Mantis:the awakening

Chapter 2 – Exile

Kade, Hinter’s elder brother, wasn’t done yet. With his ego bloated by his new position and the poisonous influence of Sara—Hinter’s former wife and now Kade’s wife—he made a final move. Hinter was forced out of the family.

No fight. No protest. Hinter simply packed what was his, gathered Susi and his son, and left. But the humiliation didn’t stop there. Family members mocked him as he walked away. Some laughed. Some spat cruel words. Daton, too young to understand it all, cried harder than ever.

Just when it seemed no hand would reach out, one did—Chris, Hinter’s former personal guard. Loyal to the end, Chris defied Kade’s orders and helped Hinter to his feet, both literally and figuratively. Of course, that act cost Chris his place in the family estate.

With nowhere else to go, the four of them—Hinter, Daton, Susi, and Chris—left together.

They settled far from the capital, in a rugged region where nobility rarely looked. Hinter secured a basic house using fading connections. No servants. No riches. Just dirt, stone, and four people trying to start over.

Hinter couldn’t afford to raise children with luxury—but he could offer discipline. Chris began training Daton when the boy was just five. Wooden swords, bare fists, and grueling routines before sunrise. At first, Daton cried, stumbled, and sulked—but the fire was there. That Turner blood still ran deep.

By eleven, Daton had already cracked three low-level mana cores. The failure rate was discouraging. Most nobles had stable mana control by eight or nine. But Daton? He was different. He didn't back down. If anything, he doubled down.

At thirteen, Hinter handed him something odd—a dark metallic band with ancient glyphs barely visible on its surface.

“Manis,” Hinter said. “It’s not from this land. The Turner family once studied it, but they didn’t understand its value. Maybe... you will.”

It clamped around Daton’s wrist like it had been waiting for him. From that day forward, training changed. Energy stabilized. His swordsmanship surged forward. Still, it wasn't easy. Each step forward demanded blood.

Meanwhile, Susi—calm, determined—took her path in silence.

Unlike Daton, she had no burning ambition to prove herself. But she hated weakness. And more than anything, she hated how powerless she had been when her family collapsed.

She trained under Hinter personally, specializing in his unique sword technique: The Three Blades of the Inner Core—a sequence of internal mana strikes that unfolded in three stages: Bronze Blade, Silver Blade, and Gold Blade.

While Daton struggled with control, Susi’s mana was calm, focused. By the time she reached twenty-one, she had fully mastered Silver Blade, making her one of the rare few able to grasp the technique beyond its first stage.

But after that? Nothing.

At twenty-five, she was still stuck at Silver. Four years with no improvement. She trained harder, risked unstable cores, and even took up meditation techniques, but no breakthrough came.

And unlike Daton—who joked through pain—Susi grew quieter with each passing month, weighed down by expectations and silence.

By fifteen, Daton’s eyes turned to the future. He needed an academy, but the best required wealth, and they had none. That’s when Hinter remembered an old kingdom-wide contest—an elite tournament where the top four fighters earned a place at the most prestigious academy, for free.

Hinter reached out to Maximus, an old acquaintance with ties to the academy, hoping for a favor.

“No help,” Maximus said bluntly. “Your boy registers like everyone else.”

So be it.

Daton grinned when he heard the terms. “All I gotta do is beat a bunch of kids? Sounds like a warm-up.”

Susi didn’t laugh. She just handed him his sword and said, “Don’t die.”

I am not that good at writing long chapters and making small talk so....