Chapter 66: Facing the Darkness

Chapter 66: Chapter 66: Facing the Darkness

Thursday morning, Felix and Liora sat across from each other with consoles in hand, the room quiet except for button presses and his steadily souring expression.

**DEFEAT.**

He stared at the screen, eyebrow twitching. Liora lowered her console with a small, satisfied smile. "You’ve certainly improved."

He looked at her.

"You still have a long way to go, though."

His eye twitched again. "Just you wait. Soon I’m wiping that smug look off your face."

"I’ll be waiting," she said, smiling wider.

Another match started. He lost. Then again. Then somehow, impossibly, again.

"*How?*"

She covered her mouth, laughing. "You keep making the same mistake."

"Those aren’t mistakes. They’re tactical experiments."

"You’re losing."

"You’re enjoying this too much."

"Very much," she admitted, and he sighed but she was smiling, genuinely, and somehow that made every loss worth it.

Eventually he set the console aside. "Liora."

"Hm?"

"Want to train today?"

The smile vanished instantly. Her fingers tightened around the controller, shoulders starting to shake.

"Liora?"

She looked down, saying nothing for a long moment. "Train," she finally managed, barely audible.

"Your Darkness."

The trembling got worse, her breath going uneven. His expression softened. "You have to face it eventually. It’s part of you, and you need to learn how to control it."

"But what if I hurt you?"

"You can’t."

"But—"

"I’ve already fought something with that exact mana. An S-rank monster, pure Darkness affinity. I’m still standing." He tapped his own chest. "I’ll be fine." She looked down at her hands, and he kept going, gentler now. "And if you don’t want anyone else to get hurt because you can’t control it, this is how you stop that from ever happening again."

Silence.

After a long moment she nodded. "Okay." She set her console down. "Promise you’ll be fine."

"I promise."

She nodded again, and he stood. "Follow me."

---

**A Different Training Facility**

Acheron Deep wasn’t just a prison, it was a sprawling underground complex, and scattered through its countless levels were specialized training chambers, assigned by prisoner, ability, and risk profile.

Seraphina had her own designated facility, and Felix wasn’t taking Liora anywhere near it. Two unstable elements in the same space was the last combination he wanted to test.

He led her through several corridors to a reinforced chamber with a guard posted outside.

"Disable the jammer," he said.

The guard hesitated. "Sir—"

"It’s part of her training."

The guard looked at Liora, already pale, and after a beat hit the control panel. A low mechanical hum built, then cut off with a click.

The oppressive weight that always sat on her vanished all at once.

For the first time in a long while, her mana could actually move.

Felix opened the door. "Come in."

She stepped inside, and it closed behind them.

---

The difference hit her immediately, mana circulating freely through her channels instead of locked down, slow and quiet on the surface, but something underneath it clearly waiting. Her hands started to shake.

"Don’t force it," Felix said from a few meters off.

She nodded, breath slowing, eyes closing. "I can feel it."

"Good." He watched her carefully. "Liora, your current Darkness proficiency is High III."

She nodded.

"You went from Mid I to High III the day everything went wrong."

Her eyes opened. She remembered exactly which moment he meant, the instant the Darkness had stopped feeling like mana and started feeling like something awake inside her.

The gate had been a low-level one, nothing strong enough to stop what happened once it broke loose. Every monster. Every member of her team. Every person in her way. She’d gone through all of it, and only once her mana finally ran dry had control come back to her.

And then the memories had come with it. Every scream. Every face. Every death.

Her breath went ragged.

"Liora."

"I’m okay." She wasn’t. But she tried.

He didn’t push. "Just manifest a small amount."

She hesitated, then raised one trembling hand. A tiny, pitch-black ember formed above her palm.

​The split second it appeared, her pupils contracted. Her breathing hitched, locking tight in her chest.

​VRRR-THWUM.

​The dark ember began to expand on its own, vibrating with a high-pitched, unstable frequency. Her shoulders jerked, fine tremors running down both her arms.

​"Felix—"

​He took a calm step forward, boots clicking against the reinforced floor. "It’s alright. Keep your focus on me."

​"I can’t—I can’t hold it—"

​The Darkness surged.

​BOOM!

​A violent wave of black aura detonated outward from her core. Her head snapped back, her eyes clouding over as every trace of focus dissolved into a glazed, glassy void.

In a fraction of a second, the quiet, withdrawn girl he had spent weeks gently coaxing out of her shell vanished entirely. A cold, suffocating pressure flooded the containment chamber, dropping the room’s temperature to near freezing.

Felix’s expression sharpened into clinical focus.

"So that’s what happened."

She lunged.

SWISH—CRACK!

Her fist shot toward his cheekbone, and he caught it one-handed without effort. The floor cracked beneath his boots from the sheer force, but his arm never gave an inch. He looked down at her fist, then straight at her.

"Hm. Nearly A-rank striking power." A faint smile touched his lips. "This affinity really is absurd."

She snarled, pulled back, and came at him again.

BAM! THWACK! BAM!

Punch, sweeping kick, another savage punch and he parried every single one of them with crisp, economical deflections, noting how far past her normal peak B-rank speed she had climbed.

Her raw strength had spiked hard, but her form had warped along with it. There was an erratic, unnatural twitch in the rhythm of her movements.

Worse was her face, her expression had gone strange, almost euphoric, a faint, vacant smile sitting where panic and fear should have been.

She struck again with a vicious right hook. Felix sidestepped smoothly, her knuckles slicing empty air past his cheek, and snapped his fingers around her wrist with an iron grip.

"Liora."

Nothing. Just that same hollow, unsettling smile.

"What are you thinking right now?"

She merely tilted her head like a curious predator, said nothing, and whipped her free fist straight for his throat instead.

Felix sighed. "Fine."

He let go of her wrist, stepped inside her guard, and buried a heavy, emerald-coated punch into her stomach.

BOOM!

The shockwave launched her backward across the room.

CRASH!

She slammed hard into the reinforced alloy wall, cracking the heavy plating on impact. Dark blood coughed from her lips, yet as she slid to the floor, her glassy smile only widened, as if taking the blow from him was the sweetest relief she had felt in months.

Felix stared down at her, his amusement gone.

"...Enough."

WHOOOOM!

His emerald aura erupted outward, brilliant and dense. Healing mana flooded the entire chamber: warm, steady, and unyielding.

The ravenous Darkness coating her skin hissed violently under the radiant green light, receding almost immediately until it vanished back beneath her pores.

Her eyes cleared. The glazed haze broke, and her body went completely still.

"Huh?"

She blinked, looking around the scarred room, then down at her trembling hands, and finally up at him.

"Felix—" Her eyes went wide with pure panic.

"I... I attacked you."

He walked over slowly, his hands resting in his pockets. "Yeah."

Her face completely drained of color. "And then—"

He nodded toward the dented alloy wall and the fractured floor behind her. "You got beaten up."

Liora looked down, and only now did the sharp, hollow ache in her solar plexus register. A deep blush rushed over her cheeks as she pressed a trembling hand against her bruised ribs. "I’m sorry. I’m so sorry."

"You don’t need to apologize." His voice turned serious, all traces of teasing stripped away.

"This is exactly why we’re doing this. The Darkness isn’t just boosting your output, it’s altering your physiology. Your strength spikes, your instincts shift, your emotions warp, and the line between your own mind and whatever that element wants gets thinner every second it stays active."

He gestured to the surrounding air, which was still thick with the soothing thrum of his healing aura.

"Right now, I can neutralize the backfire just by standing in the room with you. But I don’t want you relying on my presence forever."

She looked at him, her chest rising and falling, and nodded slowly. "I understand."

"Good." Felix took three paces back, giving her space. "So let’s do this properly."

Liora drew in a slow, steadying breath and raised both hands in front of her chest.

"Don’t fight it," Felix instructed, his tone low and grounded.

She hesitated, her brow furrowing. "Don’t fight it?"

"You’re treating it like an enemy that’s invading you. It isn’t an intruder, Liora, it’s your own affinity. Guide it. Don’t wrestle with it."

She closed her eyes. Deep within her core, the icy reservoir stirred. Black mana gathered slowly above both palms: pure, absolute black that seemed to drink the room’s fluorescent light rather than reflect it. Her breathing remained steady, rhythmic.

"Don’t let it bleed out," Felix said softly. "Keep the boundary inside your palms."

The black aura trembled violently,

VRRR

Her jaw locked tight as the raw, hungry mana tried to surge and tear free.

"Don’t suppress it," Felix commanded, his voice cutting through the panic. "Guide it. Direct the flow."

Instead of balling her fists in desperate resistance, she exhaled, consciously uncurling her fingers and softening her palms.

The Darkness yielded to her intent. The jagged spikes collapsed inward, smoothing out until a small, perfectly stable black orb hovered silently half an inch above her skin.

She opened her eyes and stared at it.

There was no ringing in her ears. No manic, euphoric haze clawing at her sanity. For the first time in her life, she wasn’t terrified of the thing in her hands.

"That’s it," Felix said, a genuine, warm smile breaking across his face.

Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Like... like this?"

"Exactly like that."

The dark sphere hovered in complete silence: dense, contained, and entirely obedient. Since the day her element manifested and tore her world apart, Liora Morven was holding her power, instead of letting it consume her.

Felix crossed his arms, his eyes gleaming with anticipation. "Now. Let’s see how far we can actually push this."

Liora nodded firmly, her grip on the sphere tightening, and the real training began.