#Chapter 3:
# CHAPTER 3: THE BRINK OF WHITE SNOW
The frost of the Far North had never shown mercy to the fallen.
Neither had House Dermott.
Early the next morning, just as the first pale rays of sunlight pierced the biting fog around Wolf Castle, a proclamation bearing the dark-red wax seal of the Elder Council was nailed up in public before Obsidian Square. The sentence for the one who had “tarnished the glory of the main branch” came swiftly and coldly:
*Bailey Dermott was officially stripped of his status as heir to the fourth branch, cut off from all monthly elemental stones and graded mana crystals, expelled from the castle, and relocated to an outlying settlement three kilometers from the border.*
At noon that day, the heavy iron gates closed behind Bailey.
All he took with him was a battered wooden suitcase and his father’s old dagger, hidden beneath his cloak.
On the windblown balcony of the castle, four figures his age stood silently looking down: Richard, Audrey, Kevin, and Sarah. As four outstanding teenagers who had recently awakened dual elements, all of them already held their family’s prestigious recommendation letters. Those letters were tickets straight into the Royal Academy—the institution that gathered together royal children, noble heirs, and supreme lords. There, they would enjoy extraordinary privileges: access to ancient magic archives, inexhaustible supplies of magic stones, and priority nominations for elite Mage tournaments ranging from the kingdom level to the world stage.
Bailey, meanwhile, had nothing but a snow-covered trail stretching out before him.
The outlying settlement three kilometers from Wolf Castle was a row of old, abandoned wooden houses. The rotten tile roof of one had collapsed under the weight of the snow, while its cracked walls let every howling northern wind scream through the gaps.
And directly behind those ruins... stood the **Ancient Snow Forest**.
This was a border crawling with high-grade Ice Demons, the source of the periodic Beast Tides that had buried countless warriors. By sending a fifteen-year-old “single-element” boy to live beside the edge of the abyss, the Elder Council had quietly decided his fate.
The family’s punishment did not end with isolating him.
Under the cold regulations issued by the supply office, every **Thursday**, Bailey had to walk three kilometers along the snowy road back to Wolf Castle’s rear gate to collect his meager food ration for the week: a burlap sack containing a few loaves of rye bread hard as stone, along with a bag of coarse dried rations.
Every trip to collect supplies became filthy entertainment for the people inside the castle.
In the rear courtyard, teenagers from the collateral branches—those who had once bowed and scraped before Bailey’s parents’ reputation—now gathered along the stone corridors, pointing at him and bursting into mocking laughter:
“Look at that! The ‘genius’ of the fourth branch is here to beg for food again!”
“I heard they exiled him right next to the Snow Forest, and he still hasn’t been torn apart by a demon beast? That pathetic Ice bloodline must only be good for freezing stale bread!”
Even the stewards and low-ranking servants made no effort to hide their contempt. When the warehouse servant in charge threw the sack of bread onto the snow in front of him, he merely curled his lip and barked:
“Take it and get out. Don’t stand there cursing up the main branch heirs’ great hall.”
Faced with every insult and venomous stare, Bailey silently picked up the sack of food. His deep-red eyes were as still as a thousand-year-old frozen lake, without the slightest ripple. He couldn’t be bothered to answer a single word. In his eyes, those noisy people were no different from ragged straw figures—their narrow vision would remain imprisoned forever within the four stone walls of Wolf Castle, while his gaze had already turned toward the vast continent beyond.
Bailey returned to the rotting wooden house and set the sack of food beside the broken window frame. He stared deep into the endless snowy forest, one hand lightly touching his chest.
In the world of Elantra, a Mage’s path was divided into **10 strict breakthrough tiers** for each elemental system:
* **Tiers 1 through 3:** the *Beginner* stage. * **Tiers 4 through 6:** the *Intermediate* stage. * **Tiers 6 through 8:** the *Advanced* stage. * **Tiers 8 through 10:** the threshold of a *Grand Mage*.
The unchanging rule of the continent was this: **Every time a Mage broke through to a higher Major Rank, they gained the chance to awaken another elemental system.**
For an ordinary person to begin at Beginner Tier 1 with a single element was already precious. But the arrogant House Dermott had turned superiority into the standard by which existence was measured: anyone who possessed only the Ice element at the starting line was immediately branded a bloodline-degenerated good-for-nothing.
They thought stripping Bailey of his recommendation letter to the Royal Academy had extinguished all his prospects.
But they had forgotten one thing: Every **March**, all the low-level and general Mage academies throughout Elantra opened free admissions to every teenager under eighteen. In those places, noble blood was unnecessary, as was the protection of a great house. As long as a magic orb could identify a compatible flow of mana, the academy doors would open.
He only had to survive this Far Northern winter.
The freezing night descended.
Bailey sat meditating on the stone floor, his deep-red eyes half-closed. Within his magic consciousness, the Transparent Six-Cornered Magic Seal continued rotating silently beside the Snowflake Magic Seal.
The first attempts always came at a steep price. The second Magic Seal did not produce mana on its own. When Bailey tried forcing the Beginner Tier 1 Ice magic power into the six-cornered mass in the usual manner of releasing an element, all the energy in his body was instantly drained, making his meridians cramp violently.
Bailey exhaled a breath of cold air, his brow furrowing tightly.
The law of space was not a lump of matter to be kneaded with brute force. It did not require flashy Magic Seals or turbulent flows of mana surging outside the body. Its core lay in understanding boundaries and structural order.
In the darkness of night, Bailey gradually comprehended the unique laws governing the Spatial Element through five stages of transformation:
**Perception—Intent—Establishment—Control—Break.**
He opened his palm. Without unleashing a torrent of magic power, he calmed his mind and *perceived* every ripple vibrating through the space around his fingertips.
A sharp *intent* traveled outward.
Using only a thread of magic power as thin as a hair, Bailey *established* a miniature spatial barrier that enclosed a fragile shard of freshly condensed ice.
Under the *control* of the condensed spatial boundary, the ice molecules were forcibly compressed to their maximum density. The thin shard did not grow in size, but transformed completely into a diamond-like transparency, glittering with razor-sharp light.
That was not all. The angle of the spatial membrane bent the path of light, making the ice shard seem to vanish from sight.
*SWISH!*
Bailey flicked his finger. The final step—*Break*.
An invisible ray glided away in absolute silence. The thick oak log beside the corner of the wall was sliced cleanly in two, leaving a perfectly flat, mirror-smooth cut before the ray plunged deep into the stone wall behind it.
The mana consumed was less than one-tenth that of an ordinary ice spell.
*Compressing space creates absolute hardness.*
*Bending space conceals the trajectory.*
*Reducing mana consumption to the absolute minimum.*
Bailey stared at the deep gash in the boulder, his hand tightening around the hilt of the dagger at his waist. His deep-red eyes glinted with cold determination in the winter night.
The snowy forest behind him would be the perfect live-combat arena. He had three months to prepare before the March admissions opened the door leading toward new lands.