Chapter 113: Eren and Aden

The next morning, Aden sat upright in bed with a mildly pleased expression. He looked down at his hands; for the first time, they were steady.

Usually, sleep was a battlefield. He was plagued by jagged nightmares or clear, resonant whispers that vibrated through every fiber of his being in a language he couldn’t decipher. These hauntings had followed him since the moment he left the cave, but under the constant pressure of survival, he had never moved them to the top of his priorities.

But waking up today without a trace of a dream, without Lorelei having to dampen his forehead with a wet rag like a fever-stricken child, it brought to him a surge of quiet exhilaration.

Beside him, Lorelei let out a low groan and turned over as he pulled back the blanket. The sun was barely a suggestion on the horizon. Under normal circumstances, she would have been a whirlwind of activity by now, but it seemed that managing a household took a greater toll on her spectral strength than a life-or-death struggle.

His feet met the cracked wooden floor, sending a cool, grounding wave through his senses. He glanced toward the corner where the children slept near the spot where Zero rested. Only Armin and Reiner remained, their low, rhythmic snores the only sound in the room.

His eyebrows rose before he stepped into the living room and found Eren.

The boy was a silhouette of pure focus, anchored in a lotus position in the center of the room. Despite the shadows, Aden could clearly see the faint, crimson glow radiating from Eren’s form as he cultivated. His face was a mask of absolute calm, a still pool unruffled by the external world.

Aden watched with a mixture of astonishment and pride. He could sense the Resonance energy flowing through the boy’s meridians with surgical precision, the warmth spilling from his skin signaling a rapidly approaching breakthrough to the Attuned Realm.

’What a monster,’ Aden mused, a small, proud smile tugging at his lips.

As he watched, a thought took hold. He could train Eren himself, a sparring session to bridge the gap between raw energy and practical application. But the logistics were a nightmare. This house would crumble at the first stray shockwave, and the backyard was barely a meter wide so they couldn’t train there the way Kaelthorn had done with him.

His mind ran through a thousand scenarios within a minute before settling on a plausible location: the desolate, empty lands bordering the entrance to Grey-Rock, near the area where Horen stayed. He couldn’t recall the exact name of the landmark, but he knew Lorelei or Zero would have it mapped.

He nodded to himself and turned to head back, but a floorboard groaned beneath his weight. The low creak sounded loudly in the silence and unfortunately broke the serenity that wrapped itself around Eren’s space.

Aden felt the sudden fluctuation in the air and glanced back. Eren’s eyes were half-lidded, his red irises glowing with a predatory, eerie intensity in the dark as they watched him.

’I think I understand how that market woman felt now,’ Aden thought wryly.

“Why are you up this early?” Eren asked, his voice gravelly. He clearly didn’t have the energy for another staring contest.

Aden let out a huff that was half-laugh, half-sigh. He leaned against the doorframe, crossing his arms over his chest.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Aden countered. “But I suppose you wouldn’t need much sleep when the breakthrough is whispering in your ear.”

Eren didn’t move from his lotus position, but the crimson glow surrounding him flickered, dimming as he began to manually cycle his energy back into his core. The predatory edge in his eyes softened, replaced by the weary irritation of a teenager whose best work had been interrupted.

“It’s not whispering,” Eren muttered, wiped a bead of sweat from his temple. “It’s screaming. If I don’t move it, my meridians feel like they’re being scraped with rusted needles.”

Aden’s smile faded, replaced by a sharp, clinical focus. He’d read about that feeling, it was the Expansion Ache, the sensation of a vessel becoming too small for the power it held. If Eren didn’t vent that pressure soon, the breakthrough would be messy, perhaps even damaging.

“Change of plans,” Aden said, his voice dropping the playful edge. “We’re going for a walk. Just you and me.”

Eren looked up, his eyebrows knitting together. “Now? It’s not even dawn. And what about the others? If Lorelei wakes up and we’re gone—”

“Lorelei needs the rest,” Aden interrupted, glancing back toward the bedroom. “And you need a place where you can actually breathe without bringing the roof down. Grab your cloak. We’re heading toward the waste-lands near Horen’s old haunt.”

“Who’s Horen?” Eren questioned, not moving from his lotus position.

“He’s a… Friend,” Aden replied with uncharacteristic unsureness.

Eren hesitated for a heartbeat, his gaze darting toward the kitchen where his brothers slept. Then, he nodded, uncoiling his legs with a fluid, athletic grace that spoke of his rapid progress. He stood up, and for the first time, Aden noticed the boy had grown. He was broader, steadier.

They moved through the house like two shadows, Aden leading the way out into the biting morning air of Grey-Rock. The city was silent, the mist clinging to the new cobblestones like a shroud. As they reached the edge of the inhabited district, the reformation vanished, replaced by the jagged, broken ruins of the old world.

“Why here?” Eren asked, his breath hitching as he felt the sudden drop in temperature.

Aden stopped in the center of a wide, desolate expanse of cracked earth and grey silt. To their left stood a row of collapsed stone pillars—remnants of a temple or a manor long forgotten. To their right, the distant, jagged silhouette of the mountains loomed.

“Because here,” Aden said, turning to face the boy, “you can stop pretending you’re just a kid.”

Aden raised his hand, and for a split second, he allowed his Harmonic Realm pressure to leak out. The air around them didn’t just grow heavy, it hummed. The pebbles at their feet began to vibrate, and the mist was violently pushed back in a perfect circle around them.

Eren’s eyes widened, his own red Resonance flaring instinctively in response to the overwhelming weight of Aden’s presence. He dropped into a defensive stance, his hands trembling, not from fear, but from the sheer biological urge to survive.

“Break through, Eren,” Aden commanded, his sapphire eyes glowing with that faint, internal mist. “Right here. Right now. I’ll be the anvil. You be the hammer.”

“W—what? That’s not how you break through,” Eren stuttered, his feet shifting nervously on the cracked earth. “I’m supposed to stay still and focus on understanding my pathways… I have to start building the foundation for my identity, which in turn helps me find my affinity—”

Aden raised his hand, cutting through the boy’s frantic recital of theory. The silence that followed was punctuated only by the low, predatory hum of the Harmonic Realm pressure Aden was still leaking into the air.

“That’s for normal cultivators, Eren,” Aden said, his finger tapping firmly against his own chest. “The power you carry within is anything but that. Your body will literally explode if you take the slow route. You’re trying to channel a flood through a straw.”

Eren’s breath hitched. He looked down at his trembling hands, where the crimson Resonance was beginning to leak out like steam from a boiling kettle.

“The identity they teach in books is a cage for people who are afraid of their own strength,” Aden continued, his sapphire eyes locking onto Eren’s red irises. “But you? You don’t need a foundation yet. You need a violent release, one just as volatile as the energy itself. If you don’t vent the pressure by pushing against me, it will tear you apart from the inside out. Do you understand?”

Eren swallowed hard. The logic was terrifying, but as the Expansion Ache in his meridians turned from a dull throb into a searing heat, he realized Aden was right. The standard meditation wasn’t calming the storm, it was just holding the door shut while the house burned.

“I… I understand,” Eren whispered, his voice gaining a sudden, jagged edge.

He dropped lower into his stance, the dirt beneath his boots beginning to blacken and char. The crimson glow around him intensified, no longer a soft radiance but a flickering, jagged aura that hissed against the morning mist.

“Good,” Aden said, his voice dropping to a low, dangerous velvet. “Then stop thinking. Stop calculating. Just hit me.”

With a roar that tore through the silence of the waste-lands, Eren lunged. He didn’t move like the child in the Arena, he moved like a cornered animal finally snapping its chains. A pillar of red energy erupted from his frame, aimed directly at the Anvil standing before him.

Source: Webnovel.com, updated by NovelKeep