Chapter 194. How Do You Win a Race When the Finish Line Keeps Moving Away?
"God damn it," William hissed under his breath, his voice cracking in the silence of the archive.
His mind flashed to Lia, not the prodigy, but the girl who flinched at shadows, the girl who carried herself as if she were constantly apologizing for occupying space. ’They didn’t want her to be Lia...’
’They wanted her to be Seraphina. And when she couldn’t be, what did they do to her?’
With a grim determination that felt like swallowing glass, he turned the page to where the records for Lia began.
The shift in the archives was immediate. It was subtle at first, a change in the very texture of the writing, a tightening of the prose, but to William’s trained eyes, it was as unmistakable as a blade wound.
The early entries for Lia began several years later, and they followed the familiar script. They noted genuine, considerable talent.
Lia had mastered basic sword forms at an age that would have made any other noble house weep with pride. She absorbed technique with terrifying speed.
On paper, she was exceptional. She was a star in the making.
But as William read further, the air in the archive seemed to grow thinner, more suffocating. Every single entry, every single commendation, and every single recorded milestone carried the same poisonous shadow trailing behind it.
It was a constant, relentless undercurrent of comparison.
’Lia demonstrated remarkable control in the third form, though she lacks the instinctive brutality shown by Seraphina at this age...’
’While Lia’s footwork is precise, she has not yet achieved the supernatural fluidity that defined her sister’s early years...’
’Progress is steady, though the child appears to struggle with the same intuitive grasp that made Seraphina a phenomenon...’
It was everywhere. A quiet, methodical dissection of a child’s worth, measured not against her own potential but against the ghost of a perfect sister.
Every triumph Lia achieved was immediately diminished; every skill she mastered was framed as a failure because it wasn’t hers.
William gripped the edge of the table so hard his knuckles turned white. He could almost hear the unspoken cruelty of the Valestria household.
The disappointment that must have hung over Lia like a guillotine blade every time she picked up a sword. She wasn’t being taught to fight; she was being taught to fail.
William’s breathing became shallow as he delved deeper into the archives, the silence of the tomb now feeling like a physical weight pressing against his lungs.
He found a formal progress report, the kind of document an instructor would submit to a noble house to document a child’s martial development. His eyes scanned the page, seeking any sign of genuine mentorship, but what he found made his blood run cold.
’Lady Lia has completed mastery of the redirect parry in two months’ time, a genuinely impressive pace for a student of her age.’
The instructor’s words were sincere. There was pride in the ink, a genuine acknowledgment of a child’s hard work.
But beneath that paragraph, the parchment bore a scar. In a different hand, sharper, colder, and written with the clinical detachment of an executioner, a single, clipped line had been appended:
’Lady Seraphina required three weeks for the same technique... Continue monitoring for improvement.’
William stared at that addition for a long moment, feeling something ugly and venomous twist in his stomach.
Two months. An achievement that would have earned any other child a feast and a celebration had been reduced instantly to a mark of inadequacy.
It wasn’t just a comparison; it was a punishment. It was a reminder that Lia’s best was simply Seraphina’s mediocre.
’They weren’t teaching her,’ William thought, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth ached. ’They were measuring her against a ghost.’
’How do you win a race when the finish line keeps moving further away?’
His hands moved faster now, his desperation growing as he flipped through more pages, hunting for a shred of humanity. He found it further along an entry documenting Lia’s victory at a regional tournament.
She had fought older, stronger opponents, showing a courage that should have been celebrated.
’Lady Lia’s regional victory demonstrates exceptional promise for a competitor of her age bracket,’ the official record read.
And there it was again. That same cruel, familiar hand slicing through her triumph like a blade:
’Seraphina won the national tournament at a younger age...’
’Regional competition is an appropriate starting point, but expectations remain considerably higher.’
William felt a surge of raw, impotent rage. He wanted to slam his fist into the ancient desk, to shatter the precious silence of the archives.
He could see Lia in his mind, not the girl he knew but a child standing in a training yard, sweat streaming down her face, hearing nothing but the echoing disappointment of a family that refused to see her.
Then, he found something that almost broke him.
It was a brief, warm note, tucked into the margin of a training log. This wasn’t an official report; it was a personal observation from one of Lia’s own instructors.
The handwriting was loose, almost tender, the kind of unguarded praise a teacher offers a student they have come to love as their own.
’I want it noted formally that Lady Lia’s dedication and discipline exceed anything I have witnessed in a student of her age...’
’Her commitment to improvement is remarkable and, in my professional opinion, deserves genuine recognition.’
William felt a flicker of hope. Someone had seen her.
Someone had loved her enough to try and defend her. But that hope was short-lived.
Beneath the instructor’s heartfelt words, the family’s response had been appended. It wasn’t just cold; it was devastatingly flat.
’Dedication and discipline are the minimum standard expected of any member of House Valestria...’
’This is not remarkable. This is simply correct.’
William closed the book with a thud that echoed through the stacks like a gunshot. The sound reverberated off the stone walls, leaving him alone in the dark with the truth.
’This is why she flinches,’ he realized, the horror of it settling into his bones. ’This is why she believes she is nothing.’
’They didn’t just fail to raise her; they systematically dismantled her soul, piece by piece, until there was nothing left but the hollow shell of someone trying to live up to a legend that never existed for her.’
William closed his eyes, but the darkness behind his lids offered no respite. Instead, it became a canvas for the images the text had conjured.
Beneath the cold, clinical detachment he had fought so hard to maintain, something hot and furious was beginning to simmer, a slow-burning rage that felt like molten metal spreading through his veins.
Every achievement, every scrap of progress Lia had scraped together with blood and sweat, had been filtered through that same singular, impossible measuring stick. It was a relentless, mechanical process of erasure.
Nothing she accomplished was allowed to belong to her.
Nothing she achieved was allowed to be hers.
Every victory arrived pre-diminished, every milestone pre-compared, and every moment of genuine pride systematically undercut before it could even take root in her young mind.
’They didn’t just compare her,’ William thought, his breath coming in ragged hitches. ’ They poisoned the very idea of success.’
’They taught her that winning wasn’t enough, that winning was only valuable if it surpassed a ghost...’
’How do you learn to love yourself when your entire existence is framed as a failure to be someone else?’
She had never been Lia. Not to them.
She had existed as a shadow, a secondary thought, a disappointment waiting to happen. In every written record, in every conversation, and William could almost feel the suffocating silence of every dinner table she had sat at, she was nothing more than ’Seraphina’s sister.’
A creature born to chase a horizon that receded every time she took a step forward.
His hands shook as he turned to the next section. This wasn’t the clean, sanitized language of official reports.
This was something different. Something raw.
These were fragments and scraps of household correspondence, testimonies from servants collected during decades-old legal disputes, and private journal entries surrendered to the archives during inheritance squabbles.
Taken alone, they were footnotes.
Taken together, they were a confession.
William forced himself to read, applying the same grim, deliberate discipline he had once used to review after action reports from battles where the dead outnumbered the living. He needed to see the truth, no matter how much it burned.
The first fragment came from a household steward’s testimony, written with the detached tone of someone reporting a minor inventory error.
’The younger daughter was often kept in the training hall well past supper if her father judged the day’s progress insufficient.’
’I recall more than one evening bringing a tray to her room only to be told she had not yet earned her meal.’
William gritted his teeth. ’What the fuck...?’
’This is just... Cruel...’