Chapter 562. It Can Be a Gift, I Thought, Right Before It Cut Down an Oak

Chapter 562: 562. It Can Be a Gift, I Thought, Right Before It Cut Down an Oak

The group had gathered nearby, watching the progress. Ellie stood at the edge of the construction site, her eyes fixed on the raw materials: the stone, the wood, and the sweat.

A strange light flickered in her pupils.

She raised her hand slowly, mimicking the posture of a student seeking permission in a classroom.

"Mister Grock?" she asked softly. "May I try something?"

William froze. The request hung in the air between them, charged with a sudden, terrifying electricity.

His first instinct wasn’t hope; it was panic. His mind immediately flashed to the image of the Dead Field scorched black, the taste of copper in his mouth, and the sound of Ellie’s bones creaking under the pressure of her own power.

He looked at Catherine, his eyes pleading for some kind of tactical assessment, some sign that this wasn’t another trap set by fate.

Catherine didn’t offer reassurance; she offered permission. She gave him the faintest, almost imperceptible nod, her sharp eyes scanning Ellie as if measuring the girl’s spiritual stability.

William swallowed hard, the Adam’s apple bobbing painfully in his throat, and then he nodded to Ellie.

"Go on," he whispered, though every nerve in his body was screaming at her to run the other way.

Ellie didn’t hesitate. She walked toward the enormous dwarf with the steady gait of someone who had finally found something she recognized.

Grock stopped his grumbling mid-sentence, his hammer frozen mid-swing, his bushy eyebrows knitting together in suspicion.

She reached him and, without asking, knelt on the damp earth. She laid both of her small, pale hands against his left knee, the joint that had been knotted with pain and arthritis for two decades.

For a heartbeat, nothing happened.

Then, a glow began to seep through the gaps between her fingers.

It wasn’t the violent, bone-white lightning that had nearly torn them apart days before. This was different.

It was a soft, luminous fusion, a gentle blend of emerald green and liquid gold that flowed outward like warm water poured over stone.

The light didn’t explode; it seeped. It rolled over Grock’s scarred skin and soaked into the fabric of his trousers.

Grock stiffened. His entire body went rigid as a plank of oak.

His eyes went round, bulging with a shock so profound it seemed to momentarily paralyze his breathing.

Ten seconds passed. Then twenty.

The only sound in the clearing was the distant chirp of a bird and the ragged breathing of the watchers.

William held his own breath, his hands clenched so tight in his pockets that his nails drew blood from his palms.

’Please don’t break him,’ he prayed silently. ’Please let it be gentle.’

Then, Grock moved.

He straightened up slowly, his spine popping with audible cracks. He bent his leg experimentally, rotating the joint with a deliberate motion.

Then, he did something no one expected: he bounced on his toes.

"My knee..." Grock began, his voice uncharacteristically thick, rough as unpolished granite. He stopped, swallowing hard.

"My knee does not hurt." He repeated it, more firmly this time, as if testing the reality of the words. "My knee does not hurt at all!"

"By the ancestors... it has been twenty years since my knee felt like this!"

Before anyone could even process the miracle, the dwarf’s gruff exterior shattered. With a roar of unselfconscious joy that sounded like a landslide, Grock scooped Ellie up in his massive arms.

He spun her around in a wide, dizzying circle, his booming laughter echoing off the newly raised stone walls. He looked less like a hardened mason and more like a man who had just been handed back a stolen piece of his youth.

Ellie let out a startled shriek that immediately dissolved into bright, musical laughter.

The dam broke. The tension that had held the group in a vice grip for weeks finally snapped.

Kaela let out a piercing whoop, punching the air with a fist. Olivia’s notebook slipped from her nerveless fingers, hitting the dirt with a soft thud.

Even Lia, who was mid-stroke while reorganizing her rotation chart, nearly lost her grip on her pen, her lips parting in a rare, unguarded smile.

For several glorious minutes, the clearing rang with the kind of raw, unfiltered laughter that only erupts after a long, suffocating stretch of terror.

When Grock finally set her down, Ellie was breathless, her cheeks flushed pink, her eyes shining with something far brighter than her magic.

She stared down at her own hands with a dazed expression, examining them as if she were seeing them for the very first time.

William watched her from a distance, leaning against the fresh timber of the practice hall’s wall. He saw the realization dawning behind her eyes, the thought he had been desperately hoping she would reach on her own.

’This power doesn’t have to be a weapon of destruction,’ he thought, his own chest feeling strangely light. ’It can be a gift.’

’It can be the thing that mends what is broken.’

’It doesn’t always have to take; sometimes, it can give.’

He didn’t move to interrupt. He didn’t want to break the spell.

He knew that days would come when the fear would return, when the darkness would claw at her throat, and the light would threaten to become a cage again.

But he also knew that today, they had given her something more valuable than training or protection.

They had given her hope. And hope was the only thing that could truly carry her through the night.

The following week arrived with a different kind of tension—not the suffocating dread of a catastrophe, but the sharp, electric anticipation of a breakthrough.

The air in the Dead Field felt thinner, charged with the collective breath of the group as William prepared the training ground.

He had set three wooden practice dummies at the far end of the field, fifteen meters away.

They weren’t just simple straw figures; these were reinforced with iron bands to withstand magical impact, standing like grim sentinels against the horizon.

William stood before Ellie, his expression uncharacteristically serious. His own forearms, though healed, still bore the faint silvery scars where the blisters had once been a silent reminder of what happened when control failed.

"This is different today," William said, his voice low and steady, carrying across the clearing. "Last time, you were a dam breaking under pressure."

"You were trying to contain a flood, but today... we aren’t fighting the flood."

"We’re learning to aim the stream."

Ellie nodded, her knuckles white as she gripped the hem of her shirt. Her eyes kept darting to the dummies, then to the scorched patches of earth that still marked the field.

The fear was still there, coiled in her gut like a sleeping predator.

"Listen to me carefully," William continued, stepping closer to close the distance between her anxiety and his authority. "Do not push the light."

"Do not try to vomit it out of your chest to make the feeling stop."

"That’s what caused the explosion..."

"Instead, you must feel for the direction first."

"Imagine the path before you even summon the power."

"Find where you want it to end up, and only then... let the rest follow."

’Control isn’t about holding it back,’ he thought, watching her jaw clench. ’It’s about giving it a purpose.’

Ellie took her position. She planted her feet wide, finding purchase in the dirt, and closed her eyes.

She stood motionless for what felt like an eternity. The wind whistled through the grass, and the distant sound of Grock’s hammer echoed from the practice hall, but Ellie seemed to exist in a vacuum of absolute silence.

William watched her intently. He could see it before she even consciously summoned it: a faint, ghostly luminescence gathering along the base of her spine.

It moved like something alive, a river of liquid mercury flowing upward through her vertebrae, spreading across her shoulders, and cascading down through her arms.

It wasn’t the wild, chaotic lightning of the previous week; it was precise, controlled, and moving through her channels like water finding its way around stones in a stream.

When she finally opened her eyes, they weren’t frightened. They were focused.

Her pupils had dilated, reflecting a spark of something ancient and controlled. She lifted her right hand, extending only two fingers—the index and middle—and with a sharp exhale, she released it.

There was no explosion. No thunderclap.

Just a sound like silk tearing.

A single, razor-thin line of concentrated gold-white light hissed through the air. It moved with terrifying velocity.

Thwip.

It struck the first dummy at neck height. The wood didn’t splinter or shatter; it simply ceased to exist along a perfect, cauterized line.

The beam passed through the second dummy at the shoulder with the same surgical indifference, severing the reinforced iron band as if it were wet paper.

The third dummy was merely singed, a smoking wound carved across its torso, before the beam tore free and streaked toward the far perimeter.

The group held their collective breath. The line of light carried on past the training area, past the fence, and vanished into the treeline at the back of the field.

A heartbeat of silence passed.

Then crack.

A slender oak sapling at the very edge of the property swayed violently, its trunk severed clean through. It leaned precariously for a moment before slowly, almost gracefully, falling over onto the grass with a soft, final rustle.

Silence descended on the Dead Field.

Even the wind seemed to have stopped.