The western training hall remained empty the following morning beneath four royal ward seals. Captain Roen cleared every attendant, while Ferra placed Gazel’s prayer case behind a disconnected ceramic screen at the boundary.
Didi stood inside the central circle with her sword pointed toward an unoccupied target frame. Three Shards waited closed around her wrist, leaving the silver-gold response absent until she chose to begin the complete prayer.
Hajin watched from outside the declared line with one Ring available beneath Vella’s recovery limit. His right shoulder remained wrapped, preventing extended output while allowing one narrow Aegis intervention if Didi’s test crossed its recorded stop conditions.
Eirwen held the treaty witness slate beside Vella’s diagnostic station. Neither woman offered mana into the hall, ensuring Didi’s first complete attempt contained only her own source plus Gazel’s preserved technique impression.
{Sovereign’s Brand training test.}
{Participant: Princess Didi / three Shards.}
{Reference: Gazel completed circulation impression.}
{Immediate stop conditions: soul heat / foreign command / uncontrolled ward connection.}
"I understand the conditions," Didi said, placing her copied active-channel diagram beneath the evidence stand, "record whether the current follows my channel or the borrowed route Gazel used."
Ferra opened one viewing face around the prayer case without exposing its fitted pin. The case displayed Gazel’s completed circulation as an inactive diagram, supplying direction without stored mana, soul, consciousness, or independent activation.
Didi opened her first Shard and placed ordinary frost along the sword from guard to point. The second widened that circulation through her shoulder, while the third stabilized pale-blue mana around her active Sovereign channel.
[ Didi active Shards: three ]
[ Stable personal Brand circulation before prayer: unavailable ]
She touched the opening line with her voice while keeping both hands upon the hilt. Gold entered her frost immediately, followed by a narrow silver current rising from the dormant channel beneath her three Shards.
"By the light of the fallen, carve the path of the righteous," she said, holding the blade inside the empty target line.
The gold did not settle into the colder silver route her body produced naturally. It turned toward Gazel’s preserved diagram, matching the first borrowed curve he had used as a bearer without royal blood.
Aria placed both conflicting pathways above the warded training circle before Didi continued. Her personal route began inside the active source, while Gazel’s route reached backward toward that source from an external bearer position.
"Your current is matching his return direction," Hajin warned, keeping Aegis closed while the first stop condition remained absent, "the prayer is teaching your source to circulate as its own borrower."
"Then I complete it once before deciding the shape is impossible," Didi replied, accepting the warning without lowering her sword, "an unfinished prayer cannot show where the return changes."
She continued under the recorded test authority rather than concealing another attempt. Silver narrowed beneath expanding gold as the second line drove her three Shards toward the oath’s protected endpoint.
"Through the blood of the sworn, shield the weak and purge the dark," she said, forcing the blade another finger toward the target.
Gold lines crossed her sword arm before reaching the side of her neck. The borrowed circulation treated Didi’s own body as both protected source plus external bearer, creating a loop her three Shards could not stabilize.
[ Circulation conflict detected ]
[ Active source position: Didi ]
[ Forced bearer position: Didi / incompatible borrowed route ]
[ Soul heat: rising ]
Vella detected the heat before it appeared inside Didi’s ordinary mana pathways. Gold diagnostic marks above the station showed pressure entering the soul structure beneath her core rather than burning flesh, Shards, or spell channels.
"Soul heat has begun," she warned, keeping her hands outside the circle, "one line remains inside recovery range, but another escalation reaches the cost recorded beneath Gazel’s oath."
Didi tightened both hands upon the sword instead of dismissing the current. She had spent years receiving partial warnings from people who stopped her, leaving completion itself feeling inseparable from the truth they had withheld.
"Let the steel remember its purpose, and the spirit break the unbreakable," she said, driving gold through the third borrowed curve.
Heat crossed the active Sovereign channel before silver disappeared beneath the borrowed form. A faint Brand pattern reached Didi’s cheek while her soul supplied the circulation her three Shards could no longer carry.
[ Soul heat: critical increase ]
[ Borrowed circulation completion: imminent ]
[ Stable personal Brand: not forming ]
[ Projected result of final line: soul combustion ]
Hajin opened one Ring around his right wrist without extending power into Didi. Aegis formed across the empty space between her sword point plus the target frame, interrupting the external completion path before the prayer’s final line could close.
The barrier accepted gold from the sword without feeding it back toward her protected-source channel. Hajin turned its outer edge away from the prayer case, giving the trapped current a direction that ended inside unoccupied ward stone.
Gold struck the empty wall through Aegis before breaking apart across the floor seals. Silver returned along Didi’s arm after the borrowed loop opened, leaving all three Shards intact while the Brand pattern disappeared from her face.
[ Sovereign’s Brand attempt: interrupted ]
[ Soul combustion prevented ]
[ Didi Shards: three / intact ]
[ Stable personal technique gained: none ]
Hajin closed his single Ring as Vella entered the marked circle by foot. Her gold diagnostic mana reached Didi through wrist contact, confirming residual soul heat without a burned section, foreign command, or persistent oath loop.
Didi pulled her arm from Vella after the examination ended, then faced Hajin across the fading Aegis. Anger reached him before the sword lowered, carrying every childhood restriction into the intervention he had just made.
"My father stopped every Gate, every rite, plus every explanation because he decided ignorance was safer," she said, keeping the blade outside a striking line, "Gazel accepted the danger for me, and now you stop me before I can finish understanding it."
"You were finishing Gazel’s soul-burning route," Hajin replied, leaving the critical projection visible between them, "I interrupted that route after showing you the cost, not your right to find another one."
The distinction did not remove the anger already rising inside her chest. Didi had chosen the test beneath explicit limits, yet the moment somebody enforced them, she heard every older command that had used protection to deny her agency.
"Everyone says the wall is temporary," she said, looking from the closed Ring toward her father’s training seals, "then another person appears to explain why the next door must remain closed."
She stopped speaking after hearing her own sentence inside the emptied training hall. The reaction matched the pattern she had carried since childhood, turning any safety limit into proof that another person intended to control the rest of her life.
That pattern had reasons, because her father repeatedly hid permanent restrictions beneath temporary concern. It still could not make a projected soul combustion safe merely because Hajin had become the newest person standing beside the stop line.
Didi lowered her sword deliberately before closing all three Shards around her wrist. Ordinary frost remained along the steel without gold, silver, soul heat, or a fourth crystal answering her failed completion.
"I used his route because it was the only complete one available," she said, returning to the diagram after her anger settled, "show me how to measure the difference without making you the source."
Hajin looked toward the gray pathways beneath his slowly recovering right-arm wrap. Phase Lock could hold both frequencies against one reference, although any correction had to preserve Didi’s circulation instead of lending her his own.