Gilded Ashes-Chapter 61: Floating Knives

Lynea had been quiet the entire session. Watching. Her fragments traced their usual orbit by her shoulder, calm and slow. She hadn’t reached for anything. Hadn’t tried any of the exercises. Just stood at the edge of the room and observed the others fail, learn and fail again.

Then she lifted her hand.

The four gleaming fragments rose a hand span higher and held - aligned, steady, their edges catching light in clean lines.

Kenzo stopped mid-laugh. "Go on" he said, softer now. 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝚠𝕖𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝕖𝚕.𝚌𝗼𝗺

Lynea extended her fingers.

A practice luminite knife trembled on the rack, slid forward, and came free. A second knife followed. Then a third. They took up positions around her fragments in a slow ring, points inward, perfectly spaced.

A training spear drifted from its hook next, turning point-down and hovering with the kind of steady control that none of the others even came close to.

Seven weapons hung in the air around her, silent and still.

Kori’s eyes flicked from Lynea to Kenzo. Kenzo’s smile didn’t disappear. It changed. He stepped closer - not too close - and when he spoke, his voice had lost most of its playfulness.

"How?" he asked. Not suspicious. Not praising. Just genuinely curious. "I struggled to keep five clean when I first started. You have seven floating like you stlil did’t decide which one to pick up."

Lynea didn’t look proud. She looked like someone sharing something she’d carried for so long it had stopped feeling heavy. The fragments rotated a fraction. The knives held their quiet.

"My family-" she said. "This technique runs in the family." She paused. "It started like a game when I was little, and I guess I just picked it up from them."

"I see... But you do realize that this – what you’re doing right now – It’s awesome, right?""

"They did keep saying I was gifted, but I didn’t believe them. Something about restoring control? I can’t really remember."

Kenzo waited.

Lynea’s eyes went to Raizen - just for a second, so fast nobody else caught it - and then away. Her voice stayed calm.

"My family essentially mastered an ancient Eon technique" she said. "Manipulating luminite weapons."

Arashi opened his mouth for a joke - then closed it. Some things are for later.

Suddenly, Raizen had the strange feeling that he should be remembering something important. He just couldn’t figure out what that was.

Kenzo didn’t blink. "I see."

After a few seconds of awkward silence, Kenzo broke the silence with a clap. "Okay." he said, voice practical again. "Keep moving slowly, we’ll keep the more difficult stuff for later. We can move on once all of you can hold something in the air and you’re confident about it"

"I’m always confident about-" Esen started, but never got to finish his sentence.

"Oh my lord, Esen! I told you to stop trying to lift my hammer! It won’t work!"

He pointed around the hall. "Lynea – if you would - show them the basics, not the tricks. Arashi, try to save the ceiling next time. Feris, don’t try to handle. Esen, stop trying with my hammer. Keahi, don’t light anyone on fire. Ichiro, stop being polite to the ball and start actually doing stuff. Hikari - slow is fine, we’ll get to the hard parts later, if it works. Raizen – try float them longer, and this time, put them down on purpose."

Lynea walked Esen and Arashi through the whole thing. "Not grab" she said with her usual cold voice. "Think of the air as a shelf. You put something on it. If you push too much, the shelf tips. If you don’t push enough, the shelf... Doesn’t even exist anymore." She made a knife spin midair like she just enjoyed making it look effortless. Esen tried to match the softness and managed to keep Arashi floating at ankle height without hitting anything.

"Improvement" Arashi said from his embarrassing altitude.

"Don’t sneeze" Esen warned through a bead of sweat.

Hikari looked like she found the answer she was looking for. The rod rose, wobbled, and stayed a few seconds longer than before. She frowned, eased her breathing, and adjusted something invisible. The rod started spinning in the air, slowly, trembling from time to time. After a few rotations, she let it down slowly and sighed through a smile.

Keahi coaxed a small ember to drift above her palm. It floated past a chalk line without scorching it. She grinned. Ichiro glared at the ball, tried again for the fiftieth time, and the ball lifted three fingers off the floor and stayed there. He kept it hovering, careful and almost in disbelief.

Feris tried to grip the mace head instead of the handle and it finally obeyed, lifting a finger’s width off the floor. She laughed out loud when it did, because making something that heavy listen to you is its own kind of achievement.

Arashi guided three practice rounds in a slow orbit around his head. One slipped and pinged his ear. He accepted the pain as tuition.

Raizen opened his hands and raised his blades again. They finally held, still trembling in the air like they weren’t sure if they actually wanted to float or not. Raizen breathed out, and the swords settled back onto the floor - gentle, deliberate, like someone had placed them there by hand.

Kenzo’s grin returned. "Mhm" he let out a small sound of approoval.

They ran the drill for another hour or two. The mess smoothed into steady rhythm. Kenzo corrected with humor and precision. Kori kept circling the room, watching everything. Twice she caught herself watching at Kenzo’s forearm, the way it moved when he flicked the hammer midair. Twice Arashi noticed and chose - with visible restraint - to not laugh. It was for his own safety.

By the end, even the ball stopped being so annoying. Ichiro finally admitted out loud, after Esen’s relentless teasing, that a rubber ball was worse than a boulder.

Kenzo clapped once. "Enough. You don’t need headaches to be talented. Put the stuff back. Next time – I don’t know when that’ll be – we’ll try catching each other before the floor does."

"Excellent!" Arashi exclaimed. "I love not hitting the floor! Right, Esen?"

"Whatever you say..." Esen rolled his eyes.

"I could say something about that" Keahi mumbled, not resisting the urge to annoy Arashi.

They set things back where they belonged. Raizen slid his blades into their sheaths and could still feel the memory of them floating in his hands - that brief, strange lightness, like holding something that barely decided to trust him.

He looked across the room at Lynea.

She was quiet again. Fragments orbiting her hand in their usual pattern.

Her words kept replaying inside Raizen’s head. "My family mastered an ancient technique. Levitating knives."

He still couldn’t figure out what they reminded him of.

Kenzo shouldered his hammer on the way out. He flicked a switch on the wall, and the light in the hall dimmed a notch, its arches overhead shifting from bright to ordinary as the light outside wound down.

On the way out, Raizen stayed half a step behind the others. The noise of the corridor found him again - footsteps, voices, the Academy being the Academy.

But Lynea’s words wouldn’t leave him alone.

My family mastered an ancient technique. Levitating knives.

He turned it over in his head. Ancient technique? Bloodline? Weapons that moved without hands. He’d heard this before. He knew he’d heard this before - not in a classroom, not in a book.

Then, the word hit him between one step and the next.

Something inside Raizen’s chest went very cold.

Moirai.