Chapter 152: [X] - 152: The Upcoming Proving
Alex was still sitting on Vespera’s lap.
The residual warmth of the earlier conversation about the treasury and the red-lightning stone had settled into a quieter atmosphere.
Alessio remained on the other side of the couch, posture relaxed but attention fully present.
Zara stood a short distance away, silent and watchful as always.
The study felt smaller with the three of them focused on the same point.
Alex turned his head toward Vespera.
"I am here for something else."
Vespera’s hand paused where it had been resting lightly against his shoulde.
Her eyes met his without surprise, only the calm expectation of someone who had already sensed something.
"What are you here for?"
Alex did not look away.
The words he had been turning over since the banquet and the training hall match sat ready.
"I want to take part in the upcoming Proving."
A sudden and heavy silence filled the study.
The words sat in the air between the four of them with more weight than any birthday request or treasury permission.
Alessio’s expression tightened.
Vespera’s gaze did not shift, but the quiet pressure of her attention sharpened.
Even Zara’s presence in the bond went still for a moment the moment she sensed the change of mood in the room.
Alex felt the possible refusal forming before either of them spoke.
He continued without waiting for the first objection, keeping his voice even and practical.
The match in the training hall had already shown what he could do against people older and higher in recorded level.
The Proving was the next logical step, not a sudden ambition.
"I am strong enough to participate and if I am not wrong, the conditions only say that one must be an Awakened Rank 1 to enter the competition."
"I am clearly strong enough to meet that requirement."
"The age is not a formal barrier written into the rules, it is only the pattern people have followed, and patterns can be broken when the foundation is already ahead of the schedule everyone else is using."
Alessio looked at Vespera.
Vespera looked back at Alessio.
The exchange lasted only a few seconds, but something passed between them in the silence, the kind of private assessment that did not need spoken words after years of shared decisions about their son and the political cost of every public action he took.
When it ended, Alessio was the one who spoke first.
His voice was steady, practical, and stripped of the earlier birthday warmth or the residual irritation from the treasury argument.
"Almost everyone who participates in the Proving is generally eighteen years or above."
"It is not a written rule."
"It has simply become tradition over the decades, and traditions in this kind of competition exist because enough people tested the alternative and paid for it."
"Almost everyone awakens somewhere between twelve and eighteen."
"When they reach or cross eighteen, and they are talented enough to believe they can survive what comes next, they enter the Proving."
"It gives them firsthand experience of what it means to fight with the intention to kill in an unknown region, under conditions they cannot prepare for in a standard training hall or a controlled spar."
"The terrain changes."
"The opponents are not holding back."
"The only constant is that the Institution is watching for death and nothing less."
He paused and the next part carried a darker edge that did not soften for the fact that the person hearing it was still sitting on his wife’s lap.
"The only exception is that the Curse Bloom Institution will not let anyone die."
"You might get all your limbs destroyed."
"Your body can be mauled."
"You can be left in pieces that take months to recover from, if recovery is even complete."
"Some people walk out with severe damage to their foundations."
"But if you are still alive, no one is going to intervene."
"The observers will not step in for pain, for broken bones, or for the kind of damage that ends a normal cultivator’s career."
"Only when you are about to die will you be removed from the Proving."
"Otherwise you have to win or survive, whatever the conditions of that year’s Proving turn out to be, in order to be qualified for the selection rounds that follow."
"That is the full shape of what you are asking to walk into."
The silence that followed was heavier than the first one.
Alex remained on Vespera’s lap, posture unchanged.
He had expected resistance, but he had not expected the description to land with quite this much deliberate weight.
Alessio was not trying to frighten him into withdrawal.
He was stating the reality as it existed for anyone who stepped into the Proving grounds without the protection of age, experience, or institutional favoritism.
The tradition of waiting until eighteen existed for a reason that had nothing to do with written rules and everything to do with the number of people who entered earlier and left permanently damaged.
The Institution’s refusal to let participants die was not kindness.
It was a boundary that still allowed everything short of death.
Vespera’s hand rested lightly against his back.
She had not spoken yet.
The decision between the two of them was still unfinished, the private calculation still moving behind the calm surface of her expression.
Alex could feel the weight of it even without words passing between his parents.
A public entry into the Proving by the Third Prince would not stay private.
The other houses would watch.
The results, whatever they were, would become political material the moment they left the competition grounds.
Alex kept his eyes on his father.
"Dad, I understand the risks, but I still want to enter."
Alessio’s mouth tightened further.
He did not immediately refuse.
He also did not agree.
The look he exchanged with Vespera this time carried more calculation than the first, the weight of a parent that would have to answer for whatever happened to their son inside a competition designed to break people who were already older than a boy who had forced his way into Rank 1 through methods no one is all of Eldoria understood.
The Proving was not a simple topic.
The room remained quiet and Alex waited.
Because Alex believed that when he will get the answer, it will not be simple, and it will not come from only one of them.
🌿 ─ ❦ ─ 🌿
End of Chapter 152: The Proving
🌿 ── ❦ ── 🌿