman said. A silver strand of hair slipped from beneath her mask, catching the violet glow of the flames.