It was a new day in the Cradle, but unlike the previous morning's routine, Ares awoke with his tiny body aching from the previous day's ordeal. Every muscle fiber screamed in protest as he shifted in his cradle, the phantom sensation of fire energy still coursing through his veins like a cruel reminder of what he had endured.
"Yesterday nearly killed me," Ares thought with dark humor, "The author really undersold how brutal this training would be—'rigorous conditioning' not a chance!" He tried to stretch his limbs and winced. "Note to self: being reincarnated as a baby in a family of psychotic warriors was NOT my brightest idea. Though I suppose the alternative was being dead-dead instead of just wanting to be dead."
As he began his morning mana absorption routine, Ares noticed something remarkable. Despite the agony, his core felt different—stronger, more refined. The fire energy had left permanent changes in his mana channels, like steel that had been forged in the hottest flames. "Well, well, well," he mused internally, "looks like yesterday's session actually did something useful. My mana channels feel like they've been upgraded Progress!"
He paused his absorption, already dreading what was coming next. "According to the book, today should be ice training. Great. From being roasted alive to being frozen solid. The Eisenklinge family motto should be 'Why kill you quickly when we can torture you creatively?'"
The familiar sound of approaching footsteps announced Junia's arrival. She entered with her usual warm smile, but Ares could see the concern etched in the fine lines around her eyes. She had witnessed his condition the previous evening—the way he had trembled uncontrollably, his skin flushed with fever-like heat that had taken hours to subside.
"Good morning, young master," she said softly, her voice carrying extra gentleness as she lifted him from his cradle. "Today will be... different. Are you ready?"
After the familiar routine of bathing and feeding, the dreaded sound of approaching footsteps echoed through the corridor. This time, however, it wasn't Drenar who appeared at the threshold. A new figure emerged—a woman with the characteristic obsidian hair of the Eisenklinge bloodline.
"I am Glaciana," she announced. "I will be overseeing his ice conditioning today." Her breath was visible even in the relatively warm confines of the chamber, and frost crystals clung to her eyelashes like tiny diamonds.
Without ceremony, she lifted Ares from Junia's reluctant arms and strode purposefully from the residential quarters. The infant could feel the temperature dropping with each step they took, as though Glaciana herself was a walking embodiment of winter's wrath.
They emerged into the courtyard, and Ares' gaze was immediately drawn to their destination—a sight that made his blood run cold even before they reached it. The ice shrine rose before them like a monument to eternal winter: a pale-blue spire-shaped building laced with jagged crystalline formations that jutted from its walls like frozen lightning. The entire structure emitted a cold mist that swirled around its base like spectral dancers, and its walls shimmered like frozen glass under the pale morning light.
"Oh, come ON!" Ares mentally groaned as he took in the intimidating structure. "The book described this place as 'challenging,' not as a frozen palace of death! Wonderful. Just wonderful."
"Beautiful, isn't it?" Glaciana said, her voice carrying a note of perverse pride. "The Ice elements has claimed more life than any other element. Fire may burn, but cold... cold creeps into your bones, your blood, your very soul until you become one with the ice itself."
As they approached the entrance, Ares felt the temperature plummet dramatically. The ornate doors were crafted from what appeared to be living ice, their surfaces covered in intricate frost patterns that seemed to shift and writhe with each breath of wind. When Glaciana pushed them open, a wave of arctic air rushed out like the breath of some slumbering ice giant.
The interior was a marvel of frozen architecture—a freezing chamber lined with mana-reinforced glacier walls that seemed to stretch impossibly high into the shadowed ceiling. Inside, temperatures had dropped to sub-zero levels that made Ares' breath immediately visible as tiny puffs of steam. The air itself felt sharp and brittle, as though it might shatter at the slightest disturbance.
"The Cryochamber," Ares thought recalling the interior of the ice palace as the book described it. "This should be where children learn to circulate their mana without succumbing to cold shock. It recorded that many fail this test—their blood literally freezes in their veins, their hearts stop mid-beat, their minds shatter like glass beneath the pressure of absolute zero. After that happens they would never visit the ice palace again."
At the chamber's center stood their destination, and Ares felt his infant heart skip a beat at the sight. The Permafrost Podium was a raised platform constructed entirely of ancient ice that had never known warmth. Its surface was covered in a layer of permafrost so old and dense that it seemed to absorb light itself, creating patches of absolute darkness that hurt to look at directly.
"This is where I'll sit in prolonged stillness to absorb pure ice mana," Ares thought terrifiedas the cold had started getting to him.
Glaciana placed Ares upon the podium with surprising gentleness, and the infant immediately felt the cold seeping through his clothing like liquid nitrogen. The sensation was the complete opposite of yesterday's fire trial—instead of burning pain, this was a creeping numbness that threatened to steal away all sensation.
"Holy frozen hell," Ares thought as the cold hit him like a physical blow. "This is worse than I imagined. It's like sitting on a block of ice while someone slowly drains all the warmth from your soul. But wait..." He paused, concentrating on the sensations in his body. "Actually, I'm not dead yet. The fire energy from yesterday—it's still there, keeping me from becoming a baby popsicle! Ha! Take that, ice shrine! I'm like a tiny human furnace now!"
But his triumph was short-lived as the reality of his situation set in. "Okay, don't get cocky, Ares. The book mentioned that the ice shrine was particularly deadly because it lulled you into a false sense of security before freezing you solid. This is going to be a long, long day."
Glaciana stepped back to observe, while Ares forced himself to begin the meditation process. The cold was already working its way through his tiny body, and he could see his breath forming small clouds of vapor that dissipated quickly in the frigid air.
"Alright, let's see what you've got, ice mana," Ares thought with determined bravado. "Yesterday I survived being slow-cooked. Today I'm going for the frozen dinner experience."
He began to draw the ice mana into his core, immediately understanding why this shrine claimed so many lives. The ice energy didn't assault his system like fire had—instead, it crept through his mana channels, slowing his circulation, frosting his internal pathways, whispering seductive promises of eternal rest.
"Oh, you sneaky bastard," he thought as the ice mana tried to lull him into dangerous complacency. "The book was right—you're not trying to kill me with pain, you're trying to convince me that dying would be nice and peaceful."
But something incredible happened that he hadn't anticipated. The fire energy still residing in his core from yesterday's brutal conditioning began to react with the incoming ice mana. Instead of canceling each other out, they began to dance together in a delicate balance—the fire preventing the ice from completely freezing his channels, while the ice tempered the fire's wild intensity.
"Holy shit," Ares thought in amazement, "I'm like a walking demonstration of thermodynamics! The fire energy is literally keeping me alive right now. Thank you, yesterday's torture session." Ares shouted in joy as he managed to survive yet another training.
Glaciana's eyes widened in shock as she observed this phenomenon. "Impossible," she breathed, her words creating a small cloud of vapor. "He's achieving elemental harmony on his second day of conditioning. This should take months, if it's even possible at all."
Hours passed in this frozen meditation, with Ares walking the knife's edge between fire and ice, heat and cold, life and death. His infant body trembled not from weakness, but from the incredible strain of maintaining balance between two opposing forces that could each destroy him individually.
"This is insane," he thought around the fourth hour, his mental voice growing sluggish from the cold. Noon had finally come and Junia had brought his food, although Glaciana did not permit her entry as she felt Ares would pull a tantrum after seeing her, she fed Ares herself and let him rest for an hour before he continued his training.
The afternoon dragged on mercilessly. By the sixth hour, Ares was beginning to hallucinate from the cold and strain.
As evening approached, his thoughts became increasingly scattered. "You know what the real tragedy is here? I had been so sickly in my previous life that a little exposure to cold would cause a big sickness."
The eighth hour arrived with punishing intensity. Ares could barely feel his extremities, and his breath had become so visible that it looked like he was a tiny dragon breathing mist instead of fire. "Come on, Junia," he pleaded internally. "Where are you? I know you're supposed to pick me up when the sun sets. Please tell me you haven't forgotten about the potentially frozen baby in the ice death chamber. That would be a really awkward way to end this whole reincarnation experiment."
Finally, as the last rays of sunlight faded from the sky and true darkness settled over the Cradle, Junia appeared at the entrance of the Frostspire like an angel of mercy. Her warm presence was a stark contrast to the frigid chamber, and she gasped audibly when she saw Ares still sitting perfectly upright on the Permafrost Podium.
"My goodness!" She whispered, rushing forward with panic evident in every step. "Young master! You're still conscious!"
Ares was indeed still conscious, though barely. Frost had formed elaborate patterns on his lips, eyebrows, and even his tiny eyelashes, creating a crown of ice crystals that made him look like some miniature winter deity. His lips were blue with cold, but his eyes still burned with that inner fire that spoke of incredible willpower and sheer stubborn determination.
"Thank the heavens you're here," Ares thought weakly as Junia carefully lifted him from the podium. Her touch was so warm compared to the ice that it almost burned. "I was starting to wonder if I'd become a permanent ice sculpture.
"What have they done to you, my little master?" Junia whispered, her voice thick with emotion as she felt his ice-cold body against her chest. "You're like holding a block of ice, but somehow you're still breathing."
Glaciana watched the rescue with a mixture of professional interest and genuine amazement. "In all my years overseeing the Ice shrine," she said quietly, "I have never seen a child—let alone an infant—go a full day of ice conditioning on their second day of elemental training. This is unprecedented."
As they made their way back to the residential quarters, Ares could feel sensation slowly returning to his extremities. The fire energy in his core was working overtime to restore his body temperature, creating an odd sensation like tiny suns blooming throughout his circulatory system.
"Well," he thought with exhausted satisfaction, "I survived day two of baby boot camp from hell. Fire yesterday, ice today. If the book is accurate, tomorrow should be water, then air, then earth, then lightning. At this rate, I'll either be the most powerful toddler in history or the most traumatized. Probably both."
As Junia tucked him into his warm bed and began the process of slowly bringing his body temperature back to normal, Ares allowed himself a moment of genuine pride. He had faced down two of the most dangerous elemental forces in existence and emerged victorious. The original timeline was already fracturing around him, and he was becoming something that had never existed before in this world.
"Tomorrow is another day," he thought as sleep finally claimed him, "and another element to conquer. But tonight, I'm just grateful to be warm and alive. and one step closer to saving my mother. The Eisenklinge family's means are too brutal but I'll survive."