CRADLE: PATH OF GOLD (Cradle Collected–Book Two)

Copyright © 2020 Hidden Gnome Publishing

All rights reserved.

Book and cover designs by Patrick Foster Design

Path of Gold cover painting by Ashley MacKenzie

Ghostwater cover illustration by Kevin Mazutinec

* * *

This book collects volumes 4–6 of the CRADLE series, previously published as individual editions.

SKYSWORN

Copyright © 2017 by Hidden Gnome Publishing

All rights reserved.

GHOSTWATER

Copyright © 2018 by Hidden Gnome Publishing

UNDERLORD

Copyright © 2019 by Hidden Gnome Publishing

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

This is a collection of Cradle books four through six. If you haven’t read the first three books, there will be some catching up for you. And possibly a quiz.

Contents

Skysworn

Ghostwater

Underlord

About the Author

Also by Will Wight

Skysworn

Cradle Volume Four

Contents

Dedication

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

To Lyla Anna, who is slightly older than this book. By the time you’re old enough to read this, our robot overlords will have already outlawed reading.

All hail the machines.

1

Jai Daishou labored up the side of the sharp peak alone, madra trickling through his body in a pathetic dribble. The white metal strands of his hair flogged his back with each step as he pressed against the wind, moving higher with every step.

Remnants blacker than the night sky lined his path. They were voids against the stars, their caws like shattering glass, their feathers drifting down like shredded shadows. The feathers hissed as they landed on the rocks, eating into the stone. They had dissolved his shoes already, but an Underlord’s flesh was not so easily seared away.

He felt his weakness in every step, as agony traveled up his ankles and into his spine like lightning. His spirit was no longer strong enough to prop up his fragile body.

A month ago, he could have made this journey without pain. But back then, he’d still had options. Many plans in play, many pieces on the board. He had already been dying, but not so quickly.

Now, he only wanted his clan to outlive him. Anything that prolonged the life of the Jai clan was a virtue. No matter what it cost.

As raven Remnants screeched at him, he climbed toward a gamble he never would have made, had he any other choice.

This was the first of his last hopes.

He reached the end of the road, a sharp cliff overlooking an ocean of clouds. It stretched out before him as though he stood before the end of the world, and overhead the stars glared down at him.

Mist swirled before the cliff as something moved beneath the cloud’s surface. An instant later, wings of shadow rose from the gray cloud. Each of these wings was the size of a ship’s sail, and the head that followed was bigger than a horse. It looked like a bird formed from living ink.

The vast raven filled his vision, floating in the air with still wings. It remained motionless, not disturbing the icy wind with a single flap, drifting like a ghost instead of a living thing. Curls of darkness rose from its feathers.

Jai Daishou inclined his head. As a supplicant, he should have bowed, but his back had locked up so tight he thought he might fold over backwards. His lack of respect might kill him, and that thought chilled him as much as the Remnant’s presence. No matter how much he had prepared to throw his own life away if necessary, nothing could prepare him to come face-to-face with a spirit of death.

“I greet you, Lord of Specters, and I come with an offering.” From his robes, he produced an ebony box, holding it out in both hands. He could only hope the spirit heard him over the screeching of its flock.

Not all those who sought the Remnant’s services brought an offering, but the wise did. It was quite separate from the raven’s price, but a freely given offering bought a measure of protection. Returning a gift with betrayal incurred a soul-debt, which the Remnant should want to avoid.

A gift would not save Jai Daishou if he truly offended the Lord of Specters, but it couldn’t hurt his chances.

Two of the raven Remnants fluttered down from their rocky perches, landing on his arms. They radiated a cold that infected him, stealing his warmth, seeping even into his spirit.

With an identical motion of two beaks, they flipped open the box.

A severed head lay on a bed of stained velvet, its skin waxy and blue, its tongue swollen out of its mouth. This was a servant of the Arelius family whose name Jai Daishou had never learned—he had needed a head, and so he had taken one. Better to steal from his enemies than from his friends.

The great raven opened its beak and inhaled. In the Jai Underlord’s sight, a dark and nebulous mist lifted from the corpse’s head like smoke from a fire. Death aura had once been difficult for him to see, until he had learned the trick of it. Until he had become accustomed to its presence.

Once the Remnant had its mouthful, Jai Daishou threw the box—head and all—out over the cliff. It would have been more polite to kneel and place the container on the ground, but his knees were giving him almost as much trouble as his back.

The Lord of Specters opened its beak once more, and a voice issued forth like a distant chorus singing a dirge. “Tell us the name of your enemy.” The screeching bird-spirits grew louder, their discordant song scraping his ears.

In the Blackflame Empire, when you wanted an Underlord dead, you had precious few options.

There were weapons that could do it, but killing an Underlord yourself risked reprisal from their family and friends. And most assassins were Truegold at best. Any poisons that could affect a body forged in soulfire would cost a fortune, and the refiners with the skill to make such poisons were difficult to silence.

Still, there were a few specialists, if you had the resources and the fortitude to hire them. Among them, the Lord of Specters was the most…palatable.

“The feud between us cannot be solved except by blood,” Jai Daishou said, raising his voice over the smaller, squawking Remnants. “I cannot kill him, and I fear that when I die, his family will tear mine apart.”

The raven remained silent, listening. Some legends said that if the Lord found your reasons insufficient, it would feed you to its flock.

“His name is Eithan Arelius.”

Instantly, the broken-glass screeching of the ravens died. The night was silent but for the wind, which gasped across the spear-sharp peaks of the mountain.

“Eithan Arelius will not be taken,” the Lord of Specters sang. “Choose another, or be gone.”

Jai Daishou stood in shock, like he’d taken a step forward to find his foot poised over a chasm. He had come prepared for a failure of negotiations, or for hostility, or for the Lord of Specters to demand a price too high. But not for an immediate, flat-out refusal.

“Lord of Specters, your servant can prepare a handsome price. Blood essences from life-Remnants more than a century old. Spirits sworn to your service by oath. Scales of death and shadow from the Path of the Twisting Abyss. Name any wish, and if it is within your servant’s power, I will fulfill it.”

The Lord finally flapped its great wings, and ice crawled along Jai Daishou’s spirit. His madra pulsed brightly in his channels, fighting against the darkness—a weaker sacred artist might have withered in that one gust.

“Eithan Arelius is a friend to the flock. He has given us great gifts.”

“Only to protect himself,” Jai Daishou insisted. “He wants to tie you down so that none can hire you against him; he has no loyalty to you.”

“Even so,” the great raven said. “To act against him would bind our soul with chains of debt. You may name another, but not a feather of ours will harm Eithan Arelius.”

* * *

“Let me tell you something about that family,” Mo She said, slamming his clay mug back down on the tavern table. “You don’t ever take a contract against an Arelius. Not a real Arelius, anyway. They always see you coming.” Mo She looked like a desiccated corpse someone had unearthed from an ancient tomb: a skeletal, shriveled man with skin tight over his bones and hair like drifting scraps of mist.

His eyes were mismatched; one a blind, milky white, and the other a statue’s eye carved of green jade.

“And then there’s this Arelius in particular,” Mo She continued. “He doesn’t just see you when you strike. He saw you when you got up this morning.”

Jai Daishou stiffened in his chair. He may be on the last leg of his mortal journey, but he was still an Underlord. He had enough power to punish insolence. “You speak of him as though he were above me.”

In the half-empty tavern, quite a few eyes turned to Jai Daishou. The barkeeper, polishing his counter with a towel, chuckled. A one-legged boy in the corner grinned at him, mocking.

They knew exactly who he was. They knew of his pride, but they showed open contempt for him anyway.

You did not join the Path of the Last Breath if you cared about staying alive.

Mo She held up his hand for peace, taking another drink as he did so. “Me and my boys would take a contract out on the heavens themselves, if the price was right. Worst that could happen is we die, right? But going up against somebody who knows you’re coming and can do something about it…well, there’s a difference between gambling and throwing your money down a well.”

From his robes, Jai Daishou withdrew a gilded box the size of his palm. He clapped it down onto the table, then slid it across to Mo She.

With his thumb, Mo She cracked the lid. As he did so, a gust of wind pushed the box all the way open, along with a pale green light. Wind aura gathered around the box, a gentle storm of green, and air rushed and spun all around the box. Mo She’s brown robes rippled in the wind, and his hair blew away from his face.

“A top-grade scale,” Jai Daishou said. “Forged by the Emperor himself. I have collected seven of these over the years, for my services to the Empire.” He had never meant to use them as currency, carrying them instead as badges of honor. But when the enemy was at the gates, you used any weapon at your disposal.

Mo She didn’t have anyone who could swallow the scale directly—it would take an Underlord to process even a fraction of this scale’s energy—but it could be used to power weapons of wind madra, to fuel a massive boundary formation, or to nurture wind-aspect sacred herbs. Failing that, Mo She could just sell it. This was the most valuable coin in the Blackflame Empire.

With clear reluctance on his face, Mo She forced the lid shut. “It’s a pretty offer, but you’d have to prove to me that he’s not watching us right now. You want somebody for a suicidal mission, sure, we're your guys. But this is just suicide.”

* * *

Even in the depths of night, the jungle air was still hot and choking. Water aura swirled in Jai Daishou’s spiritual sight, almost equal to the power of wind. But brighter than both was the vivid green of life aura, which made the dense mesh of vines and trees around him look like an emerald bonfire.

The trees loomed over him, swallowing the sky, filtering the sunlight through their wide leaves. The noise from the jungle's inhabitants was like a force itself. As ever-present as the heat, that mass of chirps, growls, screeches, and screams crushed his ears.

At the southern edge of the Blackflame Empire, this lush green expanse had once belonged to the Tanaban clan. Before they had been driven to extinction by the mad Blackflames.

Now, this was the home of a thousand squabbling families, none large or important enough to be called a clan. If the heavens provided, he could enter and leave without anyone ever knowing he'd been here.

A crash echoed through the jungle, and he tightened his veil: the technique that hid and contained his power as an Underlord. He forced his body to hurry despite the sharp pain in his knees, huddling behind a thick bush.

A tree lifted one mass of roots like a leg, taking another step forward, wading through the foliage like a man through shallow water. It crushed a sapling underfoot, and a panicked squeal cut through the noises of the jungle.

A plump creature the size of a dog shot away from the walking tree, whimpering loudly. A tenderfoot scurried off, thankfully not in Jai Daishou's direction. If he had to unveil himself and destroy one of these ancestral trees, the Underlady of the southern jungles would sense him in a blink.

Tenderfoots were like wild pigs with the long, floppy ears of rabbits. They bred quickly, fed on roots and leaves, and served as prey for most of the jungle.

A hand of vines reached down from the tree and snatched up the tenderfoot, which kicked its legs wildly as it was shoved into a widening gap in the bark. When the tree crunched down, blood and one severed leg fell to the ground.

There were thousands of ancestral trees in this jungle, and most of them fed on blood and flesh. When Jai Daishou had flown in on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, he had seen a dozen of them circling the ocean of leaves like sharks in the surf.

He had to withdraw his spiritual senses in order to maintain his veil, but he estimated this tree was only Jade. The Lowgolds could move faster, and some of them had developed eyes. The Truegolds could be crafty, in their way. Above that...

This was a vast and wild land. Some of these trees were truly ancient, and truly powerful.

When the tree had finished feeding, a flock of colorful birds fluttered down from its branches, fighting over the bits of flesh that had fallen from the plant's meal. They tugged the meat between their beaks, glaring at one another. As they fought, the nearby soil swirled up as though caught in a sudden wind.

Sacred beasts. They lived in the branches of the ancestral trees, feeding on leftovers and the occasional spirit-fruit the tree produced. In return, they helped defend their tree against rivals.

When the tree had finally gone, Jai Daishou progressed. The scripted eight-sided plate in his hands glowed softly blue to the north-northwest, so he headed that way.

He wasn't supposed to know the exact location of this prison, and it would go badly for him if anyone knew he'd marked it for later return. The Deepwalker Ape had killed thousands before it was finally subdued by the previous Empress, and officially it had been executed.

Unofficially, the bloodthirsty creature had been given to the Underlady of the South to imprison. One did not simply throw away an Underlord-level sacred beast. Not when it could be turned to the good of the Empire someday.

Jai Daishou intended to turn it to the good of the Jai clan instead.

He finally reached his goal in a clearing: a massive boulder the size of a house, dropped into a ring of trees as though it had fallen from the sky. Now that he was out of the shade, the sun beat down so hard that even he began to sweat. A human without a robust Iron body might have been killed by this heat.

The Underlord struck one unremarkable knob of rock, and a hidden circle lit white. He repeated that process six times in different places, and finally the aura in the area shimmered and dispersed.

A formation designed to lock the boulder in place. If he hadn't helped design this prison, he would never have been able to remove this lid. And only careful interrogation of some of his old friends, who had actually placed the seal, allowed him to find its location.

Now, though...

He braced his hands against the blistering hot rock, Enforcing his body with madra. The flow of power strained against his veil, almost revealing him, but he limited himself to the level of a Truegold. Even so, his soulfire-forged body had advantages no Gold could ever hope to imitate.

Jai Daishou shouted, both to chase away the pain in his joints and to focus his attention. He pushed against the rocky soil, shoving the boulder forward.

His feet started to dig down into the ground, and he used a quick Ruler technique to add force aura to his push. Force was not quite his chosen Path—sword aura was a specific adaptation of force aura, but in practice, they were cousins at best—but his mastery was such that it was enough. The stone slid away from its resting-place, slamming into a pair of trees with a crunch and knocking them over.

The lid's removal revealed a wide, circular pit ten yards across. A stench billowed up from within, like blood and sweat and carrion left to rot in the sun, but its contents were shrouded in absolute darkness.

Jai Daishou drew himself up despite the aching in his back, Enforcing his lungs. “Ape!” he shouted down. “Jai Daishou, Underlord of the Jai clan, brings you freedom!”

Except for the buzz of insects and scream of a distant cat, silence reigned.

He looked to the edges of the hole, where chains thicker than his wrists were still securely anchored. They were steel with veins of halfsilver, and they should anchor the ape's madra as well as its massive strength.

The last he'd seen the creature, it was half-mad with rage, and had sworn bloody revenge against the Imperial clan and every Underlord in the Empire. This beast would be a disaster, one that he was reluctant to unleash on the Empire, but it shouldn't be too hard to steer it toward the Arelius family first. Afterwards, it could be dealt with.

But he had expected it to howl and rage at the sight of him. Instead, it was quiet. Was it dead? Or had it learned patience in its long imprisonment?

Jai Daishou reached out to the power of the sunlight around him. There was no light aura in the pit, but it was strong up here. He gathered the light with his Ruler technique, focusing it, shining it down into the pit as though he were magnifying it through a telescope.

The beam shone down, revealing the distant bottom of the pit. The prison was a long cylinder, many stories deep, its walls circled with security scripts. The Deepwalker Ape should have waited at the bottom, staring up at him in rage. Or its body should have lain there, broken after decades of isolation.

Instead, the floor was spotlessly clean. No fur, no muck, no blood. Nothing.

Only two characters scratched into the stone floor, so large that they were visible from the entrance so far above.

Two words: “Nice try.”

Jai Daishou didn't need to have seen the characters before to recognize Eithan Arelius' handwriting.

He staggered back from the edge of the pit, clutching his stomach. All his life, he had heard of people coughing up blood in anger. He had always thought of it as an expression, an artistic way of illustrating the toxic feel of anger.

But now, he really felt as though he were choking back blood. It had taken him weeks to reach this jungle, far from his lands. And it cost him a small fortune to keep it secret.

All the while, he had been nothing but a fool dancing in Eithan's hand.

Jai Daishou actually did cough then, and he spat into his palm. The saliva was stained red.

So you could cough up blood in rage. Or perhaps his time was even closer than he'd thought.

In a fury, Jai Daishou tore away the veil over his core, uncaring of the consequences. He cycled his madra to its limit, and white blades of light shredded the trees, tearing apart the forest in time with his rage.

The Deepwalker Ape had been the last piece he could play with only one life on the line. The last weapon he could buy so cheaply.

But now? Now, he would see Eithan dead at any cost. If his clan had to burn, if the Empire itself did, Eithan Arelius would burn with it.

* * *

Lindon sat with legs crossed, surrounded by a ring of fifty candles. With his eyes shut, he could feel the aura around him.

Fire aura, bright and red, radiated from each of the candles. He pulled wisps of it into his core, pushing it through his madra channels in time with each of his slow, measured breaths.

In his time here—however long that had been—he had reached a deeper understanding of the Path of Black Flame. At first, he had seen fire and destruction as two entirely separate powers. He had wondered how he could possibly train both, without access to a dragon's den like the one in Serpent's Grave.

But the aura of fire and destruction went hand-in-hand. Even now, tiny sparks of black power surrounded the wicks of the fifty candles as they were burned away by the flames. Destruction aura. He could harvest almost five times as much fire aura as destruction, but he limited himself. Balance was important...or so he'd learned after his madra had revolted and he'd scorched the back of his hand.

In his core, he visualized a stone wheel grinding away with a deliberate, agonizingly slow rhythm. It pushed at the boundaries of his core, stretching him, expanding his spirit.

Even after all this time, the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel still felt like breathing through a thin straw. Sweat covered his forehead, his lungs burned, and each inhale was ragged. Only determination kept him breathing in time with the cycling technique.

Of course, it was more than just the restrictive technique that was making him feel trapped. There was also the fact that he was, quite literally, in prison. Not that you'd know it from his surroundings.

The Skysworn had brought him here directly after leaving Serpent's Grave. They had dumped him into this room and left without answering a single question. If not for his twice-daily meals, he would assume that they had forgotten him.

At first, he hadn't thought of these rooms as a prison cell. They didn't look like one. For one thing, they were rooms. He had a privy equipped with water-generating constructs, a small bedroom, and a sitting-room. The furniture was polished and finely carved, and the walls were smooth wood. His meals were simple but varied, and he was served tea with each one.

He wanted to burn through the walls and escape.

Every time he shut his eyes to cycle, it felt as though the walls shrunk to an inch from his skin. He remembered his time sealed in the Transcendent Ruins, and sometimes he had to snap his eyes open to remind himself that he wasn't still there.

He actually had burned through a panel of the wooden wall to see if escape was possible. The wood was only a finger thick, with scripted stone beneath that did not give way to Blackflame. If he became more desperate, he might try blasting through even that.

He needed out. He didn't even know how long he'd been here—he had no window by which to judge the passing of time, and they'd confiscated his pack. He could have counted meal deliveries, but he hadn't thought of that until it was too late. The duel with Jai Long was approaching, and he wasn't ready. They might wrench open his door one day and haul him to his death.

It couldn’t have been more than a week. Could it?

Even if freedom was too much to ask, he just needed a word. He could speak to his jailors through the door as they delivered his meal, and they would provide him with any reasonable request. They'd given him a few books on cycling theory, several loads of candles, and a new teacup when he'd broken his first. But they wouldn't speak to him. He was at the point where he would trade one of his meals for a single—

Boots tapped against the stone outside. Mealtime already.

The steps grew louder, and he snapped out of his cycling trance. He jumped to his feet, wiping the sweat from his face and preparing a smile. They glanced in sometimes, and he wanted them to see him in control and friendly, not desperate. They might take desperation as hostility, and treat him as an enemy. An enemy might never get out.

The boots stopped. The top half of his wooden door could swing open separately, leaving the bottom half in place. There were bars behind the top half, and they could hand him his food and tea through the bars. Unfortunately, that always gave him a clear look at the person who was refusing to talk to him. If they were faceless, sliding his meals under the door, maybe he could forget that they were humans at all. Pretend that his food was delivered by construct.

As he had for every other meal delivery, he stood with back straight and waited with a smile for the top half to swing open.

This time, he was left smiling at his door. Firmly shut.

He kept his expression in place as each breath stretched on. He hadn't heard anyone walk away, so surely someone was still there. Was this silence designed to make him uncomfortable? Or had it only been a few seconds, and his frantic mind was stretching each instant into an eternity?

He took three deliberate breaths and confirmed that no, they really were making him wait. Why? Every other day, they had simply delivered the food.

An instant later, he was given his answer.

The door swung open.

Normally, a balding old man delivered a box with his meal in it, collected his old box, and left without a word. Lindon had deliberately not picked up his old box today, in the hopes of prodding a sentence out of the man—a demand, a curse, anything. It hadn't worked when he'd tried that before, as the man had simply gestured and the wind had carried Lindon's empty box to him, but surely anything worth trying was worth trying twice.

Eithan and Yerin stood outside, both smiling.

The Underlord had a smug grin on his face, hands in the pockets of his blue silk robes, long yellow hair tied behind him. He looked like a child who had the satisfaction of seeing a trick he'd pulled work flawlessly.

Yerin's smile came with a breath of relief, as though she hadn't expected to find him here. He stared at her like he hadn't seen her for months: her skin covered by razor-thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, and two silver blades hanging over her shoulders. A sword was buckled onto her hip, strapped onto a red belt that seemed to be made of liquid...or perhaps a living Remnant.

Even after all the times she’d saved his life, he’d still never been happier to see her.

Eithan...he couldn't be quite so happy to see Eithan. Usually, when the Arelius Patriarch popped up unannounced, that meant he was about to put Lindon through something dangerous.

Lindon stared at them for longer than was appropriate. He knew his eyes were wide and his lips parted, but he still couldn't quite believe that they were here. Now, with no hint and no warning.

“You like looking at me so much, I might get the wrong idea,” Yerin said, grinning and rapping her knuckles on the lower half of the door, which was still shut. “You going to ask us in, or what?”

Lindon stammered for a few moments before saying, “...in? You're not coming to get me out?”

Eithan put on an offended look even as he levered the handle and slid the rest of the door open. “Get you out? After all the trouble we went through breaking in here? That would just be rude.”

He shut both halves of the door behind them when they entered.

Yerin glanced around the room and nodded approvingly. “Not bad. Can't even call this a proper prison, can you?”

Eithan ran his hands over the scorched hole in the wall paneling. “Ah, what happened here? Training accident?”

“No, I was trying to escape. I stopped because I thought you might come for me.”

“Just to visit you,” Eithan said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. “Looks like you have a cozy place to call your own. I wouldn't want to ruin that.”

Lindon had no response.

Yerin kicked the side of Eithan's leg so hard that it sounded like a hammer hitting the ground, but the Underlord didn't so much as flinch.

“The Skysworn say they haven't arrested you,” Yerin explained. “They like to fiddle with words. Basically, they're keeping you like a fish in a pond so they can keep an eye on you. You're not in danger.”

That was a relief, but it didn't explain why they weren't freeing him.

Eithan buffed his fingernails on the edge of his robe. “I'd prefer not to antagonize the Skysworn more than I already have, but I couldn't let your training stagnate with such an important deadline looming. So I decided to bring the training to you! We can all three continue our pursuits in this very room. Convenient, isn't it?”

Lindon wouldn't have called it convenient, but he still had to admit he was greatly relieved to see them here. At least he wouldn't be alone anymore. And there were some burning questions he finally had the chance to ask.

From his pocket, he withdrew a glass ball that burned with a blue flame in the very center. The Skysworn had confiscated it from him—along with most of his belongings—when they brought him here, but it had appeared beside him one morning when he woke up.

“You showed me something like this before,” Lindon said, voice low. “Where did you get it?”

Eithan tapped his fingers together. “That's an interesting first question. You don't want to know about my Path, perhaps? The techniques I could teach you?”

“Of course, yes. But this first.”

“Very well. I inherited it from my family.”

Lindon waited for more, but none came.

“Did you know all along?” He asked. “Is that why you...picked me?”

This was one of the questions that had needled him ever since he'd seen Eithan produce the marble with the void at its heart. Had Eithan really singled him out because he saw a singular opportunity, or because he'd recognized Suriel's marble? Was Lindon only special because of the glass ball in his hand?

Eithan patted the pocket on his right hip. “I keep mine in here. Close your eyes and stretch out your perception, if you would.”

Lindon followed instructions, reaching out to sense Eithan with the extra sense he'd developed when he grew to Jade. He was still growing used to the impressions given by his spiritual sense—it seemed to only feel the nature of madra, ignoring anything physical, so something could feel as though it was right next to you even if it was blocked off by a brick wall.

At first, he felt Yerin's power: sharp, cold, and somehow not fully formed, like a gemstone halfway through cutting. The sword on her hip gave off a different power, distant and cold as a far-off mountain. He couldn't get a grasp of exactly how powerful that weapon was. Her belt...he pulled his perception away from the belt. It always made him think of murder, of blood-drenched hands and the scent of a slaughterhouse.

He felt almost nothing from Eithan, as though the man were made of air. Eithan had mentioned before that he wrapped his core in a veil: a technique that allowed him to mask his power. Lindon wondered if Eithan would teach him, now that he had enough power to mask.

Sharpening his focus, he dove into Eithan's pocket and encountered...a gap.

He wouldn't have noticed anything strange if he hadn't been specifically looking for it, but it was like something in Eithan's pocket was hidden, concealed so that he couldn't sense a hint. He pushed further, tightening his perception, trying to penetrate it.

He may as well have saved his effort. Confused, he ran his perception into the marble he carried. Suriel's marble was warm and comforting, even to his spiritual sense, and it also brought a sense of order, of rightness. Like the flame added something into the world, rather than taking it away.

When Lindon opened his eyes, Eithan dipped into his pocket and withdrew the void marble. He held it up so that Lindon could see: a perfectly clear orb the size of a man's thumbnail with a perfectly dark hole in the center. Lindon still felt nothing, as though the object had no power whatsoever.

“The legacy of my bloodline works slightly differently,” Eithan explained. “An Arelius sees things as though with our physical senses, seeing and hearing and smelling rather than picking up on spiritual perception. As such, I saw the marble in your pocket like a ball of glass...but I could see nothing inside.”

He closed his own eyes and nodded. “Even now, I can see you holding a transparent ball, but I can see no blue flame.” He tossed his own marble up and caught it. “As for mine, however, I can pierce it quite easily with both my bloodline powers and my perception. It is the same for you, yes?”

Lindon nodded slowly. “So what did you think it was?”

“Naturally, I assumed there was something inside. I thought it was a Lord-stage barrier meant to protect a small treasure, or perhaps a pill or construct. And I was very curious to learn what Copper had caught the eye of an Underlord. It was only later that I began to suspect it had been produced by someone far above any Underlord.”

He held up the void marble, inspecting it. “As far as I knew, this was the only example of such a heavenly relic in the world. If I ran into another, I would have expected it to look like mine. How interesting that I was wrong.”

“I would love to hear that story,” Lindon said, sensing an opportunity. “I'm only too happy to share mine.”

“He is,” Yerin confirmed, fiddling with one of the edges of her outer robe. She must have been bored. “Shared it with me more than once.”

“And I would be delighted to listen,” Eithan said, closing his fist around his marble. “Later. Unless this heavenly messenger told you something urgent?”

Suriel had said he had thirty years, and he'd spent slightly more than one. He supposed he could wait a little longer, though the curiosity might kill him in the meantime. He sighed and shook his head.

The glass ball vanished into Eithan's pocket. “Excellent! Consider our conversation a prize for when you defeat Jai Long, hm? Something to look forward to.”

Lindon dipped his head in acknowledgement, but he wasn't satisfied. Suriel had seen something in him, even if he wasn't quite sure what that was. She must have seen something in Eithan as well, or at least someone else up there had.

Eithan had said more than once that he wanted to pursue the sacred arts to their height. And he thought Lindon and Yerin had what it took to join him.

Maybe the heavens thought so too.

2

Outpost 01: Oversight

People from various worlds often likened the Way to a tree, or a branching vine. Suriel had always thought of it more as a network of veins, stretching out in all directions from a central heart. The Way touched everything, bringing order, stability, and protection from the ravages of the void. Only in the shelter of the Way could life and reason exist.

In the center of that heart of the Way, at the nexus of everything that existed, was Oversight.

As she drifted in endless blue, thousands of kilometers away, she could see the entire station: one blue-and-green planet of standard size orbited by no less than sixteen moons. Each of the moons was so close that it almost looked like they skated along the planet's surface, and she could see city lights blanketing every surface over all seventeen spheres.

This was the headquarters of Makiel's First Division: the Hounds.

He had created this system himself, hand-selecting the fragments from the void and binding them together with the force of his will. He had positioned it here, manipulating the Way to enforce natural laws. The inhabitants of Outpost lived as naturally as they would in an Iteration, but with an endless blue sky devoid of sun or stars.

Twelve billion people lived here, and the vast majority of them were not Abidan. They were simply people. They went about their lives, living and dying with no knowledge of the greater cosmos.

These were his ties to Fate. Every sentient being was a tie to the Way, and even here at the heart of it all, Makiel wanted to be closer.

As staggered as she was every time she thought about the vast expenditure of time and personal power that must have gone into the creation of this outpost, it frightened her as much as it impressed her. Every other division of the Abidan was headquartered on Sanctum, so they shared a cultural understanding that facilitated interaction.

Not the Hounds. The First Division was centered here.

They tracked targets forward and backwards in time, reading Fate to find criminals and predict disasters, and their official excuse for their location was a desire to see as clearly as possible.

Suriel had no doubt that was true. From Oversight, a sufficiently talented Hound could glimpse the destiny of every Iteration in existence. It was especially easy to locate those places where one Iteration's fate overlapped another's, and investigate for violations.

But even here, she couldn't sense Cradle.

She touched the Way—so easy here—and simply adjusted her position in space. One blue flash later, she stood on an endless arctic plain, a layer of gray clouds overhead and snow drifting in the wind.

The north pole of Oversight’s main planet. Makiel’s home.

She glanced down at the two hundred meters of snow and ice beneath her: this was Makiel’s front door.

Suriel tapped the Way, flexing her authority as the sixth Judge of the Abidan Court. Blue power flared from her back like wings, and the seal on the door responded.

A symbol shone blue in response: a three-headed dog, one hundred meters in diameter. The symbol of the Hounds.

The ice cracked, sliding apart, snow trickling down in white waterfalls. The ice split beneath her feet, but she stayed floating in the air until it had parted enough for her shoulders. Then she let herself drift downwards.

Into Makiel’s lair.

The room beneath her was huge, hundreds of meters, its tiles marked in a giant circle of runes meant to focus sight. It was lit by a diffuse purple glow, all emanating from violet-edged “screens” that floated in the air at various heights. These were celestial lenses, used by Judges and most high-ranking Abidan for monitoring Iterations from the Way. They displayed images of the future, which looked odd to the naked eye, as though they showed dreams. Actions would have two results, or would rewind and play again on a loop. Numbers flashed with each image: chance of occurrence, temporal deviation, Iteration number, and so on.

The lenses opened like eyes even as others blinked shut. They were rectangles, some as small as a palm and others as big as a barn wall, all angled toward the center of the room. The chamber was packed with them, such that no one could possibly see them all at once.

Unless you were both powerful and very skilled.

Makiel stood in the center, surrounded by eyes. Manifestations of his Presence. His white-gauntleted hands were a blur of motion as he tapped one eye and another, transmitting messages to one sector or another. When he tapped an eye, it flashed blue and disappeared, transferred through the Way to its destination. For every eye that disappeared, a celestial lens vanished.

By her brief count, he was tracking over a thousand threads of Fate at once, over hundreds of different worlds. Any other Judge would have delegated this work, in order to focus their power and attention only where it was needed. Not Makiel. The only busier Judge should be Telariel, the Spider, who coordinated communications for all the Abidan and simultaneously scouted for invasions…but he used his subordinates to cover practically every one of his duties.

No wonder Makiel’s Hounds worshiped him so. He was worth a division all on his own.

The First Judge himself had an unremarkable appearance. He looked like a natural human, as though his genetics had remained the same since birth. Suriel, and every other Abidan she knew, had altered themselves in some way to improve their performance. Rumor said that Makiel never had, and that he worked solely on natural talent, but of course he would never allow a scan to confirm those rumors.

He had dark brown skin, slightly wrinkled like a man in his fifties, and silver at the wings of his black, short hair. He was trim and solidly built, with a square jaw; as a girl, she would have said he looked like a soldier. Only his eyes stood out, blazing a brighter violet than the celestial lenses around him, as he watched Fate.

“Suriel,” he said, and his voice resonated through the room. “Will you verify for the record that Ozriel is dead?”

Her Presence had prepared her for this. Suriel had not told Sector Twenty-one the story of the survivors she’d pulled from Ozriel’s shelter, but Makiel’s mandate included watching the past as well as the future. Her actions would have alerted him, and he would be able to piece together a picture of the truth, even from the ashes of a dead world.

“I cannot,” she responded, finally settling down on the tiled floor. “I am not myself convinced.” She could feel the energy passing through the circle beneath her feet, urging her to gaze into the future.

Makiel’s hands were still a blur, eyes fluttering into existence and then vanishing several times a second. He didn’t seem to be looking at her, but she knew he saw everything. “Yet he was already missing. Why stage his death?”

The First Judge would have considered all the possibilities already. He was asking her for her opinion, so she gave it.

“To encourage us to look for a replacement,” she said. “He has left us in a scenario where we have no choice but to act as though he is dead. He may have thought that we would simply wait for him to return, even as the cosmos crumbled around us.”

[Based on models of Ozriel’s personality, this explanation is sixty-two percent convincing,] her Presence told her. [And only eighteen percent likely to be the sole explanation.]

Makiel’s hands paused for half a second, and she felt a ripple in Fate as possibilities began tumbling like a handful of dice. For her to feel such a working even in the midst of his normal activity meant he had exerted himself. To check something, or to change something? She would have to investigate later.

“It seems your task has ended, Suriel,” he said at last. “That took much less time than I anticipated. Ninety-two out of a hundred projections had you on his trail for decades.”

Her own predictions had suggested as much. “And a twelve percent chance of finding him eventually,” she added. “In those cases, I had a ninety-one percent chance of persuading him to return. How were your odds?”

Makiel gestured, and his Presence stopped manifesting. The arc of eyeballs in front of him vanished, with a single purple eye hovering over his shoulder just as the gray ghost hovered on Suriel’s. The celestial lenses in the room all remained frozen in the air, emitting violet light and flickering with images and scrolling numbers.

His eyes blazed as he faced her, crossing his hands behind his back. “Tell me. What were you doing in Harrow?”

Anger flooded her system, but she flushed it out. He was provoking her, just as Gadrael had when he had sent her to Harrow. On Makiel’s orders.

“Is the Hound’s eye so blind that he can no longer see his own actions?”

“Gadrael was ordered to show you the cost of Ozriel’s absence. You chose to stay and cleanse the world yourself.”

Which he had surely known she would do, but she remained silent. She would not give him excuses.

“It only cost you a handful of standard months, but those were months in which you were not seeking Ozriel. That you stumbled on evidence of him was due to his foresight, not your own success as a hunter. And where were you before that?”

It was dangerous, here in the heart of Makiel’s power, but she couldn’t let him play her like a puppet. She activated her eyes and scanned Fate.

Immediately, she saw where he was headed with this line of questioning. He hadn’t bothered to hide it. Her stomach twisted, and her anger gained greater heat before she choked it off.

“You were in Cradle,” he continued, overlooking her glimpse into the future. “Where you knew you would not find Ozriel, because he could not hide there. He would have a better chance of hiding in Sanctum itself than in Cradle, but you knew you had a plausible excuse for checking his home world.”

“I want to restore the Abidan,” she said, her power crackling blue in the air between them. “You have been tearing the wound deeper for centuries.”

She was trying to distract him, to pull him away from his plan, but he remained doggedly focused. “You went to Cradle for a breath of fresh air, to consider your options, to decide if you wanted to hunt Ozriel at all. Convenient, then, that your search has ended before you ever started looking for him.”

He would go on for another minute if she didn’t stop him. He would say that she had been manipulated by the Reaper, and allowed him his freedom. That if Ozriel was still on their side, he would have told Suriel before his departure. She was his closest friend on the Court, after all. There was no need to hide it from her, and then place an elaborate distraction to keep her from looking for him.

He was controlling her. Looking down on her. Exploiting her sympathy.

That was the Hound’s objective. Since she couldn’t deflect him, she cut straight to it. “If he didn’t want me looking for him, there were easier ways to stop me.”

“He knew you could find him,” Makiel said. “Your odds of finding him must have been much higher without this plan. Since I didn’t know about his fake death scene, I couldn’t factor it into my projections. He blinded me, and he kept you sidetracked.”

“Then he succeeded. I’m returning to my division.” She tapped into the Way, preparing to depart directly. Leaving this way was disrespectful, but she was beyond caring. She always left Makiel irritated if not disgusted. He had only summoned her here to produce the results he wanted, and then he had the nerve to accuse someone else of manipulation.

The worst part was, he was probably right. Ozriel could have warned her about his departure, but he hadn’t. He had moved her like a pawn to be manipulated.

She would feel better if he really were dead.

“The quarantine,” Makiel said, before she left. “I would like your vote.”

“Ozriel said he left a total of sixteen shelters,” she said, light tearing into a blue-edged portal overlooking Iteration 001: Sanctum. “Evacuate the other fifteen, prepare those worlds for corruption, and you have my vote.”

“Already done.” When she turned back to the portal, he continued. “Now, let’s talk about the changes you made to Cradle.”

Behind her, all the screens vanished except one, which swelled to take up the whole wall.

It showed Wei Shi Lindon. He was tall and broad-shouldered, with short black hair and his expression locked in a glower. He looked sullen even when he was fast asleep, and she knew his face alone had provoked more than one fight.

That face was even more unpleasant now.

His eyes were solid black but for the irises, which were solid red. They shone as black fire gathered within his hands. He was practicing a new Path.

[The Path of Black Flame,] her Presence supplied. [Its sacred artists imitate the power of a tribe of black dragons.]

Suriel didn’t care about those details at the moment. Why had Makiel shown her this?

She turned, allowing her portal to close.

Makiel fully faced the image on the lens, his hands still behind his back, looking away from her. “What changes did you make in this young man’s life?” he asked.

She told the truth, as it would not matter. The Eledari Pact only prevented Abidan from changing the destiny of a healthy Iteration. Saving one young man’s life wouldn’t have altered anything. “He was caught in a spatial violation, which I reverted. After conversing with him, I determined that he was fated to die in a disaster, and I set him on a course to prevent it.”

“You stayed within the bounds of the Pact,” Makiel agreed. “But someone else did not.”

Cradle’s deviation. It hadn’t been her interference after all. But who…

The answer came to her before she even finished answering the question.

“Ozriel left something behind, it seems,” Makiel went on. “For his descendants.”

The picture changed to show a man in his early thirties, handsome and smiling, with blond hair trailing behind him. He wore a silk robe of fine blue, and he looked down fondly on someone: Yerin, the girl that Suriel had told Lindon to seek. She scowled at a pale white sword as she knelt on the ground, invisible blades cutting at the dirt around her and nicking the edges of her robes. Two silver blades hung on thin arms over her shoulders: Goldsigns.

The man was training her. Eithan Arelius, an Underlord in the Arelius family.

A touch of anger entered Makiel’s voice. “Ozriel’s bloodline, from before he was Ozriel. He worked against us before he ever gained his Mantle.”

Now it was starting to come together in Suriel’s mind. Some artifact of Ozriel’s had been recently found by one of his descendants, altering that man’s destiny. Then Suriel’s actions had changed Lindon’s direction.

And the two had collided.

On their own, neither of those changes had been significant. Together, they would be exponentially more dangerous. And more difficult to predict.

“Their actions would have affected all of Cradle,” the Hound said. “They would work for decades, changing the Iteration, and eventually derailing it entirely. I cannot see any further than thirty years in Cradle’s future.”

That was chilling. Either it meant that Cradle would be destroyed so soon, or it would have changed so drastically that its relationship to Fate shifted. Either way, they couldn’t jeopardize their Cradle. It produced an Abidan candidate every century or so: far more than any other Iteration.

“I will resolve this,” Suriel said heavily.

“This is a violation of Fate. It is the mandate of Makiel.” He shifted his gaze to her. “However, I will act with a gentle hand. I intend to accelerate events so that they cannot stay within the confines of the world for so long. The faster they are gone, the lesser the damage.”

“You have a solution?”

“I believe I do. If I am successful, their world itself will eventually force them to leave, and will not tolerate their staying and making alterations. However, this does increase the personal risk to both subjects.”

The odds were already stacked against Lindon, but the alternative was manipulating his memory and sending him home. This was a peace offering from Makiel to her, fixing the problem she had helped create while keeping her favored mortal intact. All the while demonstrating the damage that Ozriel’s meddling could cause.

She appreciated the gesture. Perhaps Makiel was willing to work together for unity after all.

Suriel nodded, and the Hound reached up to his Presence.

* * *

Jai Daishou stood before a stone door, weighing his life in his mind.

The door was marked with a familiar symbol, one that had remained embedded in his memory for decades. It was etched with four beasts: on the top, a coiling dragon surrounded by rain and crackling with lightning. On the bottom, a phoenix with feathers like drops of blood. To the right, an armored warrior with the shell of a turtle and a sword so rough it was almost a club. To the left, a tiger seated on treasure and crowned with light.

This was more than just a decoration. It was a warning.

By his oath to the Empire, he should not open this door. It was located inside Jai clan territory, beneath a lake and past miles of underground tunnel. This was the deepest into the labyrinth he—or anyone else—had ever dared to delve since the demise of the old Blackflame Empire.

Behind him, in the shallow chambers, had once been a series of Gold-stage weapons and devices left by ancient Soulsmiths. His clan had plundered that chamber decades ago.

But here...past this door were weapons for Lords. Ancient records described a few of their number, and with any one of them, he could shoot to the top of the Underlord rankings. With some, he could declare himself Emperor.

Of course, opening this door was punishable by the death of one's entire clan. Part of his mandate as Patriarch of the Jai clan was to prevent anyone from entering.

It was forbidden not because of the power of its contents, but because of their danger. When this door had been opened before, it had called disaster down on the entire continent.

But then, it had remained open for years. Now, he would be in and out in a flash. No one would ever know.

The Dreadgods wouldn't be watching so closely.

He had even consulted some oracles, who confirmed that there was no hint of the Dreadgods in their dreams. At least not for several decades.

That was good enough for him. But still he hesitated.

Every day of his life, he had been taught to serve his clan so that his clan could serve the Empire. In his earlier rage against Eithan Arelius, he had been willing to risk this, but now that he faced it...was he really willing to put everything at risk?

He thought of his clan, doomed to slide into obscurity without him to lead them. If he opened this door and was detected, they would be executed by either the Dreadgods or the Empire. No matter how good his odds, was he really willing to roll the dice with his family's lives?

But what kind of lives would they be, without an Underlord at their helm? They would not enjoy the respect, the standard of living to which they had become accustomed. They would have to live like paupers.

Dithering over a decision for so long wasn't like him. He was a man of action.

And he couldn't wait to see the smile torn from Eithan Arelius' face.

With a ward key in each hand, he pressed them against the script-circles to the sides of the door. He had to pour most of his madra into the circles before they activated—far more than he anticipated, enough that the loss of power left him gasping for air—and those didn't even open the door. They caused a pedestal to rise from the floor, set with yet another circle of script.

On his fingertips, he ignited soulfire. The gray, almost colorless flame danced for a moment before being sucked into the script.

It drew more, enough that he was glad he had woven extra soulfire before coming. When it had finished devouring a stream of dull fire, it flickered once and then slid back down into the ground.

This time, the door swung silently open.

Power washed out, flooding him with awe. He glanced at the aura, which seemed both shining white and utter black at the same time, as though he couldn't see through the doorway because it was both too bright and too dark. Either way, the aura blinded his spiritual sight, and he had to close down that sense as he stepped inside the ancient storehouse.

He couldn't shut the door behind him while he was inside, or he'd be sealed within to die alone, so he had to be quick.

It had taken them years to notice before, so he could probably take his time, but he thought he might as well minimize his risk.

The room was a hallway, set on either side with walls of polished wooden cabinets from floor to the ceiling, fifteen feet above his head. That hallway continued as far as he could see...and as an Underlord, he could see quite far indeed.

For a moment, he felt as though he'd stumbled onto a dragon's hoard. He was shocked by the sheer value of what was presented before him, overwhelmed by the weight of wealth.

He wanted it all.

He was surprised at his own greed, but his hands trembling as he reached to open the first cabinet. The bottom row of cubbies was the largest, big enough to contain a large dog, but each row got progressively smaller up to the top, far above his head. Those were only the size of his fist.

If each of these cabinets, down this endless hallway, contained precious treasures of the ancients...there might be millions of weapons down here. He might have enough to buy the entire Empire.

Or to destroy it.

The cabinet was smooth to the touch, and he seized the wooden handle and pulled it open.

It was empty.

So was its neighbor, and the eighteen others he checked in an instant. He was sweating by this point, his gut heavy with disappointment. Where had all his wealth gone?

He shook himself. He wasn't worried about riches, but about the fate of his family.

He had to tell himself that very firmly.

Ten more empty cabinets went by before he found something: a ring of pure white, scripted inside and out, set with a single black gemstone. He had no records of this, so he swept his spirit through it.

He couldn't sense anything. It would be an Overlord weapon, then, or perhaps even one for Archlords.

Reluctantly, he set it back and shut the door. He left all the empty ones open.

He moved to the next cabinet feeling like an idiot. Why couldn't he take the ring? Surely he should stuff his pockets.

He knew why: because everything he took was another chance to get caught, and he could only carry one object at a time in his soulspace. He had to find a weapon he recognized if he wanted to kill Eithan Arelius. Anything else would only weigh him down.

Ten more minutes passed before he found something that initially excited him: a duplicate of the Ancestor's Spear.

Until he realized it was cracked in the middle. The scripts around the edges of the cabinet were preserving it, keeping it from dissolving, but he would need a Soulsmith to repair it. Which may or may not succeed.

He tucked the two halves of the spear away; it wouldn’t be enough on its own, but at least he wasn’t leaving empty-handed.

Finally, when he was almost ready to give up, he pulled open a cabinet the size of his head. The object inside was so unremarkable at first glance that it wouldn't have grabbed his attention anywhere else. Only that it was here, important enough to seal up, drew his focus.

It was a crystal ball slightly bigger than a hand, filled with a dim, diffuse light. The light swirled like smoke, as though something invisible swam within.

He touched it with his spirit, and felt an endless will to devour that almost consumed him. He wanted to tear through every cabinet, cramming his pockets full. So what if he died in here? He would die the richest man in the world. The will of an Underlord was not so easily swayed, and he resisted.

But he recognized this device from the records. It was perfect.

He focused his power onto it, then took in a deep breath. As though he had inhaled it, the stone vanished and reappeared inside his spirit.

Inside him, above his core and behind the cage of his tangled madra channels, a crystal ball floated. It seemed to orbit his soulfire, as though the two attracted one another but could draw no closer.

His soulspace was full, and he may have even obtained a replacement for the Ancestor’s Spear. This may have been the most profitable day of his life; it was cause for celebration.

No matter how much he might be leaving behind.

Feeling as though he were leaving behind his own limbs, he left the chamber and sealed it once again behind him. The satisfaction of success carried him away, and allowed him to break the hold of whatever feelings had swallowed him back in the storehouse.

Armed with this Archstone, he couldn't lose.

* * *

Information requested: Makiel’s influence on Cradle

Beginning report…

The Jai Patriarch exits the labyrinth proud of his prize. The facility's unique aura shone like a beacon for the duration of his visit: twenty-six minutes.

In ninety-nine out of a hundred projections, this aura goes unnoticed. Jai Daishou returns from his trip safely. There is only a negligible chance that a Dreadgod will notice this aura, which calls to them like the scent of meat to a predator, and choose to investigate. His gamble has paid off.

Influence detected: designation zero-zero-one, Makiel.

Makiel's influence confirmed. Recalculating...

The possibility of a Dreadgod noticing increases in likelihood as the probability shifts. The will of the Hound bends Fate, twisting chance.

Currently, there is only one Dreadgod within range: the Bleeding Phoenix. Hundreds of miles to the south, it rests beneath a city of tattered cloth. Its servants, the Redmoon Hall, attend to its feeding as it sleeps.

During the first twenty-five minutes, the Dreadgod tosses and turns, sending shivers through the members of Redmoon Hall. They sense their master's needs through the parasites embedded in their bodies, and they seek the cause of its distress.

On the twenty-sixth minute, as the aura fades, the Bleeding Phoenix regains a fraction of its consciousness. It catches the scent of power it has almost forgotten, power long lost. It calls to a memory buried deep in the creature's awareness.

For the first time in centuries, its bloody feathers stir.

The members of Redmoon Hall, from Jade to Herald, fall to their knees in supplication. Their master has spoken to them through its Blood Shadows, preparing them.

They must head north and pave the way.

Suggested topic: Yerin, reluctant host of a sealed Blood Shadow. Continue?

Topic accepted, continuing report...

Yerin is seeking the voice of the Sword Sage as she cycles. She has uncovered four of his memories since achieving Highgold, and combs over them every day for fragments of his wisdom. The remaining memories in his Remnants will help polish her techniques, if not advance her to Truegold.

At the moment the Bleeding Phoenix contacts its subordinates, she feels a sudden restlessness, an urge to rise to her feet and destroy everything around her. The call seems to be pushing her north.

She shifts in her meditation, uncomfortable, but she knows where this compulsion comes from.

An idle hand moves behind her, to feel the knot tied in her Blood Shadow, which she wears as a belt. Her fingertips pass through it as though through a liquid, though nothing remains on her skin.

The thought is pushed aside, a momentary distraction, and she returns to her training.

Report complete.

3

Renfei finished buckling on the green plates of her Skysworn armor, clipped the dark hammer to her belt, and sent a whisper of spiritual awareness to test the Thousand-Mile Cloud preserved inside her armor. It was fully powered and ready to deploy.

And so was she.

She pulled her hair back and tied it into a tail, then walked to the door. As she expected, Bai Rou was waiting on the other side. He had to bend down to see her through the doorframe.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Time's up,” she responded. “Let's go get him.”

Bai Rou, her partner in the Skysworn, was two feet taller than she was and twice as broad. He always wore a hat woven from dried stalks, which cast a shadow across his face. Only his eyes shone from within the darkness, bright yellow—his Goldsign. He wore the same armor she did, though his was three sizes bigger and he carried no hammer.

They had to travel down cramped hallways lit only by flickering, damaged rune-lights—no one had done the maintenance on these scripts for years.

Fortunately, their destination was nearby.

They reached the end of the hallway in a minute, in front of a...well, it wasn't a door. More like a thick metal plate bolted to the wall, with a script in the center.

This script wasn't derelict, like the others. The custodians of the prison knew better than to allow actual security to lapse.

From inside a pocket at her belt, Renfei pulled out her half of the key—a ceramic half-disc etched with one part of a script-circle. Bai Rou handed over the other half, and she fit the two halves of the disc together.

When the script was completed, she let her madra flow through it. Another security measure: this key was created anew for each new jailer, and would shatter if power from the wrong Path flowed through it.

She pressed it against the circle on the metal slab, and power spun through the door. The metal lit up in lines, as hidden scripts activated.

The bolts around the edges, each marked with a script-circle of its own, began to spin out of their mounts. An instant later, they pinged to the ground, followed by the thick metal plate swinging soundlessly open.

Renfei walked through the doorway, Bai Rou ducking after her.

They found themselves in a room of twisting mist. Images seemed to swirl and die within the mist, as sounds haunted the very edges of her hearing. She heard something like children whispering, a gong sounding, the cries of a thousand birds.

It was easy to ignore the illusions, as she and Bai Rou carried ward keys to this formation. The two of them saw only mist and heard only distant sounds, but anyone without ward keys would be snared in convincing visions.

They walked across a narrow bridge with no railing, a sheer drop on either side.

Though it looked bottomless, Renfei knew that more than simply air and darkness waited beneath. Anyone trapped in the tricks of this world would live only long enough to hit the bottom, whereupon they would be devoured by what waited there.

“This is too much,” Bai Rou said, his deep voice drowning out the whispers.

“Too much to secure him,” Renfei replied. “But not enough to keep him isolated.”

“Not enough?”

She sighed. “You know it won't be.”

The next door was wooden and opened to a simple physical key and lock. She opened into a dark stone room, lit only by light spilling in from the room of illusions. A pair of crimson lions waited at the end of the room, embers burning in their eyes, flames building in their throats. Remnants, sealed to the defense of this room.

The Remnants had been Truegold when they were imprisoned here, but were fed weekly to make them even more formidable. If she and Bai Rou had to fight their way through, they might be able to do it, but they would have to pay a heavy cost.

Fortunately, the Remnants recognized them and parted, allowing them to walk through. That didn't lessen the tension—their heat pressed against her like she was locked in an oven, and their burning gazes made them look anything but tame. She brushed her fingertips against the hammer at her waist.

Remnants could be bound, but they weren't predictable. These looked like swirls of bright color painted onto the world, their eyes like balls of fire. They glared at her, and she found herself wondering if they might make a fight of this after all.

She could feel Bai Rou's madra, like water and nightmares, gathering behind her. She realized she was cycling her own Cloud Hammer madra, and picked up her pace.

The next door was made of heavy stone, moved by brute strength. This might be the least secure entrance, but it was made so that it only opened slowly. Anyone who tried to ignore the lions and open the door would find themselves trapped and delayed.

This room was thick with water aura, a pale green waterfall splitting the hall in two. It wasn't water, not really—instead, it was liquid madra, water fused with the essences of death and venom. A truly vile combination.

A construct provided by the prison allowed them to pass through this one—a personal shield that repelled this exact Path of madra. Renfei was still nervous as she walked through the green waterfall, even though she could feel the shield intact. Bai Rou might survive contact with this liquid, though even he wouldn't enjoy it, but she would die without a doubt.

The next room was full of security constructs. The floor was a web of etched circles, and brightly colored devices made of Remnant parts stuck from every wall and the ceiling. Eyes on purple stalks pushed away from a mass of muscle-like madra stuck to one wall, examining them. The ceiling bristled with spiked tails, clenched claws, sparking fangs, and pieces she couldn't identify. She could, however, sense the power of the Striker bindings in all of them.

If the scripts beneath them were triggered, the constructs would unleash enough power to vaporize an Underlord.

Her heart rate picked up every time, but they were once again allowed to pass.

“No sign of entry,” Bai Rou noted, as they approached the last door.

“There wasn't last time either,” she said.

“This is different.”

Renfei had to admit that she couldn't imagine these defenses being penetrated. Their prisoner wasn't too dangerous on his own—he was locked in more as a political statement than to protect others from him. The Skysworn had received orders to keep him isolated, but that had proven more difficult than they anticipated. Everywhere they put him, no matter how secret or protected, had been infiltrated within days.

This time, with the approval of their Underlord, they had placed him in the most isolated facility that could hold him without killing him. Having just passed through the security herself, she had to admit, she couldn't imagine how someone could pass through each of those measures without the keys. Or without blowing a hole through each wall in sequence.

Maybe this time will be different, she thought.

It wasn't.

This cell was originally designed for top-level security threats that couldn't be executed by usual means. Its door was shot through with halfsilver veins, and the room itself was broad and brightly lit. There was a separate prison in the center of the room: a box of bars, at least twenty feet away from each wall. The box itself was fairly roomy for one prisoner, with a bed, a chair, and a pit with a water construct that flushed away his waste twice per day. The only thing a prisoner wouldn't have was privacy—anyone who entered the cell would see everything from every angle, through the gaps in the bars. Even the bars had flecks of halfsilver in them—the empire spent a fortune furnishing this place, and a smaller fortune powering and maintaining it.

Wei Shi Lindon Arelius stood outside those bars, his white sacred artist's robe scuffed and torn. He was on the balls of his feet, madra flowing through his body in an Enforcer technique, and blood trailed down from a split lip.

His eyes weren't black-and-red, as they had been when Renfei had first seen him. Now he didn't look quite so horrifying, but he had that rough look to him that she associated with lawbreakers. He looked like the kind of young man who started fights for fun.

Over her interactions with him in the last several months, she had grown to realize that he was practically the opposite. A troublemaker, certainly, but of a very different type.

He was supposed to be inside his cage, but she didn't wonder how he'd gotten out.

Instead, she wondered—not for the first time—how all these other people had gotten in.

Yerin Arelius stood opposite Lindon, a pale sword held casually in one hand. The Skysworn had obviously interrupted a training session between them—they were facing one another, and Lindon had a few more cuts than just his lip.

She had not taken a single injury that Renfei could see. At least, not in this fight. Yerin's whole appearance was a map of battles won and lost, her skin crisscrossed by thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, her hair cut straight above her eyes. A pair of silver arms stretched up from behind her, flattening into sword-blades that poised over each shoulder: her Goldsign. A red rope of living madra had been wrapped around her waist, with a complicated knot at her back, and Renfei instinctively kept her spiritual awareness away. The rope was rank with blood aura.

A huge black turtle waited in the back of the room, as long as a horse from tip-to-tail, and the peak of his shell as tall as a man. Orthos regarded her with black eyes that burned with circles of red, and then snorted out a puff of smoke, ignoring her. Dull red light smoldered in the facets of his shell, and smoke drifted up from him as though from a dying fire. As she watched, he stretched his neck out and took a bite from the nearby stone.

Fisher Gesha was the only one to greet the Skysworn with respect, drawing herself to her feet and bowing over her fists pressed together. The old woman was tiny and almost impossibly wrinkled, her hair drawn up into a tight bun. She carried a sharp-edged hook of goldsteel strapped to her back, and the weapon was almost as large as her entire body. From the bottom of her robes, long purple spider legs stretched out, evidence of her drudge. The Fisher Goldsign, a web of madra between her fingers that slowly gave them webbed fingers, was difficult to make out at this distance.

Renfei had checked Gesha’s background after finding her with Lindon that first time. The woman was an ordinary Highgold Soulsmith, having spent her entire life in the remote Desolate Wilds out west. If there was anything strange about her, it was finding her in the Empire proper.

Body parts of vivid color, so bright they looked unreal, had been spread out on the floor behind Fisher Gesha. She had abandoned these Remnant parts when Renfei came in, and the pieces behaved oddly when left alone: one claw scuttled in circles, a sapphire lock of hair started to fade as though it were starting to vanish, and a loop of twisted violet entrails reached out a questing tendril as though to slither away.

Was she here to work as a Soulsmith, or had she just turned to her specialty to pass the time?

A man leaned back from an easel and a half-finished swirl of color, holding a brush in one hand and a shallow clay bowl of paint in the other. With a brilliant smile, he turned to her.

Steadying her breath and the flow of her madra, Renfei met his eyes.

* * *

Eithan Arelius wore a brilliant blue outer robe, though he had tucked a long towel into his collar to protect his clothes from the stray splatters of paint. His blond hair flowed freely down his back, his smile was brilliant, and his eyes were as bright as if he had just spotted a long-lost friend.

A tiny blue spirit clung to the top of his head, tilting its head to regard Renfei and Bai Rou with childish curiosity. It was like a girl the size of a hand, blue as the deep ocean. She looked human in fine detail except for her legs, which trailed off into a shape like a dress.

“Ah, the Skysworn! What a pleasure you could join us today!”

“How?” Bai Rou asked, astonished.

Eithan waved his brush. “Well, I took painting lessons as a child, but I admit it's not coming back to me as quickly as I would have hoped.”

“How are you here?” Renfei said. She couldn't let him escape this.

No matter where they had taken Lindon, from the most ordinary dungeon to the safe house of their Underlord himself, they had found Eithan Arelius and the others waiting for them. None of the security measures had ever been disturbed, and there was no sign that it had cost them any effort at all.

The bloodline powers of the Arelius would explain how he had found them in the first place, but even that explanation strained belief. They had moved Lindon to different cities, sometimes. And even if you assumed Eithan had simply sensed and followed them every time, even an Underlord shouldn't have been able to break the security on this place. It was made to hold Overlords.

There was a trick here, and Renfei didn't dare to hope Eithan would share it with them. If he deigned to tell them how he'd done it, perhaps the Skysworn would have an excuse to save them from the anger of their Captain. He was not happy that Eithan Arelius could come and go as he pleased anytime, anywhere.

“Well, we were in the neighborhood when I happened to notice that Lindon was in need of some company. What kind of Patriarch would I be if I didn't serve the least of my family in this fashion?”

Underlord Arelius didn't serve the least of his family at all, as far as Renfei could tell. He focused his attention on a few individuals, and recently Lindon was his pet project. It must have taken a great investment of time and resources to raise him to Lowgold in the Path of Black Flame. And after only a few months, Yerin had broken through to Highgold as well. An early advancement—she couldn't be more than eighteen.

Supposedly, she had been the disciple of a Sage before Eithan had found her, but Renfei regarded that rumor with a skeptical eye. There were only three Sages on the entire continent, as far as she knew, and Sages never took disciples. Everyone knew that.

Regardless, Yerin and Eithan were part of some plot, and Renfei had the sick feeling that she and the Skysworn were playing their role just as Eithan had planned.

“Tell me how you avoided our security,” Renfei said coldly, refusing to let him evade. She couldn't intimidate this man, not even with the weight of her office—Underlords were too valuable to the Empire to have their freedom restricted, barring great offenses. But she exerted as much pressure as she could to squeeze some kind of answer out of him.

The natural spirit perched on his head shrank back as though frightened of Renfei's voice, but Eithan's smile brightened if anything. “Ah, but I think there's more pressing business, isn't there? You can't be here for my stimulating conversation.”

Lindon had his head respectfully down, but now he looked to her. “Is it time already?” he asked. “I thought I was to have two more days.” She supposed he was nervous about the answer, but with his tight jaw and wide eyes, he looked more like he was spoiling for a fight instead.

“We must take you to the arena ahead of the others,” she explained, turning from Eithan and trying to suppress her frustration with the Underlord. If he would just cooperate, he could make life easier for her, but no. The higher-ups of the clans did what they wished, without concern for those beneath them. It was a large reason her parents had sent her to join the Cloud Hammer sect, as a child.

The cloud hovering over her head was boiling, she was sure.

“We can't disclose the location of the venue ahead of time,” she said. “To prevent tampering. We will notify the respective Underlords when the venue has been prepared, and then give them time to travel there.”

These were standard procedures when the representatives of two great clans or families dueled with real stakes, but since both Underlords had personal pride in this, the Skysworn had to have an Underlord of their own to ensure parity. That was a large part of the reason her Captain was in such a foul mood lately; he hated having to waste his time supervising a fight between children.

That, and he had to deal with Eithan Arelius.

Lindon turned to the others, and even on his contentious face, there was a look of uncertainty. Yerin walked up and tapped him on the chest with her fist. “Your path's as straight as a good road,” she said. “Kill him if you can. Try not to die.”

The words sounded casual, but Renfei detected a tremble in Yerin's spirit. For the briefest instant, her madra was disrupted in its flow.

A smile pulled at Lindon's lips, as though Yerin had said something touching, but Orthos bulled in a second later. “Destroy him!” the turtle said, through a mouthful of gravel. “Scatter his ashes around the arena! Crush your enemy, drive him before you, hear the lamentations of his—”

“I will do what I can, Orthos,” Lindon said, resting his hand on the turtle's head.

The sacred beast snorted, pulling back. “Cycle Blackflame and say that to me again.”

Lindon complied, his spirit going from a tranquil pool to a rolling chaos of dark fire in an instant. Renfei pulled her awareness back slightly—destruction was a difficult power to sense too closely. It always reminded her of insects swarming over their prey, and gave her a headache.

His eyes now matched Orthos', giving his features a sinister cast. He had a solid build, such that he looked older than he really was, and the eyes gave him a menacing edge.

“I will do what I can,” Lindon said again, but Orthos snapped at the air between them.

“No! The dragon destroys! Victory is not good enough, you have to finish him.”

Lindon straightened himself, his Blackflame madra suddenly boiling. “I'll send his ashes back to the Jai clan in a jar.” His dark eyes faded, and he smiled sheepishly. “...if I can.”

Orthos snorted. “We need to have a Soulsmith make you a spine.” He wandered away, muttering to himself, and Fisher Gesha approached next.

“All right,” she said, slapping her palms together. “To business, hm? Which would you like to take?”

To Renfei's surprise, she led Lindon to a huge trunk at the corner of his cell. Renfei hadn't noticed it before; she had been too preoccupied watching the people. That was a mistake, and she chided herself for it. She had worked for the Skysworn long enough to know that it was the detail you missed that killed you.

The Fisher threw open the chest, pulling out devices of bright color: constructs and weapons. The products of a Soulsmith.

“Well, hurry it up,” she said. “Tell me what you want.”

“Everything,” Lindon said. He sounded much more certain than when he had spoken with Orthos.

Fisher Gesha's eyebrows shot up. “Everything? You want to fight with your pockets bulging like a squirrel's cheeks?”

“Everything,” he said again.

When he was finally ready to leave, he turned to the Skysworn with a bright blue band around his head, a purple bracelet on one wrist, a black bracer on the other, three rods of varying length and color at his waist, a gelatinous red mass that pulsed like a heart stuck to his chest, a bright green dagger in an ankle sheath, and—sure enough—his pockets swollen, spilling multi-colored light into the air.

He looked like a clown. More weapons did not mean a more prepared warrior, and everyone present had to know that.

She looked to the others as though they would stop him, but even Yerin looked resigned. Eithan beamed as though watching his proud son leave for the first day at a School of sacred arts.

“We will send a messenger to contact you when the fight is ready to begin,” Renfei said. “Each Underlord is of course allowed a retinue, though we hope that you will conduct yourself with honor, as befitting your respected rank and station.”

Eithan turned back to his painting. It depicted a tall, lonely mountain, jutting from the surrounding landscape like a gray spear. The top was flat, as though the summit of the mountain had been sliced off, and it was capped by an ancient stone building supported by columns.

Renfei stared at the picture. She was afraid her mouth might be hanging open.

“See you there!” Eithan said.

* * *

On the top of a gray mountain, Lindon waited, cycling Blackflame madra to fight off the chill of the relentless wind. The gusts shoved at him, stronger than he would have thought possible—even with his Iron body reinforced by Lowgold madra, he had to bend down and grip the edge of a nearby boulder to stay in place.

The power of wind was strong here, covering his spiritual sight in green swirls. A Jade wouldn’t be able to survive alone under these conditions; they would eventually exhaust their madra fighting against the wind and be shoved off the sheer edge of the nearby cliff.

Lindon had grown up in Sacred Valley, surrounded by mountains, and this mountain was a strange one. It had been sliced off at the top as though by a sword, so it now terminated in a flat plane. A vast stone structure had been built at the center, squat and ancient, supported by granite pillars.

It was impossible to reach this place without flying, and even the Skysworn who had carried them here on their Thousand-Mile Cloud had been forced to fight their way up. Sacred eagles with emerald talons had harassed them all the way.

Lindon didn’t even know where in the Blackflame Empire he was. South, they said, but he had no way to tell.

He had traveled with the Skysworn for a full day, spent the night huddled in a tiny valley, and then taken off again the next day at dawn. When they finally reached this barren peak, the two green-armored Truegolds had stuffed him into a room carved into the base of the mountain for two more nights, leaving him to marinate in nerves.

Today, of all days, they’d taken him out only to abandon him on the edge of the cliff while they checked inside the “sanctuary,” as they called it, for potential tampering.

The Blackflame madra warmed his spirit and his flesh, protecting him from the cold of the wind, but he shivered anyway.

The day had finally come.

He hadn't seen Jai Long for months, not since the Skysworn had taken him away to prevent him from causing a panic with his identity as a Blackflame. At first, he had almost been relieved, thinking that his imprisonment meant the duel would be canceled.

Then Eithan had shown up and told him otherwise.

Eithan had brought Yerin and the others to him more than ten times, and each time the Skysworn either moved him or increased security. It never seemed to matter.

Lindon stared up at the stone columns, wind whipping at his hair and his outer robe. Though his heart pounded and his breath was coming faster, he felt a strange calm.

The others, especially Yerin and Fisher Gesha, had done everything they could to prepare him for this day. He was as ready as he could be.

There were still no guarantees, of course. But this was just another obstacle he had to overcome. Just one more step.

...of course, he was still armed to the teeth.

The constructs felt strange against his skin. The blue headband tickled, the purple loop around his wrist squeezed, the mass on his chest pulsed in time with his heartbeat. He had helped Fisher Gesha make every one of these constructs...though perhaps “helped” was too strong a word. She had provided the bindings and the dead matter to make the constructs, and he had simply assisted her and maintained them afterwards.

Their essence bled into the air, like tiny motes of colored light rising from the surface of the constructs as their madra dissolved. Lindon couldn't help but worry when he saw that. They would degrade over time, and probably wouldn't be useful in any fight after this one, but they should last at least that long. Still, he couldn't help feeling like they'd crumble at any second.

He looked up as two figures walked out of the cavernous entrance to the sanctuary. Bai Rou loomed over his partner, his green armor making him seem as steady as a statue, his glowing yellow eyes in the shadow of his hat striking and intimidating. He seemed to radiate menace.

He was overwhelming, but Lindon preferred the impression Renfei gave: she was calm, composed, ready to act at a moment's notice. Her black hair was pulled back in a tail, a gray cloud hovering inches over her head, hammer bouncing on her hip. She didn't seem threatening, just in control.

That was how Lindon wanted to feel.

She met him with a direct, unblinking gaze. “We're to confiscate your weapons,” she said.

Lindon's hands instinctively moved to cover his pockets. The Skysworn had taken his pack when they first captured him and had yet to return it to him, and he felt almost helpless without it. The constructs returned some measure of that control.

“Jai Long will have a weapon,” he said reasonably. “Surely you won't deny me mine, if this duel is to be entertaining at all.”

He had some strategies he could attempt against Jai Long. Eithan put Lindon's chance of winning at thirty or forty percent. “Those aren't the worst odds I've ever bet on!” he'd said.

But Lindon's chances went down significantly if he had to walk in unarmed. All of the ideas he'd come up with for rigging the fight had involved altering the arena in some way, but it seemed that the Skysworn had anticipated him. Unless he could still get some time alone with the stage...

“We will return any weapons appropriate to your stage of advancement,” Renfei said. “We can't have you bringing an Underlord weapon into a fight between Golds.”

Lindon shifted so that his outer robe covered up the pulsing mass attached to his chest. It had been worth a try.

They peeled the constructs off him one at a time, and though he put up a few more halfhearted attempts at bargaining, he didn't struggle. They would sense any object of power he had on him, regardless of how he tried to hide.

This was within his expectations. During one of their planning sessions, Eithan had warned him that they would likely confiscate anything too powerful, though he had hoped they would match his weapons to the level of his opponent. In that case, Lindon would have been left Highgold and Truegold tools as well.

Renfei did give him a reproachful look when she discovered that one of his launcher constructs was made from Underlord-grade parts. As was the artificial heart on his chest. And the band around his forehead.

Two more of his constructs were Truegold, and four were Highgold. They sealed all those into a scripted box that Bai Rou produced, but kept the Lowgold devices in a sack. Those would be returned to him quickly, he assumed. He hoped.

“Your first core is…” Renfei flicked her spirit through Lindon’s, and he froze, wondering if she would see past the first of his surprises. But she said “…Jade,” and he relaxed. “Your second core is Lowgold, so you go on record as a Lowgold. You can take in weapons appropriate to your stage.”

As expected, they missed Suriel's marble. The glass ball sat tucked into his pocket, burning with a steady blue candle-flame. Had they looked inside, they would have seen it, but they had done all their searching with their spiritual sense.

They also left him his badge, which was heavy and cold against his chest. It was made of gold, etched with a hammer, and it reminded him of home. Nothing reminded him that he was a sacred artist of Sacred Valley like that badge.

The two Skysworn ushered him inside, and Lindon took a deep breath.

As far as he was concerned, the duel had begun. From here on out, he had to take any advantage he could.

“What about my sacred beast?” Lindon asked them. “I have a contracted partner. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe sacred artists are allowed to do battle alongside their partners.”

Bai Rou gave a single, deep laugh.

“Traditionally, contracted partners are allowed to duel as a single unit,” Renfei confirmed. “However, Orthos is too far above you. That makes you his partner, and if he were to participate, this would be officially recorded as a duel between Jai Long of the Jai clan and Orthos, guardian of the Arelius family. This is not what we were permitted to allow, nor what either side wants.”

They walked through the entrance, the wind cutting off as though sliced with a knife, and Lindon started to sweat. It was quite cool inside, but every possibility they denied him reduced his chance of winning.

This was still within his predictions, though. At least they'd left him some weapons.

The hall was a vast, empty space, and Lindon suspected it was rare to see a visitor in a year. Dust had piled up in the corners, cobwebs on the ceiling, and the stone was worn with the passage of time. More, there was no sign of any inhabitants other than the fresh boot-prints in the dust that must have been left by the Skysworn.

A single heavy, wooden door waited at the end of the hall, and Bai Rou pushed it open. Yellow eyes bright, he ushered Lindon inside.

Or rather, outside.

The room was fairly spacious, but the far wall was open. Only pillars held up the ceiling, and the spaces between them were filled with views of a snowy mountain range. The sight brought back a sudden, unexpected longing for home.

Wind rushed in again, though not as fierce as it had been on the edge of the cliff. This room was about a hundred yards square, and had no furnishings at all. Besides the wall behind Lindon, with its single door, everything else was open to the sky.

The Underlords were already waiting.

4

Eithan stood on Lindon's right, and he gave a cheery wave when he saw Lindon, his smile as bright as ever.

Opposite him was Jai Daishou, the Patriarch of the Jai clan. An old man, he wore white robes with highlights of blue, and his white hair ran in a straight river down his back. Thanks to the Goldsign of the Path of the Stellar Spear, his hair was a collection of metal strands that reflected bright in the sunlight. He gripped a blue-hafted spear in his right hand, grinding its butt against the stone of the floor.

He had deteriorated since Lindon had last seen him.

The last time, Jai Daishou had looked like a fit man in his eighties. His back had been as straight as his spear, and his eyes were sharp. Now, his back was curved as the branch of an old tree, and his eyes were half-lidded, as though it was a strain to keep them open. He held his spear, not like he was ready to use it, but as though it was the only thing holding him up.

He may have been an Underlord, but he had one foot in the underworld. Lindon had spent long hours hoping he would die before this duel—if he was gone, the Arelius family would have nothing at stake here. It would purely be a duel between Lindon and Jai Long.

In that case, the Skysworn wouldn't have checked the surroundings for traps. Lindon could have cheated to his heart's content.

They must have just arrived, because Eithan didn't greet his opposite until Lindon was close enough to hear. “Jai Daishou! You're in good health, it seems. Better than last I saw you.”

The Jai Underlord's hand shot up to his chest, clawing at the center, as though his heart were seizing up at that moment. His wrinkled face twisted in hatred, but his voice was clear as he responded. “This is a waste of my time. Without your tricks, this duel is already over. You should have had the boy's head delivered to me on a plate and saved us all a day's travel.”

“I asked him about that,” Eithan said. “He told me he prefers his head where it is.”

That was a true story. While Lindon had been practicing with Fisher Gesha, Eithan had looked up from his book and suggested that this whole thing could be resolved if they just delivered Lindon's severed head to the enemy. It would look bad for the Arelius, but losing an official duel would be worse, because there would be a public record of their shame.

Lindon had politely requested to keep his head attached.

There were three other people in the room, but Lindon had focused on the two Patriarchs first.

Another old man stood in the center, equally distant from both Underlords. He wore the green armor of the Skysworn, but there was something on his back sticking up from his shoulders. Was he wearing a backpack?

He wasn’t as ancient as Jai Daishou seemed to be, but he still looked like he could be Lindon’s grandfather. His build was still powerful, and he wore his green Skysworn armor more naturally than Renfei or Bai Rou, as though he had been born in it. Its plates were so scuffed and dented that the armor might well be as old as he was.

His gray hair was long and matted, hanging down in tangled curtains. A large patch of his face was scarred and twisted, as though it had been burned, and he wore a large sword strapped to his back.

His scratched armor, dirty hair, and scorched face didn’t make him look weak to Lindon. It was the opposite, if anything. He looked like a man who belonged on a battlefield.

The old man chewed on a leaf that stuck halfway out of his mouth, regarding Lindon with a weary expression. “All right, all right. On behalf of the Blackflame Empire, I witness this duel between Jai Daishou of the Jai clan and Eithan Arelius of the Arelius family. As an Underlord and Captain of the Skysworn sect, I, Naru Gwei, certify upon my word of honor that no tampering has occurred at the venue before my arrival, and I will not tolerate any further interference by outside parties during the duel itself.”

Every word was hammered in like a nail, as though he were reciting something while desperately wishing he could be anywhere else.

“It's a joy to have you here, Gwei,” Eithan said happily. “Of all the duel adjudicators in the Empire, you're still the highest-ranked, aren't you? It's honestly a pleasure, a pleasure, to have such an esteemed—”

“Eithan, one more word out of you and I will personally beat you down into the center of the mountain.” Naru Gwei gnawed on his leaf as he spoke, still looking as though he'd rather be in bed. “I don't have any love for the Jai clan, but as for you, if I saw you on fire I'd hold an umbrella for you so the rain didn't put you out.”

“I don't feel like that's entirely warranted.”

Lindon's heart was already hammering as the duel loomed over him and he tried not to look at the red-masked man standing behind Jai Daishou, but his heartbeat quickened and his stomach soured when he realized that Eithan had antagonized the judge. What had he done? Would Naru Gwei interfere on Jai Long's behalf?

“Wei Shi Lindon Arelius,” the Skysworn Captain said, “go stand next to your Underlord and face your opposite. Wipe that smile off your face, Eithan. Heavens above, it sickens me to look at you.”

Lindon stood shoulder-to-shoulder with Eithan...but slid away slightly. The less he could associate himself with Eithan in the judge's mind, the better. For Eithan's part, he looked as though he were enjoying himself immensely.

With no other choice, Lindon finally looked at the two people standing behind Jai Daishou.

He didn't mind seeing Jai Chen. About his age, she was small and pale, with soft black hair that tumbled down past her shoulders. Her wide eyes were fixed on the judge in an expression of concern, but when she saw Lindon looking at her, she turned to him. She was dressed in powder-blue robes cut longer and looser than the traditional sacred artist's robes, and her sleeves hid her hands until she raised one in his direction.

She didn't smile—she still looked worried—but at least she had acknowledged him. That was a friendly gesture, right? He hoped the Blackflame Empire didn't have a history of acknowledging enemies with the wave of a hand.

He smiled tightly, the closest to a friendly expression he could manage with his stomach twisting, and nodded to her.

Then, for the first time since entering, he finally looked straight at his opponent.

Jai Long was already watching him.

His dark eyes glistened through a gap in the strips of red cloth that wrapped his head completely. He was tall and lithe, his robes dark blue, and he held his spear at his side.

Lindon brightened when he saw that spear—it wasn't a shaft of pure white, the signature weapon of the Jai clan's ancestor. That spear could steal madra, and this one was a mundane weapon of wood and metal.

Jai Long raised his own hand to Lindon, which returned concerns that perhaps this gesture was meant to show respect to an enemy. He couldn't see anything of his opponent's expression beneath the mask, but he decided to take the gesture as cordial and raised his own right hand.

Naru Gwei looked from Lindon to Jai Long, ensuring their attention was on him, before he took the leaf out of his mouth and spoke. “This is a duel for pride. As such, the champions will fight to death or incapacitation. I am here to ensure that the Underlords cannot interfere, so fight without reserve. The bounds of your battle shall be confined to this room; if it seems you will breach those bounds, I will return you by force.”

He slid the leaf back into his lips and continued talking, but now it no longer sounded like he was quoting. “Even though this is a...Lowgold with a second, weaker core...against a Truegold, it's still a fight between two great families. It will reflect official rankings, as well as the reputation of both powers. If you can resolve your differences, do so now.”

He didn't sound like he had much hope for that to happen.

Lindon thought back to what he'd heard from the others over the intervening months of his imprisonment. The Arelius family was dangerously under-funded since the attack of the Jai clan, but the Jai clan's reputation was at an all-time low. Some merchant organizations refused to deal with the Jai clan anymore, either because of their weakness or because of the poor form they'd shown in suddenly attacking the Arelius family's workers.

Attacking them and failing was the real sin, as Lindon understood it. If Jai Daishou had succeeded in killing Eithan, and the rest of his fighters had crippled the Arelius family work force, the other Underlords of the Blackflame Empire would have considered it a clever move.

On top of all that, their Underlord didn't have long to live. In this case, it would only take one pebble to start an avalanche that buried them.

But it was down to Lindon to be that pebble.

He gathered himself, mentally running down the four construct-weapons that he had been allowed to keep. They would be of limited use compared to the ones he had been denied, but his plans would still work with them. He hoped.

“Step to the center of the room and face your enemy,” Naru Gwei said, walking over to the open side of the room. He crossed his arms and leaned one shoulder against a column, not seeming to care about the sheer drop behind him. “Everyone else, back up. I'll be protecting the duel from you, not you from the duel.”

Eithan not only backed up, but sat down, propping his back against the wall and stretching his legs out in front of him, crossing one ankle over another. He looked like he was making himself comfortable at a picnic.

Casting worried glances at the participants, Jai Chen followed Jai Daishou as he slowly made his way over to another end of the room.

They left Jai Long and Lindon with plenty of open space around them. And nothing to watch but each other. For Lindon's part, his enemy seemed to swell and fill the entire world.

It felt too soon.

It had been a year, an entire year since he stood at the peak of the Transcendent Ruins. That didn't feel real. Where had the time gone? It couldn't possibly have been a year; he felt cheated.

Suddenly, he felt like running to Eithan and begging out. Someone had made a mistake—he wasn't ready yet. He needed more time.

“Exchange greetings,” Naru Gwei commanded.

Jai Long pressed his fists together, holding his spear in the crook of his elbow, and gave a shallow bow. His eyes didn't leave Lindon.

Mechanically, Lindon's body returned the gesture. His mind was still floating in disbelief. Was he really here?

“I have to thank you for healing my sister,” Jai Long said. “You killed my brother, but you gave me my sister back. For my part, we're even.”

That jostled Lindon awake, and he rushed to speak. “We can walk away! I have no grudge against you.”

“If it were up to me, I would have called it off already. I would never fight for the Jai clan at all.” He spun his spear up to grip it in both hands, lowering himself into a stance and pointing the spearhead at Lindon. “But it isn't up to me. I will be as gentle as I can.”

Some of Lindon's nerves retreated. If his enemy was taking it easy on him, then maybe he had a better chance than he’d imagined.

“Ready yourselves,” Naru Gwei said. Lindon leaned forward onto the balls of his feet, flexing his knees, ready to run. Jai Long's fists tightened on his weapon. Madra spun through Lindon's channels even as wind spun through the open space.

Whether he liked it or not, the time was here. And he was ready.

“Begin,” the Skysworn Underlord said, and a thunderclap tore the air between the two fighters.

Lindon shot forward.

I’d contend he thinks of you like a Blackflame, Yerin had told him. He’ll want to hold off and block your first technique. Break through it.

Lindon activated the purple bracelet wrapping his right wrist, casting his hand forward. A bright purple line shot forward like a whip, its tip blue-white.

Back in the Desolate Wilds, the Fishers had a technique they called the Snare. It used their connection madra to stick to prey, which they could then reel in with raw strength. Fisher Gesha had brought a Fisher Remnant from home, and when she and Lindon dissected it, they had found a Snare binding.

When they made it into a construct, they built some modifications. Now, the technique inside the purple bracelet was called the Void Snare.

Jai Long had the speed to intercept the technique, of course. He was a Truegold. He swept his spear through it, but his weapon only passed through the line of Fisher madra and was stuck. The string had no physical substance, but drew objects toward Lindon.

And the tip of the whip, the shining blue-white tip, struck Jai Long in the shoulder.

Inserting pure madra into an opponent's body wouldn't work exactly like the Empty Palm. That technique was designed to disrupt an enemy's body, interrupting their control over their entire spirit, and it had to land on the core.

This was more of a localized pulse, like the sting of a needle compared to the stab of a sword. When the tip of the whip hit Jai Long's shoulder, it discharged its payload of pure madra.

The power in his shoulder was disrupted. Not enough to prevent him from using his sacred arts, but enough to keep him from breaking the line for just a moment.

A moment was enough. With all his strength, Lindon pulled.

His strength was nothing next to Jai Long's, and of course the Truegold resisted. But Lindon wasn't trying to pull his enemy to him.

Quite the opposite.

Lindon pulled himself forward, launching himself toward his opponent.

Struck by the Void Snare, it took half a breath before Jai Long could muster his madra and blow the purple line apart with white light. By the time he managed it, breaking the technique, Lindon was already inside spear range.

“A good fight is a short fight,” Orthos said. “A dragon uses his full strength, whether he's fighting a Sage or a mouse.”

End it quickly.

Lindon had already pulled the launcher from his waist: a crackling bar of living lightning that had once been the wrist-bones of a Remnant. The binding inside snapped with power; it wasn't just lightning, there was more to it, but Lindon didn't need to understand the Path of this strange Remnant to use its power.

He activated the construct, and an arrow of sizzling light blasted Jai Long.

Jai Long's motions blurred as he pulled his spear back, sweeping it vertically in front of himself, leaving a trail of white light on the air. That white light bloomed into a hissing serpent, which was instantly torn apart by the blast from Lindon's launcher.

Lindon could feel the construct snap as he used it—he wouldn't get a second shot. That was the risk of using a construct after having it exposed for so long to let its essence dissolve.

Fortunately, he didn't need a second shot. The launcher was just to keep Jai Long on the defensive; if he had used that speed to take a step backward and attack instead, he would have skewered Lindon through the gut by now.

Instead, he had been prepared for an attack by Blackflame. He had been hit by unknown attacks from unexpected angles, and he was trying to treat Lindon 'gently.'

He hadn't come into this fight with a willingness to kill.

That didn't mean he wouldn't end up killing Lindon if he was in a position to do so, or if things went wrong, but Lindon had been counting on that moment of hesitation to cause Jai Long to decide to defend instead of attack. That was Lindon's chance of victory, and he seized it.

He already had his next move ready.

Even as his right hand cast the ruined launcher construct aside, his left had already withdrawn an object from his pocket: a rounded skull the size of his fist. It was the brown of old parchment and felt greasy in his hand. A single-use, simple construct.

“Warriors focus on weapons too much, you see,” Gesha had taught him. “Powerful treasures, legendary swords, yes? In a duel, the winner is not the one with the strongest weapon.”

Lindon dropped the Nether-drain Swamp construct at Jai Long's feet. The skull cackled as it struck the ground, filled with Lindon's madra. Now free from restrictions, the Remnant skull acted according to its nature: it exploded into a technique.

This technique covered the ground like brown paint in an instant, splattering on Lindon's legs, but covering Jai Long to the ankles. The paint stuck to the floor like glue, but Lindon had expected it—he tore free of the few drops that reached him.

Jai Long was not only caught off his guard, but the technique had originated between his feet. He was stuck fast, at least for the instant before the paint drew itself up into a thousand grasping, scaly brown hands, grabbing his legs and pulling him down toward them.

His eyes left Lindon as he jerked his head down. Now he was not only stuck, but the hands pulled at his feet, keeping him off balance, drawing his attention.

“You may have noticed I don't have a Goldsign,” Eithan had said. “No Remnant, you see.”

Jai Long's core was open. He was swinging the butt of his spear up, intending to crack Lindon in the head, but Lindon was already close enough.

“I reached Gold purely through accumulated power. We can do the same for you, if you like.”

With just a thought, Lindon removed the veil around his Lowgold pure core.

He couldn't disable Jai Long completely. His Truegold madra was too difficult for Lindon's weaker spirit to disrupt. But Lindon could buy himself an instant with a much-weaker opponent. If he were still Jade, his technique would have slid harmlessly off Jai Long's spirit.

Before the butt of the spear reached him, Lindon slammed his Empty Palm into Jai Long's core.

Driven along with the motion, his pure madra slammed like a spike into the heart of Jai Long's spirit. The madra washed through his channels, disrupting the natural rhythm of his soul, choking out his techniques. Madra that could not be controlled by a pattern was useless.

The spear smacked into Lindon's forehead, and his world flashed white. If Jai Long had Enforced the blow or his weapon, that could have been a lethal strike. But the Empty Palm had broken his Enforcer techniques.

Lindon stumbled back, agony stabbing through his head, his eyes blinded by pain and tears. He couldn't even be sure if the effect of his Empty Palm had lasted, or if Jai Long had shaken it off immediately.

He had to assume it had worked, so he focused his breathing on his core. The pain in his skull made it hard to focus, but if the Empty Palm had worked, it would only last for so long.

He had to make it count.

In a breath, he reeled his pure madra back to one of his cores. The one that, in his spiritual vision, shone a soft blue-white.

On his next breath, he drew from his other core.

Black fire ran along his madra channels. His eyes warmed as they changed color, and Lindon focused. He couldn't have put much distance between himself and Jai Long, but the Truegold must be still off-balance from the spiritual disruption. Otherwise, the fight would have ended already.

Under Lindon's direction, Blackflame madra slithered like roots to every corner of his body. According to the ancient Enforcer technique, it ran into his skin, penetrated his muscles, and burned his bones. It felt like his body had begun to dissolve from the inside-out, and the heat was uncomfortable.

He ignited the madra, activating the technique.

The Burning Cloak sprung to life around him, the air blazing with a hazy, translucent shell of black-and-red fire.

His madra would run out quickly, with the Cloak active. The Enforcer technique burned his muscles, and his Bloodforged Iron body activated to restore him. The combined effect felt as though his limbs were constantly sizzling, and both the technique and the Iron body required madra.

He couldn't keep this up for long, but he didn't need to. He had an Enforcer technique, and for the moment Jai Long didn't.

Under the power of the Burning Cloak, Lindon kicked off the stone. He exploded with motion, covering the distance between himself and Jai Long in an instant.

There was a long, frozen moment where Lindon's eyes and his opponent's met.

Then Lindon stabbed him.

This was the fourth and final construct he’d been allowed to keep. Made from only a Remnant's claw, with no binding involved, it was what she called a “dead construct.” It had no abilities apart from the properties of the madra it was made of and any script you carved into it.

In the case of this dagger, there was no script. Its structure wasn't solid enough to be carved, and even if it were, the pressure of a script would have torn it apart immediately.

It was black as ink, the length of one of Lindon's hands, and shaped like a long fang. It felt like a waterskin full of worms, stretching in Lindon's fingers, as everything except the tip was soft and pliant. The point was sharp as a spearhead, and it pierced Jai Long's robes at the chest.

With no Enforcer technique to protect him, the Truegold couldn't resist. Blood sprayed from him as his skin broke.

The dagger wasn't strong enough to penetrate any deeper, but that was enough. As it tasted Jai Long's blood, the dagger squirmed eagerly in Lindon's grip, worming its way into the wound and slithering into Jai Long's bloodstream.

Lindon leaped away, then let the Burning Cloak die.

Jai Long grunted, but he didn't scream as Lindon had expected. Instead he stood, gripping his spear, as he fought the foreign madra inside of him.

If Lindon hadn't broken his defense with the Empty Palm first, this would never have worked. The sheer power of Jai Long's spirit wouldn't have allowed the dagger inside.

Now, the Path of Twisted Blood went to work.

Fisher Gesha had determined that the madra was harvested primarily from life, shadow, and blood aura, but it had been twisted even further by the Path's practitioner. The Remnant from which she took the claw had been sliding inside animals' veins and twisting them from the inside out, breaking every bone in their body at once.

She hadn't been able to determine why it did so. Remnants didn't feed on blood or flesh, but on madra, so killing would only be an expenditure of its energy. Nonetheless, that was what every part of its body did, even when separated from the others. This Remnant's guiding purpose was to kill.

The same was true of its claw.

After a moment, Jai Long's arms both twisted backwards. It looked like he was a toy a child had decided to break. His neck slid to the right, despite his obvious effort to fight. His legs were still snared by the grasping brown hands emerging from the swamp, but the rest of his body had begun to contort.

“You…fight…like…a coward…” Jai Long’s words were choked out one at a time, but they emerged tinged with rage from a tightening jaw.

Lindon didn't expect this weapon to actually kill Jai Long. The Remnant had been at the Highgold level, so Jai Long's madra would eventually exert control again.

But he had planned for one of two things to happen: either rendering the opponent helpless would count as a win, or it would give him an opportunity.

Lindon looked to Naru Gwei, but the Skysworn Captain was still watching through the filthy curtain of his matted gray hair, the burn scar around his left eye giving him a sinister cast. He chewed on a leaf and looked completely unconcerned. Not at all as though he were about to stop the match.

Reluctantly, Lindon gathered black fire into a ball between his hands.

The red-streaked black flame built, wild and difficult to control. It stressed his concentration and his spirit to gather, and only a few months ago he would have had to use some pure madra props to execute this technique at all. After practicing during his enforced isolation, he had improved...though a technique that required several seconds to gather would be of limited use in a fight.

“Surrender,” Lindon said, voice strained with the effort of controlling the dragon's breath.

A white light flashed beneath Jai Long's clothes. It was fitful and weak, struggling against the intrusion of the Path of Twisted Blood, but Jai Long's head snapped straight again. He dropped his spear, but pulled both his arms back under control. The brown hands holding his ankles started to dissolve, the Nether-drain Swamp dissolving under white light.

Lindon released the dragon's breath.

He had no grudge against Jai Long. The man was an obstacle, and one he had to pass to continue, but not quite a true enemy. And he would hate to think that he had healed Jai Chen only to kill her brother.

He hadn't asked for this duel. But over the intervening year, one thing had become clear: he was the weaker party. He didn't have the luxury of pulling his punches.

If he didn't come at Jai Long intending to kill, he couldn't win.

The dragon's fire blasted toward Jai Long, not soft and billowing like a cloud, but a tight bar of almost liquid-looking red-and-black flame. It skewed right, and Lindon had an instant to hope that perhaps it would only take off Jai Long's arm, but leave him alive.

Then there came a blinding flash of white.

Jai Long blocked the bar of red and black with a shaft of pure white madra. The spear was almost seven feet long, smooth, and etched with a web of scripts that Lindon could only see because of their bright glow. The spearhead accounted for a foot of its length, flat and white.

The Ancestor's Spear. He'd taken it from nowhere.

Lindon's heart dropped.

How had he gotten it back? Where had he gotten it? Lindon thought Eithan had taken it. Had his own Underlord returned it?

“I think you have a decent chance of winning,” Eithan had told him. “As long as Jai Long is only a Truegold.”

“If he's an Underlord, then surely they won't continue with the duel,” Lindon had said. “It's only remotely fair in the first place because we're both technically Gold.”

“It's true; if Jai Long has truly reached Underlord, he will become my problem. But there is a...third option.”

Jai Long swept his spear through the dragon's breath, splashing tongues of Blackflame onto the stone floor and ceiling. They hissed when the stone dissolved as though under acid.

“Reaching Underlord requires a Truegold to clear three distinct stages. If he has cleared the second, weaving soulfire from aura, then he will defeat you instantly. The first stage, however, is opening a space in your soul.”

In the same motion as he disrupted Lindon's technique, Jai Long retaliated. An arm-long snake of white madra was born, its jaws agape as it flew toward Lindon. He reactivated the Burning Cloak, cycling madra to his limbs.

“If he pulls a weapon out of nowhere, he's cleared the first stage. That means he has taken half a step into the Lord realm..”

Lindon pivoted into a punch, spraying Blackflame out of the punch in a half-formed Striker technique. The force of the flame met the serpent, and the two clashed in a burst of light. But it wasn't enough to stop the Truegold attack.

From the cloud of Blackflame, the serpent emerged, avoiding Lindon's fist and sliding over his hand.

It burned.

Lindon screamed as the snake slid over the back of his hand and up his forearm, scoring the skin and burning, slicing him like a red-hot knife. The technique's madra dissipated in a blink and the snake disappeared, but it had already traveled up to his elbow, leaving a twisting trail of blood all the way up his arm.

He held up his other hand in defense, though he had no technique gathered. It was just the instinctive panic of a wounded animal. It was hard to see through the pain, and the rising tide of fear that threatened to choke him.

All of his preparation had come to nothing. His weapons were gone. His plans had failed.

He was at Jai Long's mercy.

5

Jai Long moved in a flash. His red-wrapped face was only two feet from Lindon's own, his pale spear raised, poised to plunge down. Lindon scrambled backward, but the weapon wasn't pointed at his head or chest. Jai Long paused a moment to take aim at...his leg.

He was trying to spear Lindon through the leg. That was probably a mercy, but Lindon certainly didn't feel like it at the moment. His arm already felt like it had been chewed up and spat out, and now his enemy was trying to cut off his leg. He almost fell as he scrambled to escape.

“Enough,” Eithan said. His voice wasn't stern, but it echoed through the room like the command of an emperor.

Jai Long's spear froze. Lindon backed up another few steps, keeping a wary eye on the spear, but he still turned slightly to see Eithan.

The Arelius Underlord was standing now, hands in his pockets, a slightly pained smile on his face. “It's clear the Arelius family has lost this duel. Congratulations, Jai Daishou. You have found a worthy replacement...though I'm sorry you had to use such a tight leash.”

Lindon didn't understand that, but Jai Long tensed. Jai Daishou's wrinkled face twisted with disgust, and he barked at his champion: “It isn't over yet. Kill him.”

Jai Long tightened his grip on the spear as though straining against something. “I carried out your command,” he said, through gritted teeth. “He surrendered; we're done.” Jai Chen let out a breath of relief at almost the same time Lindon did.

“It's not a duel to surrender,” came an aged, lazy voice from the cliff overlooking the drop. Naru Gwei's dirty gray hair drifted in the wind as he rested against the column, arms still crossed. He chewed on his leaf as though unconcerned.

Jai Long stopped. He turned slowly, lifting the Ancestor's Spear.

Behind him, Jai Daishou looked as though the heavens had opened and given him a gift.

Lindon clenched his jaw at the pain in his arm, but his Bloodforged Iron body had already started pulling madra to heal it. He cycled the Path of Black Flame, preparing the Burning Cloak.

Eithan raised both hands from his pockets. “Hey now, let's not go too far. I've admitted my loss, Captain, openly and without reservation. I will accept the cost of losing.”

“Not how it works, Arelius,” Naru Gwei said, spitting out his leaf and replacing it with another. “I'm the adjudicator. Surrender all you want, but the boy isn't killed or crippled.”

Lindon could feel the world tightening around him. Jai Long gathered his madra, white light spreading from beneath his robes.

He wasn't going to get out of this. He couldn't cheat. He wouldn't catch Jai Long off guard again. Eithan couldn't save him.

Lindon was on his own. He was walking out of this killed...or crippled.

His Burning Cloak ignited.

“We've had our differences,” Eithan said, his voice becoming more serious. “Don't make this about me.”

The Skysworn Captain turned back to the two champions.

“Fight,” he said.

Jai Long blurred as he moved, and Lindon struck to the side with his good arm. It was a bad punch—he was off-balance, and his stance was sloppy; Yerin would have mocked him for it—but his knuckles met the edge of the Ancestor's Spear.

It sliced his skin.

The force of his punch knocked Jai Long's blow aside, so the spear swept harmlessly by his shoulder, but Lindon hardly noticed. The pain from this tiny cut was almost as overwhelming as the agony from his shredded arm.

This spear cut not just the flesh, but the spirit. Spiritual damage, as he had experienced several times before, was deeper and harder to ignore than physical pain. It cut him to his core, and his Blackflame core shivered.

Black-and-red light slithered down the spear, and Jai Long took a step back. He jabbed the spear backwards, thrusting the butt into the floor behind him. The Blackflame madra spurted out with the motion, venting into the floor, scorching a pothole into the stone.

So that was how it worked.

Fisher Gesha still hadn't given him back the Soulsmith papers he'd taken from the Transcendent Ruins, but he'd been allowed to study them for the purpose of preparing for the upcoming match. Just in case Jai Long were to use the Ancestor's Spear.

He hadn't known how the weapon would work—if the spear took in madra that was incompatible with the user's Path, would it absorb the madra anyway? Thus perhaps ruining the user's core? That would have been a double-edged sword, and one Lindon could exploit. He had considered intentionally allowing himself to be cut, so that Jai Long would corrupt his own core.

But there was a safety valve built into the script of the spear. Fisher Gesha had theorized there would be, otherwise it wouldn't be a useful weapon in battle.

That was one more hope struck dead. His Blackflame core had dimmed slightly with that cut, and his Iron body was still trying to heal his right arm. He would run out of madra very quickly at this rate, even with both his cores raised according to months of the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel.

Without that cycling technique, perhaps his Blackflame core would already be dangerously low. He had expanded the capacity of both his cores to the point that he had almost made up for the weakness of splitting his cores in the first place: each core held almost as much madra as any Lowgold sacred artist's core should.

But he didn't have vast reserves to draw on, especially with his Bloodforged Iron body draining madra with every injury and every second he used the Burning Cloak.

That spear would be his downfall...and Jai Long could probably beat him without it.

Jai Long moved with such speed that Lindon couldn't track his movements. Only the explosive speed provided by the Burning Cloak let him keep up, and each of his dodges was a guess. He leaped to the left, hoping to avoid a thrust from the right, and the Ancestor's Spear sliced across his ribs. It took another chunk from his spirit at the same time.

A stab above, a sweep from the left, and a probing attack at his legs. He guessed the first one was coming and ducked, accidentally hit the second with a blind punch, and missed the third completely. The white spearhead buried itself in his calf, and he screamed as he jerked his leg away.

Jai Long vented enough Blackflame from the butt of his spear to gouge a ditch in the rock, Lindon swaying with exhaustion on a body of pure pain. His Blackflame madra was about to run out, though his pure core was still fat and bright, and there was something wrong with his wounds.

His Bloodforged Iron body was still working on his right arm, but it hadn't sent any madra to the other wounds. Why not? Was it working on the worst injury first? No, the stab to his calf was deep enough that his shoes were already soaked in blood. Then...

His heart clenched as he realized the truth. The Ancestor's Spear was blocking his Iron body from healing him.

When it drained madra away from the affected areas, some property he didn't understand prevented his Iron body from sending power back into the flesh. He could still cycle madra through those areas, but he couldn't use it to affect the wounds at all. Maybe bits of the spear's substance, left behind after each thrust?

Even when it looked like he was about to lose one of his limbs, he was trying to understand. Some part of his mind was still trying to capture details about the spear; any information he gained would help him understand the binding he'd taken from that ancient Soulsmith foundry.

That was one year ago today.

Jai Long had finished venting his madra, but something caught his eye. Lindon stumbled to the side so he could see too.

Eithan was on his feet, frozen mid-step by chains of green wind aura that were only visible in spiritual sight. To the mundane eye, he was as still as though he'd been locked in glass.

It was a Ruler technique. The Skysworn Captain had controlled the wind to lock him in place.

“We didn't pick this place on accident, Underlord,” Naru Gwei said, chewing on his leaf. “Continue, boys.”

Jai Long stood with the Ancestor's Spear held loose in one hand, the Blackflame gone from its shaft. He didn't attack immediately. “You're a coward, and you have no shame. I've killed people who deserved it less than you, and slept soundly afterwards.” Coming from a red-masked monster, the icy words were even more chilling.

Then he glanced back at his sister. “...but I still don't want to kill you. Give up the arm.”

If nothing else, Lindon thought, helping Jai Chen paid off. He had wanted to try and help her because he knew what it was like to have no control over your own soul, but he had almost ignored that feeling when he realized she was Jai Long's sister.

He had continued in order to build up some goodwill with Jai Long, hoping to cancel the duel entirely.

That hadn't worked quite as well as he'd hoped, but without Jai Long's mercy, he would have died already. Now...

He shivered as he extended his shredded right arm. It hurt so badly that raising it every inch was a new stab of agony, but the fact that he could move it at all was testament to the power of his Iron body.

Jai Long nodded, a businesslike acknowledgement, and moved his spear in a smooth blur.

Lindon projected Blackflame out of his hand, pulling it away from the weapon.

It wasn't a proper Striker technique, and projecting madra outside of his body without a real technique was always both difficult and inefficient. This time, a puff of madra burst from his fist in all directions, dying almost immediately like a bubble popping.

So instead of his hand, the spear swept through a cloud of Blackflame madra.

It was much easier to cope with Jai Long's superior speed when he knew exactly where the next strike would land.

The spearhead flashed as it absorbed the cloud of madra...but as Lindon had hoped, a lick of the diffusing flame landed on the spear's haft. And a small puff of essence burned upward.

Not much. Just a spark like one would see from a campfire, instead of the dust-sized motes that usually drifted from decomposing madra. But it taught Lindon one thing: the spear could be destroyed. And the Path of Black Flame could do it.

He gathered Blackflame into his cupped hand as Jai Long thrust his own hand forward. Another white snake bloomed out of nothing, lunging for Lindon.

A wave of madra tore through the entire building.

It passed Lindon like a curtain of cool water, rippling smoothly through his spirit. Not a single hair was affected, nor a pebble disturbed; only the spirit trembled at the touch of this power.

Pure madra. That one pulse was more than Lindon could contain in his entire body.

Jai Long's serpent dispersed into a cloud of harmless white motes and vanished. The fistful of Blackflame guttered and went out like a candle, and even his Burning Cloak was blown away like dust in a strong wind.

And Eithan was free.

His pulse of pure madra had disrupted the madra Naru Gwei had used to control the wind aura, and as soon as he lost that control, the wind was once again nothing more than air. Eithan covered another ten feet of ground in a blink, black scissors flashing in the sun.

Then he froze again. His face was grim, all smile gone. His yellow hair streamed behind him—each strand undulating slowly, as though underwater. He had both hands on his scissors, held in front as though he were about to drive them into flesh, and his body was low as he'd been caught in the middle of a dash.

The green-armored man's leaf had fallen from his lips, and now he was giving Eithan his full attention.

The blond Underlord's jaw worked, and he forced words out. “I will not allow this,” Eithan said, his voice cold as the grave.

“Not yours to allow,” Naru Gwei said, but he seemed to be waking up. “I follow the rules, Arelius. Our laws are etched in steel.”

The chains of aura binding Eithan were much brighter in Lindon's spiritual sight now, like thick bands of green steel wrapping the Underlord. It was clear that the Skysworn Captain was putting everything he could into it.

Another sacred artist could respond with a Ruler technique of their own, but there was no such thing as pure aura. Eithan would have to break free physically...or disrupt the Skysworn's control again, as he had done before.

But even if he arrived at Naru Gwei, would he be in time to help Lindon?

Lindon returned his full attention to Jai Long, gathering Blackflame in his palm once again. He had to fight as though he were all on his own.

Jai Long seemed distracted. Behind him, the Jai Underlord walked forward steadily, spear gripped in both hands. He seemed to regain ten years at the sight of a helpless Eithan. “Please, Captain, allow me to assist you.”

“Get back, Jai,” Naru Gwei barked. Jai Daishou stopped, confused.

“Do not mistake this as a favor to you. The Arelius Underlord thinks he is the exception to all rules. He trespasses on the Imperial Palace and escapes without punishment. He moves behind the scenes of the empire, pulling strings, violating the laws of the realm without fear. He raised a Blackflame and expected to get away with it. Because he always does.”

He thrust two green-armored hands forward, and a green gust of madra visible to the naked eye blew toward Eithan. It looked like wind dyed green, and it wrapped in a circle around Eithan's shoulders, pulling his arms into his sides.

Now Eithan was trapped by both madra and natural wind, but the Skysworn stayed focused on him.

“I will uphold the laws of this empire,” Naru Gwei said. “If you violate them as well, you will join him.”

Jai Daishou looked as though he'd swallowed a lemon, but his expression brightened when he looked back at Jai Long. His champion had been barely scratched, while Lindon looked like he shouldn't be able to stand up.

Lindon himself was surprised that he could still stand. His calf had started to slowly heal, but the pain infected every thought, affecting his concentration. It was twice as hard to gather madra in his palm as it should have been.

Without a word, the Underlord strode back to his place next to Jai Chen. The girl had gone pale, but she was no longer concentrating on the fight. She held her palms a few inches apart and was focusing between them, as though she were struggling to use a technique.

Before Jai Daishou had returned to his seat, Lindon threw his hand forward as though hurling a fistful of water. The Blackflame madra wasn't concentrated enough to hurt Jai Long—it burned a few holes in his clothes, but it vanished as soon as it touched the Truegold madra flowing through his skin.

But the sloppy technique did its job. More sparks sprayed up from the haft of the Ancestor's Spear, though the spearhead absorbed part of the power safely. That madra spiraled down the weapon's script, gathering at the butt until Jai Long vented it.

Jai Long continued with his attack, stepping into the thrust, but Lindon stepped back with surprising ease. That had been the easiest move so far to dodge. Maybe Jai Long was getting tired, just as he was.

Lindon should have seen it coming.

In the same motion as his 'failed' attack, Jai Long swept the spear up and back until the butt was pointed at Lindon.

Then he expelled Blackflame into Lindon's face.

Lindon crossed his arms in front of his head, cycling the Path of Black Flame. He'd spent enough time fighting Orthos to know what to expect; as a Blackflame artist, he could resist the madra with his own, but it still burned. Such a small amount of madra, released with no technique, couldn't kill him.

But it put another burden on his core. The madra he used to resist came from his Blackflame core, and his Bloodforged Iron body activated at the burns...draining yet more power.

As the dark fire washed over him, his core sputtered. He only had a spark of Blackflame left.

A fist-sized hole had been burned in Jai Long's mask, exposing one corner of his mouth. His lips stretched inhumanly wide in a smile that stretched all the way back to his ears...but it wasn't a real smile. Not a human one.

It was a crocodile's smile. The baring of fangs. And those were actual fangs showing in his mouth, blue and sharp as a shark's. Yerin had described what she'd seen beneath his mask before, but Lindon found that seeing with his own eyes was different.

Patches of skin were showing through the small, burned holes in Jai Long's robes, and lines of white snaked over his skin as he advanced. “That is the way my ancestor used this spear,” he said, calmly walking forward. “I'll show you the proper—”

Another wave of pure madra lashed the room.

This time, Lindon was ready. He switched to his pure core immediately. Jai Long wasn't disabled by the pulse, but his Enforcer technique had been banished, so he'd lost his advantage in speed.

Lindon lunged forward, driving the Empty Palm into Jai Long's core.

For a second time, it connected.

There was a loud explosion from somewhere out of sight, and something pushed him from behind like a pillow hitting him in the back, but that only thrust his body into Jai Long's.

Jai Long grabbed him to push him off, one hand still holding the Ancestor's Spear.

And Lindon switched to Blackflame.

He was close enough that he might have been able to kill his opponent, but in the moment, he didn't even consider it. He had already set his target.

With both hands, Lindon grabbed the white shaft of the Ancestor's Spear and let Blackflame flow.

The fire spread through the weapon as though through a dry log, sending sparks spraying into the air like blood from a severed artery. Jai Long cast the red-hot weapon aside, shouting in horror.

Lindon stood panting, his pain turning his emotions numb. He watched with a sort of dull fascination as the white spear melted like ice, its light dulling steadily as scripts broke and died.

In mere moments, the Ancestor's Spear was a pile of white dust, and even that was disintegrating by the second. Only the spearhead remained, white and glinting, a single script on its surface shining.

Lindon noted its position. If there was any way for him to get out of here with that, he should try—it would be an invaluable material for Soulsmithing.

Not that it seemed like he was getting out of here at all.

Jai Daishou roared, his face actually turning red, and his lips were speckled with...was that blood? He drew up his spear, and white light shone from his skin. Jai Chen glanced at him nervously, but she was still concentrating on a space between her hands. Something swirled there, like one of Jai Long's snakes, but smaller and so faded it was barely visible.

Her Patriarch didn't spare her a glance. He cocked his spear back over his shoulder, preparing to throw at Lindon.

Suddenly, it was hard to breathe.

At first, Lindon thought it was fear and blood loss. He had been on the brink of death often enough to know that his body could betray him in unexpected ways.

But it wasn't just his breath. There was pressure on every inch of his skin, as though someone had wrapped him in a sheet and pulled it tight. Each movement was difficult, like he was pushing his way through mud.

Judging from Jai Long's stiff position, Lindon wasn't the only one affected. Jai Daishou seemed even worse, as his spear dropped from a suddenly slack grip—and drifted through midair, falling like a feather. Jai Chen seemed like she had been touched the least, her hair lifting but her posture changing not at all.

Lindon looked to the Skysworn Underlord.

Sure enough, he had thrust both his hands out to the sides, and green madra spilled from them like gas. The power faded into invisibility, affecting the wind aura and commanding the air to obey him.

This was a Ruler technique. He had locked everyone in place, though it didn't seem as thorough as what he'd used on Eithan earlier. Lindon could still move, if with difficulty, and he saw the others shifting position slightly as well.

He must be concentrating it differently on each of us, he thought. If he was binding them according to their relative threat level, that explained why Lindon and Jai Chen were least disrupted.

Of course, the primary target was Eithan.

In Lindon's spiritual sight, Eithan glowed in a sun of green wind aura. The wind howled in from all the open sides of the building, pushing against him, building a prison of air.

He was only a step from the Skysworn Captain, his scissors poised.

Naru Gwei's filthy gray locks were whipped in the wind, his eyes savage, the burn scars on his face crinkled and red. He shouted, and from his back spread two enormous, emerald wings.

They glistened like jewels, bright as the most stable Remnants, but each feather had as much detail as a real bird's wings. His Goldsign.

“Interfering with a Skysworn in the course of his duties!” Naru Gwei announced. “No matter your background, even you can't—”

A pulse of madra blasted out of Eithan.

Lindon could see it, twisting the air like a heat haze. It burst from Eithan's chest, the size of a galloping horse, sweeping through Naru Gwei in an instant. The cage around Eithan vanished, as the technique passed through Gwei's body.

It did not, however, pass through his wings.

The spread Goldsign caught the blast of pure madra like a sail catching the full force of a hurricane's wind. The Underlord was ripped back by his own wings, hurtling out over the abyss.

And dropping.

Where he had stood a moment before, the majestic range of snowy peaks now reigned. Everyone in the room stared.

Lindon wanted to say something, but it was a struggle to stay conscious. He began shuffling toward the head of the Ancestor's Spear—now that the Skysworn's restriction had vanished, he could move under his own power again, but he barely had the strength to do it.

Before anyone had a chance to react, there came a sound like a flag snapping in the wind and the huge emerald wings reappeared. The green-armored Skysworn rose up to the building's height, bobbing up and down with every flap of his wings.

There was a dark gray sword in his hand, its blade long and thick. Its surface was notched and dull, just like the Underlord's armor, but its edge was clean and sharp.

Eithan's smile was back, and he regarded Naru Gwei with arms folded. He looked like his normal, cheerful self, as though the icy demeanor from before was only a lie. “You really want to use your Goldsign to fly? If I take them away, you'll fall three hundred feet.”

The Skysworn's face hardened. “Do you really want to make an enemy of the entire empire by fighting me? I'm the second-ranked Underlord on these shores, Arelius. You'll be lucky to escape the Emperor's wrath already.”

“You...almost made me lose my temper, I'll admit,” Eithan said. “But no harm done. No, I'm not here to fight you. I just want to delay you.” A little of that ice returned to his voice. “I have a different target.”

One step, a swirl of his wrist, and a punch.

Pure madra rippled out of his fist, so dense as to be visible. It caught Naru Gwei in the center of his chest, and he plummeted like a brick.

Jai Daishou scrambled on the ground, pulling up his spear as though his life depended on it. His white metal hair fell around his face in disarray, and he watched Eithan in panic. White light began to glow from the tip of his spear...but the light was fitful and weak.

Eithan turned to him. Not quickly or slowly—he was the picture of a man in control. “I rarely have to kill someone twice,” he said. “A third time? Never.”

Jai Long shoved Lindon away and ran over toward the Patriarch...then he scooped up his sister and backed away.

He was leaving Jai Daishou on his own.

6

Jai Chen, for her part, didn't seem to realize that her brother had pulled her away for her own safety. She released the technique from between her hands, and a finger-sized worm of pink-tinged white light slithered into the air.

Though it was smaller, it seemed somehow more...real than Jai Long's attacks. The serpents he created while fighting were bare outlines, like the sketches of snakes, but this tiny dragon drew itself up in front of Jai Chen, sniffing at her face like a dog.

It was like a tiny Remnant. Like a real spirit.

Like Little Blue.

Lindon had only turned his head for a second, but he looked back when the sound of crashing steel tore the air louder than thunder. Eithan had smashed the Jai Underlord's spear aside with his scissors.

They traded another half-dozen blows in an instant, each one loud as a ship crashing into rocks. The air itself rippled around their blows, and Lindon thought he could see flashes of a gray, almost colorless fire: soulfire. The hallmark of an Underlord. They were surely using it in their attacks, but he couldn't see how.

In the first second of their engagement, it was clear that Eithan was toying with his opponent. Despite having the advantage in reach, Jai Daishou was always on the back foot. He could barely move his spear enough to intercept the blows, and at any moment, Eithan could take away his sacred arts.

He was done. Lindon had made it.

The relief—that sweet sensation of having walked away from a situation that should have killed him—settled onto Lindon. It was growing to be a familiar sensation.

He lowered himself to pick up the head of the Ancestor's Spear. It took him entirely too long, as his entire body screamed in pain, and even his pure core was strained trying to provide enough madra to fuel the Bloodforged Iron body's restoration. With or without it, he was running low on blood, and he was going to need some real medical attention. The wounds caused by the Ancestor's Spear still weren't healing right.

Something snatched the spearhead out of his hand.

It was a small, worm-sized figure of pink and white. The blade was bigger than its entire body, but it still seized the spearhead in its jaws and hauled it back, like a snake trying to drag a bear's carcass.

Lindon watched it with bleary eyes, the sight so bizarre that it took a moment to register.

Jai Chen was taking it.

He grabbed for it out of slow-witted reaction more than anything else, but the little worm turned and snapped at him. It was actually a little dragon, he realized; a serpentine figure with a flowing mane and four undersized legs.

Lindon hesitated before grabbing for the spearhead again. He hated to let it go, but he didn't need it exactly, and he didn't have the strength to fight anyone for it. And the last thing he needed was to provoke Jai Long again.

Besides, the tiny dragon was amusing. It was still having trouble dragging the blade across the floor, every once in a while raising its head to give Lindon a wary look.

He swayed on his feet, and he realized he couldn't feel his left leg anymore. That couldn't be good. At least his right arm was almost useable again, though it still looked like mincemeat.

Eithan still hammered away at Jai Daishou, keeping the old man stumbling backwards, occasionally throwing a barely-visible pulse of pure madra that whizzed past the Jai Underlord's shoulder or between his legs.

Though the battle had only continued for a few seconds, Lindon could already tell: Eithan was drawing it out on purpose. Why? What was he waiting for?

As Lindon wondered, Jai Daishou caught his eye.

“Jai Long!” the Patriarch screamed. “Serve the clan!”

Jai Long stiffened.

Lindon's stomach hollowed out.

He had wondered why Jai Long would fight for the Jai clan, who had exiled him to the Desolate Wilds. Lindon had gotten the impression that he and his sister had grudges against the clan proper, but after they began working for the Underlord, he'd assumed he was mistaken.

Now it made sense: Jai Long was under an oath.

Dredging up the last of his strength, Lindon raised his fists to defend himself. He ran madra through his muscles to Enforce himself, though his Path of Twin Stars did not have an actual Enforcer technique.

“Hold on just a moment,” Lindon said, as Jai Long approached. Light had already started slithering over his skin, even the lips of his stretched-out grin. “Let's talk this out. You can serve the clan without—”

Jai Long blurred forward.

Lindon didn't have the speed of the Burning Cloak anymore. He didn't have the time to switch to his Blackflame core, and even if he did, that core was empty anyway.

He triggered his Void Snare, but Jai Long didn't even try to avoid it. The purple line caught him in the forehead and simply pulled him forward. It would have disrupted his Enforcer technique in his head, as well, and Lindon wondered if there were some way to use that to his advantage.

He was still wondering when the razor-edged white light took off his arm.

* * *

For the second time, Jai Daishou was being driven backward by a pair of scissors.

He had hoped Eithan would be distracted by Lindon's impending death, but the Arelius was as cold as an Underlord should be. He stayed focused on his enemy, raining blows down on Jai Daishou's spear.

On the spear itself. As though he were aiming for the weapon, and not to kill.

“I have beaten you,” Eithan said, knocking the spear aside and ignoring a gap that could easily have reached his enemy's throat. “I could kill you any second.” He slapped the weapon down this time with his bare hand, contemptuously.

“You're a weak—” He broke a Striker technique, shattering the beam of white light. “—old—” Eithan kicked Jai Daishou's wrist, sending the pain of shattered bone through his arm. “—man.” Jai Daishou's spear clattered to the ground, and Eithan kicked it away.

Jai Daishou crouched, panting, his entire body aching. His spirit was a dull spark, and darkness closed in around his eyes. He tasted blood in his mouth, and his breath came rough. Even if he survived this day, it wouldn't be for long.

His time was up.

“Unless you have something left,” Eithan said, smiling.

He knew.

Somehow, he knew.

Blood sprayed up from behind the Arelius Underlord, and Lindon's arm fell to the ground. Jai Daishou felt a surge of elation before the crushing despair reminded him that a crippled Lindon changed nothing.

He should have made Jai Long swear a tighter oath. Absolute loyalty to him, not just obedience to the letter of his commands. That would have saved him today.

If he could have ordered Jai Long to “kill” instead of to “serve the clan,” then surely Eithan would have turned aside and saved his young disciple. Surely.

Instead, the young Lowgold fell to his knees, staring at his stump. Then he folded like a rag as consciousness failed him.

Jai Daishou envied him.

Only rage kept him awake. If spite could give him power, Eithan would have already crumbled to ash and blown away.

Now, he only had one option left: the Archstone. Eithan had cornered him into using it. Naru Gwei would be back any moment. This could ruin the Jai clan...

...but how could he worry about consequences in a time like this?

From his soulspace, he withdrew the fist-sized crystal orb. It flickered with a swirling light, as though something invisible swirled through it. Its palpable sensation of power tickled his spirit, as it would for anyone within range. Even Eithan's eyes widened for a moment in sheer awe.

A flap of emerald wings, and Naru Gwei emerged from below the cliff. He looked furious, but his anger could compare nothing to Jai Daishou's.

Now? Now the Skysworn finally managed to make it back up the mountain? Now that it was too late?

Jai Daishou triggered the Archstone.

Color drained from the entire world. It appeared gray and lifeless, as though he had painted everything in charcoal. Aura still appeared as colorful as ever, if he looked through his spiritual sight, but all madra and mundane matter now appeared in shades of gray.

An instant later, streams of color burst from everyone in the room. A twisting, white light flowed from Jai Long's chest, thick as his wrist. A thin string of pink-tinged white came from Jai Chen, and an even thinner stream of pale blue from Lindon's unconscious form.

That was strange; the Archstone should have drawn from everyone according to their power. Either Lindon simply had that little power left, or the artifact drew less madra from unconscious targets. Jai Daishou didn't know; records about these weapons were imprecise, and he hadn't been able to test it for fear of discovery.

But those three streams were only teasers. They were appetites before the main course.

A breath later, streams of power burst from the Underlords.

These were rivers, thick as the bodies from which they came. Naru Gwei's was green and nebulous, but bright, funneling into the Archstone and from the Archstone into Jai Daishou. It came to him in a torrent, overloading his madra channels, stuffing him full.

And even that was nothing next to the tide of madra from Eithan.

It surged from him in a wave that was mostly colorless and tinged with blue-white. The pure madra blended and strengthened every other type, diluting it like a flow of water.

Jai Daishou took in so much madra that his spirit began to strain at the seams. It vented madra, white light bleeding from his skin, and still Eithan's power kept coming. How much madra did the man have?

Though the Jai Underlord had already permanently damaged his spirit, he cackled. What did he have to lose? He was dying.

He took more, and the world lit up.

It was as though there were invisible strings leading from him to the rest of the world, and each string carried his hearing and sight along with it. He could see in all directions, though only a tiny strip at a time: he could hear worms crawling through the dirt in the mountain, and Lindon's heart beating weakly. He could see the two Skysworn guarding the outer door, hear snatches of their whispered conversation about whether they should intervene. He could taste the wood of the door between them, smell the clean snow on the roof.

The legendary power of the Arelius bloodline power. It was beautiful.

So beautiful that it overwhelmed him.

He tried to move, but where was his body? He was standing on the wings of a sacred eagle, perched on the edge of a cliff, deep beneath the ground...

Vaguely, he could feel that he needed to take a breath, but he couldn't remember how.

Eithan staggered forward, unused to a body without madra, but his scissors were still sharp. Naru Gwei had managed to land before his wings failed him, but he couldn't move in his armor any longer.

Then a piercing pain bit into Jai Daishou's neck.

He screamed, snapping back to himself, and lashed out with his madra. A chaotic mess of madra stained with different colors tore out of him, a stream blinding in its brilliance, but it was too great for him to control. He was like a child trying to swing his father's sword.

The rough Striker technique blasted through the stone of the building, tearing a gouge in the wall, slowly carving outward until it was blasting column after column. The roof sagged, but the pain in his neck didn't subside.

If anything, it got stronger.

His soul was tearing itself apart, but he realized part of his massive power was missing. His core had dimmed, and now he was bleeding from a hole through his neck.

He was choking on blood. He couldn't breathe. Couldn't speak. But he could still see.

Jai Chen was behind him.

She clutched the spearhead of the Ancestor's Spear in both hands, the weapon still planted in his neck.

Power surged through her, flooding her core. She released the blade quickly, her core swelling, her madra channels strained to bursting. As she panted, eyes wide, he could see white light rising in the back of her throat.

He tried to ask her what she was doing, but he still couldn't say anything. His hands went numb, and the Archstone fell from his fingers.

He reached out for it, and realized he was lying on stone. He couldn't lose that. He had risked too much to get it.

Without it, he had no chance. It was his only hope.

His only...

* * *

Eithan saw everything at once, and it was a mess. Things had gotten out of hand.

Naru Gwei held the Archstone in two gauntleted hands as though it were a writhing spider, his heartbeat picking up as he realized the implications. The Captain of the Skysworn would see that Jai Daishou had violated an imperial command to retrieve that weapon, and had placed the entire realm in danger. Being who he was, he would provide an accurate account to the Emperor.

That much, at least, had gone according to plan.

Jai Chen crackled with stolen madra; it stretched her core, straining her channels. Her back arched, her eyes rolling back into her head, her jaw locked open. But she didn't fall. Her brother held her, the chaotic mix of madra blended by the Archstone slicing pieces of his clothes away. But still he held her, Enforcing his own flesh to protect himself, his muscles tense and eyes locked on his sister.

And Lindon...Lindon lay a foot away from his right arm, his Bloodforged Iron body drawing madra to stop the bleeding. Jai Long had cut him evenly at the elbow, for which Eithan was grateful. It would be easier to attach a prosthetic at the joint.

This will be an opportunity for him, Eithan thought. A chance for him to grow.

That was true, but it was also an excuse. He was honest enough with himself to recognize that.

This was all Eithan's fault. And Lindon had suffered for it.

The other two Skysworn kicked in the door just in time to see a white tendril rise from Jai Daishou's body. A dozen tendrils followed, and Renfei and Bai Rou were horrified, gathering their power to defend. A cloud boiled up from the hammer in Renfei's right hand, and Bai Rou Forged three fist-sized drops of yellow water: Amberwell madra.

An Underlord's Remnant was no joke, and this one had been swollen by the Archstone. Under different conditions, Eithan and Naru Gwei would have had to join their powers together in order to prevent this spirit from tearing the building apart.

Instead, Eithan didn't even turn around, keeping his eyes on Lindon. Naru Gwei tucked the smoky crystal Archstone into his armor, paying no attention to the Remnant. He knew.

The two Truegolds ran as though to battle, even as a dozen fat tentacles of white light pushed at the ground around Jai Daishou's corpse, hauling the main body of the Remnant out of his chest...

There was one instant where the outline of the Remnant was visible, a bulbous pale creature that looked like it belonged at the bottom of the sea. Then it fell apart.

Chunks of wet, slick-looking madra fell to the ground, dissolving to essence almost immediately. The tentacles shook with spasms as they squirmed on the floor, then they too faded to nothing. Only seconds after Jai Daishou's Remnant had begun to reveal itself, it was nothing more than a cloud of white dust hanging in the air.

The Archstone itself was capable of siphoning much more power than it had demonstrated today, but its wielder had limits. Jai Daishou had drawn everything he could with no attention to his own safety. He had eroded the foundation of his own soul, so his madra wasn't stable enough to form a whole Remnant. If he had lived a little longer with his spirit shredding itself apart, his core would have shattered so completely that a Remnant wouldn't have formed at all.

The two surviving Underlords had realized what would happen, but the others didn't have enough experience. Bai Rou's yellow eyes were wide as he stared at Eithan as though wondering what he'd done. Renfei returned her hammer to her hip, but her brow was creased in confusion.

Eithan tilted his head to Naru Gwei. “He must have been desperate, to go so deep into the labyrinth.”

“He should have died with courage,” the Skysworn Captain barked. He scratched roughly at his dirty hair. “Do you know what this...no, you do. Of course you do.”

“To protect himself, he put us all in danger. If we caught the attention of the Bleeding Phoenix, Redmoon Hall will show themselves inside a week.”

“That's the best case,” Naru Gwei said, looking as though he wanted to kick Jai Daishou's body. “If the Titan or the Dragon caught a whiff, then our lives depend on the whims of the Monarchs.”

“The Weeping Dragon was sighted only last year in the Iceflower Continent. No reason to think it should be making its way here.”

Naru Gwei looked like a man running on three sleepless nights who was staring down three more. “Dreadgods...I never thought I'd see the day. I'll bring word to the Emperor, but if it is Redmoon Hall, he will require all of us. You'll have to do your duty this time, Arelius.”

Eithan put a hand on his chest and staggered as though Naru Gwei had wounded him. “How dare you suggest that I wouldn't do my duty for my beloved Empire?”

The Skysworn Captain wasn't in the mood for levity, it seemed. His jaw clenched, the muscles in his arms and legs tensed, and madra swirled through his soul. He had to be weighing the costs and benefits of attacking Eithan once again.

Eithan raised his hands. “No need for that, I apologize. I'm aware of the weight of this situation.”

Naru Gwei's look was still bleak, and his madra kept cycling. Eithan resisted the urge to roll his eyes. The Captain wouldn't kill him, not before a potential Dreadgod attack. This was just irritation boiling over—Eithan saw it quite often. An Underlord should have more control over his emotions than this.

If there were another fight, Eithan would not fare well. He'd been forced to waste an absurd amount of madra to break Naru Gwei's Ruler techniques, and the Archstone had taken even more out of him. Despite his years of practicing the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel, his core was almost dry. He couldn't afford another fight here.

Finally, help came from an unexpected corner. Jai Long raised his head, crying out in a hoarse voice. “Please, help her!”

Eithan ran his spiritual sense through her soul. Thanks to Sylvan Riverseed's touch, her madra channels had been rebalanced, cleansed, and purified. Without that, she would have lost control of her madra and died already.

As it was, she was just barely holding on. A sack stuffed to capacity and coming apart at the seams, but not in danger of bursting.

“Unfortunately, there's nothing we can do for her,” Eithan said, and Jai Long's twisted face began to fall behind his mask. “...but fortunately, there's also no need. She will survive this. And her core will be filled with quite unique madra, so that's a treat. You were quite lucky that Lindon and I were here, and that Lindon's Blackflame core was empty, otherwise the madra would have reached a critical imbalance. As it is, none of our madra conflicted too badly with each other. They will blend together in her.”

She would also gain some measure of the Arelius bloodline ability, though she would have to expend madra to use it, while Eithan's happened naturally. She really had ended up in quite a unique situation, and he looked forward to seeing how she handled it.

“She will have difficulty controlling her madra for a while,” he continued. “But then...well, she has a unique Path ahead of her.”

And he was very interested in that Path, though he didn't express it. The siblings needed space, so he could keep his distance.

For now.

While he spoke, he reached down and casually took an object from the floor. Jai Long didn’t notice, consumed as he was with his sister’s fate, so Eithan had no trouble slipping the head of the Ancestor’s Spear into his pocket.

He could certainly find a use for that. He still had the original, locked away in Serpent’s Grave…but there was no such thing as too many priceless weapons.

Naru Gwei stretched out his wings and walked over to the edge of the room. “I'll be reporting the results of this duel, Arelius.”

“You don’t think we have more important concerns?”

“It was still a legal match with a valid conclusion. When this all blows over, you'll be facing the consequences.”

“I understand,” Eithan said, affecting a solemn tone. The family elders and branch heads would irritate him after this. The reputation of the Arelius name would take a hit, and that would result in economic pressure on the family all across the country. The rest of the family would use this to put restrictions on him, and if Redmoon Hall really did invade, he wouldn't have time to deal with family business.

This would tie his hands for a while, but in the end, he found it hard to care. The world was so much more than anyone on this continent imagined, and there were still more worlds beyond.

He reached into his pocket and rolled the glass marble between his fingers. As always, the feel of its cool surface comforted him.

Naru Gwei walked over to the edge, where the wind tossed his dirty hair. “Will you follow me to the Emperor, or will I have to drag you?”

“I will follow as soon as I have seen to family business. I have a disciple who has just lost an arm.”

Muscles all over Naru Gwei’s body tensed, though he didn’t change on the outside. He needs to learn to relax, Eithan thought.

“Even now, you still won’t cooperate? When a Dreadgod might be headed our way with all its little cult in tow?”

“If I have to choose between disappointing you or my disciple…well, I’m sorry, but I don’t like you very much.”

Eithan gave him a cheery wave and turned his back on the Skysworn, strolling away.

“I won’t wait long,” Naru Gwei said.

Eithan walked through the door without a response.

He needed to take Lindon to shelter, and surround him with friendly faces. When he woke up, he wouldn’t be happy.

7

“Prosthetic limbs,” Fisher Gesha said, “are among the easiest constructs for a Soulsmith to create. You were lucky. If we had to replace one of your organs, I would be singing a very different tune right now, hm?”

They were still inside the mountain, five or six floors beneath the arena where he'd fought. Apparently this whole place was honeycombed with shelters—it had once been the home of a sect living in secrecy, but had been abandoned for years. Or so the Fisher had told him in the last few minutes.

Lindon remembered nothing of the trip down here, and very little of the fight. He didn’t even ask how Fisher Gesha had gotten there, though he assumed Eithan had brought her. Yerin and Orthos were nowhere to be seen, but he didn’t ask about them. His attention was swallowed entirely by his right arm.

Which was lying somewhere above him, he assumed.

Now, it ended abruptly above the elbow. Gesha had wrapped his stump with scripted bandages, which weren't stained with as much blood as he had expected. This script must work the same as the one his mother had once used on him: it guided his spirit through an Enforcer technique that blocked out pain. Certainly, he didn't feel any physical pain. It was more like the opposite. He felt normal, as though he could reach out with his right arm just as always.

But he couldn't seem to peel his eyes away from the space where his hand should be.

The Fisher firmly grasped his chin and turned his head back toward her. Her wrinkled face was set in a stern expression, but a few strands of gray hair had escaped their normal tight bun. “Whatever state you're in, you listen to me when I'm talking to you, yes?” Involuntarily, he tried to turn back to his arm, but her grip was steel.

“Don't think,” she warned him. “After an injury like this, it is your thoughts that are most deadly. Your fears, your pain, your despair, they are deadly poison. Do not let them rule you.”

From somewhere, he mustered up a nod.

“Good. Now, limbs are simple. We simply take an arm from a Remnant that is compatible with your Path—or Paths, I suppose, since you always have to make things complicated—and we attach it to you with a combination of scripting and Forging. I happen to have some Remnant arms with me right now.”

She knelt by his bed, rummaging around in her chest, which gave Lindon a chance to look around the room. It was a rounded room carved out of the stone, giving it the impression that a mole had dug it out of solid rock. His bed was more of a cot, made of trembling wood and scratchy sheets. A single candle sat on a shelf bolted to the wall. There was one more source of light: a glowing script-circle on the wall behind a square of paper painted with an abstract landscape. Meant to replace a window, he was certain.

His pack leaned against the wall, which was a relief. Next to it was the Sylvan Riverseed's case, a box of glass with a tiny island inside. Little Blue herself, now almost too big for her enclosure, stood on the island and stared at him with her hands pressed against the glass. Though she was made entirely from ocean-blue madra, she had gained enough definition that he could read her face: she was worried.

Her concern almost broke him, but he tore his eyes away and took in a deep breath. Don't think about it. He was fine. Better than fine, really. He had expected to die if he lost, so walking away with three limbs out of four was a bargain.

Fisher Gesha straightened, carrying a wide wooden tray set with three limbs.

As Remnant arms, they didn't look quite real, like they were paintings come to three-dimensional life.

“These are the ones I have on hand for you,” she said, “and be grateful I have this many. It's not every day I have to match a limb to not one, but two cores.” She gestured to the first, a slick-looking purple arm with webbing between the fingers. “From a Fisher Remnant, this one has a Snare binding like the one you used against Jai Long. It is more compatible with your pure Path than with Blackflame, so you might have some trouble cycling Blackflame for the next few weeks, but it won't trigger a critical incompatibility.”

Lindon had seen Fisher Gesha use some of her techniques before, and of course he'd practiced with his Void Snare construct. He could imagine lashing himself to a wall to pull himself up the side of a building, trapping enemies who tried to escape, swinging across a chasm...

The thought cheered him. Just a little.

“The problem will be what the binding becomes when it absorbs your Path of Black Flame, you see? I see two possibilities: either it will become a sort of burning whip instead of an actual Snare technique, or it will work as usual, but carry a measure of Blackflame with it that burns whatever you attach to. It depends on how the madra balances out, and there's no way to test without slapping it on.”

She moved to the second offering on the table, a gray mass of cloud molded into the shape of a limb that looked as though it could blow apart any second. “You'll have to concentrate to keep this firm enough to interact with solid objects, but it's made from Cloud Hammer madra. It was one of their Enforcer techniques in a binding, though I'm afraid I don't know the name. It may have been a custom technique belonging to the artist who left this Remnant. Anyway, you'll pack quite the punch, especially once it equalizes with your Blackflame madra.”

He reached out and passed his fingers through the cloud. As he expected, it only felt like mist. He could find a use for this just as much as the binding inside—an arm that could reach through solid objects.

“I like the physical properties of this one,” he said, reaching for a set of goldsteel tongs at the edge of the tray. But he reached with his right hand, so nothing happened besides his stump twitching.

He blinked.

Gesha snapped up the goldsteel tongs and used them to grip the limb of cloud. You needed goldsteel to manipulate Remnant parts like this one, because anything else would pass straight through. Madra couldn't pass through goldsteel.

The golden tools flashed unnaturally milk-white in the light as she grabbed the cloud hand and stretched. The hand grabbed at her tool while she pulled, trying to wrestle against her. Remnant limbs often retained some life and will of their own.

She ignored the hand's attempt to fight back and stretched the limb, pulling it out to a good three feet before the cloud started to thin. The severed end stayed on the tray, but now the fingertips were halfway across the room.

“It can be stretched, you see,” she said, holding it there for a moment. “This is something you could learn to do in time, though keeping it solid while you do so would take quite the force of madra.”

Lindon had already forgotten about the Fisher arm. This one had endless possibilities. He could stretch it, reach through doors, and hit with the force of a Cloud Hammer Enforcer technique...

Maybe he hadn't lost as much as he'd thought.

Gesha folded the arm back onto the tray and placed down her goldsteel tongs, moving to the third limb.

“Now, this one...you're lucky I favor you, hm? I made this one myself.”

This hand had six fingers with an extra joint on each one, making them look somewhat like an insect's legs. They were tipped as though clawed, and the arm was inhumanly thin. It seemed to be made of glass, with the slightest hint of color shooting through it. The color changed every second, a wisp of green brightening to a hint of yellow before darkening to orange.

“Path of the Shifting Skies,” she said proudly, as though it was her own Path. “I caught this Remnant almost four years ago, and I recognized its potential immediately. Years of experience should not be underestimated,” she said, shooting him a glance as though he had been questioning her expertise. “It was an interesting blend of cloud, wind, and water madra, but I found it especially intriguing when I found that it was also extremely close to pure. It was only barely tinged with other aspects of madra, as though the artist who left it had cycled aura for no more than a month. Though this is a Highgold arm, so that certainly could not be the case. I do wish I knew the story of this sacred artist,” she said with a regretful sigh.

Lindon stared at the transparent arm. If he understood her correctly, then she had easily saved the best for last. Finding a pure Remnant in the wild was next to impossible, because there were so few pure madra Paths. Unless Eithan died, there was very little chance of Lindon ever encountering one. That was the whole reason Eithan had gone through the effort of raising him to Lowgold without hunting down a Remnant—because finding a Remnant would have been even more difficult and expensive.

But Fisher Gesha had found a piece of the next best thing.

“I say I created this because I've fed it with pure madra for almost the last two years,” she said. “It was difficult to do so without compromising the balance of the binding or the structure of the limb, but I did it, didn't I? If we join this to you, it should—should, I say—match perfectly with the Path of Black Flame while you're drawing on your Blackflame core, but lose that influence and match with your pure core while you cycle the Path of Twin Stars. Eventually, it will carry a slight Blackflame influence, but it won't affect the performance of the limb.”

“It can't be so perfect for me,” Lindon said. If it were, she wouldn't have given him a choice, and would have simply brought this limb out from the beginning.

She pointed to him. “And so it isn't. Very good. Always be wary of anything that seems to fit too well. There is no binding in this limb, so it will not bring any technique along with it. Only the properties of its madra. It will serve you perfectly well as an arm, but it will carry you no capabilities you don't already have.”

Lindon nodded absently, looking from one arm to another. So he had a choice between compatibility and utility. The cloud arm looked the best, but there was an argument for the Fisher arm. Though tying himself to a surface didn't sound terribly exciting, it would allow him some creative options. Of course, he was still worried about its interaction with Blackflame.

How could he only choose one?

“What about all three?” Lindon asked. “I could change them out according to the situation.”

Fisher Gesha raised two fingers as though she were about to smack him on the head, but grumbled to herself for a moment and lowered them. “You think binding a Remnant arm to your spirit is so simple of a process, do you? You think you can just stick it in and remove it whenever you want to?”

“Pardon, Fisher Gesha, but you said it was simple.”

She opened her mouth, but then closed it again. “I suppose I did. Well, attaching one is the simplest process in the world, but by the time you can use it naturally, it will be your arm. It will be attached to your body and spirit, you see. Losing it will be the same as losing the limb you were born with.”

Lindon's eyes drifted back to his stump before he jerked them away. “I see. I'll be sure to choose carefully, then.”

A thought occurred to him, and he nodded to his pack sitting in the corner of the room. “What if we added a binding of our own? To the Shifting Skies arm, I mean.” That one was clearly the best selection, if only it came with a technique.

Fisher Gesha clearly understood what he meant, because she hesitated. “You should know that we've studied bindings like that one for generations. Dreadbeasts have plagued our lands long enough that we wanted to know what kind of madra created such monsters.”

She waited for him to ask a question, but he remained silent, so she reached into her robes and pulled out a sheaf of papers bound together with string. The Soulsmith notes he'd taken from the foundry back in the Desolate Wilds.

“We never had a name for the white madra in dreadbeast bindings,” she continued. “Our drudges could measure some of its properties, you see, but not enough to identify it. These notes call it hunger madra, which is perhaps one of the most absurd names for a power that I've ever heard. Though it seems to fit.”

“Hunger madra,” Lindon repeated. He'd read the notes, so he had heard the expression before, but he hadn't put the phrase together with the binding he'd carried around for the past year. “Is it compatible with my Paths?”

“As far as we can tell, it's compatible with everything,” she said wryly. “Dreadbeasts attack us with madra of all aspects, and they all have one of those bindings inside them. Although it could be that the ones with incompatible spirits die off...”

She waved a hand in the air. “You're distracting me. These notes reference an origin for this madra, a single source from which they got all their samples. They were trying to breed sacred beasts that left Remnants of this aspect, but they never made it. At least, not by the time these notes were written.”

Lindon nodded. If they didn't have a reliable source of Remnants, then the bindings and madra for the Ancestor's Spear must have come from somewhere else. “So where did the bindings come from?”

“That is what disturbs me,” she said. She shook her head as though shaking off cobwebs. “But it doesn't matter, does it? I could put your binding into this arm, certainly, but there would be no framework for it. We would need more hunger madra to reinforce and adapt the arm to handle the binding. Besides, do you really want a hand that devours madra? It could start feeding on the spirit of anyone you touch.”

To Lindon, that sounded incredible.

“If it worked like the Ancestor's Spear, my Paths would be much easier to advance,” he said delicately, keeping his enthusiasm from his voice. If she knew how excited he was, she would try and talk him out of it. “Reaching the peak of Truegold would be no problem. I could even split my core again, and drain yet a third Path.” He nodded to the color-tinged glass arm, which was tapping its pointed fingertips on the tray like a woodpecker. “We have such a fine sample here. Why not try an experiment?”

He was trying to appeal to her curiosity as a Soulsmith, but she shook her head. “The Ancestor's Spear worked thanks to its script as much as its binding. Without those scripts, we can't be certain what it will do, and testing out the binding might destroy it, and render our tests useless. Besides, we need more hunger madra if we're to build it into your arm without collapsing it, and the spear has dissolved already. There's no—”

She was cut off when the steel-banded wooden door creaked open, revealing Eithan grinning and holding up a pure white knife.

Gesha pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a heavy breath, but soon composed herself and bowed. “Underlord.”

Lindon started to greet Eithan, but no words came out. The man's easy smile stabbed him.

“It seems you need further materials,” Eithan said cheerily, striding into the room. “I just so happen to have some to spare.”

He tossed her the spearhead, but instead of reaching out her hands to catch it, she jerked them back as though afraid. Lines of purple madra lashed out from her, lashing the blade to the ceiling and slowly lowering it down to her eye level like a spider on a line. Clearly, she didn't want to risk having her madra drained away, even if Eithan had been holding it in his bare hands with no apparent problems.

When she saw that her technique had remained intact despite its contact with the weapon, she gingerly plucked it out of the web with two fingers.

The spearhead was about a foot long and a hand wide. She studied it for a moment, and then two long purple spider's legs reached up from beneath her. Her drudge.

The two legs snatched the blade from her, juggling and spinning it between them for a good two minutes before the spider-construct let out a hiss.

Finally, she gave a single nod. “There's enough here to...try. I'll have to break this binding down to its materials to avoid a conflict, and once we have the fragments of this weapon, we can begin merging them with the Shifting Skies limb.” She jabbed a finger at Eithan. “I cannot promise anything, you understand. And you'll be giving up this weapon.”

“I expect to gain a better one,” Eithan said, his gaze on Lindon.

Fisher Gesha gathered up her tray, returning the limbs to her script-sealed box before the madra decayed any further. “I'll need my assistant for this,” she said. “I don't want to muddy this with more aspects than we need, so Fisher madra is not the most suitable. We'll need his pure madra to link it all together, and perhaps Blackflame to break down the extra binding.”

Lindon was eager to begin working, and he started to struggle out of the bed—no matter how weak he felt, this was something to do. Something to focus on besides what he had lost.

Eithan held up a hand, stopping him.

“I apologize, Fisher, but I need a word with him for a moment. Do what you can on your own, for now, and I'll send him to you when he's ready.”

Gesha hesitated, looking between Lindon and the Underlord.

“Don't you give him any trouble, now,” she said firmly, and to Lindon's shock, she wasn't speaking to him. She was looking straight at Eithan.

He raised his eyebrows. “I'll try my best not to.”

“He ought to get some time to rest after a day like this. You hear me? He's not a construct. Even if he were, you couldn't push him every day like you do without ever giving him time to rest.”

“I don't intend to—” Eithan began, but Fisher Gesha interrupted him.

“A whole year I've been here,” she said. Her spider-legs carried her forward, and she actually rapped her knuckles against the Underlord's chest. “A whole year of my life I've given up, and I don't have many of those left, do I? Well, I've always wanted to see the Empire, and so I have. I've tried foods I'd never heard of before, I've worked on Remnants I couldn't imagine, I've met strange people and seen strange sights.”

She reached up as though to smack him in the face, but seemed to remember who she was talking to, and pointed at him instead. “How much of that has he done, hm?”

Lindon started. He hadn't given much thought to what Fisher Gesha had been doing while he was training. He supposed he thought she just...worked all the time.

Like he did.

“He's spent more time underground than a mole. At least he's got Yerin with him, she's a good girl, but she wouldn't rest if someone killed her. You have to slow them down, you hear me? They're not Underlords.” She lowered her hand and sighed. “Not yet.”

Eithan's eyes were wide and his mouth slightly open. After a moment, his smile came back, but this time it was soft. “Honored grandmother, I will take your words to heart. I'm sorry for worrying you.” Then he pressed his fists together into a salute and bowed low.

Gesha cleared her throat and reddened slightly. “Well. So long as you know.”

Before Lindon could gather his thoughts, she'd already scooped up her chest and scurried out the door.

Eithan stared after her, chin in his hands. “You know,” he said, “I don't believe I've paid enough attention to her.”

“I apologize for her,” Lindon said, dipping his head slightly. “I have no complaints about my work over the past year. I know it was done for my benefit.”

“Not entirely for your benefit,” Eithan said. “I was initially hoping that Jai Long would serve as a motivation for you, of course, but the situation evolved as soon as Jai Daishou inserted himself. I was hoping to reap some benefits for the Arelius family, and though I didn't get everything I wanted, I still made some measurable progress. I'll chalk this whole thing up to a win, though we may have indirectly led to the destruction of the entire Empire.”

Lindon was meant to ask about the destruction part of that sentence, he knew. It was bait, set by Eithan, trying to capture Lindon's interest and attention. Normally, it would have worked.

This time, Lindon shrugged his right shoulder, drawing attention to his missing arm. “You could have finished off Jai Daishou immediately.”

Eithan's smile faded. “I could have, yes.”

“You drew it out. You were trying to get him to bring out that crystal ball.”

“The Archstone. It's a—”

Lindon cut him off. “He took my arm.”

Eithan clasped his hands behind his back and studied his disciple. Instead of deflecting or pointing out that technically Jai Long was the one who had removed the arm, which would be typical Eithan tactics, the Underlord simply nodded. “He did. If he hadn't given the order, Jai Long would have left you alone. If I hadn't put him under such pressure, he wouldn't have given the order.”

The admission both made Lindon feel better and much, much worse. It tore open the bandage he'd wrapped around his anger, and he could feel tears welling up in the corners of his eyes.

“Why?” he said. “Why did you have to push him? I just...want to know it was worth it.”

Eithan looked to the ceiling for a moment, considering, then looked back down to Lindon. “What do you know about the Dreadgods?”

“Nothing,” Lindon said. “I don't know that I've ever heard the word. Are they like dreadbeasts?”

“Yes. Yes, they are.” Eithan chewed on his words for a second, as though trying to gather his thoughts. Or trying to decide how much to tell Lindon. “They are...disasters. Four monsters, big enough to blot out the sky, hungry for destruction, and so powerful that the most advanced sacred artists in the world have to join forces to drive them off. Drive them off, you understand. None of the Dreadgods have ever been killed.”

“They're sacred beasts?”

“Corrupted ones. Like the dreadbeasts of the Desolate Wilds, they were warped and twisted by their own powers.”

“Where do they come from?” Lindon asked, caught up in the legend. He briefly wondered if this was another tactic to distract him...but if it was, it was working.

“They're scattered all over the world. They burrow into a secure location and wait for decades...but when they wake up, they're hungry. Fortunately for humanity, no two have woken at the same time in centuries.

“But the last time they did, they destroyed the original Blackflame Empire.”

From Orthos and Eithan, Lindon had heard of the fall of the Blackflame family. But from what he could piece together, even that family had taken over the remains of another, more powerful Empire.

And even that ancient nation had fallen to these Dreadgods.

“The original Empire was ruled by dragons, not men,” Eithan said, with a tone that suggested dragons building an empire was nothing unusual. “As they advanced as a culture, they began to study civilizations even older than theirs. And they stumbled on a...vast, underground complex. It was abandoned even then, and it was so massive and so dangerous that not even the greatest of the dragons could map it fully.”

That reminded Lindon of something, but before he could voice it, Eithan nodded to him. “You've seen one of the shallowest corners of this massive labyrinth in the Desolate Wilds. What they called the Transcendent Ruins was, in reality, just a corner of this huge maze that stretches all over the Empire. There are entrances all over, but to have seen one is your good fortune.”

“Two,” Lindon said. “There was one in my homeland.”

He remembered the ancient tomb from the Heaven's Glory sect, and a stone door marked with four beasts.

Now, that carving carried an eerie significance.

“Is that so?” Eithan asked, surprised. “Well, you're lucky indeed. And even luckier that you didn't explore too far inside. The dragons of the first Blackflame Empire found that out firsthand when they plundered weapons from the depths of the labyrinth. At first, they only took Highgold or Truegold devices, wanting to study them, but they became greedy for more when they learned that the weapons had such miraculous effects.”

“The Ancestor's Spear,” Lindon said.

“One of the weakest objects in the maze. The spear wasn’t even unique, you know, though it is enough to dazzle the eyes of anyone below Truegold.” Eithan stared longingly into the distance. “The labyrinth is a true treasure trove, but there's a reason we've left it undisturbed for so long, only nibbling at the corners every once in a while in places like the Desolate Wilds. Because when the dragons delved deeper, withdrawing Lord treasures like the Archstone...”

He paused, picking up from a different point. “You should understand that the dragons left the doors open for years as they explored the labyrinth, making war on one another and settling petty grudges with their new weaponry. They didn't realize that something in that place drew the Dreadgods like wolves to fresh meat.

“Records of that disaster are very spotty, as you might expect. But the warnings they left are clear. Most of this continent was reduced to a blasted wasteland, from which it has not entirely recovered even to this day. Billions of people and sacred beasts died, and the former Blackflame Empire was nothing more than a Remnant haunt for generations.”

Eithan slowly shook his head. “We can't know how many dragons survived, but it wasn't more than a handful. The survivors returned all their weapons to the labyrinth, leaving dire warnings to future generations. To delve past the shallows of this maze is to invite death. They destroyed as many of the entrances as they could, and sealed up the rest.”

“And Jai Daishou opened one?” Lindon asked.

“Desperate men cannot see beyond their own desperation,” Eithan said, with the air of a man quoting. “There was an entrance to the labyrinth in his territory. He would have kept the door open for less than a day. A minor risk, he must have thought, though a risk to the entire Empire. When he brought out the Archstone, Naru Gwei and I knew what he had done. We knew that he had risked bringing the Dreadgods down on us once again.”

A wisp of Lindon's anger rose up again. “You pushed him to it.”

Eithan held up a finger. “I closed off his options to push him to do something foolish. Otherwise, I'd have been leaving my reputation entirely on the outcome of a single fight. I don't prefer to gamble without an overwhelming advantage.”

“But you knew exactly what he had. You knew it was a hidden weapon, you weren't guessing.”

“Yes, well, I was watching when he opened the door. I was shocked he would go so far as to risk the wrath of the Dreadgods, but there it is. That was my plan: to get him to incriminate himself in front of the Skysworn. Even if he had survived, with Jai Long victorious, his reputation—and that of the Jai clan—would never recover. They are the lowest-ranked of the great clans, and the Arelius are ranked number one among the major families. They will lose their spot in the Empire, and we will take it.”

He grimaced, looking uncertain for just a moment. “I am...sorry that you lost what you did. Only know that you were a part of something greater. The Arelius family will rise because of you, and you can only benefit from that.”

Lindon nodded, but his gut was still a little twisted. He shouldn't be complaining about a lost arm. Back in Sacred Valley, if Eithan had offered to raise him to Gold in exchange for a lost arm, he would have handed the man a saw himself.

But this didn't feel like he'd sacrificed something for a greater goal. It felt like he had been a pawn in the plans of the powerful.

“The Dreadgods,” Lindon said at last, trying to change the subject. “Are they coming for us?”

“Most likely not,” Eithan said. “But just in case, the Emperor is gathering his Underlords to him.”

“Will you fight them?”

Eithan let out a bark of a laugh. “As an Underlord? No, they could evaporate my blood from a hundred miles away. We'll be working to keep the populace under control in a state of emergency, should we see signs of a Dreadgod's approach. And we'll be messengers to the people that might actually help.”

Before Lindon could ask who, Eithan explained.

“The Monarchs. They're the most powerful individuals in our world, though the best they could hope for would be a stalemate. None could win a fight against a Dreadgod alone. Not Seshethkunaaz, not Akura Malice, not the Eight-Man Empire or the entire Ninecloud Court.”

Lindon's breath caught. He remembered two of those names, but he had never expected to hear them from Eithan.

How much did Eithan know about them? Monarchs, he'd said. Lindon had never heard the term applied to sacred arts. It sounded like there was a whole group of people at that stage, not just the three examples Suriel had shown him.

He took the thought to its natural conclusion, and a fist seemed to squeeze his lungs. Suriel had given him the names of three people with the power to save Sacred Valley: Sha Miara the Queen of the Ninecloud Court, Northstrider the dragon-eater, and the Eight-Man Empire.

If those were the most powerful people in the world, that meant whatever was approaching Sacred Valley was even more horrifying than he had imagined.

It might not be one of these Dreadgods, but it would be something equally destructive. He couldn't even imagine it.

“I've heard of them before,” Lindon said.

“I would imagine so. They're very famous.”

“No, in a vision. Suriel showed me. She said...they were the ones that could save my homeland.”

Eithan nodded slowly. Over the months, he had scraped most of the details of Suriel's visit from Lindon. All without giving up the details of his own vision. But Lindon had never been specific enough to name the individuals Suriel had shown him.

But that brought up another point, and Lindon could sense an opportunity. He seized it.

“Speaking of visions...” he began, and Eithan's back straightened.

“Later,” Eithan promised.

“I lost an arm for your plans,” Lindon said, the heat of Blackflame leaking into his voice. “I have earned your trust.”

It was perhaps the most firmly Lindon had ever spoken to Eithan, and a trembling part of Lindon's mind—the part that still remembered being Unsouled—begged him to apologize. But Lindon kept staring into Eithan's blue eyes.

“I owe you a full explanation,” Eithan said. “And I will give you one. The more you grow, the more I can share with you. For now, I beg you to trust me.”

That was an irritating non-answer, but Eithan spoke more earnestly and openly than he almost ever did.

Reluctantly, Lindon nodded.

“That's good,” Eithan said, and his grin returned. “Cassias will be here in Sky's Mercy to retrieve you any day now. Rest. Fisher Gesha was right; you've trained like a madman for a year, but that's no way to live forever. There will be plenty of time to advance when I return.”

“When will that be?” Lindon asked. The idea of staying in bed for months horrified him. What if he fell behind his advancement?

“That depends,” Eithan said, “on whether or not there's a Dreadgod coming to kill us all.”

8

Sky's Mercy was a cloudship maintained by the Arelius family: a large blue cloud with a house in the center, flying through the air. Yerin had seen stranger things before—stranger cloudships, too—but there was something about a floating house that especially knocked her off-kilter.

There used to be a second building on the cloud, and Yerin missed the barn. She had more room. Instead, she and Cassias were inside a single bedroom-sized cultivation room, surrounded by wooden walls that had been reinforced by scripts so they didn't fall apart with every flying Striker technique.

He was showing her what it took to be the second-ranked Highgold in the Empire.

She kicked off from the wall, slashing the air in a Rippling Sword technique: a wave of silver madra that sliced through the air like an extension of her sword.

Cassias stood before her, back straight, one hand on his thin saber. He looked like Eithan's more serious younger brother: his golden hair was curly and short, his blue eyes calm, and he wore no smile.

He sidestepped her technique, raising his weapon to return a strike. But she had counted on that. She'd gathered enough aura around her sword, and she struck that aura with her madra as hard as she could.

Her sword rang like a bell.

A ripple ran through the sword aura in the room, exciting it, causing invisible cuts to appear on her robes...and then the wave of aura reached Cassias.

When it hit his sword, the weapon should have burst into a wave of slicing sword-energy that cut him to pieces, but instead he gathered aura himself as he pulled his saber back. The aura she'd affected with the Endless Sword was drawn in like straw into a cyclone, and it swirled around his sword in a silver cloud visible to her Copper sight.

Then he stabbed forward, carrying all that aura with it.

The thrust stabbed across the room in an instant, piercing the air and passing an inch over Yerin's shoulder. A few strands of her hair fell away, and she shivered as she felt the air disturbed by her ear. His technique landed on the wall, where a script shone and dispersed the aura, leaving only a slight scratch on the paneling.

Cassias sheathed his saber and frowned. “If you haven't recovered from last time, I'd be happy to wait.”

Yerin's ankle was still sore, but nothing that would slow her down in a real fight. “You never woke up with a dull edge? Happens to everyone, sometimes.” Cassias had defeated her in no more than three moves each time today, and normally she could hold him off for six or seven. She was a Highgold now, technically his equal, but he had experience and skill that she couldn't match. Yet.

Cassias nodded, expression softening as though he understood. “Don't worry. Eithan has taken too much interest in Lindon to let him die so easily. And in you too.”

Yerin snorted in disbelief, but she turned her head so as not to meet his eyes. What did he know? Sacred artists risked their lives every day. That wasn't enough to worry her.

Even though people died all the time where they weren't meant to. Her master had died in Sacred Valley, maybe the safest place in the world. It wasn't the trap you saw that killed you.

Without her around, Lindon wouldn't know what to watch for. Would Eithan look out for him?

Cassias pulled an intricately carved wooden device out of his outer robe and checked it, tucking it back inside after a glance. “It's almost time. Before we go, Yerin, would you mind if I asked you a personal question?”

“How personal?”

“No one pushes as hard as you do without a goal. Pardon me if I’m overstepping my bounds, but I’d like to know what destination you have in mind.”

She'd started wondering that herself recently.

“To become a Sage,” she said.

His eyebrows lifted. “I wouldn't have thought you were so ambitious.”

“Most Sages don't take disciples. Not real ones, anyway. They don't want to pass on their Path. My master trusted me, and now he's gone.” She ran her hand over the hilt of her master's sword. “I'm not letting his Path go to waste.”

Cassias moved to the door, gesturing for her to follow. “That's a noble goal, and an impressive one. I met a Sage as a child, back in my family's homeland. It was a humbling experience. But it took him centuries to reach that height. Most people can't handle the pressure of training at that level, day after day, year after year, with no guarantee that they'll ever make it.”

They passed through the door on the second floor of the house, moving to the stairs. Through the tall arched windows, she caught a glimpse of the deep blue Thousand-Mile Cloud that was their foundation, as well as the islands of white that surrounded them.

“Never understood that myself,” Yerin said, vaulting over the railing and landing on the first floor instead of taking the stairs. Cassias took them carefully, one at a time. “Don't know what I'd do if I wasn't practicing the sword. You think I'd rather put down roots, or what?”

“That's not what I meant to imply,” Cassias said, unbuckling his belt and tossing it and his sheathed saber onto a nearby rack designed for the purpose. “Only that it often helps in a fight if you have something to fight for.”

Preserving her own life had always been enough to push Yerin along in fights. Should be enough for anybody.

But that wasn’t always the truth, was it? She wanted more than that.

The Sword Sage had always said the pursuit of perfection in the sacred arts was a lonely pursuit, and anything else was a distraction. She’d come to think that advancing alone wasn't just boring, it was painful.

Which had made it such a stab to the gut when Eithan told her she couldn't come to watch Lindon fight. Especially when he'd taken Fisher Gesha, of all people.

“She won't be allowed to watch either,” Eithan said. “I'm bringing her for her unique talents. And I can't carry two people.”

That had sounded like an excuse to Yerin.

Cassias stepped up to the wooden console at the front of the room, before a massive wall of paneled glass. He looked out, through the clouds, over a series of strange mountains that rose from the ground like a forest of spears. One of the closer ones had something that looked like a temple on the top.

“I only ask you to consider...expanding your interests,” Cassias said, moving his hands over the script-circles on the wooden panel. They lit up, and Sky's Mercy shuddered in response. “Even your master was a famous refiner, in addition to being an accomplished swordsman. Many experts find that splitting their focus can actually increase their results.”

Yerin folded her arms, considering. She did spend all her time practicing the sacred arts in some way. Made it hard to care about anything else, when that was her world.

Problem was, she didn't know anything about the world outside of her training. It was the only thing the Sword Sage had raised her to do.

She needed a breath or two to think, but the floor shuddered again, and Orthos came stomping in.

The turtle was so tall and wide that he couldn't pass through most of the doors in the house without tearing holes in their frames, so he stayed in the corner of this main room. He'd walk out of the larger outer doors when he needed to relieve himself or vent his madra, standing on the Thousand-Mile Cloud. But he was tender as a newborn chick when it came to heights, so Yerin usually had to guide him out so he could close his eyes.

For a massive, black reptile with a shell that smoldered with dragonfire, he didn't have much of a spine. Even now, he glanced from side to side with his black-and-red eyes wide. “We're not on the ground yet?” he demanded in a deep, rumbling voice. “We were supposed to land. Why haven't we landed?”

Cassias turned around, his hand reaching into his pocket. Beneath his outer robe, he wore a shirt and pants, which still looked strange to Yerin in a fight. Everyone she knew fought in either a sacred artist's robes or armor.

“I apologize, Orthos,” Cassias said. “I should have given you your medicine already.”

Orthos shifted from one leg to another like a wobbly stool, his eyes flicking from one window to another, staring at the clouds. “We're not...it's not...why are we so high? Hm? Why do we have to be all the way up here?”

Cassias held out a violet pill streaked with blue. “Take your medicine, Orthos. It won't be long now. We're on approach. When you wake up, you'll be with Lindon.”

“He was weak,” Orthos mumbled, stretching out his head to snap up the pill in Cassias' hand. “So weak. He's probably dead. I'll be going back to the way...I was...”

In seconds, he drifted off, withdrawing his head and his limbs into his shell. Now there was a great black mound in the center of their living room, smoke drifting up from him as though from a dying fire.

“He's cheerier than a ray of sunshine,” Yerin said. She'd already heard about Lindon's bout of weakness following his duel, but Orthos admitted that he might feel the same way if Lindon had died. He'd never felt a contractor's death before. He thought Lindon's madra had recovered since, but he couldn't be sure—maybe he was just getting used to the sensation.

So she couldn't shake a little worry. Not enough to distract her, of course, but some.

“Well, at least the pills still work,” Cassias said, eyeing Orthos' sleeping form. “They've kept his madra quiet as well, even when he's awake.”

“He hasn't torn the house apart. That's a prize and a half, if you ask me.”

Cassias turned back to the console. “That was our last pill, so we'll have to rely on Eithan and Lindon for the trip back. One breath of dragon’s fire, and we'll hit the ground like a meteor.”

He had angled the house down slightly, so that the cloud was now drifting toward the temple at the top of the mountain. She walked up to stand beside him.

“That it?”

“Eithan's down there,” Cassias confirmed. “I believe I saw some Remnant parts set out in a room as well, so Fisher Gesha must have set up.”

That, or some Remnants died in a cave. And she noticed he didn't say a word about Lindon, one way or another.

She turned to go find a seat—she'd learned it was best to be sitting during a landing. As she did, she felt a surge of power miles away to the south, the opposite direction of the mountain. Only a few miles, and it gave off the familiar feeling of blood madra.

At least it wasn't any closer. A sudden battle between experts could be like an earthquake in a ceramics shop. Maybe that fight would—

Her Blood Shadow unraveled.

That quickly, the knot tied behind her slipped free. The seal her master had left for her was gone. No warning.

Her belt loosened, uncoiling like a serpent.

No time to panic. She dropped to the floor with Orthos' heat behind her, focusing on her spirit. A bloody red light was already stretching deep into her, its roots questing for the silver light of her core. She pushed her madra through its cycles, her breath coming too fast, silver light forcing back the red.

It wanted to slither inside. Infect her.

And her master's protection was gone.

The thought made her breath come even faster, but she calmed herself before she lost control over her madra, pushing back, forcing the Blood Shadow to retreat. She was a Highgold now, and it hadn't quite caught up yet. She was still ahead of it. She could still keep herself under control.

Something shifted on her waist, and she snapped her eyes open.

The Shadow reached for Cassias.

It stretched out from her like a questing limb, the end of its blood-covered length splitting into fingers. A hand. It was actually reaching for Cassias now, its fingers grasping for the back of his head. Its fingertips were sharp as knives—shaped by her sword madra.

She croaked out some kind of warning, but it was hard to talk while every part of her was straining to hold back her uninvited guest. She even seized it with both hands, trying to pull it back, but it dragged her seated body a few inches across the floor.

The parasite's knife-edged hand closed on Cassias' golden curls.

And without turning around, he slid away.

With one punch, he drove a spike of silver madra from his fist and into the center of the crimson palm. Blood madra spattered on the ceiling and then dissolved into essence with a hiss.

Yerin was still trying to push out her warning, sweat streaming down her face, but she finally closed her mouth. An Arelius might as well have eyes in the back of his head.

The Shadow moved again, a blur of red, and Cassias stood his ground. Both of his hands struck, blasting pieces away from the Blood Shadow.

But when the exchange ended, there was a scratch on his arm. It oozed a single drop of blood.

“Get away,” she managed to grunt out, hauling on her uninvited guest. “Blood!”

Cassias looked from her to the parasite and dashed back without asking questions, but the drop had already fallen to the ground.

The Blood Shadow fell on it like a hawk taking a fish, slapping its palm down on the droplet on the floor. Blood aura and madra flared, twisting with one another into a horrible and complex technique, even as the parasite relaxed. It retreated, allowing her to haul it back a few feet.

She knew why. She had seen this technique before.

It had destroyed her home.

As though that single drop of blood had been a seed, a creature sprouted in seconds. It was a doll of pure crimson, formed as though from solid blood, shaped like a man but only half the height. It had no features on its head, but it turned to Cassias like a hunting dog. It loped toward him, using its arms for balance, like an ape.

Her master had called them bloodspawn, and they were the stuff of her nightmares.

She shouted a warning to him, still hauling on her Shadow. Cassias kicked off, away from the console, a flash of silver driving a hole in the floorboards. His Silver Step technique brought him forward with such speed that he vanished, reappearing behind his opponent. He slashed his hand back, trailing silver light, passing through the bloodspawn's head.

Its head was blasted apart, but it was made of ooze. It latched onto him, grabbing him by both shoulders and across the chest.

Each bloodspawn was different, but this one had been grown by a Shadow that fed on her madra. She knew what would happen next, but it still caught her off-guard with its speed.

It sharpened into a forest of blades, like it had sprouted razors.

Cassias let out a sound like a grunt, soaked in his own blood in an instant. The bloodspawn dissolved, having poured its own power into the technique, but the wounds remained. His shirt was shredded, and a stain slowly spread over his chest. He staggered, even as a sheet of blood fell from his wounded scalp and covered his eyes like a waterfall.

He looked up to the window, where the mountain temple had grown huge in his sights. He stumbled to the controls, leaving a bloody handprint on them, starting to level off their flight.

Guilt squeezed Yerin's gut. This was her fault.

But no, she had to focus. If she let the Blood Shadow take over her spirit, things would only get worse.

She tightened her grip on the parasite, both physically and spiritually. But it seemed to sense Cassias' wounds...or perhaps the blood aura.

It surged toward him, transforming into a razor-edged mace that smashed down at his back. She managed to shout a warning this time.

He turned with both his hands raised, filled with silver light, driving forward with spikes of sword madra. The technique blasted into the Blood Shadow, splattering power onto the walls, and turning its course aside. He was able to take one unsteady step to the side, avoiding its strike.

But it smashed straight into the console, blasting it to splinters.

The parasite had lost much of its strength in confronting Cassias, so Yerin was able to level herself to her feet...but all she could see was the mountain in the window. Growing closer and closer.

The Blood Shadow drew itself back in, like a pet falling asleep, twisting itself around not only her waist, but her shoulders and hips as though it would never let go.

She shuddered, but at least she was in control over herself now. She dashed forward, seizing the wounded Cassias. He struggled against her for a moment, but he was too weak.

Yerin ran out the door, dashing onto the deep blue cloud as wind tore past them. She cast a glance back at Orthos, but he was withdrawn into his shell—she hoped it would be enough to protect him from the crash. Whether it was or not, there was nothing she could do.

She leaned over the edge of the Thousand-Mile Cloud and forced herself to wait. Her every instinct told her to jump out now, abandoning the doomed house, though it would splatter her like a...well, like anything dropped from this height.

The temple loomed closer, and she refused to blink, staring straight into the wind as they approached.

When the edge of the mountain was finally beneath her, she jumped.

With Cassias over her left shoulder, she drew her master's sword, slashing at the air in the only Forger technique she knew. She Forged a blade beneath them—it would be thin enough to see through if viewed edge-on, but of course she didn't want to fall on the edge of the blade. They fell onto the flat side.

Her master had used a variation of this technique to fly. She only hoped she could do half as well now.

She couldn't. The sword shattered like glass and they tumbled down toward the rock, barely slowed at all.

She tried again, crashing through it once more, and then she drew her sword back to try a third time.

They hit the stone.

She couldn't feel her limbs. A disturbing sense of cold passed through her, and darkness pressed into the edges of her vision. A roar sounded nearby, and some part of her guessed that had to be the house crashing.

Before she lost consciousness, she realized there was one thing she could still feel: the power rising from behind her, like a blood-red sun. It was getting closer.

Something was coming, and it had given her Blood Shadow its strength.

* * *

Pai Ren had joined the Skysworn to see the world look up to him.

Not only was the green armor of the Skysworn among the most respected uniforms you could wear in the Blackflame Empire, you also got the chance to fly. People watched him from below as he flew over, and they looked up at him in jealousy. Until today, he had considered it the best decision of his life so far.

Now, he thought it might be the worst—and last—decision he ever made.

Death had come to Lastleaf Fortress, where he had been stationed. He was only investigating the Empire's southern border. It was a standard inspection, and the sacred artists in Lastleaf had welcomed him like an honored guest. He had spent the last three weeks feasting on the products of the southern jungle, which he had been honored to visit.

Now, somehow, the sun had been stained red. He stood on his personal Thousand-Mile Cloud, looking out over the rest of the fort below him, horrified. Blood aura choked the air, so that he had to close his Copper sight and withdraw his spiritual sense, lest he lose his lunch.

The fortress was a vast complex, wider than it was tall, spread out beneath him in layers like the rings of a tree. Each ring was walled, and the strongest sacred artists lived in the heart of the fort.

The sacred arts of this School, the Path of the Last Leaf, turned trees into deadly weapons. Vines and trees had been planted within the fortress for the purposes of cycling aura, dotting each layer. The innermost layer was almost a forest.

Ordinarily, there was a natural flow of students and experts flowing throughout the fortress, passing between walls and going on a thousand different tasks. It had been soothing to watch.

Today, it was a horrifying scene of carnage.

Beneath him, the artists of the Lastleaf School tried to stand in desperate pockets against an army of...not Remnants, exactly, nor sacred beasts. Were they constructs? He couldn't be sure.

He'd call them monsters.

Creatures of blood, born of blood. Every wound created another one—a faceless, shambling creature that sacrificed itself in order to kill another sacred artist. They would latch on to a Lastleaf artist, split into a thousand crimson vines, and then strangle the man or woman to death.

It looked disturbingly similar to a technique from the Path of the Last Leaf, as though these blood-creatures used the sacred arts of those they killed. Or perhaps they took the sacred arts from the blood when they were born.

Ren's mind tried to unravel the puzzle even as his body stood, frozen and horrified, stuck to his Thousand-Mile Cloud. He was a Truegold, stronger than most in the Empire, but he couldn't imagine himself doing anything about the tragedy he saw unfolding beneath him.

A trio of women stood with weapons in hand, standing against a tide of crimson creatures. One slashed a green sword, and leaves were Forged from nowhere, slashing against them. Another raised a construct device, which flashed green, to no apparent effect he could see. A third swung a hammer, smashing a single monster to a splatter. A wave of creatures overwhelmed them in seconds.

He could probably have heard their screams, if they didn't blend into everyone else's.

A couple pulled their child between them, running from a line of red monsters. They wouldn't make it.

An elder directed a tree to raise its branches in a fist, smashing down on the blood-creatures and reducing them to paste. A group of disciples huddled behind him, frightened, but there seemed to be a new batch of enemies born from every human death. There was no end to them, and the elder's madra could only last so long.

Similar stories played out all over the fortress, such that he found it harder and harder to focus on any individual detail. It was just a mass of horror, like a nightmare spread out beneath him.

He could descend on that elder who was holding out. Perhaps save a disciple or two on his cloud.

But...

He glanced behind him, where the red light had condensed into a shaft of what looked like a beam of crimson sunlight. He had withdrawn his perception already, but he still felt something from back there: dread. Horror. Overwhelming power.

There was something only a mile or two south of this fortress, something ancient and powerful. It had caused this, he was sure.

And if he died here, the Skysworn would never know about it.

There was a sealed box on his thigh, scripted and reinforced so that it was almost impossible to open by accident. Among the Skysworn, it was considered shameful to open this box.

He flooded it with his madra, unlocking it. It popped open, causing a stone to fall into his gauntleted hand.

This green egg-shaped stone was, in fact, a simple construct. He crushed it, releasing the power inside.

The power gathered into a small, winged creature like a four-winged hummingbird made entirely out of green light. The construct flitted around his head for one lap and then streaked into the distance, heading for Skysworn headquarters.

The messenger would alert the Underlord, drawing reinforcements, but it couldn't carry any detailed information. He would have to tell that story himself.

He retreated into the sky, urging his Thousand-Mile Cloud forward. Away from that disturbing shaft of red light...and from whatever it was shining on.

As he flew away, he spotted someone standing on the outer wall. A young man, with utterly pale skin and black hair that fell down almost to his waist. Even among the brutal scenes below, he stood out. Ren slowed, wondering if he should pick the boy up. He didn't look older than eighteen, but something warned him off.

The young man wasn't watching the fighting around him. His eyes were calm, and on the sky. Watching Ren.

Ren gained some distance, rising into the sky. The young man was wearing a shapeless black coat that covered him from shoulders to feet, but he reached out a hand.

The hand was solid red, as though it had been dipped in blood. With one sharp gesture, the young man made a fist.

A lance of pain shot through Ren's heart.

He clapped a hand to his chest, his lungs freezing up, and the break in his concentration made his cloud shudder. An instant later, the script in his armor flashed, breaking off the blood Ruler technique that had almost killed him. The red aura was pushed away from him, his heart relaxed, and he heaved a huge breath.

This time, he flew as fast as he could. There was no thought in his head besides escape.

He made it a few more yards before something seized him around his ankle and dragged him off his cloud.

Before Pai Ren hit the ground, he screamed one last time. No one heard him.

* * *

Lindon hobbled out into the sunlight to see what the noise was about. He and Gesha had been preparing his new arm when the mountain shook with an overwhelming crash.

He still hadn't fully recovered from the fight, his body still sore, his madra still weak. Little Blue had cleansed some of his madra channels, but they were still scraped raw. His body felt as though it was made of clay, and he was pushing it through each step with sheer willpower. Gesha had tried to keep him in his bed, assuring him that he needed his rest, and that she would investigate the noise.

But Yerin was supposed to arrive today.

Fisher Gesha held the door open for him, but she was distracted. Her bun of gray hair was in his face as she stared out the door.

Before he saw anything, he was distracted by the feeling of a huge power to the south. He looked that direction first, and it was as though the sunlight had been filtered through a lens of red glass only a few miles to the south.

But when he realized what was lying right in front of him, all thoughts about that distant power were pushed from his mind.

The wreckage of Sky's Mercy was strewn all over the side of the mountain, with dust and smoke rising from the debris. Blue wisps of cloud were still dissolving in the air, and here and there he could see something he recognized: a chair lying upside-down, a twisted piece of what had once been a dragon-headed banister.

Then he spotted a figure in black robes, and he shot forward, his wounds forgotten. Yerin was lying there on the stone, bloody and broken, with Cassias next to her.

His spirit told him Orthos was nearby, but only a quick glance assured him the turtle was fine: his limbs and head had been retracted into his shell, and he was sitting at the center of the wreck like a smoldering coal. If Lindon was reading his spiritual sensations correctly, his contracted partner was sleeping.

But when he looked at Yerin's condition, his throat tightened up. She was lying on her side, blood pooled beneath her head, with her legs twisted around one another. Her arms were limp, her fingertips twitching, her bare sword lying twenty yards away. At least she hadn't fallen on it. Even her belt had come undone, somehow, twisting around her body instead of coiling around her waist.

He knelt beside her, raising trembling fingers an inch away from her lips to feel for breath.

An instant later, he felt her exhale, and he released his own breath. As long as she was alive, she could be saved.

Cassias' corpse was a few steps away. Lindon only looked him over once before knowing he was a lost cause. He didn't need to check for a pulse; the man was covered in wounds and soaked in blood. No one could—

Cassias stirred, raising a hand to his head. Lindon jolted, hurrying over to the older man to help him sit up.

“Don't push yourself,” Lindon advised. “We're here.” He had no idea what they would do, but it seemed important to soothe a man who had just survived a violent crash.

When it seemed Cassias could sit up on his own, Lindon began to walk back to Yerin, but the Arelius seized his arm.

“Stay away,” Cassias said, voice rough.

He was shaky from the crash. Lindon had seen this before, back in his clan, on people who had survived battles. He tried to pry himself away gently, but Cassias' grip was like an eagle's talon. He staggered to his feet, pulling Lindon away from Yerin.

Toward Eithan.

Eithan had, of course, made it here before Lindon and Fisher Gesha had even made it out of their rooms. But Lindon hadn't noticed until now that the Underlord had made no effort to help his family member or his disciple.

Instead, he stood on the very edge of the cliff, staring at the red light in the distance.

Which, now that Lindon thought of it, seemed a little closer than it had been a moment ago.

Wind tugged at Eithan's hair, and for once he wore no smile. He stared into the red light like a man contemplating the approach of an advancing army.

“Her Blood Shadow has awakened,” Cassias reported to Eithan.

“It's no wonder, considering what's coming,” Eithan said, still looking to the south.

“We should remove it. We should have removed it before now, I can't imagine what you were thinking.”

“No, you can't,” Eithan said, pulling out his black iron scissors. With one swift motion, he sliced open the tip of his finger.

Then, without warning, he turned on his heel and headed for Yerin.

Yerin's belt stirred and struck like a serpent when Eithan moved closer, which startled Lindon. Fisher Gesha scuttled away on her spider's legs, looking terrified, but neither Cassias nor Eithan seemed surprised. The Underlord simply let the end of the blood-colored rope strike him on the neck, where it did no more damage than a limp string.

Eithan pulled Yerin's robes apart.

He tore the cloth easily, exposing about a foot of her belly. There were thin scars even there, though not as many as on the skin of her arms and face. It was just her stomach, but Lindon still thought about looking away.

But the sight stopped him. The bloody rope that she had always worn like a belt stretched out from her navel, as though it was made of her intestines.

Or, a more disturbing thought: as though it stretched into her core.

Eithan sketched in her skin with his blood, writing a circle of symbols around her navel. It must be a script, but Lindon recognized none of it. He took in a breath, and then a gray fire ignited the symbols. Soulfire: the power of an Underlord.

Lindon still didn't understand it, as Eithan refused to explain, but soulfire was the hallmark and the signature of a Lord. This script used it as power.

And the red rope crumbled away. It wilted and shriveled like a dying plant, dissolving into what looked like flakes of dried blood before it finally evaporated to red essence.

Just like that, it was gone. The circle of symbols on Yerin's stomach had been blackened, as though they had been burned into her flesh.

She woke up only a second later, coughing. She groaned. “Somebody find the ox that trampled me.”

Lindon hurried over to her, but Eithan had returned his gaze to the south. “You'll feel worse in a moment,” he said. His scissors were still in his hand. “Battle is upon us.”

Lindon was going to ask what he was talking about, then he saw the wall of red had pressed against the edge of the mountain. His eyes widened.

Then red light swallowed them all.

9

It was as though the sun had turned red.

Even in Lindon's Copper sight, everything was dyed crimson. His stomach heaved, and bile rose in his throat—this felt like being submerged in a pool of blood.

He closed his spiritual sight before he lost himself, but what he saw in reality was even more disturbing.

Where Cassias and Yerin had been lying on the stone, creatures rose from their blood like Remnants from corpses. They were only half the size of a person, with featureless faces, and their bodies had been formed from gelatinous blood.

There were six of them in an instant, turning their heads toward Lindon and the others as though they could smell living flesh.

They lurched forward, but Eithan blurred through their ranks, his scissors sweeping through the air.

Blood madra sprayed into the air and dissolved into essence, and all six of them deflated.

Fisher Gesha pointed a trembling finger at the sight. “That! What is that? Hm? Did you bring those back with you?”

“These are bloodspawn,” Eithan said, shaking the last stains off his scissors as the liquid madra evaporated. “They are the least of the Bleeding Phoenix's creations.”

Gesha seemed to shrink into herself even more, though she didn't have much size to lose. “The...the Bleeding Phoenix? Did you...are you saying...”

Cassias grasped at his hip as though feeling for a sword that wasn't there. He frowned at the space, then fumbled at his other hip. Of course, there was still no weapon. The crash had shaken him.

“What happened here, Eithan?” he asked, finally giving up on his saber.

“Jai Daishou opened a door he should not have,” Eithan said, moving his head as though watching something move through the air. Something that Lindon couldn't see. “Someone noticed.”

“Dreadgods,” Fisher Gesha repeated, shaking. “Dreadgods...”

“Bloodspawn rise from spilled blood,” Eithan said. “When it's still inside you, or on your skin, your madra still has control. The Phoenix's power can't do anything with it until it leaves the influence of your spirit.”

“Unless the Phoenix itself rises,” Cassias pointed out. He was leaning against the back of an upturned couch that had fallen from Sky's Mercy, and he still didn't look balanced.

Eithan nodded absently, still watching something in the air. “A Dreadgod doesn't care for the protection of your meager spirit. This isn't its full attention, just a side effect of its awakening.”

More bloodspawn formed from the drops spilling from Cassias and Yerin, but Eithan dispersed them with a couple of quick blasts of pure madra. Lindon needed to learn that technique.

“Forgiveness, but we should leave,” Lindon said at last. He felt like he was stating the obvious, but no one else had said it. If the red light was the extent of the Phoenix's influence, they had to escape it.

Eithan responded without turning. “I could take myself out of here. I could take Yerin with me, and perhaps Cassias. You, with your Thousand-Mile Cloud, could take Fisher Gesha. But what about Jai Long and Jai Chen.”

Lindon started. They were still here?

“And what if we have to fight our way out?” Eithan continued. “Do we abandon our charges? If we are to run, we first have to clear some space.”

Yerin rose unsteadily to her feet, clutching one arm as though it pained her. “Then let's stop jabbering and do it,” she said, hobbling over to her master's sword. Leaning over and picking it up was an agonizing production. “Better than sitting here.”

“Don't worry. They have come to us.”

A young man appeared beyond the edge of the cliff, his pale face framed by black hair that stretched down to his waist. He wore a dark, shapeless coat that covered his shoulders, and as he slowly rose up the side of the cliff, Lindon saw that the cloak covered even his feet.

He was standing on a rising tide of blood.

The newcomer stepped from his red platform onto the edge of the mountain without a word, his gaze locked on Eithan's. “Underlord,” he said, his voice a whisper. He sounded as though that single word pained him.

“An emissary of Redmoon Hall, if I'm not mistaken,” Eithan said. His voice was cheery, but he still wore no smile. His scissors were held ready in his right hand.

“I am Longhook,” the emissary said. A gleaming red hook appeared at the end of his right sleeve, as though it were made of crimson-dyed steel. In that light, everything looked red, so its color could have been nothing more than a trick of the eye.

Though he doubted it.

The hook slowly slid to the ground, revealing link after link of red chain. In a moment, the hook hit the ground with a clink.

Eithan looked from his enemy’s weapon to his own. “Longhook, is it? You can call me Tiny Scissors.”

Longhook didn’t seem to appreciate the joke. He stood like a statue carved from ice.

“What does your master want?” Eithan asked, casually strolling away from the other members of the Arelius family.

“North,” Longhook whispered. “He wants the treasure of the north.”

“By all means, go around us,” Eithan offered.

Lindon wondered what Eithan was doing. Why was he trying to make a deal with the enemy? Eithan often preferred to talk his way around problems, but he had already said they would have to fight. And he had dispersed the bloodspawn with no problems. Why didn't he knock this newcomer off the mountain?

Gingerly, feeling as though he were submerging his arm in sludge, Lindon extended his perception.

Only an instant later, he understood the truth.

Longhook blazed with the power of an Underlord.

“No,” the emissary responded. “A piece of the treasure...here.” His breath rasped, so many words apparently having been too much for him.

Eithan froze a moment, then his smile reappeared. “Well then, I think we can come to an—”

In the middle of his own sentence, he exploded into motion. The air clapped behind him when he moved, driving his scissors at his enemy.

Lindon couldn't follow what happened next, only the explosion of sound, a rush of wind, and a flash of red light.

A column of stone exploded under Longhook's weapon, the hook having missed Eithan and slammed into the building behind him. Eithan avoided even the chain as though it were red-hot, vaulting over it, and slamming his fist into Longhook's chest. A ripple of colorless power surged out, blasting past the Redmoon Hall emissary.

This exchange of blows was still too fast for Lindon to follow, but the emissary didn't seem slowed down by Eithan's attack at all. It ended in Eithan leaping backwards, and Longhook with one arm extended. It stuck out from his coat, and his arm was sheathed in solid red.

Was that his Goldsign? Or was he covered in one of those bloodspawn?

He'd hauled his hook back to himself, and now he whipped it at Eithan. It struck with an impact that hurt Lindon's ears, carrying the sound of steel-on-steel as Eithan blocked with his scissors.

The impact sent him flying back toward the building on the mountain, and Longhook was after him in an instant.

From start to finish, the whole exchange took perhaps two seconds.

Lindon stared after the crashes and explosions coming from inside the building. He shivered.

He couldn't have blocked a single one of those strikes. He would have died in an instant.

He'd started to think of Jai Long as close to Eithan's level, but the first step toward Underlord was nothing compared to the real thing.

“I say we leave,” Lindon said, moving to help Yerin walk. She waved him away, though she winced at the motion and her arm was starting to swell. He stayed next to her, just in case.

Cassias was in even worse shape, his eyes distant. Fisher Gesha nodded to Lindon's words, scuttling off to the side entrance of the building—the sounds from Eithan's fight had already grown distant, but she was still careful.

Slowly, Cassias shook his head. “Not yet. There are more coming.”

Lindon scanned the ground, but no new bloodspawn had risen. It looked as though the blood from Yerin and Cassias' injuries had been exhausted.

“Not ours,” Cassias said, and pointed to the edge of the cliff.

Where Longhook had first appeared, there were now a host of featureless heads popping over the edge. They clambered up with their malformed arms, but these seemed somehow different from the ones before.

The others had been slightly angular, with sharp features and long limbs. These were still made of blood madra, and still had no faces, but their bodies were twisted and gnarled. As though there were a skeleton of wood underneath. There was even a pattern in the flow of their crimson “skin,” where Lindon caught an impression of fluttering leaves.

His guess was confirmed an instant later, when one of the bloodspawn exploded into a branch of crimson vines covered in scarlet leaves. The vines rushed across the ground for them, like a nest of hungry snakes.

Next to him, Yerin shuddered. Her skin was even paler than usual—although that might have been the blood loss—and she clutched her master's sword in both hands. He had never seen her so panicked before.

“No, no, no,” she said. “Not this time.”

With a desperate shout, she slashed her white blade at the grasping vines. Lindon heard a sound like a bell, and something sliced at the edges of his robes.

The vines splattered to liquid madra, which quickly began to dissolve.

So did the ranks of the bloodspawn.

Lindon caught her with his left hand as she sagged, exhausted, but his sudden motion pulled loose the scripted band around the stump of his right arm. Pain flared back again, dull but immediate, and his eyes lost focus.

He fell to his knees, taking her with him.

She shook for a moment, then her eyes fastened on the space where his right hand had once been. “Your arm,” she said, looking up to him with wide eyes.

He forced a smile. “Better than my life, isn't it?”

“Doesn't make it smiles and rainbows just because you lived,” Yerin said. “Heavens know, I’m sorry. I’m just…” She looked back to the splashes of blood and shuddered again. “I am sorry.”

In mortal danger they may have been, but her sympathy warmed him even as it caught him unprepared. He thought she would say he should just bear it and stop complaining.

“I've been down that road,” she said, rolling her sleeve up to reveal a scar around her left elbow. “Lost both of them, to tell you true.” Another scar ringed her right wrist. “And chunks out of both legs so they hung there, useless as rust on a blade. It's no joke. Nothing worse than an itch on a limb you’ve already lost.”

“How did you get them back?” Lindon asked. As interested as he was in the powers of a Remnant arm, if he could get his own arm back...

“Master had a pill for everything. He could regrow a limb faster than a flower. Expensive, though, so he always made me work for it.”

She stood on her own now, and despite the blood running down her face, she seemed more like herself now than she had only a moment before. Lindon's missing arm had shaken her out of whatever had taken hold of her.

He looked to the still-vanishing puddles of blood madra. “Pardon, but have you seen these before?”

She went still for a moment before giving him a single nod. That lost expression returned. “I’ve seen them. Too much of them, when this showed up,” she said, clapping a hand to her stomach. “I guess it's time to—”

Then she seemed to realize her belt was missing. She stared down, dumbfounded, and felt around her waist. “Where is it? It can't just...crawl off...” She was starting to breathe quickly, and she squeezed her eyes shut.

A moment later, her breath returned to normal, but her shoulders slumped. “It's still there. Coiled like a worm in an apple.” Her lips twisted in disgust. “But somebody bottled it up. Eithan?”

“Eithan.”

Another explosion in the back of the mountain led to a rising column of smoke. “Let's go. We should be ready to leave when he wins.”

Another bloodspawn poked its head up the cliff, and Fisher Gesha threw a web of purple light at it. It was jerked down the side of the mountain as though she'd tied a weight to its ankles.

Carefully, Cassias stepped up to the edge of the cliff and glanced down. Almost instantly, he staggered back.

“We have to leave. Right now.”

He marched back toward the entrance into the mountain, though every second or third step he swayed as though he stood on the deck of a ship.

Yerin and Gesha followed him, but a strange curiosity took hold of Lindon. He walked to the edge and peered down.

Dozens—perhaps hundreds—of bloodspawn were stuck to the side of the mountain. Some of them looked like gnarled trees, others like clouds of gas, and still others like a mass of jagged crystals. Most of them weren't moving quickly, but they all crept up the side of the mountain.

But beneath them, covering the hills, was an ocean of writhing red figures. Lindon couldn't begin to guess how many there were. An army.

He ran back, hurrying after the others. There were so many. So many. And if they fought, new ones would be created every time a human was injured.

They would be overwhelmed in minutes, dragged down and torn apart by monsters.

His exhaustion and the mental burden of losing his arm seemed to retreat in the face of a rising tide of panic.

One of the doors to the sanctuary had been blasted off its hinges. Red-stained sunlight streamed in through a hole in the ceiling.

A bloodspawn was forming right in front of them, from a tiny splatter on the wall. It was transparent as red glass, and it seemed taller and thinner than the others.

Cassias drove a spike of silver madra through it, but the bloodspawn didn't seem to mind the hole in its chest. It held its arms wide, trying to catch the Arelius in an embrace.

Lindon moved up, cycling pure madra.

His madra channels still pained him whenever he cycled, and he had to improvise a different pattern to use his technique with his left hand. He usually used his right.

But a second later, he had driven an Empty Palm into the bloodspawn's midsection.

It popped like a bubble, spraying him with liquid madra. The madra burned slightly, tingling against his skin, but it started to evaporate almost immediately. No one commented; they were all on high alert as they moved through the red-lit halls, heading for the entrance to the complex below.

So many walls had been blown out by the battles between the two Underlords that Lindon wondered about the sanctuary’s structural integrity. As he watched, a few boulders bigger than his head crumbled from a hole in the ceiling, smashing into the ground.

The wind, whistling through the walls, now sounded ominous.

After an agonizing minute or two of navigating through the fractured halls, they finally came upon a door at the end of a hall. Debris was lying against it, holding it closed, but at least they hadn't run into another bloodspawn. Lindon would count that as a success.

Fisher Gesha lashed lines of purple madra to the debris, hauling them back with her power. With a single palm strike, Cassias shattered a block bigger than he was, though he had to lean against a wall and take a breath afterwards. He looked as though he'd bathed in blood, and his wounds were obvious. More than any of them, he needed to get out of here.

Yerin simply grabbed chunks of stone and hauled them away with her bare hands. Lindon switched to Blackflame and joined her, though the Burning Cloak was better for sudden, abrupt motions than for sustained strength. He ended up kicking stones away, then shattering the door open.

He was relieved when he saw the steady runelight of the script-circle in the stairway behind the door. It led down, toward the chamber where his pack waited. Once he retrieved Little Blue, his belongings, and his new arm—which was still in the process of being created—they could all leave. Fisher Gesha had some belongings of her own as well, which she couldn't leave behind. She wasn't even carrying her goldsteel hook.

They started heading down when Eithan crashed through the ceiling behind them.

A red hook had been driven into his shoulder, and the Redmoon Hall emissary had hauled him down through the ceiling. Longhook was standing behind them, on the ground floor, and none of them had noticed him show up. Now he stood over Eithan's squirming body, holding his chain in two crimson hands.

Eithan forced his eyes open, though they were hazy with pain, and both of his hands were holding the hook in his shoulder. He craned his eyes back to see Longhook, though from his perspective the emissary must have looked upside-down.

He revealed a grin of bloodstained teeth. “It's not too late for you to surrender,” he said, pulling the hook from his shoulder with a sick, wet sound. He shuddered as he did so.

Longhook had a cut along the side of his neck, and his coat had been sliced in a few places. But otherwise, he seemed the same as when he had first appeared.

Lindon gripped the edge of the doorway, rekindling the Burning Cloak.

A loud voice in his mind urged him to run down, grab his belongings, and leave. But Blackflame pushed him to action, which is why he kept it surging through him.

He had to help…without getting destroyed by a single casual backhand from an Underlord.

He gathered a dark fireball in his one remaining palm, focused on Longhook. Fisher Gesha shook her head frantically when she saw what he was doing, but he was staring at his target. Blackflame madra was known for piercing defenses. He had blasted off a Truegold's hand and threatened Jai Long. He could at least distract an Underlord for an instant.

As long as he didn't draw too much of his attention.

Eithan flipped up, slamming a foot into Longhook's face, but the emissary dodged and caught Eithan in the ribs with a red fist. The blow launched Eithan five feet in the air, where he twisted and fired a Striker technique down at his opponent.

A colorless wave washed over the Redmoon Hall emissary, and just a hint of it splashed on Lindon, destabilizing his technique. His ball of Blackflame swelled to twice its size in an instant as his control shook, and it was all he could do to compress it once again before it exploded.

The fight between Underlords had continued in a long, ear-shattering roar of strikes and counterstrikes, but Eithan was clearly getting the worst of it. If Lindon couldn't do something, he was going to die.

Then Longhook froze.

And the world darkened.

The crimson light streaming in from the holes in the ceiling was cut off, swallowing them in shadow. Lindon looked up, startled, only to see a deep green mass covering the sky. It rolled like distant storm clouds, or the surface of a lake seen from beneath...

No, those were clouds. A massive bank of green clouds.

Longhook withdrew his chain, and it slithered back into his sleeve, the hook following. He turned to dash off, but there was another wave of transparent power. He stumbled.

When it washed over Lindon, his Blackflame technique was snuffed out like a candle. The purple lights connecting Gesha to the rocks vanished, and Cassias and Yerin both sagged to their knees as the Enforcer techniques they used to keep themselves upright failed.

“So rude, to leave in the middle of a conversation,” Eithan said, though his words were slurred and his smile was still bloodstained.

Longhook's head swiveled on his neck independent of the rest of his body. His hook peeked out the edges of his sleeve again.

Then a figure fell from above. It fell through one of the holes in the roof, folding its emerald wings, and landed with an impact that shattered stone.

Naru Gwei looked up through the veil of his greasy, gray hair, burn scars twisting his face. His old, battered armor was no worse for his hard landing, and his wings folded up impossibly small as they vanished into slots in the back of his armor. He knelt with one hand pressed against the broken stone.

The other held his massive black sword.

“In the name of the Blackflame Empire, and by the authority of the emperor, you are under arrest,” the old man said. His voice still sounded bored, if not sleepy.

Longhook hurled his weapon. Not toward Naru Gwei; the hook shattered the far door, breaking the way out to the arena where Lindon and Jai Long had fought. The chain continued, impossibly long, until the end of the weapon hooked one of the columns still standing.

Without a word, he hauled on his chain, pulling himself down the hall so fast he may as well have been flying.

Naru Gwei lifted his free hand from the stone, making a gesture as though grabbing something.

Longhook froze like a bird trapped in mid-flight.

“I thought I said you were under arrest,” the Skysworn said, rising to his feet.

The emissary of Redmoon Hall craned his neck with great effort to look back at them. No, not at them.

He looked straight at Yerin.

Yerin's head rocked back as she noticed, and she drew in a breath. With a barely perceptible motion, he nodded to her.

Then he twisted his body, fighting Naru Gwei's Ruler technique, and moved his hands in a strange pattern.

Red light twisted, and pain stabbed through Lindon's limbs. He fell to the ground, because the weight of his body was too much for the agony in his calves. Even Naru Gwei grunted, flinching back.

A blood Ruler technique, Lindon was sure of it. He was using the power of blood aura to affect their bodies directly. Normally, it might be too weak to harm an opponent, but the power of blood was so strong it was twisting the light. He had more aura to work with than Naru Gwei possibly could.

The Skysworn's technique broke, and Longhook shot off again. In an instant, he had vanished beyond the cliff.

Naru Gwei looked sharply to Eithan, who was struggling to sit up while leaning against the wall, a bleeding hole in his shoulder.

“He has friends,” Eithan said, his smile twisting. “He's headed straight for them. I can't be sure if they're coming to us, but I'd rather not find out.”

The Skysworn Captain nodded. With a casual swipe, he destroyed a bloodspawn that was rising from the pool beneath Eithan.

“Fifteen minutes,” he said. “See to your injuries and gather your things. Then we're leaving.”

Eithan glanced up at the vast green clouds overhead. “You brought your whole fortress along, did you?”

“Never thought I'd need it,” he said heavily. “No one should have to plan for a day like this.” Eithan started struggling to his feet, but Naru Gwei scooped him up with one hand. “The rest of them can join us, or they can take their chances with the Bleeding Phoenix's mercy. But you, Arelius, you're coming with me. The Emperor needs us both.”

* * *

Jai Long spun his spear, driving the white-edged point of his spear through a blood-creature, reducing it to a rush of liquid. After every one he defeated, he glanced back to his sister.

His instincts urged him to carry her, but he fought back the thought. She could move on her own now.

Although not by much.

The rush of unstable madra from Jai Daishou had swollen her core with powers he didn't understand. If not for the Arelius Underlord's assurance that she would be fine, Jai Long would have tried his own hand at first aid. Though he knew so little about healing the spirit that he might well cripple her again.

She was following behind him, and to the physical eye she looked healthier than ever. Her wide eyes were focused, and she wore lavender sacred artist's robes that had been stained with red liquid madra. She had her hands out as though trying to use a technique.

And that was where the problem came in.

Her breath was ragged and heavy, and she was extremely focused on the area between her hands, but she couldn't control her madra.

A nearby monster exploded into a cloud of red spores, and Jai Long was almost caught off-guard. He spun his spear in a circle, trailing serpents of white madra.

The spores met the snakes and sizzled like water droplets hitting a hot grill, and the serpents moved of their own volition to devour more of the blood madra.

They'd run into fourteen of these since they sensed Underlords fighting above them and decided to run. Remnants, perhaps? If so, where had so many of them come from?

There were a series of tunnels leading down from the chambers inside the mountain to ground level, and they'd hoped to escape the Arelius family while Eithan fought off...whoever it was.

Eithan Arelius may have promised them safety, but they were still enemies and rivals of the Jai clan. It was best to be on their own.

Except Jai Chen had been stumbling after her brother, attempting to control her madra, for far too long now.

“Don't force it,” he reminded her. She could strain her madra channels and cause greater spiritual damage than she'd struggled with in the first place. “I can get us out of here.”

But he was less and less sure of that.

The red light that flooded the world made him shiver. This wasn't the work of a mere Underlord; perhaps a foreign Overlord, or a Sage, or some ancient weapon. No matter what it was, he had to escape it.

They rounded a corner, and six more creatures raised their featureless heads to fix on the living humans.

Jai Long evened out his breath, focusing on his cycling technique as he spun his spear. His core was dimming, running dry, but he'd seen early on that he couldn't spare his effort. These monsters favored suicide attacks, exploding into a mass of whatever power had been used to create them. They were easy to destroy individually, but if he were to miss even one of them, more could swarm him in seconds.

And, as they'd learned, more could be born from even a single drop of spilled blood. He was fighting against a tide, and running out of power.

But he would use what he had.

He stepped forward, gathering up his madra for a technique.

Then the red light receded before a bright tide. He spun his spear around, looking for the creature that had gotten behind him, only to see his sister holding a dragon by its tail.

A serpentine dragon roared, surging from the space between her hands. It was like one of his snakes, only far more detailed: he could see a pair of whiskers on its face and scales on its body. It was tinged pink, like the light of dawn, and it raged into the bloody creatures with a majestic cry.

They were splattered across the floor with the sheer momentum of its charge.

Awed, Jai Long extended his spiritual perception. The substance of this creature felt like nothing he'd ever seen before. It was something like his own madra, corrupted by that Remnant long ago, which explained life in a creature that wasn't a Remnant. But at the same time, it was also...refined, in a way he couldn't describe. Like Jai Long's power had been boiled down, purified, perfected, and then strengthened. And there were elements that reminded him of a storm.

It was a confusing, overwhelming mass of impressions, and he couldn't make sense of them before the dragon burst in a massive flash of essence, dissolving almost instantly.

“I did it,” Jai Chen said, her smile broad.

Then she collapsed.

Jai Long hurried over to her, checking her spirit. Her madra channels were strained and dim, and her core was almost exhausted, but there was no further damage. He let out a breath of relief and threw her over his shoulder.

There was still a long way to go before he escaped.

When he sensed someone behind him, he whirled, readying his spear in one hand.

It was Wei Shi Lindon.

He didn't have the black-and-red eyes he'd used for most of their fight, but his gaze still smoldered with anger. Although that could be Jai Long's imagination; he didn't know Lindon well, but the young man apologized too much to be the angry type. He just looked like he was spoiling for a fight, with his rough face, tall build, and broad shoulders.

Now, he wore his large canvas pack on his shoulders, and he was holding out another, smaller pack in one hand.

The only hand he had left.

“Forgiveness, but we don't have much time,” he said, holding out the small pack. “The Skysworn have arrived. They've offered to take us from here, and it's not safe to stay. I think you may have noticed.”

Jai Long ignored the offering. “We will make it on our own.”

Lindon didn't withdraw the pack. “I assumed so, but there are hundreds of bloodspawn at ground level. There's another way.”

Slowly, Jai Long reached out with the tip of his spear and hooked the strap of the pack. He was still wary of some sort of trick. “Where?”

Now that his hand was free, Lindon pointed down a stone hallway that ramped gently back up. “That tunnel is connected to a bridge that leads to another mountain. That one isn't surrounded by bloodspawn.”

“Have you told the Skysworn about us?” Jai Long asked, still searching for a trap. Wei Shi Lindon was full of tricks, and not to be trusted. The Skysworn would be hunting down anyone connected to Jai Daishou, and this could all be a plot to lead Jai Long and Jai Chen into capture.

“They're not looking for you,” Lindon said. “They have bigger problems. But no, of course I have not told them.”

After a moment of silence, he added, “Please, accept my gratitude. For your...mercy.” He shrugged his right shoulder.

Jai Long stared at him, but despite his generally surly appearance, he seemed sincere.

“You could have killed me, so I appreciate your restraint.” He rubbed at the remainder of his right arm. “Forgive me, but I hope you'll make it far away from here.”

Jai Long returned the sentiment. He shrugged the pack over the shoulder that didn't have his sister on it and began to walk away.

Jai Chen spoke from his back. “We're going to the very outskirts of imperial territory,” she said. Jai Long hadn't realized she'd regained consciousness. “People there have forgotten about the Empire.”

Awkwardly, Jai Long turned her so that she could see Lindon without straining her neck. The young man gave her a smile. “That sounds like it's for the best.”

She shifted on Jai Long's shoulder, and he realized she was trying to give him a polite bow. “I hope the heavens will allow us to meet again.”

“Maybe they will,” Lindon said, lifting his hand. “In the meantime, travel safely.”

A tiny blue Remnant climbed up onto his shoulder. It looked like a sapphire woman only a few inches high, and she lifted a hand in imitation of him, waving to Jai Chen.

Without another word, Jai Long took off.

He couldn't sense any trap in the pack. There was nothing in there that gave off any power. No sealed Remnants or easily triggered constructs, which he had expected. Still, he'd have to check it for mundane traps when he had a chance.

Even if Wei Shi Lindon really had helped them out of goodwill, they had quite a journey ahead of them. Their cursed valley was little more than a legend, though evidence suggested it did exist somewhere to the west. If nothing else, they could find a peaceful place for Jai Chen to grow familiar with her new spirit.

And they would escape the net of the Jai clan. That was the important part. This was a new start.

Whether the heavens allowed it or not, they would never see Lindon again.

10

The Skysworn didn't refer to their enormous cloudship as a ship. It was more like a floating city on the clouds, and they treated it as such.

It looked like a jagged fortress of midnight-black stone, each building peaked and sharp. The largest facility was in the center of the cloud, a broad tower that loomed over all lesser structures. It matched the image Lindon had of a dark lord's stronghold, and the rest of the city was his evil fortress in the sky.

It was not at all the image he would usually associate with the Skysworn, a group of sacred artists dedicated to preserving justice and the rule of law.

Renfei and Bai Rou had come down to gather Lindon and the others to bring them onto the clouds above. Lindon wasn't sure if they were chosen as familiar faces, or if they were simply the only two with free time, but he was strangely glad to see them. He didn't know them well, but at least he knew their names.

The massive Bai Rou, his face shaded beneath his woven straw hat, marched in front of them down the paved streets. He pushed his way through the crowds, clearing the way for the people behind him.

Renfei followed behind, the cloud over her head bobbing with every step. She seemed far less serious and more relaxed now that they were aboard the heart of Skysworn power, and she quickly explained why.

“We call this city Stormrock,” she said, as they walked past row after row of tall obsidian buildings. “Costs a fortune in wind scales to keep it aloft every second. If the empire didn't have so many Underlords on wind and cloud Paths, we would never be able to fly it at all. This is the home to almost two million people, when it needs to be, and only about five thousand of those are Skysworn or trainees. The rest are our families, as well as the merchants and farmers and such that we need to be self-sustaining. The Redflower family has quite a presence here, and in times of emergency it actually serves as their family headquarters as well.”

Lindon vaguely remembered the Redflower family: just as the Arelius served to clean and sanitize the Empire, the Redflowers provided food and irrigation, even to those corners of the Blackflame Empire where farming would usually be impossible.

Sure enough, the streets were bustling. People cried out greetings when they saw the green armor of the Skysworn, or else they tried to entice Renfei or Bai Rou into buying some trinket or another. If not for the fact that their party needed medical attention, Renfei said, they would normally have stopped and interacted with at least a few of the city's people.

Yerin lay on Lindon's rust-colored Thousand-Mile Cloud and Cassias lay on a green one provided by the Skysworn. Yerin insisted that she could walk on her own, but she didn't get up. Cassias didn't struggle at all, and Lindon thought he might be asleep.

The people swarmed around them, all going about their ordinary lives, and only the passage of a couple of Skysworn could break their routine.

Well, that, or Orthos' irritation.

The sacred beast had woken up sore and irritated. Not only was he bruised and battered from the crash, but now he was on another cloud instead of solid ground. Only the size of this cloudship had appeased him; when he was inside the city walls, he couldn't tell that he was in the sky at all. Still, he snorted smoke at anyone who passed, and every once in a while pulled up a chunk of the street and munched on it. No one stopped him.

Lindon had thought they would make a strange sight; they had two Skysworn with them, a giant lumbering dragon-turtle, and an old woman drifting on spider's legs. Even he and Yerin would stand out in a crowd, and Cassias was always visible thanks to his golden hair among the sea of black. Not to mention that two of their number were covered in blood and using floating clouds as stretchers.

But despite the admiring looks at the Skysworn and the fearful ones at Orthos, they didn't stick out as much as he would have imagined.

Paths of all kinds were represented here on the streets of Stormrock. A woman passed over their party without looking down from a book she was reading, a half-dozen tentacles extending from her back and swinging her from building to building. A pack of fiery dogs passed through the middle of the street, following their leader, who had a golden crown on his head. They were conversing in quite ordinary human speech about which of them should guard their territory that night. A set of triplets wrapped in identical white ribbons watched the party pass, their eyes in eerie sync.

Words floated in midair, as though the characters had drifted up of their own volition: “Mother Lin's Parlor,” “Goldhammer Soulsmiths,” “The Restaurant in the Sky.” It took Lindon longer than he cared to admit to realize that they were floating business signs, and that realization explained the other signs that were etched in physical material above each building's mantle.

“Second-ranked Soulsmith in the city available for commissions.”

“Ranked number one of all mixed bowls in the city (vegetable-only category)!”

“Number four purveyor of Thousand-Mile Clouds for civilians, but number one in value!”

The experience of the city reminded him of his first arrival in Serpent's Grave: he'd been overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, and smells of the city then too.

But this time, it didn't take him long to notice a key difference: a level of consistent unease. They were high enough that the red light was beneath them, so there were no bloodspawn here, but they must have picked up on something.

Each salesman who called out to the Skysworn also asked them what was going on. Almost half the shops they passed were in the process of packing up and closing. And most of the looks they encountered were nervous and unsteady rather than hostile or curious.

It remained so until they made it to the center of the city, where the Skysworn's true headquarters were. That overwhelming spire that Lindon had noted earlier towered over the rest of the city, and its entrance was guarded by a quartet of men and women in green armor. Two of them also had emerald wings, and they were spread as though to stretch them.

Orthos snorted smoke at one of the guards, but the young man didn't seem to notice. Instead, he asked Bai Rou if there was any news from outside. He seemed as nervous as any of the civilians outside, but Bai Rou reassured him in a steady voice.

Renfei had been keeping up a steady history of the city as they walked in, but Lindon paid closer attention now that they were within the heart of Skysworn power.

She whispered to one of the guards, who flew off over the wall. Skysworn hurried everywhere, the courtyard bustling like a wasp's nest, but Renfei stood calmly in their center.

“We wait here for the healers to arrive,” she said. “Ordinarily we could take them right in, but we're preparing for a new class of Skysworn applicants, and we don't have anyone in urgent danger of death.” She glanced at Cassias as she said this.

“In the meantime, let me tell you about the Starsweep Tower. All these facilities are exclusive for Skysworn and trainees.” Jerking her thumb over her shoulder, she indicated a door of swirling blue light behind her. Lindon only knew it was a door because of the bronze framework and the goldsteel handle at the center. Otherwise, he would have thought it was a portal or a barrier of madra.

“Soulsmith's foundry,” she said. “State-of-the-art. All of our Thousand-Mile Clouds and our weapons are made and maintained in there. We have the most complete dream tablet library of Soulsmith legacies in the entire empire, including one left by an ancient Herald for his descendants.”

Fisher Gesha's breath caught. Lindon wasn't sure what half of that meant, but he was still aching to take a look inside.

“Our armory is over there,” she said, indicating a door banded in steel. “We offer public tours, because our weapons cannot be stolen. They're keyed to either the individual Skysworn using them, or to the Skysworn armor in general. They can all be located or deactivated remotely. Confiscated weapons and our suits of armor are stored elsewhere.”

Lindon wondered how the weapons could be deactivated remotely. He could imagine how you might track a unique weapon down, but how would you deactivate them? Unless they drew from a central power source, instead of being powered by the substance of the weapon itself, and you could simply shut off the power link.

Speculation was useless. There was too much he didn't know. Perhaps there was a Path with a technique that could reach across the city and disable any weapon. But the question intrigued him, and he longed to open the door.

She nodded to a tall set of copper doors. “That's our technique library. It's more extensive than our Soulsmith library, but it's only ranked third, Soulsmith tablets being so rare. There are Paths that exist only here in the city, thanks to original techniques we managed to salvage in our library.”

Lindon realized he'd taken a step toward the door. When had that happened?

“We've also assigned as much space to cycling rooms as we have to bedrooms,” she continued. “Skysworn can't spend all their time focusing on advancement, like many sacred artists do. They have combat training, study, and assignments. We have to accelerate the advancement process as much as we can, so our cycling regimens are brief but intense.”

Lindon wondered if there was a cycling room that would work for the Path of Black Flame. He imagined there would be—it was a Path unique to this empire, after all. But maybe they had gotten rid of it after the Blackflame family fell. Would it be sealed up? He could probably find it...

“It's thanks to these facilities, and the prestige of the Skysworn, that our recruitment has gone so well,” Renfei said. She seemed as proud as if she'd built the city herself.

“You're recruiting?” Yerin asked.

“Only a week ago, our dream-readers agreed that we would soon need to add more to our ranks, so we opened ourselves to applications. In that week's time, we have received over six hundred qualified Lowgold and Highgold applicants, both from inside the city and outside.”

“What does an applicant need to be qualified?” Lindon asked, eyeing the Soulsmith's door.

“Twenty years of age or younger for Lowgolds, thirty years or younger for Highgolds, and they have to be ranked highly enough. Top one thousand for Highgolds, and top three thousand for Lowgolds. Even so, they have to pass our application process.”

“What if they aren't ranked by the Empire?”

She gave him an odd look. “Everyone is ranked.”

“I'm not.”

Renfei pulled a purple card from a slot over her wrist, touching her fingers to it. Wisps of purple rose from it, and Lindon thought he could see shapes in it. Dream madra.

“After your duel with Jai Long, you are ranked...” She shook her head, sliding the card back in. “Twenty-fourth among Lowgolds. They must value you highly. Though that only takes individual combat power into account, of course. Your skill, aesthetics, and influence are all lower.”

“Twenty-fourth,” Lindon repeated. He couldn't suppress a little excitement. “I don't mean to overstep myself, but that sounds high.”

“Too high,” Bai Rou grunted.

“It's high,” Renfei confirmed sourly.

“Forgive me if this is a rude question, but what are most Skysworn ranked?” He really wanted to ask them what their ranks had been when they were Lowgolds, and from the look on Renfei's face, she knew it.

“Lower than that,” she responded.

He wanted to dig for more details, but his Thousand-Mile Cloud zoomed around, and Yerin's scarred face peeked into their conversation. “While we're all singing and sharing together, why don't you tell us about Redmoon Hall?”

Bai Rou straightened and folded his arms, yellow eyes blazing within the shadow of his hat. Renfei's businesslike mask returned, and she glanced around as though looking for listeners. Within the headquarters of the Skysworn.

“That's for your Underlord to tell you,” she said firmly.

Lindon wanted to learn more about his ranking, but he couldn't pass up an opportunity to dig up sensitive information. “Underlord Arelius was the one who shared the information with us. He said it was important for us to know, but unfortunately he was wounded against one of their members before he could give us all the details.”

Renfei hesitated, the cloud above her head rolling as she glanced at her partner. Lindon sensed weakness and pushed.

“We only wish to serve. We can't contribute to the Arelius family if we don't understand the situation.”

Lindon didn't know much about Renfei, but he assumed that a woman who proudly served as a Skysworn would accept a plea based on duty.

Reluctantly, she leaned in. “It's the cult of a Dreadgod,” she said, so softly that he wouldn't have been able to pick up her words without his Iron body. “Usually, they operate beyond the Empire's southeastern border. They are people who sought out a fragment of the Bleeding Phoenix. They call it a Blood Shadow.”

She shook her head, in disgust or sympathy. “They're betting they could control it, but nine out of ten can't. Those are just puppets, little better than bloodspawn themselves. The ones who can control it...they're the ones to watch out for. They're still in the thrall of the Phoenix, but they have their own goals as well.”

“What is it they want?” Yerin asked, eyes sharp.

“To feed their master,” Bai Rou responded, but before he could say more, a third Skysworn reappeared. Renfei spoke to her for a moment, then turned back to them.

“We've cleared out a pair of rooms for your wounded, and our healers will see them within the hour. The rest of you can follow me.”

A new Skysworn walked in front of Cassias and Yerin, controlling Cassias' cloud directly and leading them through a plain-looking door that Lindon had overlooked before.

Fisher Gesha followed Renfei, as did Orthos, though he took a bite from the frayed end of a nearby tapestry as he did so. Lindon hitched up his pack and prepared to join them...

Then he thought once more about Yerin's reaction to seeing the bloodspawn.

“I'm going to join the wounded for a while, if that's permitted,” Lindon said, following Yerin's cloud. “I'll find my room later.”

Renfei looked as though she would object, but Bai Rou just waved his hand and kept walking. Eventually, she said, “Settle in before sunset,” and followed her partner.

“They can't all be Underlords,” Yerin muttered from her cloud. “You don't find an Underlord under every rock and tree stump.” The Skysworn in the lead was probably close enough that he could hear them over the clanking of his armor, but he was polite enough not to say anything.

“They're from outside the Empire. Maybe where they come from, everyone's an Underlord.”

She tried to sit up, winced, and ended up rolling onto her side and propping her head up on one arm. “My master's feet started to itch after two nights in the same place, so I've spent more time outside this empire than in it. I've never seen a place where Underlords are common as Lowgolds. Besides...” One hand drifted down to her stomach before she stopped it.

“I wouldn't call us strangers,” she said at last. “They wore a different name, but they still had—” She glanced up at the Skysworn. “Some things in common. My master used to fight against these people. It was how he found me.”

Lindon looked from their Skysworn to Yerin. “Is this a conversation we should have in your room?”

“Won't be easy, no matter where we have it,” she muttered, but she didn't object. Cassias was taken to his own room, where a healer was already waiting. Apparently Renfei had communicated that he was the more urgently injured.

Yerin's room was more like a closet, or a prison. It had a single red-painted mat against the wall, blankets folded on the surface. A lidded chamber pot sat nearby, and that was all.

When Yerin drifted inside and the Skysworn guide left, it was actually difficult for Lindon to step inside for a moment. He had spent too much of the last year and a half locked inside small spaces. He was irrationally afraid that he would walk inside and be sealed within, though the only entrance was a sliding door of flimsy wood. He could break through it without an Enforcer technique.

Yerin eyed him, then the door. “You want me to send you a formal invitation, you'll have to write it yourself.” Ever since revealing that she couldn't read, she had made several jokes about it. The subject was starting to make him uncomfortable.

Finally, he took a deep breath and stepped inside, sliding the door into place behind him. He fixed his gaze on the small window high up in the wall, though it just revealed another nook of the complex. Focusing on the outside let him forget how small the room was.

Yerin clambered from her cloud to her bedding, wincing and hissing at every movement. He would have helped, but he was still trying to keep the queasy sensation in his stomach under control.

When she had finally settled herself, she looked up and began again. “You remember my...uninvited guest, true?”

“It was your belt, wasn't it?” Lindon asked. He had come to that conclusion through implication and inference, but she'd never told him.

She grunted, and he took that as affirmation. “Some people call it a Blood Shadow.”

A few things slid into place for Lindon at that moment: her reaction to the bloodspawn, the Redmoon Hall emissary looking straight at her, Eithan sealing her belt.

One of the silver blades sprouting from her back began tapping lightly on the wall, and Lindon wondered if that was a nervous gesture while she waited for him to finish thinking, or if the Goldsign was out of her control.

“But you'd never heard of Redmoon Hall,” he said.

“Not by that name. Sacred artists would sometimes hunt down these parasites and take them like pills. Hoped they would get stronger.” She sneered as though she were looking down on those sacred artists right then. “Only one in every ten made it, but every sacred artist thinks they're the special exception. For them, it'll work. Problem is, it doesn't just put you in danger.”

“You didn't do that,” Lindon said confidently. That seemed more like something he would do than something Yerin would. In fact, he'd already started wondering what specific benefits a Blood Shadow offered. Longhook had been strong, certainly, but he was an Underlord. Or did the Shadow perhaps allow you to create bloodspawn? No, that seemed to be an effect of the red light. Could they generate that red light?

A flicker of a smile crossed her face. “You're starting to learn. A little. No, I didn't look for it. It looked for me.” The smile faded as quickly as it came. “The Dreadgod gives birth to...a litter, I guess you'd say...of Blood Shadows at one time. They run around like Remnants, looking to find a host before they starve. When they find somebody, they usually drain them dry and take their power back to the Bleeding Phoenix. Every once in a rare moon, you run into somebody who takes them over instead.”

“When did it get to you?” Lindon asked, kneeling to face her.

“Can't be sure how old I was. Seven, maybe? Eight? They called me a genius.” She smiled bitterly. “Everybody in town said how shiny my future was going to be. The star of my town. Made me stick out, as it ends up. Even to a Dreadgod.”

She was silent for so long that he wanted to prompt her with a question, but he curbed his curiosity and sat quietly, waiting.

“Didn't know what it was, but I fought it,” she said at last. “It was trying to...burrow into me. To my spirit, more than my body. My dad tried to pull it out, and it cut him. His blood fell on the ground.”

Lindon had fought the bloodspawn only a few hours earlier. He could picture what happened next, and the bottom fell out of his stomach.

“Spawned those...things,” she said, though he'd guessed it already. “Cut through town like fire through a dry wood. I'm just standing there, holding on while everybody died. If I let it get inside of me, I figured something worse would happen, so I just held it off. Don't know how long I sat there, holding it, before Master found me.”

She had started to shake.

Her wounds had been wrapped, but not thoroughly bandaged, and some of them had begun to bleed again, but she didn't notice, staring into the distance.

There was nothing Lindon could say to help her. The past had already left its wounds.

But he could do something she'd done for him once before.

Without a word, he squeezed in next to her, sitting side-by-side though her Goldsign jabbed him in the side of the head. Sweat covered his palm, and he eyed her for any sign that she was uncomfortable or in pain. She didn't even seem to notice him, staring ahead with a blank gaze.

He reached across her shoulders and gave her a light squeeze. When she didn't object, he just sat there, holding her with his one arm. Reminding her that someone was there.

Back in Sacred Valley, when things had been at their worst, this was all he had wanted. Someone to sit with him and remind him that they were with him, that everything would be okay. Sometimes his sister or his parents filled that role. Sometimes they didn't. Sometimes, they were the problem.

But today, Lindon could give that to Yerin.

After a minute or two, she leaned into him. “We're going after them,” she said at last, her voice confident. “They can't all be Underlords. I'd say we could stop any of them under Truegold, or we could find a way to deal with them. Together. We have to stop them.”

Lindon leaned away, turning to see her expression. “Yes, we should do whatever we can. We just need to be…careful.”

She turned to him and the blades on her shoulders shifted. He had to withdraw his arm or risk getting cut.

“You’re in this with me, true?”

“Of course,” he said without hesitation. “But we should have a plan.”

She nodded, her eyes focused intensely on some point beyond him. “Yeah…we have to track down a Truegold, don’t we? Cassias could tell us where it is. He points it out on the map, and we slip in like a shadow’s whisper. Maybe we could get Orthos in, too, that would ease the fight somewhat.”

Lindon cleared his throat. “That could certainly work, but I’d like to propose an alternative. We could push Eithan to make us Truegolds. He must know a way to do it, don’t you think? If the Ancestor’s Spear could take Jai Long from Highgold to Truegold so quickly, there has to be some solution for us.”

His new arm might be exactly that solution, but there was no telling until the construct was completed.

She backed away, turning to face him head-on. “You want me to sit around on my hands until I advance again? If Eithan can make me a Truegold tomorrow, sure, I’m not going to spit on that. Short of that, I’m not waiting. I’m going with whoever’s raising their swords against Redmoon Hall.”

“But who is that?” he countered. “Who’s going to take us? Who can use us? What can we even do? We have to know what we can do before we—”

“The Skysworn,” she interrupted, folding her arms. “They’ll jump to take us.”

Lindon wasn’t sure they would jump to take him, but he had to admit he was tempted by the facilities he’d seen in Starsweep Tower.

Then again…what did the Skysworn have that Eithan wasn’t already giving him for free?

“Let’s not rush into anything,” he said in a reasonable tone. “We can wait until Eithan gets back, at least.”

“Eithan’s out there fighting Underlords and emissaries and heavens-know-what right now,” she said fiercely. “When he gets back, we’re out of time.”

A bearded man in hooded green robes slid open the door, peeking his head inside. “Excuse me, I'm here to see the patient?”

Yerin gave Lindon a razor-sharp stare, but she took a breath. “Turn over what I said, see if it looks any better to you. I’m going to see Cassias tonight. If I don’t hear what I like, I’m gone. The door’s open for you to join me.”

After Lindon left, he continued turning her words over in his mind. She was rushing to a decision too quickly. There was no reason to take this fight personally; Redmoon Hall wasn’t after them. At least they could weigh out their options, they didn’t have to dive straight in.

No matter how he thought of it, there was nothing to gain from going after Redmoon Hall. It would be a foolish move.

Maybe Cassias could talk Yerin around.

11

Cassias sat on his mat, covered in bandages, with a frog's tongue stuck onto his wrist. The fat, blood-red bullfrog sat on a little dais, an ornately carved platform the size of Lindon's hand, and pumped blood through its tongue with every exhale.

It was one of the most fascinating sacred beasts Lindon had ever seen, and he couldn't help wondering what sort of blood Path had produced it. The healer had said that it would slowly replace the blood Cassias had lost, as well as purging any remaining influence from the bloodspawn, but that he had to rest. And, if possible, he should avoid strenuous activity or stressful conversation.

They were putting that last advice to the test.

“I'll be fighting Redmoon Hall if it's just me and my sword,” Yerin said, arms crossed. To Lindon's eye, she still looked odd without the red belt, as that had been the brightest splash of color about her. “Don’t have the legs to go very far if I’m not Truegold, but I’d go if I were Copper. You get me to Truegold, you’d be lending me a hand up.”

Lindon recognized his opportunity. “The sooner we reach Truegold, the sooner we’ll be ready to contribute to the Empire. And the more useful we would be to you.”

Cassias glanced at the frog and took a deep breath. “I don't have the full list of training materials you've used in the time since you've been with us, but it's extensive. Running the Blackflame Trials alone cost the equivalent of two top-grade scales a day, not to mention my own time. That's more than the training budget for all our other students combined. And then there are those Four Corners Rotation Pills we provided. We could have hired five new workers for the same price. Yerin, you've been using our sword aura cycling room so extensively that we had to replace some of the aura sources and upgrade the scripts.”

“That's a fair point, but most of those decisions were made by Eithan,” Lindon pointed out. “He obviously thought we were worth the expense.”

“He did, which is why Eithan paid for most of that personally,” Cassias responded. “If he spent his time doing nothing else, he could generate three or four top-grade scales a day, which is absolutely stunning. Most Underlords could not do the same. So additionally, we have the cost of his time when he went to the Desolate Wilds to retrieve you. Every day he spent on you has cost this family a sizeable amount of income.”

Yerin turned as though to leave. “I've heard my fill. I need to track down Eithan, not you. Is he on the battlefield yet?”

“Eithan has been recalled to a secret location by order of the Emperor,” Cassias said, carefully watching the frog. The frog croaked and gave him a stern look, so Cassias settled back against the wall. “If you want help before he returns, you'll have to go through the family system.”

“System?” Lindon asked, intrigued.

“Workers are paid for their living expenses, of course, but anyone who contributes to the family beyond the scope of their job receives additional resources. We invest in those who provide a benefit to us.”

“And how are those benefits measured?”

“There's an extensive chart in any of our facilities,” Cassias said, and Lindon perked up. A clear-cut list of tasks and rewards sounded perfect. “Essentially, we want you to advance as quickly as possible if you're serving the family.”

“Sounds like a load of fetching and carrying for nothing, if we're already getting the same from Eithan for free,” Yerin said.

Cassias looked to Lindon. “Yerin has already earned several rewards from the Arelius family, for tasks she performed while you were…isolated. She earned a set of pills that condensed several months' worth of sword aura, five thousand sword scales, quite a bit of time in our highest-level sword cycling room, and time with our most experienced sword Path instructor. Which so happens to be me.”

Lindon looked to Yerin, astonished. He imagined that she spent all her time cycling and training alone. That was most of what he'd seen her do, when she had the choice. “What did she do for the family?”

Yerin gave an impatient sigh. “Killed a Remnant, killed another Remnant, pushed away some guy who was needling the cleaning crews a little, stopped a big lizard from running through the sewers...Probably more, I don't know, it slips through my mind.”

“Those sound like things I could do,” Lindon said eagerly.

“That's the point,” Cassias said. He sounded exasperated. “Most employees of the Arelius family join us because they are not suited for combat. If you can protect them from rivals or remove obstacles—such as Remnants—that pop up in the course of their ordinary duties, you are rewarded. There are other ways to demonstrate excellence than fighting, but I imagine this is the area in which you will excel.”

“I don't have time for more of the same,” Yerin said. “I know what bloodspawn can do to a town. Someone's getting run over while we're locked in here chatting.”

The red frog croaked at Cassias, who took another deep breath. “This is the problem with how Eithan treats you. Neither of you have an appreciation for the expense that has gone into your training.”

“You think so? I grew up paying for it all myself,” Yerin said proudly. “My master made sure I know what sacred arts cost.”

“And yet a minute of your master's time was worth more than a day of Eithan's.”

She scowled at him.

Cassias closed his eyes, clearly waiting for them to leave. “I'm happy to provide you with the same support we would to any of our disciples. As long as you earn it.”

“This is it,” Lindon said in the hallway outside Cassias’ room. “He has everything we need. If we see the family rules, I’m sure we can find a way to make them work for us.”

“The family rules can go rot,” Yerin said, gripping her sword and marching down the hall. “The Skysworn will let me fight.”

Lindon stopped in place, forcing her to spin and eye him. “…that’s it?” he asked. “We’re leaving the Arelius family? After all this?”

Yerin’s scars stood out in the pale white rune-lights of the hall. “Not joining another family, are we? The Skysworn don’t ask you to throw your family away. We’re just serving the Empire, like good and proper boys and girls. Now let’s go.”

Lindon didn’t move. “I…really don’t think we should.”

Color rose into her cheeks. “I’m not just thinking about it. I’m doing it. Thought you were with me.”

Lindon felt like a Remnant had reached into his chest and made a fist, but he swallowed. “I am,” he said, “of course I am. But I don’t understand why we’re rushing into this. If you’ll just give me a few more days…”

“Don’t have ’em to give,” Yerin said, and she kept walking.

Lindon stayed where he was.

* * *

Yerin found Renfei and Bai Rou talking intently over a low table, which was heavy with food. Empty plates were piled around Bai Rou, and he was sucking the meat from a chicken bone as she approached.

Both of them were in full armor, though they had stayed close to the Arelius family guests. No one had taken them off babysitting duty yet, and as the days passed, they were starting to get restless.

Yerin had no news of the outside world. That was part of the weight she felt pushing down on her—what was Redmoon Hall doing now? How many towns had the bloodspawn ruined?

Grabbing a chair from a nearby table, Yerin spun it around and sat down, joining them. Renfei eyed her as though trying to figure out whether to be amused or irritated, but Bai Rou just kept eating.

“You mentioned you're recruiting. What do you need the recruits for?”

Renfei frowned. “You've seen them. Redmoon Hall is washing over the southern Empire like a tide. We've lost contact with three cities on the southern border, and have confirmed bloodspawn sightings a hundred miles north. People all over are beginning to panic, and that's when you need order. If we had five times as many Skysworn as we do, it wouldn't be enough.”

“And here we are,” Bai Rou said between bites, “waiting.”

“You're fighting the bloodspawn? And Redmoon Hall?”

“Of course we are. What do you think we do with our time?”

Bai Rou swallowed. “When we're not trapped here.”

Yerin nodded sharply. “All right. I'm in.”

Renfei and Bai Rou exchanged glances, then Yerin felt a whisper of power tickle her soul. She was being scanned.

“We don't usually take people on slaughter Paths,” Renfei said, and Yerin gave an inward sigh of relief. The Skysworn had sensed the presence of the Blood Shadow inside, but had assumed it was just a part of Yerin's power.

Sacred artists on Paths of blood and the sword weren't the most popular people around. They were known for murdering anybody they came across just to cycle. It had earned them the nickname “slaughter Paths,” though Yerin had heard others.

“...but you're a Highgold,” Renfei continued. “We're not in the business of turning down eager Highgolds while we're in a state of emergency. But we'll be checking your rank, and you still have to go through the same qualification process everyone does.”

Yerin had no problem with that. She'd never been afraid of trials.

* * *

Officially, Eithan was on a private cloudship on his way to the capital.

The cloudship had actually departed from Stormrock that morning, and the city's records showed him aboard. From beneath a hood, and with a veil over his core to make him seem like an ordinary Gold, he had waved good-bye to the ship himself.

The Emperor had commanded his presence.

Naru Huan, Patriarch of the Naru clan and sole leader of the Blackflame Empire, was officially on a tour of their southern defenses. He was addressing this crisis personally.

In reality, that was almost correct. He was just doing it a bit more...directly than the public believed.

He waited at the top of the Starsweep Tower at the center of Stormrock. When Eithan entered, the Emperor had his back turned and wings spread, looking out vast windows over the city. From here, they could see the edge of the green cloud that supported all of Stormrock. And below them, a dome of hazy red light.

Eithan was the last to arrive.

The other Underlords were already there.

There was a table in the center of the room, laden with fruits and drinks, but no one sat. They all stood separately, each man and woman an island, though many in the room were related. A control console of ornate gold stood a few feet from the Emperor, though no one was manning it. Its script-circles were dark, and the city was still.

Eithan made his way to the food as the Emperor spoke. “We have chosen you to serve us in the most important tasks. We will address the others later, but you are the ones who will truly defend the Empire.”

Naru Huan turned, spreading his vast, shimmering emerald wings for effect. He cut a heroic figure, with a jaw like a brick and eyes like knives. His royal robes didn't hide his muscular figure, and the outfit was impressive in its own right. His robes had a green dragon and a blue one twining around each other, the cool colors complementing his wings, and his hair was pinned up with a jade pin.

Eithan nodded at the presentation even as he took a bite of a steamed bun. Naru Huan wasn't a master of capturing an audience, but he had presence, personality, and a flair for style. He'd learn.

There were seven others around the table, including Eithan: the top seven Underlords in the Blackflame Empire. Only a few months ago, Eithan had been rated merely eleventh, but his confrontations with Jai Daishou had raised him a few spots up the ladder.

Had he not been invited, he would have been forced to eavesdrop on this meeting. And that would have been rude. Besides, it was much harder to advance his own plans if he wasn't in the room.

“This has been nothing less than a betrayal by one of our number,” the Emperor said, spearing each of them with his gaze. “He has risked the very existence of our nation for selfish greed.” When it was Eithan's turn, he raised his half-eaten bun in salute, and he caught a brief twitch of Naru Huan's eyelid.

When he had let the moment sink in with appropriate gravity, the Emperor made a sharp gesture with his right hand. Wind aura surged, and a box drifted up on a cushion of air. It was sealed with layers of script-circles, and even the Emperor had to use three different keys to open it.

With great ceremony, he turned the box toward them and lifted the lid.

Several of the others gasped or muttered at the sight of the Archstone, sitting on a cushion. The dull light within swirled as though with motion, and Eithan could sense its hunger tugging at their spirits even from so far away.

After only a second or two, the Emperor shut the lid. Its scripts shone, sealing away its power once more. “The Archstone, as described in the Draconic Records. It was sealed deep in the western labyrinth, where Jai Daishou retrieved it.”

The Emperor inclined his head toward his uncle, and Naru Gwei stepped forward. The second-ranked Underlord in the Empire had positioned himself near the door, as though hoping he could leave as soon as possible. His hair was even more matted and dirty, if possible, and it seemed to be wet this time. He still wore his battered Skysworn armor, though he hadn't brought his sword along this time. Perhaps he felt safe in the heart of his headquarters. He had withdrawn his wings as well, so there was nothing to mark him as one of the elders of the Naru clan.

“We believe the Underlord of the Jai clan entered the western labyrinth to retrieve a weapon that would allow him to settle a personal grudge,” Naru Gwei recited, as though reading from a dull schoolbook. “We cannot confirm how long the seal was breached, but it was long enough to alert the Bleeding Phoenix.”

Another general murmur swept through the room, though they all must have known as much already. A crack came from the edge of the table as the Emperor's sister lost control of her strength.

“Based on the movements of Redmoon Hall and the influence of the Phoenix, we believe that it has nested only a few miles south of our border this time. Our dream-readers suggest we have weeks, perhaps months, before it is fully conscious and able to move.”

“Will the Skysworn be enough to stop Redmoon Hall?” Eithan asked through a mouthful of food. He didn't have to be subtle here. Very few of the others considered him important enough to care what he was doing, and the ones who did wouldn't stop him.

Naru Gwei gave him a look, though it lacked impact coming from his dead face. Eithan wasn't exactly sure what that expression was supposed to be.

“We will serve the Empire with honor,” Naru Gwei said, raising his fingers to touch the burn scars on his left cheek. “And we are recruiting as we speak. But we could use as many applicants as we can, if only to keep the peace while we focus on the real battle.”

Eithan nodded thoughtfully, sipping a crystal goblet of blazewater. It was a popular drink in the East, and he enjoyed the novelty. Every sip made him feel like his mouth was on fire, but with no actual pain. It was infused with spirit-fruits and dream aura, he heard. Some Paths considered it invaluable for cycling.

Naru Huan fixed his imperial gaze on the third-ranked Underlord. “Underlord Kotai, what is your assessment of our situation?”

Kotai Shou walked up to the table, pressing his fists together in a salute—one of his fists was five times bigger than the other—and then standing straight with hands at his side to report. Shou was a grizzled old sea captain with his head shaved except for a dangling gray braid in front of each ear. He had storm-gray skin, and he had lost his left arm in battle as a child, replacing it with the limb of a massive stone-madra Remnant.

“We've got three problems,” he barked. “The bloodspawn are the first. They're part of the Phoenix's power, so they will only show up in the red zone around the nest. But they will spread further as the Dreadgod wakes, until every drop of blood inside a hundred miles will hatch into a monster. I'd call that a regional emergency on its own.

“Second, Redmoon Hall. They've got two levels. The vassals are the ones who let their Blood Shadows take control. They can be managed. They can raise bloodspawn if they want, but they're mindless and weak enough to be taken over in the first place. We can handle them. And they'll stay close to either the Phoenix itself or the emissaries.”

His gray-skinned face remained calm, but his prosthetic arm gripped so tightly that the madra creaked. “That's the real threat of Redmoon Hall: the emissaries. They were powerful sacred artists even before they controlled their parasites. With a Blood Shadow, they can each fight beyond their stage. Battle reports we've received from the Akura clan, based on their encounters with Redmoon Hall outside of the Empire, confirm multiple emissaries at the Underlord level.”

A few of the others had already started muttering again, but Eithan knew he hadn't finished.

“...as well as at least one Overlord.” The muttering intensified. “And, supposedly, the Sage of Red Faith.”

This time, the room was quiet for a long moment.

“Then we have the third and final problem,” Underlord Kotai continued. “The Dreadgod itself.”

In the ensuing silence, Kotai Shou bowed to the Emperor once more and backed up.

“We have plans to handle each of those issues,” Naru Huan assured everyone. “First, let us hear from the only one to have fought a Redmoon Hall emissary. Underlord Arelius, if you would?”

Eithan walked forward, giving an exaggerated wince and touching his shoulder as though it pained him. In truth, it was just a little sore. The Underlady of the Jade Eye School had treated him herself, so he was healthier than before his battle. In fact, she was in the room, and he was sure she was rolling her eyes at him. Unfortunately, it was hard to make out anything of the old woman's expression under her thick black veil.

“I crossed swords, so to speak, with an emissary of Redmoon Hall only yesterday,” Eithan confirmed. “I can confirm that he was indeed an Underlord. A skilled and powerful one, at that.” He hadn't even relied on the power of his Blood Shadow, and he had still knocked Eithan around the mountain.

It had been embarrassing, not to mention painful. He had almost forced Eithan to resort to a contingency plan.

“If he was the only one of his kind, we could manage. Honored Chon Ma could surely have destroyed him,” Eithan said, dipping his head to the number-one Underlord in the Blackflame Empire.

He was the head of the Cloud Hammer School, and the dark cloud hanging over his head seemed to indicate the Underlord's perpetual mood. The bearded man scowled, folding his arms and revealing the hammers he wore at each hip.

Supposedly, he doted on his only daughter, who had the potential to become an Underlady herself one day. Eithan had trouble imagining him softening enough to dote on anyone.

“...but he was not alone,” Eithan continued. “He had allies in the mountains, and though I could not measure their strength accurately, the fact that I could sense them at all from so far away suggested that they had at least as much raw power as I.”

That wasn't necessarily true, but it could be, and it suited Eithan's purposes.

“With so many Underlords in the enemy's forces, it seems right to me that we should count ourselves as the front line of defense for the Empire. I know it will be difficult to set aside our own agendas for the duration of this crisis, so in the interests of unity, I propose that we should assist the Skysworn directly.”

Eithan projected absolute sincerity, but he hadn't pierced the cynical looks on most of the others. It was just as well; someone would have proposed it anyway, but by being the one to bring it up, they would make sure he was forced into participating. So he could nobly accept the role of a temporary Skysworn officer.

Where, he gathered, at least one of his beloved disciples was about to enroll.

Naru Saeya pounded the table with her fist, sending a crack through the polished wood. The Emperor's little sister was tall and strikingly beautiful, with smooth skin and a delicate face that had “inspired” any number of ambitious painters in the Empire. She, the Emperor, and Eithan were the only ones in the room who appeared younger than fifty.

She wore a fan of peacock feathers over one ear—they were either powerful constructs or nothing more than decorations, because Eithan had never sensed any power from them. Her wings, spread in agitation, were much smaller and thinner than her brother's or uncle's, and her agility in the air was almost unsurpassed. She had been the youngest Underlord in the Empire before Eithan, and her senses rivaled those of the Arelius family.

Which was almost a shame, because her sensitivity was comparably lacking. She had a reputation of bulling her way through problems headfirst.

Now, she was rolling her sleeves up as though getting ready to punch through a wall, pacing in agitation. She looked restless for a fight. “We know what to do. We have the Underlords and the Overlord, we just need to find a Sage. Then we can take the fight to them. We might be able to destroy Redmoon Hall in one stroke!”

“Then we only have to deal with the Dreadgod,” Chon Ma said, still scowling beneath his cloud.

“We'll evacuate! People do it all over the world, all the time. Without its servants, it has nothing to weaken us before it wakes up.”

Mentally, Eithan had to applaud her plan. It was vague on the critical details, but the general outline was good. If they simply weathered this storm without destroying Redmoon Hall, they would be inviting another apocalyptic crisis in the future. It was never good to leave enemies behind you.

Of course, they didn't know the enemy's full strength. And they didn't have the power to deal with the forces they knew about.

“Finding a Sage might be tricky,” Eithan said. “I have it on good authority that the Sage of the Endless Sword was killed not so long ago, which leaves...”

“Frozen Blade and Silver Heart,” Underlady Li Min Redflower put in, her voice creaking behind her dark veil. She was the one who had healed his shoulder, and from his understanding, she rarely spoke in these meetings. She was the only one with a chair.

Kotai Shou turned his gray face to Eithan, flexing his stone fingers as he spoke. “What about the Arelius homeland? The Sage of a Thousand Eyes has an honorable reputation. She would come to our aid.”

Eithan winced. He hadn't been to the homeland for seven years, but memory of his last failure was still harsh. “I'm afraid the doorway doesn't open for another three years. Besides...last I saw them, they didn't have any help to spare for anyone else.”

If the Sage of a Thousand Eyes was still alive after all this time, then she was much wiser than he had given her credit for. Or she'd found a powerful ally. Somewhere.

The Emperor reached out a hand to the golden console beside him, and one of the circles shone. Starsweep Tower hummed to life around him, but the enormous cloudship went nowhere.

Eithan extended his senses, confirming that they were indeed hovering over Lastleaf Fortress. This must be their target.

Once the meeting was over, the battery of launcher constructs on the bottom of the floating city would fire at once, in a barrage that would reduce anything beneath them to dust. The Underlords would be expected to contribute their power to that effort.

“We have all the facts we need,” Naru Huan said, staring out the window. “At the least, we must beg the help of a Sage...and a Monarch.”

Good luck to you, Eithan thought. Monarchs were practically myths. It would be hard enough to find a Herald, and very few Monarchs could be reached at all. By mortals, anyway.

Those few that stayed in one place and ruled steady kingdoms all had something...wrong with them. Not that Eithan would ever say so aloud; some of them could hear their names spoken from all the way across the world. Still, supplicants had an equal chance of being ignored for centuries, granted an audience, or unmade. It was like begging the help of a volcano.

No one else could drive off a Dreadgod, it was true, but the Blackflame Empire could employ the strategy that had served humanity for millennia in front of overwhelming natural disasters: fleeing like mice.

“Underlord Arelius,” the Emperor said, spearing him with that sword-sharp gaze. “You will be our representative to the Akura family. Using our name, you will beg an audience with their Monarch, as one of her loyal servants. They have shielded us from the dragons for generations, and they might grant us grace this time as well.”

Eithan's mind froze. The room came into focus as it did when he was in battle, his emotions chilling. The smile slipped from his face.

“You're sending me to die,” he said. His voice had an edge.

As befit the sole Overlord in the country, the Emperor did not back down an inch. “We do not waste resources in times of war. But if your death will grant us the chance at an audience with a Monarch, yes, then your blood is cheap to us.”

Eithan stared down Naru Huan for a long moment as he considered.

The logic was sound. It took a moment for his feelings to catch up, but he accepted the decision. It was the right move.

Eithan's smile came back as though it had never left, and he bowed before his ruler. “Your command is my heart's desire. However, you have never sought the Akura family's support before. Why now?”

“In our reign, the Empire has never faced such a crisis.” The rampage of the Blackflame family had occurred during his mother's rule, so technically Naru Huan had never faced a true crisis. Well, this could be considered a test for him.

The Emperor paused a moment, then added, “We may also reveal that the Akura family has recently asked a service of us. As we have agreed to their terms, currently we are on better footing with their clan than we ever have been before.”

Fascinating. Eithan had been unaware that there was any more than incidental contact between the great Akura clan and the relatively unimportant Blackflame Empire. The Akura protected the Empire from dragons simply because they were both humans, but otherwise they were utterly apathetic. Only their lack of motivation kept them from enslaving the entire populace or razing them for cultivation resources.

What favor could the Emperor possibly do for a Monarch's family? Eithan was dying to find out.

12

The Soulsmith foundry in the Skysworn’s tower was advanced enough to support the creation of Truegold and Underlord constructs. Lindon had picked up a rumor in the city that suggested the Emperor's Overlord-stage weaponry had been created here.

He wasn't allowed to use those facilities. Instead, he and Fisher Gesha had been pushed to one of the apprentice rooms.

It was barely big enough for the two of them and their tools. Fisher Gesha stood next to her drudge—the huge purple spider—rather than riding it around, as she was used to. Little Blue clutched Lindon's hair, piping up every once in a while in a high-pitched burble.

The foundry had a basic set of tools on the wall, though they were goldsteel-plated instead of made from pure goldsteel, and they were chained to their rack to prevent theft. In the center of the room was a boundary formation in the shape of a large bubble. It would keep the project suspended so that Lindon and Fisher Gesha could work on it together without letting their construct rest on a table.

Lindon wondered what a higher-level foundry would have allowed him. Could he have made his new arm stronger? Fisher Gesha had assured him that he would have to replace this one when he became an Underlord (though she found that possibility unlikely). It was made of Gold-stage components, so it wouldn't handle the stress of a transition to Underlord.

Then again, when he was an Underlord, maybe he would find the materials for an even better arm.

Fisher Gesha floated the Shifting Skies arm into the center of the boundary field. It floated there peacefully, gleaming like glass in the light, its spiked fingertips drumming against the air.

Then she sat cross-legged on the ground. “Cycle,” she commanded. “It calms the mind and the soul, hm? You should be at your sharpest when you Forge a new weapon.”

Lindon followed her lead and began cycling his pure madra, but he couldn't contain his excitement. His imagination kept providing all the things he would be able to do with his new arm.

And the alternative was to focus on the fact that he was missing a limb. He preferred daydreaming.

Their preparation seemed to stretch on and on, but finally Fisher Gesha levered herself out of her cycling position—moving stiffly—and started to limber up her shoulders. “Well, it's not naptime. Let's get moving.”

She sounded nervous, eyeing her chest which sat in the corner. Lindon knew why: even through the restrictive scripts on the box, he could sense the power of the white binding. It felt like intense hunger.

The more they prepared it for use, strengthening it with pure madra as though watering a flower while attuning it to Lindon's soul, the stronger it felt. Now it shone with power, which even the chest couldn't contain.

Using a set of halfsilver tongs, which would disperse any stray madra, she withdrew the small book-sized box that contained the binding itself. Then she shut the large chest, placing the small box on top. Reaching into her robes, she pulled out the notes that they had taken from the Transcendent Ruins along with the binding.

She and Lindon had both practically memorized those notes in preparation for today. They tended to be very technical, though they referred back to a “Subject One” as the source of the hunger madra. Lindon very much wanted to know about Subject One, as it seemed the entire purpose of their research in the labyrinth was to duplicate Subject One's unique madra.

“Soulsmithing is blending three elements,” she said. She had given him this lecture before, but he still focused on every word. A mistake here might mean weeks of going without an arm. “You have the binding, the material of the construct itself, and the Soulsmith's madra, hm? But unlike blending physical materials, you are working with the stuff of souls. Madra lives. It changes. Even the same Path, taken from two different people, can have subtly different properties.”

She traded her halfsilver tongs out for her goldsteel set. These could seize immaterial madra without damaging the subject. She opened the small box, which let a feeling of ravenous hunger wash over the both of them.

Then she withdrew a finger-sized shard from within. It was one of the pieces left over from the Ancestor's Spear.

“A Soulsmith must learn to predict those changes, hm? It's no good making a weapon that will turn on its owner. But even with the best drudge in the world and years of experience, we are working with living components. No two constructs are exactly the same.”

Gingerly, she placed the shard of white within the bubble at the center of the room. The transparent arm and the shard of bright white orbited one another, though the smaller piece seemed to be squirming through the air toward the larger.

Gesha crossed her arms. “Now,” she commanded.

Lindon reached out with his perception, sensing both the arm and the piece of hunger madra. They gave him very different impressions, but he didn't focus on that, instead pouring pure madra into combining them.

They drifted together faster than he'd expected, and he focused on Forging them like he would a scale. He held the shape in his mind, pushing it together with his will.

The shard entered the clear-as-glass surface of the arm, staining six inches of the forearm white. Pale strands ran through the limb like veins, and the sharp fingers shuddered.

Fisher Gesha gestured, and her spider scurried up beneath the floating boundary field. It lifted two legs, poking at the substance of the construct, spinning it around as though spinning a web.

After a moment, it hissed in three sharp patterns and withdrew its legs.

“Unstable,” Gesha reported. “Keep holding it.” She produced another shard of the Ancestor's Spear, and Lindon repeated the process.

The stress of holding onto the construct felt like cycling the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel for too long: his soul was under pressure, every breath was heavy, and he was having trouble holding onto the appropriate breathing pattern. Sweat had begun to bead on his face.

But there was a distinct difference. The presence of the arm had begun to change, as the Shifting Skies madra in the original limb was suffused with the power of the hungry white madra. Instead of tapping, the fingers now flexed, grasping, and he sensed...

Well, he wasn't sure what he was picking up on. Maybe Fisher Gesha could tell him, if he could spare the attention to ask. It felt as though the arm wanted something, and it twisted in the floating bubble like a hunting snake.

It must have been an effect of the hunger madra, as she added more samples inside and Lindon used his pure madra to Forge them together into one. With every piece, it seemed to become more aware, like they were building a Remnant instead of a Remnant arm.

This time, when Fisher Gesha's drudge tested the limb, it gave a high whistle. Immediately, she withdrew a shiny, twisted form of pure white light with a corkscrew pattern. The binding.

A crystallized technique, the binding was the heart of any construct. Without it, a construct would only have the properties of its material and whatever scripts they added on top. That would make it no better than any scripted object.

Ideally, this binding would allow him to feed on someone else's madra, though Fisher Gesha insisted that it would only allow him to pull another's power into his arm and then vent it elsewhere.

Either way. Both ideas intrigued him.

As the binding approached, the arm squirmed toward it, fighting against the hold of his spirit. He tried to ask her to wait, but the word came out as a croak.

Then the binding slid into the arm, and he had to absorb it.

The actual process of completing the arm was simple. He worked it into the Forging, and the arm flared with a brilliant white. Now it was all spotless and pale, and the claws had smoothed out into fingertips—Lindon didn't want to use an arm with needle-sharp fingers. It looked almost skeletal in shape, though it was thick enough to fit on his arm.

Fisher Gesha let out a breath. “Good. Now, normally we would add scripts at this point, but it will be attached to your body. Your own spirit will do the maintenance, protecting it from decay. It seems stable, but for a while you'll have to...prepare for...”

Her words drifted off as she watched the arm.

Lindon was staring at it too.

It had gone wild, twisting and writhing as it pushed its hand at the edge of the boundary field. He could almost hear a snarling in his head, as it sought to devour...something.

An instant later, the boundary field vanished.

The hand lunged for Lindon's head. No...not for his head. The link he shared with the arm gave him an instinctive understanding, and rather than ducking, he threw himself to the side.

It wasn't after him. It was after the Sylvan Riverseed.

Little Blue scurried down the side of his head, hiding in his robe, peeking her sapphire head out of his collar and trembling. Lindon reached out with his power again, but the arm wouldn't respond to him anymore. All he could sense from it was a boundless hunger.

“What now?” he asked, his voice creaking from disuse.

“It's out of control,” Gesha said sourly, pulling the goldsteel hook from her back. Sharp on the inside and as big as her torso, it was more of a sickle than a hook, and it gleamed white in the light of the room. “This is why you don't use unique parts, hm? Something goes wrong, and you can't learn from it and try again. You have to give up all your wasted time.”

She stepped forward, preparing to swing her weapon, but the arm was still scurrying across the floor on its fingertips. Toward Lindon.

Lindon kept his attention on the limb. There had to be something he could do to salvage this—it would be a waste of not only irreplaceable materials, but also far too much time. And a unique opportunity.

He held out a hand to Fisher Gesha, begging for restraint, even as he studied the arm. What he called hunger wasn't just that. It felt similar to hunger, but it was more textured, with deeper layers. He felt ambition, greed, gluttony, an endless desire to reach for more and more.

The hand lunged at him, but he caught it by the wrist. It burned his palm, as though he'd grabbed onto solid ice, but he kept his attention on it.

Without context, the arm was out of control. It needed a mind to control it. A will to keep it in check.

And it fit him. There was a little of this hunger in him already.

He focused on that, stoking his desire for power, the feelings of envy and awe he'd felt when Suriel had demonstrated absolute authority, the aching helplessness of living as Unsouled and his desire to get stronger. As strong as he could.

The arm stiffened, like a dog catching a new scent.

Lindon threw more at it. His feelings as he looked over the Heaven's Glory School's treasures: he wanted it all, but even that wouldn't be enough. He remembered the sensation of Blackflame, the desire of a dragon to conquer and to destroy.

Then he shoved the end of the arm onto his stump.

The construct didn't resist him, but pain blacked out his memory for a moment. When he came back to himself, he was on the floor, his back propped up against a cool wall. Fisher Gesha was muttering, her hook on the ground next to her, holding her wrinkled hands over his elbow.

Where flesh met pure white madra.

“Dangerous,” she muttered. “Too dangerous. Could have devoured you, you know that? Hm? And you made me Forge it on, so that will hurt your compatibility. An impulsive Soulsmith is a dead Soulsmith, I can say that much for certain.”

He forced a smile. “Forgiveness, and thank you. I can only tell you that I thought it would work. I felt...like it would,” he finished, though it sounded limp when he put it that way.

She grunted and thwacked him on the forehead with her knuckles. “You have to stay open to your instincts when you're Forging a construct. That's important. But don't go sticking things on your body just because you feel like it, hm?”

Full of expectation, Lindon flexed his new white arm.

It twisted backwards, fingers twitching, reaching for Fisher Gesha's face.

She stepped back, sighing. “It will take you some time to adjust so that you can control it naturally. Scripts could speed the process up, but they would eventually restrict you, so it's better to adapt over time.”

Lindon nodded, focusing on his spirit. The arm's madra wasn't flowing into his body, but his power was flowing into it, and it was quite a burden. It took more madra to maintain his arm than to Enforce the rest of his body together.

“Don't try to use the binding yet,” she warned him, sticking a finger in his face. “Lindon? I could not be more serious. Your madra channels are having enough trouble with the load of a Remnant's arm. If you try to use the binding, your spirit might tear itself apart. You have to get used to your new arm, and preferably strengthen your channels, yes? You should really wait as long as possible before you try to use the technique. At least four to six weeks.”

Lindon nodded attentively, but his mind was focused on controlling his new arm. Finally, he got it to run its white fingers over the floor.

Sensation was...odd, through the new limb...as though the arm were talking directly to his brain and spirit instead of his body. Like he knew the floor was rough and cold, rather than feeling it as he would through a hand of flesh and blood.

But at least he could tell if something was hot or cold, smooth or rough. He would take it.

Forcing the arm to move as he wanted it to was stressing his spirit, and Little Blue seemed to react to that. She reached up from his collar, slapping her tiny hand on his chin. A cold spark traveled through him, soothing his channels and giving relief to his spirit. When the spark reached his arm, it shuddered and stilled for a moment.

“That's better, thank you,” he said, smiling down at little blue. She dipped her head in respect and then gave him a broad grin. Where had she learned that?

No matter how much trouble it caused him, he had an arm. He could be careful for a few weeks if it meant having two hands again.

He leaned his head back against the wall, exhausted, and met Fisher Gesha's face. She seemed concerned.

“Gratitude, Fisher Gesha. I'm excited to see what I can do with this.”

Gesha watched him quietly for a few seconds before folding her arms and addressing him with the look of a strict grandmother. “What is wrong with you, boy?”

That wasn't the first thing he had expected her to say. “Honored Fisher, I humbly apologize for anything that I—”

“You've been running at a full sprint for more than a year. Well, I guess I can understand it at first, considering your fight with the Jai boy. Afterwards, I thought you'd settle into a routine, hm? No, it's adventure after adventure with you. You're going to burn yourself down to ash if you keep this up.”

Lindon held his hands out in a pacifying gesture, trying to reassure her. Well, he held one hand out. The other squeezed into a fist and shook itself aggressively.

“I have a lot farther to go,” Lindon said reasonably. “If my goal was only Jai Long, then certainly, I could have given up and gone home by now.”

“You think you hike up a mountain by sprinting all the way, do you?” she snapped. “You need a place to rest as much as anyone, if you don't want to crack like bad steel.”

“I can't afford a break yet. I started too late; only last year, I was still Copper. If I don't try as hard as I can, I can't catch up.”

She threw her hands in the air. “Catch up? Who exactly are you trying to catch up to, hm?”

Only two names flashed through his mind, but he was embarrassed to say them out loud.

“They call you the twenty-fourth ranked Lowgold on the combat charts,” she said. “You know what that means?”

“That there are twenty-three Lowgolds stronger than I am,” he said immediately.

“That you're ranked higher than three quarters of the Empire! If you settled down and lived in the Arelius family, you'd be Highgold by twenty-five. Considering it's you, probably Truegold ten years later. You could be an Underlord in your fifties. And that's living peacefully! You could settle down, rest, find a nice young lady, raise a family. You don't have to live every day like you're looking to die!”

She was shouting by the end, and Lindon winced as every word landed.

Because they hit him too close to home.

Since leaving Sacred Valley, he had risked his life almost daily. He'd given everything to move forward. He didn't regret it—if anything, his only regret was that he'd advanced too slowly.

But it was scraping him raw.

He felt like a man who had started to run down a hill, going faster and faster until he couldn't stop. Now he had to keep accelerating or stumble and fall.

The problem was, he really couldn't stop. As enticing as that vision was, he could never return to his homeland as an Underlord. Not if it took him more than thirty more years.

His home would be gone by then.

Lindon started to speak, and was surprised to find his voice rough. His vision had blurred—were those tears? Fisher Gesha looked down on him sympathetically.

There came a single knock at the door, and then Yerin pushed her way in. “They said you'd be fussing around with constructs in here,” she said, glancing around the room. “Didn't want to bump your sword-hand, so I knocked.” She saw the white arm and brightened.

“Skeleton arm! Scarier than a tiger's teeth, I love it. With your black eyes, that'll have them messing themselves before you ever throw a punch.”

That hadn't been Lindon's actual goal, but he was glad she was pleased. And it did remind him of another issue: he had to test the arm with Blackflame. All of the tests performed on samples by Fisher Gesha's drudge had suggested the two types of madra wouldn't interfere with each other, certainly not after his soul acclimated to the limb, but there was no way to be sure without testing.

“I'll take any advantage I can get, in a fight,” Lindon said, surreptitiously swiping at his eyes and rising to his feet.

Yerin straightened her back, the silver Goldsigns over her shoulders rising. “That wasn't why I came. I have news for you, and the sand's running down.” She met his eyes with a firm gaze. “Skysworn are going sword-to-sword with Redmoon Hall. I'm joining them.”

Lindon's new arm twitched as he lost control of his breathing technique. He had known she’d spoken with the Skysworn, but not how it had turned out. She hadn’t told him, and he’d been afraid to ask.

But now...Yerin was going. And he wasn't.

“Already?” he asked, and he sounded like he’d swallowed sand.

“Told you I wasn’t burning time,” she said, meeting his eyes. “They’ve got some test or something coming up. Could be my last chance, and I’m not planning to miss it.”

He wanted to say he was going to join her, wanted to leave Fisher Gesha and walk out alongside Yerin. They’d traveled together for so long, it felt wrong to be parting ways now.

But she was still rushing, he wasn’t wrong about that. The smart thing to do was wait.

If only it didn’t feel like slicing into his own chest.

“There will be another test, though? Perhaps I can join then.”

“Could be,” she said, with half a smile. “Couldn’t tell you when it is, though.”

Then, at least for now, he needed to say good-bye. He bowed at the waist, as deeply as he could. “This one thanks you for your long guidance. He could never have made it without you.”

She scratched the back of her neck with one hand. “Yeah, well...wouldn't have made it out of the Valley without you, would I? And having you around kept me busy.”

Lindon straightened and looked into her eyes. “Thank you, Yerin. I can't...ah, thank you.” It wasn't adequate, but he was afraid that if he said any more, he would embarrass himself.

She nodded, shifting her gaze. They stood in silence for a few moments before Yerin finally waved and turned on her heel. “Don’t need to make this any fancier than it has to be,” she said as she walked out. “I’ll see you soon, won’t I? Not gone forever.”

“I'll see you then!” he called after her, even as the door shut.

Fisher Gesha eyed him. “I'm sorry, boy.”

Lindon didn't hear her.

The excitement of his new arm had been completely dampened. He packed up his things in a haze, and the next thing he knew, he had returned to his room. It was simple—less appointed even than the cell where the Skysworn had kept him before, but mercifully bigger. It was connected to a kind of stable, where Orthos slept.

He stood in the center of his room, lost.

When Gesha had asked him who he was trying to catch up to, only two faces had popped into his mind: Yerin and Eithan.

Both of them were too embarrassing to say aloud. Yerin was the apprentice of a Sage, and a prodigy. Eithan was an Underlord and the Patriarch of a great family.

But they had both treated him as though he could catch up to them. They had made him believe it.

Now he was on his own.

Without knowing what he was doing, he grabbed his pack with his left hand and slipped it on. He froze halfway through, realizing he didn't need it, but it comforted him. Made him feel prepared.

Then, aimlessly, he drifted over to Orthos' room. It was broad, empty, and its walls were plated in dark, scripted metal. It had been designed to hold contracted sacred beasts, or so Lindon had been told.

Orthos hadn't been asleep, which Lindon had expected from the feel of his spirit. Instead, the turtle was munching on a pile of rocks and broken chunks of street that Lindon had scavenged from around the city. The red circles of his eyes pivoted to Lindon as he entered, but the turtle didn't say anything. He just kept chewing away.

Lindon hugged his pack to himself—with one arm, because the other had rebelled again—and sat down.

Orthos felt confused and weak again. The years he'd spent with a damaged spirit had left their mark on his mind. Now, he was struggling to think.

Little Blue popped up from inside Lindon's robes, eyeing Orthos. With a quick glance at Lindon, she hurried across the floor, resting her blue hand on one of the turtle's forelegs.

His spirit and body shuddered as the Sylvan Riverseed's power cleansed his madra channels, but he kept munching away on the rock.

“Lin...don...” he said, through a mouthful of gravel.

Little Blue gave him a mournful whistle and then drifted back to Lindon.

“Good morning, Orthos,” Lindon said.

“...arm,” the turtle forced out.

“It's a new one,” Lindon said, holding it up and twisting it with difficulty. “But it should be an improvement.”

Orthos' consciousness was growing sharper by the second, but he was still having trouble with speech. After a moment, he gave a single nod. “Good. Like it.”

Well, he'd gotten approval from Yerin and Orthos.

“I think you and Yerin will be happier the more frightening I look,” Lindon said, idly opening his pack.

“Dragons...are frightening,” Orthos said, the red in his eyes shining.

“That doesn't mean I want to be,” Lindon said, flipping through his belongings. He was taking inventory.

Here, in this room, was everything he had left.

Little Blue, Orthos, and the contents of his pack. Eithan would still help him, but Eithan was gone. Who knew when the Underlord would return? He had been fickle even before the Emperor had needed him to resolve an imperial crisis.

He dug down past a portable rune-light, a spare set of clothes, and a ball of string. Counting everything in his pack calmed him, gave him a sense of control. He had prepared for everything he could, and these were the fruits of his preparation.

After only a moment, his fingertips brushed old, yellowed paper. He pulled it out: The Heart of Twin Stars, the cover said.

Inside, he had written on the blank sheets the manual had included, and had added more pages within as necessary.

The Path of Twin Stars, he had written, in his own handwriting.

Here, he had recorded every step of his advancement. The uses of pure madra. Notes on the performance, range, and feel of the Empty Palm technique. He had recorded his experience splitting his core, and how he had used scales he Forged himself to expand his capacity. He recorded when he'd moved on to the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel technique—though he was vague on those details, following Eithan's advice to keep that cycling method a secret.

After that, his notes were sparse. He'd recorded the pills Eithan had given him to train, and how he had refined Lowgold and Highgold cores for Lindon's digestion. That was the method Lindon had used to reach Lowgold in his pure core.

But that was all. There were still more blank pages left.

Lindon sat for entirely too long, holding the manual in his hand. The feel of the old paper, the smell of it, brought back old feelings.

How he'd felt when Yerin taught him that an Unsouled was a fabrication of Sacred Valley. How he could carve out his own Path.

“Orthos,” Lindon said quietly. “Yerin went to join the Skysworn.”

The turtle grumbled for a moment before forcing out, “Why?”

“They're fighting against Redmoon Hall.”

Rage boiled up in Orthos' spirit. Lindon could feel it, pushing against the sacred beast's restraints. He had heard about the bloodspawn, what they'd done while he slept, and that they'd come from a Dreadgod. In his mind, Redmoon Hall had made a fool of him while he slept.

Orthos kept himself under control, but he rose up to his full height, turning his head to face Lindon. “And you? You will allow them to do as they wish, unopposed?”

At least he was back to full sentences.

“The smarter choice is to stay with the Arelius family,” Lindon said. “Get stronger first. If I went to fight now, I wouldn't offer anything. I'd be going to lose, or to die.”

Orthos backed him against the wall, looming over him. Lindon felt a pang of fear, though he could sense that the turtle was totally in control. He had fought against the wild Orthos too many times to be entirely comfortable.

“A dragon does not allow fear to make his decisions for him,” Orthos rumbled. “A dragon decides for himself.”

Lindon glanced down at the manual in his hand.

His own Path.

What did he want to do?

Little Blue looked up at him from somewhere around his shin, her ocean-blue body shimmering in Orthos' smoldering light. She reached up to pat him, giving him some comfort.

He reached down with his flesh arm, scooping her up, and she scampered up to sit on his shoulder. Then he stood.

“Let's go,” Lindon said.

Orthos stomped out the door. “You don’t need to tell me we’re going. Of course we are. He snapped up a chunk of the floor, munching on it as he spoke.

“A dragon always fights.”

13

Renfei and Bai Rou led Yerin away from Starsweep Tower, toward the class of applicants. Bai Rou loomed over her in a way that made her want to knock him down a peg, if only he weren't a fully armed and armored Truegold. Renfei had a more reasonable height, only an inch or two over Yerin herself. Yerin couldn't help but like her more.

“As we return to the capital, Stormrock will pass over Serpent's Grave. The rest of the Arelius family will be sent home then,” Renfei said.

Yerin nodded. She had been a little worried that they would stay here, so that she might crash into them during her Skysworn training. She itched at the thought of them seeing her train to leave them.

And at the same time, she ached when she thought about them leaving her. Her feelings were too twisted to think about for very long; clearly, she needed more training.

“There are only fifty other qualified Highgold applicants,” Renfei went on. “You'll be competing with them for ten spots.”

“I thought you'd be begging for as many bodies as you could squeeze into green armor,” Yerin said.

“We can't let our standards slip,” Renfei told her proudly, the cloud over her head lightening. “Now, more than ever, we need the Skysworn to be excellent.” She waited a moment before adding, “However, we won't dismiss the other forty, like we might under other circumstances. We will give them a chance to re-apply, or to serve in other ways. And the basic training program for those who join will be accelerated.”

Yerin translated to herself. They were cutting corners all over the place, but not in places where they had to admit it. So they were desperate, they just didn't want to look that way.

She had another question, but before she could ask it, the crowd parted behind them as random passersby were shoved out of the way. A tall, broad figure loomed behind her, and the brief flash from her spiritual perception showed her a great power moving toward her at speed.

Her sword was in her hand immediately, the blades over her shoulders poised. Her master's memories drifted to the surface, sketching the outline of combat in her mind. Not that she needed his experience—she had scars from enough fights herself. She wasn't so raw and unformed that she'd lock up at the first taste of combat.

Then she saw who it was and completely locked up.

Lindon stumbled up to her, out of breath, dipping his head in apologies to all the people around him he'd shoved out of the way. Orthos rose over him like a smoking mountain, his eyes glaring at her. He looked even angrier than Lindon usually did, though it fit his black, leathery turtle's face.

Lindon's pack was hanging awkwardly from one shoulder, Little Blue seated on his head, his arm twisting and bucking like it had slipped his leash. Wasn't a tough guess to see he hadn't mastered it yet.

He met her gaze, and his eyes were black with red circles. But that darkness faded as he switched away from Blackflame, looking to the Skysworn.

“I'd like to join as well,” he said. “To serve the Empire.”

Bai Rou marched forward, yellow eyes shining in the shadow of his hat, and seized Lindon by the arm. “You idiot,” he said in a low voice, dragging him into a nearby alley. The citizens stared after them, and Orthos followed, growling like he was prepared to attack.

Renfei's cloud was a solid black as she joined them in the alley, one hand on her hammer as though she expected to use it.

“A Blackflame?” Bai Rou snarled, shoving Lindon up against the wall. “In Stormrock?”

Orthos stepped up, growling, his eyes blazing red and Blackflame madra flaring from the plates of his shell.

Yerin had her own sword out. She'd aim for the back of Bai Rou’s neck first, above the armor, while he was focused on Lindon. If she and Orthos killed him quick, then they could turn to Renfei together.

The woman stabbed her finger toward the mouth of the alley. “You didn't even hide yourself! What do you imagine they're thinking right now?”

Wary of a trap, Yerin shot a quick glance at the opening, but she didn't take her eyes off Bai Rou for more than an instant.

The people had run, peeking in from around the corner. They looked terrified. A shop owner shut his door with a bang.

Lindon held up his hands...or his hand, as his white arm rebelled halfway through and started reaching for Orthos. With visible effort, he knocked it down. “I...humbly apologize for causing a scene, but surely you see why I can only join the Skysworn. How can I fight for the Empire when merely revealing my contracted partner causes a panic? Unless I work for the Skysworn.”

Yerin saw a shred of reason in it. If people knew the Skysworn had a Blackflame under control, it would make them look stronger. Lindon would look weaker, too, but he didn't care what every random person on the street thought. At least, he shouldn't.

Renfei was still furious, Bai Rou still had Lindon pushed against the wall, and Orthos' growl was growing louder. Yerin held her sword at the ready, careful not to send any madra flowing through the weapon. If Renfei sensed it, the battle would begin too early.

“How did you get out of the tower?” Renfei demanded. “The guards would have stopped you.”

Lindon looked genuinely confused. “We just...walked out. They seemed busy.”

Other than Renfei and Bai Rou, every other Skysworn Yerin had seen in the city was scampering around like a scared rabbit. She still couldn't swallow that he'd walked straight out with Orthos following him. She wondered what had really happened.

Bai Rou turned to exchange a glance with Renfei. He released Lindon, abruptly taking a step back.

Yerin sheathed her sword as though she'd never drawn it. Her Goldsigns withdrew.

Somewhere around her core, her uninvited guest sent out a pulse of disappointment. Like a craving gone unmet. It pushed against the seal on her skin, but that dam held.

How long will that last? she wondered. If Eithan didn't come back in time, she'd have to find a solution herself.

He'd hinted and teased about a way to get this parasite out of her, but he'd also made it clear as glass that he'd rather she use it. He wanted her to be one of these emissaries, or whatever she'd be called if she didn't work for Redmoon Hall.

She had no interest in that. She'd rather walk away from the sword forever than lose to this...disgusting thing inside of her. She couldn't end such a long fight by giving up. Not even by taking it over herself.

A handful of her master's memories dealt with her guest—it seemed like every other memory she pulled from his Remnant had to do with her. Eithan said that it was easier to pull up memories that touched you in some way, but she was disappointed. She'd hope to learn things about her master she didn't know.

Still, she knew what he'd felt about her Blood Shadow: disgust. He thought the parasite was a burden on her, and he'd only been waiting until she advanced enough to be rid of it.

While she was lost in thought, the other four had gone back to an uneasy standoff.

“We have to bring him to the Underlord either way,” Renfei said at last. “If he wants to invite a Blackflame to try out...well, that's up to him.”

Lindon nodded along. “I believe I'm qualified to apply for one of the Lowgold positions. I know the application process is today; we could try that before meeting with the Underlord, if time is an issue.”

“He's at the testing grounds,” Bai Rou said, ignoring Lindon.

“We'll have to circle around, by the walls,” Renfei responded, looking into the shadows of the alley. “We would be even more visible in the air. Just have to take it fast.”

Bai Rou turned to look at Lindon, face in shadow. “Keep up,” he commanded, then took off with a splash of golden liquid madra.

“You first,” Renfei said. “Try to escape or deviate from the course, and I will take care of you myself.”

Lindon gave Orthos a nervous look. He'd be wondering what Yerin was: whether Orthos could keep himself under control as they ran. After one reassuring pat on the turtle's head, he scooped Little Blue off his head and into his palm.

The Sylvan Riverseed caught Yerin's eye as she was lowered, and Yerin waved.

The spirit turned away as though suddenly frightened, huddling on Lindon's palm. Yerin sighed.

An instant later, Lindon's eyes were dark again, and the Burning Cloak ignited around him like a red-and-black shroud in the air. He kicked off, Orthos trotting after, and Yerin filled her body with madra.

The Path of the Endless Sword didn't have a full-body Enforcer technique, but her Iron body was strong. She fed madra to her limbs in a general Enforcement, which was nowhere near as good as a true technique, but she had no trouble keeping up with Lindon.

They ran side-by-side for a while as she tried to sort out what to say, but the words got tangled up inside her. She couldn't seem to push the knot out past her tongue.

As a group, they were darting through damp alleys, vaulting short walls, dodging piles of trash and hopeless-looking people crouched on the sides of the road. She'd seen the decay of cities before, and it almost comforted her to see that the sickness extended even here, to the city of the Skysworn.

She had remained silent too long, the tangle of words keeping her frustrated. Finally, she just blurted it out.

“You followed me,” she barked as she hopped up on top of an eight-foot wall and waited for him to come after her. “Why? Ten seconds ago, you didn't want to fight.”

He shrugged as he landed next to her, though his white arm folded up with the motion and wouldn't unlock. “You've followed me for the better part of two years,” he said at last, taking off and trusting her to keep up. “You didn't have to stick with me after Sacred Valley, and you didn't have to help me through the Blackflame Trials. It seemed like my turn.”

He gave her an embarrassed smile. “When I stopped looking at all the problems, and I just asked myself what I wanted to do...I realized I wanted to come with you. So here I am.”

Yerin kept her eyes focused on Bai Rou's broad back, because she could feel heat rising up through her neck and into her cheeks. Her words were stuck in her throat again, but for a different reason this time.

“Well,” she said at last. “Glad you finally saw it straight.” Then, to change the subject, she asked him, “How did you really get past the guards?”

“It’s a good thing the applications aren’t back in the tower,” Lindon said, voice low. “Orthos burned a hole in the wall.”

* * *

Lindon was losing track of the number of times he’d been imprisoned.

Bai Rou walked around him, producing a pair of manacles joined by a short length of chain. They looked like iron, but pale specks like stars deep in the metal told him that they included halfsilver. They would disperse madra on contact, preventing him from burning his way out of the restraints.

Not that he was drawing on his Blackflame madra at the moment. He had switched to his pure core as soon as Renfei and Bai Rou had dragged him into this squat, nondescript building. The Path of Black Flame made him aggressive, made him want to move, to act.

If he was filled with Blackflame madra, he was sure he would have tried to run. That would only have resulted in a short chase followed by Bai Rou dragging him down the hall anyway. He could sense that was what Orthos wanted to do; the turtle was safe, but growing restless. Wherever he was, he wouldn’t stay there long. Little Blue had crawled back in her case, and though they’d taken his pack, they’d left her inside.

The manacle was uncomfortably cold on his wrist of flesh, but it positively burned his Remnant arm. He managed to slip the edge of his sleeve inside, to protect his artificial limb. If he hadn’t, Bai Rou would have been dragging his limp body inside.

Past an ordinary door was yet another bare, nondescript room. He was growing used to those. At least this one didn’t have a bed, so they wouldn’t keep him here for too long.

There was another door on the opposite wall, and a smooth wooden chair in the center of the floor. A circle of script on the ceiling glowed softly white.

Otherwise, it was empty.

Bai Rou walked him to the chair and clipped the chain between his restraints to a hook in the floor. Lindon sat down, because it was that or stay uncomfortably hunched. There wasn’t enough slack in the chain for him to stand up straight.

“You don’t need to speak respectfully,” Renfei said. “He appreciates direct answers more than good manners. But you should be respectful.”

“Tell the truth,” Bai Rou added from his post by the door.

Lindon’s breath sped up as he pictured the Skysworn Underlord. The man had shown him no mercy during the duel…but he had, in the end, allowed Lindon to go free.

It made him feel better about being cuffed and chained to the floor of what was most likely an interrogation room.

The far door swung open and Naru Gwei entered, the man shuffling inside in his beaten armor as though dragging a weight behind him with every step.

Renfei and Bai Rou bowed slightly and pressed their fists together. Lindon mimicked them as best he could in his position.

“I am Wei Shi Lindon, sir,” Lindon said. He had to force himself not to refer to himself as ‘this one.’ “I was not able to properly introduce myself last time.”

The man slipped a long leaf into his mouth, chewing it for a while before saying, “You’re part of the Arelius family.”

“I have that honor, sir. If I could only—”

“But you weren’t born to it.”

“No, sir. Underlord Arelius was kind enough to take myself and my companion under his wing.”

The old Skysworn didn’t ask about his companion. “Where were you born?”

“Sacred Valley,” Lindon said. “It’s far to the west, past the Desolate Wilds.”

For a long moment, he chewed his leaf. “Are there more Blackflames hiding in Sacred Valley?”

Lindon forced a polite laugh. “No sir, no. There aren’t even any Golds.”

“So this was something that Eithan Arelius taught you.”

The old man was drilling for something, and Lindon wasn’t quite sure what; surely he’d known all about Lindon’s situation before even the duel with Jai Long. The uncertainty made him wary. “I entered a contract with a sacred beast known as Orthos. You have him captive here, somewhere, and I’m sure he could give you a further explanation.”

Orthos would know more about this situation than he did, though Lindon doubted the turtle would cooperate with any questioning.

Only the wet sounds of the leaf between the man’s teeth broke the silence of the room. Eventually, he reached out and shut the door behind him.

The snap of the door closing echoed in the tiny room.

The Skysworn Captain folded his arms and leaned against the wall. Bai Rou took a respectful step away, but the old man didn’t seem to care. He examined Lindon through a curtain of matted gray hair.

“Did you ever break that arm as a kid?” he asked. “Back when you had it, I mean.”

Whatever Lindon’s interrogator wanted, he was coming at it from a different direction. Lindon only wished he understood where this was headed. Why hadn’t he waited for Eithan before trying to join the Skysworn? Maybe the Arelius Underlord could have persuaded them to hold another round of applications.

“Both of them, yes,” Lindon said. He’d broken one falling out of a tree, and the other had been broken by a tree.

“And how did they treat that break, back in Sacred Valley?”

“We weren’t the richest family in the clan, sir. We had simple elixirs and a scripted sling.”

“No life artists?”

“Only for more severe injuries, honored sir.” Lindon’s father had his leg treated by a life artist, but the woman hadn’t been on hand soon enough to restore the limb completely. Without her, he wouldn’t have kept the leg at all.

The man nodded slowly, flipping the leaf over between his lips. “And burns? You ever burn yourself?”

Lindon’s eyes flicked to the scar on the side of the man’s face. “Minor burns only, sir.” His voice had grown quiet, and he wasn’t sure why.

“Well, since they didn’t heal burns back in Sacred Valley, I’ll tell you how we do it here.” Lindon stayed focused on the raised patch of ridged, reddish scar tissue that ran from his temple down to his chin. It only missed his eye by a quarter-inch.

“Blood madra removes unhealthy tissue and grows some more. Life madra smooths it all out, heals it together with the rest of your body so that you’d never know you’d been burned at all. And that’s just a general picture. If you get a specialized healing Path, or some decent elixirs, the whole thing can be done in a breath.”

He ran his little finger across his scarred cheek. “Black fire hurts a little worse.”

Lindon sat, more and more conscious of the chain locking him in this room. He looked to the more familiar Skysworn for comfort, but Bai Rou had his arms crossed, his yellow eyes staring at the far wall. Renfei kept her eyes on her Captain.

“They tell me you’re requesting entry into the Skysworn,” Naru Gwei said, without leaning away. “Did Eithan tell you to do that?”

“No! No, I…I probably should have waited for his permission, but I didn’t. He doesn’t know.”

“But he was the one who turned you into a Blackflame,” Gwei said. His expression still looked tired, as though he hadn’t slept in three days and wanted nothing more than to go home and sleep. His tone, by contrast, betrayed no impatience.

“He helped me along this Path, yes,” Lindon said, hoping this wouldn’t reflect too badly on Eithan. The Arelius Underlord had never told him to keep his involvement a secret.

The Skysworn Captain gave no sign whether he thought this was good or bad. He kept leaning against the wall, chewing his leaf. “Did he do that to your core?”

From his previous conversations with Renfei and Bai Rou, Lindon gathered that they assumed his pure core was a sort of disguise to cover the Path of Black Flame. “I split my core on my own, sir. Before I met Eithan.”

“And what did he want you to do with this new Path? What purpose did he have for you?”

Finally, Lindon saw what the Underlord was getting at. Naru Gwei assumed this was all part of Eithan’s plan, and wanted to know what that plan was.

“For the duel, sir. I asked him for a Path that might allow me to fight someone stronger than I was.”

“The way I’ve heard it,” Gwei said, “Eithan allowed the duel. Even proposed it.”

“His favorite training method is…I guess I would call it extreme duress.”

The Skysworn Captain swallowed the leaf and withdrew a long straw from within his armor. He placed it between his teeth and continued chewing. “So he proposed this duel, held you to it, and then held out the Path of Black Flame as your only salvation. That doesn’t sound like a plan to you?”

“He’s pushing me forward,” Lindon insisted. “He’s helping me grow.”

Naru Gwei unfolded his arms and leaned closer. “Into what?”

Lindon had no answer to that.

“What did he say you would do after the duel?”

“Nothing I know of. He’s helping me advance.” Lindon felt less confident than he had before.

The Underlord stared at him for a long moment, then jerked his head toward the door. His two subordinates traded looks, though they couldn’t do anything but leave. Bai Rou ducked his woven hat beneath the doorframe, and the cloud over Renfei’s head passed through with plenty of room to spare.

They didn’t look back at Lindon.

“The duel is over,” Naru Gwei said. “Now, in the middle of an imperial crisis that he helped cause, he’s trying to slip a Blackflame into my Skysworn. While he tries to take over himself. I know what he’s doing, linking Underlords to the Skysworn. He’s trying to win them over from me.”

The Underlord had loomed over Lindon, the air in the room swirling and picking up into a windstorm. His scarred face was hostile: he was working himself up into a fury. Whatever was happening out there had put too much pressure on the Skysworn Captain, whether it was the threat of Redmoon Hall or whatever Eithan had done.

Either way, Naru Gwei had decided Lindon was part of it.

Lindon’s right arm started straining against its restraints, and he almost wanted to help it.

The Underlord leaned toward Lindon, his dirty gray hair swinging closer. Lindon shut his mouth. Naru Gwei's weather-beaten face somehow looked both weary and intense, as though he were bracing himself for an unpleasant task that he had performed hundreds of times before.

“Lower your head,” the Underlord commanded, and Lindon could hear his death in that command.

“It’s not Eithan!” Lindon said desperately, tapping his Blackflame core. His eyes heated, and he knew from experience that they would have transformed into a copy of Orthos’ eyes: pure black with red irises. The Path of Black Flame flooded into his left hand, and his right remained mercifully untouched and intact.

He poured that power into his cuffs even as he Enforced his muscles. If he melted them, they would burn through his wrists, so he had to hope he could tear his hand free before the damage was too great.

Instead, the madra broke to steam on contact with the cuffs. A spike of cold shot up Lindon's arms, as though he'd driven an icicle through his wrists.

Halfsilver in the cuffs. He'd remembered, but hoped against hope that there was some flaw.

“A friend wanted to join! Yerin, I mentioned her earlier, she’s the companion that Eithan adopted. She wanted to fight Redmoon Hall, so she insisted on joining the Skysworn! I didn’t want to, but I couldn’t let her down!” He was babbling as though every word out of his mouth would slow down the Underlord’s blow.

Considering that he was still alive, maybe there was something to that theory.

“She just wanted to help! And…ah, so do I! Of course!” As Naru Gwei’s hand drifted upward toward the hilt of his sword, Lindon's breath came faster and faster. His breath started to blur, and the ice in his wrists grew sharper as he poured more effort into breaking the shackles. Even his white arm was writhing with desperation. Just a little more, he was sure. He had to believe that. Just a little more...

“Eithan adopted her too,” the Captain said quietly, and Lindon forced himself to take deeper breaths. He could feel Orthos growing agitated in his own cell, feeding on Lindon’s fear—if it went too far, or if Lindon was killed, the turtle would go on a rampage.

“Why?” Naru Gwei continued. “What was special about her?”

“She was apprenticed to a Sage,” Lindon blurted out. Yet again, he wondered if he should be sharing this, but Yerin had never kept it a secret. She would proudly tell anyone.

“Which Sage?”

“The Sword Sage!”

Naru Gwei’s green-armored fingers wrapped around his sword hilt. “Which Sword Sage?”

There was more than one?

“I don’t know!” Lindon insisted. “I don’t know! She’s on the Path of the Endless Sword, and she learned it from him, but I don’t know if he had another name, or...”

After a moment, the Captain’s hand moved down. He stared at the wall, and Lindon felt a light brush on his spirit as the Underlord’s perception moved through him…and kept going.

He was looking for Yerin.

* * *

Naru Gwei wasn’t an Arelius, so he had to rely on his spiritual perception to find someone. He’d long been jealous of their bloodline legacy; it was wasted on them, he felt. The world’s best scouting tool, and they wasted it on civic maintenance.

But there were some things that an old-fashioned spiritual scan did best.

He found a nearby Highgold sword artist almost immediately. Her madra moved in smooth, steady rhythms—she was cycling. That would be Yerin. There were other sword artists nearby, but none of them so close.

He’d read reports that had mentioned Yerin, but he hadn’t paid them much attention. He had been focused on Lindon, the Blackflame. He’d even seen her once himself, briefly, though she hadn’t stood out to him.

But now he’d found yet another seed that Eithan had tried to plant in the Skysworn.

At first, he felt nothing out of the ordinary. She had a powerful soul, with madra that was potent for a Highgold. She may be on the verge of Truegold, or she might have used some elixir. None of that was cause for alarm.

But upon closer inspection, he felt something: a seal. Fueled by soulfire.

The seal was like a cage embedded in her soul, and it must have been made recently. Soulfire couldn’t last forever.

What was inside?

He ran his perception around the box, probing for gaps, but he found none. Instead, he sat there with his attention on the box itself, waiting for an impression to drift through.

After a few breaths of time, he felt a wisp of something from inside the seal: blood. Like a monster that had spilled an ocean of blood and was hungry to spill more.

He jerked away, his head actually snapping backward as he broke the connection.

Could Eithan have done this intentionally? No, he must have picked this girl up months before Jai Daishou had opened the western labyrinth. And he couldn’t have known the Jai Underlord would attract the attention of Redmoon Hall.

Or could he? How far ahead had Eithan’s plan gone?

If not for Naru Gwei’s vigilance, Eithan would have slipped a Blood Shadow into the Skysworn.

The Underlord wasn’t surprised no one had caught it before. Even without Eithan’s seal, most people had never encountered a Blood Shadow before. Renfei must have scanned her before allowing her into the Skysworn, but she could easily have mistaken that impression as a blood Remnant or perhaps part of her Path.

But Naru Gwei could tell. If she wasn’t part of Redmoon Hall herself, she was well on her way.

Now, the Blackflame and the Blood Shadow’s host were in his power. He could rid the Empire of both of them.

He stood still, thinking, as Lindon squirmed against his manacles beside him. He could kill them both in an instant.

And then what would happen?

He would provoke the Arelius family at least, on the verge of a national crisis. Everyone expected the Arelius to replace the Jai clan in the ranks of the great clans, now that Jai Daishou was dead. This would be the worst possible time to make new enemies.

Even if he were willing to face that problem, there was a greater one: the Sage of the Endless Sword.

Eithan said he was dead, and if he had adopted the Sage’s disciple, he would be in a position to know. But could Naru Gwei accept anything Eithan said?

No, he couldn’t. If the Sage showed up alive, and his disciple had been killed by a fellow Highgold, he would have no one to blame. But if she had been killed by an Underlord…

Naru Gwei wouldn’t last any longer against an Archlord than a Copper would. And the Sages were the greatest of the Archlords.

No, he couldn’t kill her himself. And he would prefer not to antagonize the Arelius family by executing Lindon either. Now he had two enemies with backgrounds he couldn’t afford to offend.

Wait, not two…three.

A new face popped up in his memory, and he remembered the request from the Akura clan.

Take good care of our errant daughter, their messenger had said. Treat her as you would a favored disciple, and place her where the battle is hottest. If she is to fall, there will be no reprisals. Your cooperation will be rewarded.

The Akura clan had entrusted their Empire with this request only months ago, and Naru Gwei himself had been assigned to oversee its execution. The Emperor was counting on him.

There was no reason he couldn’t fold two more enemies into the plan.

Lindon and Yerin would still have to apply. They could go through the evaluation process like usual, and Eithan Arelius couldn’t complain. If they failed, they would join the reserve, and Naru Gwei could still find a place for them.

And if they succeeded, so much the better. They would share a fate with all the Empire’s enemies.

Before Lindon could react, Naru Gwei pulled free his sword and struck through the young man’s manacles. Halfsilver had its uses, but it was brittle, and it practically crumbled under the force of his blow.

“You’re free to go,” the Captain said.

Lindon’s expression looked dissatisfied, as though he’d missed the opportunity for a fight, but he sounded only relieved. “Gratitude, Underlord, gratitude.”

“Better hurry,” Naru Gwei said, returning his sword to his back. “The application begins precisely at noon.”

Without a backward glance, Lindon scurried out of the room. He would be headed for his contracted partner and to Yerin.

And, soon, to his death.

14

The two Skysworn guided them to a fairground just inside the city walls. Hundreds of people had gathered out in the open, bustling and mixing, and the sheer variety of different sacred artists made it a riot of color and motion. Birds, winged Remnants, and hovering constructs filled the sky. Lindon saw Goldsigns of every description, from shining tattoos to floating clouds of eyes, and weapons Forged from solid fire or living dreams.

It was an overwhelming sight, but Renfei and Bai Rou eventually dropped them off by a pair of tents. Each had a pair of characters floating overhead, projected on cloud madra. They spelled out the words "Lowgold" and "Highgold."

Yerin made her way to the Highgold tent, and Lindon started to make his way toward the Lowgold area.

He stopped almost immediately, when the green-armored guards saw him and their faces went hard. One of them drew a sword, and the other's hands started crackling with lightning.

Bai Rou stood with his arms folded, as though whatever happened to Lindon was no business of his, but Renfei stepped up and spoke to them. What she said must have worked, because they backed away, but they still didn't look pleased.

"This is foolish," Orthos grumbled, tearing up a chunk of grassy soil and swallowing it whole. "We surround ourselves with enemies."

Lindon glanced over at the Highgold tent, where Yerin's silver Goldsigns bobbed over the crowd. "The Skysworn treat their students well. One day inside their Soulsmith library will pay for itself."

He was trying to convince himself, and Orthos' skeptical grunt said he knew it. Lindon was still shaking from his encounter with the Skysworn Captain, and his decision to apply for the Skysworn now felt like the most impulsive and stupid decision he could possibly have made.

The woman sitting inside the tent was motherly and soft, and she had a miniature sparrow of crackling yellow sparks sitting on her shoulder. "Name," she demanded.

"Wei Shi Lindon."

She scanned down a scroll, and her eyes widened when she found his name. Or perhaps when she saw his Path—Lindon couldn't tell what information was written on the scroll, but her eyes flicked to Orthos, at which point they widened even further.

The woman looked from side to side for help, but the other people working in the tent were all dealing with other applicants. Finally, she pulled out a small wooden chit with the number "537" stamped onto it.

"This is...your, ah, participant number? Please do not lose it...um, if you don't mind. You are one of the final applicants we're accepting today. If you are one of the first fifty participants to reach the end, you will be considered to have passed."

It had the sound of something she'd said many times today, but she was too flustered to deliver it smoothly.

"The end of what?" Lindon asked, but the woman was staring at Orthos again. That reminded him of a different question. "He's not a Lowgold. Will we have to apply separately?"

She shook herself as though waking up. "Ah, no, of course not. As your contracted partner, he is considered part of your strength. He will be competing with you."

Suddenly, Lindon wondered if this application might be incredibly easy.

On her directions, he and Orthos made their way to a massive group of other Lowgolds. Hundreds of young sacred artists huddled in small groups, matched with people they recognized. Some of them looked nervous, others projected confidence, and still others were seated on the ground cycling to steady themselves.

As he and Orthos pushed through the crowd, the turtle earned more than a few angry glances. Followed by second looks, and spiritual scans. Which invariably led to even angrier looks.

Orthos may not have noticed, but Lindon grew more and more nervous each time it happened. He was hoping they were upset because he was bringing a Truegold-level sacred beast into a Lowgold competition, but he suspected otherwise. They could recognize Blackflame in the sacred turtle at a glance, and they weren't happy about it.

"Orthos," Lindon said, "can you veil yourself?"

The turtle snorted out a puff of smoke. "Do you know how to open and close your eyes? I was veiling myself before your grandfather ever laid eyes on your grandmother. When the Skysworn were nothing more than a sect of servants, I was—"

Lindon cut him off before he gained too much momentum. "I think it would help us both if you did."

There was a wide circle around them now, and most of the Lowgolds surrounding them were giving them hard looks. Some of them held their weapons in hand, bringing them to life as they filled the blades with madra.

Orthos' dark eyes flicked up to him. "You want me to hide before a mob of angry hatchlings? They will make good targets for you to practice Void Dragon's Dance. The survivors will cast their eyes to the ground, and they will know that we are to be respected!"

Lindon cleared his throat, trying to think how to phrase this for the turtle's benefit. "I'm trying to infiltrate their ranks, Orthos. To benefit from their unique resources. It would hurt my cause if I killed their young on the way in."

Orthos rumbled deep in his chest, clearly displeased, but finally the strength of his spirit weakened. Now, he blended into the feel of the crowd, instead of standing out like a bonfire among candles.

Not that it helped the looks they were getting.

Lindon had started to identify some patterns among the young men and women surrounding him. Many of them had the emerald wings of the Naru clan's Path: the Path of Grasping Sky, if he remembered correctly. Their wings were not as fully formed as Naru Gwei's, looking more like they were made out of vivid Remnant parts rather than real feathers.

Almost as common was gray skin, though he didn't know what family or Path that represented. He even spotted two or three with the shiny metallic hair of the Path of the Stellar Spear, and those sacred artists all had their spears in hand and stared at him avidly.

Finally, one of the boys with gray skin stepped out. He carried a round shield on one arm, and held a long knife in the other—the knife rippled, as though seen from underwater. A pink-and-white fish swirled through the air around his head. Lindon assumed that was his contracted partner, as the boy's pink gemstone eyes matched those of the fish.

He held his chin high, looking down on Lindon despite being head-and-shoulders shorter. "Blackflame," he said loudly. "You should leave. For your own safety."

A general murmur of agreement and soft laughter rose from the crowd.

Lindon leaned over to Orthos. "Is he going to attack me?"

He had run into situations like this back in Sacred Valley. A number of boys would take out their frustrations on Lindon simply because they could, but the scenario was different here. He didn't understand what was likely to happen—would the young man give up after posturing for a while, or was he actually looking for a fight?

Red-and-black flames rose slightly from Orthos' shell as he considered the gray-skinned boy in front of him. "He is looking to stand out by provoking one of the Empire's villains in front of everyone," the turtle said, not bothering to keep his voice down. Everyone heard. "He is not confident enough in his results to let them speak for him, so he has to distinguish himself in another way. He is the weakest sort of scavenger, crawling along the bottom and looking for scraps. Crush him."

The words echoed in the ensuing silence, and power slowly gathered and mounted inside the gray-skinned youth.

Lindon regretted asking Orthos anything.

He plastered on a smile, raising his hands in a show of peace. "I apologize for him, honored brother. Please, can I know your—" His own right hand cut him off. Not satisfied by staying in the air, it instead lunged for a gray throat, grasping with white fingers.

Lindon managed to pull it back before anything happened, but the gray young man had raised his shield. He lowered it, pink eyes blazing. "You face Kotai Taien of the great Kotai clan, Blackflame! Defend yourself!"

The meeting with Naru Gwei had only been an hour ago. Lindon still hadn't recovered from that, and all he wanted was a peaceful tryout. He bowed carefully, spending most of his madra on keeping his arm under control. "I humbly apologize," he said, and someone kicked him in the back.

He stumbled forward a few steps, turning to see who it was, but there was no telling. It was a circle of hostile faces.

For the second time that afternoon, he started to sense real danger. There were more than five hundred Lowgolds around him, and none of them had any love for the Blackflames. If it hadn't been for his confrontation with the Skysworn Captain, he may have tried to run.

But this time, he'd reached the end of his patience.

Against an Underlord, he had no choice but to beg and whimper. There was no standing up against overwhelming strength.

These…were not Underlords.

Lindon shifted the pattern of his breathing, tapping into his Blackflame core. He could see those nearest him flinch as his eyes filled with black and red.

He turned to see Kotai Taien, resolving to try one more time. "I have no reason to fight you, Kotai. We are not enemies."

But he'd miscalculated. He'd hoped to push the boy away, but he should have known that he was giving Taien exactly what he wanted: a villain.

Pink eyes brightened, and he held up his shield, reversing the long knife in his right hand. "This Empire is no longer yours!" he declared, and charged.

Orthos' laugh was like that of a hungry dragon.

Lindon ignited the Burning Cloak before Taien had taken a step, launching himself forward. He drove a punch at the gap around Taien's shield, fully expecting him to shift and block the strike. The momentum should knock him back, giving Lindon time to...

Taien's ribs crumpled like a cage of dry sticks.

His body slammed backward into the crowd, tossing aside a group of other gray-skinned Lowgolds. His weapons tumbled from limp hands, his fish swam in agitated circles above him, and blood sprayed from his lips in hacking coughs.

Lindon stood, staring, from within the black-and-red haze of his Burning Cloak.

Orthos' laughter grew until it deafened the entire crowd, and he stomped the ground, howling in mirth. His eyes were almost closed, and if he were human, Lindon was sure he'd be crying with laughter.

Everyone in the crowd took a step back.

Still chuckling, the turtle walked up and sniffed at the fallen boy's shield. "Spoils of war," he said, snapping it up and chewing. The sound of twisting metal cut through the air even louder than his laughs had.

Taien hacked up blood again, letting out a loud moan, and tried to roll on his side. Abruptly, Lindon realized that he hadn't canceled his Burning Cloak yet, and finally let the technique fade.

He had only intended to show everyone that he couldn't be pushed around. He hadn't want to kill anybody.

Everyone in the group of Lowgolds seemed allergic to him all of a sudden. Even the other gray-skinned sacred artists backed away from Taien, as though to help him was to associate themselves with him.

The crowd rippled as someone pushed through, and Lindon turned, readying his madra in case it was another challenger. He sincerely hoped it wasn't; he had never had to adjust his strength to avoid hurting someone before. If they attacked, he couldn't hold back.

From the wall of people, a girl stumbled out. She was slender and a little taller than Yerin, with her hair pulled back into a long black ponytail. She wore white-and-black sacred artist's robes, with a breastplate of smooth purple armor over her chest. The armor matched her eyes, which were a startling, vivid purple. The eyes looked human, not as though she'd borrowed them from a sacred beast through a contract, but he couldn't be sure.

She carried a staff in one hand. It was as tall as she was, thick as her wrist, and made of smooth-looking black tendons. The tendons coiled up to the top of the staff, which was capped by a dragon's head.

The girl stumbled as she came out of the crowd, steadied herself, and then dropped to her knees next to Kotai Taien. "Oh, wow! You really hammered him, didn’t you? Just…” She gave the air a little mock jab. “He’s on the Path of the Unstained Shield, too. Must have been skipping his training, huh?”

She looked around at the other gray-skinned youths standing around. They shifted in place, clearly unsure how to respond.

Taien coughed again, blood splattering his lips.

“Are you his…friend?” Lindon asked hesitantly.

“I try to be friendly, when I can!” she chirped, brushing a lock of hair away from her eye and smiling brightly. “But no, I can’t say that I’ve ever met him before.” She put two fingers to his ribs and winced. “Sorry, you must be in pain. Give me a second.”

She removed a pouch tied at her waist, rummaging inside. Her hand seemed to dip further into the pouch than it should have, and Lindon noticed that she wore tight black gloves up to her wrist. They seemed to be made out of the same substance as her staff, as though she had dipped her hands in glossy black liquid. Her Goldsign, perhaps?

After a moment of rummaging around, she brightened, withdrawing a smooth white bottle with a cloth tied over its opening. She untied it in one swift motion, popping out a round green-and-gray pill.

Lindon could smell it from where he stood, like a rainstorm in a pine forest.

“Open up,” she called down. When he didn’t respond, she propped his head up and shoved the pill into his mouth. He gagged for a moment, his face turning red, but she held his mouth closed and he eventually swallowed.

The effect was immediate. Light of green, red, and purple burst from his chest in long strings, and the aura inside of his body was ignited into a storm. He sat up as though someone had pulled him on a string, gasping loudly, pink eyes wide. The fish flying in the air around his head grew excited, bobbing up and down and all around his face.

The girl slapped him on the back, smiling proudly. “There we go, good as new! Try not to eat for an hour or two, or you might start vomiting up living creatures. I’ve done it, it’s not pretty.”

Only a few seconds later, Taien was conscious again, breathing steadily. He glanced once at Lindon and then looked away, turning instead to the young woman who had saved him. “I thank you. The Blackflame attacked me before I was—”

At the sight of her eyes, he froze. She waited patiently, seeming to expect what was coming.

“…Akura?” he asked, voice hoarse.

“Akura Mercy,” she said. “I’m honored to meet you.”

If everyone had taken a step back when they’d seen Lindon crush the other guy’s ribs, they fled at the mention of Mercy’s family name. Even the other gray-skinned members of the Kotai clan abandoned their fallen cousin, scrambling to get away.

There were two types of people who stayed: the ones who looked as confused as Lindon felt, and the ones who were bowing too deeply to run. Not everyone had heard of the Akura name, it seemed. But all of the students from major clans had: none of the Jai, Naru, or Kotai remained.

Except for Kotai Taien. His gray face went ashen, and he planted his forehead on the ground. “Forgive me my disrespect,” he said. “I am not worthy of your help.”

Mercy pushed herself to her feet and swayed for a second as though unused to her own legs. She leaned on her staff for balance, and the dragon’s head at the top shone with purple light. Its eyes were glowing purple pinpricks, and Lindon thought he heard it snarl.

“No atoning necessary,” Mercy said with a smile. “Just don’t bow to me anymore, how about that?”

Taien jumped up as though the ground had become red-hot, and vanished into the crowd just as quickly.

Mercy looked after him for a while, then sighed, and walked into the distance idly twirling her staff.

“…what just happened?” Lindon asked Orthos.

No response. Lindon looked to the turtle on his left.

Orthos had withdrawn his head and all his limbs into his shell. His core seemed small and quiet, though that could have been because of the veil over his spirit. After a moment, his voice echoed from within the shell. “Is she gone?”

“She didn’t seem so bad to me,” Lindon said, watching Mercy’s ponytail vanish into the crowd. Every few steps, she tripped over her own feet and had to catch herself on her staff.

Orthos peeked out of his shell, confirming that she really was gone, before he finally emerged. “If she’s really a descendant of the Akura clan, we’re lucky she was in a good mood. Her family owns three-quarters of the continent.”

“Not the Empire?”

“The Blackflame Empire is one of their territories,” Orthos said, still staring at where Mercy had vanished. “And not their most valuable. She might receive the Empire as a coming-of-age present.”

“Then why doesn’t the Emperor come from the Akura clan?”

Orthos snorted smoke. “The Emperor runs the Empire. They own it. They don’t put one of their own on the throne because they don’t have to. Naru Huan knows enough to do whatever they want him to.”

Lindon rested a hand on the turtle’s head. Though Orthos would never acknowledge it, Lindon knew he found it comforting. “She must be impressive, to get a dragon to back down.”

“Even dragons,” Orthos said, “know when to bow.”

* * *

Eithan stared up at the fortress of death and wondered how he had gotten in so far over his head.

The heart of Akura clan territory was clearly designed to intimidate anyone who laid eyes on it. The wall—which rose high over his head and stretched for miles beyond sight—was made of absolutely black Forged madra and topped with man-sized sword blades. He was fairly certain that the material of the walls had at least some aspect of death madra to it, from the icy cold dread that pressed against his senses and the cold howls that he heard from deep within.

And that was just the outer wall. The Emperor had a gatekey that had transported Eithan over ten thousand miles straight to the entrance, but even such a key couldn't get him in the door. The Akura family Matriarch must have created the gatekey herself, or one of her close disciples, because no one in the Blackflame Empire had such control of space.

The guards were even more intimidating than the wall they guarded. The two Remnants were the dark green of murky swamp-water, and they looked like dried lizard-corpses. Only they were fifteen feet tall, and each of them carried a halberd that blazed with black-and-violet flame. A different breed of dragon's fire than Blackflame, but just as deadly.

They each rested on piles of bleached human bones that were undoubtedly there for effect.

...not that they were a deception. They had just chosen to leave the bones of those the guards killed as a declaration to future visitors.

Remnants they may have been, but they looked down on Eithan with cold intelligence. They had been left by Lords on the same Path and slowly cultivated by the Akura clan until they could match Heralds for power. The signs were there, if you knew what to look for.

It was enough to make Eithan painfully aware of his status as an Underlord. Or rather, his lack of status. If the guards were to blast him to vapor, word would never reach the Blackflame Empire. Even if it did, the Emperor would be the one to apologize.

Even in mortal danger, Eithan had never been one to give in to intimidation. He smiled brightly, pulling the gatekey from his pocket and holding it forth. It was made of purple-tinted black crystal, and it pulsed like a heart in his hand.

"I represent Naru Huan, Emperor of the Blackflame Empire," he declared. "I seek an audience with the highest-ranking member of the Akura clan available to me."

He certainly couldn't request a meeting with their clan leader directly. Disrespecting a Monarch by implying that he was worthy of her time would kill him on the spot, and might even spread to the rest of the Arelius family.

The Remnants inspected him with unreadable reptilian gazes. Even his bloodline powers were of no use to him here, as the spirits gave no physical clues for what they were feeling.

However intelligent and advanced they were, they were still Remnants. They would act according to their nature unless given reason to do otherwise, and these had clearly been given guard duty. One sent out a spiritual pulse—the heft of which felt like it would push Eithan to the ground—in an obvious signal.

Eithan waited. Somewhere behind the wall, the fortress itself spewed fire into the air.

He hoped they wouldn't ask him to go inside. It would severely derail his plans if he was captured in an Akura holding cell for a hundred years.

Finally, a center section of the wall dissolved into a black puddle. An old man with a long, wispy beard and purple eyes strode out of the gap, hands crossed in front of him. Those hands looked as though they'd been dipped in tar up to the elbow: the Goldsign from the Path of the Chainkeeper. He would be a blood descendant, then, as though the purple eyes weren't enough of a clue.

He walked out with stately dignity, but he did not carry himself with arrogance. His black-and-white robes were simple, and he met Eithan's eyes with a placid gaze. Eithan liked him already; a different member of the Akura clan might have made him bow and scrape for an hour before deigning to hear a word.

Eithan did not scan him directly, as that would have been an appalling breach of manners, but he did gingerly reach out his spiritual perception to get a sense of the man's advancement. As he suspected, he couldn't tell. The man might as well not have been a sacred artist at all.

That meant he was at least an Underlord skilled in veils. Most likely, he was far above that stage.

Eithan bowed deeply, pressing his fists together. "As an unworthy servant of the Blackflame Empire, I greet the representative of the honored Akura clan."

The old man dipped his head in acknowledgement. "I am Akura Justice. The clan welcomes you, Eithan Arelius."

Eithan was not at all surprised that the Akura clan knew his name, but he was somewhat surprised that Justice had chosen to use it. "I am honored that you have taken such notice of me," he said, without straightening from his bow.

"Our Matriarch, eternal and all-knowing, employs the greatest dream artists in the world," Justice said calmly. "They have seen you. It seems there has been a great shift in fate recently. The currents of destiny change rapidly these days, and the dream-readers have seen you in their flowing currents."

Eithan began to sweat. Though their talents all varied, the legendary Monarchs could see far. Depending on what they decided about his destiny, he could be killed here. Or worse.

"She has left words for you," Justice said, and his voice was awed. He must have been a descendant of his clan's Matriarch, so he was talking about his own mother, grandmother, or great-grandmother, but his tone suggested he was referring to a divinity made flesh. "In other circumstances, we would have a feast for anyone so honored, but time runs short."

Eithan fell to his knees, pressing his head to the ground three times in the direction of the fortress. He resisted the urge to grimace while facing downward—Justice might not have been able to see it, but a Monarch would. If she were watching.

Better to play it safe.

"I am not worthy," Eithan said. And then, far more sincerely, "I will engrave the Monarch's words onto my heart."

That, at least, was true. Whatever she had gleaned from the future, it would be invaluable to him.

"The following words are not mine, but the Monarch's." Justice drew himself up, words rising in a proclamation. "Once, and once alone, will I defend your empire from the fiend that rises against it. Soon, I will have greater concerns…so you must raise protectors of your own. They will defend us all from the great calamity that follows. I await your success, Underlord."

"She left those words for me?" Eithan asked, raising his head.

"For you, by name. She has seen your plans, and knows that you have a chance of success."

Eithan tried not to shiver. A Monarch's help could make everything infinitely easier...but no one at that stage was selfless. She might take over, and there would be nothing Eithan could do to stop her.

However, any information about his fate was invaluable. "I cannot express my gratitude in words. If the time does come where I may defend the Akura clan's territory, I will do so." He was careful not to admit debt. His soul might hold him to such words, especially when he was dealing with a Monarch.

Justice nodded, gesturing for Eithan to rise. He did so, trying to ignore the mudstains on his outer robe.

"I do not wish to overstep my station," Eithan said, turning up the charm in his smile. "But are there any instructions I should pass to my Emperor?"

Justice ran a black-gloved hand down his beard. "We have made our will known to your Empire regarding our fallen daughter, and they have interpreted our instructions in an acceptable manner. It is important only that the daughter is pushed to the brink. Whether she learns to fly or falls to her death, the imperial clan will be rewarded."

Eithan was doubly glad that he had researched the Akura clan's "fallen daughter" before coming here. Otherwise, he would have been completely in the dark, and there was little he hated more than ignorance.

He bowed once more, extending his gatekey in both hands. "I regret the inconvenience, but if I could beg you for one further favor..."

Justice smiled in a grandfatherly way and extended one finger to touch the crystal key. "Good-bye, Underlord. Until we meet again."

Eithan vanished.

15

The "application process" was a race.

It was more of an obstacle course, Lindon had heard, similar to the dummy courses Eithan had used to train him. The course was so wide that it took up three-quarters of the fairground, broad enough that all five hundred and fifty-two Lowgold participants could line up shoulder-to-shoulder to begin.

The course itself was shrouded in an orange cloud meant to obscure the obstacles. He supposed they wanted applicants thinking on their feet, and he'd caught a few snatches of conversation as people speculated on what could be inside.

Although very few of the Lowgolds were actually on their feet at all. They rode sacred horses, or stood on flying swords, or spread their wings, or were carried in elaborate cages by constructs. He spotted Mercy, who had straddled her staff as though she were riding a horse, leaning forward and bracing herself on the weapon with both hands. It hovered a few feet over the ground, though she wobbled so much he wondered if she would fall off. The dragon's head at the end of the staff snarled, violet lights shining where eyes should be, as though it were eager to proceed.

He glanced over at the Highgold course, which was much smaller and swallowed by a white cloud. There were only fifty participants there, and fewer of them were mounted, as though they trusted more in their own speed. He couldn't see Yerin, though he did notice sunlight glinting on steel and wondered if he'd spotted her Goldsign.

"Everyone else is riding," Lindon muttered softly. "I won't be able to catch up to them on foot."

Orthos' eyes blazed. "Of course. Climb on my shell, and we will destroy any obstacles in our way."

Lindon didn't want to question his good fortune, but he was shocked at how quickly the turtle had agreed. "Gratitude, Orthos."

"You sound surprised."

"I only thought you might consider carrying me to be, ah...demeaning? Not that I think it is, of course, only that you might see it that way."

Orthos looked at him as though looking at a particularly simpleminded child. "When a horse carries a man, which of them is the stronger party? It is only suitable that a dragon should carry lesser creatures."

Lindon couldn't argue with that.

His shell was hot, spiky, and uncomfortable. Lindon had to cycle and push back against the Blackflame madra rising from Orthos in order to stop from burning a hole in the seat of his pants. Every step the turtle took as he shuffled around at the starting line jostled Lindon so badly that his badge bounced on his chest. It was so uncomfortable as to be almost painful, but before he could get down and take his chances with the Burning Cloak, a Skysworn rose above the crowd.

Lindon had never seen her before, but she had a single horn rising from the top of her head and she floated on an emerald Thousand-Mile Cloud. Her armor gleamed, pristine, as she raised one hand.

"You are the greatest of all those who desire to serve in the Skysworn," she announced, voice thundering. "The first among you will have the honor of keeping the peace in the name of the Emperor. Fight hard, and let nothing stand in your way."

Lindon looked to his fellow competitors, who had either formed into groups or were casting suspicious glances at the others. They had picked up on the same thing he had: nothing prevented them from fighting each other inside the cloud. It was a pure competition, and the judges cared only about who emerged from the other end.

What did it say about the Skysworn, that they taught their next generation of protectors to compete with one another first and foremost?

The judge high in the sky raised her palm, and a crackling field of yellow and blue formed in her hand. "Prepare yourselves!" she declared. Lindon leaned forward, gripping the edge of Orthos' shell.

The field exploded with a crack, and they were off.

The orange cloud swallowed him in a second as Orthos dashed forward with blurring speed. It felt warm on his face instead of cool, as he would have expected.

On the other side, the first thing he saw was a ball of shining chrome headed straight for his head.

He ignited his Burning Cloak, striking the ball away with an explosive punch. The ball hurtled into the orange distance, and Lindon got a better look at this obstacle.

It was a broad field of flying, whirling metal balls. There must have been thousands of them, all circling in seemingly random patterns. It didn't look like they were targeting competitors, but the air was so thick with them that the mass of Lowgolds crashed into them like a wall.

They were fighting through, but with only a few exceptions, they were forced to slow themselves and proceed slowly and carefully. He could see Mercy among those who were hurtling through, her ponytail streaming behind her. She was still wobbling as though her staff would fall to the ground at any second, but she always adjusted her balance, narrowly avoiding a chrome ball each time. It looked like chance, but she hadn't slowed at all.

And neither had Orthos.

Perhaps because he was used to the protection his shell offered, he didn't seem to see any threat in hurtling spheres of metal. He galloped through the cloud in a straight line.

Lindon screamed for him to slow down, clinging to the shell. His knuckles ached where he had punched the first chrome ball, so he switched hands, grabbing on with his flesh hand and using his skeletal Remnant arm to defend himself.

His new hand was only a day old, and it still wouldn't do as he commanded.

...fortunately, it seemed only too eager to help. It hauled him closer, catching the metal balls in its palm without Lindon's direction. It seemed to draw something out of the spheres, because they dropped to the ground, lifeless, after it caught them. It must have been a property of the madra, because the binding in the arm didn't activate.

That was the good news.

There was a dark side, though. The arm focused on one ball at a time, preferring to feed than to protect him. One steel ball smashed into his ribs, another crushed his elbow between it and Orthos' shell, and still a third slammed into the heel of his foot.

As the pain took his breath away and his Bloodforged Iron body siphoned madra to deal with the injuries, he reflected that the pain in his ribs might be divine justice for Kotai Taien.

They were through the field of balls almost too quickly, and he gasped in relief, holding onto the shell with both hands. He was clinging desperately to Orthos, plastered belly-down on the smoldering shell. He was most focused on staying stable and conscious, but keeping his clothes from burning off was a strong secondary concern.

The second obstacle was a brick wall.

Orthos still didn't slow down. Lindon barely had enough time to form dragon's breath and burn his way through; he almost lost control of the technique, without a second hand to contribute. He finally managed it, sending out a liquid-looking bar of Blackflame madra that sliced through the bricks as though they were made of butter...

Carving a line straight down. He might have been able to edge his way through, if he didn't mind red-hot bricks pressing against him, but there was no way he would squeeze through riding on Orthos.

He drew madra together desperately, though he knew there was no time for the technique before they hit.

Then Orthos opened his mouth and blasted a hole in the center of the wall.

They went through with no more damage than a smoldering patch on the back of Lindon's outer robe. He could feel it burning, but he couldn't spare any attention to put it out.

So far, he understood the reasoning behind the obstacles. The flying balls tested your awareness and reaction time. The brick wall tested your raw power—it was already re-forming behind Lindon, so the only way to pass through was to tear a hole in it.

The third obstacle was a cloud of wasps.

He almost cried. What does this have to do with enforcing the law?

Devoutly, he swore to himself that he wouldn't go through any more trials without learning more about them ahead of time. He could have cheated his way through here without a problem.

Riding Orthos was something like cheating...though far, far less comfortable.

The wasps began stinging him, and he both thanked and cursed Eithan for his Bloodforged Iron body. There was nothing it handled better than poison, but without its help, he would have passed out.

There were four more obstacles after that.

* * *

Yerin could have passed the Highgold application in her sleep. The Blackflame Trials had pushed her harder than this, and her training with Cassias and Eithan even harder. She had passed through in first place, earning astonished looks and not a few people trying to snatch her up for their organizations.

She ignored them all, strolling over to the end of the Lowgold course. If she had passed the Highgold so easily, Lindon should have blown through the application like a spring breeze. He loved having time to plan for things like this, but it wasn't as though he really needed it. Not in her estimation, anyway. Planning for a fight was important, but he used a plan more like a crutch. That was how the weak did things.

The Lowgold course was longer than hers had been, so Yerin arrived in time to see the first person emerge from the orange cloud. To her surprise, it wasn't Lindon.

A girl on a flying...broomstick?...blasted out, tumbling onto the grass at the end. She flipped heels-over-head, rolling to a halt and looking around in a daze. Her hair had been tangled from the fall, her ponytail had dead grass in it, and her purple eyes were hazy.

She sat up, looking around, and saw no one. Then she put her hands up in victory—they were gloved in black—and collapsed onto her back, breathing hard.

Yerin gave her a quiet scan, sneaking a glimpse at her soul. Her madra was rock-stable for a Lowgold, deep and quiet as a winter pond. Yerin couldn't figure why she hadn't advanced to Highgold yet. With power that solid, she should have been able to do it in a snap.

The girl seemed to notice something, glancing around until she saw Yerin. Yerin didn't look away—if she had been caught, she'd been caught. No use playing around about it.

Rather than looking offended, the girl gave a cheery wave and let her head fall back down against the ground.

An instant later, a new batch of students came through the clouds. The first flew on green wings, though one of them was broken and his eye was swollen shut. The next was covered in a cloak from head-to-toe, and flew on a jet of streaming blue sparks.

The third was Orthos.

She was surprised they'd let Lindon take him. Sure, contracted beasts were normally considered like a weapon or construct, but they didn't normally have a two-stage difference from their contractors. Sacred beasts didn't advance like sacred artists did, but Orthos still had power on the level of a Truegold.

Which surprised her even more, because he had only come in fourth.

He trotted out, not seeming to hurry, carrying something in his mouth. It took her a breath or two to see it was Lindon, limp and covered in blood. There were slices in his outer robe, pieces of it were on fire, and his face was covered in lumps like bug bites.

But he groaned and moved in Orthos' mouth, so she reasoned he was fine.

She walked up to the turtle as the remaining members of the successful fifty made it through. "What rolled him over?" she asked.

Orthos spat him onto the ground, where Lindon groaned upon landing.

"He needs a shell," Orthos said.

* * *

Three days after the qualification, there was a ceremony to welcome the new generation of Skysworn trainees. In consideration of the red light that was swallowing more and more of the horizon each day, the usual feast and celebration were cut short.

Each inductee was handed a green pin marked with a cloud, which would identify them until they graduated their training and received the Skysworn armor. They were then given a brief, personal greeting by the Skysworn Underlord. He had made himself presentable for the occasion, so his hair was washed and clipped back, baring the scar high on his left cheek. He was even out of his armor, wearing instead a crisp layered outfit that had the look of a uniform.

For Lindon and Yerin, he practically threw their pin at them and gave them no greeting, but Lindon didn't mind. He was eager to minimize any future contact with the Underlord; that seemed to be the best way to live a long and healthy life.

Finally, when all sixty trainees had been given their pins, they sat down for instruction. Twenty full Skysworn, Truegolds all, lined the walls of the room, looking in at the student tables.

They stood in pairs, which Lindon took to be partners like Renfei and Bai Rou.

The Highgold table and the Lowgold tables were separate, with five Lowgolds for every Highgold. More than one of the students at Lindon's table sent jealous glances at the higher table. Some of the more advanced trainees gave smug looks back.

Yerin looked as though she were falling asleep. Her bladed arms sprawled, threatening the people seated on either side of her.

Naru Gwei stepped between the tables, looking as though he would rather be anywhere else. Lindon's white arm struggled to escape from the table, but he wrestled it back down. Orthos, seated next to Lindon, fought to stay quiet and still. Lindon could feel the effort in the turtle's soul and in the thickening pillar of smoke that rose from his shell.

"You'll be separated into teams," the Captain said at last, nodding to the full Skysworn around the walls. "Every pair of Skysworn gets five Lowgolds and one Highgold. Normally we'd get you started by finding lost pets or delivering messages, something suited for your level of advancement. We don't have the luxury of that this time."

It was so quiet that Orthos' breath sounded like a bellows. None of the trainees seemed willing to make a sound.

Their system was easy to understand: sixty trainees, and ten pairs of Skysworn mentors. Six to a team.

But what about Renfei and Bai Rou? They stood apart from the line, and with them, that would be twelve teams of five each. But he had clearly said they would be six-man teams. Were they expecting extra students?

"We always choose the better fighters among the young. We have to, because the bigger your weapon, the less you have to draw it. We've got the biggest hammer in the Empire, and everyone knows it."

A halfhearted cheer rose from the Highgold table, but Naru Gwei ignored it, so it died quickly.

"If we were at peace, I'd have higher standards for your training. I'd want you to be familiar with imperial policy, and the names of all the political players." He waved that aside. "It's a luxury. We're in a crisis, so we're cutting everything down to the bone. We only need one thing from you: to fight. When and where we tell you. The Empire's scurrying like a kicked anthill, and there are always snakes and rats who want to take advantage of that while we're looking away. We'll need to defend the Empire from those traitors...and from the real enemy to the south."

He pulled a long straw out of his chest pocket and started chewing on it. "We're baptizing you in fire. There's plenty of fight to go around. We'll be taking you from battle to battle, and in between, you're expected to spend every second pushing for your next advancement. The Empire has no time for you to waste.

"At the end, if we all make it, I'll be looking over all the reports from your mentors. Those of you who follow orders and distinguish yourselves...well, I look forward to calling you Skysworn."

He nodded sharply to one of the green-armored Truegolds in the back and then walked away, hands tucked into his outer robe.

The speech actually encouraged Lindon. Going from fight to fight, with nothing but a stop to train in between, was essentially what Eithan had for him every day. If the Skysworn would be pushing him to advance faster, that was all he could wish for.

Though it wasn't as though he was eager to rush into battle with Redmoon Hall. At least Yerin would be happy.

The first pair of Skysworn read out a series of names, calling up five Lowgolds and a Highgold. The team of eight filed out, leaving all the young sacred artists in the room excitedly waiting their turn.

That included Lindon. He wondered if they would pair him with Yerin, given their history of working together, or if they separated those who came from the same sect or family.

As the selection process continued, he noticed two things. First, most of the sacred artists in the room were from the three major clans. Kotai and Naru were the most common names, followed in a distant third by Jai.

Second, the math didn't add up.

There were twenty full Skysworn in the line: ten pairs. They were selecting from a pool of ten Highgolds and fifty Lowgolds, so there should be five Lowgolds, one Highgold, and two Truegolds to each team.

But one team took only four Lowgolds. A few picks later, another team skipped a Lowgold. Toward the end, an irritated-looking pair turned down a Highgold.

With two teams left to pick, there were fifteen trainees remaining. Including Lindon and Yerin.

From the way Yerin was glaring, she'd picked up on it too.

Renfei and Bai Rou weren’t in the same line as everyone else, standing in their own separate corner. If they picked trainees as well, there wouldn’t be enough students left for a full team. Neither of them had made eye contact with Lindon through the whole process, so they weren't doing anything to help Lindon's unease.

When the other ten pairs of Truegolds had all picked, Lindon knew something was wrong. There were still three trainees left: Yerin alone at the Highgold table, and he at the Lowgold table together with Akura Mercy.

Mercy sighed with a resigned look on her face, as though she'd expected this, and pushed her way up with her staff before Renfei said a word. It wasn't as though anyone had to hear their picks anyway.

Renfei and Bai Rou were selecting students after all: the dregs. They had been left with a team half the size of the others.

"Something's crooked here," Yerin said. She didn't bother to keep her voice quiet.

"You think so?" Naru Gwei asked. He shrugged. "Quit."

With that, he turned and walked out of the room.

The cloud over Renfei's head seemed especially dark today, as she looked over the three of them. She seemed paler than usual, with shadows under her eyes.

"You're not stupid," she said to them, when the Underlord had left. The other teams had filed out when they were chosen, leaving the room empty but for the five of them. "They've singled you out."

"What for?" Yerin asked, glaring.

Renfei looked from Lindon to Mercy and back to Yerin. "I don't think I need to answer that."

Mercy swung her staff up onto her shoulder and walked up to Yerin, though she tripped over nothing and almost fell on her face. When she righted herself, she smiled. "Akura Mercy," she said. "But my clan doesn't entirely approve of my being here." She tapped her chin with a black-clad finger. "I'd guess they either let it be known that they wouldn't avenge anything that happened to me, or offered a reward for placing me in mortal danger."

Renfei remained stony-faced, giving nothing away, but Bai Rou glanced to the door before nodding once.

"There are more than a few people who would take any opportunity to settle things with an Akura who can't fight back," Mercy said with a sigh. She pointed to Lindon. "Then we have a Blackflame, who the Skysworn don't like very much, and..." She hesitated when she reached Yerin. "Wait! I don't know your names!"

"Wei Shi Lindon of the Arelius family," Bai Rou said, before Lindon could speak up. "And Yerin. Emissary of Redmoon Hall."

He gave her a yellow glare, and Lindon's spirit screamed with the sudden tension in the air. Orthos was on his feet and cycling Blackflame, and Yerin was ready to draw her sword. Her face had paled during her introduction, and her Goldsigns blazed with silver light.

Lindon stepped forward, holding one arm out. The other couldn't be bothered. "Wait! Wait a second, I think there's a misunderstanding here that we can resolve!"

"I'll cut your Truegold tongue out," Yerin said, which didn't help his efforts.

Mercy was looking curiously at Lindon. "Wei clan?" she asked. "Not the Blackflame family? You must have an interesting story."

She didn't seem to see the fight brewing behind her, though the dragon's head on her staff hissed.

"This isn't an execution squad," Renfei said. Her voice was calm, but she kept one hand on her hammer. "Not unless you make that necessary. We are here to keep you under control, and to squeeze as much use out of you as we can."

Why tell us? Lindon wondered. Why not put two more trainees in our squad, and pretend everything was normal, then abandon us on a mission?

He realized the answer almost immediately: because they didn't need to lie. Part of it could be due to a sense of honor on the part of the Skysworn, but for the most part, the three students were no threat. If they left, they would be deserting their duty and would be hunted down. If they fought, they would lose. They were battling two Truegold Skysworn inside the heart of Skysworn power; reinforcements would arrive almost immediately. And even if they succeeded, they would be executed.

And then there was Mercy. Her family had disavowed her, or exiled her, or whatever they wanted to call it, but clearly the Skysworn couldn't kill her flat-out. Yerin and Lindon, too, were backed by the Arelius family. Anything the Skysworn did to them had to at least appear legitimate.

Lindon held his hand out steadily. "Correct me if I'm wrong," he said, "but we will be given a chance to do our jobs, won't we?"

Bai Rou's yellow eyes blazed, still fixed on Yerin. "We won't put you anywhere you can hurt the Empire," he said. He must have taken Yerin's Blood Shadow personally. Maybe it hurt worse because he hadn't spotted it himself; the Underlord must have told him, or he would have reacted this way the very first time he met Yerin.

Renfei answered him directly. "Yes. We are only to supervise you. So long as you follow our instructions and contribute to our cause, we have been instructed to treat you as any other trainees."

"Until we give you a shot at our backs," Yerin countered, still holding her sword in both hands.

"Until you betray us," Renfei corrected. "We will not give you the safety net we give to the other students. One instance of insubordination, one refusal to fight, and there will be no disciplinary action. We are authorized to execute you on the spot."

They had to be holding something back. Lindon was sure of it. With only the strength of two Truegolds, they couldn't be sure of removing Lindon's group quietly. Orthos alone could match one of them, which left the other three to deal with a single opponent. It wouldn't be easy, but it wasn't a sure victory for the Skysworn.

Which meant they had a reason for their confidence. Either that armor did more for them than Lindon expected, or they had some weapons in reserve.

So fighting wasn't an option, but they had time. And the Skysworn needed something from them.

That meant there was a way to win.

He was exhausted, and wished he could sleep as long as he wanted without worrying about another life-threatening battle popping up.

But there was a small part of him that was focused and excited. They hadn’t killed him from behind, so this was a puzzle with a solution.

He moved over to Yerin, ready to calm her down.

Then the light turned red, and the world was cast into chaos.

16

Cassias walked through the barn, waving to the workers. His team of cleaners was preparing it, shoveling manure and dirty hay, sweeping cobwebs, and building temporary pens for the livestock. The Arelius employees would be staying here, for the time being, unless and until they could reclaim their former territory.

Their homes had been ravaged by bloodspawn.

Cassias passed families where only one parent wore the dark blue outer robe of the Arelius, but the others worked just as hard. He was squeezing forty-two people into this barn, and he might have to find room for even more before this was done. Considering that virtually all of their branches in the south had been closed by the advance of Redmoon Hall and the rise of the Bleeding Phoenix, he was dealing with as many as fifty thousand people either evacuated or displaced. And those were only the ones attached to the Arelius family. The Empire as a whole was in a crisis even if the Phoenix never rose.

He moved out of the back of the barn and looked to the south, where blood-colored light hovered like a permanent sunset.

It had grown. When he had left Stormrock, only a few days ago, the light wasn't visible from this far away. In the worst-case scenario, he might have to pack everyone up again, and find room for them even farther north. He didn't have a way to transport so many people so far, unless Stormrock agreed to help, and he suspected they would be packed to capacity as well.

Well, that wasn't the worst scenario. The Dreadgod might decide to go on a rampage and kill them all, without a Monarch to turn it aside into the eastern wasteland or the uninhabited sea to the west.

If it marched straight north, killing everything in its path and spreading bloodspawn, no evacuation would matter.

He reached the back of the barn and stood beneath a particular tree.

"We don't have to meet in secret, Eithan," he said without looking up. "These are your employees."

Eithan sat with legs dangling over the edge of a branch, staring south. "You don't think this is more exciting? Besides, I don't want to deal with greetings and farewells and all the ceremony."

"You never do," Cassias said, stretching his shoulder. Despite the attentions of the Skysworn, his wounds were still sore, especially when he moved around for too long. "Have you come to help with the evacuation?"

Eithan laughed as though Cassias had made a joke. "I actually received some new information that deserves prompt action. Suffice it to say that this will not be the only disaster of this scale in the coming years. We may be heading for interesting times ahead, little brother!"

"I'm not your brother," Cassias said, his mind racing. First of all, he had to know if Eithan had gotten this information from a reliable source, or if he was relying on his own guesses. Knowing that a disaster was coming could make all the difference.

He said as much, and Eithan nodded along.

"A wise question," Eithan responded. "I cannot reveal my source, but it is...worthy of trust."

"Then we need to suspend normal operations immediately. We should pull back to our strongholds, prepare for sieges...can you convince the Empire that we're in danger, or should we accept censure?"

"Instead of that, we're going to send teams south and west."

Cassias looked up to stare at his Underlord, horrified and disbelieving all at once. The South was a slaughterhouse, and the West was the home of the crumbling Jai clan. "You want me to send families to die."

"Not if you do it right," Eithan responded lightly. "I'm not asking our clansmen to throw their lives away, but these are the places where we are needed. We're equipped to help rescue and repair efforts, as well as to gain information. On Redmoon Hall, the Bleeding Phoenix, and the western labyrinth. That information will soon be very valuable, as will the allies our assistance will earn us."

"It's not worth the risk." Cassias gestured behind him, to the barn that was halfway through its transformation into a shelter. "We'll have enough trouble keeping these people alive if we're not walking straight into the Phoenix's nest. You can't ask them to—"

Eithan dropped to the ground, landing as though he weighed nothing. "I am not asking them to do anything. Put the best face on it, and certainly don't feed anyone to the Dreadgod, but I am commanding them to take a riskier path for greater reward to the family." He clapped Cassias on the shoulder. "Make it so, Cassias."

Cassias' heart boiled. Personally, he was still grateful to Eithan. But as the one-time heir to the Arelius family, he itched at the Underlord's attitude. He would always do things according to his own whims, and would never listen to anyone else.

Now, it fell to Cassias to tell these people that they had to leave their families and head back into danger.

After Eithan left Cassias to his simmering thoughts, Naru Jing returned. She was carrying their three-year-old son in one arm and a basket of firewood in the other, eyeing the sky.

One of her eyes and one of her wings had been replaced with glowing orange Remnant prosthetics, which meant one of her wings could no longer be fully retracted. It stuck out over her left shoulder, folded up.

Both her soft brown eye and her bright false one scanned the sky. "Was Eithan here?" she asked curiously.

Cassias dropped to the ground, leaning his back against the tree, and told her everything that had happened.

When he'd finished, she'd set the firewood down and was examining him with a steady gaze. "I owe Underlord Eithan the same debt you do," she said at last, "but we can't let gratitude overshadow our duty to the family."

Cassias nodded along. He'd let Eithan overwhelm him, causing him to forget his other options. Although...did he really have any?

"You have to take this to your father," Jing said, spelling out what he already knew.

Sighing, he nodded. The elders of the Arelius family could rein in the Patriarch, if they wanted to.

But would they oppose him after he'd brought down the Jai clan, leaving an opening among the great clans that the Arelius could fill? They might, considering that Lindon had lost his duel to Jai Long, which had cost the family some reputation for no reason.

Cassias knew his father, though. The former Patriarch of the Arelius family had never approved of all the time and resources Eithan spent on his own whims.

Though he felt like he was betraying Eithan, he had to ask his father's approval. For the family's sake, it was the right thing to do.

A screech cut off his thoughts. Glass shattered next to him, but he didn’t hear it. Instead, he stumbled over to his son, clapping his hands over the boy’s ears. Jing had already woven a barrier of wind around them to cut out the deadly sound.

A crimson light shone from behind him, and he didn’t need the horrified look on his wife’s face to understand what had happened. He already knew.

* * *

The floor tilted and Lindon scrambled to grab onto one of the bolted-down tables as Stormrock accelerated as quickly as possible. The whole city shook, the table in Lindon’s arms shaking as though in an earthquake.

All from the force of a scream that was more than a scream, as though the sound had been given life. It was layered, like a thousand birds shrieking at once, so loudly that he felt a sharp pain in both ears.

A moment later, warm liquid trickled down both sides of his face. His Iron body drew madra to his ears, but there was a moment of blissful silence where he couldn’t hear…he could only hear the cry in the rest of his body.

He didn’t even dare to listen to his spirit, which trembled under a force much greater than the sound.

The Bleeding Phoenix had awakened.

The stench of blood filled the red-tinged air. His heart beat more heavily than usual, as though it were hammering on his ribs, and his veins seemed to boil. He opened his Copper sight—not south, lest he blind himself, but at the room around him—and everything was tinged red. Even the pale green of the wind was tinged with wet red.

Mercy was sitting on the ground, both of her palms stuck to the floor as though nailed there. She squinted south, staring into the bright red light. Her ears had been stoppered up with the same black goo that seemed to coat her hands and staff; her madra, Lindon guessed. Renfei stood on dark platforms of solid cloud that she had generated with her madra, face horrified, and Bai Rou was clinging to his emerald Thousand-Mile Cloud like a drowning man clinging to driftwood. Blood ran from their ears as well. Orthos had let himself fall, slamming the side of his shell into the far wall. His sanity had fled before the Dreadgod, his madra raging up, and it was taking all his self-control to keep from breathing fire in the general direction of the Bleeding Phoenix.

However badly off the rest of them were, whatever changes the Phoenix’s aura was making in their bodies, Yerin was worse.

She lay on the floor, collapsed on her back. The only things keeping her from sliding down the slope were her silver blade-arms, which had been driven into the stone. She shook even worse than the ground around her, her back arching and her eyes rolling up into her head.

Blood spilled from her stomach.

Despite his total lack of any medical ability, Lindon looked for a way to slide over to her before she bled out. At least he could keep pressure on the wound, even if his pack—which he'd kept in the back of the room during the ceremony—had slid to the opposite wall. Little Blue's case must have cracked in the impact, but he couldn't worry about that now. There were bandages in there.

It was only at that point that he realized it wasn't blood. It was a Blood Shadow.

Sparks of gray soulfire hissed from the broken seal over her core. The Shadow reached tendrils out, sliding over her body, questing about, looking for something.

Bai Rou let out a roar when he saw her. Lindon's ears had just healed enough to hear. The Skysworn struggled onto his cloud, kneeling on it and flying over to Yerin.

With one hand, he scooped her up. The Blood Shadow latched onto his arm, but a sheath of liquid yellow madra protected him.

With the other hand, he sprayed a geyser of his madra at the window.

The glass dissolved as though eaten away by acid, and he soared free, dragging Yerin along with him.

For a long, frozen second, Lindon panicked.

Where was he taking her? What was he doing? The Dreadgod's scream had quieted, but Stormrock was still rushing away. Why was Bai Rou flying around?

One thing was clear: he’d taken Yerin. And Lindon had to follow.

He released the table, letting himself slide down the slanted room. He bent his knees as he hit the far wall, his legs Enforced by pure madra, landing between Orthos and his pack.

His right arm betrayed him then, grasping at the air to the south, so he had to open his pack with one hand.

"Orthos," he said, as he dug through his belongings. "I don't know if you can hear me right now, but I have to go after Yerin. If I'm not back soon...please don't kill anyone."

Nothing in his spirit told him if the turtle heard him or not, but he couldn't spare any further thought. He'd found the scripted box that contained one of his most valuable possessions.

His own Thousand-Mile Cloud.

He slung the pack on his back even as he spilled out the cloud, hopping onto it immediately. Unlike the Skysworn's, his was a rusty red, made a vibrant ruby by the light.

With no more hesitation, he poured his madra into the construct, hurtling out the hole in the window after Bai Rou.

Wind tore past him as he flew out of the building, and it took most of his effort to keep up with the flying city. After one frantic look around didn't reveal a huge, armored man on a green cloud, he reluctantly opened his spirit.

He was drowning in blood.

Life, vibrant and powerful, had been spilled here. The power that anchored his soul to his body was in his blood, and it was overwhelming him, choking him.

Strangely, the overpowering sense of the Dreadgod actually made it easier to sense what he was looking for. There was only one spot of power that was hanging in the air instead of cowering in a building, and Lindon headed straight for it.

It was to the south.

The red light was almost blinding, but within it he could see a shape. A monstrous shape.

It was so large as to defy description, swallowing half the sky and stretching into the clouds. Each of its feathers was an oozing, flowing blob, as though it had been made from clumps of crimson gel pushed together. Its beak was curved like a scythe and razor-sharp, and its eyes were shapeless masses of white-hot power.

The Bleeding Phoenix spread its wings like a wound stretching from one horizon to another. Then it opened its beak and cried again.

Lindon sent madra to his ears to protect them, but it didn't save him. That stabbing pain returned, blood dribbling down his ears.

This time, a pair of bloodspawn formed beneath him in midair.

They hadn't sprouted earlier, inside the building, though he wasn't sure if that was due to some scripted protection on the Skysworn fortress or if the influence of the Dreadgod simply hadn't been strong enough yet.

These bloodspawn—made of liquid, but clear as red glass—clawed at him as they fell, splattering against the street below and re-forming.

Even when he went deaf again, Lindon kept his eyes locked on the distant green speck. It had reached the southern end of the city, the part that was trailing deep emerald clouds and tilted downward.

He closed on them as the other cloud began to slow down.

Then Bai Rou released Yerin.

Her Blood Shadow clawed for him as she fell, but he defended himself with yellow madra. Without waiting to see her fall, he turned and started flying his cloud after the city.

Lindon tore after her.

She was falling through natural clouds now, and he pushed his Thousand-Mile Cloud harder than he ever had before. She was too far below him. He wouldn't make it.

For months, he'd been stretching his core using the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel. He had more madra in his core than he could possibly use at one time.

He strained his madra channels, shoving as much out as he could, flooding the construct's core with power. He didn’t need the cloud to last beyond today. Just now. Just one last time.

She was close now, her tattered robes blowing in the wind, her Blood Shadow flailing. He reached out his right hand, trying to grab a fistful of her robes.

His arm betrayed him.

The Blood Shadow reached for the white madra of his arm, seeking it, and his arm flinched away.

Desperate, he tried to push the Thousand-Mile Cloud even harder, but the cloud was already dissipating beneath him. The script at the core had overloaded and warped, and now he was flooding the cloud madra with his own. It would fall apart any second.

Which was only fitting, because they would hit the ground any second.

A searing pain hit him in the shoulder, and he shouted, though even he couldn't hear it. He had only a moment to see what it was: a black arrowhead, sticking out from the front of him.

Then, from the tip of the arrow, burst a net.

It looked like a spider's web made of tar, blasting out from the arrow and swallowing Yerin. It covered her from neck to hips.

The Blood Shadow wrapped around the net immediately, seeping into it, but it remained intact. Yerin's weight pulled at the arrow impaling his shoulder, and he was tugged downward, but he grabbed onto the black web with his left hand and hauled her aboard the cloud.

As he swooped below the trees, he managed to level off their flight. Only then did he see what they were falling into: a broken village, with barely a single building left intact. The ground was dotted with fresh corpses.

And shambling bloodspawn.

The Thousand-Mile Cloud burst apart when they were only five feet from landing, but he'd managed to slow them enough. Yerin slammed into the grass back-first, and Lindon fell onto his hands.

He caught a glimpse of the glowing mass of Forged madra at the heart of the cloud construct before it dissipated into essence.

His body flooded with relief, though it was likely premature: they were still caught out in the open, surrounded by bloodspawn, still within the Dreadgod's influence. The sheer size of the creature made it hard to estimate, but they might have been over a hundred miles away. It only felt like it was looming right over them.

Also, he still had an arrow in his shoulder. He couldn't stand up straight or move away from Yerin, because the weight of her body kept the black string between them taut.

His ears healed again in time for him to hear someone land behind him. He turned with horror, part of him expecting to see Bai Rou, but it was Mercy.

She was standing on her staff, which drifted down to the ground. She stumbled as she landed, but smiled as if she'd done a trick. "Sorry for shooting you," she said. "It was the only shot I could get." Black madra unraveled from her ears as she spoke.

Lindon stared at her. "I don't know how I can repay you. I wasn't going to make it, I..." He shook himself. "I can't believe you followed me at all."

"I'm not the only one," she said, turning and pointing to the north.

A smoldering red-and-black meteor plunged to earth. It was a few miles away, but Lindon knew exactly what it was. Or rather, who it was.

He had no idea if Orthos' shell could withstand such an impact, but the turtle would know better than anyone.

Lindon tapped the arrow on his shoulder as some of the bloodspawn oozed closer. "Could you remove this, please? We need to go."

Mercy reached out and touched the arrow, whereupon it melted, along with the web over Yerin. Her Blood Shadow surged up, an excited mass of tendrils seeking food. They leaned toward Lindon’s right arm, which flinched back.

Lindon had expected more pain when the arrow vanished, but all discomfort vanished with the arrow. His skin was untouched.

He found that fascinating, but he held back his curiosity about her madra until later.

"He's your contracted beast, isn't he?" Mercy asked. She spun her staff idly in both hands, eyeing the approaching bloodspawn. They were acting sluggish, perhaps blinded by the Phoenix's influence, but all of them focused on the living humans. "It might be better if we let him come to us."

"I'm not certain he can," Lindon said, feeling the rolling rage in Orthos' core. He was heading quickly for Lindon, but there was no telling how long he could hang on. "When I'm not around, he doesn't always stay...himself."

Mercy's eyes grew sad. "If he loses himself, I will help you find him and bring him back. But I'm afraid none of us will make it if we're out in the open when the fight begins."

Lindon tapped his Blackflame core, feeling the warmth in his eyes and in his spirit, the low-level sizzling pain as his body strained to contain the destructive power. It seemed even wilder today, more difficult to control, as though it fed on the blood aura. His Burning Cloak ignited as he faced down the first of the bloodspawn.

"I've fought these before," he said. "We can’t let them bog us down, but we can force our way through."

Mercy shot a black web from her fingertips, binding three bloodspawn together, then she drove her staff through one of their heads. The headless creature still grasped at her, and she danced backwards, tying up another.

"I don't mean this fight," she said. She nodded south, and her voice grew heavy. "I mean that one."

Lindon wanted to follow her gaze, but he couldn't bear to look upon the Dreadgod again. It was too bright, and reminded him too much of carnage and slaughter. Although letting it hover over him like a weight about to fall may have been worse.

"What is it going to fight? Us?" Lindon couldn't imagine that being much of a contest.

"Not us," Mercy said. "We should get inside."

Carrying Yerin ended up being the hard part, with Mercy dragging her along in a case of webbing, wrapping up the Blood Shadow whenever it struggled free. Lindon was forced to face most of the Bloodspawn himself, and with every one he killed, he regretted his lack of a weapon.

The bloodspawn burned on contact with his fist, and he could only use Striker techniques every few seconds. He took several cuts and some burns just because of how close he had to get, and came very close to death as one of the creatures had burst into thorns when he got close. Mercy managed to haul him out at the last second.

Fortunately, his Remnant arm was only too happy to devour these bloodspawn.

It seized any of the spirits that came too close, gripping them by the throat as though they were made of flesh. The bloodspawn froze when the white claw took them. They trembled, flashed with power, and eventually dissolved into dark, dried flakes. The arm always glowed brighter when it did so, and the sense of hunger radiating from it grew stronger.

It was taking something from the spirits, but he couldn't figure out what. The arm wasn't turning red, and there was no hint of blood madra in his channels. It was either taking something other than madra, or it was processing the power so efficiently that Lindon couldn't sense any waste.

He would question it later. For now, he was simply glad of it. Without its help, he would have been overwhelmed in an instant. He had to get too close to his opponents, and these enemies could burst into suicide attacks. Mercy couldn't always cover him, and his dragon's breath took too long to muster.

Yerin would tell him his training was lacking. He needed a way to deal with a mass of opponents, when he couldn't approach to arm's length. A reliable Striker technique and a weapon would go a long way.

In his opinion, it was preparation he lacked. He needed to stop plunging headfirst into situations where he had no reliable information.

Although, in this case, it wasn't as though he had another choice.

They fought their way to a building that may have been an inn. Its windows were broken out, but Mercy found a door to the cellar. They pushed inside, and she webbed up the edges of the door. Lindon pulled out a knife from his pouch and scratched a quick Remnant-repelling script into the door's wooden surface. He didn't think bloodspawn were exactly Remnants, but they were composed of madra, and that should be similar enough. He hoped.

When they finally came to a stop in the cellar, surrounded by sealed jars and sacks, his breath came so fast that he had almost released his cycling technique. Sweat drenched him, and he heaved in air. Mercy was in the same state, leaning on her staff as though it were the only thing keeping her upright.

At last, Lindon had a moment to check on Yerin.

He didn't need to be a healer to tell she wasn't doing well.

Beneath the layers of black web covering her, she still bucked, limbs thrashing. He slipped a mass of folded-up bandages between her teeth to stop her from biting her tongue, but he wasn't sure that he would be in time.

The Blood Shadow wrapped her like a second robe. He didn't know anything about it, but that couldn't be good.

He pulled Little Blue out of his pack—her container had indeed cracked, but only slightly, and not enough to spill any of the water within. She saw the Blood Shadow and flinched, letting out a piping scream. Then she ran from Yerin, tucking herself back inside his backpack.

He hadn't expected her to help anyway. Her power washed madra channels clean, she didn't expel parasites, otherwise Eithan could have used Little Blue to free Yerin from the Blood Shadow months ago.

Bloodspawn slammed against the door, and the circle flared. It wouldn't hold against them for long. Every time the circle expended power, it would push against the material of the door, until eventually the wood broke and snapped, the circle deforming. Scripts engraved in metal or stone lasted longer, but they weren't appropriate for all aspects of madra. Also, they often took more power to operate.

He switched to his pure core, reluctant to touch the parasite, but he had to try.

Gathering power, he slammed an Empty Palm into Yerin's core. He felt the pure madra penetrate, disrupting the flow of power through Yerin's body. She bucked again, but the Blood Shadow didn't seem to mind.

It wasn't anchored in Yerin's core, but around it. He could feel that now, though the haze of the Bleeding Phoenix still hung in the aura around him.

He couldn't shake it loose. His Sylvan Riverseed couldn't cleanse it.

There was one more thing he could try.

The closer he got, the more the Shadow reached for his arm. His skeletal white hand, which had fed on the bloodspawn, was too frightened of this parasite to get close.

Lindon wished he had a drudge. It could help detect and measure the interactions of madra, so he wouldn't have to rely on feelings and guesswork. Instead, he had to rely on blind experimentation.

There was some relationship between the Blood Shadow and the material of his arm. It almost made sense: the Bleeding Phoenix was awakened by the power hidden in the same labyrinth where he'd found the Ancestor's Spear and the binding of hunger madra.

It seemed as though this piece of the Phoenix's power wanted to feed on his arm, rather than the other way around. But the binding in his arm was supposed to devour madra.

It was possible that he could tear it free.

There were risks. First, he didn't know what the Shadow wanted with his arm. It was possible that he was feeding it exactly what it needed to grow strong enough to consume Yerin completely.

Second, he had used the arm for less than a week. It still wasn't bound to him completely. He couldn't even control its motion all the time, and he was supposed to wait for three to five more weeks before he activated the binding.

Third, there was the danger to him. He didn't want to pull a mass of self-aware blood madra into his core...but at least he had one to spare. It was better than leaving it free to control Yerin.

But that was if it went into his core at all. It wasn't in Yerin's. If it attached itself to his spirit, or embedded itself inside his arm, he wouldn't be any better off than Yerin was. Less so, considering her years of experience.

Another bloodspawn slammed on the door, and the circle flared again. Mercy stood below the door, staff in both hands, ready to protect them.

It was time for Lindon to do his part.

He placed his palm on the bloody surface of the parasite, then triggered the binding.

17

Deep in a trance, Yerin fought for her soul. And for the lives of the people around her.

She didn't even know where she was. Her body had been moving, she knew, but she couldn't tell where she was or what was happening. She might be all clear to stop struggling. To let go.

That thought whispered to her, and it was too sweet. Too sweet to trust. Out of sheer stubbornness, she clung to her uninvited guest. Ever since she was a little girl, she'd been fighting to keep it from taking over her body. From draining her dry and wearing her like a suit.

Now, she fought to keep it from leaving.

The Blood Shadow wanted nothing more than to tear itself away from her. It strained for freedom, pulling away from her spirit, but she poured the whole force of her spirit and mind on keeping it trapped within.

Why? That was a puzzle and a half. Maybe the Dreadgod was spraying so much power everywhere that the Blood Shadow was getting thirsty. Maybe she was about to beat it, and it was trying to run. Maybe it was finally leaving her alone.

But she didn't need to know why.

The Blood Shadow wanted it, so she was going to stop it.

She almost lost her grip on it when something drove a hole in her madra, but lucky for her, the Shadow itself took the brunt of that hit. It was stunned just as much as she was, so she kept hold. In fact, for a moment, she had the upper hand.

Then something started pulling.

* * *

Arms of blood madra wrapped around Lindon's pale right arm. They stuck as though they were covered in suckers, and the madra burned where it made contact. Being a Remnant arm, it felt more like burning his spirit than his body, but that was an ache all its own.

His madra channels, already strained by what he'd done with the Thousand-Mile Cloud, felt like tendons on the brink of tearing. The arm was already a burden on his spirit, and activating the binding was worse.

But it was working. The technique embedded in his arm had fastened itself to the heart of the Blood Shadow, and he was pulling it away from Yerin. It peeled back, inch by inch, as he stretched his spirit to its limit.

The binding had released a vortex of white light, which was meant to devour the Shadow, but the parasite fought to feed on the arm instead. They were stuck together as though nailed, but Lindon couldn't pull the Shadow the last few inches. There was still a short tether connecting the Blood Shadow to her core.

A crash came from the door as a bloodspawn exploded through and into the room. The rest of its brood followed, only to meet Mercy's vast black web.

Lindon was out of time.

With one last, wrenching effort, he pulled the Blood Shadow free.

Yerin's body shuddered and shrunk back to the ground, limp. Her chest was heaving, which led him to let out a sigh of relief. His one other concern had been that pulling the parasite free would somehow kill her.

Now, he stopped powering the binding, but the Shadow was still attached to his arm. It was a huge mass, easily half the size of Yerin's body, and most of it was a bulbous shape stuck to Lindon's palm. The rest was wrapped around his arm like the roots of a tree, and he could feel it trying to burrow inside.

It hadn't succeeded yet, but he only had a moment. Focusing the pure madra of his core, he squeezed a little more out of his exhausted spirit. His core was still half-full, but his madra channels were as ragged as old clothes.

In a focused wave, as though striking with an Empty Palm, he thrust as much pure madra as he could out of his right arm.

The Blood Shadow blasted away, losing its grip on him, and Lindon thought he could hear it hiss.

An instant later, he realized it wasn't his imagination at all.

The spiritual parasite was hissing, and snarling, and burbling like a boiling cauldron. All at the same time. It was also contorting into a roughly humanoid shape. It's becoming a bloodspawn, he thought, but he almost immediately realized that was wrong.

Or at least incomplete.

This was darker, thicker, and more real than a bloodspawn. It stood on two feet, not two oozing shapes meant to resemble legs. It had two arms and two hands, not the vague outlines of arms. It still had no face, but it looked as though it had hair. Hair cut straight across the back of her neck.

He was starting to have a bad feeling about this.

Its body inflated to twice its original size, so that now it was more Yerin's size. In fact...

Exactly Yerin's size.

His stomach dropped when a pair of blood-red, razor-sharp blades sprouted from behind its shoulders.

Lindon's spirit was tender as an open wound, and though he tapped into his Blackflame core, he felt as though five more minutes of combat might actually kill him. "Mercy," he called, without taking his eyes from Yerin's Blood Shadow. "Can you spare a little help?"

"I'm...doing...the best I can...over here," she said, her words punctuated by crashes. Blood madra sprayed close to him, but it missed him.

As the Shadow examined its hands, Yerin's eyes snapped open.

"...what did you do?" she whispered.

That struck Lindon like a kick, but he'd already ignited his Burning Cloak. Yerin's sword was lying nearby—they had taken it from her for fear that she would hurt herself with it, and he pulled it out of its sheath.

He had no idea how to use a sword, but he'd learned his lesson from the bloodspawn. Any weapon was better than none. He wasn't about to fight this blood-clone of Yerin with his bare hands.

Lindon lunged, the motion powered by the explosive movements of Blackflame. He slashed through the Shadow...or tried to, as one of its blade-arms caught his white sword with the sound of steel on steel.

"We're dead and buried," Yerin said, struggling to her feet. "It's free."

"We can kill it," Lindon said, with more confidence than he actually felt. Mercy pinned a bloodspawn to the wall, where it exploded, but neither the Blood Shadow nor the other two gave it any notice.

"This is its favorite dance. It drains what it needs, then brings that whole mess back to its mother." Yerin stood frozen, staring at it. "It's how the Dreadgod feeds."

The Blood Shadow finally looked around, though it didn't seem to have eyes. It walked over to the splatters left by one of the bloodspawn and stood in the puddle before the madra dissolved. An instant later, the puddle vanished, and a light slipped up the Shadow's legs.

"It usually kills its host, doesn't it?" Lindon said, keeping his sword trained on it. He was determined to keep his focus on any ray of hope he could find, because the alternative was to sit down and wait for death.

"Kills you or wears you like a mask," she responded dully.

The Blood Shadow's head tilted toward his arm. Mercy cried out, and something sounded like the beating of a drum. There came a great splatter like a dropped bucket of paint.

He glanced back to see her panting and exhausted, seated on the floor, her dragon-headed staff resting on her shoulder. The entire front half of the room was covered in sticky black madra, but there were no more bloodspawn.

"There's one more outcome," Lindon said, still trying to scrape together a hope. "How do the emissaries—"

The parasite moved, and his Burning Cloak ignited once again. It felt like tearing his soul in half.

* * *

She knew about the emissaries of Redmoon Hall, or people like them. They had gone by different names in different countries, but she'd never met one who had survived the Sword Sage.

Eithan had made it clear as glass that he saw the Blood Shadow as an opportunity for her. A step forward.

But all of those sacred artists had hunted down their parasites with purpose. They had prepared scripts, treasures, and traps. And the least of them she'd ever met was Truegold.

She couldn't do it. This was the demon that had haunted her from the inside for most of her life; she hated it with a burning passion.

And it was the one thing that frightened her.

Under the Burning Cloak, Lindon moved in bursts of speed. The Blood Shadow's motions stopped and stuttered, like it was getting used to its new shape, but it was faster than Lindon. Easily faster. And Lindon used a sword like he'd never seen one before.

She had to fight with him. Together, they might be able to drive the Blood Shadow away.

But her spirit was as exhausted as his was. She'd strained every ounce of her soul trying to keep the Shadow from taking over. In the Dreadgod's light, the parasite was stronger than it had ever been. Fighting would kill them both.

This wasn't her first hopeless fight. She could go down swinging. Maybe the heavens would send them a miracle.

But she could sense bloodspawn overhead, more and more every second. Whatever the new girl had done—Mercy, Yerin thought her name was—it had kept them out for a breath or two. Wouldn't hold for long.

Orthos should be on his way, but she couldn't feel him yet. The Phoenix was choking out her perception, so maybe he was closer than she thought. That was her only hope.

That, or...

If she could control the Shadow, that was one enemy down. One less thing to worry about. And it might make her strong enough that she could keep fighting.

That, or I could be giving them another enemy to worry about, she thought.

The Blood Shadow rushed forward, grabbing Lindon's collar and slamming him into the far wall. The blades on its back knocked the sword from his hand, and grabbed him by the shoulder.

It lifted him by the right shoulder as though he weighed no more than a child. His pale arm thrashed like a trapped snake, but the Blood Shadow stared it down.

Mercy stood up. A bloodspawn exploded at the top of the stairs, its power eating through the black web that protected them, but she didn't look to the sound. The purple in her eyes spread out until it stained the whole eye. Looked like she had gems stuck in her face.

She was about to do something, Yerin reasoned. Too bad she was late.

Yerin's anger and fear had finally come to blows, and she realized which one had always been stronger.

The rage.

She kicked off and dove for the mass of blood that had stolen her shape. It turned, slashing out at her with the blade over her left shoulder.

Yerin had one of those herself.

The two Goldsigns met with a clash, sending up red-and-silver sparks of essence. She grabbed the Blood Shadow, tearing it away from Lindon.

It had taken enough from her. Whatever it wanted, she was going to take.

Right now, it wanted freedom.

The spirit let itself become fluid again, and her hands sunk in to the wrists. The blood madra started to break down her skin, which she felt as burning. Blood madra was good at that; it controlled the body, usually tearing it apart.

That was okay. She could work better from inside.

With her will as much as her spirit, she pulled.

The Blood Shadow resisted, but it was actually easier to haul it back inside than it had been to keep it inside in the first place. It felt like the Dreadgod's aura was helping her, like it was pushing the parasite to take a new body.

It flailed, its blades slashing at her, but she stopped it with her own. With his flesh arm, Lindon seized one of its Goldsigns, wrestling it back.

Yerin gritted her teeth, still pulling. Half of the Shadow had vanished, merging inside her, sinking into her like a statue into a lake. But the top half still fought, reaching for Lindon's arm or stabbing at Yerin's face as though berserk.

Lindon pulled his arm back, and—looking like he was tearing his own skin off—he slammed an Empty Palm into its face.

Stunned, the Shadow slipped into her spirit easy as a sword into a sheath.

Lindon fell back, relaxing, though a troupe of bloodspawn were marching down the stairs. Yerin's spirit was in tatters, but she had succeeded.

Almost.

"Get out," she said, her voice little above a whisper. Mercy looked at her, frowning in confusion, but Lindon seemed to have heard. He just didn't move.

A rope of red madra burst from her core, stretching for Lindon's arm.

She barely caught it with both hands, the force dragging her across the floor. "Why?" she hissed. "Why aren't you running?"

Lindon ignored the Blood Shadow and moved to pick up her sword, walking like a crippled old man. "I'm waiting for you." He glanced up to the creatures on the stairs, then added, "...hurry, though."

She stared after him.

"If the emissaries of Redmoon Hall already did it, you can," he said reasonably.

With that, he ran to support Mercy on the stairs.

When you put it like that, it didn't sound so bad.

Instead of trying to push it back into place with her unsteady and failing madra, Yerin reached out to the Blood Shadow like it was her madra. Her spirit. Part of her.

It resisted her, of course. But this didn't have to do with advancement level. It was pure grit.

As far as that went, she wouldn't lose to anybody.

* * *

Lindon knew Mercy didn't really need his help. Not as long as her madra lasted, anyway, though based on her heavy breathing and the fading sense of her spirit, that wouldn't be much longer. She held the stairway with webs, keeping the bloodspawn back.

She didn't actually destroy any of them, but she locked them up. When they destroyed themselves unleashing their power, they'd break through, but she put up more barriers.

It was good that he didn't have to do much. Yerin's sword felt like it weighed a thousand pounds.

Mercy wiped sweat from her forehead, shooting a brief glance back at Yerin. She had been standing in one place, spirit and body still, for...too long.

"Is there anything we can do for her?" Mercy asked, sounding worried.

"We won't need to," he said. Oddly, he was confident. Eithan had implied he thought Yerin could control the Blood Shadow, and others had managed it. Yerin could do it.

And if she didn't...well, then the parasite in her body would kill him, so he wouldn't know any differently.

A bloodspawn compressed itself to slither through a gap in the web—none of them had done that before, and he wondered why. He drove his sword through it, and it froze, then shattered.

That was...strange. The Blood Shadow hadn't done that. Maybe it was a property of the madra that had gone into making the sword's blade; it had always given him the impression of icy cold.

Whatever the reason, he was glad he had a weapon that could oppose the bloodspawn without using his own madra. Because Mercy was running out.

The spirits seemed endless, and as far as he knew, maybe they were. More and more slipped through, and he had to use the sword.

It wasn't long before he could barely hold up the sword, and Mercy was breathing so long she could hardly speak. "I...have...one more trick," she said, panting. "Hoping...to save it...sorry."

Lindon couldn't imagine what she was apologizing for, but before she could do anything, the bloodspawn froze.

They didn't turn to ice, like they did at the touch of the Sword Sage's blade. Instead, they simply...stopped. Like constructs that had run out of power.

Relieved, he turned.

Yerin stood with hand held out, trembling.

And a red shadow stood behind her.

The Blood Shadow wasn't as distinct this time—it looked more like an actual shadow cast by the Dreadgod's bloody light. But it was very clearly standing an inch behind her, mimicking her every move.

"It's about time I gutted that fish," Yerin said, and though she swayed on her feet, her smile was radiant. "Stone simple. Who's in control now, huh?”

Lindon sagged down, sitting on the lid of a nearby jar. His right arm was limp, like it was made out of nothing more than wood and string, and he thought he might have actually torn open a wound in his spirit.

"Knew you'd do it," he said, using what seemed like a great effort to push a smile onto his lips. "Knew you would..."

Finally, a warm presence approached, crashing through the web on the doorway with a roar. Mercy stood abruptly, but he flopped his hand in the air to wave her down.

Orthos stomped through the bloodspawn, splattering them on the stairs, snarling. Two of them burst into dark flames, but the others were just destroyed.

"On time like a rising sun, you are," Yerin said, releasing her Blood Shadow.

Orthos growled, but shook his head to show he couldn't speak. He chomped into a nearby jar, crunching mouthfuls of the uncooked rice within.

Finger on her chin, Mercy looked at Yerin. "Does that let you command the bloodspawn?"

"Just cut them off from the mother," Yerin said, then winced. "...the Dreadgod." She brightened. "And I can do this."

The Blood Shadow formed fully this time, as though it were going to attack, and Lindon couldn't help but flinch. It stood next to Yerin...but this time, a red line stretched between their feet. The Shadow jumped up and down, waving its arms.

"It's a new weapon," Yerin said, re-absorbing the spirit. "I'll need practice."

"That's amazing," Mercy said in awe. "Can you—" She cut off, her head whirling to one side. "Oh no..."

Lindon didn't need another "oh no" in his life.

Mercy threw herself onto the ground. "She's here!" she shouted. "Get down!"

A new presence stabbed into his spirit like a light seared into his eyes. He let himself fall to the ground.

And the house above them was torn away.

It was as though a shovel the size of a mountain had scooped out the ground in a second. Between one instant and the next, the view above Lindon transformed from a dirt ceiling to a red-stained sky.

He had seen nothing but a wave of dark purple. Felt nothing but overwhelming, crushing power.

Mercy was pulling on his left arm, urging him to get up, to run. He stumbled after her, though Orthos was actually leading the way. He had bolted up the stairs like a spooked rabbit.

"Can't stay here," Mercy shouted over the rushing wind. "We need to find another—"

Whatever she was going to say was obliterated by an unimaginable crash. The sun went dark.

A wall of purple-edged darkness covered everything to the west. An enormous tower of crystalline amethyst rose from one end of the wall. And there was something above even that, something that blacked out the sky...

Mercy pulled on him again, and Yerin lurched out in front, so he followed.

An instant later, the wall vanished.

Wind actually pulled him off his feet, sending him tumbling down the street, so he lost himself for a moment. When he looked up again, the tower was gone.

No...it had moved.

The Dreadgod had taken to the sky, farther away now, but still incomprehensibly vast. Its sickle-like beak opened, and though its screech still pained his ears, it was nothing like before.

Now, it was focused on its opponent.

A giant stood beneath it, holding a spear. A giant covered from head to toe in armor of dark purple crystal. From the smooth facets of its face, a pair of violet pinpricks shone with light.

It was many miles away—how many, Lindon couldn't begin to guess—and he could still see it clearly. How large was it? There was a mountain by its knees, and when it adjusted its stance, half of the mountain crumbled away.

His brain finally snapped the pieces into place, and his jaw slackened. What he had taken as a wall covering everything to the west was just one of its boots. The tower had been its leg.

There came a flash of color and power as the two monsters exchanged blows, but he couldn't even catch a glimpse. A wall of heat and pressure pushed against Lindon's face. The skin of his scalp pressed back against him, and his eyes spiked with pain.

He fell back, but raised two fingers to his eye. Blood ran like tears.

As his Iron body pulled the last of his madra to heal his eyes, he saw bloodspawn rise from the ground…until Yerin reached out a hand and dispersed them to nothing.

First his ears, then his eyes. Though his Bloodforged Iron body had healed him so far, that still couldn't be good for him.

A black web snagged him and dragged him along the dirt road. Mercy and Yerin hauled him in, stuffing him down into a cellar door.

He fought them, though none of them had much strength at the moment. "Please," he begged them, "please, I have to see."

This was real power. These were the sacred arts that could stand over the entire world.

In this case, literally.

Mercy pushed him deeper, casting fearful glances behind her. "If we don't get down, we will die. Trust me."

He still struggled. "I beg you! I have to see this."

She halted for a second, though the wind grabbed her ponytail and tossed it around. "She’ll be fighting for days.”

Lindon stared at Mercy. Yerin, who had most of her body down the stairs already, looked up and peeked out.

"How do you figure that?" she asked. The armor covered the figure completely, and there was nothing to say if it was a man or a woman.

"I think she knows who it is," Lindon said, watching Mercy's expression.

"I should," she responded. "That's my mother."

A blazing crimson light crashed into a shining amethyst blur, and Mercy shoved Lindon the rest of the way inside. The last he saw was a wall of dust and debris headed their way before the door shut it all out.

18

They huddled in the shelter of the broken village’s cellar for three days.

Most of the homes here had stockpiled some food, so they were able to feed themselves easily. Water was harder, at least at first, until they ventured outside and realized that one of the blows from the distant battle had torn open a spring. They filled as many jars as they could carry, hauling them back to their cellar while avoiding as many bloodspawn as possible.

After the first day, the sounds of battle had faded to those of a thunderstorm. By the end of the second day, they'd disappeared entirely, and the red haze had vanished from the sun.

Only then did the bloodspawn completely vanish. Most of them had been torn to pieces in the wake of the titanic conflict, but stragglers still formed until the red aura withdrew.

It was for the best, because Lindon couldn't fight. He couldn't even cycle.

Little Blue had worked on him, with every spark improving his shattered spirit, but each of her touches caused him agonizing pain. Each time, it was like setting a broken arm.

She hated that he was in pain, but she still tried her best. But he wasn't her only patient—Yerin and Orthos needed help as badly as he did.

Her power was stretched thin, and the store of pure scales in his pack wasn't endless. Eventually, she paled and had to curl up in her case again, the crack hovering over her like a frozen lightning bolt.

If his madra channels had been in better shape, he could have shared his power with her. As it was, he needed to feed her if he wanted her to help, but she needed to help him before he could heal her.

So they were stuck, waiting.

He was awakened on the third day by someone tearing the door open. He tried to extend his perception, but it was like trying to touch something with a broken finger. He shied back.

Not that it matters, he thought. I know who it is.

There was only one person who could find them. And, for that matter, only one person who would have gone looking for them.

Eithan stuck his head down, hair gleaming in the shaft of sunlight he was letting in. He jerked back, lips twisting in disgust.

"An apocalyptic battle is no excuse not to bathe," he said.

Lindon rose, apologizing, but Mercy laughed, her voice light with relief. Yerin rolled her eyes, and Orthos extended his neck from his shell, snorted, and withdrew it again.

Despite the smell, he hopped down the stairs, examining them with hands on his hips. He addressed Yerin first. "I see you managed to follow my advice after all!"

"No choice," she said. "Bad luck pushed me into a corner."

"You'd be surprised how often people listen to me when they're left with no choice. I'll have to fulfill one of those many rewards I've promised you."

"Cheers and celebration," she muttered.

Then he turned to Lindon. "Why is it that I so often find you locked in a dark place, filthy and exhausted and covered in blood?"

"At least Yerin didn't have to kick me this time."

"Does that happen often?" Mercy asked.

Her comment pulled Eithan's attention to her, and his smile broadened. "I don't believe I've had the pleasure," he said.

Lindon couldn't quite see how, but he got the impression Eithan was lying. Somehow.

Mercy stood and propped her staff on one shoulder, bowing and pressing her fists together. "Akura Mercy. I cannot thank you enough for coming to rescue us."

Eithan didn't mention her family name, though Lindon was sure he knew what it meant. All the clan members among the Skysworn trainees had known, though the lower-class students hadn't. He doubted those Lowgolds would have information that Eithan did not.

"Not at all, young lady, not at all. I was simply retrieving some of mine." He beamed over at Lindon and Yerin. "I have some news that you will enjoy, and some that you will not. Which would you prefer first?"

"I could use some cheer," Yerin said.

"Bad news first, then! I do not know how the Skysworn will react to your absence. It could be that you are wanted for capture."

Capture. Again.

Lindon had rarely longed so badly for advancement in the sacred arts. The stronger he was, the harder it would be to keep him imprisoned.

He couldn't imagine anyone keeping Mercy's mother in a box.

"Allow me to follow with the good news: I have successfully completed a difficult task for Naru Gwei, and he owes me a favor...although it was not actually difficult for me, but that was not a relevant detail to share with the Empire. They will punish you lightly, just for the sake of appearance, but then they will allow you to continue serving the Skysworn."

Yerin scoffed. "Maybe when the sun cracks and falls. They dropped me from the sky." Lindon had shared that story with her during their time in the cellar.

"Alas, they won't let go of you. You are still, officially, Skysworn. Even I cannot pry you loose, now that you have committed to them." He spread his hands. "If it eases your mind, at least know that they won't be trying to kill you so aggressively anymore. Not now that I'm openly in favor."

Mercy heaved a deep breath before saying, "They think we're the enemy. We just have to show them we're all on the same side."

Yerin and Lindon stared at her.

Eithan pointed. "That's the spirit. Another piece of good tidings: the Bleeding Phoenix has retreated for now."

A chill ran down Lindon's spine. "She didn't kill it?"

"Kill it? If anyone could kill a Dreadgod, they would not have survived for so long. No, there's a reason behind the Bleeding Phoenix's name." He paused a moment. "I think you've figured out the Bleeding part, but the Phoenix half is just as important. It disperses its Blood Shadows all over the world, then it builds itself a new body from the power they gather. Unlike most of the other Dreadgods, Monarchs can destroy its body temporarily, but it always forms again.

"Although, in this case, that isn't what happened."

Eithan was milking the moment, Lindon could tell. Unfortunately, he couldn't pretend not to be interested. The Underlord had them on a hook, and he knew it. Even Orthos had poked his head out of his shell.

"The honored Monarch fought for two days and nights, until her armor was cracked and leaking essence. She would surely have had to retreat in only another hour or two, and the Phoenix had sustained no injury. Their battle had spilled into the eastern wasteland, but it would be nothing for the Dreadgod to turn back and return to our lands."

He shrugged. "Then the Phoenix fell apart. I saw it myself. It just...split apart."

Mercy let out a huge sigh of relief, perhaps thinking about her mother, but Yerin looked skeptical. "Gave up and went home, did it?"

"A battle on that scale takes huge quantities of madra," Eithan said. "Even a creature like the Bleeding Phoenix cannot fight forever. I have only a theory, you understand, but I believe it a likely one: it is biding its time."

Lindon sucked in a breath. "So it's still around."

"It always is. But usually it is sleeping, and this time...this time I believe it's still awake. I think it realized it was fighting for no reason, that the objective which had pulled it out of its long slumber was no longer obtainable. So it decided to wait."

"For what?" Mercy asked, eyes wide, clutching her staff.

"For its brothers," Eithan said, and his voice was suddenly grim. As though he'd heard himself, he lightened almost immediately. "I'm sorry. That falls in the category of unpleasant news, doesn't it? This was supposed to be the time for good tidings. Speaking of which, Lindon, I have something of a mixed bag for you."

He faced Lindon, the fingertips of both hands pressed together. "You mentioned that you saw several doors into the great labyrinth in your homeland. Sacred Valley, as you said. Could you describe to me the vision your heavenly messenger shared with you? In more detail than you have shared before, I mean."

Lindon was prepared for this. "I'd be happy to exchange our stories. Perhaps part of your vision will remind me of details I've forgotten."

His encounter with Suriel was the one bargaining chip he had to trade. He wasn't giving it up for free.

Eithan inclined his head, acknowledging the point, before withdrawing the void marble from his sleeve.

"I hereby swear on the heavens, my soul, and the grave of my second cousin that I will share my account with you in return." He flipped the marble up and caught it. "In fact, I was prepared to do so in any case. I received some...reliable advice...that suggested I no longer have as much time as I'd assumed."

Lindon searched that statement for any hint of deception, but it seemed airtight. If Eithan was going to wriggle out of it, he would, but he hadn't left himself any obvious loopholes.

His oath shouldn't hold much real weight unless Lindon closed the circle by returning a promise of his own, but sacred artists as powerful as Underlords were still wary of false promises.

Besides, Yerin and Mercy were both staring at him with interest. Yerin had heard most of this already, but Mercy looked like a child awaiting a bedtime story.

"She showed me my future," Lindon began. He glossed over the personal details, especially the parts with his family. Until he came to his death.

"Something marched into Sacred Valley," he said. "My home. It was just a shadow, blotting out the sun, but it waded through the mountains like they were made of sand."

Like the giant in armor he'd seen only a few days before. Mercy's mother.

"That's how I was supposed to die," Lindon said. "Suriel gave me a chance to avoid that. And she showed me some people who could have saved me." He had long since committed the names to memory. "Luminous Queen Sha Miara. Northstrider. The Eight-Man Empire."

Mercy sucked in a breath. Even Yerin gave a low whistle, though Lindon was sure he'd shared this detail with her before. Hadn't he?

Eithan ran a thumb along his chin. His smile was gone, but he didn't look cold or angry. Just thoughtful.

"Those are some of the most powerful people in the world," the Underlord said. "Though you figured that out already. They are practically myths. In fact, I have it on good authority that Northstrider died almost seven years ago, and the reputation of the Eight-Man Empire is supposedly exaggerated. Though if this Suriel rates them so highly, then presumably popular opinion is in error."

He sat thoughtfully for another moment before raising a finger. "Placing that together with those doors in your valley, I have a theory. I believe it is the return of one or more Dreadgods that leads to the destruction of your home. They hunger for whatever is in this maze. On their way to it, they—or perhaps one of the Monarchs doing battle with them—was destined to crush your valley underfoot."

Lindon thought back to the impossibly vast wall of blood and power that was the Bleeding Phoenix.

He had to stop that.

"Thirty years," he said. "That was how long she said I had, and that was last summer. Is that enough time?"

"Ah...by conventional wisdom, most lifetimes are not enough." Eithan gave a polite cough. "And I believe I mentioned that I no longer had as much time as I expected. Somewhere along the line, fate has been twisted."

Dread filled Lindon's stomach. "What does that mean?"

"No one predicted the rise of the Bleeding Phoenix until a matter of weeks before it happened. An event of that magnitude should have showed up in their premonitions for years. Sometimes generations. All over the world, that is how sacred artists deal with Dreadgod attacks: we predict them, and then we run.

"Something changed this time," Eithan said. "We'll have to consult experts in the subject, but I think it's best to assume you have less time than you thought."

Lindon's heart sunk further.

"...perhaps much less."

They sat in silence for a while. Mercy looked like she was still piecing stories together in her head, Yerin was brooding, Eithan cleaned his nails, and Orthos munched on fragments of pottery.

Lindon was wondering how much he could trust Eithan's guesses. Suriel had descended from the heavens to show him the future. Surely, she was the most reliable source.

But she had emphasized how fate could always be changed...

"Now it's my turn," Eithan said, evidently having grown bored with waiting. "But first, I have to ask. Lindon, has your resolve been shaken?"

Had it? Lindon thought about it for a moment.

If he didn’t really have thirty years, then he should go back to Sacred Valley as soon as possible. Borrowing help from Eithan and Yerin, he could warn everyone to leave. They should do what most people did before a Dreadgod attack and run. He was powerful enough now that even the elders and clan leaders should listen to him.

But...

Assuming he did clear everyone out, would he give up and go home? Would he pack it in, once his goal was achieved?

No. He'd seen too much. There were sacred artists whose steps covered miles, who traded blows with Dreadgods and blotted out the sky.

If he settled for less than that, he was giving up. Suriel had transcended this world entirely; he couldn't forgive himself if he didn't at least try.

He shook his head, and Eithan accepted it, turning to Yerin. "How about you, Yerin?"

Yerin seemed surprised that he addressed her at all. "Is Redmoon Hall still around?"

"Like their master, they remain awake and aware," Eithan said. "They are here, now, in the Empire. Longhook, the gentleman we met before, has been sighted more than once. I fear we will see them again even before the Phoenix returns."

"Then I'll be there too."

Eithan cocked his head curiously. "For that reason alone? What if you were to defeat Redmoon Hall completely? What if they did retreat? Would your spirit fade away, and your resolve crumble to nothing?"

Yerin sat and thought, rather than delivering a snap answer, as Lindon had somewhat expected. Slowly, a light grew in her eyes, until a smile slid onto her scarred lips. "I've got a lot of road left to travel, but...even my master couldn't keep up with a Dreadgod. Sure would be fun to go sword-to-sword with one."

"It is my intention," Eithan said, "to do exactly that."

Mercy frowned up at him. “But you’re so weak,” she said.

Yerin snorted a laugh, and Orthos gave a deep chuckle.

Eithan winked at her. “I have a secret weapon. A great expert has peered into my future and determined that I have at least a chance of success. I traveled all the way to your home, where Akura Malice gave me her blessing. She told me she was counting on me.”

Mercy scooted back a few feet and looked up at the ceiling.

A few breaths passed.

“I swear on my—”

“You’re telling the truth!” Mercy said in a mixture of disbelief and awe.

“How do you know?” Lindon asked. If there was a way to catch Eithan in a lie or an evasion, he wanted to know.

“Because he’s still alive,” she said simply.

Lindon shivered. Monarchs could do that?

Eithan seemed a little shaken himself, from the glance he shot upward, but he continued on. “No matter where you are, the strong write the rules. But even if you’re the most powerful in the world, there are limits to what you can do alone.” He clenched his fist. “They say the sacred arts are lonely. The higher you climb, the more alone you become. That is the first rule I’d like to rewrite.”

Mercy tapped her staff against her shoulder, eyes narrowed. “Let’s say you do make it to my mother’s level,” she said, and Eithan didn’t so much as twitch at the word ‘mother.’ So he had been pretending not to recognize Mercy. “There are a lot of things you could do with all that power.”

“I think of myself as a fairly shrewd judge of character,” Eithan said. “I have chosen very carefully who I want to take with me on this journey. They are people who, I believe, have the potential to make the world a better place.” He gave a wry smile. “You’ll notice I’ve only found two. And they have years to grow. Their choices will determine whether I was right or wrong.”

Mercy looked sheepish, but she didn’t give in. “Everyone thinks they’re making the world a better place,” she said quietly.

“Then we have come full circle,” Eithan said, flipping out his marble again. The void pulsed in the center, a hole of endless darkness. “Now I will fulfill my promise.”

He tossed the glass ball to Lindon, who clapped his hands around it.

The world vanished as a vision consumed him.

* * *

A man stood against a background of endless, textured blue. He wore black armor of rounded, eggshell-smooth plates that looked almost like a liquid. His skin was pale, his face long and angular…but his features were perfect, without a blemish or wrinkle anywhere. His eyes were pure blue, and his hair a long, streaming white.

He seemed familiar for a moment before Lindon, with a shock, recognized him. He looked like Eithan.

Not exactly alike. His chin was a little sharper than Eithan’s, his hairline a little further back, his nose a little thinner. But if someone had told him this was Eithan’s brother, or perhaps a younger version of Eithan’s father, Lindon would have believed them.

It was somewhat disconcerting going straight from sitting in a cellar to floating in a sapphire void, but Lindon’s experience with Suriel had somewhat prepared him. It was comforting, in a way: this was independent confirmation, if he’d needed any, that Suriel’s visit was more than just a hallucination.

“I am called Ozriel,” the man said, turning to fix Lindon with his stare. “If you have found this, that means you are one of the descendants I’ve left behind. Lucky you.” His voice was far more animated than Lindon would have expected—in his black armor, with his pale hair, he looked like he should speak in grave whispers.

“I left behind this message in case one of you, any of you, inherits some spark of my desire. I determined that there must be more beyond the world I could see. And I was not content to stay trapped, like a fish in a pond.”

He waved his hand, and the blue fabric tore. He stepped out into the sky over a city Lindon had never seen before: a landscape of towering spires in all the colors of the rainbow, as though each had been hewn from gemstone. Amethyst and sapphire and emerald shone in the sun, with glittering crystal bridges crossing from one to the other.

Sacred artists traveled through the sky, standing on Thousand-Mile Clouds, riding sacred birds, or pulled by Remnants.

Ozriel looked out over the city, and his voice turned sad. “Everything you know, everything you have ever known, is but one world. One island in a vast ocean.”

He made no gesture, but he began to rise, and Lindon felt once again that sickening lurch that came when his eyes told him he was moving, but his body told him he was standing still. They rose into the sky, until the city was but a dot beneath them…and they kept rising.

Into the stars.

Lindon’s eyes couldn’t widen enough to take it all in. The land curved away from him…endlessly. He couldn’t even see the city below him anymore. He could barely make out what he thought was the country.

The world spread out in front of him, blue and green and yellow. There were so many clouds! And so much ocean…how much of the world was covered in water?

He almost didn’t notice the curve. The world was…bent?

They continued to drift into the stars until Lindon could see the whole thing. It was a ball. He’d read his natural history before, and more than one natural philosopher claimed that the world was a ball, but it had never caught his thoughts before.

How did the people on the bottom stay on?

“It’s an overwhelming sight,” Ozriel said softly. “This is the central planet of the world we call Cradle. Iteration 110. It is larger than average for an inhabited planet, with vital aura making it both harder and easier for humanity to spread. At the moment of this recording, over six hundred billion souls call this place home.”

He spread his hands. “And this planet is but the central fragment of the world called Cradle. Your moon, your sun, each of the stars…they exist only here.

“There are thousands of realities just like yours,” Ozriel said, tearing open another rift in reality. An instant later, they had popped into another Iteration. This planet was also blue and green, but the shapes of the land were all different. It didn’t seem much smaller than Cradle had, but Lindon’s mind was still twisting to try and comprehend the scale involved.

“Each of them with their own population,” Ozriel said, popping into another. This world was a series of jagged chunks floating in darkness, as though the planet had been torn to pieces and left to drift. But Lindon could see city lights on each of them. Even some in the ground beneath the surface, as though humans had made those islands into their own personal molehills.

The world went blue again. “I belong to an organization called the Abidan,” he said, and now new figures appeared in the blue. Rank upon rank of white-armored figures, drifting in color. Arranged in regiments, some of them had symbols on their armor, and still others carried strange tools.

Eagerly, Lindon watched for Suriel. He didn’t see her, but it was hard to pick any individual out from the crowd.

The Abidan were formed into seven distinct ranks. Above each of them now hovered a single individual.

This time, Lindon finally saw Suriel.

She stood over the sixth division, purple eyes staring forward, her hair drifting emerald as though underwater.

Tears welled up as he saw her, though he couldn’t quite explain why. He swept them away as though Ozriel might see him and laugh.

The sole black-armored Abidan stared out over the ranks of thousands of Abidan, and Lindon thought he seemed…lost. Though who could read the expression of immortals?

“We draw our power from the Way,” he said. “This is what you see all around you now. It is the power of order that runs through all Iterations. With that power, we defend you all. Without us, all would fall to chaos.”

Suddenly, without Ozriel making a gesture or tearing open another gateway, the scene changed.

The Abidan were gone. The blue light of the Way had vanished, and now Lindon stood on a vast, dusty plain.

All around him, people were dying.

They had once been an army, with armor and swords and shields, but now they were on the ground, writhing and choking. Their bodies grayed and dried by the second, as though they were aging decades before his eyes.

Every time one of them died, he could pick them out, though he couldn’t tell how. It pierced him through the heart, as though each was a friend.

Tears streamed down his face now, and he averted his eyes, but there was no escaping from the pain.

“Like all power, ours has rules,” Ozriel said sadly. “This is a necessary truth. One of those rules restricts our interference. For centuries, I have watched worlds die…and the pain you now feel, I feel with each death. Over and over again, in worlds without end.”

Now they were in another world, as people were run down by monsters. Another, where the air had become too toxic to breathe. Another, where men and women starved or died of thirst. A world where great rocks fell from the sky and devastated cities. A world where great beasts rampaged. A world on fire.

Over and over again, time blurring in Lindon’s head. Each death speared him as though he had personally caused it.

Finally, when Lindon was on his knees, they returned to the calm of the Way. Ozriel met his eyes. “This is one part of my plan,” he said softly. “Only one seed planted of many, in the hopes that some might one day bear fruit. I need you to join me.”

He raised black-armored fingers to his head, and Lindon could see endless weariness written there. “Not as Abidan. I want to raise you outside their rules. I want you to go where we can’t: into dying worlds, to save those we have abandoned.”

Now a mantle of darkness billowed from the back of Ozriel’s armor. Suddenly, he loomed like the end of all things. “You are one of my children,” he said. “You have inherited my sight. To you, the world is open.

“You can step out of the Cradle. You can grow up.

“And join me.”

* * *

Eithan had touched Yerin with the marble as well. It would be awkward for Mercy, sitting around watching the other two sit motionless and stare into space, but she would adapt.

If he accepted her early, he would seem too eager. Best to reel her in.

He knew what Lindon and Yerin were seeing—the message’s contents never changed—and he could imagine how overwhelmed they felt. He had felt the same way, once.

Speaking of messages…

Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out an envelope that had been sealed with wax. It was a foreign way of sending messages, from the Arelius homeland. And indeed, this wax was marked with the Arelius family’s crescent symbol, alongside two ancient characters indicating power.

The mark of the head family. Cassias’ father had appropriated it without cause. How would he feel if he knew Eithan had a marble containing a vision from their family’s First Patriarch?

Although, if the real head family had been wiped out, Gaien Arelius had as much claim to the seal as anyone. Eithan would have to wait another three years to find out.

Eithan, Cassias had written.

The family elders are not pleased with the way you have handled recent matters. Lindon’s lost duel, they meant, although they had seen the benefits of that. And the orders he’d given Cassias before the Bleeding Phoenix rose, though Cassias had never had a chance to carry those out.

In reality, they just didn’t like his way of doing things. They wanted him to consult them before every single decision. He understood. This stemmed from his own, old failing: he kept too much control. It made him difficult to work with.

But the sun would burn cold before he let himself be ordered about by men like this.

It personally gives me great pain to deliver you this message with my own hand, but the family elders would like you to temporarily step down as Patriarch. You will still hold all the rights and privileges of a family elder, and of course our only Underlord.

I am here with my father, who provides his stamp at the bottom. He concurs, and we have received imperial approval. If you are unsatisfied, I urge you to appeal to the elders. I believe you are the one to lead this family into the future, when you settle down and put the family’s needs above your own.

In pain and regret,

Naru Cassias Arelius

The paper was stamped with characters for both Cassias’ name and his father’s. Eithan flipped over the envelope, looking at the wax seal that he’d left intact.

The symbol of his family.

They had rejected him.

A gust of wind picked up, and he let it take the letter away.

* * *

Information requested: current status of the Dreadgods.

Beginning report…

The Bleeding Phoenix, its consciousness scattered over thousands of pieces, settles in to wait. Many of its fragments go dormant, but many others go looking for hosts. To hunt, and to build up their mother’s power. It is biding its time, for the moment when it senses its lost brother again.

The Silent King stirs in its dreams as it senses the Phoenix in battle. For hundreds of miles, spirits and Remnants feel its influence. Though they do not know the source, they are disturbed.

The Weeping Dragon sleeps in the upper atmosphere, on a miles-long bed of clouds. It has not been long since it last woke, and it is still weary. Though the power of the Phoenix prickled its spirit, it will take more enticing bait to rouse the Dragon from its slumber.

In a chasm on the ocean’s floor, the Wandering Titan rolls its stone joints. They have stiffened from long disuse. It wakes slowly, but steadily.

Soon, it will rise.

Suggested topic: Makiel’s full influence on the fate of Cradle. Continue?

Denied, report complete.

THE END

Cradle: Volume Four

Skysworn

Ghostwater

Cradle Volume 5

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Bloopers

To my grandfather, the first William Lawrence Wight.

1934 – 2017

Thanks for lending me your awesome name.

Prologue

Mu Enkai had been nothing before the egg.

He was born a servant, following just enough of a fire Path to allow him to operate a furnace for a low-ranked refinery. He’d spent his days shoveling coals and choking in smoke, making barely enough scales to live on.

Then the sky had turned red. He and his fellow servants had taken shelter in the cold furnace, huddling together for days before the earth stopped shaking and the air was no longer flooded with blood aura. When they emerged from hiding, shaking but alive, it had been waiting for him.

The egg was a glossy, polished orb the size of a man’s head, waiting among the debris of the refiner’s shop. Unlike the building, it was unharmed. Spotless. Beautiful.

He could feel its promise in his soul; the blood aura that had drowned the world for days was concentrated here. Enkai had never considered himself an ambitious man, but in the egg’s sleek shell, he’d seen his future.

His reflection was not a servant. Not someone who followed a half-remembered, incomplete Path that wasn’t considered good enough for the sects and schools. He’d seen a king, crowned and baptized in blood, and that promise seized something dark in his soul and pulled it forward.

When he’d stepped up for the egg, the others had too. He looked to his left and to his right and saw that he was surrounded by thieves.

It had been a brief, ugly fight, not a showdown between honorable sacred artists. The egg had gloried in the blood spilled, and when he stood victorious, he didn’t think about his wounds or his fallen friends.

The egg was all his.

He’d drawn it inside him without quite knowing how. It nestled inside his soul even now, warm and safe beside his core, and its power blazed in him like a bonfire.

Enkai had been nothing but a Lowgold, and not an especially powerful one at that. But now, what did advancement mean to him? Highgold was nothing compared to the power of the egg.

Now, he sat in the highest floor of the top-ranked restaurant in town. The strongest sacred artists in the region now knelt before him, trembling, daring not even to look him in the eye. Now, they were the servants.

Before the egg, Mu Enkai would never have dared speak up in the presence of the three Highgolds who now bowed before him, each with a different Goldsign and a different set of robes. They all represented different Paths, but none of theirs could stand against his.

The egg changed his body as much as his spirit. Before, he had been small and hunched; as a boy, he had often been compared to a rat. Now, he was lean and sharp, like a hungry wolf. His Goldsign—a shifting flame pattern on the back of his hand—had been stained red as blood. Veins of crimson stretched from his hand and up his arm as the egg’s power radiated out, infusing more of him.

He gestured to one of his Highgold servants, and the young woman flinched as she raised a slice of rare spirit-fruit to his lips. Even younger than him, she was already a Highgold. No wonder she’d had such a high opinion of herself. She had required a number of demonstrations of his new power before she understood his strength, but now she respected him. He could read that respect in her trembling fingers and the veil she kept around her spirit.

Enkai bit into the fruit and savored its icy flavor. It carried a soothing power into his madra channels, though little of it went into his core. Most of it went to nourish the egg.

That was even better. The egg had begun to show cracks, and once it hatched, he could barely imagine the power he’d control.

He opened his mouth for another bite, but his servant’s hand was frozen. She stared off into the distance, eyes growing wider.

She could still ignore him?

Weak sparks of fire kindled in the air around his head, formed by his irritation. The egg echoed him, releasing fist-sized balls of blood-red fire. The egg’s copies were stronger than his own, but that only excited him. The egg’s power was his.

Before he could pull the young woman’s attention back by force, he noticed that the other two Highgolds—an old man with a trio of horns on his head and a motherly woman with iron-gray skin—were staring off in the same direction.

He extended his balls of fire to the backs of their necks. All three of his servants fell to their knees with cries of pain as his power scorched their skin.

“Tell me what it is,” he demanded. He may have had power beyond any Highgold, but he was still only Lowgold. Their spiritual perception was beyond his.

They looked at each other, which only stoked his rage further. The balls of fire trembled, ready to drive through their bodies. Blood aura affected flesh, so the flames of the egg burned men more easily than wood.

“We feel someone,” the young woman said. She glanced at the ceiling and licked her lips.

That was all she said.

He wanted to slap her—the egg’s power could boost his basic Enforcer technique into a blow that would crush her skull. Instead, he stood and gripped her by the chin. Her face paled, and her eyes slid to the side so she didn’t have to stare into his eyes.

“When I ask a question, do you think I want half an answer? Tell me—”

“It’s the Skysworn,” the older woman blurted from the floor. She bowed more deeply. “They must be here to recover the town after the great battle.”

The old man had also not dared to stand after Enkai forced him to kneel. “They will be pleased to know that you have already restored order.”

Despite their reassurance, or perhaps because of it, alarm spiked in Enkai’s heart. The Skysworn were more than just a police force; they were wandering judges, empowered by the Empire to punish criminals. He had been raised on stories of independent sacred artists being inducted into the Skysworn and going on to become some of the Blackflame Empire’s greatest heroes. Even the current Emperor had served as a Skysworn for years.

They could take away everything he’d earned for himself. They might even sense the egg in his spirit, and they would surely kill him and take it from his Remnant.

The thought of losing the egg made him sweat more than the thought of his death.

Enkai released the Highgold’s chin and began stalking away, his fireballs blinking out of existence. He had created a room reinforced with scripts just for an occasion like this. He would hide until they went away. “Keep them away from me,” he commanded. “Tell them nothing.”

Someone rapped on the window.

As one, all four pairs of eyes snapped toward the sound. A man stood outside on a dark green cloud, arms crossed, in robes of deep blue. It looked almost like an Arelius uniform, but there was no way he was there to clean the windows. Broad-shouldered and powerfully built, he loomed over the room, glaring like an executioner about to pass judgment. His right arm was a Remnant prosthetic, a skeletally thin limb of white light. Despite his young age, he gave off an oppressive feeling, as though he were deciding which of them to destroy first.

Enkai shivered at the sight of him, afraid to extend his spiritual perception lest he be punished. Though the egg had made him a conqueror, now he felt like a servant once again, flinching whenever an expert passed.

Without waiting for instruction, the old man hurried over to the window and pushed it open. Only then did Enkai notice the pin on the stranger’s chest: a green cloud. That was the emblem of the Skysworn, though a full member would be wearing a suit of jade armor. Perhaps a disciple? Or a subordinate, deputized to help deal with the emergency?

Whoever the stranger was, Mu Enkai decided it was time to slip away before he was noticed. The Skysworn would assume the Highgolds were in charge anyway, and he gave off the air of a man looking for someone to punish. Let his anger fall on them while Enkai snuck away. The egg would serve him just as well in some other town.

“Pardon,” the young stranger said, “but could you tell me which of you is in charge here?” His voice was apologetic, and he bowed slightly as he spoke.

Enkai stopped at the top of the stairs.

All three of the Highgolds glanced back, but the old man coughed before he spoke. “I am happy to represent my master before the Skysworn,” he said, and Enkai breathed a little more easily.

“Your master?” the Skysworn apprentice asked, looking surprised. “Is there a Truegold in town?” Now that Enkai looked at him further, he saw that the man was even younger than he’d first appeared. And not quite so intimidating as his frame would suggest.

A shiver passed through Enkai’s soul—the stranger had scanned him. But it was soft as a brushing feather. The scan of a Truegold’s perception might have weighed on him, but this was lighter than a breeze. Either the stranger had withheld his power for the sake of respect, or...

Delicately, ready to withdraw at a moment’s notice, Enkai extended his own perception toward the stranger. With only a strand of his awareness, he touched the young Skysworn’s spirit.

It was no stronger than Enkai’s own.

With such a light touch, he couldn’t tell many details, but he didn’t get a sense of fathomless strength he would expect from a Skysworn. In fact, the quality of the stranger’s madra felt like a child’s: like a pure, untainted spring. He couldn’t sense the extent of the man’s core, not without a more thorough inspection, but his madra was no more dense or potent than an average Lowgold.

Shame crept into Enkai’s heart, quickly followed by anger. To think, he had allowed one of the Skysworn’s servants to frighten him. He hated himself for his momentary weakness.

Their exchange of scans took less than a breath. The stranger with the Skysworn pin turned to Enkai, eyebrows raising. Instead of drifting away on his cloud, the boy held up both hands to show he held no weapon—his Remnant hand looked less threatening with fingers spread.

Enkai conjured a ball of blood-red fire, contempt fueling his madra. “I rule here,” he said harshly. “If the Skysworn need to speak to me, they can come themselves.”

Still hovering outside the window, the stranger pressed his fists together and bowed over them in a sacred artist’s salute. “Forgiveness. We did not intend to disturb you. It is an honor to meet you; we were wondering who had done such an excellent job of protecting this town after the Dreadgod’s attack.”

The crimson flame still drifted around Enkai’s head, but he paused. He had defended the town, but he had never expected the Skysworn to recognize the truth.

Enkai straightened his spine and faced the stranger head-on. “They had no Skysworn to protect them. They needed a strong leader.”

“They’re alive thanks to you,” the Skysworn deputy said, radiating sincerity. The more Enkai saw of the man, the softer he looked. “How did you do it?”

The honest admiration in the question cracked through Enkai’s suspicion. He swelled with pride; it was about time someone asked him that question.

“People love to follow the strong. You have to show them your power…but not just show them. They have to feel it. You have to grind it into them, so that your strength is as present and undeniable as the sun.”

Two of the three Highgolds flinched back at the reminder. Not the young woman. She frowned up at a high corner of the room as though staring through it. He didn’t spare her a thought.

The stranger nodded seriously, rubbing his chin with his hand of flesh, with the attentive air of a man taking notes. He still wore what Enkai would call a glare, but he didn’t seem angry. Well, a man couldn’t help the face he was born with. He was clearly reasonable, no matter what he looked like.

“Well, if your approach worked so well here, I can’t wait to see how it will help the next town.”

Enkai hesitated, the fire around his head sputtering. “The next one?”

“In the wake of the crisis, we have more citizens in danger than we have capable leaders. I’ll have to report this to my superiors, but I’m sure we’ll want to put another town or two under your jurisdiction. If you are willing to serve the Empire in this way, of course.”

The egg. This was all thanks to the egg.

The townsfolk had given him tributes: more scales, elixirs, and treasures than he’d seen in his lifetime before the egg. Another town would make him rich beyond his dreams.

But more than the riches, it was the people that captured his imagination. Even more people, bowing to him. Sacred artists taking his orders.

He cracked a smile for the first time, and two of the Highgolds joined him, though their expressions were a little too shaky for his taste. The young woman was late, still staring at the corner of the ceiling, but she eventually shook herself awake and smiled even more broadly than the other two.

A thread of suspicion crept back in, and he extended his perception. The egg had lent him some of its bloody power, which helped his madra burn through flesh, but it had done nothing to extend his spiritual awareness. He stretched his spirit as far as he could, feeling nothing but the spirits of the remaining townsfolk huddled in their homes…and one presence high in the sky. A Truegold, headed this way.

The real Skysworn were coming.

Their servant was just stalling for time.

Fear and rage and pain crashed over Mu Enkai in one dark wave, and he fed it all to the egg. Tendrils of its power extended more deeply into his soul, and he welcomed them. The ball of fire over his head swelled to life, turning a deeper red, and the stranger stumbled back. He held up his white arm to shield his face. He had realized his mistake…but too late.

Enkai swirled madra through his body, stepping forward and lashing out with a Striker technique. The fireball that he’d created streaked forward like a shooting star, followed by eight lesser lights. This technique had once been used to light firewood, but the egg had transformed it into a new level entirely. It had evolved, becoming a true weapon.

Fused with fire madra, the blood power would allow it to burn flesh like dry tinder. It could devour the body of a Lowgold in seconds.

Though he hadn’t thrown it at a Lowgold.

The young Highgold cycled her spirit quickly, raising icy mist as a shield, but his technique burned through hers without slowing down. For an instant, she had a shocked look on her face and a scorched hole in her belly.

Then she went up like a torch. She opened her mouth to scream, but the fire had swallowed her breath. Her chest was a blackened ruin before the eight smaller sparks landed, trailing after the initial fireball.

As a Highgold, she took a second or two longer to burn.

With everything he’d done for this town, they still dared to call the Skysworn. She had sensed them coming and failed to warn him; no matter how many demonstrations he gave, they all still plotted behind his back. The truth felt like a knife in his back, and black hatred rushed out of the egg.

Though it didn’t use an audible voice, the egg seemed to whisper to him.

You have no choice. They pushed you to this.

Before a breath of time had passed, while the first Highgold still had half her flesh left, he had already taken aim at the second.

The old man kicked off a movement technique, sparks flying from his feet, as he dove for the window. He still presumed to run; that stoked Enkai’s fury even hotter. If he had to burn through the Skysworn servant to reach the old man, so be it.

But the stranger wasn’t outside the window anymore. He was dashing across the wooden floor, focused on Enkai like a man staring at a blood enemy, pulling back his arm of flesh as though he was about to drive it into Enkai’s stomach.

Enkai drove his red fireball down instead of forward, slamming it onto the Skysworn servant’s head.

The man dropped to one knee, ducking to the side, forced to drive his strike up to meet Enkai’s wrist. His palm struck, but not hard enough to stop Enkai’s move. He seemed even weaker than a normal Lowgold. Pure madra rushed into Enkai’s wrist without ruffling a single hair on his arm, but it did flow into his spirit and disrupt his technique.

…about as much as a gentle breeze disrupted a bonfire.

The bloody fireball fell undeterred, burning through the servant’s blue robe in an instant and entering his body. With the bloody power of the egg fueling it, he was dead already.

He screamed, but Enkai had already moved past him. He should have known what would happen when he tried his tricks. They wouldn’t work on Enkai.

The real Skysworn would arrive to find nothing of this town but ash.

He leaped out the window and landed on the stranger’s green Thousand-Mile Cloud. From his vantage point, he could see the old man almost to the edge of town, sprinting down the dirt road and past the half-destroyed buildings that had remained after the Bleeding Phoenix’s passage. Another few seconds, and he would be beyond Enkai’s range.

But he wasn’t there yet.

Enkai hurled another ball of fire flanked by eight lesser echoes, and it hurtled toward its target. The egg’s hungry power would draw it to the scent of blood.

He would have watched, but a twinge of danger turned him around. Six green daggers floated around the old woman, and her spirit had latched onto his. She paled when he turned around and launched her Forger technique early.

Familiar with her madra, Enkai knew that this technique contained a life-poison that was all but impossible to stop. It would devour his life just like his own fire devoured the body, but leave him with an unmarked corpse.

A wash of bloody flame consumed all the daggers. He could barely call what he’d done a technique; it was nothing but pure power flowing out of him. As such, the red flames that landed on her skin didn’t consume her instantly.

Or quietly.

She screamed loud enough to wake the dead as he hopped down from the Thousand-Mile Cloud, landing on the ground two stories below. He felt the first aching pain of exhaustion in his spirit, drawing more deeply on the egg to quench it.

The town was nothing more than a collection of homes flanking a single wide dirt road. Most people lived above their businesses, and more than a few faces peeked out of upper windows at the sound of the screams. When they saw it was him, they slammed the windows shut.

Cowards. They all disgusted him.

Filled by the egg, he poured one ball of fire after another into the air around him, keeping them in orbit around his body. He was relying so much on the egg now that they looked more like fist-sized droplets of blood that were shaped like flames rather than actual fire madra. Eight smaller lights hovered around each one, until he was surrounded by a swirling constellation of power.

The energy within him was thirsty. He could feel it. Each technique strained against his control like a dog against a leash, begging to go hunt its prey.

Someone slammed to the ground beside him, kicking up a ring of dust.

It was the Skysworn stranger.

His skin was undoubtedly scorched, his face tight with pain, but he had not been consumed. Enkai’s hatred raged hotter; the Skysworn must have wasted valuable defensive constructs on their servants. They spent so much money just to defy him, when they could have had him as an ally.

He would show them the truth of the choice they’d made.

The stranger spread his hands, watching the fireballs encircling Enkai. “You don’t have to hurt anyone else,” he said, voice smooth and calming. “This isn’t what you want. This is what the Blood Shadow wants. Let’s just slow down, and we can talk about how to get you what you want.”

A peal of laughter boiled up from inside Enkai, loud and venomous. “I’ll show you what I want.”

He released his techniques.

Sixteen balls of fire, each trailing eight sparks, streaked away from him in lines of red light so that he was surrounded by a crimson web. There were sixty-two spirits left living in town.

It went down to forty-six in an instant.

The egg’s power wasn’t exhausted yet. After those first people died, their bodies burst into hungry red fire. That flame craved flesh, and it jumped from victim to victim in a second. The second wave didn’t die so quickly.

The screams rose from a solo to a chorus.

Enkai whirled on the Skysworn servant, rage so great his body couldn’t contain it. He filled his palm with bleeding fire, but it felt just like blood.

“It’s mine!” he shrieked, and even he wasn’t sure whether he meant the egg or the town. “You don’t get—”

Enkai froze, throat locking up.

Something had changed.

The stranger stood with his eyes widened in horror, mouth half-open as he stared at the blackened holes burned in village walls. He looked like a man watching his own home burn.

But he felt like a monster.

His spirit suddenly loomed like the shadow of a dragon flying overhead. Rage replaced by icy dread, Enkai scanned the stranger’s spirit. His core still wasn’t dense or bright enough to be a Highgold. For a moment, Enkai wondered what had changed. Then he realized: the man’s madra wasn’t pure anymore. His channels were filled with black fire.

Darkness flooded into the stranger’s eyes like ink, his irises kindling into circles of burning red. That horrifying gaze locked onto Enkai.

“Why?” the Skysworn servant asked, and the word was a plea.

Enkai drew even deeper on the egg. Its power was the ultimate counter to fear.

He hurled the ball of red light in his hand, packing twice as much madra into it as usual. The lights following it looked like stars, and each could consume a tiger like a torch.

When the technique left his hand, the Skysworn servant’s body erupted in a black-and-red haze. It was like an illusory flame, burning all around him, but it put a heavy pressure on Enkai’s spirit.

The stranger waited, motionless, until the bloody fireball had almost reached his chest.

With explosive force, he leaped straight up.

Enkai’s fireball blasted through the cloud of dust he’d left behind, which trailed up into the air. The Striker technique looped in the air, swirling up, nine orbiting lights chasing after the stranger.

He’d already started falling, gathering red-streaked black fire into his human hand. It gathered slowly, taking far longer than Enkai’s technique had, but it carried a great sense of danger.

Enkai reached behind him, pulling a twisted green-tipped knife from his waistband. This was a Highgold treasure, one of the most valuable weapons in the town. The blood-fire was rising to meet the falling servant, and even if he landed safely, this dagger would be waiting for him.

A green cloud swept in from the left, catching the stranger mid-fall. He flew away on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, and once again Enkai’s technique swept through empty space where his target had once been.

Enkai’s fireballs were Striker techniques. They were not Forged, so they ran out of power quickly. This one had already diminished to almost nothing, and Enkai could feel it unraveling. He snarled, forcing his spirit past its exhaustion again, digging deeper into the egg for another technique. He locked his eyes on the Skysworn’s emerald cloud.

There was no one on it.

A great, hot, overwhelming power loomed up from behind. Enkai turned, dagger raised, and a white fist caught him in the jaw.

In his conquest, Enkai had taken blows from Highgolds before. The power of the egg had strengthened his body until he felt like he had leather for skin and stone for bones. He could catch a hammer-blow with one hand, standing as firm as though his boots were nailed to the ground.

This time, he felt nothing but a flash of pain and a tremendous rush of noise. Then he realized he was lying on the inn’s floor in the middle of a pile of splinters. Groggy, he tilted his head up; there was a hole in the front wall big enough to ride a horse through.

The stranger stood there, a silhouette against the sky holding a ball of black fire. More flame blazed around him in a hazy corona. His shadow fell over Enkai like the specter of death.

No. Enkai would not allow himself to die here. Not to a Lowgold.

The power of the egg was much greater than this.

In an instant, Enkai drew his core dry. He pulled so hard that it might cause permanent damage to his madra channels, but he was beyond caring. He pulled up all the power of his spirit, drinking thirstily from the madra of the egg.

Between his hands, a red light bloomed. This didn’t look anything like flame; it was a pure crimson light that hung in the middle of his palms like a red sun. This was a technique worthy of the egg. It sang with power, an echo of the Phoenix’s song that had turned the sky red.

In triumph, he pushed forward, releasing the technique on the Skysworn’s servant. A river of light, straight as an arrow and thick as a man’s leg, blasted forth with all his rage and fury.

The stranger lifted his left palm in response, his ball of dark madra hovering in front of him. It erupted into a bar of liquid fire, black streaked with red.

The two streams of fire clashed head-on, only a foot from the Skysworn apprentice’s outstretched hand.

Enkai was prepared for a direct clash of their spirits, pushing the egg’s madra into the technique so he could blast through the stranger’s technique.

It wasn’t enough.

The dark flame devoured his, melting through an inch at a time. By the time Enkai started to panic, the stranger’s power was almost at his chest.

“You can’t—” Enkai started to say. Then the bar of black fire burned through his stomach.

And the egg was gone.

Dark flames spread through him, and he collapsed to the floor like a straw doll. It didn’t hurt like he would have expected. It only tingled, as though he faded away like a Remnant.

He had time for one last, jealous thought. This stranger had so much power, but he acted like a servant. If Enkai had sacred arts like that and combined them with the egg, he could have ruled the world.

Seconds later, Mu Enkai was nothing more than a pile of ashes.

Unsatisfied, dark fire spread from his body, consuming the ruined inn. The screams coming from around town slowly died while the survivors huddled in silence and darkness, hoping to be overlooked.

In the midst of the black flames, the apprentice Skysworn stood alone.

1

On their clouds, Lindon and the two Truegold Skysworn returned to Stormrock, the black city in the sky. They alighted in the tallest tower, presenting entrance codes to the Skysworn on guard.

This was Starsweep Tower, headquarters of the Skysworn. For them, it must be like coming home.

It was only Lindon's second time inside.

Numb, he followed the two green-armored figures inside, past a few other scattered Skysworn. They all looked as exhausted as he felt, and the smell of blood hung heavy in the hallways. More than once, he saw a servant in the dark blue uniform of the Arelius family mopping up a puddle left by a bloodspawn. Or one of its victims.

The Bleeding Phoenix hadn't even attacked directly. It had only risen for a few days.

They would be cleaning up the aftermath for years to come.

All the Skysworn were either on a mission, preparing for a mission, or too injured to work. They were stretched so thin that even the Lowgolds didn’t have a moment to rest.

Without a word, the two Truegolds brought Lindon to a single, sparsely furnished room behind a black door. It was lit by a stark white circle of script on the ceiling, and filled with only one round table and nine surrounding chairs. There was a three-foot gash in the wooden table, and it looked fresh.

Lindon slid his bulky brown pack into one of the chairs, then turned to leave the room.

Bai Rou held up one armored hand, his eyes burning yellow in the shadow beneath his hat of woven reed. “Stay here,” he commanded.

Lindon wanted nothing more than to sink into a chair, but he had more pressing concerns. “Pardon, but I will return. I'd like to go see Yerin.”

Renfei, a slight woman with a resolute air and a black cloud hovering in the air over her, jabbed a finger at the table. “Sit. We'll be back. Do not leave this room.”

“I would like to check on her for myself, if you don't mind.” The last he'd seen her, her soul had been exhausted, but her Blood Shadow was stable. That was the main reason why he wanted to make sure she was all right; the Skysworn were not likely to leave someone with a Blood Shadow to herself. Especially not now.

Bai Rou stepped forward. He was a brick wall of a man, and the armor only added to his silhouette.

“Sit,” he said.

Though, as big as Bai Rou was, he only had an inch or two on Lindon. Compared to the difference in their spirits, that didn't seem like much.

How would that armor help him against the Path of Black Flame?

Lindon realized he was meeting those yellow eyes glare for glare, and dark madra was creeping into his vision. Blackflame flowed through him, angry and defiant.

He looked to the side, blinking his eyes clear, and focused on his pure core. With the clarity came the cold shiver of reality setting in; he had almost started a fight with a pair of armed and armored Truegolds in their headquarters.

“Apologies. I have been...stressed.”

Lindon couldn't have called Renfei's expression sympathetic, but at least she hadn't pulled the hand-sized hammer hanging at her hip. “Don't be. The target is dead, the parasite neutralized. Mission accomplished. Don't think about it more than you need to, just do as you're told.”

He sunk into the nearest chair, trying not to just collapse and sleep. He tried to brace his right arm on the table, but he forgot to cycle madra through it, so his Remnant arm sank right through the wood. “I apologize for my disrespect, but I am concerned about Yerin. Please, I need to know that she is being treated well.”

* * *

Yerin was being treated like a prize pig hauled in front of a bunch of butchers.

Her hands were manacled in halfsilver and chained to the stone wall behind her, while a bunch of unarmored Skysworn prodded her spirit with theirs. It was hard not to shake like a shaved bear in the snow under the tickle of their scans.

“And you feel that you were treated...poorly by the Skysworn?” the voice of this green-hooded man made it clear that he thought a knife across the throat and a shallow grave was better treatment than she deserved.

“What put that in your head?” Yerin asked, glaring at him.

She didn't say any more, but one of the hooded figures in the back scribbled onto a little board. She figured they were making sure she was still herself, and not a shell the Blood Shadow happened to crawl into. She just wasn't sure how they were doing that, when they didn't know her from a bullfrog.

“Have you had any urge to harm or kill your fellow man?”

“Having a few of those urges right now.”

“What color is this card?” He held up a paper with a splash of yellow paint on it.

Her Goldsigns twitched, the silver blades hanging over each shoulder eager to cut her free. She calmed them—they wouldn't be able to cut through the halfsilver, made of madra as they were, so she would have to dig through the script-reinforced stone behind her. And the second she started trying that, they would cook her like a side of bacon.

Still, she was stone certain they were doing nothing but burning up her time. “What does that tell you? Is a Blood Shadow blind to color?”

The Skysworn examiner looked like he was struggling not to spit at her feet. “Answer the question.”

“Yellow. You want me to tell you the shapes next?”

This time, he held up a green card. “And this one?”

“...if you can't tell what color that is, you need a new line of work.” Every Skysworn in the tower wore green robes when they were out of their green armor.

He paused for a second as though deciding whether he could backhand her or not, but accepted the answer. He pulled out a card with a triangle painted on it.

“Do you know what shape this is?”

She stared at him. “Are you pulling my chain right now?”

“Answer the question.”

She shook her wrists, rattling the chains. “You're welcome to kill me now if it'll bring this to an end.”

He stepped closer, wind madra swirling green around him. He wore a thin beard and he looked at her like she'd killed his children and made him watch. “Don't tempt me, Redmoon.”

She grinned at him. “Not Redmoon. Arelius.” Eithan Arelius was the only reason she was tied up at all, instead of facing the business end of an axe.

If he touched her without the stamp of his Emperor, or at least another Underlord, Eithan would wear his skin like a scarf.

He reddened and turned away as the door opened. When Bai Rou entered, the examiner and note-taker buzzed over to him like vultures to a corpse. They muttered to him for a while—telling tales about her, she was sure.

The big man's burning yellow eyes flicked to her, and she turned her smile on him like a blade. He gave no sign whether she'd drawn blood or not, but raised his voice so she could hear. “She's clear?”

“It's in a stable condition,” the note-taker said, “but there's no telling how long that will last. It's largely up to her.”

“She'll turn against us before the sun sets,” the examiner said, glaring at her.

Bai Rou folded his arms and leaned against the wall, and he was watching her too. “She comes with me.”

Yerin rattled her chains again. “We're wasting breath. You got a key, or am I going to go gray in here?”

They freed her in spite of the examiner's protests, but left the halfsilver shackles on her wrists.

Bai Rou pulled her into the hallway and began marching her down without a word. She caught more than one hostile glare, rough search of her spirit, or flare of a half-formed technique.

What a spine that took, to shake swords at a girl in chains. They had better hope she didn't remember their faces. Not only did she have the power of Redmoon Hall inside her, she had the will to use it against them. They'd dropped her off a cliff and left her to die.

Well, one Skysworn had.

Smartest thing to do would be to kill her flat-out. If they let her hit Truegold, they'd regret it.

“You looking for somewhere to drop me?” she asked.

He said nothing.

“You can't kill me, so you want to put me to work. Lindon isn't cutting it on his own?”

She tried to conceal the real worry she felt, after she'd been forced to leave Lindon in the care of the two Truegolds. She'd only had a fingernail's weight of trust in the Skysworn to begin with, and now even that much had dried up and blown away. They wouldn't draw swords on him, not with Eithan's name hanging over him, but they wouldn't step quick to help him either. He needed her help.

“The Blackflame completed his mission,” Bai Rou said. “We will speak to you both, and that's all you need to know.”

“That so? Last I checked, there were three of us. What about the new girl?”

She thought she saw a shadow of worry pass over his yellow eyes, and that cheered her.

“She's coming too,” he said, scowling.

* * *

Renfei stood in front of the room where she'd left Akura Mercy to recover. It swung open soundlessly, revealing a mass of darkness so thick it was almost palpable. If she stuck her hand past the doorframe, it looked as though it would be swallowed by endless night.

Only one thing was visible in the inky murk: a bright purple book, hovering in the center of the room. It glowed, but somehow cast no light. Only the book itself was visible, a single distinct figure in an ocean of black.

The book was spread open, its pages thick, and it pressed on her spirit with an impression of overpowering might and incomprehensible age.

Then it vanished, and Mercy hopped out of the dark.

If not for her wide purple eyes, Mercy would look more like a friendly innkeeper's daughter than a child of the mighty Akura clan. She beamed at Renfei, clasping her hands behind her back and leaning forward with a twinkling smile. “Sorry, sorry! I know it's gloomy. I heard you knock, but you know how it is when you're deep into cycling. You just lose your head!”

A staff fell out from the darkness. Made of what looked like polished black roots, the staff was taller than Mercy, with its top carved to resemble a snarling dragon with purple pinpricks for eyes.

...or perhaps not carved. Though its eyes didn't move, Renfei was sure they'd fixed on her, and she thought she heard a hiss.

It was enough to get her madra cycling and send a hand to her hammer.

Mercy grabbed for the falling staff, fumbled it, tried to catch it with her other hand, almost lost her balance, and ended up seizing it in both hands. She raised it triumphantly. “Got it!”

Renfei's eyes moved from her to the shadow behind her. “What were you doing in there?” she asked. She didn't intend to, but she was using her Skysworn voice: the tone of a career authority figure.

“Cycling,” Mercy said, waving one hand as though she meant to blow away the darkness like smoke. “It's not my favorite aura to cycle. Hard not to fall asleep.”

It was deep shadow aura in there, laced with some other, darker aspects that dissipated even as Renfei tried to sense them. It was a tapestry of black.

Some of the rumors about Akura Paths flashed through her mind, and she could feel her expression harden. This was a fine nest of vipers she had to babysit.

Mercy was watching her, and slowly she stood up. Renfei felt an instant of what she could only call a premonition: she was about to see beyond the mask of the cheery, innocent girl.

The Akura Lowgold reached up with one hand—gloved in slick black, as though she'd dipped it in tar—and placed her fingers on Renfei's arm.

“You must be exhausted,” she said.

Renfei searched her face for anything mocking, but found only sympathy. A trainee shouldn't speak to their Skysworn with such familiarity, and a Lowgold should express more respect to a Truegold.

But she was an Akura, so that much was to be expected. She would have grown up around people who could evaporate Renfei with a thought. Sometimes, Renfei wondered why any Akura stayed only Lowgold, even one as young as Mercy.

“You don't need to worry about me,” Renfei said, turning to walk down the hall. “Follow me, we have to meet your...partners.”

Mercy followed without protest, walking side-by-side. She twirled her staff and almost dropped it. “I can't imagine a more trying time to be a Skysworn,” she said idly.

“I certainly can't remember one,” Renfei said. Or the last time she'd actually sat down for a meal, instead of taking it on her feet or on her cloud.

“I don't know how you find time to sleep.”

“Sleep?” Renfei said dryly. “Never heard of it.”

Mercy nodded along. “You can work every hour of the day, and there's still more to do.”

“We'd be short on staff if we had twice the Skysworn we do. Recruitment will be up next year, you can bet on that, but that means even more work for the instructors and recruiters...”

* * *

Renfei and Mercy arrived first. Lindon looked up hopefully when the door opened, but when he saw it wasn't Yerin, he sank back down into his chair. The respectful thing to do would have been to rise from his seat, but he couldn't make himself move.

The green-armored Skysworn gave him a quick look that suggested she noticed. He winced.

She didn't spare him more than a glance, though, continuing to talk lightly with the girl at her side. Mercy held her tall black dragon-staff behind her back, and the piercing purple gemstones it used for eyes seemed to fix Lindon with a glare. The Akura girl hopped into a chair opposite Lindon. She almost tipped over backwards, grabbing onto the table for support.

Renfei chuckled, and Lindon wondered if that was the first time he'd seen her laugh. She had always seemed stern and professional, if not cold, to Yerin and Lindon. Even before they'd come into direct conflict. Now she treated them like suspects she might have to execute at any time.

Maybe she treated Mercy differently as a daughter of the Akura clan. But then, it was hard to stay on guard against someone who was struggling to pull her chair down to the ground before she spilled over.

Once she settled at the table and sighed in relief, Mercy gave Lindon a wave. “You've been working hard too, haven't you? I've caused you trouble,” she said apologetically, bobbing her head.

She had been recovering from madra exhaustion and a collection of light injuries, after their fight against the bloodspawn and subsequent days in a basement. The spiritual healers of the Skysworn had determined that she was unfit for duty, so she had remained here to recover. She had actually protested Lindon being sent out alone, trying to struggle out of her bed before Bai Rou restrained her.

No, the strange one was Lindon, having been proclaimed fit for duty so quickly. Part of that was the speed of his physical recovery, thanks to the Bloodforged Iron body: after three days in that basement, he had already recovered almost entirely. The touch of Little Blue, the Sylvan Riverseed, had helped ease the burden on his spirit.

But there was nothing she could do about spiritual fatigue, and Lindon still felt a deep ache in his madra channels from overuse. He wondered if he had really been in any better shape than the other two, in terms of his soul.

Or if the Skysworn had simply sent him out without caring if he lived.

“No, no,” Lindon said hurriedly, “I hope you’re all right. I couldn't—”

“Quiet,” Renfei said, cutting him off. “You want to chatter, do it on your own time.”

He couldn't help but notice that she hadn't interrupted Mercy.

The door swung open again, and Bai Rou ushered Yerin in ahead of him.

Seeing Yerin in one piece was a deep breath of relief for Lindon. Her skin was covered in thin scars and her black robes were tattered, but that had always been true. Two arms of Forged silver madra extended from her back, their ends flattening into blades: her Goldsigns.

The halfsilver manacles around her wrist bothered him at first, but he understood the necessity. Her Blood Shadow was made of living madra, like a Remnant, so it wouldn't be able to manifest through halfsilver without carving a chunk of it out. Yerin wouldn't be able to cycle her own madra through her hands without great difficulty, and using a technique of any kind would be much harder than usual. She was effectively hobbled.

But without such precautions, she might not be able to leave this place alive.

Her face cracked into a half-smile when she saw him, and she started to speak, but Renfei repeated her line about chatter. Yerin rolled her eyes, then took a chair next to Lindon. Mercy waved at her, smiled, and mouthed the word 'Hello!'

Looking somewhat confused, Yerin nodded back.

Bai Rou slammed the door and leaned against it, the brim of his hat tilting down to cover his eyes. Was he standing guard against an escape attempt, or just generally being intimidating?

Renfei dropped a cloth sack onto the table. Its string was drawn shut, but a watery blue light spilled from its mouth. She surveyed them as though looking over a host of enemy troops. The cloud hanging over her head seemed darker and more solid than ever.

“You're all Golds,” she began. “I won't spare my words. We all know why the Captain put you all together.”

Because a Blackflame, a Blood Shadow, and an Akura were all potentially dangerous liabilities, but their backing was too strong. The Skysworn couldn't kill or imprison them without cause.

“Because you don't give two plucked hairs if we live or die,” Yerin said, propping her chin on her hand.

That was also true.

“I wouldn't put you on the same team if the Captain hadn't ordered it,” Renfei continued without acknowledging Yerin. “And even so, we had never intended to give you assignments. Keeping you out of the public eye and under our supervision would have been enough.”

She really wasn't sparing her words. Lindon was almost impressed, but her sudden frankness made him wary. What was she leading up to?

“Now, the situation has changed. We're going to use every asset we can lay our hands on, and if it turns out we can't use you, we'll throw you out.”

“Seems to me you tried that already,” Yerin said, but before her statement was halfway out, dark fog boiled out from Renfei. Cloud Hammer madra. Though it looked like mist, Lindon got the spiritual impression of a great fortress wall.

“Do not take this lightly,” Renfei said, nailing Yerin to the spot with the force of her stare.

Yerin didn't back down or look away, but she did shut her mouth.

“We will put you to use for the Empire, or we will throw you in a cell. At best. Now, under ordinary circumstances, Skysworn teams select from the available missions together. But the three of you have to stay isolated from the public. Rumors about a Blackflame loose in the Empire are bad; rumors about a Blackflame under the command of the Skysworn are good. But only if he is under the control of the Skysworn. Understood?”

That went for all three of them, of course. The Skysworn might not trust Yerin because of her Blood Shadow, but if she did eventually earn their faith, it would look as though they'd captured a member of Redmoon Hall and compelled her to work for them. And an Akura working for the Empire, instead of the other way around, would make the entire Blackflame Empire look stronger.

No one said a word, but Mercy nodded eagerly.

“I will be brief, because we have a cloudship to catch on the hour.” She activated a script on her armored wrist, and a beam of light streamed out, projecting lines of violet light on the air. They sketched a ghostly model of an island, hovering in the middle of tossing waves.

Lindon was less than impressed. A White Fox binding could have made an illusion that looked real, and suggested sound and even smell.

“We're headed for a three-day journey into the Trackless Sea. It will be cramped and uncomfortable, and I expect you to silently cycle the entire way unless we need you to fight. Our destination is a pocket world called Ghostwater, created by the Monarch Northstrider.”

There was a general intake of breath all around the room.

“Pocket world?” Yerin asked, leaning forward eagerly. Her bladed Goldsigns tapped the table beside her. “That's where sects keep their treasures.”

Mercy rubbed black-gloved hands together. “I've always wanted to visit one! Our family has one, but it's too dangerous for anyone less than a Lady.”

“I'm sorry,” Lindon said, “but...a pocket world. That means...”

“It means a pocket-sized world. A self-contained space much smaller than our own, but separate. Exactly like it sounds.”

He wished he hadn't had to ask.

Renfei continued, pointing to the image of the island. “This world, Ghostwater, was designed to contain a research facility. The honored Monarch abandoned it almost fifty years before eventually losing his life.”

According to Eithan, most believed that the Monarch had died seven years ago. Not even two years ago, Lindon had seen Northstrider alive with his own eyes. At least that much of the Skysworn's information was inaccurate, though they wouldn't believe him if he corrected them.

Besides, the Monarch wouldn't mind them entering a world he'd abandoned decades ago. Would he?

“Now, the battle between the Akura Matriarch and the Dreadgod has damaged the anchor binding that world to our own. If our experts are correct, it will crumble within the next few months.”

Lindon was dying to ask about this “anchor,” but he suspected Renfei didn't know herself. And wouldn't appreciate further interruptions even if she did.

Reaching into the bag she'd brought, Renfei produced a jewel. A sapphire, which shimmered like sunlight filtered through water. White and green lights flickered at its heart, though it cast blue illumination on the walls and ceiling.

“We were alerted to the current problem by this artifact: the Eye of the Deep. It was left to the last Emperor in the Blackflame family for safekeeping by one of the Monarch's Heralds. It grants access to main facilities of Ghostwater.”

She held up the gem. “I will carry this and guide us around, so stick with me. Without this, you will die alone as space itself crumbles around you.”

“Forgiveness, but what is our assignment?” Lindon asked. He was actually eager to see something Northstrider had built, but there had to be a purpose for their presence there. Lindon and Yerin didn’t know how to stabilize a world.

“We go as scouts,” Renfei answered. “We will determine if Ghostwater is really damaged. If it is, we will secure as many treasures as possible for the Empire and then report back. At that point, the Emperor will decide what to do with the time we have left.”

One of Yerin's sword-arms raised. “And how heated do we expect this to get?”

Bai Rou's yellow eyes narrowed on her, and Renfei's brow furrowed in confusion. “It's a relatively cold sea, and it's almost winter. Bring a coat.”

“Not what I meant.”

This time, Bai Rou answered her. “The world's defenses are down. Could be scavengers.”

Yerin nodded, as though that was exactly what she'd wanted to hear.

“Is there anyone living inside?” Mercy asked.

“No,” Renfei said, tucking the Eye of the Deep back into the bag. She gestured to Bai Rou, who stepped away from the door. “Now, we are entering into an unknown situation with an unknown number of enemies outside the boundaries of the Empire. If you aren't prepared, feel free to stay in a cell.”

Before leaving the room, she turned to Lindon. “We need all the boots we can get on the ground. Go get your turtle. Half an hour.”

Then she was gone.

* * *

The flight to the island was quiet, boring, and more than cramped. Their cloudship was covered, but hardly large enough for six people. Orthos took up most of the upper deck himself, and he spent most of the journey tucked away in his shell, pretending they weren't in the sky.

Yerin and Mercy, at least, could cycle aura on the ship. There was no way to start a fire without killing them all, so Lindon just focused the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel on his cores. It felt like spending three days with iron bands around his lungs.

After the first full day of being packed into the cramped, dark confines of the cloudship, Mercy scooted over to Yerin and Lindon. Orthos snored behind them, and the two Truegolds were up on deck.

“What do you think the pocket world is like?” Mercy whispered, full of excitement.

Lindon exchanged glances with Yerin. She was sitting next to the wall, Goldsigns curled down over her shoulders to avoid scraping the ceiling.

“I suspect you know more about that than we do,” Lindon said politely. He and Yerin hadn’t figured out how to handle Mercy yet. She had acted like they were all friends almost from the moment they’d first met. It was disconcerting.

“Oh, I don’t know anything about our family’s pocket world. And now we get to see one!” She clapped a hand on Yerin’s shoulder, and Yerin shrugged it off.

“Have to wonder what Eithan would think about us getting hauled away,” she muttered to Lindon.

“If he didn’t want us here, he’d show up and take us away.” Eithan had left them to the Skysworn for a reason, and he rarely explained himself. Lindon relished the chance to make decisions for himself, but at the same time, the Underlord still hadn’t taught him any pure madra techniques.

“My master used to leave me to take risks for myself too,” Yerin said. “Can’t make it far without taking any risks.” She hesitated, then added, “Especially if you’re trying to make it…so far.”

Lindon knew what she was referring to. Eithan had shared his ambitions with them in the form of a vision from the heavens. It had sharpened Lindon’s aims, but he hadn’t had a chance to discuss the vision with Yerin yet. Even now, Mercy was with them all the time.

She leaned closer, eyes sparkling. “What are we talking about?”

Yerin ignored her, and Lindon made up a flimsy excuse.

Finally, they reached the island.

It was larger than Lindon had imagined from the sketch in the air; big enough that from their vantage point hovering just above the trees, he couldn't see the opposite shore. It was heavily forested except for the beaches, with one prominent hill in the center doing a decent impression of a mountain.

Renfei put them down on the beach, the dark green cloud beneath their ship hovering inches over the sand. Withdrawing the Eye of the Deep, she headed for the treeline.

Lindon, Mercy, and Yerin leaped out of the ship at the first opportunity, all groaning at the chance to stretch their legs. Orthos followed them a moment later, landing in the sand like a boulder. He didn't stretch his head out. In fact, after falling, he pulled his legs in as well.

A shadow lay across the turtle's spirit. Lindon could feel it through their contract. He needed Little Blue to balance out his spirit, and soon, or he would become a problem for all of them.

Lindon pulled his pack from his shoulder, slinging it around, intending to pull out the Sylvan Riverseed.

“Here it is,” Renfei called. She swept out a hand, and a bolt of dark cloud slammed into a tree in front of it, crushing it and sending it tumbling into the forest.

In front of her stood a jade doorway, not surrounded by any wall. The door was rectangular and covered in script, and it shimmered blue-green like a murky pond with its surface disturbed.

Renfei pulled out the Eye of the Deep, glancing at it and then back to her partner. “Bai Rou.”

The huge, green-armored man had already left the ship, his hat of dried straw shading his face. He strode over to her, where they exchanged an animated discussion.

“What's crawled up their armor?” Yerin asked, nudging him with the side of her silver Goldsign.

Mercy stumbled in the sand, but braced herself with her staff of smooth black. Its dragon head hissed at her, glaring with violet eyes. “The door wasn't supposed to be open.”

Lindon rested his hand on Orthos' shell, considering.

“They're going to separate us,” Lindon said, keeping his voice low. The other two turned to him, Mercy looking resigned, Yerin's face darkening. “One group goes through to scout, and the other stays out here until the first reports back. They'll divide us so that each of them can handle a group on their own.”

Yerin's hand moved for the hilt of her sword. She'd been allowed to have the weapon back when none of the Skysworn could sense anything exceptional about it.

It was the weapon of a Sage, but neither Yerin nor Lindon had said anything. It seemed the Sword Sage's blade could hide from lesser artists.

“Let them try to split us up. Now's our chance; we fight them out here.” She nodded to Orthos. “Big guy ties up the big guy, and the other three of us take Renfei.”

Lindon exchanged glances with Mercy, and both of them extended a hand in a calming gesture.

“We don't need to go that far,” Mercy said.

“It's too much of a risk. We don't need any more enemies than necessary.”

Yerin gave them a sour look. “You two got in step awfully quick.” She took her hand away from her sword, but her Goldsigns twitched as though ready for action.

“Wei Shi Lindon,” Renfei shouted. “You and the beast are with me. Ladies, you stay with Bai Rou. We will observe the situation and report back within the hour; I can relay a message to Bai Rou at any time.”

Unsurprised, Lindon rapped his knuckles on Orthos' shell. “It's time, Orthos.”

The turtle's limbs slid out slowly. He didn't feel tired. Quite the opposite; it felt as though Orthos were wrestling to keep himself under control. The rings of red in his black eyes were bright, but he nodded to Lindon.

Lindon and Orthos joined Renfei, facing the portal. Its rippling surface gave no indication of what waited on the other side.

“We walk through together,” the Skysworn said, cloud rolling over her head.

Lindon took a deep breath and stepped forward. Yerin stopped him, hand on his left arm.

She looked as though the words had gotten caught as she tried to speak. She cleared her throat. “...stay sharp,” she said at last.

Mercy gave him a wave.

“Gratitude,” Lindon said, dipping his head to them both.

Then, with Orthos on one side and Renfei on the other, they stepped into the jade doorway.

As he'd experienced before, the world was swallowed by an endless expanse of blue light that looked thick, as though he could reach his hand out and run his hand down it as though down a veil.

But this time, it only lasted an instant.

2

The air ripped like a torn page.

Lindon stepped through the portal into a bubble of air the size of a castle. His shoes crunched on the dry sand of the ocean’s floor, which spread out in front of him to the edges of the bubble. Twisted rock formations and bunches of brush-like weeds rose in irregular patches, with tiny crabs skittering from shadow to shadow.

The water outside the bubble was black as ink, but the space was brightly lit by…Lindon hesitated to call it a “tree.” It looked more like a glowing, abstract sculpture meant to represent a tree: a bunch of blue tubes spread out like roots coiled together to make a trunk, and at the top—where he would expect leaves—were clusters of glowing yellow lights. They weren’t too bright to stare at, but all together they lit the bubble like late afternoon.

This ocean clearing was silent in a way the land never was. No wind brushed these plants, and no waves crashed nearby. Only the occasional scuff of sand or the soft drip of water disturbed the stillness, and the air tasted of salt and green plants.

A sense of awe hung heavy over the space, like Lindon had trespassed on an ancient tomb. Invisible pressure pushed on him as though he’d shouldered the entire weight of the ocean above.

It was only a moment before he realized that the pressure wasn’t his imagination. By then, he’d noticed that Renfei had stopped, one hand on her hammer, her cycling madra drawing wisps of dark cloud around her armor. Orthos growled so low and loud that the sand shook.

They weren’t alone.

A young man sat with legs crossed on top of a nearby boulder. His robes were white, his unbound hair spilling down his back, and his features so delicate that at first Lindon mistook him for a woman. A disc of shadow hovered behind his head like a dark halo.

There were others that might have drawn Lindon's eye first, but this man drew his spiritual perception like a magnet. He was a deep, dark weight, and Lindon had to pull back his perception before he touched the young man's spirit. He was cycling now, eyes closed and breath even, but Lindon feared that even the slightest touch would wake him.

Far at the other end of the clearing, where the edge of the bubble met the sand, a sprawling miniature palace of golden madra glittered in the light. A pair of servants in plain, identical white coats stood at attention in front of the curtain that served as the door. A...creature...peeked out of that curtain, shimmering even more than the palace.

It looked like a woman merged with a dragon, covered in gold scales and with a face closer to that of a lizard than of a human. She wore strings of jade, silver, and pearls in layers around her neck, and rather than a sacred artist's robe, she had wrapped herself in silk of every color. As she saw the newcomers, a smile stretched across her leathery lips, and she casually manifested a shining drop of gold madra between her claws.

Lindon began cycling Blackflame. Once, he had caught a Truegold off-guard and burned away the man’s hand. If he could injure Sandviper Gokren so badly, he might have a chance against these strangers. So long as they didn’t notice him first.

His attention was drawn by a deadlier threat: a flash of red from the left, far away from both the cycling man and the dragon-woman.

He recognized that color. He recognized that sensation in his spirit, a shivering impression of a thousand corpses drowning in a crimson sea.

A young woman stepped up, Blood Shadow covering her like a cloak. Her hair fell into her eyes, shrouding her expression, but blood madra trickled away from her feet, steadily spreading across the sand. She didn't bother to veil her spirit, so she blazed like a bloody torch to Lindon's perception. She was Truegold, without a doubt, and a strong one at that. She gave Lindon the same impression as Renfei or Bai Rou, and she looked to be at least ten years younger.

The Redmoon woman made three, but there was a fourth presence nearby.

He cast out his perception and immediately noticed a tiny hut to his right. It looked like it had been slapped together from mud and bundles of dried grass, though he could see neither of those materials anywhere around him.

Another young man, about Lindon’s age, pulled himself out of the hut’s doorway like a corpse crawling from a grave. His eyes were bloodshot and half-lidded, his gray cloak stained and dirty. Two emerald horns rose from his forehead, pointing up.

Lindon accidentally brushed the man’s spirit with his spiritual perception, and he hurriedly pulled it back. The man seemed not to notice, but his aura felt as strong and steady as the roots of a mountain.

He took in the situation with the look of a man who would rather be anywhere else. Though he had done nothing that Lindon could tell, the golden-scaled woman stopped in her tracks, looking nervously in his direction. The girl from Redmoon Hall watched them all.

“Who are you?” the horned man asked the Skysworn, wearily.

Renfei was muttering under her breath. “Bai Rou, do not follow. I repeat, maintain your position and call for reinforcements. Multiple enemies. We will try to disengage.” When the man addressed her, she drew up straight and consciously drew her hand away from her weapon. The black cloud over her head rolled and rumbled.

“We are the Skysworn of the Blackflame Empire,” Renfei announced. “We are responding to reports of a disturbance around this facility after the passage of the Bleeding Phoenix.”

Her voice was smooth and practiced, but her tension infected Lindon. He withdrew Blackflame, changing his breathing pattern and pulling power from his pure core. Blackflame would serve him better in combat, but in a fight between Truegolds, could he even make a difference? Anonymity would serve him better.

The man's perception moved over their group, slow and careless. He dismissed Lindon in a blink, but his spirit lay heavy on Orthos and Renfei. “Who is backing you? The Winter Sage?”

Orthos snarled, smoke and red light rising from his shell. “We need not answer to you.”

The stranger stared at Orthos with absolute disinterest, as though replying was too much effort. Based on Lindon's feeling of the horned man's spirit, his confidence was entirely justified.

A woman's voice piped up over his, airy and amused. “When you're done, leave me their trinkets,” the golden dragon-girl said. “It's so exciting to see a pack just bulging with who-knows-what treasures. And I like the look of that armor.”

The green-horned man sighed. “Not every fight needs to be to the death, dragon. What could they possibly have on them?”

“They shouldn't be here,” came an eerie whisper from the Redmoon Hall girl. The liquid form of her Blood Shadow had almost reached the base of the portal. “They are not bound by the rules. Who can know who sent them?”

“We are here on behalf of the Blackflame Empire,” Renfei said loudly, “under the protection of the Akura family.” She shot a glance to the man cycling on the boulder. “If we have disturbed the honorable representative of Redmoon Hall, we apologize and will withdraw.”

“Back,” she said under her breath to Lindon. “Back through the portal.”

Lindon turned immediately, but a tendril of blood raised itself from the ground and poised in front of him like a snake coiling to strike.

“Hold, Lowgold,” the young woman commanded. “We wait for instructions.”

“No need to bother your Sage with this,” the golden dragon said. She was approaching by then, strolling closer to the portal, though Lindon noticed she gave the cycling man's boulder a wide berth. “Strip them and send their bodies to the ocean. What is that behind your back, Skysworn?”

For the first time, Lindon realized that Renfei was gripping the Eye of the Deep behind her back in her left hand. Her fist tightened around the gem, but she still edged backwards.

“I salute the honored representative of the Desert Monarch and King of all Dragons, and I assure you, if we are allowed to return to our empire, we will send you a greeting-gift that far outstrips any of our meager belongings. Furthermore—”

The world went silent as the young man on the boulder opened his eyes. Like Mercy's, they shimmered like a deep amethyst.

Shadow flashed out from the seated man as though it had been unleashed, dimming all light. His right hand drifted up, then down, like a painter leisurely adding a stroke to canvas.

“Silence,” he said, as his hand lowered.

In a blink, so that Lindon thought he'd imagined it, a thin line of shadow flickered down, passing through the middle of Renfei's body from the top of her head down.

The Akura representative closed his eyes.

Renfei fell apart.

Her armor was still untouched, but her body collapsed in a pile of blood. Lindon stared, too stunned to be horrified, and before he could avert his eyes, the Blood Shadow covered Renfei's corpse.

An instant later, a towering giant of black clouds slid out of the Shadow with an explosion of force that sent both Lindon and Orthos tumbling away from the portal. The Remnant punched two fists of dark fog together with explosions that cracked like thunder, launching itself forward.

The golden dragon-girl met it with a tinkling laugh, sending a wrist-thick river of golden liquid punching through the spirit, but Lindon didn't have time to watch. The Blood Shadow was re-forming, gathering itself up to engulf him.

A massive boulder plunged from above, slamming into the sand, cutting off the Blood Shadow and shielding Lindon.

The green-horned man stood staring at a hole next to him, where that boulder had once rested. He gave no sign that he had even moved, his dirty cloak hanging dead from his shoulders.

“He is not your opponent, Yan Shoumei,” he said wearily.

“But you are,” she said, gathering her Blood Shadow around her and dashing forward.”

The young man walked to the other side of another boulder, kicking it lightly. A green ring flashed as his foot made contact, and the boulder shot forward as though launched from a catapult.

Whether by design or coincidence, it landed inches from the first boulder, between Lindon and the portal.

Lindon ducked behind the stones, leaning around them to look at the place where Renfei had fallen. He was choked by a complex mess of emotions when he saw her half a face—relief that she was gone, regret that he couldn’t bring her body back to her family, and fear now that she wasn’t around to protect him. Though he’d never trusted her, at least she’d been on his side.

But he wasn’t looking for her body. He was looking for a way out.

Her armor was still unharmed; it seemed that the shadow-sword had struck her through the green Skysworn plate without damaging the metal. He wanted to take it with him, but it was still half-engulfed in Yan Shoumei’s Blood Shadow, and Lindon wasn’t foolish enough to stick either of his hands anywhere near that. Maybe his Remnant arm could feed on it like it fed on the bloodspawn, but he wasn’t willing to bet his own safety on it.

Her hammer was nowhere to be seen, which he regretted even more than the armor. As the weapon of a Truegold from the Cloud Hammer sect, it would have been invaluable.

But most importantly…

The sapphire she’d been holding behind her back rolled free, darkened with spots of her blood.

Lindon snatched it up, stuffing it quickly into his pack. If he had the Eye of the Deep, he could deactivate the portal after leaving. Maybe he could lock these others inside to fight it out amongst themselves.

Orthos roared, launching dragon's breath at the gold-scaled girl engaged with Renfei's Remnant, but she ducked to one side of his Striker technique and avoided it with ease. The Cloud Hammer Remnant reared back, preparing to drive a dense fist into the girl's head.

A sigh cut across the battle, and the Akura young man opened his eyes again. The shadow returned.

“I asked for silence.”

Flickers of black, like feathers in the night.

Renfei's Remnant was split into two clouds, which drifted apart as it began to dissolve into essence.

The dragon-girl skidded to a halt, scattering sand into the air. The shadow-blade passed in front of her, leaving a perfect line sliced into the ground.

The horned man raised a hand, and a circle of green script flashed into existence in front of him. The edge of shadow cut into it, and the script flickered at the contact before shattering like glass.

His shield must have weakened the attack, because he didn’t fall into two pieces like Renfei had. Instead, the skin on his hand split open, leaking blood. He stared at the wound with lifeless eyes, as though watching someone else’s hand.

Yan Shoumei's Blood Shadow cloak was split in half, revealing deep red sacred artist's robes beneath. She hissed and backed away, her Shadow drawing itself together, but she seemed unharmed.

An instant of pain flared through Lindon's soul, and Orthos howled.

His shell split open, spraying dark blood and ruddy light in equal measure. He staggered back, letting off flares of Blackflame madra out of sheer panic and instinct. His pain dimmed Lindon's mind, but it also stoked the rage of the Path of Black Flame. Without thinking, Lindon tapped back into his Blackflame core, and the Burning Cloak sprang to life around him.

Everything had taken only a few breaths, and the battle was so far above Lindon's level that he had unconsciously shrunk back. But now he had a task he could handle: get Orthos back through the portal. If the rest of them could make it out alive, that would be a victory.

It took the strength of his Enforcer technique to restrain Orthos, who was lashing out with blind pain, but Lindon hauled him to a stop and started pushing toward the portal. He glanced back at the Akura man, only to see him lifting his arm again.

That gesture was enough to fill Lindon with terror now, but the purple eyes weren't fixed on Lindon.

He was looking at the portal.

Following his gaze, Lindon noticed with a jolt that the portal was transparent from this side.

Bai Rou was holding Mercy back with one armored hand, dragging her away from the portal. He was clearly trying to retreat. A handful of yellow madra droplets blasted out of his other hand, striking at Yerin.

Who was darting for the gateway.

She slashed back without turning, her white blade casting a storm of invisible swords that shredded Bai Rou's Striker technique. Her eyes were fixed on the portal.

Sometimes it felt like it had been a lifetime since he'd left Sacred Valley. Other times, he felt like a child who had just left home. The reality was, he had been outside the Valley for a year and a half. He was overwhelmed by the weight of so much time. Surely it couldn't have been that long. But at the same time, he wasn't sure how he'd crammed so much into such a short time.

But through all of it, he'd been with Yerin. By now, he knew her as well as he knew anyone. Seeing her face as she ran, he knew in a split-second what she was thinking. In that moment, he understood her thoughts better than he understood his own.

She was coming for him.

Whether she had sensed something from the other side or whether she'd heard Renfei's report to Bai Rou, she knew something was wrong. She was headed into the hands of these Truegolds, and she didn't even know it.

But if she did know, she would only run faster.

Ever since Lindon had first adopted the Path of Black Flame, he'd lamented how long it took him to gather dragon's breath. Never had every fraction of a second burned him like they did now, as he shoved his hand of flesh in front of him and poured madra into it.

Dark fire gathered in his palm, pointed at the portal. Was it faster than the shadow the Akura was calling? He didn't know. He couldn't know without turning, and that would take him precious instants.

Yerin kicked off from the stone floor. Lindon scorched his madra channels, pushing power in a loop through his soul with every breath, Blackflame burning his body and his soul as he forced it to move faster.

The world darkened. Shadow flickered.

And a bar of Blackflame madra tore through the thin, green metal frame of the portal.

Instantly, the window into another world winked out. A blade of darkness sliced a smooth gash in the sand where the portal had once been.

The sand was bare. No Yerin.

Lindon’s breath of relief disrupted his cycling technique for a moment.

Thick, choking spiritual pressure fell on him like a weighted net, but he still couldn't look back. His Remnant hand didn't pass through living beings like it did through objects, so he pushed Orthos with both hands, struggling against the huge sacred beast's strength.

The Akura could cut him down at any time from behind, but he shoved Orthos through the sand. The Burning Cloak worked in bursts of strength, so it was easier to punch or kick than to carry something heavy, so he could only push Orthos a few yards at a time, moving him toward the nearby boulder. He didn't know if it would stand up to the young man's shadow blades, but at least they wouldn't be so close.

The pressure faded before Lindon reached the boulder, and he was so surprised that he couldn't resist a glance back.

The Akura man had closed his eyes again, returning to his cycling. He had taken the destruction of the portal as nothing.

But he was the only one.

The other three all stared at the damaged portal frame, their battle forgotten. The Redmoon Hall girl stared out of the veil of her hair and trembled like she was watching her own home burn down. The man with the emerald horns looked from the portal to Lindon and passed a hand over his face. And the dragon-girl had both clawed hands in front of her mouth, eyes wide.

Then she and Yan Shoumei turned to Lindon. Rage of red and fury of gold pushed against his spiritual senses.

Black-and-red haze flared around Lindon as he heaved Orthos with all his strength, sliding the turtle behind the boulder. Orthos' struggles had gotten weaker and weaker, and Lindon could feel his consciousness fading. It sent a spike of alarm through Lindon—he hoped this was just exhaustion caused by exertion and injuries, but it felt like a slide into death.

Hunkered down behind the boulder, Lindon felt the flares of madra recede. It seemed they were trying to keep all disturbances to a minimum to avoid waking the cycling Akura again.

Which gave him a window to find a way out.

Suppressing his dread and alarm, he scanned the darkness of the water around him. He was only steps away from the bubble that separated him from the cold, black water all around them.

However the fight among the Truegolds fell out, it wouldn't bode well for Lindon. He needed somewhere to escape. He'd closed the portal, and that fact hung over him like a sword suspended by a string: he had destroyed his only way home.

But he shoved that panicked thought to the back of his head for later. There had to be another way home, and now that he had the Eye of the Deep, he held the key to the entire Ghostwater facility. If there was a way, he'd find it.

He just needed to get out of here now.

He scanned the black water along the ocean floor, looking for other spots of light.

A gold sun rose behind him, and his Enforced jump sent sand spraying behind him. His Burning Cloak surged, his madra channels still shrieking in protest after he'd abused them to force out the dragon's breath.

Lindon twisted in midair, bringing his white arm up in front of him as a shield.

The golden dragon-girl stood before him, necklaces hanging against her golden chest, her silks shimmering in many colors. She held out a claw.

“The sapphire, the pack on your back, and anything you have in your pockets. You have no idea how expensive it will be to return home without that doorway.”

So there was a way out, and these Truegolds knew it. Lindon tucked that fact away.

“If you compensate me for my expense and give me something that is worth more than your life, I may leave you unharmed.” She was keeping her voice low, shooting frequent glances at the spot where the black-haired man meditated.

Lindon ducked his head toward her, raising his hands and letting the Path of Black Flame fade from his spirit. The Blackflame urged him to fight her for dominance, but he shoved it down and drew from his pure core instead. He needed a clear head.

Orthos growled and stumbled next to him, but fell to his belly. His eyes fluttered shut.

“Please, forgive this one for his rudeness,” Lindon said, sliding his pack off one shoulder. “This one believes he has something that may please you, but please spare the lives of this unworthy one and his companion.”

The ridge of scales she had in place of eyebrows raised, and she said nothing, allowing him to continue. Lindon reached into his pack, pulling out the biggest box he'd brought with him on this trip. The case of the Thousand-Mile Cloud the Skysworn had lent him.

Before he could open the box, Orthos' eyes snapped open and his spirit seethed with the same insane anger that had possessed him when Lindon had first met him.

Lindon stared at him, shocked, as Orthos rose to his feet with the Burning Cloak flaring around his shell. Lindon's was a pear-shaped aura around his body, but Orthos' shell rose as high as a horse's back and he was almost as wide as he was tall. He looked like he was surrounded by a black sun.

Even in the grip of his temper, he only growled and didn't roar as he had before. Lindon couldn't tell if that was because he was still partially in control of himself or if he simply didn't have much energy.

The dragon-girl bared her fangs and gathered lines of liquid gold madra in both hands. “Black dragons,” she said quietly, snapping one hand forward. “Little better than dogs.” A whip of madra unfurled from that fist, cracking in front of Orthos' head. Though the attack flashed like lightning, it made only as much sound as a man snapping his fingers.

Orthos didn't flinch, ducking to the side and then extending his neck to snap at her arm.

Lindon wasn't there to watch a fight. As soon as Orthos rushed forward, he cast the Thousand-Mile Cloud's box aside and let the dense, grass-colored cloud unfold in front of him. He clambered onto it, merging his madra with the construct and urging it forward. Into the water.

There was a glimmer of yellow light in the distance. It could have been a reflection from this bubble, and Lindon would have preferred to find one that was clearer and closer, but he wasn't quite spoiled for choice. As he reached the bubble, he carefully reduced his speed and ran his fingers through the water.

They pierced the bubble easily. As he'd hoped, this bubble was created by a massive script-circle that manipulated aura into holding the water at bay. He should pass through without obstruction.

“Orthos!” Lindon turned behind him to shout, hoping the sacred beast had enough mind left to hear him.

He saw a line of gold descending on him like a curved blade.

Lindon twisted at the last second, taking the madra whip on his pack. The attack caught him over the ear and on the hip, burning like a heated brand, but the pain wasn't the worst of it.

The worst was the lurching sensation he felt when the cloud vanished from beneath him.

The Thousand-Mile Cloud, given to him by the Skysworn so he could follow them on assignments, dissipated into green wisps of mist as the whip struck the construct's core. A shattered ball covered in script fell to the ground, singed. The rest of the construct faded into essence of cloud madra.

A split second later, Lindon hit the sand too. He rolled, ignoring the pain, trying to put some distance between himself and his attacker.

After rolling a few yards, he noticed he was leaving a trail behind; his pack had been torn apart. Burned, torn cloth that had once been part of his spare clothes. Fragmented scripts, broken stones. His heart caught in his throat as he saw water and broken trees spilling onto the ground between two cracked halves of a transparent case. Little Blue's tank.

He dove for the twin halves of the case.

A quick glance showed him that Orthos was keeping the golden dragon-girl busy, but he couldn't tell what the other two were up to. Apparently their silent truce remained.

The first half of the case was empty. Nothing but mud and sand left after it had fallen from his shredded pack. He dumped it out, just to be sure, but there was no sign of the Sylvan Riverseed.

And nothing but garbage in the second half.

Lindon's eyes moved from one to the other as flashes of gold and red played over the glass. Like a rising tide of heat, Blackflame crept into his veins. His strained channels ached, but he pulled more.

Before the rage of the Path of Black Flame took over, he gathered himself and released his spiritual perception.

A sensation from behind him, like a fresh breeze, released his tension. With a breath, he let Blackflame go, and leaned to see behind a tiny mound of sand.

Little Blue huddled behind it, clutching her hands on her head as though trying to shut out sounds. She looked like a woman made of deep blue madra, only a little taller than his hand, in a flowing dress that was really part of her body.

Lindon extended his hand to her, and she turned to him with wide eyes that seemed to be filling up with tears. Lindon was fairly certain the spirit couldn't cry, but her gaze trembled. She ran to him with arms outstretched, chiming like a bell, and clambered up his arm. Each footstep was an ice-cold pinch of static, and each was a reminder that she was still alive.

A wave of sand sprayed into the air as Orthos crashed down next to him. His spirit was dwindling as he ran out of madra, and his consciousness was starting to fade again—it almost felt like he was sleepwalking, but the turtle shook himself and flipped over from his shell, growling at the golden dragon-girl.

Holding Little Blue to his shoulder, Lindon dashed over to the box he'd discarded from the Thousand-Mile Cloud. He started shoving everything that had survived into it: the leather roll that contained his Soulsmith tools, the polished wooden case holding his badge collection, the notes on hunger madra, and his Heart of Twin Stars manual. He was especially relieved when he found that in one piece.

The Eye of the Deep went inside too, but it must have taken a hit from the woman's whip. The jewel had a single long crack down one side, white-and-purple dream madra drifting out in wisps of mist.

If the physical vessel burst, the construct inside would dissipate. Lindon couldn't worry about that now; he just had to hope it lasted long enough.

Lindon slammed the lid shut with his left hand and tried to fasten it shut with his right, but the Remnant arm passed through the latch like a ghost. Hurriedly, he used his left hand to seal the box. This would be big enough to hold all his surviving tools, but more importantly, it was waterproof.

He rushed past Orthos, seizing the turtle by the tail. Orthos dragged him forward for a moment, ready to run at his opponent, but eventually noticed the human clinging to him.

Lindon pointed to the light in the water and shouted, “Run!” Then he ran through the bubble.

Black, icy water swallowed him.

3

Yerin passed through the jade doorway sword-first.

And out the other side.

She stumbled into the underbrush and whirled, looking back to see Mercy and Bai Rou on the beach behind her. Bai Rou held Mercy against the sand with one arm, the other extended toward Yerin, yellow madra swirling around his gauntlet. His eyes glowed the same color from within the shade of his hat.

“Return, recruit.”

Yerin stared at the door. She walked through it again, sweeping it with her perception.

The portal was gone.

Lindon was inside.

Cycling her spirit, she pushed all the madra she could into the script. The runes around the frame flared silver, then tinted a shimmering blue-green before dying out. The door stayed empty.

She stared at the artifact, trying to think, but her brain was stuck in the mud. Renfei's message to Bai Rou had played loud enough for them all, and the phrase “multiple enemies” was all she needed to hear.

But the Skysworn had held her back from passing through the portal. He had stopped her.

Endless Sword madra flowed through her. Her white blade was in her hand.

Bai Rou's fist tightened, and his madra broke into a rain of droplets that came at her sideways, like rain blown by a gust of wind. She'd faced his power before; it ate through the mind as it did flesh. The Path of the Amber Well, Renfei had called it.

It would be as useful for questioning as it would for restraining targets. One drop on her skin, and she couldn't be sure she'd be able to keep her sword in her hand. He'd tried this technique on her only a moment ago, to stop her from going through the door.

If he hadn't, maybe she'd have made it.

She could have dispersed the technique with sword aura using the Endless Sword technique, but she compressed silver madra in the edges of her blade instead.

Yerin chopped her sword down, unleashing the Rippling Sword Striker technique. The slash unleashed a surge of silver light, a crescent storm of sword madra and aura that rushed at Bai Rou, tearing through his technique and sending sand spraying to either side as it blasted toward him.

He was a stage more advanced than she was; his techniques should trample hers rather than the other way around. But how could a spray of rain stand up to a full sword-slash?

Bai Rou raised his forearm and the technique slammed into his armor, breaking like a wave on a rock. It took a chunk out of his hat, sending straw drifting on the wind.

He'd gathered his madra together for another technique, but Yerin had known she couldn’t break through that green armor so easily.

She rushed in, closing the gap.

The Path of the Endless Sword didn't have much of a full-body Enforcer technique, but her Steelborn Iron body took care of that. It drew madra from her and she dashed forward with speed equal to Lindon in his Burning Cloak.

And she showed Bai Rou the Enforcer technique she did have.

Her blade shone silver with the power of the Flowing Sword. The technique gathered both aura and madra, growing more and more powerful as the battle continued. Eventually, she would hit hard enough to break this Truegold’s armor.

It would be a struggle to hold it for so long without losing control of the technique, but she was angry enough to try.

The shining blade descended on him like the judgment of the heavens, and he had to take it on his raised arm once again. His other was occupied with a struggling Mercy.

This time, the blow slammed him into the ground. Her next strike sent a chip of green metal spinning into the air. Her third cracked one of his vambraces.

She was screaming by the time he released Mercy to use both hands. She could let him off for dropping her off the city and leaving her for dead. In a way, that had been merciful; he could have killed her himself while she was helpless under the control of her Blood Shadow. She could let him off for his threats, for the way he treated them like enemies, for his never-ending reminders that he would kill them at the first sign of defiance.

But he had held her back from saving Lindon. That was too far.

Yellow madra gathered around his hands, and with an instant of freedom, he'd turn the tables on her with his superior strength.

She didn't give him that instant. She reversed her last slash, slamming her sword up into his chest.

He flew back so fast that he tore into the surf, sending up a plume of water.

She stuck to him like a leech, sprinting after him, leaving Mercy behind. Her shining blade hit him again before he righted himself, knocking him into the water, and a Rippling Sword followed him into the ocean, slicing through the waves.

She began sinking herself, but she didn't let up with the Striker techniques. She hit him with two, then three, before the water swallowed her.

With the strength of her Steelborn Iron body, she hauled herself through the water, but she saw only clouds of sand and murky water. Her spiritual perception caught his general direction: he felt like a liquefied nightmare. She swam toward him.

The water around her lifted, like someone had scooped her up in a giant, invisible bowl.

She felt herself, and the chunk of ocean around her, rising into the air. She lunged forward, but the water shifted so she went nowhere, tumbling in a chaotic storm of bubbles and dust.

She sent her perception out, trying to sense what was happening even as she strained her eyes to catch a glimpse through the rolling ball of water.

It was only when the dust settled that she got the full picture.

Bai Rou had used a Ruler technique to command the water. The aura lifted a globe of the sea with her trapped inside. He stood on the surface of the ocean beneath her, reaching down to pull his soaking hat from the surf.

His yellow glare cut through the water, and his spirit released its full power like a crashing tide. He had to use half his madra to hold this Ruler technique in place, but the rest of his spirit was focusing itself in his palm.

In only a breath of time, he'd either spear her like a fish or fill this water with his madra and dissolve her. Maybe both. But his rage couldn't compare to hers.

Which made her drop her guard.

Yerin's relationship to her unwelcome guest had changed in the last week. It was free now, but she'd shown it whose sword was sharper. It was quieter, but she couldn't shake the thought that it was smarter now too. It had been a caged wolf before, and now it was a lurking killer, biding its time.

And now it slipped its collar.

The Shadow boiled out of her, a mass of blood madra that stretched out of her back and formed into a copy of her swimming by her side. The Blood Shadow wasn't an exact reflection; it looked almost like a Remnant version of her, built of all sharp, jagged angles and covered in red paint. Two thin arms stretched from its shoulders and flattened into blades, matching her own silver Goldsigns. It carried no sword, but its fingertips sharpened into points.

She tried to restrain it, but it had already passed her control. At this second, they wanted the same thing.

The Shadow melted, oozing out of the water globe and falling toward Bai Rou. It didn't care much for anything that would hold a regular body back. Madra would have stopped it, but normal water did about as much good as a screen umbrella.

Bai Rou pushed his technique toward the Shadow, and this was more than just a fistful of rain. It was a stream of Amberwell madra that coiled like a dragon, diving at the blood spirit. It cut right through the Blood Shadow's left arm, which sent a spike of pain through the parasite. Yerin could feel it, but she wouldn't say it hurt her. It was more like hearing about someone else losing an arm.

The Blood Shadow took the injury as the cost of doing business, turning its fall into a lunge without a care.

The blades on its shoulders struck like a pair of scorpion stings, carrying Striker techniques with them. Its Rippling Swords were stained red, carrying as much power from blood as from the sword.

She hadn't known it could do that.

Any other time, she would have been disgusted and horrified to see her Path of the Endless Sword techniques used by this creature, but now...now she just wanted Bai Rou to hurt.

He slipped to the side, feet sliding across the waves as though he stood on slick stone, dodging the first at the same time as a burst of yellow madra dispersed the second.

Her Blood Shadow landed on him.

It clung to him like a monkey to a tree, driving its clawed hands and its Goldsigns into his body. He twisted his head, pushing blades aside so he took everything on his armor. But Skysworn armor was famous for a reason.

Green light flared within the plates, and a pulse of emerald wind madra blasted out from him, shoving everything away. The Shadow was thrown backwards, splashing into the ocean.

But he'd tried to split his concentration too many ways. His Ruler technique fell apart.

Yerin dropped as the water around her rained back down. Cycling underwater was like trying to push gravel through your channels, so she hadn't bothered using any other techniques while she couldn't breathe. Her lungs were on fire, but that wasn't even close to the top of her mind.

And she'd never released her Flowing Sword. The blade shone like a silver star in her hand, a bonfire of madra and aura. It carried power like a Truegold's weapon, and she was about to see how it stacked up against his armor.

She angled herself to fall next to him, raising her sword for a strike. He was just turning away from the Blood Shadow, his perception sweeping through her spirit with a shiver. She gave a cheer in her heart; he was too late. She had him.

Then a black spear pierced her through the chest.

She'd set her eyes on Bai Rou, so she had no warning until she felt the hot pain beneath her collar. A black point, thin as a finger, stretched from her robes.

Her lungs seized up. Her spirit fought against the dark madra passing through her, which was a contest her spirit easily won. The black branch dissolved within a second, but it had enough to disrupt her techniques. The power blew away from her sword like dust on the wind, and she splashed into the sea.

The pain vanished when the madra did, and she touched her skin with her fingertips. No wound. It didn't even feel bruised.

Her fury surged again, and she twisted in the water, pushing madra back into her sword. Her core was all but empty, with only scraps left, but she'd go at Bai Rou with her teeth if she had to.

A black tendril, like a burnt tree root, wrapped around her. She slashed it away, but three more replaced it, cradling her and hauling her back through the waves. She struggled, but she wasn’t far from shore. The branches pulled her back to shore, and she rolled onto her feet, pushing her way free.

Mercy stood there panting, covered in sand, her ponytail undone. The dark madra extended from her oil-gloved hand. She had taken his side.

Yerin cycled the last of her madra through her weapon, preparing the Endless Sword, but Mercy released her own technique and collapsed back onto the sand, panting. “That’s…harder than…it looks,” she said through labored breaths.

The Blood Shadow faded to red light, which streamed out of the ocean and into Yerin’s back. It slid into her spirit, coiling around her core weakened and unsatisfied. Yerin felt about the same.

She paced to the side, keeping her sword on Mercy and her perception locked on Bai Rou. He hadn’t moved. Why?

Mercy’s staff lay next to her, the eyes of its dragon-head glowing violet, but she didn’t reach for it. “We can’t fight each other,” she said quietly.

Yerin gave a weak, angry laugh. She reversed her sword, plunging it into the beach an inch from Mercy, but the Akura girl didn’t flinch.

“We? You’ve buried me.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “You think he’ll let me walk away now? That’s my one chance gone.” Yerin stood over Mercy, rage and the frustration of failure boiling inside her.

Mercy held up her hands, showing them empty. “I thought we should be more worried about them.” She pointed both hands up at the sky.

Since the portal vanished, Yerin had kept her spirit locked on Bai Rou. Now, she finally noticed the rest of the world.

A golden cloud hovered only a hundred feet over them: a Thousand-Mile Cloud big enough to hold several houses. How had they not seen that when they arrived? How had they not felt the ones riding it? In her spirit, they shone like burning lamp-oil.

One of those questions was answered as another veil dropped on another side of the island. Its presence felt wild, savage, eager for battle. A thousand beasts roared along with the rising power, shaking the forest. Winged creatures took to the sky in a cloud.

But she could understand veils. She didn’t understand how the air could part only a few yards from her, revealing a towering black castle that stretched from the beach into the forest. It cast its shadow over her and Mercy both. It looked like it had been dropped from the sky, with half-crushed trees emerging from its foundation, but she didn’t hear the crunch. Had they been like that all this time, and her eyes had been tricked?

The whole palace was surrounded by a smooth rectangular outer wall, its only visible opening a pair of tall, spiked gates. From behind those gates, Yerin sensed darkness, fear, and endless despair.

Veils continued to drop all around the forest, so powerful that she was sure some of these forces had to contain Underlords at least. From the far shore, she felt a familiar feeling of nauseating slaughter: a Blood Shadow. Maybe more than one.

Powerless, Yerin dropped to the sand next to Mercy. They had never been alone on this island. They were surrounded.

* * *

The instant the portal was destroyed, Yan Shoumei was overcome with anger. Her Blood Shadow picked up on her agitation and started to flow toward the Lowgold.

It wasn’t just her agitation. Something about his thin, white replacement arm stoked her Shadow’s appetite, which was a complication she didn’t need.

She remembered herself just in time and pulled it back. Ziel, the horned boy from the Wasteland, was nearby, and she knew him by reputation. He was known to wait on the sidelines for an advantage. The second she struck at the Lowgold, he would take advantage of her distraction and hit her while she was distracted.

There was no love lost between Redmoon Hall and the sacred artists of the Wasteland. Especially not now, after the Dreadgod’s rampage.

Instead, keeping an eye on Ziel, she drew her Shadow back into a cloak around herself and began backing away. Contrary to her expectations, he wasn't looking at her at all. He was staring at the broken portal frame with a dead look on his face.

Maybe he didn't have a gatestone. Shoumei had no doubt that the gold dragon and the Akura did, so if Ziel did not, he might end up as the only one trapped here in this pocket world. If so, she might owe that Lowgold thanks.

...though her anger returned when she thought of having to crack her gatestone. Each of those represented days of work from a Sage or better; they were not handed out frivolously.

It was meant to save her life from a situation of certain death. Breaking it to replace what should have been a free trip home was frustrating at best.

She backed up until she felt the cool air coming off the wall of water behind her. Ziel was staring at the portal, either lost in despair or in contact with his master. Harmony was cycling still, and thank the heavens for that. He even made her Blood Shadow shiver. Ekerinatoth and the turtle were engaged in battle, while the Lowgold scrambled around to recover something in the sand.

According to the truce, none of them were allowed to leave this habitat until all six faction representatives arrived. They were still waiting on the young prince of the Tidewalker sect and the delegate from the Ninecloud Court.

However, without the portal, there was no point in waiting. The treaty had been decided by the higher-ups in each faction, so Shoumei should never violate it on purely her own judgment, but...

She slipped into the dark water.

The Sage of Red Faith would applaud her decision. Even if some supervising Heralds could sense what was happening here, they wouldn't blame her when she wasn't the one to break the pact.

No one followed her, or even noticed her leave. She was free to hunt.

* * *

Ekerinatoth snapped another whip at the retreating dragon-turtle. It cut a satisfying chunk out of his shell, but her opponent didn't turn. Instead, he used that Enforcer technique of his to dash away and follow his human through the bubble of water aura containing the vast ocean of Ghostwater.

She lashed her golden tail in irritation. A black dragon's Remnant could fetch a pile of high-quality scales if you knew the right buyer, and she did. Its shell would have made a decent decoration, or the foundation for a seventh-grade refinery. That was at least a hundred medium-grade scales. And who knew what was left in that box the human was carrying?

He at least had that sapphire construct, which she suspected was connected to Ghostwater. If that were true, the Heralds would pay her in top-quality scales. Her tongue flickered out involuntarily.

She would have had them already, if not for Harmony.

Ekeri glanced back at the young Akura on the boulder. It singed her pride that she had to restrict her techniques to avoid disturbing a human, but pride was nothing before the reality of strength. She had to admit, she'd never personally seen a Truegold sacred artist with as much skill as this Akura elite. She'd known Underlord-level dragons who didn't put as much pressure on her spirit.

She almost drooled at the thought of what riches he must be carrying on him. He'd have a void key on him somewhere, which might even contain treasures from Akura Malice herself. Her master would be pleased with her if she could turn over something that embarrassed the Akura clan. He may even bestow his smile upon her in person.

Ekeri brought herself back to reality. She'd gotten lost in daydreams again, which was a long-time habit of hers.

Drawing one claw down the wall of dark water, she snapped her tail. Immediately, her two attendants—in their plain white robes—appeared behind her. They were only Lowgold, but their Path was designed specifically to serve leaders like her.

“Contact the Herald,” she ordered. “Describe to her the situation, and tell her that the others won't be arriving. The portal has been destroyed. I request permission to begin immediately.”

The two attendants bowed, but before they could do anything, Ekeri's world softened to white.

“Ekerinatoth of the gold bloodline,” a smooth, overwhelming voice echoed in her very soul.

This was not the voice of a Herald.

She fell to her knees in awe, tears hot on her face to hear her name spoken in this voice. “I see you,” he said. “I am with you. You may begin.”

Ekeri took the time for one last bow, wriggling in the sand to show her deference, and then shot off into the water.

She did not dare to delay the orders of the Monarch of Dragons even a second longer.

* * *

Akura Harmony breathed darkness.

This habitat was bright, but endless night pressed in from all directions outside. With concentration, he could filter shadow aura from the water outside and draw it into himself, purifying and refining the shadow in his core.

He was at the peak of Truegold, only a small step from Underlord. His soulspace was filled, and a spark of soulfire waited at the heart of his soul. This sort of ordinary cycling would do very little for him until he broke through to the Lord realm.

But Harmony was not a man who skipped steps. If he had to wait, he would cycle. When he had a moment free, he would train. When he finished training, he would train some more.

There were others of his relatives that were closer to becoming Akura Malice's heir than he was, but they were generations older than Harmony. And they might decide to ascend, to wherever it was that Sages and Heralds went instead of staying and becoming Monarchs.

Harmony intended to face that choice himself one day. And to get there, he couldn't waste a single breath.

These others had disrupted him with their noise, so he had struck out at them. That was as far as he allowed them to occupy his attention. He hadn’t even bothered to reach out his spiritual perception and scan them; it would be too much of a distraction from his cycling.

His grand-aunt's voice echoed inside him, though it sounded younger than his own.

“Begin,” the Sage of the Silver Heart ordered him.

Without a second's hesitation, Harmony opened his eyes and stood, marching into the darkness. Even Ziel of the Wasteland had departed already, so he was the last to leave. That did not bother him.

Only the Akura family knew about the true prize at the heart of Ghostwater. While he feasted, the others would fight over scraps.

He had no rivals here.

* * *

Eithan kept his smile on for the Imperial clerk, trying not to show the woman his irritation.

“I don't want to inconvenience His Imperial Majesty, of course,” he said. “That's why I'm doing it this way. He requested that I not show up in his chambers anymore without an audience, so I'm requesting an audience.”

The clerk sniffed. A Truegold woman of seventy, she reminded him of a taller Fisher Gesha; her gray hair was pulled up into a bun, and she looked like she was strict on her grandchildren.

She sat behind a desk in the Imperial palace in Blackflame City, inside an unassuming office that would have looked more at home in one of the Arelius family's administrative centers. As an Underlord, he was allowed into the palace uninvited, but he was still supposed to request an audience with the Emperor.

He had expected this part of the process to be simple.

“During this time of emergency, all Underlords are expected to contribute to the defense of the Empire. The Emperor will not see any Underlords unless they have information contributing to the emergency effort, or unless they represent the interests of a major family or clan.” She looked him up and down. “You are no longer the Patriarch of the Arelius family, so you do not have the standing to make such a request.”

Eithan had known this would cause him no end of trouble. Cassias and his father had taken the title of Patriarch away from him in order to bring him to heel. When the threat of Redmoon Hall was behind them, he would have to make his irritation abundantly clear.

He calmed himself, focusing on the cycle of his madra. “Ah, I see the confusion. I have information that is vital to the fight against Redmoon Hall. But it is very sensitive. I'm afraid I can only speak to the Emperor himself.”

She narrowed her eyes. “She said you'd say that.”

He could have asked who she meant, but he had a good guess. Eithan turned, calling out to the hallway. “By she, I'm guessing she means you.”

There was a moment of hesitation as Naru Saeya struggled with herself in the hall. After a few seconds, she straightened her spine and walked straight up to the door.

The Emperor's younger sister was a famous beauty, and she bristled with barely contained energy. Her wings were folded behind her back, and she wore a fan of peacock feathers over one ear.

Saeya marched up to Eithan without another moment of hesitation. “If you really have information, you can give it to me. I'll take it to His Imperial Majesty.”

He gave her a deep bow, complete with a flourish of his outer robe. “Your generosity moves my spirit, but I'm afraid I can speak only to your brother.”

She pushed the heel of her hand against her forehead as though struggling with a headache. “I've been in the city for no more than a day, and I'm back out to the battlefield tomorrow. While I've been here, I've dealt with emergency requests from every sect, school, and family in the Empire. My patience is long dead. If you don't want me to kick you from here to the Trackless Sea, then tell me what you want.”

“I want a spot in the Skysworn,” he said immediately. “I have two promising students that I believe can become Underlords for our Empire, and I'm hoping to scoop up a third. They're gaining some experience as part of the Skysworn, but I have to be there to guide them personally.”

She lowered her hand, giving him a puzzled look. “You'll never take my uncle's place.”

“Surely the Skysworn could use a second Underlord who isn't in command. Especially now.”

Saeya chewed on that for a moment. She started to turn, then she shook her head, then she threw up her hands, then she folded them again. It was like watching two women have a debate in one body.

In the end, she gave a frustrated sigh. “Fine, listen. Here's what I'll do. After you help me hunt down the last Underlord emissaries, I'll get you in to see my brother.”

“Or I could slip in there myself,” Eithan countered.

“You're fighting one way or the other. You know he's just going to tell you to get back out there. Do it, make yourself look good, and he'll listen to you.”

That made some sense. It was a large part of the reason why he'd tried to get an audience instead of popping up in the Emperor's home; he needed to stay on Naru Huan's good side.

Eithan turned and saluted the Imperial clerk with both fists pressed together. “Excuse me, madam. It seems that I will no longer need your assistance.”

She sniffed at him and turned back to her work.

He gestured for Naru Saeya to lead the way out; not only was it polite, but he couldn't push past her without shoving her wings out of the way.

“We'll be taking the fight to them,” Saeya said eagerly, wings trembling. “We might be able to rid ourselves of them for good.”

That reminded Eithan of an idea he'd been toying with for the last few weeks. His smile widened. “I would like to make a quick stop first.”

4

Lindon burst through the next bubble, shivering and gasping for air. Spots of color blinded him as his lungs heaved. Another second, and he would have been breathing water.

Little Blue trembled on his shoulder. There were things in the water. Long, serpentine creatures with patches of glowing blue running down their sides. He had thought they were schools of fish from far away.

At least no one had followed them. He’d kept his perception behind him the whole way, and he hadn’t sensed anyone behind him. No one except those massive spotted serpents. He shuddered again.

Now his Blackflame core was all but useless, and his madra channels felt like sunburned skin that he had rubbed with sandpaper. He desperately wanted Little Blue to soothe him, but when she raised a hand to try, he stopped her.

She was weak, and her powers were needed elsewhere.

Orthos had stumbled out of the water after him, the light spilling from his cracked shell dim and weak. The instant he emerged onto dry land, his eyes rolled up into his skull and he collapsed.

Lindon dropped his box, carrying the Sylvan Riverseed over to him. She touched him, sending her soothing power into his channels; Lindon felt it through his connection to Orthos. He couldn’t tell if it made a difference.

Limbs and spirit trembling with exhaustion, Lindon took his first look around at their new bubble. It didn’t take him long.

All he could see was a forest of tall, drifting grass. He called it “grass” because he imagined this was what grass would look like if he were the size of an ant. Each blade was dark green and rose to the height of a tree. They swayed in an invisible ocean current, as though they were still submerged in water. There was plenty of room between each stalk, so Lindon could see some distance away, but all he saw were more plants.

Compared to the entrance, this place was dim and shadowed. Most of the light came from yellow discs rising in bunches from the sand. He thought they were scripted rune-lights at first, but upon closer inspection they looked more like naturally glowing plants. Surrounded by tree-sized stalks, the illumination cast a maze of drifting, dancing shadows.

A blue glow passed over the sand like a brief flash of starlight, and Lindon looked up. In the dark water overhead, a train of blue lights slid lazily past. It looked like a serpent constellation come to life, and Lindon shuddered, scooting farther from the wall of water. If the bubble hadn’t stopped him from entering, he had no reason to think it would stop one of these massive snakes.

Little Blue chimed in his ear from her spot on his shoulder, and he turned to Orthos. His spirit was still weak, his breathing unsteady. Before anything else, he needed to get Orthos some help.

He had to cycle pure madra to his limbs just for the strength to stand up, and his Bloodforged Iron body was hard at work repairing scrapes and bruises he never knew he had. He had the Eye of the Deep, so he just needed to find a door. Behind that door would be something that could help him. He didn’t know what exactly that would be, but he had to believe it.

The forest of sand and waving sea-grass didn’t suggest any direction, but it stood to reason that any exit would be against a wall. If it turns out there was no wall, and he was trapped in a bubble at the bottom of an endless ocean world…well, then he would have to wait for the others to find a way to save him. Yerin, at least, wouldn’t leave him here.

As long as there was a way for them to find him, with the portal destroyed and the key on this side. That was the sticking point.

Lindon set off walking away from the wall of water, carrying his boxed possessions in his arm of flesh. He didn’t have the madra to spare to run it through his Remnant arm and prevent it from passing through the box, so he just carried it one-handed.

Lindon was counting on his footprints in the sand to lead him back to Orthos. He would prefer to take the sacred turtle with him, but Orthos’ bulk made that easier said than done. He had to scout the way first, and just hope that Orthos could hang on until he made it back.

Dread and panic pushed in like darkness outside the bubble, but he pushed it aside and reached into his box for the Eye of the Deep.

The round, cut gem was slightly larger than his fist. It felt warm in his hand, although that could have just been in contrast to the icy chill of the water outside. He glanced from side to side as he walked, trying not to miss any movement in the drifting shadows of the sea-stalks, but a thread of his madra plunged into the sapphire.

The crack in the sapphire leaked another breath of dissipating madra. The internal construct was damaged. He needed to seal the breach in the sapphire or transfer the construct before it lost structure entirely; every puff of escaping madra was another piece of the construct lost. It would dissolve eventually, but it would be useless to him long before that.

This time, the construct activated. A spiritual tug pulled his attention in one direction, where a spark of blue light only he could see hovered over the stalks. He wasn’t sure exactly what the construct was showing him—he wasn’t trained in the use of this construct, so he could be headed for an exit, a broom closet, or anything in between.

But it was something. He returned the Eye to the box and trudged on.

Lindon marched with eyes open and senses stretched. He kept his spiritual perception light and close, to avoid accidentally brushing across any enemies, but he couldn’t march forward blind. The air smelled like fish and salt water with a few hints of flowers, as though he trucked through a seaside garden.

There were no prints on the sand besides his. He hoped he was alone down here; Ghostwater was supposed to have been abandoned until recently, after all.

A sudden, harsh noise echoed in the distance, like a whispered scream.

He froze, weighing the risk of extending his spiritual perception. Whatever it was, it wasn’t close, so he cautiously took another step forward.

Blue light flowed around the shadow of a nearby stalk.

He expected another of those luminous serpents in the dark water overhead, but his spiritual senses screamed a warning and his eyes snapped up.

From behind the nearest blade of grass emerged a fish the size of a bear. It swam through the air as though through water, and its fanged mouth couldn’t close fully over its needle-sharp teeth.

A quick flash of his Copper sight showed him blue-green aura gathered into a cushion beneath its fins.

It was swimming through water aura.

The fish’s silver scales rippled as it swam by only two feet from Lindon’s head. His scalp tensed at the discomfort of having those teeth so close, but the creature gave no sign that it had seen or sensed him. It drifted along, vanishing into the towering grass.

Back in the direction Lindon had come from.

Carefully, with no idea whether these things even had ears, Lindon turned and crept after it. He hated to be the kind of idiot who would follow a tiger back into the jungle, and he was haunted by images of the fish flashing out from behind a stalk in front of him with jaws open, but it might be headed for Orthos.

After a moment, that harsh shriek came again, but it was much closer this time. It stabbed his ears, followed by a shuffling sound like something digging through sand.

Lindon ran.

He hadn’t traveled far; it only took him a few seconds to retrace his footsteps to the gap in the stalks where he’d left Orthos.

The fish was eating him. It had the turtle’s shell in its massive fangs, and was working itself back and forth, trying to chew through the hard plate. Orthos’ body shook like a rag seized by a dog, spraying sand everywhere. The fish wasn’t getting anywhere with the shell, but it quickly bit another spot, and Orthos’ body turned a little more. Getting that much closer to exposing his underbelly.

The last of his Blackflame madra raged through Lindon’s channels.

His power gathered in his palm of flesh, a ball of dark, liquid fire. It would take a breath or two to condense enough that he could use it as a Striker technique, but as soon as Lindon began gathering power, the fish released Orthos. It spun around, baring its fangs and hissing at him.

Then, with an abrupt silver flash, it struck.

Lindon couldn’t split his concentration to ignite the Burning Cloak, but his right hand came up without his order. The skeletal, bone-white arm flew up eagerly, seizing the creature.

Slightly pointed nails met the creature’s scales and clawed for a grip. Madra flowed through the sacred beast, so his Remnant arm could seize it easily, but it wasn’t satisfied with only a handful.

His arm held the fish in place for an instant, dragging it to a halt, though the force of its resistance dragged Lindon through the sand. He almost lost his hold on the dragon’s breath technique, but he didn’t have the mental energy to wrestle his arm for control.

At last, black fire lanced out from his left hand. The bar of dark flame speared the fish through the middle, burning it from the inside out, and emerged from the fish's tail in a spray of smoke and burning chunks.

The madra continued at an upward slant, eventually hitting the water overhead and vanishing. His right hand drew on the handful of madra like a mosquito drawing blood, and it seemed to grow a little brighter. A brief impression of sated hunger passed through his spirit as the madra dissolved to essence.

A chorus of shrieks, identical to the one the fish had let out, rose in the distance.

Drawing from his pure core, which still shone bright as the moon in his spirit, he funneled power through his body and tucked the box under his left arm. Madra flowed through his replacement arm as well, and he seized the underside of Orthos’ shell in his white grip.

Box under his arm, Little Blue on his shoulder, Lindon dragged Orthos forward step by step.

Silver-blue light rose behind him, casting more waving shadows as he passed through the stalks, but he concentrated on pushing ahead. He didn’t have a hand to spare to pull out the Eye of the Deep, but the general direction was straight away from the wall where he’d entered.

Which was perfect, because a sacred fish’s Remnant was rising back there.

He pushed himself faster, though it felt like his knees would buckle with every step. This was where he needed the Burning Cloak, but not only had he totally exhausted his Path of Black Flame, his madra channels were at risk of serious injury if he kept straining them. Pure madra was far easier on the channels than Blackflame was.

He needed Little Blue’s help to recover. Better yet, he needed a spiritual healing elixir, a few good meals, and three days of rest.

More fish, identical to the first, darted out of the forest of stalks. The Remnant was nowhere to be seen, but the others circled him curiously one time. Then, with the single-minded unity of a school, they all turned to Lindon.

He extended his spiritual perception over them. The fish felt like furious whirlpools, and the Remnant like a raging river. But there was something else moving toward him, something that emerged from the darkness like dawn breaking.

Before the fish struck at him, a golden whip emerged and struck it on the scales, leaving a scorch-mark on silver.

Deafening shrieks rose once more, and the three fish turned in a fury on the source of that heat. Lindon didn't stay to watch the sacred beasts fight the dragon-girl; as soon as they moved to attack, he hauled Orthos away.

He'd never developed a full-body Enforcer technique for his Path of Twin Stars, so he had no way to efficiently cycle it to his limbs for strength. He was wasting madra like this, but without the power of his spirit, he would never have been able to haul Orthos' weight. Sweat beaded on his forehead, his elbow trembled where it met the white of his Remnant arm, and every breath was a labor.

Still, he pushed himself faster. She had chased him. He was certain she hadn't followed him immediately after he left, because she hadn't bothered to veil her spirit. He would have felt her approach.

Which meant she had waited before chasing him. Why? He wasn't sure why she cared to chase him at all, but if she did, why give him a head start? Fair play?

Her voice rose to match the shrieking fish, shouting insults at them and promising punishment for their insolence. She had started mocking a group of fish.

Well, considering that they gave off the same pressure as a Highgold and they were undoubtedly sacred beasts, maybe they were intelligent enough to understand her. Regardless, he could only hope they stalled her long enough for him to reach his destination.

And that this destination would actually save him.

Every step in the sand cost him another fraction of his pure madra, and Orthos' presence in his mind was a constant, dark well of weakness and suffering. Every time Lindon pulled on his shell, he worried that he would soon be pulling a corpse.

But his exhaustion didn't leave him much room to worry about others. Soon, his vision had narrowed to nothing but that point on the horizon, and his mind was filled with nothing but the next step.

He almost didn't realize when he arrived.

A huge shadow washed over him, and he jerked his sight up, certain for a moment that a fish was descending on him from overhead.

A rocky tower rose from the sand, slightly taller than the waving weeds all around. Wearily, Lindon dropped the box in his left hand and the giant turtle in his right. He fumbled for the latch, but his white hand passed right through it again. This time, he focused, cycling pure madra through his hand and flipping the box open.

After another moment of exhausted flailing, he came up with the fist-sized sapphire. When he poured another trickle of madra into it, he realized exactly how low he was; the construct drew out fully half of the power he had remaining.

It pointed him to the base of the stone tower.

Though he called it a tower, it looked natural, like a rough pillar that had been left standing after a river eroded the rest of a cliff over centuries. Only one aspect of its construction seemed artificial: a bowl-sized scoop out of the rock surrounded by delicate lines and barely perceptible script.

The Eye of the Deep showed him a blue light hovering over that indentation. It took a moment for his exhausted thoughts to click together, but once they did, he recognized the bowl for what it was: a keyhole.

Lindon stumbled forward, dropped to his knees, and pushed the sapphire inside.

With a sound like milk slurped through a straw, the rock melted. Even the keyhole disappeared, leaving him holding the Eye and staring into a dark tunnel.

Dry wind whispered out, carrying the scent of dust...and a hint of coppery blood and something sickly sweet, like a whiff of garbage. The tunnel extended down, beneath the level of the sand outside, and the walls were covered in long scratches. Another keyhole rested in the tunnel wall to the right.

The wind from the tunnel whistled, and Lindon realized that he could no longer hear the fish shrieking.

A bland, unremarkable-looking man in pressed white appeared out of nowhere to Lindon's right, hands folded behind his back. He looked down on Lindon and spoke in a quiet voice.

“Shall I detain him?”

With the last of his madra, Lindon pushed Orthos down into the tunnel. He could barely fit, and he slid a few feet down the smooth, sloped floor before coming to a halt. His consciousness didn't flicker.

“I think we have a moment to bargain,” the golden dragon-girl said airily, stepping from among the stalks. A disc of shining gold liquid floated behind her head like a halo, she held a whip of the same madra in one hand, and her footsteps hissed on the sand. Some sort of Enforcer technique, he was certain.

There were long, pale scratches across her golden scales. The fish must have tried to bite her, but failed to penetrate her hide.

She pointed with one claw to the jewel. “Give that to me, and you may live. Give me your box without complaint, and you may follow me as my attendant until I withdraw.”

Lindon tucked the box under his left arm and gripped the Eye of the Deep in his right. He had to hope his Remnant arm didn't decide to disobey him now. “I apologize, honored lady. Perhaps once I have had a night's sleep.”

Then he jumped backward, slamming the Eye into the keyhole on the wall.

As he'd hoped, the wall reformed immediately.

But not before gold madra sprayed into the tunnel, filling it with burning heat. He flinched back, but then the wall finished forming, blocking the rest of her attack.

All sound cut off.

He turned back to the tunnel, with the only light coming from the dim red glow of Orthos' shell. He fell to the ground, catching his breath, letting the box slide down the slanting floor until it came to a rest against Orthos' side.

He crawled over to it, leaning against Orthos' leg. If he touched the wrong part of the sacred beast's shell, his hair might catch on fire. Orthos could control that while he was awake, but not sleeping.

Propped against the turtle's leathery skin, he looked into Little Blue's face. She seemed concerned, reaching for his forehead.

“Just need a minute,” he said. “Just a minute.” He leaned back, breathing heavily, trying to soothe his spirit.

He didn’t notice when he slipped into sleep.

5

Lindon woke some time later to a bright light glaring into his eyes.

He shot up, sending shocks of pain shooting through his joints. His breath came in uneven, painful gasps, but he pushed it into rhythm so his madra would move.

They’re coming for me, he thought. I can’t be here. I have to run. He felt another spike of panic. Where’s Yerin?

He spun, an Empty Palm gathering in his left hand. Over Orthos' bulk, he could see nothing but a sloping hallway lit in blue, long scratches leading down the wall. He turned back the other way: an empty stone wall. His ragged breathing echoed in the tight hallway.

When his mind woke up, he remembered where he was. Alone, trapped in a Monarch’s pocket world.

Slowly, he let the aches in his body drag him back down. His throat was dry and painful, his ribs bruised, his back aching. He covered his eyes with trembling fingers and looked between them at the ceiling.

The circle of runes glowed blue, bathing them in a watery light. He should stand up and check out his surroundings. He could sense that Orthos was still alive, but still unconscious and weak. They could all still be in danger.

Breathe. He had to keep his madra under control.

As a matter of habit, he focused on the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel cycling technique. It dug at his spirit like he was trying to drill a hole in his own heart, and it felt like metal bands were tightening around his lungs, but it gave him something steady to focus on.

He inhaled and exhaled in revolution after revolution until he could make himself believe that the fight was over. The enemies were gone.

Now that he had a moment to think, the memories closed over him like the icy cold ocean of Ghostwater.

Yerin's scarred face as she tried to reach the portal to save him.

Renfei, poised to speak, as a red line grew down from the top of her head.

His Thousand-Mile Cloud dissipating to mist.

The two halves of Little Blue's habitat lying in the sand.

Renfei's death hit him harder than he'd expected. He hadn't known her well, trusted her, or particularly liked her. But seeing her killed in front of him, so casually...so easily...

She was a Truegold in full armor, and she went from alive to dead in a moment. She didn't deserve that.

And that could have been him, just as easily. More so.

Then there was Yerin.

What was happening to her on the outside? It couldn't be worse than what was happening in here, so at least she'd been spared that, but he couldn't help but run through the possibilities. Without Renfei, Bai Rou could have decided he'd be better off without his apprentices. Mercy and Yerin wouldn't be a match for him, even together; Mercy was only a Lowgold. He could kill them both and say they'd all died with Renfei, and Eithan was the only one who would ask any questions.

Ever since losing his arm, he would sometimes wake up and forget. He'd try to reach for something and see the skeletal stretch of white madra and the sight would strike him as wrong. That wasn't his arm. It would take his brain a moment to piece together the truth.

Separating from Yerin felt the same. Looking down the hallway without seeing her was like glancing down and seeing his arm missing.

A worried chirp shook him out of his cycling trance, and he pulled his hand away from his face. He was surprised to discover his fingers were damp, and hurriedly swiped at his eyes. His father would have given him a lecture for crying in public. There was no one here to see, but it was hard to shake the old fear that he'd be caught in a shameful position.

Little Blue was barely visible against the ground, looking up at him in the azure light. She was pale and thinly spread; he could see right through her.

Only then did he realize that his soul felt much better. He still had almost nothing in either core, but his channels had been scrubbed and cleansed. While he wouldn't want to fight, at least he wouldn't risk permanent spiritual injury with a single Empty Palm.

Carefully, Lindon lowered himself back down to the floor and held out his palm to Little Blue. “Gratitude,” he said, as she clambered up to his wrist.

She'd done what she could for him. And Orthos would not recover on his own.

Yerin might not be with him, but he wasn't alone. These two needed his help.

“Are you hungry?” he asked softly. The Sylvan Riverseed let out a long, slow tone that sounded like a flute.

“I'll find us something,” Lindon said, glancing over at Orthos. “This place was built by a Monarch. There are treasures in here we can't imagine.”

His voice echoed back to him in the corridor.

He picked up the Eye, but pouring madra into it didn't do anything useful. It only pointed him to distant locations; too far away to be any help. Still, he carried it with him just in case. The rest of his belongings stayed with Orthos.

He felt naked without the pack on his back, but the almost imperceptible weight of Little Blue on his shoulder gave him comfort.

Together, they walked down the sloping hallway.

Very quickly, he discovered that the corridor was not empty. There were keyholes like the one at the entrance every few yards. His first few discoveries were causes for excitement; if these were all exits, then he would be able to leave without risking an encounter with the dragon-girl or the fanged fish.

Excitement gave way to disappointment every time. The first time the wall melted away around his gemstone, it revealed a closet packed with buckets. Many of the metal buckets were rusted through, the wooden ones rotted away. There was a puddle of something that smelled metallic in one corner.

The next door was empty except for a pile of shredded and half-burned paper.

The next was a broad storage room with hooks dangling from the ceiling. That was all; just empty hooks.

The fourth contained bedframes. No beds, only frames.

He found a food closet with all the packages torn open, their contents devoured. There was a massive, empty warehouse that looked like it was sized to hold whole ships. But no matter how he explored it, he found no other exit.

He'd been exploring for what he guessed to be an hour by the time he spotted the end of the hall. It had stopped sloping downward long before, so now it was just a straight hallway with a flat wall at the end.

It was distant enough that he guessed there were sixteen more doors between him and the end. He had been trying to visit every door in order, so that he could easily keep track of which ones he'd checked and hadn't, but so far he'd found only garbage and rot.

By this point, his thirst weighed on every thought, his stomach growled, and even this short walk had left his legs soft and trembling. If he couldn't find anything in these rooms, he'd have to return to Orthos and go out the front door. If the gold dragon-girl was still waiting for them...well, he'd have to risk that.

With time pressing on him, he skipped the last rows of doors and moved right to the one at the end of the hall. If there was any one door that might have something in it, this would be the one.

He opened the door, and purple light radiated out, clashing with the endless blue.

The light in the room came from a knee-high well of worked stone, which overflowed with some glowing purple liquid. It spilled over the edges, pooling on the floor, trickling away into grates. As Lindon watched, a single drop of the purple liquid fell from overhead and landed in the pool with an audible plop.

The room wasn't large, perhaps ten paces to a side, with floor-to-ceiling shelves against each of the three walls. All of the shelves were packed with piles of...junk.

There was a chaos in the air that he felt in his spirit, a mix of brief impressions with conflicting purposes. Random light flashed from one junk-pile or another, giving off colored sparks.

As he moved closer, he saw that some of the piles were metal, others wood. Still others were smooth and thin, as though made out of eggshell. Most of the surfaces had script-circles inscribed in them: mostly to contain madra, but others for a dozen other functions. Only when he turned one over and exposed a last trickle of madra fading to essence did he realize what he was looking at.

Constructs. This was the storage room for constructs.

Their spirits had all faded away over the years since Ghostwater had been closed, except for a few bits of madra preserved by scripts. The fully spiritual constructs would have vanished entirely, leaving only the physical vessels of those bound to some material.

Excitement warred with disappointment. He felt like he should be looking at shelves of treasure, the key to his escape from Ghostwater...but realistically, it had been too long. Some functions of these constructs might be intact, but they wouldn't last long and probably would accomplish nothing like their intended function.

As though to prove it to himself, he flipped over one of the most complete constructs, in which he could sense flickers of madra that reminded him of the Path of the White Fox. With a tendril of pure madra, he activated its script.

“...first success of its kind,” a cold, flat voice emerged from the construct. “There were thirty-one other elixirs refined in the Life Well habitat. Which one would you like to see?”

A beam of light emerged as though to project an illusion in light, but it showed only a meaningless jumble of images.

Lindon grabbed the somewhat functioning construct—if nothing else, he could perhaps learn from its construction—and turned instead to the well.

The liquid inside, which he was careful to avoid with his shoes, was not opaque, as he had first imagined. It was clear water, tinted purple, and it radiated a spiritual sense of focus and determination. Every minute or so, another droplet fell from the ceiling into the pool, which had overflowed over the years and ran down the sides, draining into grates in the floor.

A few dark blobs at the bottom of the pool told him that some pieces of a construct must have fallen from the high shelf overhead. Bracing himself, he opened his Copper sight. The well was a dense concentration of shifting violet images that he associated with dream aura, though it had an equal concentration of blue-green water aura. The two powers flowed harmoniously, and from what he could tell, the water aura might even be stronger.

He closed his sight, thinking. Was this involved in the Soulsmithing process for these constructs, somehow? The one he had examined definitely had a dream aspect to it.

“Oh, don't worry about the water,” a bright male voice echoed through the room. “It's just water.” Lindon wasn't startled by the sudden noise—one of the constructs must have activated because of his presence.

“At least, chemically,” the voice went on. “I know it's glowing and purple, and it would be very reasonable to think 'I will not drink this, because it will melt my insides,' but I promise you, it will not melt your insides. Not quickly, at any rate. Technically, everything erodes your insides slowly, doesn't it? Worth thinking about.”

None of the constructs on the shelves were giving off any lights, so Lindon examined the one in his hand. Still dark.

The voice piped up again. “You should give it a drink. The master used to reward workers with a sip from the Dream Well when they had pleased him. Or when they, uh, needed to complete a project and didn't have time for sleep. Or when they had angered him, and he wanted them to be fully aware of the punishment. Total focus, that's what it gives you.”

Lindon turned his attention to the well.

A cracked and rusted metal ball sat at the bottom of the liquid, in the middle of the other garbage he had dismissed earlier. With every word, light flashed from the cracks in the iron.

Lindon rummaged on a nearby shelf until he came up with a couple of arm-length rods that had once been part of a mechanical construct.

“You're ignoring me, that's what you're doing. A bit rude, isn't it? I mean, don't you think? First person I've spoken to in...however long I've been down here, and I was hoping for a better conversationalist. How long have I been down here, do you think?”

Using the two rods, Lindon seized the metal ball and carefully raised it out of the pool.

“Oh! Wait, what are you doing! Careful, there! Careful! If you drop me, I will take...revenge...on you. Such sweet revenge, like...hitting all your...toenails.”

Lindon lowered the flashing ball to the ground. Now that it was out of the well, he could see that the light coming from the construct was the same purple shade. Now, had the liquid taken on that color because of the construct, or vice-versa?

“Oh wow, I can see so much more from out here. Thank you, giant stranger. Giant...glaring stranger. Are you angry at me, or do you scowl at everyone you meet?”

Lindon almost dropped the ball. “...are you talking to me?”

Everything else had sounded like a conversation, sure. But constructs only said what you told them to say. All of those responses had been recorded illusions, scripted to be played under the proper conditions.

The ball shifted in his hands, as though looking around for other people. “Nobody else in here has much to say, really. Although I suppose I was like that before, too, wasn't I? That's embarrassing.”

Lindon had to ask something that couldn't possibly be a predetermined response. “What is your favorite flavor of pie?”

“...I'm not a pie-construct, am I? What I know about pie could fill a...a little...the tiny scoop you use to eat soup.”

“A spoon?”

“No, that can't be right. That's ridiculous. Spoon. Get out of here with your nonsense words.”

Lindon knelt down next to the construct on the ground, staring intently through the cracks in the metal, aching to pick it up but still afraid of touching the purple liquid. “Are you a Remnant that they bound like a construct?”

“I am the Keeper of the Dream Well!” the construct intoned from within its rusty shell. “I was built right here. Well, not right here in this room, obviously, but down the hall a little. A guide-construct, that was me, made to give people the rules of the Dream Well. 'Congratulations, favored servant! You have been chosen to drink from the Dream Well, so that your labor might serve the great work!' That sort of thing. That's why I have such a pleasant voice.”

“But you're...thinking,” Lindon said, still peering into the construct. In the purple sparks making up the construct's true body, he saw what looked like the spokes of a slowly turning wheel.

“That's a relatively new development. Some time after I fell in the well, I realized I could put words together in new combinations. Then I realized I'd realized it, and that was the beginning for me, wasn't it? The 'realization cascade,' that's what I call it! I don't call it that.”

Incredible. Was it only long exposure to this Dream Well that brought the construct to life, or did this reflect the advanced craft of a Soulsmith skilled beyond his imagination?

“Do you have a name?” Lindon braced himself and seized the rusted construct, cycling madra to resist the effects of whatever the dream-water did.

Nothing. It felt like ordinary wet metal against his fingertips.

“Before landing in the well, I was basically a big ball of memories with the ability to produce sound, so I didn't have much in the way of casual conversation. But they did call me things, let me see if I can remember...garbage, that was a common one. Defect. Junk. Chaff. Waste. By-product of a failed experiment. Failure, that was another favorite. Dregs. Slag. Scum. Refuse. Dross. These aren't very flattering, are they?”

“Pleased to meet you, Dross,” Lindon said, dipping his head slightly to the construct. “I am Wei Shi Lindon.”

“Oh, you have a name too! That's exciting. This is the first real conversation I've ever had. And I am loving it, by the way. Less...intellectually stimulating than I had imagined. I was picturing myself debating with great minds, you know, but this is still exciting! I'm still excited to be talking with...you.”

“Forgiveness, but a minute ago you didn’t know what a spoon was.”

“Yes, but I know how to say 'intellectually stimulating' and 'refuse.' Let’s call it a tie.”

Lindon nodded to the glowing purple water. “You changed after falling in the well?”

“It's designed to boost focus and eliminate mental fatigue in humans,” Dross said. “One sip, and you'll be able to work all night at peak efficiency! That was part of my pitch for the water, back in my prime.”

Lindon moved a little closer to the pool. “Well then, I think I might try a taste.” There were elixirs that refined the mind, and they were expensive.

“If anything, it will make you more alert and focused. Might even make you smarter, which ah...no offense, but...I mean, you should just take a drink. Let's leave it at that. Vials are over there on the shelf to your right.”

Lindon found a rack of thumb-sized metal vials, capped in a substance that felt like wax. He pulled off the cap and dipped it into the well; a small amount splashed on his thumb, but it still felt like normal water.

He still had his misgivings about drinking a strange purple liquid, but he felt nothing sinister from the well. And it was obviously here for a reason; to water the workers made sense. If others had drunk from this, he could as well.

Also, the thirst was starting to get painful.

He tipped his head back and swallowed the mouthful of water from the flask. He expected a stronger flavor, somehow, or some rush of power, but it was just water. It had the mineral taste of spring-water.

An instant later, the effects kicked in.

His thoughts sharpened. The mental haze of exhaustion was swept away. The world around him was clear, like his eyes had been cleaned out, and he took a breath of air like it was his first.

Little Blue scurried up his back and onto his head, leaning over to give him a pat on the forehead.

“I told you,” the construct said. “Invigorating power to keep those motivated movers moving and those tired thinkers thinking. That was one of the mottos I was working on for the Dream Well, what do you think?”

“It's like a full night's sleep in a bottle,” Lindon said, staring into the empty vial.

“Oh, that’s a good motto for the well. I’ll use that. The water also helps you focus when you're distracted, approach complex problems with new inspiration, or you can freeze it into little bits of ice and use it to make an ordinary drink glow purple.”

Lindon filled the vial.

“Now, it is incredibly valuable. I'll have to check and see if you have authorization to take a second...oh, you're drinking it. You're already drinking it.”

The second draught didn't seem to have much effect. It was mostly like taking a refreshing drink of ordinary water.

“I didn't get much from that. How long before it will have the same effect again?”

“However long it takes a human to get tired, I guess. When you're already focused and alert, I'm not sure what else it could possibly do for you. That's a thousand high-grade scales per dose, by the way. In case you were wondering.”

There was a whole shelf of similar vials, and Lindon was already filling them. When he looked at the purple rivulets on the floor, it physically pained him to imagine how much of this precious elixir had been wasted down drainage grates over the years.

“Has no one else been down here?” He couldn't imagine that other sacred artists would leave a treasure like this alone.

“I'm not sure, to be honest. No one's been in here since I've woken up, but it's not as though I could see much from inside the well.”

Lindon stoppered a vial and grabbed the rusty ball. “You’re a memory construct, aren’t you?”

“You’re carrying me. What’s happening? This is a rush! But maybe slow it down.”

Lindon took him to a shelf where a half-crushed wooden box waited. “Do you know what sort of construct this was?”

“It stored visual records from the rest of the facility. Most of these did, actually.”

Lindon extended his spiritual perception through the box. It felt like Dross, so this should work. “Do you think you could read these fragments?” When he’d inspected the room before, none of the constructs had been intact enough for him to use. Maybe Dross could get something out of them.

“I’m not, ah…well, you’re putting me on the spot, aren’t you? I could give it a try, but I don’t perform well under pressure.”

There was one intact circle on the remaining half of the wood, and Lindon scratched it with his thumb. Instantly, a ribbon of half-formed images drifted up through the box in a cloud, dissipating into the air.

“Wait, we’re starting? Put me over it, quick! Quick!”

When Lindon held Dross over the smoke-like memories, the construct made a gasping sound. Instead of blowing apart, the images drifted into the cracks in the construct shell.

Lindon pressed his eye against one of the cracks, fascinated. As the images soaked into the purple light that made up Dross, they merged into him. New lines formed in the purple cloud, and new lights sparkled inside the construct.

“Mmmmmm ah, that goes down smooth.”

“Does it feel like you’re eating it?” Many constructs of similar function could merge with one another, but it had never occurred to him to wonder what it might feel like for the construct.

“Didn't have too many memories left in that one, actually, so there was nothing too special about it. It's like when humans share blood.”

“Humans don't share blood.”

“They should. Anyway, I now have access to some facility history records. After Ghostwater was sealed away, some Heralds came and looted the place. They had a few sips from the well, but it didn't matter to them. They're Heralds, aren't they? Probably don't ever sleep anyway. Oh, I see it now! One of them is picking me up! Hello, me!”

He was silent for a moment, then added, “Well, that's a bit disappointing, isn't it? He tossed me into the well. Ouch. Rejection. Never feels good. I wasn't me back then, but even so: painful.”

“When did you wake up?”

“Take me over to the one that looks like a...shelled pinching beast.” Lindon carried Dross over to the crab-shaped construct he'd set aside before, and once again Dross inhaled the remainder of the construct.

Again, Lindon watched Dross' internal mechanisms grow more complex as he breathed in the dream madra.

His mother would have given five years of her life to see this.

“...fifty-six years,” Dross said quietly. “That's how long I've been stuck in that well alone. Wow. Best I can tell, I've only been myself for the last five or so. That's the oldest memory I have.”

Lindon looked over the shelves upon shelves of other memory constructs. “These all have information about Ghostwater?”

“Sure they did, once. This habitat was the headquarters of a project meant to design and improve memory constructs to accomplish the grand work. Never succeeded. Turns out, when they put a memory construct into your head, you just end up with a better memory.”

“I'm going to want to hear more about the 'grand work,' Lindon said, staring up at the shelves. “But first, do you have room for more?”

“I think I could grow to like you,” Dross said. “You know, eventually.”

Half an hour later, as they hiked back up the hallway toward Orthos, Dross sighed. “Well, that was disappointing.”

Lindon carried a full rack of twenty-four filled vials in one hand, and a bucket half-full of glowing purple water in the other. He'd found the bucket in one of the abandoned maintenance closets, and the handle was even scripted so that he could carry it in his Remnant hand without having to focus madra to the fingers.

“I mean, I knew I could hold more information, but I have staggered even myself. I feel like I could swallow another whole room full of information. Did you know that a thunder eagle was a bird? Birds fly through the air, not through the water, I don't know if you were aware. This is a fascinating area of study. Why don't you fly?”

Dross' rusted metal ball was tucked into the waist of his robes, while Little Blue sat on his shell. She kept peering down through the cracks, staring at Dross' construct form, though he didn't seem to enjoy it.

“Oh, she's...she's looking in here again. That's embarrassing. Could you...I mean, if you don't mind, could you please stick to yourself? Yes, thank you. No privacy here, I tell you.”

“You were telling me about the grand work,” Lindon prompted, as the ground started to slope upwards.

“The grand work is the whole purpose of Ghostwater, isn't it? Northstrider built this whole pocket world to find a way to enhance his mind. You know, sharpen it up. He had all the power he could handle, so he figured the way forward was to improve his use of that power. Fight smarter, not harder, as they say. There were three branches of research down here. This was where the Soulsmiths tried to develop an advanced memory construct that could take over some of his mental processes. Total failure. Their memory constructs never grew to be anything more.”

“That room was still full of constructs,” Lindon said. He could only imagine what treasures had filled this place before; if only this facility hadn't been looted, it might have been packed to the brim with Soulsmith research materials.

“Yes, well, after the first few Heralds left, they took everything valuable with them. All the advanced memory constructs, as well as the tools and techniques for making them. After that, they decided that this pocket world was still a good place to train their disciples, so every ten years they send some Truegolds in here for training. I learned all this from those security constructs, by the way. They saw more than I would have believed. And while I was stuck in a well! The world is unfair.”

When he reached Orthos, Lindon knelt and placed everything on the ground next to the wooden chest. Reaching behind him, he pulled out the Eye of the Deep, which was still slowly leaking essence from the crack in the gem.

“Aaaaahhh,” Dross said, “now that's a vessel. Pretty to look at, and only one crack! Luxury. Hey you! You in there! Do you even know what a life you have?”

The Eye, of course, didn't respond.

“This is the key to Ghostwater, but it’s losing cohesion. If you will agree, I could link you to this construct. It should help repair damage to the Eye, give you a better vessel, and expand your capabilities.” Lindon hefted the gem in his hand. “Personally, I’d love to see what a self-aware construct could do with greater powers.”

Dross made a thoughtful humming sound. “That's a taller hurdle than just drinking in more information, you know. I'd need to be bound to the gem just like the original construct. Once I am, though, I don't see why I couldn't show you around. Give you the tour. I'd love to see the whole place myself, to be honest. But you'd need to find a Soulsmith to perform the operation.”

Lindon reached into his wooden chest and pulled out the tightly packed bundle of leather. He untied it, unrolling it on the ground. Soulsmith tools hung in pouches and from loops.

“I am a Soulsmith,” he said.

Apprentice, he added, but only in his head.

“Oh, are you? Brilliant, then! Let's do this!”

6

The gates at the front of the black fortress swished open, trailing through sand. Yerin pushed herself to her feet, her empty core making her dizzy.

Bai Rou stomped up to them in his heavy armor. He stayed far enough away that Yerin couldn't reach him. Not that he needed to. She had less fight left in her than a caged rabbit.

Didn't stop her surge of hate and anger at the sight of him. If he hadn't held her back, she wouldn't be out here right now.

Mercy brushed sand from her hair and robes, moving toward the gates. She tripped in the sand, stumbling a few steps forward to the entrance.

An old, balding man in a pressed purple uniform scurried out. When he saw Mercy, he slowed, bowing to her with every step.

“My apologies, Mistress, my apologies.”

Mercy brightened, hurrying up to him. “Old Man Lo! Do you remember me?”

Old Man Lo cringed, dropping to his knees and pressing his forehead to the beach. “I cannot apologize humbly enough, but I am forbidden from answering any of your questions. I can’t be sure what answers might be considered...aiding you.”

The cheer on Mercy's face faded. She looked down. “Oh, that's...that's all right. Don't worry.”

Lo looked like he was about to cry as he stood up. With trembling hands, he brushed himself off, eyes locked on Mercy.

But after a few deep breaths, he'd composed himself and turned to the rest of them. He dismissed Yerin with an up-and-down glance, looking to Bai Rou. “You and your attendant will answer to my mistress. Come.”

Yerin jerked her head to Mercy. “Her?”

Lo acted as though she had not spoken, turning back to the still-open gates.

“Not me,” Mercy said sadly. “We should go in.”

She started walking, but Lo froze. “Ah...please, Mistress, forgive me. Exercise the quality for which your divine mother named you, and have mercy upon me.” He was still facing away from her, which Yerin thought might be considered rude, but he was also trembling. Maybe he was too scared to see her reaction.

“I cannot allow you inside,” he continued. “Giving you shelter, you see.”

Mercy's face contorted for a moment. “I can't even visit?”

“The divine command was...difficult to interpret. We cannot give you assistance, but how could my mere judgment be enough to decide what she would consider assistance? Please spare me and wait out here.”

Mercy slumped, bracing herself with her staff.

Yerin was starting to see a bigger piece of the picture. Mercy's mother, the Monarch who had fought with the Dreadgod, had kicked her out. Without the help of her family.

Seemed cruel. She'd have expected a Monarch to kill a rebellious daughter straight and true, which would be the end of it.

Bai Rou still had not moved, but finally he spoke. “Do you speak for the Akura family?”

Old Man Lo turned to give him a withering stare that plainly said he thought the Skysworn didn't have the brains to rub two sticks together. “The mistress of this castle is Akura Charity, Sage of the Silver Heart. She speaks for the Akura family, your empire of children, and humanity itself. Your hesitation in following her commands will be noted.”

Bai Rou fell to one knee. “I apologize and hurry to obey,” he rumbled.

Lo continued through the gate without a response, but as he did, a gold light grew like a second sunrise. Yerin had already drawn her sword at the feeling of a flame passing overhead, though exhausted as she was, there was little she could do.

The giant golden Thousand-Mile Cloud blocked out the sun, but glowed brightly enough that they didn't see much of a difference. A woman's voice billowed out from its surface.

“We all have questions for the intruders,” the voice said. “Show some respect for our master and let us ask questions together.”

Old Man Lo was so short she could see the top of his balding head, but he looked up at the cloud as though at a noisy bird bothering his meal. He spoke in a normal voice, so he was putting a lot of trust in the other person's ears. “My mistress will disclose all answers after the questioning, as she sees fit.”

He continued walking and Bai Rou followed him.

“You give no consideration for the King of the Sands?” The woman sounded angry now.

“Be content with your scraps, dragon,” Old Man Lo snapped, spitting the last word. “You can thank your grandfather that my mistress hasn't torn you from the sky already.”

There was a series of roars from the cloud that were even louder than the woman’s voice, and she spoke through a mouthful of anger. “I will remember this.”

Lo snorted and released the veil around his spirit. For an instant, an overwhelming pressure pushed down on the spirits of all around him before he veiled himself again.

Yerin caught her breath when the pressure vanished. He was an Overlord.

The dragons clearly felt the same as she did, because the Thousand-Mile Cloud vanished more quickly than it had arrived.

Old Man Lo brushed his sleeves out and led the way into the fortress at last.

It was like the whole place was designed to give strangers a case of the shivers. The only light came from dancing blue flames caged on the walls, and the hallway leading in from the gate was drowning in shadows. Spikes hung from the ceiling, and in the darkness, it was hard to tell how far overhead they were.

She tried to extend her perception, but she might as well not have bothered. Darkness covered the halls, blinding more than just her eyes.

They wound around the fortress until Yerin lost track of the way they'd come, which she imagined was the point. After a winding journey, Lo pressed his hand to a heavy metal door that barred their way. It dispersed to fog, and he strode through.

Bai Rou and Yerin followed, staying as far away from each other as the width of the room let them. The fog carried a chill with it, and Yerin shivered.

When they were through, the door reappeared, solid as ever.

The room inside was lit by globes of frosted glass all over the walls, floor, and the ceiling many yards overhead. They cast everything in shades of gray, but it was clear that they weren't meant to be helpful to visitors.

The lights were there to show off the statues.

Stone statues the size of buildings towered over them, lined up in rows on the sides of the room. The one closest to Yerin was an ape with feet braced on the ground and arms held wide, mouth open in a vicious roar. She could have used its toe as a table.

The statue across from it showed a figure in full armor, sword in one hand and shield in the other. The sword was pitted, the shield cracked, the armor dented, and the figure's knees were bent in the process of rising. But still it raised its weapons to meet the ape.

It was a theme among all the statues in the room. Along one wall, giant sacred beasts leaping to battle. Along the other, battered human figures met them.

There were nine figures in the room. Eight complete statues and one block of stone in the sacred beast row. It stood opposite an empty pedestal.

A woman sat in front of the stone, her hair tied up and gathered in a rag, her sacred artist's robes covered in a smock. She held a chisel in one hand, sitting in a cycling position, eyes closed.

Yerin couldn't feel the force of her power, but she could see the aura around her. All the vital aura stilled like a held breath. The Sage's spiritual perception overwhelmed the block of stone, submerging it and buffeting it like the ocean's waves.

Lo held up a hand. “You will wait,” he said quietly. “You will die on your feet, patiently waiting, if she requires it.”

“I don't require it,” said the Sage of Silver Heart, slowly coming out of her trance.

Her eyes were a deeper purple than Mercy's, and they carried a depth and an insight that reminded Yerin of her master.

But her master had looked like a man in his thirties. This woman looked like she might not be twenty yet.

She rose, gesturing to the block of stone. “What do you think this should be?”

“We would not dare to guess,” Old Man Lo said.

Bai Rou dipped his head down, silent.

“A dragon,” Yerin responded. “It’s the one you’d expect.”

Akura Charity nodded, as though she had expected as much. “Would that not be too obvious?”

Yerin looked from one statue to another. “If you don't want them obvious, don't make them so big.”

“On the scale of what they represent, they are no more than figurines.”

Yerin didn't follow that, so she grunted.

Purple eyes moved to Bai Rou. They waited a moment, then the Sage said, “Take him from me and question him separately. I will question her.”

Lo moved in a blur, and in less than a blink, he had soundlessly moved Bai Rou out of the room and shut the door behind him. It was over so fast that it felt like a dream.

“We may release him when we learn what we need,” she said. “It depends on him.”

“Keep him,” Yerin said.

The Sage looked at her, expressionless.

“I'm stone-serious.”

Charity flipped the chisel like a coin. It flew up to the ceiling, spinning end-over-end. “We need to know what happened to the portal,” she said. At the very tip of its flight, the chisel brushed softly across the stone of the ceiling. Then it fell.

“Don't have a hint myself,” Yerin said.

She caught the chisel, still watching Yerin.

“We're working with the Skysworn,” Yerin said. “Blackflame Empire. Something was going wrong out here, something with Ghostwater, so we came to lay eyes on it. Three of us went in.” Her voice caught briefly as she added, “Three of us stayed out.”

“There was a transmission from one Skysworn to the other,” Charity said, flipping the chisel again.

“Multiple enemies. Told us not to run in.”

“And you tried to run in anyway,” the Sage said.

“...yeah.”

Charity caught the chisel on one extended finger this time, perfectly balanced.

Now she was just showing off.

“I have monitored the situation on the inside,” said the Sage. “I know exactly what happened in there. What I'm trying to decide is whether you are here, now, by coincidence or by design.”

“Not my design,” Yerin said, but what the other woman had said caught her ears. “My...fellow disciple ended up in there. I'd give two fingers and a pile of gold to hear what happened to him.”

Charity flipped the chisel up and grabbed it again. “After the great Northstrider withdrew his presence and protection from Ghostwater, six of the great Heralds in the world gathered to inspect the pocket world. They represented a significant portion of the world's military power, and were they to do battle inside Ghostwater, they might have torn the world apart. So they bound their spirits to a truce.

“Once they had taken the greatest treasures, they departed, but they added one more restriction to their agreement. Every ten years, each could send a promising student to hunt for treasure themselves.”

The Heralds must have cleaned the place out, but a Herald's trash might drive a dragon wild with greed.

“What about my Lowgold?”

“All the students we send are Truegold,” she said, ignoring the question. “They enter at different times, but to preserve a spirit of fair play, we have them wait in the entrance until all participants have arrived.”

She tapped the edge of the chisel against her arm, and for the first time, Yerin felt the sword aura around the tool. It was so condensed that it felt solid.

“The Blackflame Empire is not one of the contestants. When we realized who you were, we experts held a conference among ourselves to decide whether you should be permitted to enter.”

Yerin clenched a fist to keep from putting a hand on her sword. It wouldn't help, but it would make her feel better. They had been a hair away from getting killed by a Sage, and they hadn't even known it.

“As you were too weak to be a real threat,” she went on casually, “we decided to allow your entrance. At best, you may have served as training for our students. At worst, you would affect nothing, and perhaps have a few fortunate encounters of our own.”

She pointed the chisel at Yerin. “So, tell me why the Lowgold destroyed the portal.”

Yerin lost her breath.

“I understand how. The Path of Black Flame has one of the most famous variations of dragon's breath. But he clearly targeted the portal with intention. I wish to know why.”

Akura Charity folded her arms and waited.

“...couldn't tell you why Lindon does half the things he does,” Yerin muttered. “But I could throw out a guess or two.” She wanted to ask if Charity was sure Lindon hadn't done it on accident, but the woman was a Sage. She knew.

“Sounded like he was fighting?” Yerin said, with a questioning tone.

Charity inclined her head.

“Then he could have been trying to lock the enemy inside. 'I'll take you down with me,' that sort of feeling.”

The Sage waited for her second guess, but this one was harder to say.

“I couldn't swear to it, but he might have...if I had to guess...been stopping someone from...getting in.”

“Stopping you,” Charity said quietly.

Yerin gave her one nod.

“My grand-nephew is inside. If I thought the Blackflame Empire or the Sage of the Endless Sword were making a move to upset the balance, I would move to maintain order.”

Yerin squared her shoulders, meeting the Sage's eyes. Usually no one recognized her Path, even if they recognized her master's title. Only those who had known her master.

“However, I suspect it is no more than coincidence,” Charity allowed. “We were not scheduled to return to Ghostwater for another year, but the Phoenix's rampage assures that the pocket world will not last so long. We were not supposed to be here. Anyone who intercepted our plans and then sent you to disrupt them would be...beyond inept.”

Yerin couldn't contain her question any longer. “The Lowgold. Is he still alive?”

“The last time I checked, he was.” The Sage watched her reaction, so Yerin kept it dull. “If he continues to survive, he could reap great rewards. But he will need to find a way out.”

“So there is another way?”

“There is another entrance to Ghostwater on this island. Map.” She extended one hand, and Old Man Lo appeared briefly, pressing a weathered sheet of paper into her palm before bowing and disappearing again. Yerin couldn’t track his movements.

Pinching the paper between two fingers, the Sage extended it to Yerin. “This is a rough map of this island, including the second portal.”

Yerin pressed both fists together and bowed to the Sage of the Silver Heart. “My thanks. You’ve been…so helpful.” Too helpful. It was suspicious.

The Sage pointed to Yerin. “Helpful to you. Not to my niece.”

“Ah.” That eased Yerin somewhat. Whatever was going on inside the Akura family, she could take advantage of it. “One last question?”

The Sage inclined her head.

“Why are you here?” Yerin asked. “I'm sure your grand-nephew is a generation's star genius, but putting a Sage on guard duty is like sending a tiger to hunt rats.”

A smile ghosted across Charity's face. “There is a larger competition coming. One with far more at stake than this one. I suspect we are all here for the same reason: to catch a glimpse of our opponents and stop them from stealing a march on us.”

“A larger competition?”

The Sage of the Silver Heart reached out. She didn't seem to move quickly, but she had a finger on Yerin's forehead before Yerin could react. Suddenly, Yerin knew the way out as though she'd walked the path a thousand times.

“A tournament,” Charity answered, and turned back to her statues.

When Yerin returned to the beach, she found Mercy sitting on a picnic blanket eating noodles from a bowl. The noodles were hot. Where had that come from?

Mercy scrambled up, setting her bowl aside and almost spilling it. “Yerin! I thought you might not...well, I was going to give you another hour, and then I was coming in.”

Yerin didn't see a Lowgold forcing her way in anywhere that an Overlord and a Sage didn't want her, even if they didn’t use direct force. “Lindon's still alive,” Yerin reported.

Mercy let out a long breath. “And the others too?”

“I didn't think about them,” she admitted.

“Well, the others are stronger than he is. If he's all right, I'm sure they are too.”

“She said her grand-nephew was in there. Someone you know?”

Mercy scratched her head, looking away. “Probably, yes. She has more than one grand-nephew, but uh...it's a good bet that she's talking about Harmony.”

“Your cousin?”

“No, no, we were from entirely different branches.” She twirled hair around one finger, still looking away. “He was my fiancé.”

Yerin's eyebrows raised. She had hoped that Mercy might recall some little bits and pieces about her distant cousin. She hadn't thought she'd hook a shark on the first cast.

“It ended before I left the family, though,” she added.

“You called it off?”

“He did. He's very competitive, and he doesn't take losing well.”

That could be bad, if he saw Lindon as a competitor. But he was supposed to be a Truegold. And if the Akura chose him to represent them here, he'd be one of their best. “Losing...to you?”

Mercy winced. “When I was younger, I didn't hold back very well.”

“Well, he wouldn't have to worry about that now. You're still a Lowgold.”

She shrugged, leaning her staff against her shoulder. “Depends on the competition.”

While Yerin was still thinking that through, Mercy continued. “I don't think he would even notice Lindon was there. Orthos and Renfei maybe, but only if they bothered him.”

That only increased Yerin's worries. If Lindon stumbled on whatever prizes the Truegolds were searching for, he might not fight for them, but he'd try to snatch them somehow. Sure as the sun rose.

Yerin set off for the woods, marching through the sand.

“Where's Bai Rou?” Mercy asked.

Turning, Yerin glanced from side to side. “I don't see him, and I don't see anybody who cares. The Sage said there's another way into Ghostwater somewhere on this island, so I'm finding it. The Akura aren't the only ones out here.”

She continued into the forest.

After another few breaths, Mercy followed.

* * *

Lightning flashed and thunder rolled, and Eithan leaned over the deck of the cloudship to watch. There was something endlessly fascinating about watching a storm beneath him.

Naru Saeya, the Blackflame Emperor's little sister, gripped the railing next to him. Her wings—the Goldsign of the Path of Grasping Sky—glittered like emeralds in the lightning flashes. They were smaller and sleeker than most on her Path, and she was correspondingly faster.

She shouted to be heard over the thunder. “I'm going in myself,” she bellowed. “He'll die!”

“No, he won't,” Eithan said, watching the lightning roll behind him.

Of course, he was also watching everything else.

He and Saeya were not the only Underlords present. Chon Ma, the top-ranked Underlord in the Blackflame Empire, did battle in the sky all around them. He was a bear of a man, and he raged like the storm, carrying a black one-handed hammer in each hand. Black clouds appeared beneath his feet with each step, so he ran through the air, another black cloud hanging over his head like a picture of dread.

He bounded in three long steps over to his opponent, pulling one weapon back. It drew dark gray Cloud Hammer madra with it, until it was shrouded in a dense fog.

The Blood Shadow raised one arm to meet the blow.

The hit cracked as loud as thunder, blasting the Shadow to liquid madra. It splattered away, losing its wings and falling through the air.

Chon Ma had overextended himself for that strike, and the Blood Shadow's host wasn't about to let that opportunity pass him by.

He was a serpentine man, tall as though he'd been stretched, wearing the black-and-red robes of Redmoon Hall. He raised a sword, so thin it was almost a needle, and gathered razor-sharp aura at its point. His strike was as swift and precise as one would expect from an Underlord, driving at Chon Ma at the exact moment he was distracted by the Blood Shadow.

But the head of the Cloud Hammer school was not the first-ranked Underlord for his beard. He continued his blow, letting the momentum spin him around, his second hammer meeting the sword-strike instantly.

Eithan was always impressed with such predictions. Those born without the ability to see behind them certainly learned to adapt.

Both hits crashed against each other, sending the two men flying backwards. Clouds formed under Chon Ma's feet, and he stayed hovering in the air, while his opponent landed on the flat side of a flying sword.

Eithan couldn't remember the Redmoon Hall man's name. Gergen? he wondered. Gergich. Gargol. It doesn't matter; I won't need to remember it for long.

The peacock feathers that Naru Saeya wore behind her ear were sodden with the rain they'd flown through to get here, but she looked as though the heat of her fury would dry them in an instant. “Get out of my way.”

Her wings swept back, pushing him aside, and she gathered up wind aura. As she was about to launch herself into the air, she froze. Then she spun around.

“See?” Eithan said, staring into the storm.

Saeya's senses were almost as honed as someone from the Arelius family. Her attunement to wind aura was truly impressive, and she could sense movements in the air from miles away. This storm would strengthen her Ruler techniques and aid her cycling, but it would also interfere with her senses. Ordinarily, she wouldn't have noticed so much later than he did.

“What are you saying?” she spat. “Now we're all going to die!”

A red Thousand-Mile Cloud rose up the side of their ship like a shark breaking the waves. He looked like he was in the middle of his twenties, his pale face framed by black hair that fell to his waist. He wore a dark, shapeless coat that covered him from shoulders to feet, and a blood-red hook dropped from one loose sleeve.

Longhook, Underlord emissary of Redmoon Hall.

Eithan's shoulder throbbed as he looked at that hook. It had been restored by the greatest healer in the Blackflame Empire, so he wondered if it was still wounded, or if it was just the shame of losing blood. He tried not to be embarrassed about taking a blow from a man named Longhook, but it was hard to restrain his shame.

When the Bleeding Phoenix vanished, the emissaries of Redmoon Hall had been caught even more off-guard than everyone else. They were deep in enemy territory, surrounded, and their master's departure left them purposeless.

Unfortunately for the citizens of the Blackflame Empire, that largely meant they killed their way through the population in whatever direction they thought led to safety.

The Emperor had whipped his Underlords into hunting them down. Except for one minor detour to pull his disciples out of a basement, Eithan had spent the past several weeks hunting emissaries. This was a huge opportunity for the Empire; they would never have another chance to deal such a blow to Redmoon Hall. The Akura clan would reward them handsomely for each Underlord head.

But their strategy was all dependent on their advantage of numbers. Each Redmoon emissary counted as two opponents, since their Blood Shadow could fight independently. So they operated in teams of three Underlords apiece.

They only had three such teams, along with one Overlord, but it had been effective so far. They had collected two Underlord heads out of a presumed six remaining in the Empire.

However, now the weakness in their plan was revealed. Instead of three-on-two in their favor, it was now four-on-three against.

Naru Saeya drew a sword of transparent, shimmering light from her soulspace. It looked like it was made of crystalline stained glass or fractured rainbows; whatever Soulsmith had made it, Eithan appreciated their aesthetic sense. “And you had to drag a Highgold into this,” Saeya said. “I just hope you can fight.”

“What if I couldn't?” Eithan proposed. “Boy, that would be embarrassing in this situation, wouldn't it?”

Longhook noticed him, and his lips tightened. Eithan couldn't read what that expression meant—was he excited to see Eithan, as an opponent he'd beaten before? Disappointed? Angry that he couldn't finish Eithan off last time?

Before Eithan could decide, there was a red hook rushing at his face.

Longhook's long hook was his Blood Shadow wrapped around an actual sacred weapon: a long, heavy chain with a thick meat hook at the end. It carried enough force to punch straight through their ship, and Longhook could manipulate it with shocking grace and speed. As Eithan had learned last time.

Eithan met this attack with the same strategy he'd used last time. He poured madra into his iron fabric scissors and slammed them into the hook.

He wasn't using a proper Enforcer technique, but he was using a lot of madra. The hook stopped, the chain rippling like a sea in storm. Eithan was pushed a few steps backward, but he took them gracefully.

And this time, Eithan wasn't alone.

Saeya swept in as a green blur, her rainbow sword flashing. Longhook's weapon coiled back of its own accord, blocking her sword, but her free hand came up and made a fist. Loops of green madra wrapped around him, locking him in place.

Eithan followed up with the simplest Striker technique anyone could use: a pulse of madra focused in a line. In his case, the pure madra passed through the chain of Longhook's weapon, weakening the Blood Shadow and causing it to falter for a second. Saeya was coming around for another pass.

So far so good. They were keeping Longhook under pressure.

Which meant...

The red on the emissary's hook oozed back, revealing dark gray metal. It boiled away as Longhook drove Saeya off with one fist, pulses of force madra pushing her back.

In an instant, he'd gathered up his Blood Shadow. His hook started to slide back up his sleeve, one link at a time, and he looked from Eithan to Naru Saeya.

“Go home,” he said, the words scraping out. They were barely audible over the rolling thunder. “We are leaving your lands. You will not see us again.”

“You dare ask us for mercy?” Naru Saeya’s voice was hot. Her bright green madra took Longhook in the gut like a fist, carrying him off his Thousand-Mile Cloud and into the wind.

His Blood Shadow caught him.

It formed into his copy, standing on the railing, its hand grabbing him by the leg and pulling him back onto the ship. Longhook didn't even look surprised, his coat fluttering in the wind as he landed.

“This will be worse than last time,” the emissary promised, locking eyes with Eithan.

Eithan drew himself up, cycling madra through his channels. He let his power as an Underlord blaze forth, matching Longhook face-to-face.

“It will,” he declared. “Last time, I did not reveal to you my ultimate technique.”

A flare of chaotic madra from below his feet was all the warning Longhook had. Eithan had scripted the veils into the cloudship's cabin himself.

Then a beam of deadly madra, thick as a barrel and bright as the sun, blasted through the cabin of the ship and washed over Longhook. The light streamed out in a bolt like condensed lightning, too bright to watch directly, streaking from the ship up into the sky. It faded out as quickly as it had emerged, the light fading to a thin line.

Longhook fell from the ship, smoking and unconscious. He would probably survive the impact with the ground, but he wouldn’t be happy.

“I call it the 'ambush,'” Eithan said.

Fisher Gesha poked her head through the ragged hole in the ship's deck. She held in her hands a smoking, twisted launcher construct. It looked much like one of the simple, physical weapons some lower sects used for defense: a cannon.

“I didn't miss! Hm. I told you I wouldn't miss.”

Fisher Gesha, a shrunken old woman with gray hair tied up into a bun, looked like she shouldn’t even be able to hold the cannon. Spider legs stuck out from beneath her, as she stood on her drudge construct for transportation. And to reach things on high shelves.

Most Gold-level techniques couldn't do much more than scratch an Underlord's skin. But she had come up with a plan for a compound launcher construct that used six Striker bindings at once. If they were properly contained and focused, she had theorized, they could produce an effect that was greater than the sum of its parts.

Under normal circumstances, the weapon would be too unwieldy to set up and use. The enemy would sense it coming a mile away, and activating six Striker bindings at once put too much of a strain on the construct's vessel. It was the sort of method that sounded better than it was.

But Eithan had found her plans, and had wanted to see them in action.

“A lovely strike!” Eithan called. “How did the script hold up?”

“Strained.” Gesha tapped a ring on the metal of the cannon's outer layer. “Warping already. And the Song of Falling Ash binding is an inch from falling apart, if you ask me. Not that you did.”

“We'll need more goldsteel plating,” Eithan mused aloud. He couldn't afford that himself—not without the resources of the Arelius family. That irritation still threatened to prod him to anger. He would have to deal with that, when he was done mopping up Redmoon Hall.

Of course, he could save up top-grade scales and eventually afford most of anything in the Empire. But it would have been so much easier with the family behind him.

He pushed that annoyance aside and returned his attention to the battle in the sky around them.

“What was that?” Naru Saeya asked, holding her rainbow sword to one side, staring blankly into the rain. She ended up repeating herself: “What was that?”

Chon Ma was bleeding from a cut on his face now, delivering a speech about honor to the remaining Redmoon Hall emissary, whose arm hung broken and bruised from his shoulder.

“You skulk in the shadows,” the Cloud Hammer Underlord proclaimed. “You rely on power that will never truly be your own. This is why you are weak.”

Eithan turned to Fisher Gesha. “Do you think you could squeeze out one more shot?”

The construct flared to life.

7

There were any number of reasonable objections that Dross could have made to the Soulsmith operation, but since the construct seemed happy enough going along with it, Lindon certainly wasn't going to say anything.

First, he moved the bucket of Dream Well water in front of Orthos. Then he forced the turtle's mouth open and poured a vial of the purple water down his throat.

It didn't quite wake him, but Lindon could feel his consciousness smooth out. His sleep went from rough and fearful to soft and deep. When he woke, he'd need some water, so hopefully the bucket would be enough. He’d always had trouble wrestling his thoughts, too; maybe the Dream Well could help him.

With Orthos settled, Lindon sat Little Blue on the turtle’s head. She gave a chirp, and he patted her with one finger. “When I’m done here, I’ll have some food for you.”

Then he got to work.

Binding a spiritual construct to a physical vessel was one of the basic skills of the Soulsmith. Essentially, he had to hold the construct into the exact shape of the vessel, then merge the two while using his own madra to tie them together. To stuff a ghost back into a body, both ghost and body had to match.

There was only one complication that mattered: the sapphire already had a construct in it. So he was trying to meld two constructs and fix them both to the gem.

Fisher Gesha would tell him to extract both Dross and the Eye of the Deep construct, then break them down piece by piece until he could rebuild them into one construct with the functions of both. Then he could bind that single construct to the gem or, preferably, another suitable vessel without a hole in it.

Then she would have hit him for trying to do this without guidance.

But Lindon had neither the time, nor the experience, nor the equipment to do it that way. He wasn’t sure that a living construct like Dross could even be safely deconstructed. He’d have to roll the dice.

Not that he would put it to Dross that way.

He extracted a pair of gold-plated tongs from the roll of tools, holding them up to show Dross. “I’ll be using these to remove you from your vessel,” he explained. “Then—”

Dross zipped out of his rusted container.

He hovered in the air, a purple cloud filled with violet sparks. Within the cloud, Lindon could see patterns of crossing lines, like Dross was made of a structure of ghostly timbers.

“Done!” the construct said cheerily. “Now what?”

Lindon put the tongs down. “Now…try not to resist.”

He put his left hand on the Eye, pouring pure madra into the construct. It was already filling most of the vessel, so he only had to focus on holding it still. That was easier said than done; it felt like trying to keep hold of a living heart that tried to escape his hand with every beat. Essence drifted out of the crack more quickly.

Lindon reached out with his inhuman right hand, then hesitated. He needed his hands free to project the madra, which meant he couldn’t hold the tongs.

Of course, strictly speaking, he didn’t need the tongs.

After a moment of hesitation, he reached out for Dross with his white grip. “Please don’t move.”

As Lindon seized Dross, he actually felt the construct in his Remnant hand. It felt like gripping a handful of cotton. A pang of hunger ran up the arm into Lindon’s soul, but he kept the limb under control. An instant of lost focus, and the arm would devour Dross.

“That gave me a tingle. Is everything all right?”

Sweat rolled down Lindon’s face, but he forced a smile. “Hold still, please.”

Now came the hard part. He had to project more pure madra around Dross to hold him in place. And it had to be exactly the right shape of the sapphire.

Well, one step at a time.

His madra still hadn’t recovered much, so he needed to do this quickly. With a rough grip of madra, Lindon contained Dross’ cloud-like form into a jagged form roughly the shape of a cut gem.

“It occurs to me,” the construct said, “to wonder about my identity. You know what I mean? Was I me before I could think freely? Now, when you merge me with this key, I’ll be taking on…who knows what memories and functions.”

In order to get this part of the process exactly right, Lindon should have made a mold of the sapphire. It was too late now, so he Forged Dross to match the cut sapphire. As closely as he could, he tried to get every ridge and facet in exactly the right place.

His spiritual grip was slipping, and he was essentially bleeding madra. Even with the added focus from the Dream Well, he was having trouble holding both constructs in the right shape at the same time. Dross kept shifting gradually.

“Will I think of myself differently? How will I see the world? Will I even be able to think anymore, or will I be like I was before?”

Heavens help me, Lindon thought to himself. Then he shoved the constructs together, hoping they would match.

“Will I be myself? What if I hate being a key, but it’s too late?”

There was resistance. Lindon had to push the last of his madra into the effort and shove them together until he forced them to click.

It was a good thing Dross didn’t have a physical body, or this would have been excruciatingly painful.

“On second thought, I’m not sure I…” Dross’ voice froze halfway through the sentence.

The light in the gem flickered and rippled. Lindon’s spiritual grip tightened; had he failed?

Motion passed through the light, as though something were swimming inside the sapphire. The light started to change, staining the vessel purple.

“…want to do this,” Dross continued. “It’s too risky, isn’t it? Who would gamble their very self on a game of chance?”

Lindon fell back, leaning against the wooden chest, holding up the gem that now shone purple.

“We’re done,” he said, swiping sweat from his brow.

“We are? Oh, that’s good then. Now you mention it…” Dross flew out of the crack in the sapphire, leaving the jewel dull and dark. He looked very different than before: his nebulous cloud-form was more of a defined orb, and instead of simple lines, now he was a complex interlocking mechanism of what looked like gears. The sparkling lights whirled in a deliberate, complex cyclone.

“I feel good. I feel great, actually. It’s like I’ve had one eye closed all my life, and now I’ve opened the other five.” The drifting matrix of phantom machinery drifted around Lindon’s head. “You’ve got quite a complicated soul, don’t you? Two cores, I feel like that’s an unusual number. And I can see your face so much more clearly now! It’s…well, at least you have a wonderful spirit. Yes, indeed. That spirit of yours, wow.”

That was a little alarming. After this one operation, Dross had gained senses like a Jade’s. Had the Eye of the Deep always sensed what was going on around it?

Lindon folded his legs into a cycling position and fixed his gaze on Dross. “Now, maybe you can help us. We need to find a way out of here.”

“That’s right in my wheelhouse. A guide and a key, that’s me. Everything you need to find your way, all in one convenient bundle. Are we talking out of the Ghostwater world entirely, or out of this room?”

“Both.”

“Ah, okay, right. Hmmm…there’s a portal outside, which—”

“Apologies, but that’s no longer an option.”

Dross drifted slowly in a circle, like a man pacing. “There’s another portal just like that one, but I won’t lie to you: it’s a little deeper in the facility. It’s located in…Northstrider’s…personal quarters.” He said the Monarch’s name in a hushed whisper.

A stone sunk into Lindon’s gut. “Can you open a Monarch’s door?”

“I am the Eye of the Deep now,” Dross said confidently. “No problem at all. And this Monarch was of the opinion that the best security was his presence. I can open his door, don’t you worry, but getting there is the trick.”

Lindon’s tension eased slightly. “And how about out of this room?”

“Even easier.” He bobbed over to the keyhole and flashed brightly. “Here it is! I’m astonished you didn’t notice this before, actually.”

“I'm afraid there may be someone out there waiting for me. I admit, I was hoping for another exit.”

Dross whirled in the air and then swooped over to the keyhole. Half of him dipped into the wall. His insides shone, a mass of phantom gears, and the clouds of sparks within him flickered and rolled.

“Ekerinatoth of the gold dragons,” he announced as he emerged. “She goes by Ekeri, which is good, because that's faster to say. She is waiting just outside for her prey to surface. That's you, by the way. You're the prey.”

Lindon looked from the construct to the keyhole. “How did you know that?”

“This whole place is a network of constructs. Just lousy with 'em. I popped in, sampled their memories for the last few hours, then popped out. Turns out there's all kind of records in there; the same factions have been coming back every ten years for over fifty years now, so we've piled up quite the hoard of juicy gossip.”

Lindon's interest spiked. This was something he could use.

“What can you tell me about her?”

“Well, she's close enough to Underlord that she can take on a humanoid form, can't she? By the time she reaches Archlord, she'll look even more human than you do. And there's every reason to suspect she will. She's the heir to the richest family on the continent, and they didn't get that way by not stealing everything that isn't nailed down, if you understand me. She practices the Path of the Flowing Flame, which involves dragon-fire behaving like a liquid. I imagine that's what she sprayed onto the door for about an hour after you vanished. Didn't do any good, of course. Those are high-quality rocks.”

The thought of fighting another Truegold made him feel like he was backed into a corner again, but he set that feeling aside. This was an opportunity to push himself forward.

“Can you help me figure out how she fights?”

“I don't know everything, do I? What do I look like, a...know-everything construct? That's a terrible name, I'm sorry, I'll try again. What do I look like, an omni-codex?” He brightened. “That sounds pretty good, actually. Omni-codex. Call me that from now on.”

“The only way we're getting out of here,” Lindon said, “is through her.”

A deep, gravelly voice rumbled from behind him. “Now that is the path of a dragon.”

Orthos' eyes were dim, but they still smoldered with orange-red light. The black turtle shifted his bulk, and he let out a cough. On his head, Little Blue jumped up and down in excitement.

Tension he hadn't even noticed melted from Lindon's shoulders. He'd been so concerned that Orthos would never wake up.

The turtle nodded to the bucket. “That's some good water. But I'll need more than that if I'm going to walk out of here. I need meat.”

“Then I need a way to get past Ekeri.”

Orthos laid his head on the ground, eyes sliding shut again, but his mouth crooked open in a smile. “Here's a lesson for you: dragons can be sneaky too.”

* * *

Ekeri rested in her portable shelter only ten yards from the hidden entrance in the stone. The device could make a home out of nothing in only an hour, but it was designed for convenience, not comfort. The rooms in the shelter were bare Forged madra, and she had to carry around all her furnishings herself. She pulled a chair out of her void key and had set it up so she could watch out the second-story window.

She had tried everything she could to force her way into the stone, but it was either dense with earth aura or protected by formidable scripts. Or both. The rock wasn't even scorched after her...perfectly calm and controlled assault.

When that hadn’t worked, she had vented her considerable irritation on the nearby vegetation. Now the sea-stalks around the shelter had been burned away, leaving nothing but sand. There was nothing blocking her view of the entrance.

For the first hour, she watched with perfect patience. In the second hour, she began running her claws down the wall. By the third hour, she had clawed her window significantly wider.

“Where are they?” she demanded of her attendants, and there was more dragon than human in her voice. She calmed herself an instant later—her Monarch lived in human form, and she strove to imitate him in all ways. She couldn't wait until her soulfire was strong enough to change her body completely.

“Replying to the noble lady: they could stay inside until their supplies run out. Surely there would be greater prizes of more interest to milady in another section of the facility. Our maps indicate there is a sacred garden full of natural treasures only a short swim from here.”

Ekeri stopped herself when she realized she was growling. Her attendant was a bland man, younger than twenty, whose expressionless face was almost identical to his counterpart's. Or maybe she was just bad at telling them apart.

“There are secrets in there,” she said, chewing on her claw. “A Lowgold doesn't come in here with a black dragon-spawn for nothing. They have secrets on them, and I want them.”

The two attendants exchanged glances, but their faces were so blank she could read nothing in them.

“Allow me to make a proposal, if it pleases the noble lady. Let us scout out the nearby habitats, and we can report back to you whatever we find. Perhaps we might find something even more valuable than this black dragon-spawn's secrets.”

Ekeri kept gnawing on her claw for a moment as she thought. She didn't like the implication that she was pursuing the wrong prize, but at the same time, she didn't want to give up the other treasures of Ghostwater by focusing on one. Especially if the world was really collapsing soon.

“One of you stay with me,” she said. “I can't allow them to escape, and I won't watch this window on my own all day.”

“It would be my pleasure to stay,” one of them said, voice empty of anything that resembled pleasure, “but surely they cannot escape your perception.”

That was true. There was virtually no chance that a black dragon-spawn or the human borrowing his draconic power could evade her, especially in this area full of water aura. Their madra would stand out like a bonfire in the snow.

Irritably, she waved her hand to dismiss them. It was hard to give in when they were right. Plus, this place scraped her scales the wrong way; she couldn't even cycle aura here, as the power of water drowned out everything else.

“Watch out for the wildlife,” she called back to them as they left. The fish had been a handful for her, a Truegold, and her attendants were much weaker.

Ekeri curled up on a couch, which she also produced from her void key, and tried to feel like she wasn't wasting her time by staying here.

Several hours later, she had almost drifted off when she felt something pressing against the edge of her spiritual perception. It felt warm and welcoming. Like a roaring fire.

She leaped up and dashed out of the house.

* * *

At first, it had gone so well.

Lindon had already known the basics of veiling his spirit; essentially, he just kept the movement of his spirit slow and quiet, so there was little for an enemy to sense unless they scanned him directly. It was one of the simplest principles in the sacred arts, but as it turned out, Lindon had never had much cause to perfect the technique. He was always so much weaker than everyone else that he was difficult to sense anyway, and pure madra was perhaps the 'quietest' form of power he could practice.

As a result, his veils were sloppy. For eight hours straight, Orthos forced him to practice veiling his power over and over until Orthos could feel the difference from only a yard away in the cave. Lindon pointed out that if Ekeri was nose-to-nose with him, she would be able to see him, which only earned him a lecture about how useful veils were. Especially for him, with his two cores; he needed to be able to hide anything unusual about his spirit at a moment's notice.

On the bright side, the water from the Dream Well made the training practically paradise by Lindon's usual standards. Anytime his concentration wavered from its peak, or exhaustion started weighing him down, he took another vial of purple water and it was like starting over fresh. Lindon was starting to think he'd get addicted.

Dross told him that he was the only sacred artist in the history of the facility to be able to use the Dream Well so lavishly, but as Lindon saw it, the water had been left to pile up for the past fifty-six years. It was about time someone used it.

When Orthos was confident enough in Lindon's veil, Lindon made Dross check the situation outside. He contacted the security constructs and found that Ekeri had blanketed the area in her spiritual perception...but she wasn't physically watching his entrance anymore.

So he'd snuck out quietly to go fishing.

Orthos had declared his veil exceptional; not because of his hasty practice, but because pure madra was difficult to detect by nature. Any veil he made was twice as effective. Which brought up another problem: Lindon couldn't switch cores.

He wasn't skilled enough to veil Blackflame, and that Path was hard to hide anyway. As a fellow dragon, Ekeri would be able to discover Blackflame anywhere within this habitat—which was what Dross called the pockets of air within the giant bubbles.

Which meant Lindon had to catch one of these Highgold-level fish, kill it, and bring it back without using Blackflame. He had a plan for that too, but not one he liked.

He felt like he saw eyes on him with every crunch of his shoes on sand, but a golden dragon-girl didn't leap out of her two-story fortress of Forged madra and burn him to death, so he had to assume he was still hidden. After creeping around, it had only taken him a few minutes to locate one of the drifting fish.

The bear-sized creature slid lazily over Lindon's head, silver scales glinting in the dim yellow light. Its fangs clashed like spears, but it didn't seem to notice him at all. As Dross had said, they seemed to hunt by spiritual perception alone.

Dross, tucked away in the now-purple gem stuffed into the pocket of his outer robes, started to say something. Lindon slapped him. He muttered to himself, but stayed quiet.

Now it was time to execute Orthos' plan, which—in its entirety—consisted of one step: “Hit it with your arm.”

Lindon couldn't help but feel a little nervous about that advice.

Without a full-body Enforcer technique, Lindon had to use basic Enforcement on his entire body. The spirit had a strengthening effect on the body, with or without the guidance of a technique, and all he was doing was pouring effort into that. It was horribly inefficient, and it would exhaust his madra more quickly and provide worse results compared to a real Enforcer technique.

However, it did make him stronger.

Lindon jumped ten feet straight up, seizing the fish's tail in his left hand. He dragged it down to the ground, though the fish fluttered and strained to stay in the air. As it fell, it gave off a deafening shriek.

Now he had a deadline.

According to Dross, the fish screamed to one another every once in a while under natural conditions, so its cry shouldn't alert Ekeri, even if she heard it. However, the other fish would start coming immediately.

He didn't sense any other sacred beasts within a hundred yards, so even in the worst-case scenario, he had a few seconds.

Lindon threw his whole body over the creature to pin it to the ground, though it was still strong. Its flailing and flopping nearly bucked him off. But in a moment, he had locked his legs around it.

Now it was time to execute Orthos' plan.

He pulled back his white arm, filling it with the power of his pure core, and began slamming it into the fish's head.

The sacred beast screamed and screamed. Dross assured him they weren't any more intelligent than normal fish, just more powerful, but the shrieks bothered him anyway. Lindon hammered until the silver scales began to crack, and dark blood splattered his face.

This is why I need a weapon, he thought. Of course, there was every chance he would have lost a weapon at the same time he had lost his pack.

When the fish's spasms began to weaken, he gripped the sharp tips of his white fingers into its newly exposed flesh.

Then he triggered the binding in his arm.

Gladly, the limb started gulping down the creature's madra. The arm seemed to grow more dense as it fed, more real, though strangely enough it seemed to get a shade darker as well. Like it was shading to gray instead of its normal, pristine white.

When Lindon had gotten the arm, he'd hoped that the hunger binding would allow him to steal madra from other sacred artists. That, he reasoned, would help him to learn more Paths.

But other than the obvious practical downsides to such a plan, he'd since learned that the hunger binding was not as simple to use as the Ancestor's Spear had been. Maybe there would be a day when he could use the arm to pull madra into his core.

Until then, he had at least learned one trick.

When the arm had absorbed so much water madra from the fish that it started to tint blue-green, Lindon vented the excess power. Aquatic madra sprayed from his forearm, splattering like rain on the sand before it dissolved into essence.

The arm could swallow some madra of any aspect to strengthen itself, but anything more than that amount would start changing the aspects of the limb's madra. Unless Lindon wanted the limb of a water-Remnant, he had to vent the extra madra before it corrupted the arm too much.

The Ancestor's Spear had a similar feature, and Jai Long had used it in his battle against Lindon. Based on that principle, Lindon had a few ideas for using it in combat, but he had yet to test any of them.

Without its madra, the fish had lost the will to resist. It flopped once or twice more as Lindon drove his fist into its skull until he heard something crack.

Then, at last, the creature was still.

Without missing a breath, Lindon grabbed the creature in both hands and started dragging it across the sand. It wasn't quite as heavy as Orthos, but it still wasn't light.

And silver-blue light bloomed as a Remnant began to rise from the body.

The Remnant looked like a wire model of the same fish, and it pulled itself free of the body as Lindon continued marching. He kept an eye behind him, hoping to lose it, and let out a breath of relief as he passed around a clump of tree-sized stalks. The Remnants didn't seem as dangerous as their living forms.

When he turned back to the front, he was standing face-to-face with a wall of fangs.

This new fish gave a shriek that stabbed his ears, and Lindon ducked just in time. Even so, the fish's scales scraped against his scalp as it swam past his head.

Lindon turned, following the fish...only to see the shining form of the Remnant drift straight through a stalk.

There was no time to think. Without considering it another instant, he changed the pattern of his breathing and drew from the Path of Black Flame.

Blackflame madra surged through his veins, filling him with heat. His channels still burned, despite Little Blue's healing touch, and he hadn't cycled aura to refill his core. There were only a few dim sparks of madra left in his core.

Though it was enough for a few seconds of Burning Cloak.

Lindon leaped at the Remnant first, kicking off in an explosive burst fueled by the Enforcer technique. He swept his Remnant hand down on the wiry spirit, clawing through its structure. His white fingers seized the pale blue wires that made up the Remnant’s outer layer, and he dragged the Remnant down by its strings.

Then he tore away a chunk of madra.

The Remnant's scream sounded like a crashing wave, but Lindon didn't have time to waste. A Cloak-powered fist punched through its head like a spear, then he turned to catch the living fish that was darting at him.

He caught a lower fang in one hand and an upper fang in the other. The force of the creature's charge pushed him backward through the sand, and its breath stunk like dead fish and rotting vegetation. Nearby shrieks told him more of its school was coming.

Orthos was always telling him that he needed to think more like a dragon. Eithan seemed to agree with him, considering his talk about tiger-chasing.

That was always easier to do with Blackflame raging through him.

Even as his madra started to die, Lindon met eyes with the sacred beast. A dragon could not be defeated by a fish. He was the predator here. He had the power.

The last of the Burning Cloak surged through his limbs, and his arms burned. He roared as he pushed power through both hands.

In a massive rush of strength, he tore the fish apart.

He stood with its body in his left hand and its lower jaw in his right, panting, blood coating the sand. As his Blackflame core winked out, he threw his head back and let out a shout of victory.

Then he switched back to his pure core and instantly broke into a cold sweat. What had he been thinking?

“See,” Dross said from his outer robe, “you're not being stealthy at all. What you're doing there is being loud. You see? You see the difference?”

Before the Remnant could rise from the new body, Lindon grabbed the old one and started running through the trees. Even his pure core was almost out of madra, and he silently thanked Eithan for the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel; if he hadn't been practicing that technique for the last year, he would have run out of madra long before.

By the time he could see the door, he knew he wasn't going to make it.

8

He could feel Ekeri even before she leaped from the second floor of her shelter, landing in a puff of sand around her golden claws. Her tail swept behind her, and even though he found it hard to read any expression on her reptilian face, he was sure she was glaring at him.

“The key,” she said, holding out her hand.

Lindon was tempted to give it to her. He could have Dross leave the Eye, then hand over the worthless sapphire, and use it as a distraction to dash for the door.

But he’d have to abandon the fish if he did that, and Orthos was going to need to eat something. Lindon had seen him munch on everything from chairs to boulders, but there must be a reason the turtle hadn’t just taken a bite out of the wall. He needed something more substantial. It was Lindon’s job to bring it to him.

Lindon dropped the fish, balanced on the balls of his feet, and raised his right arm. “Forgiveness, but I have to get past you.”

Her eyes flashed like a flare of sunlight, and she gave a cruel-edged laugh. “You've got a mouth on you, Lowgold.”

He pushed pure madra through his channels, sharpening his focus. He knew he couldn't actually defeat her here, especially not with an empty Blackflame core and a dying pure core. He was here to see how she fought.

She would open the same way everyone else did: with a Striker technique. If he could drain some of its power away with his Remnant arm, then he could hopefully land an Empty Palm when she closed the distance. That would be his chance.

The dragon rushed at him. He reached for her, but she moved like water, flowing around him. Her tail slipped around him, and her fist flashed out.

Pain exploded in his chest like a hammer crashing into his ribs. His back felt like he had slammed into a brick wall, but he hadn't actually moved anywhere.

Her golden scales glimmered from an inch in front of him, her fist buried in his chest. She'd punched him into something solid, but he was sure he hadn't been standing against anything. His eyes widened and he coughed up a mouthful of blood, turning his head inch by agonizing inch to see what was behind.

Her tail. She’d wrapped her tail around his back to keep him from flying away.

His madra stuttered as he tried and failed to take a breath. Light rippled around her feet: the Enforcer technique that she'd used to shorten the distance.

Reptilian teeth flashed as she smiled. One of her hands snaked around his waist and seized the gem, pulling it out. It glinted blue in the dim light.

“You could have handed it to me, you know,” she told him.

Despair clutched his heart as he was reminded of a simple truth: most people who chased tigers ended up killed by tigers. For a moment, he'd forgotten.

With a speed that looked like a blur, her tail withdrew and slapped him across the top of the head.

Lindon slammed into the ground in an explosion of sand. His memory blurred, and his world turned to sand and darkness.

He woke when a clawed foot kicked him in the cracked ribs. It wasn't fueled by an Enforcer technique, or he would have exploded like a sack of blood, but it still caused him to scream in pain and curl up around his knees.

“What is this?” she demanded. He looked up through teary eyes to see her tossing the dull sapphire next to his head. “It's dead. Is this a fake?”

Through the haze of pain, Lindon couldn't understand what she was asking him. But he still flailed with one hand until it closed around the sapphire, pulling it back into his pocket. She didn't stop him, but the air around her grew hot. She drew back for another kick, and Lindon flinched.

A bar of black dragon's breath tore through the air, blasting at Ekeri's chest. She slid out of the way, ducking with the boneless agility of a serpent. She glared in the direction of the technique, hissing through her teeth.

Orthos, surrounded by a Burning Cloak, came to a halt next to Lindon in a spray of sand. He was panting heavily, his spirit a mask of pain, and the crack in his shell vented red light.

A liquid, golden whip spooled out from Ekeri's hand. “Stay still. Answer my questions, and I will spare you all.”

Orthos didn't say a word. He bit down on Lindon’s outer robe.

Lindon reached out with both hands, grabbing the tail of the fish. His thoughts were fuzzy, but he still knew he couldn't leave empty-handed.

He Enforced himself as best he could with his remaining madra, but he ended up doing little but holding on for his life as Orthos kicked his way over to the tunnel.

“Ghost!” the turtle said through clenched teeth.

Dross, a floating ball of purple light, zipped over to the keyhole. A flash, and the stone wall melted.

Golden light bloomed as a Striker technique shot at Lindon, but Orthos slid sideways. He grunted as he took it on his shell, but kept running.

A second later, they were through the wall, and Dross was closing it behind them.

“Let's look on the bright side,” the construct said. “We have most of a fish. And we've learned so much. An educational opportunity, that's what that was.”

Lindon and Orthos lay on the stone, panting and groaning. Painfully, Lindon inched his neck over to the side to see the fish he'd grabbed.

Half of it was gone. He held a chunk of silver-scaled meat on the end of a wiry tail.

He spoke around his cracked ribs. “We need a new plan,” he said.

* * *

Ekeri stood watching the stone, tapping her claws together and thinking.

There had been a construct in that gem yesterday. Today, it had escaped its vessel and opened the door independently. Meaning it could operate on instructions and had a measure of control over Ghostwater.

Even more interesting, they had evidently known she was here. The Lowgold had come out wrapped in a veil, and hadn't retreated at the sight of her shelter or shown any surprise at her attack.

Was the construct spying on her? Or could they send their spiritual perception out from the tunnels, even though she couldn't send hers in?

Most importantly of all, they didn't have another way out of the tunnel. Otherwise they would never have fought in and out of this entrance, knowing she was here.

Together, this convinced her that she was right. That construct was the key to Ghostwater—if she could take it for herself, it would lead her to greater treasure than anyone else. She might leave this world stronger than Akura Harmony.

And she could have it. The black dragon-spawn was dying, and the Lowgold wasn't worth mentioning. They had risked her wrath for the sake of food, which meant they had no provisions in there.

So they would be coming out of this door. Soon. And she was in no hurry.

* * *

Lindon didn't sleep. Instead, he drank from the Dream Well.

The world sharpened, which in turn drew his attention to his robust catalogue of aches and wounds. He was covered in cuts and burns, his madra channels still gave him sharp pain, and his ribs were definitely cracked. He'd even coughed up blood, and his Bloodforged Iron body was concentrating his madra on healing internal injuries in his chest and stomach.

“Oooh, that looks painful,” Dross said, from back in his seat in the jewel. “I’m sure you’re looking for a way to restore your spirit, eh? Of course you are, every sacred artist is. Lucky for you, I have the perfect solution!”

Every time he left his vessel, he lost a little essence, but thanks to what he'd taken from the other information constructs in the storage room, he shouldn't be in any immediate danger.

“There is a Spirit Well,” the construct continued. “Oh, it's beautiful: blue as a summer sky. So I'm told. I've never seen it myself, and for that matter, I've never seen the sky either. Or summer. Anyway, it promotes growth in the soul, stimulating recovery and increasing madra density. That was another reward for the workers: a glass or two could take a Highgold to the brink of advancement. Quite a coveted bonus, I can tell you, and I’m sure it’s been piling up just like the Dream Well. This is an opportunity not worth missing, I can assure you.”

Lindon pushed himself up to a sitting position, leaning against the wall. “Where?”

“Ah, that would be in the tablet library. It's where the dream artists pursued their project: they thought that they could condense a type of mental madra that, when focused on the brain, increased performance.”

“It didn't work?”

“In small doses, it worked like a charm. In less-small doses, it drove all test subjects violently insane.”

“And how do we get there?”

A brief violet light flashed, pointing straight out the door. “It's roughly five hundred yards in that direction.”

Right through Ekeri. Of course.

In any case, if he wanted to recover, he needed to keep his strength up.

Lindon looked to his fish. He would love to start a fire—not only would he prefer to cook his fish, but he needed something to generate Blackflame aura. If he simply waited on his soul to recover madra naturally, it would take weeks to refill his core, and that would be without refining or adding to his power in all that time.

But he wasn't sure he was capable of rising to his feet. Instead, he used his Remnant arm to peel the skin and scales away from a stretch of pale blue-white flesh. Ripping off a stretch of meat, he popped it into his mouth raw.

It exploded with flavor in his mouth, a sweet but metallic taste. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was intense. He almost spat it out in surprise. The meat was tender, melting like butter on his tongue, and he swallowed it without having to chew.

He gasped with relief after swallowing, reaching for a flask of Dream Well water to wash it down. “That has quite a taste to it,” he said.

Orthos cracked one eye. “Bad?”

“It's...a lot.” His right arm flopped to the ground instead of grabbing the nearest water vial. With an inward sigh, he reached out with his left arm.

When that didn't follow his directions either, he knew something was wrong. Little Blue, who had been curled up on the floor nearby, piped a questioning note.

“Orshoth,” he mumbled, “shere's shumfing...”

Heat crawled out from his stomach and slid through his blood. Sparks of lightning danced inside him, and his muscles started to tremble. A moment later, they began to dance.

His eyes rolled up into his head as he felt his body shake against the stone.

Poison, he realized. He'd been poisoned.

That was exactly what the Bloodforged Iron body was meant for, but he'd used up all but a fraction of his madra fighting Ekeri. He could feel it draining his spirit, but once he was dry, he'd be helpless.

“Cycle it!” Orthos demanded. “Take control!”

Cycle it? Lindon wondered. The heat from the fish wasn't traveling through his madra channels, but through his bloodstream.

He tried anyway, forcing his lungs to inflate and focusing on the warm, crackling energy. He pushed out a breath, and the energy moved through his body a little more.

It was like trying to push a millstone uphill one inch at a time, but he stuck with it one breath at a time.

As he did, he noticed something: he wasn't running out of madra. His Iron body should have been pulling from his spirit to heal him, but instead, it was feeding on the power from the sacred beast's meat. Now he focused on the cycling process eagerly.

Some time later, he lay on his back, staring up at the blue lights of the ceiling, breathing slow and even. His Bloodforged Iron body had seized on the last of the fish's energy, dispersing it through his limbs. Even his Remnant arm fed on it with relish.

Lindon sat up. His ribs were still tender, his spirit still aching, and his cores as empty as ever...but much of the pain had vanished. Not only that, but his arms and legs felt tense, and somehow lighter than usual.

“...was I poisoned?” Lindon asked.

Orthos took a huge bite out of the fish, tearing away half the remaining flesh and raising his head up so it fell down his gullet. Lindon could see the lump of meat sliding through his throat.

The huge turtle let out a breath of satisfaction a moment later, shaking himself like a wet dog. “Now that is meat fit for a dragon.” He eyed the remaining chunk of fish tail. Extending one nail, he slid off a hand-sized piece and slapped it skin-down on the ground next to Lindon. “Make that last,” he said.

Then he snapped up the rest of the tail, bones and scales crunching between his jaws.

“You know, I've thought of something that you might have wanted to know a few minutes ago,” Dross said, his gem flashing. “It's not too big of a deal. Hardly worth mentioning, really. But those fish? They’re called Silverfang Carp, and they are not meant to be eaten by humans. They were raised here like cattle, you know, to feed some of the, ah, larger specimens of Ghostwater.”

Lindon felt a sick feeling in his gut. He hoped it was his nerves and not some sort of horrifying parasite.

“Their meat promotes physical vitality and muscle growth,” Dross went on. “So it's not as though it's unhealthy! The opposite, really. So you see, good for you! And you survived, so...no harm done!”

Orthos belched so loudly the floor shook. “I haven't had a meal like that in decades. The Arelius family could not afford meat of that quality. You're lucky; this is the sort of food the Emperor eats.”

“He probably has his cooked,” Dross pointed out.

“So Overlords can eat this safely?” Lindon asked.

“Underlords and above have their bodies reforged by soulfire,” Orthos rumbled. “Something of this level is no problem for them, but it also doesn't provide as much of a benefit. The earlier you start eating like this, the better it is for you. If you did nothing but gorge yourself on those Carp for the next month or two, you'd have the strength of a lion and the endurance of an ox.” He barked out a laugh. “Maybe soon, I can stop calling you human.”

Dross added, “That is, if you survived. And if there were no crippling deformities caused by uncontrollable growth of your muscles and organs. Which, none so far so...yay! Let's all celebrate and not, you know, cast blame on anyone who didn't warn you.”

Lindon hurriedly scanned himself with his spiritual perception.

If anything, he seemed to be healthier than before his fight with Ekeri. A quick glance through his Copper sight showed that the line of green life aura running down his spine was brighter than ever, and the blood aura in his body was rich and dense.

He was no healer, but he imagined that was a good thing.

Mentally, Lindon thanked Eithan for leading him to the Bloodforged Iron body. If the Underlord had done nothing else for Lindon, that favor alone would have deserved Lindon's gratitude.

He started eyeing the remaining piece of Silverfang Carp meat. He wasn't exactly eager to go through that process again, but...

“I couldn't match her,” he said. “Physically, at least, she was stronger than Jai Long.”

Orthos coughed up a laugh. “She is a dragon.” He seemed in much better spirits now, after a meal; Lindon hoped the fish would give him the strength to heal his wounds.

“And she eats like this?”

“Gold dragons eat meat of this quality from the moment they hatch.” He bunched his shoulders in his version of a shrug. “By now, she will have reached her limit. Her body can be improved no further, while you have room to grow.”

With his right hand, Lindon skinned the meat, tossing the skin and scales to Orthos. Then he crammed the remaining fistful of Carp into his mouth.

When he recovered, he could stand. Shakily. He hobbled down to the lower level and withdrew everything flammable he could find, piling it together. Orthos lit it on fire, and Dross activated vents in the ceiling that drew away the smoke.

At first, Lindon was concerned that the smoke would be visible to Ekeri outside. But she already knew they were in here, so what harm could that do?

The fire consuming the fuel released destruction aura, and the blazing flames generated fire aura. It was out of balance—there was far more fire aura here than destruction, and all of it was muted and suppressed by the overwhelming power of water—but there was enough for Lindon to cycle.

At Orthos' instruction, he simply drew the aura in and converted it to madra. He spent very little time cycling it for advancement or operating the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel to push for a deeper core. This basic aura cycling technique of the Path of Black Flame wasn't anything fancy, Orthos told him, but it was better for recovery than the Purification Wheel.

“Purification Wheel?” Dross asked. “That sounds intriguing. Is that your cycling technique?”

Lindon didn't answer him. Eithan had emphasized that others might kill him in the hopes of pulling his cycling technique from his Remnant, so he tried to draw as little attention to it as possible. Not that he expected Dross to be spreading rumors, but it was better to be safe.

In three days, during which they had nothing else left to eat, Lindon had refilled his Blackflame core and begun to train. At first, he worried every hour that the world would disappear suddenly, taking him with it. But it was supposed to last for a few more months…and besides, it wasn’t as though he knew how to escape. The fastest way out was to train.

No one slept—Dross and Little Blue didn't need to, and Orthos and Lindon were sustained by the Dream Well water. Which was the only thing they had to drink.

“A Path is designed for one purpose,” Orthos growled at him. “You must learn to see that purpose.” The turtle's mental state had been improved by the Dream Well water, so he hardly lost himself anymore, but his spirit was still scarred. Physically, he'd recovered enough to limp around the hallway, but he rarely moved more than that.

He didn't cycle either. There wasn't enough aura to sustain them both, so Orthos left it to Lindon.

“What is the strength of the Path of Black Flame?” Orthos asked, locking red-and-black eyes onto him.

“Overwhelming power,” Lindon said. He had heard Orthos talk about this often enough to know what answer he wanted to hear.

The sacred beast grumbled, dissatisfied. “But why? What does that accomplish?”

Lindon thought for a moment before he answered. This reminded him of discussions he'd had with Yerin.

“Pressure,” he said. When he trained against Yerin, it felt as though he was always on the back foot, so that he couldn't launch an attack without losing a hand.

Orthos grunted approval, snapping up a mouthful of rusted metal. Lindon was starting to wish he could digest old iron as well; it had been three days since his last taste of food.

“When your opponent defends, he is not attacking. And the first mistake he makes will be his last. Now, Ekerinatoth's Path of the Flowing Flame. What is its strength?”

Lindon took another vial of purple water and his thoughts sharpened. He concentrated on that memory of their fight, as the dragon-girl flowed like a coiling snake around his attack. She used whips, and her Striker technique curled like a stream.

“Flexibility,” Lindon said. “Adaptability.”

“The usual strength of water artists,” Orthos said, a touch of scorn in his voice. “They will avoid or redirect your attacks, and use that moment to attack. How do you maintain pressure on such an opponent?”

Ekeri's movements were clear in Lindon's Dream Well-enhanced memories. “She becomes predictable,” he realized aloud. When he left a gap, he could count on her taking it. Meaning he could see where she would attack him. “I can anticipate her.”

“Show me,” Orthos said. And he rushed at Lindon.

Two days of constant, sleepless training later, Lindon left the cave again.

Thanks to the water, Lindon felt as though it had been much longer. He was able to train for twice as long as before—when his body or spirit couldn't recover, he instead discussed strategy and theory until he was ready to move again. And what training he had was twice as effective, because he was always ready to give it his full concentration.

The level of water in the well had now shrunk significantly. Orthos' thirst was not to be underestimated, and the water was only replaced by a few drops a day. Lindon was already wondering if there was some way to take the well with them when they left, or at least recreate it outside.

He snuck out of the cave under a veil with no complications, and the Silverfang Carp died easily under his Remnant fist. His body felt lighter and stronger than ever, after digesting the power of the sacred beast meat from before. This one had only managed to scream once before he crushed its skull, then shredded its Remnant.

He had barely recovered any pure madra over the last several days—he hadn't realized how much he'd relied on Eithan's elixirs to refill his pure core. As a result, he'd only been able to make one low-quality scale for Little Blue. She hadn't been able to use any madra, so Orthos' spirit was growing worse and worse.

Even if he managed to bring back this whole Carp, they couldn't stay in the tunnels forever. Fortunately, his Blackflame core was in top condition.

He made it all the way back to the tunnel and opened the door, tossing the fish inside, before Ekeri showed herself.

His perception caught her descending like a meteor from the rock tower overhead. She blazed with power, aiming for him while he still held Dross in the keyhole.

Lindon released the Eye of the Deep and ignited the Burning Cloak.

He struck overhead, launching a punch along with a pulse of Blackflame madra above him. It wasn't a true dragon's breath, but it should at least singe her.

She was falling headfirst, her eyes blazing gold, her teeth bared. She slapped his punch aside with one claw, the other sweeping at his head.

Lindon caught it.

His Remnant arm seized on her wrist. His strength couldn’t compare to hers—not only was she a Truegold, she was a dragon. But he had gravity on his side. With all his strength, he hauled her down. She twisted in his grip, slamming into the ground braced on her feet and tail. Sand blasted away in a ring.

Lindon had already triggered his arm.

Intense heat flowed into his limb along with a flow of orange madra, sending spiritual pain shuddering through him. He gritted his teeth and continued even as she pulled back, trying to break his grip.

She snarled, turning, whipping her tail at him. He had to release her and jump back before her tail lashed him in the chest.

Without missing a beat, he vented the madra in his arm. Her own molten madra sprayed at her from only a few feet away, causing her to raise one gold hand to protect her face.

Seizing Dross again, Lindon dove through the gap and slammed the door shut.

* * *

Ekeri's rage burned so hot that the nearby aura ignited. Even through the overwhelming power of water, the edges of the nearby stalks began to smolder and release smoke. The distant fish shrieked, but Ekeri wished they would close on her. She needed something to vent her frustration.

The other Truegolds would have moved on to other habitats by now, or to the wreckage of those that had collapsed. They would be reaping a rich harvest. And here she was, clawing at a treasure chest that remained stubbornly locked. No longer.

Raising her hand to her chest, she activated one of her necklaces: a chain of silver with a single thumbnail-sized bell on the end. The bell rang once. No matter how far away her attendants were, they would hear it and return.

The next time that door opened, they would kill everything inside.

* * *

Lindon leaned his head against the wall of the tunnel, his arms trembling. Blocking the Truegold's attack directly had cracked bones in his left wrist, which his Iron body rushed to repair, and fractures had appeared in the madra of his right arm. He patched them over with pure madra, though he'd have to perform real maintenance with hunger madra when he left.

Even that brief exchange with Ekeri left him strained and bruised, but it also left him grinning like Eithan. He had traded blows with her and come out ahead.

Orthos had already torn the head off the Silverfang Carp, and was crunching happily through its skull. “I hope you've prepared yourself,” Orthos said through a mouthful of food.

Lindon nodded to the door. “I know. She won't let me walk away next time.”

The turtle grunted. “No. Next time, you won't let her walk away.”

Over the next few days, the fish became easier for Lindon to digest. It still kicked him like a horse, but it took him less time to process the energy, and he started to see a clear improvement in his body. Every time he cycled more of the sacred beast's power was another round of tempering everything from his bones to his skin.

Orthos was clearly seeing the benefits too. He moved more easily than Lindon had ever seen him outside a fight, and even the fissure in his shell had started to close. Mentally, he reported feeling clearer than he had in years, so his mood was bright. Relatively speaking. However, his soul was still damaged and weak. He couldn't use a single technique without treatment, which Little Blue was in no shape to give him. Lindon's pure core recovered at a snail's pace without help.

Every day, Lindon ate as much of the Carp as he could and trained Blackflame under Orthos' supervision.

“You have been practicing a broken Path,” Orthos told him. “How many techniques were taught in the Blackflame Trials?”

“Three,” Lindon said. He knew where this was going, but he had no choice but to humor the sacred beast.

“And how many have you been using?”

“Two.”

“All Blackflame artists mastered those three, and incorporated them into their fighting styles. Most of them developed at least four. When you have greater insight into the use of your Path, you usually create other techniques to sharpen your strengths and cover your weaknesses. This is how you form a Path,” Orthos said, nodding at the wooden chest of Lindon's belongings.

Lindon was surprised to see him allude to the Path of Twin Stars. He often seemed to ignore Lindon's pure core entirely.

“You look at the purpose of your Path and you cultivate techniques to accomplish that purpose. You do not neglect one-third of your abilities because the other two-thirds seem easier to practice.”

Lindon had ignored Twin Stars for too long. The Empty Palm was the only real technique in his Path; the Heart of Twin Stars had no practical use in battle. What else did he need? Some way to close the gap with his opponent in order to land an Empty Palm, certainly. He was relying on the Burning Cloak for that so far, which meant he needed to switch cores too often.

Orthos thumped on the floor, sending a slap echoing through the hall. “You've taken the wrong point, I can see it in your eyes. Stop thinking and listen to me: we're going to practice the Void Dragon's Dance.”

This wasn't the first time Lindon had heard this argument. While preparing to fight Jai Long, Orthos had argued that Lindon needed to master the Dance. But because their practice grounds had been both small and devoid of much fire aura, and because Eithan insisted that the duel would occur in a place with very little fire aura, they had abandoned the idea. As a result, Lindon had never used it in a real battle.

And rarely in practice; in his opinion, the technique seemed too large and unwieldy to use in an actual fight. It seemed like the sort of thing you'd want if you were burning down a forest or attacking a village.

He and Orthos gathered all the flammable trash in the hallway and spread it all around the huge, empty warehouse room that Lindon had found before. They intended to train both the Dance and his other clear weakness: it took him too long to form his dragon's breath. They had made great progress on that before Jai Long, too, but they had never reached a point that satisfied Lindon.

The fires they ignited while training served as sources of aura for Lindon to cycle. A natural fire generated more fire aura than destruction aura, so Lindon’s advancement was much slower than it had been in the Blackflame training grounds of Serpent’s Grave, but it was enough to keep his core full for training. As long as they rationed themselves; they only had a limited amount of garbage in the hall.

With piles of trash as targets, water from the Dream Well to support him, and Orthos watching, Lindon dove into focused training. Cycling aura, processing fish meat, practicing dragon’s breath, and learning the Void Dragon’s Dance swallowed every day and every night. All his sleep was replaced by the Dream Well.

He lasted two weeks.

That was as much time as they could afford. By the end of it, Little Blue was listless, thin, and pale. Even Dross—who assured him that Ghostwater was intact enough to last a few more months—had retreated into his gem to try and minimize madra loss. Though Lindon still rinsed out his madra channels with pure madra while training, the damage from the Path of Black Flame was adding up. His channels were scarred, and his Bloodforged Iron body was taking longer and longer to heal him after he channeled Blackflame for too long. He had to get out and find a way to refill his pure core.

None of them could stay here any longer. Dross needed a better vessel, Little Blue needed food, and Orthos needed her treatment. They had finished the Silverfang Carp almost a week before, and if Lindon waited any longer, his condition would only get worse.

He stood behind the door, Dross' gem in his hand, steadying his breathing to smooth out the flow of his spirit. Ekeri would come at him with everything she had. She wouldn't be trying to persuade or rob him, but to kill him. Orthos had assured him she would use a weapon, she would position her two Lowgold assistants to prevent him from running, and she would have no mercy.

“Dross,” Lindon asked, “how often do Lowgolds defeat Truegolds?” That was the question he'd avoided asking for two weeks.

He had taken off Sandviper Gokren’s hand while Lowgold, which meant he could certainly wound Truegolds. And he had fought Jai Long, knowing that victory was a long shot, so he should be used to this by now.

But he'd lost that fight.

“I wouldn't worry about it,” Dross said, purple light flashing from the gem in Lindon's hand. “Just focus on doing your best. Don't think about the massively improbable odds, or what will happen if you fail. She's probably killed scores of people stronger than you, but you can't think about that, because an instant of distraction will spell your certain death.”

“...gratitude,” Lindon said, his breathing coming a little quicker.

Orthos shoved him aside and walked around Lindon, standing between him and the door. He glared at him, eyes circles of red on darkness. “Listen to me. The black dragons were the kings of this continent. In their day, their power dwarfed the Akura family. The gold dragons were just a servant family beneath them, scraping and clawing for every scrap.”

He raised one leg, tapping Lindon's stomach with a claw. “That is the spirit that flows through you. She is two realms above you? Good. You need at least that much of a handicap to make it a challenge.”

Orthos snaked his head down and seized Dross in his jaws, then lifted the gem and pressed it to the keyhole. The door melted away, revealing the blocky structure of golden madra that was Ekeri's shelter.

The turtle released Dross, turning back to Lindon. “Go out there and show her the power of a true dragon.”

With the Path of Black Flame flowing through him, Lindon felt his eyes warm as they turned black. He marched out without another word, not looking back as the door closed behind him.

* * *

In the blue light, Dross flashed brightly. “Wow, you really set him on fire, didn't you? He didn't look very encouraged after I talked to him, but wow, you knew exactly what strings to pull. If I had hands, I'd be applauding you right now. Picture me applauding.”

Orthos ignored him, settling down on the ground. The Sylvan Riverseed gave him a worried look and a peep, and he extended a paw so she could climb up and wait with him.

“Now, be honest with me,” Dross went on. “What do you think his odds are? He's not here, he won't hear you, I just want to know what you think. Turtle-to-gem.”

“He is my partner,” Orthos growled. The construct talked too much. He just wanted to wait in silence.

“No, sure, I understand that, but what do you think his odds really are? Ten to one? A hundred to one? Maybe just two to one?”

Orthos locked his eyes on the purple-lit gem. “One hundred percent.”

“...optimism! Oh, that's a good one, it really is. False courage really does wonders for keeping the spirits up.”

“One more word, and I will eat you.”

9

Lindon stood in front of the gold shelter with no veil, staring up at the highest window. Orange curtains hung limp in the still air.

Seconds after he stepped out of the hall, the dragon's pair of servants walked out of the front door. Lindon tensed, tracing their movements, but each of the plain-looking men walked in a different direction and took up a post near the edges of the closest stalks. As expected they were there to prevent him from running. Though they felt like Lowgolds, his spiritual perception had trouble reading them. It was like trying to hold a handful of mist.

At the highest window, Ekerinatoth appeared. The dragon-girl glared down at him, golden scales flashing in the light. She had traded out her layers of fanciful colored clothes for something that looked more like a sacred artist's robe of jade-colored silk. Necklaces still hung on her chest, and she carried a weapon at her side. It looked like a long, thumb-thick needle with a sword's hilt.

Lindon looked up at her, focusing his perception on her, afraid to miss a single movement. She stood watching him.

Then she fully unveiled her spirit.

To his eyes, nothing changed, but his soul trembled. A faint weight pressed down on him, and she felt like a wildfire raging toward him. The Blackflame madra in him was nothing but a candle before a hearth. She dwarfed him.

Lindon gathered his madra together anyway and ignited the Burning Cloak. Orthos' words bolstered him: this was just a handicap.

And this time, he wasn't trying to sneak past her.

He kicked off the ground, launching himself up to her second-story window. Even with the reflexes of a Truegold, she hesitated an instant when she saw him suddenly appear in her face, and ripples of light started running in waves from her feet as she activated her own Enforcer technique.

Lindon's fist almost caught her, but she twisted enough to avoid the impact. She slammed into her own wall, leaving a web of cracks.

Black dragon's breath followed from Lindon's hand an instant later.

She slipped beneath, and the bar of dark fire punched a hole in the wall. He wrenched the technique to the side, following her, the beam carving a long gouge in her shelter. Orange-gold essence drifted up in sparks like the rising dawn.

She flowed up to him, pulling her weapon from her side, but he dropped his dragon's breath and closed the gap with the Burning Cloak. He knocked her wrist aside with his left hand, and this time his bones didn't crack. Days and nights of pain, cycling the energy of the sacred fish, had forged his body anew.

Before she brought her weapon to bear, he grabbed her shoulder in his pale right hand and began to consume her madra. She slashed at his Remnant arm with her needle, forcing him to let go, creating a step of distance between them.

Then she thrust a claw forward. Orange light burst from it like a waterfall of blazing heat.

It was far more raw power than he could conjure in an instant. The beam was as wide as his torso, and while it wasn't as focused or as destructive as Blackflame, its raw power overshadowed anything he could produce.

Lindon held out his white hand. He and Orthos had tested this as much as they could without risking Lindon's life, and it should work in theory. But there was every chance that the Flowing Flame madra would pass over him like a tide and leave him helpless.

As the Striker technique hit his palm, he triggered the hunger binding.

Unleashed, his arm started devouring the technique. It reached its capacity almost immediately, and orange lines began to stain the limb, searing Lindon's soul and filling his arm like a sack stuffed to bursting.

But he'd consumed the technique.

Without giving Ekeri an instant to recover, Lindon held his white arm out as though holding a shield. Flowing Flame madra gushed out of his forearm.

It wasn't as focused as her original technique, and it had lost much of its potency, but she still had to cross her arms and bear it. Liquid fire splashed out of the holes in the house.

Cutting off the technique, Lindon launched himself forward with the power of the Burning Cloak. He hit Ekeri foot-first, stomping her back.

For once, he landed a clean hit. Whether she thought she could endure the blow or just failed to dodge, she took the kick on her crossed arms.

And she blasted back through the wall of her shelter, hitting the sand like a falling star.

Lindon dashed after her while she was still in the air, the corona of the Burning Cloak turning him into a black meteor. He landed in front of her, sending wide, sweeping slashes of dragon's breath scything into the waving sea-stalks around her.

Stalks toppled, smoldering and smoking, but because of the water aura, none of them burst into flames.

Shrieks rose in a chorus from all over the habitat. He sensed cold, savage power approaching from every direction as the Silverfang Carp closed on them.

A great roar echoed over the sand as Ekeri's shelter collapsed. The blocks tumbled to the ground as though they were made out of real stone, a great puff of essence rose into the sky like dust. At last, flames licked up from the wreckage as bits of smashed wooden furniture caught fire. That was one of Lindon's worries eased.

But she had been waiting too.

The fire aura from around the flame gathered behind him, flames pulling themselves into a river. He sensed it happen, whirling to face the Ruler technique she was conjuring behind his back.

It was like staring down a dragon made of orange flame. He extended his own madra to the aura, contesting her control, but he felt like a child throwing his whole body weight against the arm of a warrior. The snake of fire washed over him, instantly igniting the edges of his clothes. If not for him using fire aura to push the fire away, and the water aura weakening flames, his robes would have burned away entirely.

Still, fighting against her Ruler technique took everything he had. His soul blazed, his Blackflame madra rolling like a whirlpool, and his teeth were gritted as he threw his whole concentration into it. With his right hand, he fumbled at his pocket.

The hand ignored him.

Not now, Lindon begged. Please, not now.

The hand lurched in Ekeri's direction. Lindon split his attention, and the fire pressed closer, searing his skin. He screamed, but forced his hand to listen to him.

It reached into his pocket and withdrew a sealed vial of baked clay. He broke the seal with his thumb, dumping glowing purple water into his mouth.

Instantly, his concentration sharpened. His vision cleared, and his control over the aura firmed. His training with Orthos had showed them both that reaction speed and focus were both noticeably improved under the effects of the Dream Well.

But his newly enhanced reactions weren't enough to stop the golden tail from catching him across the chest.

He flew back, tumbling across the sand, trying to scramble to his feet. Fear spiked in his chest.

He only had one chance of winning: keeping Ekeri on the defensive. Orthos had lectured him at length, but it was a principle he'd learned from Yerin. The strength of an offensive Path, like the Path of Black Flame, was its ability to put pressure on the opponent. Without that pressure, he would crumble like a dry leaf.

And now she had him on the back foot.

With the power of the Burning Cloak, he ran, trying to put some distance between them. She followed him as though tied to him with a string, holding out the needle in her hand.

A long string of orange madra extended from the end, and Lindon recognized it for what it was. Not a needle, but a whip. This would be a tool to enhance the whip-like Forger technique she'd used before.

She spun it over her head, and the line of flexible madra spun in all directions, slicing stalks open. The aura around them was mixed with spots of visible red, as fires started to ignite, and the air was beginning to choke with smoke. The screams of the fish grew closer as Lindon ducked and dipped through the stalks and the occasional boulder, trying to increase the gap between them.

A man in white appeared out of nowhere in front of him, sending a kick at his feet.

Lindon leaped over him, driving his fist at the servant's face, but he ducked his head slightly to one side. Lindon followed up with a kick, but the servant moved back a step.

Lindon's gut clenched. The man wasn't trying to fight him, just to tie him up until Ekeri reached him. Though he didn't want to waste the madra, he gathered black fire in his left palm.

Silver flashed from within the smoke, and a Silverfang Carp came for him with fangs open.

Lindon seized the fangs with his Remnant arm. After feeding on their meat for so long, Lindon could hold it back much more easily than before; even his replacement arm had been strengthened by the power in their flesh. However, it was still massive. As it swam through the air, it pushed him back through the sand.

A burst of pain exploded next to his shoulder blade, and he screamed, hauling the fish with him as he twisted to see what had hit him.

The servant stepped back, bloody knife in hand.

Rage flowed from his Blackflame core. Still gripping the massive Carp, Lindon extended his hand of flesh and fired his dragon's breath.

Ekeri leaped over her servant at the same time. If she wanted to save him, she would have to land and take his Striker technique, which would give him time to push away the fish. His Bloodforged Iron body had already started to drain madra to heal the wound in his back, so he needed to end this quickly.

But the dragon-girl ignored his technique. The bar of fire punched into the Lowgold's side, instantly taking a chunk out of his ribs and igniting his clothes. His body bucked, and the wound flashed with green light—he must have had a treasure to preserve his life.

It wouldn't be enough. Three more Carp darted over, descending on him.

Then Lindon could no longer pay attention to the Lowgold, because there was a Truegold on top of him.

She whirled her whip at him, and as he struggled to cut off the flow of his dragon's breath, the glowing orange weapon wrapped around his leg.

It seared like red-hot metal against his skin, and Lindon knew with rock-solid conviction that it was about to tighten and tear his limb away. Instead of cutting off his dragon's breath, he poured more madra into it, slicing down like a burning executioner's blade onto her head.

Before she could cut his leg away, she had to raise a hand to defend against the dense bar of Blackflame. With her attention distracted, he kicked the weapon away.

As the whip slid back down his skin, it burned him, and he choked back a scream. He wrenched his leg free, stumbling back.

The Silverfang Carp had truly gathered now, flashing everywhere, so he and Ekeri fought in the middle of a school. The air was so hazy that it looked like they were swimming through smoke. With the Burning Cloak active, he knocked them to one side and the other, leaping and kicking off of a fish that hovered in the air.

He looked down, seeing the sliced and broken sea-stalks smoldering on the sand.

And, as he watched, they burst into open flame.

Until that point, the greatest source of fire aura had been the furniture in the wreckage of Ekeri's shelter. That generated enough red-hot aura to fuel her Ruler technique.

But the Void Dragon's Dance also required destruction. The more the fire consumed, the more destruction aura it released along with the heat. Now, there was enough for him to work with.

Extending his spirit, he gathered threads of black and red energy, controlling it with his madra, wrapping it together, coiling it around himself. The air rippled with heat, his skin tingled, and the edges of his robes started to dissolve as though under the effect of invisible flames.

Holding her larger whip in one hand and a Forged whip in the other, Ekeri rushed after him. She leaped, grabbing onto one Carp with her tail and swinging over a second, snapping sacred beast. She kicked off another, slapped the next in two, and came down on him with both whips descending. All the while, fires dimmed nearby as she gathered fire aura to defend herself.

He was almost out of madra. He couldn't compete with her in endurance, in physical strength, or in technique. The longer this battle went on, the more options he'd lose.

She'd undoubtedly survived more battles than he had. She'd read his Ruler attack the second he started preparing it, gathering up aura to prepare a defense. By the time Lindon played his last card, she'd still have a full hand.

But, as Orthos had taught him, the Path of Black Flame had some good cards.

When the red and black vital aura had been wrapped together in roughly equal measure, Lindon braided it according to the Ruler technique he'd learned almost a year before.

He turned and faced Ekeri's whips. His left hand flowed with the power necessary to control the Void Dragon's Dance, so he couldn't move it, but his Remnant arm reached out and seized a nearby fish. He dragged it in front of him, using its body to shield him from her attack.

Before it hit, he pushed his left arm forward. With it, he pushed out the tightly coiled aura. It wrestled against his madra, trying to spring free, and his arm and spirit trembled.

Golden light sliced the Silverfang Carp in half, and the second whip descended. He raised his right hand to catch it, though it burned his Remnant palm with a piercing pain that shot through his spirit. At the same time, visible only in his Copper sight, a tightly wound disc of red-and-black aura reached Ekeri.

She pushed against the fire aura with her own spirit, and in only a moment she would unravel the technique.

Instead, Lindon clenched his left fist.

And unleashed the Void Dragon's Dance.

The aura exploded into a cyclone of spinning flame. It stretched from the ground to the ceiling of the dome, and the heat scorched his face. The column of swirling black-and-red fire swallowed Ekeri, then the Carp around her were consumed, followed by those farther away as the technique grew larger and larger.

But this was not just a fire technique. Empowered by destruction aura, the flames devoured material in a blink. What would normally take hours for the fire to burn instead disappeared instantly.

Every Silverfang Carp touched by the flame was consumed in a snap, becoming little more than ash that drifted down. Lindon projected Blackflame madra around himself as the technique expanded, but the Void Dragon's Dance was over in only a second.

All of the nearby fish, the remaining stalks, and the yellow-glowing plants had been completely destroyed in a circle around him. Losing the lights left him in shadow, but he couldn't feel the attendants anymore either. Everything within a hundred yards had vanished, leaving Lindon in a world of sand and ash.

Except for one other survivor. A dragon could not be so easily burned.

Though he had hoped.

Ekeri was only singed, her clothes damaged and smoking, her scales charred. She knelt on one knee with whips crossed before her, spirit trembling. As the ash cleared, her eyes snapped open. They blazed gold.

He braced his knees to keep from collapsing.

There were only a few scraps of madra left in his Blackflame core, but he released a quick, sloppy dragon's breath to keep her at bay.

It didn't help. Enforcer technique rippling around her legs, she flowed around his attack, letting her Forged whip vanish in order to strike with her weapon. He ducked it, but she was clearly prepared for him.

Her tail slipped around behind him, locking him into place. Then her clawed hand struck for his chest.

Lindon was past the scope of his plan. They had practiced for everything they could, but no fight could be fully anticipated. At some point, he had to lean on his experience and training.

He only had enough Blackflame madra for one more technique, so he let it go.

And took the hit.

Her claws pierced his chest around his gold badge. They plunged through his skin, sending blood flowing down his stomach.

The pain tore at his consciousness, but he hadn't accepted the hit by accident. If she wasn't this close, so close that he could smell the ash on her skin, he would never have been able to hit her himself.

So he shoved his Empty Palm into her core.

Her Enforcer technique vanished and her whip went dark, reverting to nothing more than a needle-pointed silver hilt. Gold eyes widened, and her reptilian lips parted.

Heat crept back into Lindon's eyes as he pulled Blackflame for one last time.

The dragon's breath was only the width of two fingers, but it drilled straight through her heart. Severed, her necklaces fell to the ground, leaving loose pearls and chunks of jade and links of gold chain tumbling over the sand.

Lindon shoved her away, stumbling backwards, trying to conjure up enough madra for a Burning Cloak. He should have gone for her head. Now he had given her enough room to recover. She would be coming for him any second, but he couldn't scrape any more power together.

A full breath of time passed before he realized she wasn't coming after him.

Instead, she dropped to her knees, scrambling in the sand for her jewelry. Blood leaked from her lips, and she wheezed as though trying to speak, but she ended up coughing blood over the ground instead.

Lindon limped forward. His right arm wasn't obeying him, but he had to try something. If he left her alive...

Her hand closed over a tiny jade rectangle. With one last frightened glance at him, she broke it.

The air shattered.

Lindon held his hands up to defend himself from this new attack, but all the weight on his spirit had vanished. Before him, where Ekeri had knelt before, there was an intricate spiderweb of cracks in the air. He swept his spiritual perception through them, but they didn’t feel like madra. They felt like nothing, like they were splintered cracks in existence itself.

He did feel something from beneath the web: one or more of those necklaces was releasing an aura like a Truegold weapon. Though every movement sent agony shooting through his whole body, he slowly knelt and slipped his Remnant hand beneath the cracks, reaching for the necklaces.

If they ended up being dangerous, at least he would only lose the same arm.

The pointed tips of his fingers caught on one string…and passed through. This time, he remembered to send pure madra flowing through the limb before he snagged the necklace, pulling the pile of jewelry free of the web and close to him.

He was eager to inspect them, but ash was still falling around him, and the shrieks of distant Carp were growing closer. He could wait until he was back in the safety of the tunnel.

Lindon limped back, passing piles of gray, pressing his robes to his chest to stop the bleeding. When he reached the rock leading into the tunnel, he could only stare at it blankly.

He’d left Dross inside. He had to wait until they opened the door for him.

With a heavy sigh, he turned to lean his back against the stone, sliding down until he was seated. Somehow, the moment of reaction made his pain so much worse, as though all his injuries were waiting for him to let his guard down before they mobbed him all at once.

That only lasted a breath before the wall behind him vanished and he tumbled backwards.

When the agony cleared and he stopped groaning, he spoke. “I forgot you could see out.”

Dross drifted out of his gem, a cloud of shifting purple gears and swimming violet lights. “I don’t see Ekeri,” he said, bobbing around the entrance. “And I see the earth has been burned and salted. Who saved you?”

“No one,” Lindon said. He was still lying on his back, so when Orthos stepped up and looked down at him, he saw the turtle’s smile upside-down.

“I won,” Lindon told him, and the truth of it seeped into him like warm honey.

Orthos’ laugh started as a distant chuckle and grew to a massive, merry rumble that shook the floor. “By the time we get out of here, the Skysworn will be asking your permission to speak.”

* * *

Sopharanatoth, dragon of the gold bloodline, sipped winter-wine from a silver chalice. The wine had weak spiritual properties, but its chill was a pleasant contrast to the heat that usually flowed through her veins. And it was a thousand high-grade scales per bottle, so it was appropriate for her position.

Supervising the entrance of Ghostwater was the most luxurious assignment an Underlord could receive. Especially when the primary portal had been destroyed. She and her retinue reclined in a silk tent planted on a Thousand-Mile Cloud ten thousand feet above the portal, scanning the portal every once in a while with their spirits. The destruction of the other exit had made her job easy; now they barely even bothered to sweep the exit once a day. When Sophara's little sister emerged, she would use her gatestone to leave. Which meant she would appear right here, so there was really no need to keep watch at all.

The other gold dragons, Truegolds all, lounged on beds of cloud madra all around the tent, reading books, consulting dream tablets, or snacking on flaming crickets from a cage. As Truegolds, they looked as much like dragons as like humans, but Sophara's soulfire set her apart. Her face was almost entirely human, but for her eyes and the patches of scales on her cheeks. Scales had fallen away elsewhere on her body as well, leaving patches of skin on her arms and legs.

She looked forward to reaching Overlord, when she would have hair, but she found the strands of loose scales tumbling down her shoulders a pleasing approximation.

Some other bloodlines valued their natural forms most highly, and refused to transform even once they had the soulfire to do so. While the power of the dragon form was useful, golds had a more refined aesthetic sense than their brethren. They shared the tastes of Seshethkunaaz, Monarch of Dragons, who had lived for centuries in human form. And there was no denying that madra moved more smoothly through a human body.

Sophara had emptied her chalice and was trying to decide if she wanted another when she felt a crack in her spiritual perception.

In the same instant, a smoking, bleeding golden body tumbled out of nowhere onto her priceless woven rug.

She had kindled a Striker technique before she recognized her little sister. Hurriedly dismissing her madra, she dropped to her knees, pulling Ekeri into her arms.

The Truegold girl stared blankly at the ceiling of the tent, blood staining her lips. A weak cough sent more blood oozing from the scorched wound in her chest.

“Healing!” Sophara commanded, her voice trembling. The other Truegolds shot away to obey, running out for elixirs or reaching into their personal void keys for life-saving constructs.

When her perception delved into her sister's body, her hope shattered. The girl's lifeline was unraveling, green dissipating into aura, and her spirit had already started to congeal. Her Remnant was beginning to form.

Ekeri met her sister's eyes. “I failed,” she said. She coughed up another mouthful of blood and started again. “I failed him. I'm sorry.”

An instant later, she was gone.

A golden serpent slithered away from her body, and Sophara stepped away, eyes closed, tears streaming down her cheeks. She couldn't look at her own sister's Remnant.

She heard the Truegolds guiding the spirit away. They would use the Remnant to raise up another student, in honor of her sister, or else they would send it to the Soulsmiths to form it into a guardian treasure for their family, so Ekeri could add to the glory of the bloodline forever.

Or a weapon, to be used against the one who had killed her.

Sophara snapped her eyes open, staring at the wound on her sister's chest. It was black and molten, burned so hot that there was very little blood. On someone other than a dragon, it might not have left any blood at all.

The aura around the wound was black and red, braided together in a recognizable pattern.

Black dragons.

Not even with their bloodline all but eradicated, their authority forgotten, their descendants scattered, would the black dragons leave them alone. Sophara threw back her head, pouring all her rage and her hate into her voice.

When she roared, it was the roar of a dragon. And all the golds roared with her.

10

At first, Yerin thought the trip across the island would be quick.

The Sage had marked the basic locations of the other factions on the map. Most of the island was uncontrolled, but there were a few places where they'd have to travel around the territory of the Beast King or the dragons. The portal leading into Ghostwater was on the edge of Redmoon Hall territory. She was tempted to hit them, but forced herself back on track.

To be safe, she thought it might take as much as a week, stepping lightly and using veils. She suspected it would be more like two nights.

The first day, she pushed them so hard that Mercy had to take some elixirs from her storage to stop from collapsing. After midnight passed and they hadn't taken a break, Mercy grabbed Yerin's arm. The Akura's hair was plastered to her forehead, and she breathed like a whipped pack-mule.

“We're not going to get there tonight,” Mercy said, a hint of begging in her tone.

Yerin glanced down at the map. She chafed at the delay, but Mercy had a point. They could use some time to rest and cycle.

“Four hours,” Yerin allowed, and Mercy sagged to the ground, leaving her staff to topple beside her.

When Mercy had caught her breath, she looked into the darkness around her. Distant howls and whispers on the wind told them that these woods were haunted by predators.

“I've never spent the night in the woods before,” Mercy admitted.

Yerin nestled into the crook of a tree, pulling her outer robe around her. “You can thank the heavens it isn't snowing. Some places, this is practically summer.” There was a biting chill on the wind, but nothing that would kill a sacred artist above Iron.

She had piled up a little mound of leaves and dirt, and the roots rose high enough around her to break some of the wind. It wasn't an Arelius guest room, but she'd slept through worse.

Mercy fiddled with the end of her hair, looking from herself to Yerin nervously. “I'm not sure there will be enough room for us both.”

Yerin's elbows were scraping roots on both sides. Her Goldsigns were folded up over her shoulders. “A hair smaller, and I'd have no room for my arms. You can find your own—”

A small door opened in the air.

It was a square opening about four or five feet to a side, sitting on the ground like someone had opened a box without bothering with the actual box part. Without hesitation, Mercy rummaged around inside, pulling out fluffy padded blankets and a metal box that radiated fire aura. A heater.

“It won't be comfortable,” Mercy said, voice downcast. “The tent is really meant for one person.”

“The tent,” Yerin repeated.

Mercy held up a palm-sized square of dark green Forged madra, which snapped into a pyramid-shaped tent. Scripts on the outside provided an extra veil and warded away spirits. Mercy stared at the shelter like she couldn't imagine how they'd ever squeeze both people inside, but to Yerin it looked like a palace.

“If the heavens gave me one wish, I'd ask to be reborn as a Monarch's kid.” Yerin still wasn’t sure how she felt about Mercy, but at least the Akura girl came with supplies.

Mercy's brow furrowed. “It's just a tent.”

Yerin was already climbing inside.

After a night in the tent, Yerin was certain that the journey would be easier than she had ever imagined. They started well-rested, they made good time that first morning, and they had a map. More than once, on her journeys with the Sword Sage, Yerin would have killed for convenience like this.

Their first delay came when they sensed a Redmoon Underlord a few miles ahead of them. They ended up having to stay in the tent, veiled, for a full day before they could confirm the enemy had withdrawn.

Then a flock of Truegold-level vultures caught their scent, forcing them off the path.

Then there was the mammoth that grazed on trees. They had to go around him.

A zone of shadow and darkness covered another hillside as Redmoon Hall skirmished with servants of the Akura family, and they had to sneak past.

Before she knew it, the days flowed like water and they still hadn't reached their destination.

Their speed dropped to a crawl, and they were forced to wait for hours at a time. So Yerin did what she always did when the hours pressed in on her: she trained.

As he fell through the air, the Sword Sage continued to fight.

One of his opponents flew on currents of air, his Ruler technique commanding the wind aura as he soared with no wings. That one produced halfsilver darts, whipping them at the Sword Sage to try and disrupt his madra.

The other rode an eagle like a horse, carrying a long spear in one hand and a shield in the other. Her eyes blazed the same color as her sacred beasts, and sword aura gathered around the eagle's claws.

Her lance-strike carried the putrid, sickly energy of death madra. The wind artist hammered him with gusts of wind madra to keep him off-balance, to knock him into the halfsilver darts.

He took a look at the deadly lance an inch from his skin, the furious eagle rearing to strike behind it. He sensed the bludgeon of wind madra from beneath him, the glimmer of sharp chaos as the halfsilver darts closed from behind.

With a tap of his madra, his sword rang like a bell.

As she advanced through the Highgold stage, Yerin had unlocked more memories that had been ingrained into her master's spirit. Some of them were personal or too short to make anything out of them, but some contained the insights into the Path of the Endless Sword that he'd never been able to share with her. She chewed on these like a cow with a mouthful of grass, meditating on them morning and night.

In this case, the Sword Sage's Endless Sword technique had met every attack at the same time. The eagle's claws, the deadly lance, the halfsilver darts—they were all knocked aside at once as though deflected by invisible swords.

Only the green column of wind madra was unaffected, and the Sage sliced that in half with a wave of madra from one of the six sword-arms on his back.

The rest of the scene faded, leaving Yerin to replay it over in her mind.

The Endless Sword was the Ruler technique for which her whole Path was named. It was the root and branch of her master’s fighting style. But she hadn't even used it in her fight against Bai Rou.

The truth was, hers was a pale shadow of her master's. Her master could use the Endless Sword to cut one page from a closed book. She just hit the aura around her weapon as hard as she could with her madra. It spread out like ripples in a pond, cutting everything in its path, and when it passed through another source of sword aura, that aura burst too. Her master had called it aura resonance, and with enough madra behind it, it could start a cascading reaction that could tear a city to pieces.

But in her case, it didn't pack enough punch. She could only use it effectively against enemies weaker than she was. And what good was a weapon that couldn't be used against real opponents?

She'd focused on other pieces of her Path instead: advancement, her other techniques, physical swordplay. For too long, she had neglected the namesake of her Path. She had hoped that, as she grew in insight and experience, the Endless Sword would begin to make more sense to her.

Now Yerin was out of time. She needed more power...and her Blood Shadow was right there.

If she didn't find a new weapon, she'd be forced to rely on the Shadow every time the battle became tough. It had tormented her for too long; she couldn't lean on it. Frankly, it turned her stomach when she so much as thought about it for too long. If she never had to use it, that would be the real victory.

Which meant she needed to win without it.

In that vision, the Sword Sage had demonstrated the second level of Endless Sword mastery: sword like the wind. Yerin was stuck at the “storm” stage. Her aura exploded out from her weapon in a furious, uncontrolled storm.

But he'd revealed a much greater level of control. His sword-aura was quiet, invisible, and everywhere.

There were three higher levels of mastery.

He'd barely mentioned any of this to her before his death. She'd discovered most of it from the visions he'd left behind in his Remnant, paired with some of her own memories of him in combat. Technically, her skill in the technique wasn't connected to advancement. She could reach Archlord if her Endless Storm still looked like a hurricane. With enough power behind it, it could do damage.

But her madra was already dense enough to cross the barrier to Truegold. A deeper connection to her master's Remnant could give her that last nudge she needed to get there.

She hoped.

From the branches above her, a brown leaf drifted slowly to the ground. With a deep breath, she delicately tapped the sword in her lap with her madra. The dense silver aura around it flared, pushing out into one direction.

She could control that much, at least. Directing it one way or the other was an advancement for her. Now, her goal was to cut that falling leaf in two.

The leaf exploded into shreds. It fell to the ground as a fistful of dust.

After another hour, she gave up, stretching her legs and standing up. “We clear to move on yet?” she asked.

Then she saw that Mercy had begun training of her own.

The Akura girl was hanging upside-down from a limb at the top of a tree. She held a short wooden bow, arrow nocked, and her eyes were closed. Her breathing was even, and though Yerin was close, she couldn't sense the girl's presence at all.

After she had held that position for several minutes, three leaves fell from her tree at once.

Purple eyes snapped open, and she slipped her legs out of the branch.

She fell, arms blurring as she released the first arrow, pulling a second from the air, stringing it, and loosing it. Then a third.

Only then did the first arrow pierce the first leaf, pinning it to the ground several yards away. The second followed suit. The third arrow brushed by its target, sending the leaf spinning in the wind of its wake.

Mercy's head cracked as it hit the ground, and she crumpled.

Yerin folded her arms and waited. Iron bodies could take more punishment than that.

Mercy hissed as she sat up, cradling her head with one hand. “Aaaahhhh ow ow ow.” Through watering eyes, she looked up to Yerin. “When I do it right, I land on my feet.”

“You expect to fight upside-down a lot?”

Mercy examined her bow to make sure it hadn't broken. “Do you not practice Striker techniques this way? Trains accuracy, precision, reaction time...”

“Pain tolerance,” Yerin suggested.

“Only when you miss.” She stood up, brushing herself off. “I had a few more rounds to go, but now you're awake. Dinner?”

“Is the barrier gone?”

One of the factions—Yerin hadn't been able to determine who—had raised up a barrier of blue light that stretched across half the island in front of them. It was hard to see through the tree cover, but if you went far enough forward, you could see nothing but a sapphire wall. She wasn't sure what the barrier formation would do to people inside, but she wasn't curious enough to find out.

Mercy's eyes widened, and she snapped two blackened fingers. “Oh, that's right! I have news!”

Hurriedly, she scrambled over to their camp. They had spent three days in this place, so it was starting to look a little too permanent for Yerin's liking.

As she looked over the stump they used as a table and the stone-lined firepit they'd dug, the impatient itch returned to her heart.

Lindon could be running from Truegolds, and here she was locked out.

Mercy tripped over a root, landing belly-down in the dirt, but she held the Sage's folded map over her head in triumph. “Got it!” she said into the ground.

A moment later, she was explaining her excitement to Yerin. “I was at the top of the tree, checking on the barrier, and I realized what we thought was a hill was just that mammoth sleeping. And the mountain is farther away than I'd thought.”

Yerin's stomach fell. Every time they'd made a mistake navigating, it had resulted in days' more delay.

“So, we're not here, we're here,” Mercy said, stabbing her finger at a spot on the map.

A spot just below the portal.

“If the wall wasn't there, we could see it from the tree,” Mercy said brightly. “It’s fading away. You can see through it now, and you couldn’t this morning.”

Yerin leaped.

Her Steelborn Iron body drew thirstily on her madra, fueling her flat-footed jump so that she launched herself to the top of the tree. She bent the top of the tree as she landed, but she had no trouble keeping her balance.

The wall of blue light still rolled on the horizon, but if Mercy was right, then it was covering the beach and the edge of the island more than another expanse of forest. When the boundary came down, they would be only a few hours' run away from the portal.

She strained her eyes to try and see if there was some change in the boundary, but she could tell nothing. She hopped back to the ground, and was surprised to find that Mercy was starting a fire instead of packing up.

“You cracked in the head? Let's go!”

“Dinner first,” Mercy said firmly. “It won't come down any faster just because we're closer.”

Yerin paced like a tiger in a cage. She just wanted to feel like she was making some progress. Even moving an hour closer would mean an hour's less travel time when the light did disappear.

She started to say so, but a deafening, bestial scream covered the island out of nowhere. It was joined by more and more, until it sounded like a choir of raging spirits howling at the heavens. A furious, burning presence lit up her spiritual senses like a flying bonfire.

“It's not the vultures again,” she muttered, opening up her perception. The roars had been deeper than that, and she thought she felt fire. But that sense could be slippery.

Mercy grabbed her staff, which hissed into the sky. Its violet eyes flared. “Not vultures. Dragons.”

As she said so, a golden cloud descended from heaven, bearing a complex of palaces on it. The Thousand-Mile Cloud that had hovered outside the Akura fortress about two weeks before, from which a woman had argued with Old Man Lo.

“What's rustled their scales?” Yerin asked. They were still roaring, and she thought she saw golden flames rising from the Cloud.

Mercy shivered. “I think we should get in the tent.”

A second later, Yerin felt it too: someone's spiritual sense was sweeping the forest. The Cloud was still many miles away; to search them from that distance would take an Underlord at least.

“I'd contend we should,” Yerin allowed with a sigh. She took a last, regretful glance in the other direction. Hiding was the smart thing to do, but she'd rather move closer to the boundary.

After all, it wasn't like the dragons were looking for them. The heavens couldn’t hate her that much.

* * *

“You're just having a little break? Having some time to yourself? That's okay, nothing wrong with that. You've just been through a fight, haven't you? But now you're rested, you're refreshed, you're ready to get yourself up and move on! The road doesn't get any shorter while you wait, as they say.”

It had been five minutes.

Lindon was still sitting cross-legged on the floor, cycling his madra to try and bring power back to his spirit before his Bloodforged Iron body took it all and left him spiritually drained and helpless. Little Blue lay sprawled on top of his head, sleeping, and he held his spine straight to avoid disturbing her.

Now Dross was growing impatient.

“I told you about the Spirit Well, didn't I? I'm pretty sure I did. Well, that's our next stop! No need to waste time trying to restore your madra now, when the Spirit Well will do it with just a sip! Well, I mean, I suppose you should strengthen yourself just a bit. There are quite a few giant, hungry beasts between us and our destination, but uh...it sounds worse than it is.”

Lindon held out a broken necklace with a copper key dangling from the center. It was only the size of a fingernail; too small to unlock anything bigger than a dollhouse. But it was a sacred treasure, he was sure of it.

Using as little madra as he could, he reached his spirit out and activated it. He was confident that this was the device that he'd sensed before, and his curiosity was too ravenous to wait until he had finished stabilizing his soul. If he really did run out of madra, he might not be able to trigger this for hours. And that would be unacceptable.

Fortunately, it didn't take much effort to start. Little more than flipping a switch.

A doorway bloomed in front of him, seven feet tall and about three wide. It led into a closet, hanging there in midair.

The closet was only a few feet deep and mostly empty. A few chairs were stacked in the center, with pillows and blankets stuffed beneath them. Three sealed clay jugs sat in the corner, and based on a quick glimpse of their contents, they seemed to contain water. He was still on his knees, weak and injured...but not too weak or injured to rummage through a closet that he'd summoned out of nowhere. A few scripted bundles were revealed to hold dried meat.

Rations, water, furniture, and bedding. Practical things to hold in a magical storage space, except perhaps for the chairs.

Orthos walked around the other side of the portal, speaking with a tone of awe. “A void key! I've only glimpsed them from afar. It's rare for even an Underlord to have such a thing. It contains a private space, accessible only by the one who holds it. Whatever you keep in here, no one can touch it unless they steal the key.”

Lindon wished there was a tear running down his face so that he could wipe it away. “I've never seen anything so beautiful.” Even Little Blue woke up, sitting up on his head and cooing in wonder. He almost wanted to thank Ekeri.

Besides the more mundane objects, there were a few eye-catching treasures shoved into the corners of the closet. A sculpture of a woman in smooth white jade, a mirror of pure gold, a jeweled star, and a teacup that seemed to be made from a paper-thin eggshell.

None of them gave off the slightest aura of power, but Orthos suggested they were valuable enough that they could fund Lindon's entire advancement to the end of Truegold. Assuming they could escape this pocket world and find a buyer.

“The real treasure is that necklace,” Orthos said, and Lindon fervently agreed. “If you were lucky enough to find anyone willing to sell one, that would cost as much as half the Arelius family. Sages are the weakest beings who can create void keys.”

“There was a void key storage room in this habitat,” Dross told them. “Room upon room full of them, each key filled with specialized equipment.”

Lindon seized him.

“…yes, it was the first thing the Heralds looted,” Dross continued, and Lindon’s heart crashed back into his chest.

His spirit and body were both still unstable after his fight, but he wobbled to his feet. “We should leave soon. As soon as we’re prepared.”

As it turned out, their preparation took two days.

The first thing Lindon did, once he could move his arms freely, was to smash the chairs and toss them back into the closet. He didn't need furniture, but as a fire artist, he could always use kindling.

He placed the chest with all of his belongings next to the bundle of kindling, then emptied all the water jars and filled them with water from the Well of Dreams. The well was only a few inches deep now, but that was still far more water than Lindon wanted to leave behind. He filled all twenty-four vials they'd found in the storage room, placed them in their racks, and stored them in the void key as well.

A few of the Silverfang Carp had been killed by his battle with Ekeri without being reduced to ash by the Void Dragon's Dance, so he found their corpses and stripped some meat. Thanks to the fires burning all over the habitat, he was able to roast them without tainting them in the flavor of Blackflame, then wrap the fish steaks up in leaves he cut from the remaining forest of stalks.

Even after two days of preparation, he was reluctant to leave. There was still water in the Dream Well, and plenty of food from the Carp. He and Orthos could cycle easily in the smoldering wasteland they'd made, and the return to regular cycling was helping heal Orthos' spirit.

Dross kept up a steady complaint, but he couldn't go anywhere without Lindon. He wasn't what finally pushed Lindon to leave.

Yerin was out there, somewhere. He had no way of knowing what she was doing, if she was safe, if Bai Rou had attacked or abandoned her. He wondered about her sleeping and waking, and whatever he did, the worry stuck in the back of his mind like a splinter.

But if she knew this place was good for his advancement, she would surely tell him to stay here as long as possible. Little Blue was more urgent.

He was using everything he could spare from his pure core to feed the Sylvan Riverseed, but she was still pale as a winter's sky and he could see straight through her. She spent most of her day sprawled on his shoulder, silent. He was no expert on spirits, but she couldn't stay here much longer.

Even Orthos, despite his good humor, couldn't fully recover just from cycling. If he could, he would never have gone insane in Serpent's Grave. He needed to move on.

But there was one last reason that shook him enough to push him out of this habitat.

The cracks in space, which once had been the size of Ekeri's body, had now spread to the size of a room. The web of nearly invisible fissures was growing. Dross said it had to do with the decay of the pocket world. Any forced spatial movement would fracture the world's boundaries until the whole thing decayed.

And, as usual, he turned that into an argument for reaching the Spirit Well as soon as possible. This time, Lindon happened to agree.

He tied the tiny copper key to the shadesilk ribbon around his neck, so that it hung behind his gold hammer badge. Opening it one last time, he walked into the closet and pulled Little Blue from his shoulder.

“Wait for me in here,” he said, lowering her to the ground.

She scrambled up his arm, chirping in distress.

“I'll let you out as soon as I can. We're going through dangerous waters; if I lose you, I might not be able to find you again.”

She clung to his forearm and chimed like a bell.

Lindon sat down in the extra-spatial closet, lifting his arm so he could look Little Blue in the eyes. Her pale face was the picture of panic.

“I'll come back for you,” he assured her.

She shook her head.

“You want to come with us?”

Silver bells rang.

“Are you more scared of being locked in here than coming with us?”

Another long, sad note from a flute.

Lindon couldn't blame her. He’d been locked into tight spaces…too many times.

So he walked out and tucked her into his pocket, next to Suriel's marble. “Try not to fall out,” he told her.

She was already playing with the glass ball.

Another wisp of madra shut the door to the closet, and Lindon was ready to leave. He looked over at Orthos, who held Dross in his mouth.

“Great, we're ready to go! Fantastic! Don't worry about the two days worth of essence I lost, each of which was a memory. As I decay, I lose more and more of who I am, but don't you worry about that now, because we're leaving!”

Lindon ducked his head to the construct. “Lead the way.”

Purple light sketched a line out of the bubble, into the dark water outside. The line extended into the darkness, then sank lower. And lower.

“The tablet library, and the Spirit Well it contains, is a tad deeper than we are,” Dross explained. “Not to worry, though, because I am both map and key. It will be a straight shot from here.”

A line of bright blue spots slid by the bubble, close enough that Lindon could have reached his arm through and touched them. In the light of the still-burning fires, he saw a glimpse of silver scales between the blue.

Dross cleared a nonexistent throat. “There's the one complication. Diamondscale Sea Drakes. You remember when I told you the Silverfang Carp were raised like cattle? Well, this is what those cattle were meant to feed.”

The last blue light slid around the bubble, and Lindon traced its path until it moved out of sight. It was circling the whole habitat.

“The refiners kept them in captivity, but the facility records say they broke free decades ago. They've been breeding in the wild ever since.”

Lindon reached a hand out to the bubble-wall. “Was this meant to keep them out?”

“No, the boundary formation is meant to keep out the water. It doesn’t keep them out at all, they just prefer it out there.”

Lindon took a few steps back.

“Is there any way to avoid them?”

“Some believe that hope is the strongest force in the universe,” Dross said. “Although that is objectively untrue.”

Lindon looked back. He couldn't see the blue lights anywhere in his vision.

“Can we form some kind of—” he started to say, but Orthos had already stepped into the water.

With a deep breath, Lindon joined him.

11

Dross' purple light and the deep red of Orthos' shell were the only sources of illumination out here, in the icy deep. Swallowed by cold and dark, Lindon almost turned back on instinct, but the red and purple were his only guides. He swam after them, reaching a hand into his pocket to make sure that Little Blue was secure.

Satisfied that she was, he pulled out Suriel's marble, adding a faint blue candle-glow to their procession. To his surprise, Orthos was a capable swimmer; the turtle's feet acted more like flippers in the water, and he outpaced Lindon in seconds. Lindon had to strain to keep up, and only because he suspected Orthos was waiting for him.

They had only swum a few yards before they reached the edge of a cliff and looked down. Warm, inviting light spilled up from below: a new habitat. The bubble was shaped a little differently than the previous, like a wide circle rather than a dome, but the top was only a dozen feet straight down. The relief was like a breath of air; he could swim that distance. No problem. He was honestly surprised that they hadn't seen the light from this place before, when it was so close.

He glanced back to judge the distance between himself and the habitat, and saw two points of blue light coming at him out of the darkness.

He looked for the other lights instinctively before he realized they weren't spots.

They were eyes.

Blackflame madra raged through him, and the Burning Cloak ignited. When he couldn't breathe freely, controlling madra was like pushing mud through a straw, and it strained his channels to bursting. Primitive, crippling survival terror made it easy: he'd tear his soul in half to defend himself from those approaching eyes.

The Diamondscale opened its maw, revealing even more saber-sharp teeth than the Silverfang Carp, as well as a light welling up from its throat like a blue furnace.

Lindon kicked off the sand, twisting desperately, hoping that the Enforcer technique would give him enough speed so that the great serpent wouldn't just turn and snap him out of the water.

It twisted, but he scratched at its face with both hands, seizing ridges on its head and plastering himself to it like a monkey clinging to a tree branch.

The Sea Drake bucked like an earthquake, rumbling with a fury that Lindon interpreted as a roar. Every quake threatened to shake Lindon loose, until he was holding on only by the pointed tips of his Remnant hand.

Red light shot through the darkness, and Orthos sank his jaws into silver scales.

Now the serpent's ferocious twist threw Lindon free, and for a moment he was lost in an aimless blur of bubbles and darkness. Lost, disoriented, he clawed in the direction he hoped was the ocean floor.

He found himself staring down at a purple light from ten feet above: Dross lay on the sand, helpless in his gem.

Lindon pulled through the water, scooping up the jewel in his left hand. He faced a wall of dust kicked up by two massive, thrashing bodies. Red and blue lights flashed from within the cloud.

His lungs were starting to burn as badly as his madra channels, and now he was faced with a choice: forward or back?

The choice was made for him when Orthos came hurtling out of the dust cloud, righting himself in the water and charging back in.

The Diamondscale Sea Drake flipped back to stare at him once more.

Then it rushed at Orthos, seizing him in its jaws. Orthos wrestled with it, sinking his own teeth into its snout, and they struggled in the water for a long instant before plunging over the cliff.

Lindon followed them. If he could reach the bubble, he could use his madra properly, and then maybe he could help Orthos.

Through the bubble, the dream tablet library looked like a series of stone shelves, resembling bookshelves, only instead of books they contained points of soft multicolored light.

Orthos and the Drake fell into the center of the ring, kicking up another cloud of sand, and Lindon pulled himself to the edge of the habitat. He clawed through the bubble, pushing his head through, getting a deep gasp of breath that brought life back to his madra.

His head was sticking through the ceiling of the bubble, and he looked down onto the stone libraries. After a disorienting moment of shifting gravity, he started to fall through into the air.

He allowed it, Blackflame still flowing through him, and twisted in midair to land on the floor. Unlike the ground in the last habitat, this one was laid with polished tiles.

And it wasn't empty.

From down the curving row of shelves, a man stared at him. Bright green horns grew from his forehead, pointed up, and he wore a road-stained cloak of gray. His expression was so worn and weary that he initially looked older, but a second glance made it clear that he wasn’t much older than Lindon.

Lindon recognized him as one of the young Truegolds. The one who had saved him back in the portal room.

He heaved a sigh as he saw Lindon, reaching out to a hammer leaning up against a nearby shelf. Its haft was as long as he was tall, its head the width of his body, and Lindon braced himself for sudden battle.

Instead, the stranger pulled the hammer behind him as though it weighed as much as a mountain. The head dragged against the tile with a horrible scraping noise. Each step cost him visible effort. There had once been an emblem dyed into the back of his cloak, which Lindon thought resembled a lotus flower or perhaps a web, but it was too faded with age to be clear.

Lindon pressed his fists together and bowed, saluting the man’s back. No need to be unnecessarily rude, even if the man couldn’t see him. After all, Lindon was the one who had burst in out of nowhere, dripping water all over the tile.

Then he shot off. Orthos was still in trouble.

When he cleared a few rows of bookshelves, he saw what the center of the ring looked like from the inside. It appeared to be a column of dark blue water in the center of the facility, extending from the floor to the ceiling as though it supported the weight of the ocean overhead.

Now, that column was filled with flashing scales, billowing dust, and leathery skin.

Lindon watched for a moment. Dross was babbling something, but Lindon was too focused on the battle to hear it. The Burning Cloak burst into being around him again, its power flowing through him much more easily. He started gathering dragon's breath in his hand. If he got a clear shot, he was sure he could turn the fight in Orthos' favor.

Then the water exploded in his direction, drenching Lindon as Orthos and the serpent spilled out of the bubble and into the library.

Orthos smashed into one of the shelves shell-first, cracking stone and releasing hisses of colored light from two of the broken tablets. The Sea Drake flopped around in midair at first, but after only a second it righted itself.

And started swimming through the air.

Sure, the Carp had done it, and they were huge. But this creature was ten times bigger; it didn't seem fair that its mastery of water aura was great enough to allow it to swim through air so easily.

It struck at Orthos as the turtle forced himself upright, and Lindon extended his dragon's breath.

The stranger was standing there, between Lindon and Orthos, holding the haft of his hammer in both hands while the head still rested on the floor. Lindon hadn’t seen him arrive, but now he had to abort his Striker technique to avoid hitting the newcomer. He stood before the serpent with eyes closed, like a man embracing the approach of death.

For an instant.

A blink later, the Drake slammed to a halt like a fist hitting a steel plate. There was a sickening crunch that echoed through the library and a brief flash of green light, and the huge serpent’s head exploded under a titanic hammer-blow.

Blood and gore sprayed over the floor, gushing over Orthos and splattering the tablet shelves behind him. The stranger was only speckled in dark red; a floating script-circle hovered in the air in front of him like a shield Forged out of green light. It pushed the tide of carnage to either side, preventing the man from becoming drenched in blood.

The rest of the Sea Drake’s body sank to the floor, twitching, and its tail slid out of the column of water to land on the tile with a meaty slap.

The stranger’s eyes were still shut. He lowered his bloody hammer to the floor and, without a word, started dragging it off again.

Orthos shook himself like a dog, spraying yet more blood everywhere, and laughed freely. “You hit with the strength of a dragon! What is your name, human?”

The green-horned man stopped. He wiped blood from his eyes with a thumb, though he didn't bother cleaning the rest of his face. “Ziel,” he said.

Then he kept walking.

“Ziel,” Orthos said to his back. “I will remember you.” He continued chuckling as he walked past the body of the Diamondscale Sea Drake, taking a bite of its meat as he passed. He was still chewing when he walked into the column of water, washing himself off.

Dross, keeping his voice to a whisper, spoke as soon as Ziel was out of earshot. “Ziel of the Wasteland. We're not exactly flush with records about him, sorry to say, but there are plenty of rumors. I can tell you he's under the Beast King's protection, and you know what that means.”

“I don't,” Lindon said. He was still in awe at what Ziel had done with a single blow from his Enforcer technique. And he was supposed to be on a level with Ekeri.

“The Beast King,” Dross said, as though it was something obvious. “He's been a legend for centuries. A crippled boy who befriended some ancient sacred beasts and eventually rose to the level of a Herald. He's one of the guardians who stands in the Wasteland between Akura territory and the land of the dragons, protecting human civilization. Or so they say. Without him and others like him, the Blackflame Empire would be a war-torn desert.”

“So what does it mean that Ziel is under his protection?”

“The Beast King spends all his time in a wasteland of endless battle. He cares about nothing but his war. If he's taken on a human, then that means he thinks this kid will be a critical weapon against the dragons. Not too surprising, seeing how he dealt with that Diamondscale. Maybe that was a secret anti-dragon technique.”

“A dragon hunter,” Lindon mused aloud. It sounded exciting, like the myths he'd heard as a child, but he had trouble putting the pieces together. Ziel hadn't turned on Orthos, though Orthos was clearly using the power of a dragon. And he hadn't showed any hostility toward Ekeri in the portal room, nor had he followed her when she left.

He didn't act like someone whose sole purpose in life was a war against dragonkind.

Orthos emerged from the water clean and radiating satisfaction. However, his soul told a different story: the battle had scarred him further, his spirit throbbing with deep pain.

“Not that this will surprise you,” Dross said, “but Ziel headed in the direction of the Spirit Well. Just follow the bloody footsteps.”

Those footsteps led past shelf after shelf of dream tablets, some of which had gone dark or flickered with age, but most of which shone brightly. After a few minutes, they reached a vast gray wall, featureless but for a keyhole identical to the one in the other facility.

The door must once have been hidden, but now it was shattered, revealing another blue hallway. Rubble had been sprayed all over the downward-sloping floor, almost as though someone had smashed their way in with a hammer.

“Ah, why don't you hold up for a moment?” Dross said as Lindon was about to enter. Ziel's footsteps led into the hall, and Lindon had intended to follow them.

“I don't know much about how these facilities were constructed, but I can tell you that they're not supposed to be something that a Truegold can break.” Dross slid out of his gem, drifting across the space as a floating purple cloud of light and phantom gears. “If we're not dealing with a Gold, but a Sage in disguise, that would be...less than ideal.”

Orthos kept walking, crunching over the pebbles in the doorway. Clearly, he didn't intend to cower at the entrance.

Lindon stopped. He hadn't done anything to antagonize the stranger, but it still seemed prudent to let Dross investigate first.

After sinking himself into the keyhole, Dross let out a sound imitating a breath of relief and floated back to Lindon. “We're okay! False alarm! The protective scripts in this wall were already failing. Good thing that didn't happen back in the Dream Well facility, eh? That dragon-girl could have just blasted her way in to us.”

Lindon shivered. His hand moved unconsciously to the still-healing wound on his chest.

“Now all we have to worry about is the facility crashing down around us,” Dross said brightly. “Should be several weeks before that happens, though. We can be fairly certain. At least...let's say sixty percent.”

This storage facility was much smaller than the one in the other habitat. It only had four rooms besides the one at the end of the hall, where Lindon soon saw Orthos drinking deeply from a shining blue well.

Though nothing had happened to the turtle, Lindon still entered hesitantly, looking around for Ziel. His footsteps led to the corner, where he sat with his back against the wall and his hammer propped next to him. He sat with arms on his knees, saying nothing.

Lindon bowed to him over a salute. “Ziel of the Wasteland, this one thanks you for your protection.”

Ziel waved a hand. He was staring at the floor as though watching a memory.

“We humbly request your permission to drink from the well, if you don't mind.”

The Truegold, still stained in blood, looked to the well and then raised weary eyes to Lindon. “Plenty to go around,” he said.

It was true. The Spirit Well was at least ten times bigger than the Dream Well, and looked more like a pond than what Lindon would call a well.

“Gratitude,” Lindon said. “We will try not to bother you more than necessary.”

Ziel stared at the floor again.

The well gave off a blue glow brighter than the hallway outside, and hazy purple shapes drifted through the air above it.

At first, he thought they were constructs meant to defend or inspect the place, but they looked vaguely like ghostly animals. Fish swam in schools with spirits like butterflies and some like snakes. They were all pale pink or purple with no fine details, and they all pulsed slightly as though on the verge of shifting shape.

Little Blue pushed out of his pocket and cheeped at the sight.

“Sylvan Dreamseeds,” Dross explained. “Just like Riverseeds are pure spirits that are born in areas with a strong balance between water and life aura, these little guys are born under the influence of dream aura. From the dream tablets, you see. The library and the Well are here purely to create the right conditions for their birth. Right now they're weak. Not much better than pure madra acting like dream madra. They only wish they could hold all the memories I can.”

He darted aggressively at the nearest Dreamseed, which ignored him, drifting through the air like a frozen bird.

As interesting as the Dreamseeds were, it was the Spirit Well that held Lindon's attention. He dipped both cupped hands into the water and lifted them to his lips.

While the Dream Well had carried a slight mineral taste, this water was sweet. The mouthful went down easily, and he cycled its power to his pure core.

The effect was instantaneous. His core crackled with lightning, reminding him of the orus spirit-fruit Lindon had consumed back in Sacred Valley. Only this was a hundred times more powerful. It felt like a whirlpool had formed in his core, refining his madra with every revolution. It was almost like his madra was cycling itself.

Not only that, but the water's power seeped into his madra channels like rain on dying grass. He gasped at the sudden pain, which reminded him of splashing icy cold water on a burn. Only when this hit his channels, it left them stronger than before.

Lindon didn't hesitate to dunk his face into the well.

It was like a high-grade madra-refining pill mixed with Little Blue's touch. Every drink rinsed his spirit, helped his core refill itself, and refined his madra. He could feel his pure power growing denser, richer, thicker.

He came up for air, gasping. “Jars. We need jars.”

12

The Spirit Well was Lindon's greatest dream made real.

It was like a heavenly feast set before him; an endless spring of power from which he could literally drink. Cycling had never been so rewarding or so effortless. He and Orthos moved into another room that was filled with garbage—the wreckage of long-abandoned crates and barrels that smelled like vinegar and had been smashed years if not decades before. They set the garbage on fire, leaving Dross to open the vents and get rid of the smoke. It became their cycling room for Blackflame. After a mouthful of Spirit Well water, each revolution of madra produced twice the result for half the effort. Lindon missed his parasite ring; the scripted halfsilver ring would have filtered his madra even further, resulting in even faster growth.

But the water was just as much of a boon for Blackflame as it was for his pure core. After the first few hours, he was pushing the barriers of Lowgold. If Lindon ever met Northstrider face-to-face, he was going to prostrate himself at the Monarch's feet in gratitude for building this place.

Ziel left the well room for an hour or two at a time, but always returned to sit in his corner. When he came back, he would dip his bowl into the Spirit Well, take one halfhearted sip, and then dump the rest over his head so that it washed the blood away in finger-thin rivulets.

Lindon almost choked at the waste.

“Forgiveness, but why don’t you drink more?”

Ziel didn’t open his eyes, but gestured at his abdomen. “Take a look, then tell me if you think it’ll do any good.”

Lindon opened his Copper sight. A venomous, toxic green ravaged his body, dimming the aura of his blood and life. He extended his perception, scanning the man’s spirit; he didn’t resist at all.

His core, a hazy green light, had been destroyed. Something had deliberately sliced it into pieces, then stitched the pieces back together. Half his madra channels were dark, and the other half were twisted and knotted into chaotic patterns.

Lindon closed off his perception, horrified. A Truegold with that much damage to their spirit should either be dead or Unsouled. But he had the power of a Truegold now.

How powerful had he been before?

Lindon bowed to him in silent apology and turned back to the pool. Little Blue’s touch could cleanse and reinforce madra channels, but the Spirit Well had a similar effect. If it wasn’t helping Ziel, neither could she.

At this point, Lindon wasn’t sure if a team of spirit healers could help the man. He was ashamed to have looked.

Outwardly, Orthos wasn't as thrilled with the well as Lindon was, but he went back and guzzled deeply whenever he could. Slowly, Lindon felt the turtle's spirit improving, like a knot unraveling or a stain shrinking.

Little Blue was hesitant to leave Lindon's side at first, staring warily at the newcomer and the Dreamseeds overhead. But after she dipped a hand into the Spirit Well, she cooed in wonder and then dove in headfirst. She had taken to it like a fish, swimming around happily and growing deeper in color with every passing minute. A night in there, and she would be back to normal.

Dross had returned to his vessel and demanded to be dropped into the pool, just as he had been in the Dream Well for over fifty years. Lindon didn't spare any more thought for him until the first night—which was what they had chosen to call the half of the day when the overhead scripts dimmed. The water outside the habitat was just as black as always, and of course the dream tablets and Spirit Well glowed constantly.

Lindon was just starting to wonder if he should drink a vial of Dream Well water to shake off sleep when he heard a loud sigh from the azure pool. Dross' spirit-form drifted up from the water, an ethereal ball of slowly turning gears and spinning violet lights.

“It's great in there, it really is, but uh...I don't know that I want to spend fifty years in there again. Do you know what I mean? I wasn't conscious for most of that time, but once I was, it got very boring very quickly. Not sure I want to do the whole thing wide awake.”

Lindon rubbed his chin, looking at the Spirit Well. “What do you think this will do for you?”

Dross made a coughing sound. “That’s the question. The Soulsmiths who made me tried to make a construct that could work alongside a person's brain, but they failed, didn't they? Ended up just making better memory constructs.

“Well, this facility was run by a collection of scholars after the same goal. They theorized that they could create a kind of super-spirit, an advanced hive of Dreamseeds that would handle thoughts so that Northstrider didn't have to. It would make it so that he wouldn't have to think to solve a problem, but he would always know the answer, bam, just like that. The Dreamseeds would do the mental work for him.”

“And it failed,” Lindon said. That wasn't a guess; if it had succeeded, Northstrider would never have abandoned Ghostwater in the first place.

“Like a snow fort in the desert,” Dross said sadly. “Turns out, when they pumped power into a Dreamseed, what they got was a more powerful Dreamseed. Not sure how else they expected that to go, really.” He waited a breath before continuing. “I may have been born a little differently than these little guys, but surely a construct that's come to life can't be too different than a natural spirit.”

That made sense to Lindon. And he wanted to see what Dross was becoming; it might end up useful. This was the chance to learn something that even Northstrider’s expert Soulsmiths hadn’t understood.

“We could try and come up with a script that might focus the power on you,” Lindon said doubtfully. If he was a more knowledgeable scriptor, it might work, but he had never done much research on that front. “It's a pity you can't just drink it.”

Dross glowed brighter. “That's it! I can borrow your body!” He saw the look on Lindon's face and hastened to add, “Don't worry, I'll share.”

“You can do that?” Lindon asked. That was intriguing. Could he send Dross to take over other people’s bodies?

“Don't see why not. There's a Remnant inside you right now, or at least all the ingredients to make one when you die. Plenty of room inside your spirit, so I'll just squeeze in there.” He pushed into Lindon's chest, but bounced off the madra running through Lindon's skin. “Excuse me, you have to move aside. Just for a minute. Don't worry, it shouldn't hurt. Me. I don't know what it will feel like to you.”

Orthos pushed past Lindon on the way to the Spirit Well. “There are some sacred artists who take in the power of natural spirits as part of their Path. It is safe.”

“See! Perfectly safe, he says.” Dross tried to push into Lindon's head this time, but slid off.

Lindon wanted to see what Dross would become, but he was still uncomfortable with the idea of letting a self-aware construct inside his soul. “Is this the only option we have?”

“Don't worry,” Orthos said. “If the tiny spirit tries some mischief, I will burn him out of your body.”

Now Lindon had more worries, but his curiosity won out.

Lindon extended a hand to Dross. “I'll still my madra as much as I can until you're inside.”

Dross whooped in excitement and zipped into his palm almost before Lindon had withdrawn his spirit.

It felt like something swimming up his left arm, and Lindon instinctively recoiled. He focused his spiritual sense on his own body, and in the blue-white loops that normally represented his spirit, now a purple ball slid around his madra channels and settled into the center of his pure core.

“Wow,” Dross said in his head. “Roomy in here. Were you born with two extra-large cores? I'm sorry, that sounds rude. But do feel free to answer.”

Since Lindon had used the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel to advance, it still had an influence on his cores even when he wasn't actively practicing it. His madra recovery was slow, but he had much more madra than he would have otherwise. And a good thing, too; his Iron body and his techniques took a lot of power. If Eithan was any indication, his cores would only get deeper as he advanced, until he had a truly ridiculous amount of madra.

But he suppressed the Purification Wheel as much as he could, with Dross inside. It was inconvenient, but Eithan's warning still made him hesitant to let the technique's existence leak.

Orthos eyed him. “Seems like it worked.”

“It’s messy in here,” Dross sent to him. “You’re so…squishy.”

Lindon walked over to the pool, scooping up some shining blue water in a cracked teacup. He drank it and cycled it straight to the construct, who instantly let out an excited whoop.

“It's working! My memories have so many connections I didn't see before; this must be what having a brain feels like! Only, you know, less...mushy.”

Lindon had cycled all the power to Dross, leaving none for his own channels or core.

He spoke aloud, because he wasn't sure if thinking the words would get through to the construct. “How is it? You need more?”

“I’ll chew on this for the rest of the day,” Dross said. “At that rate, maybe…two more weeks? Three? Compared to fifty years, it's like a drop of water in the ocean, isn't it?”

“Three weeks? Do we even have that long?” Lindon gave an aching glance at the Spirit Well; he wanted to take as much time in this room as he could, and didn't want to waste a minute of it on Dross' advancement. Yerin would kill him if she knew he'd found an inexhaustible source of power without her, and would kill him twice as hard if he didn't take advantage of every second.

A weary voice spoke up from the corner of the room. “If nothing else accelerates the decay in the pocket world's structure, we have at least a month.” Ziel spoke from his position leaning against the wall, eyes shut. “Could be longer.”

Lindon didn't have any reason to believe a Truegold's word about the structure of a pocket world, but he spoke with the utter confidence of an expert, so Lindon thanked him.

“There you have it,” Dross said, relaxing himself into a more comfortable position within Lindon's core.

And so Lindon settled in. He was looking forward to seeing Dross’ transformation, but he couldn’t deny a little bitterness about having to share the power of the Spirit Well. How much would this delay his advancement? A week? A month?

Lindon reached Highgold on the Path of Black Flame in two days.

Surrounded by burning trash, he was cycling fire and destruction aura as usual, regretting that he couldn't use the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel with Dross sitting in his soul. Without warning, his madra started running back from the rest of his body into his core like he'd opened a plug and it was starting to drain out.

“Hey, would you look at that!” Dross said, from his vantage inside Lindon's pure core. “Are you trying out a new cycling technique?”

Lindon couldn't open his eyes, struggling as he was to focus on his madra, but he heard Orthos rise to his feet nearby. Suddenly, madra poured into him from outside, guiding his power and easing the burden on his spirit.

All of his madra pushed together, squeezing to occupy the same space, and it seemed to shrink together. After several minutes passed, he had only a third of the madra he'd started with, but it was more dense and potent. If his madra before had been water, now it felt like syrup.

When it finished, all of his Blackflame madra concentrated into a thick drop at the center of his core, a pulse of uncontrolled power rippled out from him and activated the aura. Fires flared up all around the cycling room, consuming their fuel in an instant, creating a cloud of smoke.

Lindon let his new Highgold madra run through his veins. At last, he was on the same level as Yerin.

She had years of practice and experience he didn't have, but finally, they were standing on the same ground.

“Highgold,” Orthos announced. “It is the role of a Highgold to think more deeply on the purpose and nature of your Path. At this stage, sacred artists that have bonded Remnants often begin to inherit insights from their predecessors.”

“There's no need for insight before Underlord,” Ziel said. He stopped in the doorway on his way down the hall, as though he were a construct that had simply run out of power. Green horns were cast in shadow—his Goldsign was so condensed as to look completely real. “Highgold only indicates a certain density of madra. You could go from Lowgold to the peak of Truegold with two pills.”

“Shortcuts are for the weak,” Orthos said. “You walk a Path one step at a time, and this is the step of a Highgold.”

Ziel raised two fingers as though holding something very small. “I used to have those pills. They were this big. They smelled like fresh berries and summer leaves...”

He cast his glance down at the floor and dragged himself down the hallway.

“Really brings down the mood, doesn't he?” Dross observed.

Not Lindon's. After reaching Highgold, his smile was iron-plated. He didn’t care what the stage meant, just that he had taken another step.

And there was plenty of water left in the blue well.

Orthos and Ziel carved every meal from the corpse of the Diamondscale Sea Drake, but one bite of the cooked meat had knocked Lindon out for six hours. It nourished his body even more than the Silverfang Carp had, but it was at the brink of what his body could tolerate. After eating it, his Iron body had consumed so much madra that it delayed his training, even with the Spirit Well’s help.

After reaching Highgold, he could keep himself conscious while cycling one bite of the Drake's meat to his body, but it took everything he had. He couldn't afford to have more than one bite a day, so the rest of his meals came from Carp steaks stored in his void key. He was clearly reaching the limit of what that meat could do for his physical condition, but food was food.

Other than spending his time in the corner of the Spirit Well room, Ziel wandered the shelves of dream tablets. Each of the shining, multicolored stones was labeled with a name, a stage of advancement, a Path, and a subject.

After a few days, Lindon began following him. He touched six dream tablets while Lindon watched, and all of them belonged to Archlords. Those were the most advanced subjects in the library, and Ziel seemed to have no interest in anything beneath them.

For Lindon's part, he didn't try anything above Underlord after a single touch of an Overlord tablet had left him flat on his back and sweating, with no memory of what he'd seen.

When he activated a dream tablet with his spirit, he was taken into a memory of a particular scene, as though he were living it. The devices were less useful for recording information than he had imagined, but they were ideal for containing experiences. He had heard of portable dream tablets before, but these were either of a different sort, or were secured to prevent thievery: each dream tablet was sealed to the stone around it.

She held out one palm, Forging a spear of red ice. From her vantage point among the clouds, she looked down on the great spider that crouched over her city, spreading its webs from building to building. She let soulfire bleed into the Forged spear, its gray fire tempering the technique, smoothing it, nourishing it.

Now, the spear shone like a polished shaft of diamond. This was the strongest technique she could conjure.

She only hoped there was anyone down there to survive this.

Meiyen Teia, Underlord on the Path of Glacier’s Birth: the Devastation of Whisperbark.

Lindon came out of the memory gasping, his last sight a storm of bloody ice shredding a great spider...and the city over which it lurked.

He sat down and focused on the vision, drinking down a vial of Dream Well water he'd brought with him.

“What do you call that feeling she was having?” Dross asked.

“Grief,” Lindon responded absently.

“I don’t like it,” the constructed decided. “It’s too heavy. Go back to the one with the man who had just cured his daughter’s disease.”

Lindon couldn't spare the effort to reply, instead focusing on the Underlord's memories. How her madra felt as it ran through her, the rhythm of her cycling technique, the feel of pulling soulfire from the center of her soul.

Buried in these memories was the key to developing his own Path.

The Path of Twin Stars needed a real Enforcer technique, he knew that. Over the last week, he'd checked dozens of dream tablets, and he'd discovered a greater variety of Enforcer techniques than he'd ever imagined. Full-body Enforcer techniques were the standard, but they were only one type. Many of the techniques he found were single palm-strikes or sword slashes, concentrating their Enforcement on a single blow. Those gave him the shadow of an idea to improve the Empty Palm, but they weren't what he really needed.

He focused on another category: movement techniques. He needed something to close the gap between him and his opponent if he wanted to land an Empty Palm. Until this point, he'd been forced to rely on letting his opponent come to him.

Some of the memories contained single steps or leaps that ate the gap between opponents in one burst. Others held full-body Enforcer techniques focused entirely on speed, or Forger techniques that carried their users where they needed to go.

After viewing several of them, he'd started trying to apply the principles of the Burning Cloak to his pure core. The Blackflame Enforcer technique burned his flesh and spirit for a contained explosion of madra, which resulted in a burst of power.

What he learned was that pure madra was about as combustible as a snowbank. It felt like a still pond, only even less substantial.

So, since he’d found no records of anyone on a pure Path, he started looking up water artists.

These were almost all scenes of battles or intense training, so none of them were designed to explain the principles behind the techniques the subjects were using. He had to extrapolate based on the feeling of the technique.

His image of Ekeri helped as much as anything. He had a clear understanding of what her Enforcer technique looked like from the outside; when she had fought with it active, she had bent and flowed effortlessly, like a stream.

Blackflame was furious, and he had to match that fury and give it an outlet in order to control it. Pure madra, like water, had to be slowly guided and gathered until it had enough momentum to become a raging river.

Time fell away as Lindon focused on his madra, building it up and up to a rushing crescendo through his veins. When he thought it had reached its peak, he controlled it into a new pattern.

He had spent days theorizing this technique, based on adapting pure madra according to the principles of the Burning Cloak. But this was the closest he'd gotten to a real test.

Finally, something happened. Madra flooded through his body, giving him a sense of steady strength, and blue-white power flared in the air around him. His excitement soared along with it, until the madra dissipated a second later and his pure core returned to stillness. It had taken half of his Twin Stars madra to activate even that much, and it had only lasted a breath. He sighed and started stretching his legs—meditating on his madra so long was a good way to get cramps.

Only then did he notice Ziel sitting across the aisle from him, on the floor, back leaning against another shelf of dream tablets. His eyes were closed, his head tilted back, and his green horns glimmering in the light of the tablets.

“There's no one around to see,” Ziel said. “You can take a break.”

Lindon looked down at his outstretched legs. “That's what I'm doing.”

Ziel opened his eyes as though his eyelids were heavy. He looked as though he hadn't slept in days. “You push yourself to the brink of collapse, then you drink your potion and you keep going. Almost two weeks now, and I've never seen you stop working.”

“This is a rare opportunity for me,” Lindon said. “I'd hate to miss it.”

“You're killing yourself for nothing.”

He didn't look any older than Lindon, but he spoke like he carried the burden of ages.

“The prize is an illusion,” he continued. “The mountain has no peak. You keep climbing and climbing until you fall off and break yourself at the bottom. Highgold is one step, Truegold is another step, but there's no end to it. You could walk forever, but every Path ends in a fall.”

His bloodshot eyes pierced Lindon, who shifted uncomfortably.

“...two years ago, I started at the bottom,” he said at last. He told Ziel about his life in Sacred Valley as briefly as possible, skipping over Suriel and making it sound like they had a dream artist who had caught a glimpse of the future.

“Now, I have a chance I never had before. I would be a fool to waste even a second of it.”

Ziel watched the dream tablets shifting over Lindon's head. “Just make sure you have something else to keep you going. Sacred arts are not enough to live for.”

With that, he pushed himself to his feet and started shuffling down the row of shelves. When he reached the end, he turned and looked back to Lindon.

“Keep up,” he said.

Lindon followed.

Dirty cloak fluttering behind him, Ziel paced down the shelves until he found the tablet he wanted.

The Script Lord, Archlord on the Path of Whispering Wind: the Creation of the Seven Principles.

Ziel nodded to it. “For you.”

Lindon hesitated. “Gratitude, but I am not advanced enough to tolerate the memories of an Archlord.”

“Try it.”

He had not been swayed at all, so Lindon took a swig of water from the Dream Well. His thoughts sharpened, and he braced himself, inserting a thread of pure madra.

He stroked his long, white beard, his body tender and aching in the chair. He would have to stand soon, but inspiration was upon him, his quill pen scratching feverishly on the scroll in front of him.

For too long, the Foundation children had used the same cycling techniques. Now, he had applied his long years of experience to revising his sect's Foundation theory, and he had found it an unexpectedly rich area of research. No one with any knowledge had ever reevaluated the principles of pure madra; why would they? No one advanced without harvesting aura. As a result, the children used inefficient techniques.

Now, his principles would revolutionize how the sacred arts were taught to the least disciples.

Lindon's eyes snapped open, his mind racing with thoughts. He fell to the floor in a cycling position, focusing on his pure core.

He wished he had a book on the Seven Principles; the Archlord in the vision hadn't spelled out his thought processes for a stranger. Why would he? This was his own memory. There was much more to the vision that Lindon didn't have the insight to catch.

But he understood enough. Even a brief glimpse into an Archlord's revision of pure madra cycling techniques gave him a better sense for the mechanics involved.

That vague, intuitive feeling was invaluable. He tried running the technique again, this time modifying his cycling pattern based on the Archlord's thoughts. He had been trying to cycle pure madra like water, but it wasn't water madra. It simply felt more like it than like Blackflame.

Pure madra was lighter, more delicate, more adaptable. But it still strengthened the body naturally. It was the foundation on which all other aspects of madra were layered.

This time, he gathered up the momentum in minutes. Rather than a furious white-water froth, his madra now flowed smooth and steady. He began executing the new pattern, making alterations wherever it felt wrong; he would have to write down these insights later, but for now, he had to seize this moment of inspiration.

When he opened his eyes, white-and-blue haze hung in the air around him, billowing like steam. Strength pooled in his body, steady and calm.

He walked down the hall, marveling. He was just walking. When he activated the Burning Cloak, he had to suppress its power with every step, lest it launch him ten feet into the air. With this technique, the strength waited until needed.

He punched the air, and his body moved like a dream. His every movement was smooth, easy, perfect, as though his brain had absolute control over even the tiniest change in balance.

It didn't have the explosive strength or speed of the Burning Cloak, that was certain. The technique dissipated in five or six breaths this time, and it guzzled his pure madra. But this was the first time he'd used it. He could do better.

“What will you call it?” Ziel asked. He was seated nearby, hands on his knees, as though he'd been cycling himself.

Lindon had given this some thought. “The Soul Cloak,” he said.

“I used to have poets name techniques in my honor,” Ziel said distantly. “They would never have allowed such a plain name. Each character was a poem in itself. My bed was stuffed with phoenix feathers.”

“Your insight is appreciated,” Lindon said, bowing over his salute. “This dream tablet was invaluable. I am overwhelmed with my own weakness; advanced sacred artists must have a thousand techniques.” If Lindon could come up with a new technique in a few days, even with the help of a tablet library, an Underlord would surely have hundreds of techniques at their disposal.

Ziel shook his head. “They develop a thousand ways to use the same seven or eight techniques. When you practice a technique, it becomes engraved in your spirit in the form of a binding. With use, it grows, until it is far stronger than any new technique you could learn.” He flipped his palm up, and a ring of green runes bloomed over his hand. It flickered and fuzzed for a second before disappearing.

“A Monarch might invent a new technique every five seconds,” Ziel went on, clenching his now-empty hand into a fist. “They do not spread themselves so thin. A new technique would be a thousand times weaker than an ability they have spent centuries honing. For this reason, old Truegolds are often stronger than young Truegolds; their techniques are so practiced that they are faster, more flexible, more powerful...superior in every way.” He rubbed his wrist as though pained. “However, young Truegolds are more respected. They have a better chance of advancing farther.”

Lindon bowed to him. “Thank you for your instruction.” It was valuable information, but he was aching to withdraw his Twin Stars manual and take notes.

Ziel waved a hand, dismissing him. “Time grows short. Advance your second core.”

13

Longhook staggered through the rain, limping on his twisted knee, cradling one ruined arm. He could only see through his left eye; his right had been all but blinded. His Blood Shadow coiled inside him, burned and twisted. He had fed it everything he could, but it would need days of uninterrupted treatment to recover. So would he.

Since they had come into the Blackflame Empire, everything had gone wrong.

To begin with, the Phoenix’s awakening had caught them all by surprise. She wasn't expected to stir for years. When she rose, sending her compulsion through them all, they had scrambled to follow.

Not only did their Blood Shadows prefer it when they listened to the Bleeding Phoenix, but following a Dreadgod was a simple pathway to power. The Shadow grew quickly in the Phoenix’s light, and she left plenty of wreckage behind her. Redmoon Hall was largely made up of scavengers, feeding in the wake of a greater predator, but the idea had never hurt Longhook's pride. Sacred artists always pursued power.

And this time, the Bleeding Phoenix had sought a prize. She pushed for something that filled her with hunger, a treasure she desired above all others. The Phoenix's longing had echoed inside her children, and they had rushed to fulfill her commands. Both for her, and for themselves; whatever was inside the Blackflame Empire's western labyrinth, Longhook wanted a piece of it.

They had encountered resistance, but nothing serious. Not until Akura Malice took up arms against the Dreadgod. By then, Longhook and his fellow emissaries were at the gates of the labyrinth; they could taste success.

When the Bleeding Phoenix fell apart, scattering her pieces across the land, it had ruined them.

Their army of bloodspawn had fallen apart. Their Blood Shadows weakened, and their great protector abandoned them. The Phoenix had returned to her slumber without warning, and then they were hundreds of miles deep into enemy territory.

He had thought he was going to make it. These Underlords couldn't stand up to his Shadow.

Then he'd faced that smiling Underlord. The streak of light had caught him out of nowhere, burning his flesh, practically crippling him. He still didn't remember how he'd landed.

Now, days later, the same storm raged overhead. Their battle had unbalanced its aura, and it growled with unnatural fury, lightning flashing red and green. The rain sizzled against his skin, but his body had been reborn in soulfire. Something like this wouldn't faze him.

But every bit of discomfort was adding up to a blinding haze of pain that covered his thoughts with every step. He focused his eye on the range of mountains in the distance. There was a pass there; it was normally guarded, but he and his fellow emissaries had destroyed its defenses when they came through the first time. He could slip out and make it to the Wasteland in only another day or two.

Redmoon Hall had allies there. Their Sage of Red Faith was occupied, pursuing another project in the Trackless Sea, but they could find other protectors. It was their best chance.

Assuming he wasn't the only survivor.

He shook off that thought as he always had: by focusing on his destiny. His Path did not end here. The Hall had dream-readers, and they had singled him out years ago. Fate would reward him for his sacrifices, they told him.

Even now, he did not doubt them. The sacred arts were all about sacrifices—the more you put in, in time or resources, the more you got out. And he had given up everything: his friends, his former sect, his children, even his name.

He would continue walking this road he had paved for himself. And someday, the dream artists had promised him, he would become Redmoon Hall's second Sage.

Longhook's weapon fell from his sleeve with a thud. He strengthened his grip on the chain again, dragging it behind him. The endless rain had churned the dirt road to mud, so his hook dug a trench as he pulled it along. He didn't spare the effort to pull it back up.

Squinting, he fixed his one eye on the mountain peaks in the distance. Soon, he would be out of this Empire for good. After he escaped and recovered, he could meet back up with the Sage and the other surviving emissaries. Then, they could figure out what had gone wrong.

He couldn't extend his spiritual perception far without dropping his veil, so his Blood Shadow was the first to notice his enemies. It flinched and coiled up around his core, like a beaten dog flinching back from a raised fist.

Longhook raised his weapon to defend himself from an attack from above, but it didn't come. He looked up at an emerald green Thousand-Mile Cloud floating a hundred feet up.

He cycled the Path of Rolling Earth, funneling the strength of boulders through his arms and his weapon. He hadn't seen what happened to Gergen, but if all three Blackflame Underlords had survived, he would stand no chance even if he were at full power.

He looked forward to seeing how he escaped this one.

“Excuse me!” someone called from behind him, and Longhook spun instantly, whipping his hook-and-chain in an arc.

Eithan Arelius leaned back, letting the hook pass in front of his nose. He held a blue umbrella of waxed fabric over his head, and even when he dodged Longhook's attack, he angled the umbrella so not a drop of rain fell on him.

It was clear from his appearance that he'd never worked for his sacred arts. His blue robes were pristine, sewn with dragons in green thread wrapping up his sleeves and around the hem. His long, blond hair flowed smoothly down his back, and his smile was bright and unstained by worry.

Longhook wished he'd killed the man the first time.

“Slower than last time,” Eithan noted. “Wounds catching up to you?”

Longhook didn't respond, releasing the veil around his spirit, scanning his surroundings in an instant. As he'd expected, there were two more Underlords on the cloudship above him.

But why hadn't they come down with Arelius?

“I'd like you to know that it was a Highgold who operated the launcher construct that almost killed you. I reinforced it with my soulfire, of course, but even so. Sometimes the simplest of tricks can bring down the largest game.”

“What do you want?” Longhook asked. It would be hard to hear him over the roar of the rain; the old injury to his throat had not even been repaired by his ascension to Underlord. Maybe one day, when he reached Archlord, he would be able to speak normally again.

Eithan gestured upward with his umbrella. “They have agreed not to interfere. It was easy to get them to agree; I think they want to see me suffer.” His smile brightened. “And you get to fight me in single combat! It's a win for all of us, isn't it?”

“...why?” Longhook asked.

No matter how he looked at this, it made no sense. This had to be another ambush. He had beaten Eithan Arelius in combat before without even unleashing his Blood Shadow. Now they had him at a three-to-one disadvantage, and they weren't using it.

“On behalf of the Emperor of the Blackflame Empire, I charge you with the slaughter of innocents. He has judged you and found you guilty, and I am here to execute his will.”

For a man delivering a notice of execution, he sounded too cheerful. Especially for one who was so weak.

“Why alone?” Longhook clarified. This was definitely a trap; there was no other explanation.

Eithan cast his eyes up for a moment, then leaned in as though to share a secret with Longhook.

“I want to show you something,” he said.

His umbrella snapped shut, and he rushed to close the gap with Longhook. The emissary had prepared for this since the instant the cloudship had appeared overhead. He pulled his chain back so he was holding the hook, driving its point up for Eithan's shoulder.

The other Underlord slipped the point of his umbrella through one link of Longhook's chain. He pushed down with surprising strength, jerking Longhook's hand aside so his attack slipped through Eithan's hair.

The Arelius Underlord seized the collar of Longhook's robe in one fist. Before he could respond, Eithan turned, heaving with all his strength.

Longhook found himself hurtling through the rain. How had that happened?

He landed on his feet a hundred yards away, but his left knee screamed and buckled, leaving him standing on one leg. The rain matted his hair to his neck, and thunder cracked overhead. He stretched out his perception, searching for the Arelius.

A finger tapped him on the shoulder.

This time, his Blood Shadow unfolded from behind him, striking out with a copied Rolling Earth technique. A fist of blood madra, dense as a hammer, struck out from his back. Longhook turned to follow up, but saw only darkness and rain.

Something hit him in the back, and he was flying through the air again.

He landed with a new pain in his spine added to his collection. This time, he held nothing back. Rolling Earth madra flooded through him in the Mountain's Fist Enforcer technique. Power of force and stone gathered in his hands, and his Blood Shadow flew out into a rough red copy of him.

It was still wounded and broken, but the Shadow could do its job for a short time. Certainly enough to take care of one pure madra Underlord from a backwoods country.

Longhook hurled his hook with the power of the Mountain's Fist, strong enough to crack bones. His Blood Shadow mimicked him. Eithan arrived, holding his folded umbrella to one side like a sword, and the two Enforced hooks crashed into him.

The Blood Shadow's red hook burst apart into madra as it hit; Eithan had dispersed it. But his own hook landed on Eithan's arm.

It should have crushed the man's bone and caved in his ribs, but the Arelius just grunted and shoved away the hook. He winced, rolling the arm.

“That's going to bruise,” he said, looking back to the sky. “Now, I think we have a moment. In this storm, they won't be able to sense us clearly. And it will take them a minute or two to catch up.”

The rain had already soaked through Eithan's hair and robes, but he didn't seem to mind, giving his umbrella a few test swings.

The Arelius gave a sigh of relief. “At last, I don't have an audience.”

Longhook hurled his Striker technique: the Meteor Breath. A comet of earth and force madra flew out from his fist, a rolling yellow ball of pure power. His Blood Shadow echoed him with a red copy of the same technique.

In the brief instant before the madra hit him, Eithan leaned forward on the balls of his feet, his left hand coming up to the side. Madra flooded out of him, bending the air so it looked like he was covered in a transparent bubble.

It wouldn't work. He couldn't stop Longhook's technique with a shield of pure madra. He wasn't strong enough; Longhook's power would crumple his defense like a hammer hitting rotten wood.

The Meteor Breath hit the edge of Eithan's shield...and was caught like a leaf in a whirlpool.

The madra was spinning. Eithan seized the Meteor Breath with his madra, whirling it around and around his body like he stood in the eye of a hurricane.

Then he released his grip, sending the Meteor Breath hurtling back at Longhook.

Longhook met his own technique with an overhand strike fueled by the Mountain's Fist, punching the ball of yellow madra. It exploded against his fist; he felt like he had struck a plate of lead, and shards of his own broken madra pelted his face and arms like debris.

When his sight cleared, the Blood Shadow's copied technique was hurtling at him too.

This one hurt worse, breaking the skin on his knuckles and sending blood spraying into the air. Its power sank into his arm, striking his bones like a gong. Blood madra affected living bodies directly, so the Blood Shadow's copy of the Meteor Breath caused him much more pain than his own had.

His breathing turned ragged, but he tapped the last of his soulfire, pouring it into his Enforcer technique. The strength of soulfire soaked into him, empowering his limb and his weapon.

Eithan was Forging stars of pure madra in the air. They sparkled in the flash of lightning like birds of glass, but Longhook swung his hook through them, crushing the Forger technique before it was born.

Arelius batted the hook away with his umbrella, but the Blood Shadow had reached him from behind. Its arm morphed into a hook, and it was filled with its own version of the Mountain's Fist. It slammed its hand into Eithan's back.

The Blood Shadow's hand shattered like a hammer made of ice striking rock. The Shadow screamed, its agony flowing into Longhook's soul. Eithan stood untouched.

This time, Longhook could feel what Eithan had done. He’d projected a layer of pure madra armor, dense enough to stand against the Blood Shadow. It would do him no good against a sword, but against any spiritual attack, it would be a solid defense.

But Longhook could hardly bring himself to believe it. Eithan would need to flood such a technique with madra. It was one of the biggest wastes of power he could imagine; no one would be able to maintain a defense like that for longer than a few seconds.

When that armor fell, Longhook would have his last chance.

His Blood Shadow was weak, falling apart. It would help him no further in this battle. He had one wisp of soulfire remaining, to empower one last attack. The cloudship—now a few hundred yards behind and above them—was starting to move. And Eithan stood in the rain, umbrella in one hand and a grin on his face.

Longhook reached deep into himself, seizing the Blood Shadow with his will. It struggled, sensing what was coming.

He had sworn he would never do this. It would set his growth back by years, especially after the damage the Shadow had sustained. It might never recover to its current level.

But he needed an edge.

Flexing his spirit, Longhook devoured his Blood Shadow. The red spirit let out a silent scream that cut into Longhook’s soul, and from its position behind Eithan, it began to dissolve into sparkling particles of red essence. As though caught in a swift breeze, the blood essence gusted toward Longhook.

The power flooded into him, supplementing his madra, knitting his wounded body back together. Blood madra stitched the muscle and bone in his broken arm, accelerating his healing. He stood tall, full of power, eyes flashing red.

There was a gap in his spirit where once his Blood Shadow had rested, but for now, he was fueled by its power. His core was stained red, and it burned hot.

Eithan watched, an infuriating smile still on his face. Longhook had been prepared for his interference, but he hadn’t moved an inch.

That would be his last mistake.

Longhook lifted one foot, gathering up a Ruler technique and cycling it down. He stomped onto the ground, splashing mud onto his ankle and delivering the pulse of madra into the ground.

Golden earth aura flared beneath him, responding to his call.

Fingers of stone rose from the earth, each the size of a man’s torso. They closed around Eithan, grasping at him. He twisted to avoid each one, leaping and turning as new pillars of rock broke the mud and tried to grab him around the waist.

Longhook felt the armor around Eithan fade away as the Arelius shifted his focus.

Now, the Redmoon Underlord seized his chance. Holding his two palms a few inches apart, he crafted one final Meteor Breath. It gathered, a chunk of yellow earth madra tinted with the red of blood, and he poured the last wisp of his soulfire into it. The colorless flame soaked in, empowering it, and the technique became brighter and more solid, almost as dense as a Forger technique but raging with power.

The rest of his madra, and the residue of his broken Blood Shadow, all of it went into this technique. The ball of power shone red and gold, brightening the shadows of the stormy night. It radiated such force that the mud and rain flew away from him. A Lowgold might have been struck dead with the spiritual pressure alone.

Eithan jumped, avoiding Longhook’s ongoing Ruler technique. The pillar of stone brushed the edge of his robe, but failed to find purchase, and now the Arelius was in midair.

With the last remaining vestige of his spiritual strength, Longhook launched the Meteor Breath.

It streaked through the night, trailing red-and-gold light, bright as dawn. It moved like a bolt of lightning, the force of its passage tearing a line in the ground beneath.

With the technique only inches away, Eithan extended a hand.

Longhook saw what happened as clearly as a painting. Pale gray soulfire swirled in Eithan’s palm for an instant, vanishing as it soaked into a technique. Pure madra gathered, condensed and empowered by soulfire so that it shone blue-white. It drew to a point in front of Eithan’s hand, then fired out in a finger-thick line.

The bar of pure madra pierced his Meteor Breath, punching through without resistance.

Longhook’s technique burst like a bubble, exploding in a devastating wave of force that knocked Eithan off-balance and tore a crater in the earth. But it hadn’t hit. Eithan spun once in the air, but landed on his feet, umbrella braced on his shoulder.

At first, Longhook thought the shooting pain in his spirit was a side effect of exhaustion. It was only by chance that he glanced down to see the line of pure madra spearing him straight through the center.

It did nothing to his body, but his core shattered. A cold pain started sharp and only got worse, spreading through his spirit. His Ruler technique faltered and failed, stone fingers crumbling to the ground.

He tried to cycle his madra, but nothing happened. He might as well have tried to catch a handful of air.

Eithan's umbrella caught him beneath the chin, and his vision faded.

A moment later, he was lying on his back in the mud, staring into the rain. Eithan Arelius looked down on him, umbrella unfolded and held over his shoulder.

Power erupted from Eithan, rising like a pillar into the sky. He was gathering up a technique of such magnitude that it could shake the ground for miles around, though outwardly he was doing nothing but standing still. How could one man have so much madra?

Longhook turned his good eye to Arelius. “My fate...does not...end here...”

Eithan's smile softened. “Everything ends.”

The power rising from him tapered off, leaving a mass of pure madra hovering in the sky far over Eithan's head. He looked down on Longhook and pointed.

The pure madra in the sky, vast as one of the stormclouds, gathered together into a single point. It was so dense it looked blue-white instead of colorless, like a newborn star.

Longhook stared into it for a moment, enjoying its beauty. Then he closed his eye.

Like a heavenly sword of judgment, the madra stabbed down into him, obliterating his spirit. And he knew no more.

* * *

Highgold-level dragons were just big lizards. In the days she and Mercy spent running from dragons through the woods, Yerin never saw them breathe fire or use any flame arts at all. She only saw them use three weapons: their claws, their fangs, and their tails.

“What is burning them up?” Yerin said for the thousandth time, as they crammed themselves into a tiny gully and drew a scripted blanket over themselves. The script only dispersed spiritual senses, so it worked on top of the veils in their spirits to keep them hidden.

The blanket was starting to tear around the runes; the script had put too much of a burden on it. It would last a few more hours, if they were lucky, before the force of the activated script tore the fabric apart.

One of the dragons, a gold-scaled lizard the size of a horse stopped nearby. Its head was barely visible in the crack of open air they could see. These weak dragons didn't look anything like the huge sky-crawling serpents her master had mentioned, but she supposed they changed as they advanced even more than sacred artists did.

It sniffed, eyes flaring with light. It started snuffling around the forest floor like a hunting dog, looking for them.

Some sacred beasts were no smarter than normal animals, but dragons were different. This one would be able to speak and use the arts of any Highgold sacred artist. But it was hard to remember that as it snarled and hunted by scent.

Yerin braced herself, reaching for her sword. It almost took her by surprise when she realized she wanted the dragon to find them.

If it did, there would be no more hiding. No more running.

They weren't running from this thing anyway. They were running from its big sister; the Lord-stage dragon they'd felt coming after them.

The barrier of cloud had faded days ago, and they had tried to make their way closer to the beach. But every time they did, dragons tracked them down in the time it took to boil a pot of tea.

Yerin was about ready to throw the dice and dash for victory. She wasn't built for hiding and creeping.

Her Blood Shadow agreed.

While she was holding herself back, her Shadow slipped out of her back. It actually looked like a red-tinted shadow this time, sliding along the ground and closer to the dragon. If the sacred beast didn't notice, it was going to spring out of the ground and get the first strike.

Yerin grabbed it.

A chill of terror passed through her as she caught it. Not because it had almost alerted the dragon; a large part of her welcomed that. It had almost escaped on its own.

When else would it decide to do that? When she was with friends? When she was asleep?

She hauled back on it with one hand and the full force of her will. Just touching it made her feel degraded, like she'd lost somehow, but she dragged it back.

When she wrestled it back into her spirit, it boiled around outside her core, lashing at her from the inside.

She sat there panting as the dragon moved a little farther away. That had been too close. Too close to her losing control.

It tempered her will to steel: she needed to be stronger. Stronger without this thing.

From beneath the scripted blanket, Mercy looked at her with concern. “Are you feeling alright?” she whispered.

Yerin threw the blanket off and stretched all four arms. It felt good to stand up again.

The gold dragon stared at her.

She took a deep breath, feeling madra cycling freely within her spirit. Veils were a necessary sacred art, but they felt like tying yourself in a sack.

Yerin hopped out of the tiny hole in the ground where they'd hidden. Mercy stared up at her from inside, eyes wide.

Still stretching her arms, Yerin used one of her Goldsigns to beckon the dragon. “All right, you ready?”

The dragon glanced from side to side, ready for a trap. But after a moment, heat flared in its eyes again, and it roared.

Yerin put a hand on her master's sword and concentrated on the aura.

She needed power that didn't lean on the Blood Shadow. Power that was hers alone. And she'd always learned better when she was pushed to the brink of a cliff.

The dragon rushed at her, sword-aura gathering around its claws as it swept them in a powerful strike.

The sound of a bell echoed through the air as she activated the Endless Sword.

The sword-aura around his claws exploded, causing shallow white slashes to appear on his scales all over his body. His strike wasn't slowed at all, and Yerin threw up her Goldsigns to block.

When the claws met the steel of her Forged madra limbs, the impact pushed her back. She let it happen, falling back several steps.

Then she tried again, focusing this time.

Her technique should look like the wind: it should surround her, unseen except for its effect. It should be like she was defended by a thousand invisible swords.

As she triggered the Endless Sword again, it looked more like a thousand invisible swords flailing wildly.

Its tail slammed into her, though she got her sword in the way just in time. It knocked her backwards, and she had to use her Goldsigns to brace herself before she hit a tree spine-first. The silver madra limbs stuck in the trunk like axe-blades, catching her just short of slamming into the wood.

Mercy emerged from beneath her, using her staff to lever herself out of the hole. She'd tied her hair back into a tail again, and her purple eyes were fixed on the dragon. “I'm sorry, she's training. I'm Mercy! You are...”

The dragon drew in a breath.

Black madra stretched away from Mercy and stuck onto the limbs of the tree just above Yerin's head. She pulled herself away just in time, as a spray of fiery golden madra incinerated the grass, leaves, and scripted blanket she'd left behind.

Yerin glanced up at Mercy as the Akura girl dangled from a limb. “You want this to go faster, then you could help. Hit it with your stick.”

Mercy sighed, giving the dragon a sad glance, before she gripped her staff in both hands. “It's not a stick.”

The dragon was gathering itself to leap into the tree, but Mercy's weapon came to life in her hands. It looked like a bundle of flexible black tendons worked into the shape of a staff, except for the violet-eyed dragon’s head on its end.

That snarling head slid from the end of the staff down to the center. The staff itself bent like a wooden limb under pressure until it was shaped like a crescent, and a single black string slid from one end to the other.

A bow. It was a bow, almost as tall as Mercy was.

Mercy drew the string back, Forging a jet-black arrow as she did so. The point emerged between her weapon’s jaws.

“This is Eclipse, Ancient Bow of the Soulseeker.” She loosed, and the arrow stuck in the dragon's palm. “It was my mother's weapon from Lowgold to Archlord. Made from the Remnant of a shadow dragon who became a Sage.” Another arrow took the dragon in the other hand, but it had already burned the first one free. “With this bow, my mother sealed the living volcano of Shara Kahn.” Two more arrows, and this time dark madra spread like a web from the point of impact. It started crawling over the dragon like living ropes.

“She destroyed the Sunlight Rebellion with this bow, and bound together the thirteen islands into one.” The dragon went crazy, tearing and clawing at itself like it was trapped in a net. But as Mercy continued firing arrows, the web kept drawing tighter.

“I know it's just a bow, but I call her Suu.” Mercy patted the bow on its dragon's head. “Good girl, Suu.”

The bow hissed.

Yerin hopped down, inspecting the dragon. It still struggled, but it was wrapped in a dark cocoon and didn't look like it was going to escape anytime soon.

This way, at least they didn't have to deal with its Remnant.

“What about yours?” Mercy asked politely, dispersing her madra and dropping to the ground. She missed her landing and fell in a heap but didn't seem to care. “Did you get that sword from your master?”

Yerin ran her fingers down the hilt. “...yeah.”

“So what's its story?”

“I don't know.”

The Sage had never referred to his weapon by name. She didn't even know if it had one. He had made her use it to chop firewood by hand when he was trying to build up her muscles. He used it because he was too lazy to hunt down an axe.

Instead of talking about that, Yerin asked Mercy another question as they walked away from the cocooned dragon. “How about your Path? Aspects of shadow and force, if I'm not wrong.”

She'd felt Mercy cycling over the last few weeks, so she was pretty certain about that.

“Oh, this is just a restriction technique.”

Yerin glanced back. “I can see that. I've got eyes. You don't want me poking my head into your Path secrets, say so.”

Mercy gave her a surprised look. “I don't keep secrets. Bad for your heart.” She held out one hand, and a Forged book of shining violet madra popped into her hand.

The cover was entirely covered by the most intricate script-circle Yerin had ever seen. She suspected she could keep staring at it forever and finding new secrets, and the scripts seemed to turn like wheels within wheels. It was a disturbing sight.

And that didn't even count the way it felt in her perception. It gave off a menacing pressure, like the shadow of a shark circling beneath the waves.

“The Book of Eternal Night,” Mercy announced, holding her book up proudly. “I'm on the Path of Seven Pages. And the first page, the Lowgold page...”

She opened the cover, revealing the first page. It looked more like a thumb-thick tablet than a piece of paper. Yerin wondered if it contained a binding.

This page was choked with more incomprehensible script-circles instead of plain writing. Not that Yerin would have been able to get anything from it either way.

“It's the central technique from the Path of the Chainkeeper,” Mercy said. “Strings of Shadow. There are seven techniques in this book, one for each page. The Path of Seven Pages unites seven techniques from seven different shadow Paths into one.”

She let it fade away, and this time Yerin traced it with her perception. “You stock that thing in your spirit?”

Mercy patted her stomach like she'd just had a full meal. “When I bonded with this book, they opened up my soulspace early. It's one of the requirements of my Path.”

A screech echoed through the woods. Either another dragon had caught up, or the first had gotten free.

“All right, that's enough friendly time,” Yerin said, drawing her sword. “We've been too soft on these things. Now, we punch through. I'm getting through that portal before the sun sets, or I'm bleeding out.”

Mercy's eyes sparkled, and she hopped out in front of Yerin. “Did you say we're friends now?”

Yerin stared at her.

Another Highgold dragon waited for them ahead, and spots of heat in her perception told her there were more Lowgolds and Highgolds ringing them. They were getting sewed in.

But they were making progress. After an hour of running and dodging through the trees, Yerin spotted something that brightened her heart: the sparkle of light on the ocean.

According to the map, the portal was at the very edge of the island. They were close.

The Highgold dragon roared at them, spraying fire.

A Rippling Sword technique split the fire down the middle. Strings of Shadow dragged its claws to the ground, and Yerin's sword plunged into the back of its neck.

Its scales actually managed to deflect most of the blow, but blood gushed up, and it shrieked.

Mercy bound it to the ground a few more times as they kept running. She frowned at Yerin. “It wasn't going to hurt us.”

“It was trying,” Yerin said.

Mercy continued to argue, but Yerin looked ahead. This side of the island ended, not in a sandy beach, but in a strip of dirt overlooking a cliff that dropped to the ocean. She pulled out the map, examining it and pointing.

“Farther north,” she said.

She had to guess the jade doorway would be in the same place as the first one had been. If it was, that meant it would be at the edge of the treeline.

They were getting close to Redmoon Hall territory, but that couldn't dim her spirits. According to the map, they were within minutes of the Ghostwater entrance. At last, they could leave this boring rotten island behind and join Lindon in the Monarch's pocket world. It was about time.

A golden shadow passed in front of the sun.

Yerin knew what it was even before she stretched her perception up and felt the presence of the Thousand-Mile Cloud. She knew before the pressure of an Underlord pushed down on her spirit, before dragons roared in triumph and a woman jumped down from the golden cloud, landing easily a hundred feet down.

This was where the Highgold dragons had been meant to lead them. Right into the claws of their leader.

The woman wore a sparkling sacred artist's robe of intricate red, gold, and purple. Her eyes were golden and vertically slitted, and patches of gold scales remained on the pale skin of her cheeks. Her nails looked like claws, and there were patches of scales on the backs of her hands as well. A thin, gold-scaled tail lashed behind her.

She was doing nothing to restrain her spirit, or the rage that was obvious on her face. The Underlady's fury hit Yerin only a few steps from the trees, and she fell to her knees, gasping for breath. It was like a bear sitting on her chest.

Mercy fell flat to the ground, in even worse shape than Yerin. She looked like she'd been pinned in place like a corpse prepared for study.

The Underlady was flanked by Truegolds who looked like a cross between humans and dragons. They were scaled, their face reptilian, but they stood upright and wore clothes just like humans would. They spoke to the Lady from behind, but she had furious eyes only for the humans.

“...then they can give me back my sister!” It sounded like she was responding to one of the dragons, but her voice raised to an angry roar in mid-sentence.

Sunset-colored light gathered around one clawed hand, and that technique gave off heat like a scorching bonfire.

Yerin used her sword to push herself up a hair, straightening her back a little bit. “Don't know...your sister...” she pushed out.

The dragon tossed her head, and Yerin realized she didn't have hair, but rather a veil of loose scales hanging down from her head so that it looked like hair. “You will meet her now.”

Mercy struggled on the ground. Yerin braced herself.

One of the Truegold dragons lunged at the Lady's arm, holding her back for just a moment. Madra shone in her hand.

Yerin forced her own sluggish madra to move, lifting her sword in arms that felt a hundred times heavier than usual. She gathered power, Enforcing her weapon, holding it against the Striker technique that was about to come. It wouldn't be enough, but she had to try something.

“Second page,” Mercy whispered, through gritted teeth.

A phantom image flickered behind Mercy for a second, so quick that Yerin thought she might have imagined it. The violet book, turning from the first page to the second.

Light dimmed about ten feet around Mercy, as though she'd cast a bigger shadow than normal, and suddenly she was giving off the aura of a Highgold. It was the quickest, most casual advancement Yerin had ever heard of.

Not that it would save them. The Lady shook off the Truegold, hurling her Striker technique at the two humans. The liquid madra surged like a river after a storm, carrying the raging heat of a wildfire.

The full-power strike of an Underlord.

Mercy shoved herself in front of Yerin, holding up an arm as though she carried a shield. Another time, Yerin might have been impressed with the spine that took, but in that instant, she was horrified. Was she cracked in the head? Yerin had a better chance of weakening the technique by facing it with her own madra head-on; all Mercy could do was get herself burned to ash a little early.

Violet crystals started to form all over Mercy's arm, and then the madra washed over them.

It detonated as it hit, scorching every inch of Yerin's exposed skin. She couldn't tell how much of it had been pushed away by her Enforced sword, but it hit her weapon like a hammer, slamming it back into her, driving her back into the trees.

Yerin lost herself for a second. She saw only light and motion, heard only a formless roar.

When she came back, she was looking at the sky. Her face, her arms, her head—in so much pain she could barely breathe. She pushed herself up to sit, her Steelborn Iron body draining madra, and the flash of pain was so intense she almost passed out.

Pieces of her robe crumbled away as she moved. The skin of her right arm was red-and-black, twisted, almost melted. Her master's sword lay not far away. It was unharmed, and she crawled for it.

Then she saw Mercy.

The girl's left arm was covered in a violet crystalline armor the same color as her book had been. Slowly, the armor faded to essence, revealing an arm that looked totally untouched.

It was the only part of her body that looked that way.

Most of her hair was scorched off. Her robes were half-melted to her body, and all her skin was red and burned. She cradled Suu in her arms.

At first sight, Yerin was sure she was dead. Only her spiritual perception said otherwise.

Another sunset-colored light bloomed, and Yerin turned slowly to face it.

If anything, the Underlady looked even more furious now. Tears streamed from her eyes, and she gathered this Striker technique in both hands.

A Truegold dragon leaped in front of her.

The man fell to his knees and spread his arms, clearly pleading with her.

Yerin understood. She wasn't the only Underlord on this island. The dragons knew they had come from the Blackflame Empire with the Skysworn, but they also must see the two of them as members of Redmoon Hall and the Akura family.

If she, a Lady, struck down two Golds, the other Lords would do likewise. It would be an invitation to tear the dragons apart.

But Yerin wasn't going to stick around and see where the dice fell.

Her Steelborn Iron body was drawing on her spirit to keep her limbs moving, and she positively flooded it with madra. She hauled Mercy onto her shoulder, skin screaming and tears flooding her own eyes in the pain.

She gathered her master's sword and the ancient bow under one arm. Then she started jogging into the woods.

If they got far enough away, she could pull the tent from Mercy's void key and hide in its veiling script. That was their only hope.

For now, though every step was agony, she had to run.

14

At the end of the second week after reaching the Spirit Well, Lindon advanced to Highgold in his pure core.

It struck him again how much longer it took to raise the Path of Twin Stars. If he had focused on only one Path, he would surely be Truegold by now, thanks to the miraculous properties of the Well water.

Even with the distractions of raising Dross and his pure core, his Path of Black Flame had advanced significantly into Highgold. He wasn't knocking on the door of Truegold yet, but he could at least see it in the distance.

This was the easiest his advancement would ever be, and he relished it. Every sip of the Spirit Well water felt like a victory.

Orthos' spirit burned brighter than Lindon had ever felt it. If the Dream Well water had helped him to stay focused, his newly cleansed spirit meant that Lindon no longer had to feed him pure scales or keep him calm. He spent his days cycling with Lindon, drinking from the Spirit Well, or swimming around the habitat. Lindon was fairly certain he'd been fighting with Sea Drakes, because sometimes he returned from his swims with an exultant look in his eye and scratches all over his skin.

Little Blue was once again a deep ocean blue, and she scampered around like a child in a field. She played with some of the more advanced Dreamseeds, the ones who had taken a more solid form. The less-advanced spirits were hazy and ever-shifting, and they didn't seem to have minds at all.

Though it still knocked Lindon sideways when Dross said he wanted to eat some of them.

“It's not eating as you do it,” Dross said from within Lindon's core. “No, thank you—that's disgusting. It's more like a...merge. A merge in which I take in everything and they cease to exist.”

Lindon supposed there was nothing different about that than using Remnant parts, but he couldn't help but think of some construct devouring Little Blue.

“The little ones don't have minds. They're like plants. If you wanted to feed them and raise them for a few years, sure, then they'd be all cute. And then you'd feel like a monster. But you haven't done that, so we're all clear!”

Lindon gave in. Dross was confident that this would be the last stage of his growth, and that after this, he would qualify as a living spirit rather than a construct. Lindon was curious to see that, and just as importantly, he wanted the construct out of his spirit. Dross was taking up far too much of his time and water each day.

Unfortunately, that meant he had to do the job of consuming the Dreamseed himself.

“You’ve got an arm for it!” Dross said. “Just walk over there and slurp it up.”

“It won’t work. My arm can’t draw anything into my core.”

“Get it into your madra channels and I’ll do the rest.”

When Lindon tried to consume the first Dreamseed, which clung to one of the nearby walls in a translucent purple blob, his arm of hunger madra drained something out of it and left it a lifeless husk of dissolving dream essence.

The next time, he restrained the limb, pulling the Dreamseed into his core as delicately as he could. It swirled into his spirit, a mass of impressions that felt surprisingly compatible with his pure madra. Dross had been right; these spirits were less like real dream madra and more like pure madra pretending.

That was interesting, but not as interesting as what happened to Dross when he absorbed the Sylvan.

He shivered inside Lindon’s core, his essence shifting, and some of the sparks inside him gathered together. It looked like he was forming a core of his own.

“Oh yeah, that’s it. That’s the right stuff. Now grab the one that looks like a flower.”

It took six Dreamseeds before Dross stopped talking. Inside Lindon’s spirit, the construct spun, turning in faster and faster loops.

Lindon funneled as much power from the Spirit Well to Dross as he could. He didn’t know if it was helping, but he reasoned that it couldn’t hurt.

Dross started pushing at Lindon’s core. It was only a little pressure at first, but it grew stronger and stronger, until Lindon had to extend his left hand and push the construct out like he was releasing a Striker technique.

The ball of purple light spun into the air, wobbling. He was more solid now, a more clearly defined orb. Now, twisting lines of light formed a web through the mechanical spokes at his center, all leading back to a single spot of bright light.

A madra system. He had grown madra channels and a core.

“Oh, this is brilliant! Brilliant stuff! It’s like all my thoughts and memories are crawling together and breeding new ones! I’m having ideas now!” Dross spun excitedly around Lindon’s head. “We don’t have to go to the portal at all, do we? We could harness fish and ride our way up! No, wait, we’re in a pocket world. We could harness fish and ride our way through space.”

He stopped in front of Lindon’s face. “I can activate the tablets myself now! Don’t be surprised if I return as a master of the sacred arts.”

He whizzed off, out of the Spirit Well room and down the hallway.

Ziel watched the whole exchange with a complete lack of interest, sitting against the corner and staring at him from beneath emerald horns.

“Forgiveness,” Lindon said. “I did not mean to disturb you.”

Dead eyes drifted over to the Spirit Well.

“If you don’t mind, how long until I reach Truegold? In your estimation.”

“Two more weeks,” Ziel said without looking over.

“And we have that long, don’t we? You said a month…”

“You don’t want to stay here.”

Lindon wasn’t sure if that was a warning or not. “This is my new favorite place in existence. I want to stay here forever.”

“No, you want to leave.” Slowly, Ziel’s eyes returned to Lindon. “Don’t you?”

Lindon stood there for a long moment before he moved and took a seat beside Ziel. “Well, I have this friend. She—”

Ziel held up a hand. “No. Stop. We don’t know each other well enough for this.”

“Of course, I’m sorry.”

“You’ll reach Truegold. Whether you do it in two weeks or two years, it won’t make much of a difference in the end.”

“Actually—”

“Stop. It’s my turn. I have nothing against easy advancement, but don’t let it blind you.” He raised a finger, pointing to the ceiling. It took Lindon a moment to see what he was pointing to: a long cobweb stretching from one corner to another.

“The decay has already begun. That is a naturally forming spatial crack. You still have three weeks or so before this world collapses, so long as nothing accelerates it. By the time they form fast enough that you can see space cracking, you should have left already.”

He pulled his worn cloak around him. “If you’re going to a deeper habitat, you’ll have plenty of time if you leave now. You don’t want to be racing the hourglass with a collapsing world.”

Lindon thanked him, though he was part relieved and part disappointed. He had already been apart from Yerin for so long; he found himself wondering more and more what she was doing on the outside. He had expected that to fade with time, but it had only grown worse.

On the other hand, he felt like a fool for leaving the Spirit Well without milking every second.

He filled every spare container he could find with the blue water: all of the vials he’d emptied so far and everything he could scavenge from the junk rooms in this facility.

He’d opened his void key and prepared to leave, Little Blue on his shoulder, Orthos at his side, and Dross in the Eye of the Deep. Still, he looked over the pool of blue water like he was abandoning a fortune.

Ziel waited for them at the entrance to the room, leaning on his hammer like an old man on a cane. He hefted a bag in one hand and tossed it to Lindon. It clinked as he caught it.

“Six bottles,” Ziel said. “Should be enough to get you to Truegold in at least one core.”

Lindon held the bottles for a moment before placing them into his void key. He actually teared up.

Ziel ignored him.

When they were ready to leave, they stood lined up in front of the wall of black water. Dross assured them that this was the way to the final habitat, the one containing the entrance to Northstrider’s quarters.

It was filled with the swirling blue lights of Diamondscale Sea Drakes.

Orthos chewed a mouthful of stone to gravel and swallowed it. “Hmmm…I left too many alive.”

He and Ziel had consumed far more of the original Drake’s corpse than Lindon thought should be possible, but when it started to decay, they had tossed it into the ocean. Had that attracted the others?

Little Blue chimed like a bell from his shoulder, and he patted her tiny shoulder with one finger. Together, they stared down a wall of flashing silver scales and blue lights.

“Do we have time to swim around?” Lindon asked.

“That depends,” Dross said. “Do you still need air?”

A loud scraping grew closer and closer, and they all turned to see Ziel dragging his hammer two-handed over the tile. “They focus on the biggest threat in their territory. I will punch through, and you head to the habitat. This is no task for a Gold.”

He hesitated and glanced down at himself. “…although I guess it is, isn’t it?”

With a heavy sigh, he pushed through the bubble and into the sea, his cloak billowing behind him. The faded symbol on the back reminded Lindon of spread wings this time.

“You could learn from him,” Orthos said, eyes blazing red. “He has the spirit of a dragon.”

“I’m not sure he would take that as a compliment.”

An instant later, a green script-circle bloomed above Ziel’s head. It was big enough to swallow his body, but then the ring expanded. And expanded again.

A second later, it exploded. Water rushed up in a violent column from his hammer, carrying most of the Diamondscale swarm with it. The bubble-wall of the habitat rippled with the force.

The other strings of blue lights converged on Ziel in an instant, but Lindon and the others had already ducked into the water.

The ocean of Ghostwater was a chaos of blood and dust, with nearby impacts shaking the ground. They pushed forward, guided by a purple light projected by Dross. Occasionally scales flashed silver or blue lights shone in front of them, but none of the Drakes attacked them.

Lindon’s lungs were starting to ache by the time the water cleared, and then the new habitat was already in view. It was a dome of bright light packed with green; it looked like a slice of a jungle transplanted to the bottom of the ocean.

He hung onto Orthos’ shell as the turtle swam toward it, but after a moment he felt a spike of battle-hunger from his contracted partner. The sacred beast turned, cycling Blackflame.

A pair of blue lights headed toward them out of the darkness.

The Burning Cloak had let Lindon down the last time he tried it underwater, the aura and the water dampening his movements. Now, he was a Highgold, and his body had been reinforced by weeks more of feeding on sacred beast meat. And this time, he had a new technique.

The Soul Cloak swirled around him, and he kicked forward, joining Orthos in battle.

* * *

Ziel waited until the last moment to use his gatekey.

Unlike a gatestone, the gatekey could be used without breaking it. The key was many times more valuable than the stone, but once he had been able to afford these things. Now he had to rely on his patron.

One moment he was using the last of his madra to swing his hammer in the face of a Sea Drake, and the next he was dripping water all over the grass, staring that patron in the face.

The Beast King sat on a log, tearing a hunk of meat between his teeth, grease sliding down his unkempt beard. A campfire crackled in front of him, casting long shadows. He showed no surprise at Ziel’s appearance. Silver eyes looked the Truegold up and down as he took another bite.

“Lot of blood in that water,” the Herald observed. “Do I have the Lord of the Dawnwing Sect back with me once again?”

Without his Enforcer technique active, Ziel’s hammer was too heavy for him. He let it sag to the ground, where its weight pushed into the soil. “The Spirit Well didn’t work,” he said, his hammer digging a furrow behind him as he walked to sit against the Vastwood Mammoth that lay across the landscape like a hairy hill.

The wall of fur gave a welcoming trumpet as Ziel leaned against it. He patted the sacred beast, though he doubted the mammoth could feel it. It would be like a human feeling the touch of a single ant’s leg.

The Beast King had seen through the state of his spirit with a single glance. He shrugged, speaking through a mouthful of roasted meat. “It was a long bet. We can still try it in the form of an elixir. How much did you bring me?”

Ziel tossed him a bottle, which he caught balanced on one finger. Silver eyes moved from the bottle to Ziel. “One? Had the Well run dry?”

“No.” Ziel leaned his head back, resting against the mammoth’s hair. The sacred beast smelled like warm fur, and he found it comforting. The stars glittered overhead, distant and uncaring.

The Herald grunted as though he understood, and the bottle of water vanished into his void key. “How long does the pocket world have?”

“Three weeks, maybe less.”

“Shame. Built by Northstrider, and it’s gone so quickly.” He shrugged, tearing the rest of the meat away and tossing the bone behind him.

Ziel could hear the dogs fighting over it:

“You got it last time!” one of them barked.

“Ah, but you forget about the squirrel that you did not share with me.”

“A squirrel’s bones are tiny and snap easily. It is hardly the same.”

The Beast King leaned closer to Ziel, ignoring the dogs. “Since you seem so willing to help others, I have something to occupy your time. There are a couple of Golds out here who don’t belong to us, and they seem to have gotten themselves stuck. How about you swing by and un-stick them.”

Ziel had just gotten comfortable.

He reached a hand out to his hammer and gave a long sigh. “Where?”

“Under the gold dragons. I’ll send you close.” He snapped his fingers as though something had just occurred to him. “Oh, and there might be an Underlord in the mix.”

Ziel heaved himself to his feet an inch at a time, like an old man. “Yeah? Maybe I’ll die.”

* * *

Lindon walked through the outer wall of the new habitat hauling the corpse of a Diamondscale Sea Drake behind him. He held one fang in his Remnant hand, dragging the serpent’s long, silver body behind him as he walked. The blue-and-white light of the Soul Cloak still drifted through and around him.

Orthos followed, roaring with laughter. “You’ll need to eat a dragon’s portion of this one. It’ll put some scales on you, that’s for sure.”

Lindon’s stomach twisted at the thought as he pulled the Drake the last few feet and released it. Each bite of the Sea Drake’s flesh had been a new exercise in agony, and it had required his full willpower and not a little bit of madra to avoid vomiting up every meal he’d ever made of the sacred beast. At least it showed results.

“What we have here is the refiner's garden,” Dross said from the gem in Lindon's pocket. “They tried to refine an elixir, from rare plants and the blood of certain sacred beasts, that would make a mental breakthrough in the same way people make spiritual breakthroughs. They kept all the rare plants on hand here, but uh...according to our records, it's not supposed to be this much of a mess.”

If this was a garden, it was one that had been abandoned for years and then infested by monsters. Flowers that glowed like full moons were trampled by diseased, frog-like creatures the size of cows. Two hideous insects bigger than dogs wrestled in a patch of grass, surrounded by a pile of bones arranged into a nest. Whispers, cries, and twisted laughter rose in the distance, as did a pillar of smoke.

In his spiritual perception, the powers of life and blood reigned in equal measure, all infected by a poison that reminded him of the Desolate Wilds. As he looked closer, he saw black spots on nearby trees.

As soon as he noticed, he returned his attention to the giant frogs with patches of wet rot on their skin. They were dozens of yards away, but their stench carried.

“Dreadbeasts,” Lindon said at last.

“They kept a few samples safely imprisoned in this habitat,” Dross said. “Not quite safely enough, as it turns out.”

Orthos growled, and Lindon let the Soul Cloak drop to switch to his Blackflame core. “Which way to the portal?”

“Life Well first,” Lindon reminded.

Dross slipped out of his gem and bobbed in front of Lindon. “To our good luck, it's on the way.”

Lindon and Orthos marched forward. Without discussion, they burned more dreadbeasts away.

“The Life Well was really just a side effect of their work here. It bolsters the line of life aura inside everyone's body, and can even restore youth to the elderly. This was the most rare and expensive of all the water; you'd be lucky to get a spoonful after a successful project.” He flashed bright light in Lindon's face. “I used the word 'spoon' correctly there. Just thought you ought to notice.”

After the Spirit Well, Lindon was looking forward to this one. What could the Life Well do? Could it bring back youth? Heal injuries? Whatever it did, he could find some use to it.

Lindon and Orthos destroyed the remaining dreadbeasts on their way to the Life Well, though Orthos had to use a Ruler technique to quash a few fires that they started in the process.

This time, the Life Well facility was actually a building. It was the size of a large barn, its walls iron-gray. The huge door on the front was decorated with a skeleton cupping its hands; he recognized the pattern on the skeleton's palms from the previous keyholes.

Dross slid into the keyhole without instruction, and slowly the door began to grind open, spilling green light.

“Where is the portal?” Lindon asked, while the door slid from one wall to the other.

“Right below us,” Dross said, zipping back into his gem. “Good thing that the ground hasn't caved in here, or we'd be falling right now. There's a shaft inside that leads down to his quarters, but it's a one-way trip.”

“How did he make it up?”

“He was a Monarch. He jumped.”

By then, the door had opened enough for Lindon to see the Life Well. It reminded him of a laundry tub more than an actual well, and though it released bright emerald light, it wasn't nearly as large as the other two wells.

The reek of decay wafted out of the door, and Lindon waited with his hand over his nose until he figured out what he was seeing inside. The green light revealed tall, cylindrical tanks lining either side of the room; they contained bloated corpses of every species and description. There must have been two dozen of them along each wall, and the subjects ranged from hand-sized fish to coiled serpents that barely fit in their tanks. None of them had survived.

The tanks were surely airtight; the stench came from the ones that had broken. Three or four of the glass tanks had been shattered from the inside, shards scattered on the floor, covered by the rotting remainders of their former inhabitants.

Lindon caught a new whiff of something dead, and at first he wondered if something had died recently. By the time he realized the sensation was coming from his spirit rather than his nose, Orthos had already turned and let out a roar, the Burning Cloak springing up around his shell.

Yan Shoumei stood there, hair falling in front of her face like a veil, Blood Shadow clutched around her like a cloak. Her eyes, barely visible through the black locks, glistened with hatred.

“You even followed me to another world,” she hissed. “Tell Anagi that he was too late! I have everything I need.”

Lindon glanced down at Orthos to see if he had followed that, but the turtle had already unleashed his dragon's breath.

The flow of black-and-red flame streamed from his mouth, but Shoumei punched out with a fist covered in a globe of crimson force. Orthos' Striker technique hit the globe around her hand and split apart, sending fingers of Blackflame splashing into the undergrowth. Tongues of fire licked up immediately.

She gave a wild laugh, withdrawing a stoppered bottle and waving it at them. “You were days too slow! I have all the blood I need! I look forward to seeing your bodies buried beneath Hearthway!”

Still laughing, she crushed a gatestone in her hand and vanished in a blue flash.

Surrounded by burning undergrowth, Lindon turned to Orthos again. “Do you think she had the wrong people?”

“I think she should have stayed and fought us,” Orthos said, taking a mouthful of undergrowth. “But yes, as they say, she was crazier than a nest full of squirrels.”

Dross piped up curiously, “So Anagi didn't send you?”

“Do you know who that is?” Lindon asked.

“I don't know anything that didn't take place inside this pocket world. But I do wish she hadn't done that.”

Where Shoumei had once stood now waited a web of cracks. Falling leaves, passing through that space, were effortlessly sliced in half by nothing more than the weight of their fall.

Slowly, the cracks expanded. It wasn't obvious, but if he looked closely, Lindon could see them inching forward.

“Let's hurry,” Lindon suggested.

Back at the Life Well, Lindon cupped his hands and drew out a mouthful to take a sip. It had a faint taste like a very weak tea, and he could feel it spreading to his body without his encouragement.

But unlike the meat of the Silverfang Carp or the Diamondscale Drake, this didn't carry with it a burning sense of strength. Lindon felt a little more relaxed, a little refreshed, but otherwise he didn't notice much of a difference.

Well, his expectations of the Life Well hadn't been high to begin with. He started to open his void key when Orthos dipped his head in for a drink.

Pain shot through their spiritual bond, and the turtle bellowed in agony.

His legs collapsed immediately, shell slamming to the ground, and his head curled back into his shell. His eyes rolled into his skull, showing all black.

“Tell me what's happening,” Lindon demanded of Dross, lowering the Sylvan Riverseed from his shoulder. Little Blue hopped over, placing both hands on Orthos' neck, letting her power flood into him. She gave a little cheep of distress almost immediately; whatever was wrong with him, it wasn't in his spirit.

“The water of the Life Well can have...more of an impact on older subjects,” Dross said. “Usually it's very healthy for them. Very healthy. Only in a small percentage of cases do they lapse into a coma and die.”

Green light oozed from Orthos' skin. It beamed like a beacon from the crack in his shell, shone from his mouth, and spilled from beneath his belly. Lindon readied his arm; if this was excess power overflowing from the Well's power, maybe his Remnant binding could devour it.

But when he took his first step forward, he noticed that the wound in Orthos' shell was closing.

The verdant light dimmed slowly over several minutes, and by the time it did, Orthos had gone through a clear transformation. His skin was less of a worn gray and more of a glossy black. The edges of his shell now glowed bright red, and when his eyes snapped open, they were bright.

Orthos' voice was recognizable, but deeper. Smoother. Younger. “I...I feel...”

He laughed, bounding to his feet and running in a circle like a puppy. Lindon had heard more laughter out of him since coming to Ghostwater than in the last year.

He galloped away, leaping and kicking off a wall, then backflipping and landing with surprising grace.

Orthos turned back to Lindon, mouth open as though to say something. But he only laughed again and bounded out the door. Going to hunt some dreadbeasts, Lindon assumed.

Lindon looked down at Little Blue, who had tumbled onto the ground while Orthos frolicked. He picked her up and glanced at Dross, who brightened.

“I'd like some of that,” Dross said hopefully.

Lindon absorbed him into his core.

Over the rest of the day and into the night, Lindon cycled the fire and destruction aura released from the burning undergrowth, using Dream Well water to stay awake and cycling power from the Life Well to Dross.

Though the Spirit Well had taken him weeks to absorb, this started to change the construct immediately. He cheered as he spun inside Lindon’s core.

Orthos still hadn't returned, but the roars in the distance and the satisfaction radiating from his soul told Lindon the turtle was having a good time.

This place had been at least as much of a blessing for Orthos as it had been for Lindon. Not only had it helped heal some of the damage that Blackflame had done to his spirit, but it had sharpened his mind and now restored his body.

“Dross,” Lindon asked, “If this place existed while the Blackflame family was in charge of the Empire, why didn't they use it?”

“Oh, they did. They used to buy as much Well water as Northstrider would allow them. It was one of the ways this facility maintained itself.” Dross squirmed inside Lindon's core, absorbing some more green water. He was becoming opaque, as though he were growing skin.

“It was more an issue of quantity. A single cup from the Spirit Well cost a fortune, and it was the cheapest of the three. You’ve been drinking a fifty-year stockpile. And you really dove into it headfirst, too. You should bow down in gratitude for every mouthful.”

Absently, Lindon took another sip of the green water. “It will all go to waste when the world collapses.”

“Yeah, that's...yes. It will.” Dross' words were distant. “You know, I spent a long time in the Dream Well. And now I won't get to go back ever again.” He was quiet for a moment. “What do you call this feeling?”

“Sadness,” Lindon said, sitting against the Life Well.

“It feels a lot like grief,” Dross observed. “I don't like it.”

“It's not my favorite either.”

He spun quietly for a while, processing the water. “Here’s some better news: I only needed a taste of this well. I’m coming alive by the second! How does that make me feel? Excited!”

A sudden sound, like a distant clink of metal on metal, drew Lindon's attention to a rounded hatch in the floor opposite him. The clink came again, and again, louder as it continued.

Lindon pointed to it. “What's that?”

“The way down. We shouldn't go yet. There are some spirit-fruits in here that I think you'd really enjoy.”

Lindon rose to his feet, cycling Blackflame. The ringing sounded like a bell-tower now. “I'm not worried about going down. I'm worried about what's coming up.”

“There's nothing down there,” Dross said confidently. “It's been sealed for decades. You'd need an Eye of the Deep.”

“An Eye of the Deep?” Lindon asked.

“You didn't think there was only one key to this place, did you?”

With a sound like a ringing gong, the hatch crashed open. Darkness spilled out, shadows oozing from the entrance.

Lindon pushed Dross out. “Go get Orthos.”

Dross spun as he emerged from Lindon's palm, blinking in the light. Blinking. “I have an eye!” he exclaimed.

This time, Dross' evolution was even more pronounced. He was covered in what looked like purple skin, with one huge eye in the center of his body. He was speaking with an actual mouth now, which Lindon could see was lined with tiny teeth. He looked like a very advanced Remnant, or a cross between a spirit and a sacred beast.

Blunt tendrils extended from his sides. “And I have arms! Well, I have little pseudopod tentacle things, but I'll take them!”

Under any other circumstances, Lindon would have been delighted with the possibilities of a construct coming to life. He would have started speculating about what could be accomplished with other constructs, about whether long-term exposure to dream madra was the way to turn a construct into a living spirit, or whether there was something special with Dross' circumstances. If it was so easily replicable, the expert Soulsmiths would have tried it before.

However, Lindon's spirit warned him clearly about that darkness. He turned red-hot eyes on the construct. “Dross. Now.”

“Oh, right.” He spun away, flailing his stubby little arms as he flew. None too soon.

A moment later, Akura Harmony rose from the dark.

He looked as well-fed and comfortable as a man who had spent the night in the palace, his skin clear and smooth, his purple eyes bright. Hair flowed straight down his back, and the black disc of his Goldsign hovered behind his head. His black-and-white sacred artist's robes were spotless and pressed.

He drifted up until Lindon could see the dark purple Thousand-Mile Cloud on which he was standing. Casually, the Akura hopped off and strolled closer.

Lindon cycled madra, preparing to ignite the Burning Cloak.

Harmony didn't even look at him. Every step brought him closer, but he had eyes only for the Life Well. The Akura produced a shallow bowl, and brushed past Lindon to dip it into the pool of shining green water.

Lindon supposed he should be grateful the man wasn't hostile, but his spirit was still warning him. He pressed his fists together and gave a shallow bow. “Greetings, Akura representative. I am—”

Harmony cut him off with a sigh. “Quiet.”

Like a painter raising a brush, he raised two fingers.

Madra gathered within his hand, dark and sharp, and Lindon recognized the technique.

The Burning Cloak sprang into the air around him, and he struck at the Akura's wrist with the explosive speed of Blackflame.

Harmony's left hand intercepted his, pushing his punch aside with apparent ease. Lindon opened his Remnant hand, trying to grab hold of the Akura's body.

Harmony stepped back, still graceful, and lowered his fingers.

A black blade flickered down, slicing a line in the stone floor.

Lindon managed to throw himself to one side, the blade cutting only into his outer robe. He rose to his feet, conjuring dragon's breath, but Harmony was once again looking at something else.

This time, he was looking at the corner of Lindon's robe, which had fallen to the ground. It had included his pocket.

Harmony first drew out a blue-glowing glass ball, which he tossed aside. Lindon almost wished he'd taken it; Suriel's marble would return to him without fail.

Then he withdrew the other blue orb that had been inside Lindon's pocket before it was severed by the shadow-blade. This time, it was the cracked, damaged sapphire that had once housed the Eye of the Deep construct.

Harmony examined it for a moment, then reached into his own pocket and pulled out a sapphire that shimmered with a gradient of other colors.

Another Eye of the Deep.

Lindon launched a bolt of dragon's fire at Harmony, but a black wedge appeared in the air in front of him. The Blackflame madra split along the wedge, one half drilling into the wall on the left and the other half cutting a glass cylinder in two.

Unconcerned, Harmony raised the dead sapphire. “The construct. You removed it.”

“It cracked,” Lindon said, gathering madra again. “The construct dissolved.”

Harmony nodded to the door. “You opened that door not six hours ago.”

Lindon leaped at him, powered by the Burning Cloak. He grabbed for the gem with his Remnant arm.

Harmony stepped away, but that step carried him halfway across the room. “Let's see, then.”

He held up the unlit gem, sending his spirit into it. A blue light flickered deep within, and Lindon's heart fell.

There was a script inside the sapphire, which Harmony had just activated. And Lindon suspected he knew what it did.

Soon enough, he heard Dross' shouts growing closer.

“What's happening? What is this? Something's got me! Help!” As though drawn back by an invisible fishing line, Dross was hauled into the room and straight into his sapphire.

Brows drawn in confusion, Harmony held both gems next to each other. One was blue, though it rippled with other colors, and smoothly glowing. The other was now purple, with Dross inside it, and was begging to know what happened.

After a moment of examination, Harmony simply turned and walked back to the hatch.

Where Lindon was already waiting for him.

Empowered by the Burning Cloak, he lashed out with his Remnant fist. Harmony met the blow with the back of his hand.

It was a casual gesture, as though Harmony were waving him away, but it carried the weight of a collapsing wall. The force impacted Lindon’s entire body, and he flew back, turning in midair and cycling madra to his legs. He landed against the wall in a flare of black-and-red madra.

He leaped back into the fight, dragon’s fire gathered in his palm. He shoved the half-formed Striker technique into Harmony’s face, but Harmony’s fingers—shielded by dark madra—pierced through it. The ball of fire burst in Lindon’s hand, and the momentum of his lunge carried him past Harmony and into the middle of the floor.

The Akura turned, crooking his fingers as though beckoning a dog.

Black swords stabbed up from the ground.

Lindon slid aside, avoiding them, but they kept coming. He started drawing Blackflame into his palm, glancing up to judge his distance from Harmony.

Icy pain flashed through his spirit as a sword shoved through his Remnant arm. He staggered, his technique disappearing, gripping his white arm around the dark blade that emerged from the forearm.

Without another word, Harmony turned and hopped back into the tunnel. Taking Dross with him.

15

Lindon wrenched his arm free of the Forged blade, biting back a scream. He rushed over to the hatch, grabbing it one-handed and trying to haul it open with the strength of the Burning Cloak.

Orthos raced in at that moment, skidding to a halt in front of the hatch. He looked around at the burns in the walls, the sliced floor, and the newly damaged glass cases. “Where is the enemy?” he demanded, excited.

Right arm hanging limp, Lindon slapped the hatch with his left hand. “Down there. He took Dross.”

The turtle’s spirit swept over the hatch. “…it was the Akura?”

Lindon nodded.

“Then thank the heavens you are still free,” Orthos said gravely. “The Akura do not kill honorably. They take prisoners.”

Without warning, Lindon gathered power in his left hand. The dragon's fire congealed in seconds, and he drove it at the domed lid of the hatch.

Hidden rings of script shone on the lid and on the ground all around, the runes glowing the orange-white of heated metal. In seconds, they faded to orange and then to red.

“Can't follow him,” Lindon muttered, looking around the room. The refiners had left so much behind; had the Heralds stripped this place decades ago, as they had the other habitats? If not, there could be something he could use.

“If you followed him, what would you do? A dragon does not walk blindly into the devil's lair.”

“I know you see the problem here,” Lindon said, walking over to a cabinet next to the glass tanks. He threw open the doors—empty. “Without Dross, we are stuck here. Locked in a dying world.”

“Keep a calm head, boy,” Orthos said quietly. There had been no heat in Lindon’s words; even Yerin might not have heard any anger. But Orthos had a direct line to his spirit.

Lindon slammed his fist down onto the cabinet.

It stood as high as his chest and wider than his shoulders, but under his blow, it burst. Wood chips flew everywhere as the two halves of the furniture collapsed inward.

“He took Dross from me. From my hand. More easily than taking a bone from a dog.”

Lindon's rage stirred his Blackflame madra, which called fire aura to him from outside; he could feel the red power flowing into him. The shards of the cabinet started to smolder.

“Swallow that anger,” Orthos said. “Use it to fuel the fire in your belly. Dragons sometimes lose, but they learn from their losses and come back stronger.”

“If I accept this loss, there is no coming back!”

“That's not what's setting your tail ablaze. If you had a choice between leaving alive and staying to compete with the Akura, what would you do?”

“Leave,” Lindon said immediately.

Orthos grunted thoughtfully, then heaved himself to his feet. “Give me a moment. Cycle your pure core.”

That was unusual. Normally Orthos would tell him to cycle Blackflame. But then, normally Orthos wasn't the one telling him to keep his temper.

At first, Lindon paced in restless frustration, irritated at having to follow instructions. But eventually he sat down in a cycling position and focused on his pure core.

He soon lost himself in a meditative trance, so he wasn't sure how much time passed before Orthos returned. In his mouth, he carried a fist-sized chunk of what looked like shimmering blue chalk.

The turtle rolled the lump of chalk across the floor so it bumped into Lindon's knee. “This,” he said, “is a gatestone. They come in different shapes and sizes, but crushing one will allow you to instantly return to one place. It is how the others have been escaping Ghostwater.”

Lindon's eyes brightened and his heart cleared. This was the answer to all of his problems. He reached out for it before hesitating. “Where did you find this?”

“In one of the dreadbeast nests. A sacred artist must have died before using it.”

“Why didn't you bring it before?”

“We didn't need a way out before,” Orthos said, holding his gaze steady. “Now, you can decide: use this stone, or not.”

Of course he would. Lindon almost laughed out loud. But something else came out of his mouth.

“...why do you think he took Dross?”

Orthos said nothing, but Lindon's mind started churning. Harmony already had an Eye of the Deep, so he had access to all of Ghostwater. What would he need a second one for? There was the possibility that he wanted Dross specifically, but there would have been no way for him to know that Lindon's Eye was special before he stole it. Not unless he had access to the bloodline ability of the Arelius.

Maybe Harmony could have accessed the same observational security constructs that Dross had, but Lindon had no idea how likely that was. He had to assume that Harmony just needed another Eye.

Or perhaps he was acting to keep Lindon and Orthos locked inside Ghostwater as the world crumbled around him. Maybe he was just that cruel.

Lindon didn't have enough information to speculate. But using the gatestone would leave Dross to whatever Harmony wanted to do with him.

And Lindon recognized that an Akura wouldn't move for a cheap prize. He benefited from this in some way.

Lindon scooped up the stone...and slipped it into his one remaining pocket. Suriel's marble glowed there, though he didn't remember putting it away.

“Whatever he wants, we can't leave Dross to him,” Lindon said at last. And whatever the Akura was after, he wanted a piece of it.

Orthos nodded as though he'd expected nothing different. “Once, you were weak. That boy is long dead, but his Remnant still haunts you.” He turned to drink from the Life Well. “Your weakness, Lindon, is thinking you are weaker than you are.”

Lindon opened his void key, reaching in and pulling out a tiny vial of purple water. He drank it down quickly, feeling his focus sharpen.

“I think I can see a way to break the script on the hatch,” Lindon said after a moment.

Orthos shook his head firmly. “No. We’re too weak.”

“You just said—”

“Prudent caution,” the turtle said. “That is where you should find yourself.”

Lindon spread his one remaining palm. “If we stay here, we’re leaving Dross to his fate.”

“Convince me we can defeat the Akura without him escaping to his family,” Orthos said. “Then I will allow it.”

“I can repair my arm with the hunger bindings inside the dreadbeasts,” Lindon said.

“That arm didn't win you the last fight, did it?”

“We have some fresh Diamondscale meat. It will strengthen us both.”

“Slowly,” Orthos said. “If we're going to wait another two weeks, we might as well use the gatestone at the last moment and be done.”

“There are supposed to be some spirit-fruits in this garden, and I still have water from the Spirit Well. I could reach Truegold, but that will take just as long.”

Orthos shifted in place. He glanced to the side, snapping up another piece of debris and eating it.

“...Orthos.”

“It doesn't have to,” he admitted. “I have the power of a Truegold. I had to share it with you in small doses before, as neither your spirit nor mine could handle the burden.”

A light dawned in Lindon's mind. “But now we can. And whatever madra you expend, you can replace with the Spirit Well water. Let's go!” He sat down in a cycling position immediately, ready to begin.

“Listen, boy. You're only a few weeks from Truegold on your own. Don't rely on me for this last step.” He hesitated. “And nothing good comes from opposing the Akura family.”

Lindon rested a hand on the turtle's head. “Dross has traveled with us for four weeks now. Would a dragon abandon an ally in time of need?”

Orthos grumbled.

Then he opened his spirit.

* * *

Harmony knelt before the jeweled tree, calming his madra, stilling his mind.

The two Eyes of the Deep sat in his pockets, one silently, the other one chattering. He ignored them both equally.

The Akura family had known more than the others all along; they ensured that their disciples got the real prize in this pocket world. Of the other factions who had joined them to periodically plunder Ghostwater, only the Ninecloud Court had the knowledge they did. But the Ninecloud delegate hadn't made it inside this time, so Harmony would be the final recipient of Ghostwater's treasure.

The tree that loomed over him was made of scripted metal, spiraling from the floor up to the ceiling. Instead of leaves, its branches held metal cages, and inside each cage: a sapphire.

Only about a third of the cages were filled, but the chamber still sparkled with light from the Eyes of the Deep.

Harmony withdrew the silent jewel from his pocket. There was a ritual necessary to prepare the construct before coming here; he had to carry the gem around the outside world, then give it a thorough tour of the state of Ghostwater.

For the previous month, he had carried the Eye around with him as he cycled and trained, letting it absorb information about the world. About him. It would add its knowledge to the collective in the tree.

In return for his efforts, he would be rewarded.

He knelt before the tree, holding the shimmering jewel before him like a supplicant. “Harmony of the Akura clan returns the Eye of the Deep to the place of its birth.”

Without his power activating it, script flared to life all over the tree. One branch bent down toward Harmony, its cage creaking open.

Carefully, Harmony placed the gem within. His family wasn't sure to what degree the tree was aware of his behavior, but it had been known to punish rudeness. When the cage carried away the Eye of the Deep, Harmony bowed.

The jewel was restored to its state among the others, and a whispering voice echoed through the chamber.

“Ask...”

“What is the fastest path that I may use to reach Underlord?” Harmony asked. He had struggled with this question for weeks, regretting that he didn't have a second chance to ask another question.

Then he had sensed the delegation from the Blackflame Empire next to the Life Well. It meant they had an Eye of the Deep of their own.

The heavens, it seemed, were looking out for him.

The tree trembled for a moment, its script shining and its jewels shaking, as it contemplated the question.

Then a sparkling wave of blue-and-purple light washed over him, and he knew.

The shock of the sudden knowledge left him panicking and disoriented, as though he'd woken up from a dream and not recognized the room around him. When he regained control of himself, he pressed his fists together and bowed to the tree.

“Akura Harmony is grateful for your wisdom,” he said, his voice still rough.

Then he waited.

In front of him, at the base of the tree, was a scripted basin like a birdbath. He stared at the basin hungrily.

The answer was only half the prize.

A few breaths later, a clear tube slid out from the tree and hovered over the basin. A twinkling white pearl rolled through the tube, splashing into the center of the basin.

A drop of ghostwater: the substance for which this world had been named.

Abandoning dignity, Harmony leaned over the basin and lapped the droplet up with his tongue. Lords and Ladies would kill for this.

A moment of cycling later, and he realized why.

The droplet of ghostwater traveled through his madra channels to his head, where it fused with his channels and nested at the base of his skull. It shone there like a distant star, a tiny pinprick compared to the full moon of his core.

He tapped it, and it was as though his mind was refreshed. He stood, Forging his Nine Blades of the Underworld technique. Ordinarily, the technique struck nine times at a target, and it took his full concentration to control it otherwise.

Now, he caused the blades of dark madra to rise in a perfect circle. Once again, and they appeared one at a time on the same spot, delayed by a perfect second each time.

It was like he'd struggled all his life to juggle nine balls at the same time, and suddenly it had become as natural as breathing. One of his older cousins, who had earned a droplet of ghostwater twenty years before, had described it to him as 'strengthening his mental power,' but he hadn't pictured what that meant.

The power faded after only a breath of time, the point of light in his skull dimming. The ghostwater was tapped out, but it would draw from his body and spirit and restore itself over time.

One breath of increased control meant the difference between victory and defeat in a fight. Now, he could consider himself invincible among those of the same stage. And soon he would step into a new realm entirely; the tree had made his steps clear.

He pulled out the second Eye of the Deep.

He would be the first Akura since the Herald who found this place to return more than one Eye. Only a handful of people in history had attained ghostwater at all, and he would have more.

...assuming the tree accepted this one. It shone purple, thanks to the light from the construct inside the gem, and it was talking to him.

“Oh, this place is amazing! I'm a little insulted I didn't know about it, but you know, I guess they couldn't tell me everything. I mean, they could, because I do exist to store knowledge, but it's fine. It doesn't hurt at all. Although now that you mention it, I do feel a sort of connection. Like that is the place I'm supposed to return to. You think that's the Eye talking?” He paused for a moment, considering. “Hey, how about this for a plan: let's not put me in there. I know you've sealed me inside this vessel, but how about you let me go? Hm? I don't trust mysterious compulsions that are telling me to go somewhere.”

The construct pushed against the script keeping it locked inside, and the script flared. Harmony reinforced it with his madra again.

The Blackflames had corrupted this Eye somehow, maybe fusing it with a Remnant or the memories of one of their dead sacred artists. He knelt and held it up, hoping the tree would accept it anyway.

But before he could open his mouth to ask, his spirit whispered a warning. Instinctively, he looked up to the ceiling.

A dark, furious sun had dawned above and behind him. It was like feeling a dragon's birth.

The aura was only Truegold, but it carried such fury and destruction that his spirit trembled. It surprised him; he hadn't thought any Truegold could be a threat.

“Did you feel that? Is that Lindon? I tell you what, let's wait for him. I'm sure we could talk this—”

A cage drifted down from the tree, and Harmony shoved the Eye inside.

The construct shut up as though choked off. The cage started to rise, but it froze only a few feet up.

The branch trembled, and the gem shone purple. The ring of script inside glowed as the spirit pushed its way out, and suddenly Harmony could actually see it emerging from the crack in the sapphire.

It spoke as though through gritted teeth. “...not going to...stay...here...”

The tree's light shone brighter.

When it did, the cage continued to move. The spirit was drawn back inside the gem with a yelp, and the cage settled into place.

The jewel shone purple for another few seconds, and then its light dimmed.

The spirit was finally, blessedly, quiet.

* * *

Lindon held up his hand of flesh, and the madra of a Truegold Blackflame burned the dreadbeast's blood away.

He'd done some quick surgery on a few of the monsters in the garden, extracting the twisted corkscrew bindings in their body. They were hunger madra, the same as his arm, and he'd been able to patch up the hole in his skeletal limb.

It was still scarred, and you could tell where the different sources of madra butted up against one another, but it worked. That was all that mattered.

And he was Truegold.

With Orthos' power running through him, and the water from the Spirit Well to guide it, he was filled with a sense of strength he'd never felt before. Orthos told him that it was always best to spend a few days practicing and cycling after advancement in order to get used to his new power. He'd heard such advice before, and generally agreed.

But not only were they out of time, something felt different about Truegold. He felt complete, as though he were a bowl that had been completely filled.

He suspected that was partially overconfidence, but it was partially that he was approaching the limit of his Blackflame core. When he reached the end of Truegold, he would have advanced as far as he could normally.

After that, he'd have to reforge his body and spirit in soulfire.

Even minutes after advancing, he was looking forward to the next step.

Lindon opened his void key, the closet doorway appearing in the air. This time, when he pulled Little Blue off his shoulder, he handed her a pure scale.

His pure core was still Highgold, but that was higher-grade than he'd ever fed her before. She smiled at him before tilting her head back and swallowing the coin whole. Her blue body rippled for a moment until she let out a drifting hiss of satisfaction.

He reached into the void storage, placing her inside. She squeaked, just as she had last time, clambering up his arm.

Now, he met her eyes. “I can't take you with me this time,” he said.

Little Blue let out a sad note.

“I know. But we have to bring Dross back. You remember Dross?”

She whistled.

“I'm going to have to fight for him, and I'm afraid I can't look after you at the same time. You understand?”

She frowned for a moment, but then turned and walked to the edge of his fingers. She was six inches tall now, and he actually felt her weight as she leaped off like a diver, landing lightly on the edge of a jar filled with Dream Well water.

Little Blue sat down on the jar and gave him an impatient peep.

“I'll be back as soon as I can,” he said, and closed the void key.

Outside, Orthos gave the hatch a sideways glance. “This is not wise. I've changed my mind. The courage of a dragon is valuable, but it must be balanced by the wisdom of a dragon.”

Reaching into his pocket, Lindon withdrew the gatestone. The chalky ball shimmered in the light as though it were made of crushed blue glass. “Then you'll be relieved to know that I have decided to use the gatestone.”

Orthos brightened. “Really?”

“Yes.” Lindon lobbed the stone so that it landed a few feet away from the hatch. Before Orthos could ask what he was doing, Lindon extended a finger. A quick beam of dragon's breath struck the gatestone dead center.

The device exploded into a blue orb big enough to swallow a person, then disappeared. The stone floor was unharmed, but a man-sized web of cracks hovering in midair was the only remainder of the gatestone.

Orthos rounded on him in a fury. “What have you done?”

“The scripts around the Spirit Well were disabled, and I thought about why. The cracks must have sliced through the runes and interrupted the script.” Lindon pointed to the ground, where many of the silk-thin cracks ran into the stone. “Even if that's not what happened before, I'm fairly certain it would work that way now. Look.”

He extended a palm, and a much thicker bar of dragon's breath punched through the hatch.

There was no flaring script to defend it. This time, it blasted through the metal, and Lindon swept the fire from one side to the other to obliterate the hatch. The edges of the tunnel now glowed white-hot, but there wasn't as much melting metal as he'd expected. That would be the destruction aspect of Blackflame at work.

He walked over to the edge and prepared to hop in. Orthos peered over the edge.

“That's a long way down,” he said.

“Look at it this way: the entrance is plenty big enough. You'll fit just fine.”

“What if it gets narrower as you fall? My shell is not meant for tight spaces.”

Lindon looked down into the darkness, swept it with his spiritual perception, and then took a deep breath. “I'll let you know,” he said as he jumped.

There was a rush of air and darkness, then he hit the ground. Even without an Enforcer technique active, he absorbed the impact lightly: the benefit of the meat from the Silverfangs and Diamondscales.

He would probably look back on this month in Ghostwater as one of the most profitable of his life...assuming they made it out.

“Nothing down here,” Lindon called up. “You can jump.”

“Are you certain?” Orthos shouted back.

“I'm going to start exploring. If you don't think you can join me, you can leave it to me, and I'll let you know what I find.”

A moment later, a dull red meteor crashed into the ground as Orthos hit shell-first. He swung from side to side to right himself, marching over to Lindon.

“A dragon doesn't hesitate.”

Orthos had hesitated for quite a long time, but Lindon said, “I'm glad for that. I think we should head this way.”

The room at the bottom of the shaft was nothing more than an open space with three dark tunnels leading in different directions. Since advancing to Truegold, Lindon's spiritual senses had immediately expanded, so he headed through the entrance where he most clearly sensed Harmony's shadow madra.

They walked through a dark hallway with rooms on either side. The hall reminded him of the Dream Well facility, except it was lit only by the subtle glow from Orthos' shell.

The sense of Harmony's madra pulled them straight down the hall, and Lindon started to pick up speed.

Until a man appeared next to them.

He was a hulking figure a head taller than Lindon, packed with muscle, his golden eyes vertically slitted like a reptile's. Black scales covered his arms up to the elbow, and he loomed like an executioner.

Lindon had ignited the Burning Cloak and gathered up a handful of dragon's breath before he recognized the figure.

Northstrider, the Monarch on the Path of the Hungry Deep. Creator of Ghostwater.

He was shocked for a moment, but hurriedly dropped to his knees.

“What are you doing?” Orthos growled. “Get up.”

“Don't you see...”

“No, I see it. It's a projection.”

Lindon swept the image of Northstrider with his spirit. It reminded him of the White Fox madra his family had always used; a blend of light and dreams.

Northstrider's image surveyed them both, or seemed to, and then spoke. “For you who travel here after my departure, I have left this message.”

“Let's hurry,” Orthos said, and trotted off. Lindon followed him, with Northstrider's image floating along next to them.

“I poured years of effort into this world and its research,” he went on, undisturbed by their jog down the hall. “None of them delivered what I wanted: a mind, subordinate to my own, that could manage a small portion of my powers. The messengers of the heavens use such constructs, so perhaps they can only be created beyond this one small world. But I still left behind the greatest mind a man could create.”

Some of the doors they passed had small windows, and the shining lights or shifting movement he saw inside made him want to look inside. But a new sensation from up above had drowned out the trail of Harmony's madra: it was a surge of power that felt like the Eye of the Deep, only many times more powerful.

They picked up the pace.

“I dismissed the researchers, but scattered keys all over the world. Over four thousand memory storage constructs, each gathering knowledge on their way back here. They can return through many paths, and when they do, they contribute to a greater whole. Eyes of the Deep record and gather knowledge, all with the purpose of returning here. To add their information to the collective.”

Now the world was crumbling. This would be the last delivery Ghostwater ever received. It only had a few weeks left, at most.

Lindon extended his perception behind him, sensing a disruption in space that felt like cracks in existence. The spatial cracks were crawling after him, down from where he'd crushed the gatestone.

Maybe they had less time than he'd thought.

“I will allow a few beggars into this world to fight over the other scraps, but you who bring an Eye of the Deep, you will receive the true prize. A drop of ghostwater. If you have tasted of the other wells, you should know they were only prototypes. By-products of our attempts to create this one power. It no longer benefits me, but what is trash to a Monarch may still be treasure to all others.”

The hallway opened up onto a huge chamber, like an artificial cave. A metal tree filled the far wall, with cages instead of leaves and Eyes of the Deep hanging like glowing fruit. Two-thirds of the cages were empty, but it was still bright.

To the right of the tree, there was a jade doorframe. Identical to the one Lindon had destroyed in the first habitat.

And in front of the tree, Harmony stood in front of what looked like a stone birdbath. His Goldsign hovered behind his head, so all Lindon saw was a circle of darkness on his shoulders.

“Return the Eye of the Deep to the tree,” Northstrider instructed, golden eyes turning to the massive scripted device. “You may ask one question and receive one drop of ghostwater. And for the rest of your life, know that you are in my debt.”

Then the Monarch vanished, and Harmony turned to meet them.

16

The dark green madra of the tent flickered and fuzzed like it was losing reality. For Forged madra, it had lasted a long time.

Light trickled in through the entrance; Yerin had cut open a hill and buried them in it. All the better for hiding. She'd scratched basic script-circles into all the nearby boulders to help veil them, but the one on the tent was still their best. When it went out, it was only a matter of time until they were found.

She opened a case that had once contained healing salves. As she'd expect from a rich girl, Mercy carried an herbalist's shop worth of pills, elixirs, and sacred herbs around with her.

Or she had. They had delved deep into her stock to fight off the burn wounds the dragon Underlady had left them.

There was one vial left in the case, its contents glowing like blue diamonds. Yerin removed it and tossed it to Mercy.

“Last one,” she said. “Make it count.”

Mercy tried to push the vial back to her. “What would I use it for? Look at me, I'm good as new!” She stood up and twirled in place to demonstrate, but she didn't have enough room to stand up straight.

Yerin wouldn't have jumped straight to 'good as new.' The liquid fire madra had burned the hair off half of Mercy's head. You wouldn't know it now. Her salve was specially made to get rid of burn wounds; apparently the Akura family dealt with dragons more often than mosquitos. Her hair had even started to come back in, faster than was natural, but Yerin had cut the girl's hair all over to match. Now it was cropped close to the skull; it would be months before she could tie it back into a tail again.

The faint shadows of burn scars remained on her left cheek. Those would never heal on their own, but this salve should take care of them. Her leg was in worse shape. She hadn't been able to put any weight on it for days, but a blood elixir had restored most of the meat. A sacred herb, sealed in a jade box like some kind of treasure, had taken care of the rest.

They had burned through most of the healing elixirs Mercy had brought with her from the Akura family. She wouldn't be able to restock anymore, cut off as she was, but Yerin couldn't think of a better thing to use them for.

So long as Mercy kept getting attention, she'd recover.

Yerin was in a brighter spot. She had a sturdier Iron body than Mercy, and she was more advanced. Whatever Mercy had done by summoning armor onto her arm, it took the lion's share of the blow. Without that, they'd both be dead.

“Use it,” Yerin said. “Don't make me break it over you.”

She'd almost had to do that already. After Mercy had first woken, incoherent from her wounds, she had refused to take anything until Yerin did first. Yerin had forced a healing pill down her throat.

At first, Mercy's spirit had scared Yerin worse than her injuries. She had advanced to Highgold during the fight, clear as glass; after waking up, she was a Lowgold again. Yerin had thought it was some kind of spiritual damage, and had avoided bringing it up for days, but Mercy explained that it had to do with her Path.

She could push to open a page beyond her reach, and that book inside her would lend her the power to use it. For a time.

After that, she went back to advancing like normal.

Yerin had immediately asked if she could push to Underlord. Not that far, Mercy had told her. But she could hit Truegold for a minute or two.

That was more than Yerin could say for herself.

The gold Thousand-Mile Cloud was hovering over the edge of the island, and now there were Truegold dragons mixed in with the Lowgolds and Highgolds. Even if the Underlady stayed on her cloud, they were cornered. And the tent had only a day or two left.

Yerin had spent the whole time in this self-made cave cycling and practicing the Endless Sword. She had started touching on the next stage of mastery, but the hourglass was running out like it had a hole in it.

Mercy reluctantly started to apply the salve to herself, but Yerin was staring at the flickering tent. “I need to hit Truegold. Now.”

“We have plenty of time,” Mercy said. That was something Yerin had learned quickly about the Akura girl—if they were about to be buried in an avalanche, she would point out that at least it wouldn't be hot.

“Even if I use my...guest...” Yerin still wasn't comfortable talking, or even thinking, about her Blood Shadow. “...I can't punch through any Underlords. If I don't advance, we're stuck on a raft with sharks all around. I've packed my madra to the brim, so I need something to draw more out of my Remnant and push me over the edge.”

Absently, Mercy rubbed some salve over a scar on her right arm. Her left was still clear, protected by the armor that had—briefly—stood up to an Underlord's attack. “When we reached a bottleneck in our progress, we were taught to find someone to guide us through.”

“My master told me something like that.”

He had said, 'You'll be amazed how much faster you run when there's a hungry wolf behind you.' His way of saying that danger could bring out new depths of strength. Also, his approach to training foot speed.

“I'm headed outside,” Yerin said, bracing herself for Mercy’s arguments.

Mercy’s hand froze. “I guess we have to go sometime.” She rubbed the remaining salve from her fingers, grabbing her bow—which was still in staff form—and pushing herself to her feet. Using the staff to brace herself, she picked herself across the crowded tent.

Yerin didn’t move. “Thought I was going to have to wrestle my way past you.”

“You want to put yourself in danger to push your advancement, right? Not a bad idea, but it would be safer with someone watching you.” Mercy started to run her fingers through her hair again, but stopped and pushed it back down to her side. “I’m not eager to take more fire madra to the face, but we can’t stay here forever.”

With a deep breath to cycle her madra, Yerin moved to push debris away from the entrance. Mercy stopped her.

“One Highgold,” she said. “That’s it.”

“Not looking to bleed, am I?” Yerin said. If she lured in a Truegold—or worse—then she’d get no chance to advance. There was risk, and then there was stupidity.

“One Highgold. If there’s more nearby, we back out.”

In Yerin’s judgment, two Highgolds would be safe enough, but still she agreed.

She pushed her way out, into the clearing outside their handmade cave. After stretching out the last week of cramped muscles, Yerin knelt in the middle of the clearing. She breathed deeply, cycling sword aura to every limb.

“Keep their breath off me,” Yerin said. Her sword-aura couldn't deflect madra, but it would do a decent job with everything else. So long as she handled it right.

Mercy bent Suu into a bow, nervously fiddling with the bowstring. “You can do this. One Highgold, you start to advance, and I'll tie him up. Then we run. Nothing to it!”

Yerin tore the veil from her spirit.

Her perception immediately extended; the veil dampened her spiritual sense like wearing a cloth over her eyes. Golden spots of heat flared into existence nearby.

The closest one started moving toward her. Perfect.

“They're all around,” Yerin reported.

“Plenty of targets,” Mercy said, but her voice was higher-pitched than usual.

Yerin focused on aura. Her sword shone silver at her hip, though she didn't draw it. Her Goldsigns were dimmer, but still useable. She summoned the image of the Sage's Endless Sword, keeping it focused in her mind.

A delicate, controlled touch. Like plucking a string instead of hammering a drum. Aura like the wind.

The first Lowgold dragon veiled himself as he approached. Yerin saw him before she sensed him, a rustling in the brush followed by a flash of golden scales and silver claws that flashed in the sunlight. It happened so suddenly that it didn't feel real.

But Yerin was prepared.

As a Lowgold, this dragon was more ruled by his instinct. He attacked like a beast, pouncing on her with fangs and claws extended.

She tapped the aura around her sword, and sparks exploded from the dragon's claws like he'd run into an invisible steel bar. He was slammed back, twisting in midair to land on all fours, staring at her with clear surprise.

Not enough.

That had looked fine, but Yerin could feel that something wasn't right. It had taken too much concentration to deflect one clumsy attack.

She met the dragon's eyes. “You waiting for sunset?”

The beast leaped at her again.

Once more, Yerin knocked him away. It wasn't enough. What was missing?

Extending her perception, she found that the nearest dragon was a Highgold. Abruptly, she stood up. “Let's take this on the road. Mercy, I'm done with him.”

Mercy nailed him to the ground with several arrows, but Yerin didn't stay to watch her work. She was already headed for the Highgold.

When Mercy caught up, she was out of breath and leaning on her staff. “You know, I don't have unlimited madra.”

“Good thing you're not fighting, then.”

They were walking away from their cave, but if Yerin failed here, they couldn't defend themselves. When your back was against a wall, you had to bet it all.

She found the Highgold dragon eating a deer. It turned and saw them, then lazily licked its snout clean. “Humans,” she said in a feminine voice, her speech surprisingly clear. “You should have stayed holed away.”

Yerin knelt again. Though dropping to her knees before a fight felt wrong, she was putting herself in a place where she had nothing to rely on but the Endless Sword.

Mercy waved to the dragon. “My name is Mercy. What's yours?”

“Derianatoth,” the dragon said. Her eyes flared. “The girl you Skysworn killed was my cousin.”

She leaped over Yerin, then. Straight at Mercy.

Yerin kept her breathing steady, and her sword rang. The dragon staggered in mid-pounce, like something had struck her a glancing blow, but she wasn't knocked backwards. She landed next to Mercy, gathering up her breath.

Yerin drew on the Steelborn Iron body. In one jump, she closed the distance between herself and the dragon, planting her foot in its ribs.

Combined with her momentum, the kick sent the cow-sized sacred beast tumbling into a tree. It crashed into the wood, giving it a healthy dent.

Mercy froze with an arrow half-Forged on her weapon. “Nice hit!”

“Not enough pressure,” Yerin muttered, walking closer to the dragon.

Derianatoth was enraged now, shaking debris from her scales like a dog after a bath. She swept a razor-sharp claw, and Yerin could already feel that there was a second coming. She felt the pressure from a dragon as advanced as this one, born with a body no human could match. Unstopped, this blow would tear Yerin in half like a piece of bread.

Perfect.

Yerin struck the Endless Sword, the weight of battle keeping her mind tightly focused. The claw bounced away, struck aside by a blade of sword-aura, but a second had already closed, a hair's breadth from tasting blood.

Another pulse of the Endless Sword knocked it back, but the claw had been so close that it nicked the side of Yerin's chin.

She'd done it twice, and that second technique had been both faster and more precise.

“Are you...practicing a technique right now?” The dragon asked. As she spoke, Yerin could hear her disbelief turn to fury.

She roared, swiping with both claws.

Yerin stopped them both with one pulse of the Endless Sword, but it still wasn't fast enough. Not sharp enough. She could do better.

Another claw was deflected in a spray of sparks, and Yerin stepped closer. The sense of danger in her spirit spiked, but that was what she was looking for.

After a second flurry of blows was met by invisible swords, the dragon backed up.

Yerin, still with her sword in its sheath, stepped forward.

The dragon may have been furious, but she wasn't stupid. She recognized sword aura and filled her mouth with orange-gold light.

A black arrow slammed into her from above, tying her jaw shut.

Madra sprayed from the sides of her fangs, and the arrow dissipated, but it had done its job. Yerin turned her attention to offense.

Her sword rang again, and three white lines appeared across the dragon’s throat. That was a step forward; only three lines meant she was more controlled. But when it was like the wind, her Endless Sword would leave only one line. And those scales would be nothing.

Now the dragon was truly infuriated. She dashed away and pushed her madra to its limit, shining in Yerin’s spirit.

“You should run farther,” Yerin advised.

“Who’s running?”

A Truegold aura flared in the distance, taking to the sky immediately.

Yerin regretted the loss; she could tell she was only a finger away from a real breakthrough in her understanding. But they couldn’t play any longer.

“Truegold,” she called to Mercy, dashing away. “Game’s up.”

That burned. This was an opportunity she hated to pass up, but she’d pushed it too far already. There was a line between flirting with death and throwing yourself at him.

Then another light dawned in her spirit, much brighter. The Lady.

She was close.

Yerin skidded to a halt, Mercy right behind her. The Lowgold’s senses weren’t as sensitive, and she gave Yerin a look of confusion.

“Underlady,” Yerin said.

Mercy instantly drew her bow back and loosed an arrow. There was a screech from Derianatoth. “To the tent?”

That was the decision. They could try and hide again, but the Truegold and the Lady were close. If they were found this time, that would be the end.

“No,” Yerin said.

There was only one way out now.

She rushed back the other way, running for the approaching Truegold. As she ran, she pushed deeper into her spirit, reaching out to her master’s memories.

Give me something, she begged silently. Anything.

Madra flowing through her Steelborn Iron body, she ran like a rushing river. The Highgold dragon was waiting for her, but she leaped over the giant golden lizard, still aiming for the Truegold.

There was one great thing about the Endless Sword, however she used it: it didn’t take much madra. She had plenty left for her Iron body.

A stream of orange madra spewed out behind her, but she flipped around a tree and kept running, focusing on her spirit.

This was it. She was in the final, no-escape corner that her master had always said was the best for forcing an advancement. She’d advanced to Lowgold after her showdown with his spirit, and Highgold in the middle of the battle with Jai Long. It was time to go beyond herself again.

She had to make it if she wanted to reach Lindon.

But as she thought of it, that reason rang hollow. It wasn’t wrong, but it also wasn’t enough. There was more. Something deeper.

If she didn’t advance, she’d have to rely on her Blood Shadow.

That wasn’t it either. She knew she’d have to get used to the Blood Shadow soon. As much as it sickened her, she couldn’t run from it forever.

She dug for more.

If she didn’t advance, everyone else would leave her behind. Lindon would keep growing, she’d never catch up to Eithan, and even Mercy had her advancement written out for her.

The Truegold appeared over the treeline, glittering in the sun, standing on a small golden Thousand-Mile Cloud. His draconic face turned down to her.

A memory boiled up, and Yerin couldn’t tell if it came from her or from her master’s Remnant.

She was maybe ten years old, standing with her master beside a stream. Every morning, he would bring her a boulder and have her try to cut it in half with the Rippling Sword. Every morning, she failed, and he took the stone away, only to bring a new one the next day.

She’d thrown her training sword aside in disgust. “I can’t do it,” she had said.

“Been waiting for you to say that,” he’d responded.

He had taken her to a cave behind a waterfall, where he had kept all of the stones she had tried and failed to cut. There were the marks of her failure: slashes in the rocks where her madra had cut. The scars started faint, but they got wider and deeper. And the stones got bigger.

“This is what you did yesterday,” he’d said, pointing to the largest rock, the one with the deepest cut. “I can’t wait to see what you do tomorrow.”

At the time, neither could Yerin.

Now, she stood under the dragon, feeling the echoes of her master’s spirit inside her.

“Surrender yourself, Highgold,” he said. “We will not make this painful.”

Yerin’s sword rang like a bell.

He reacted to the sword aura, striking with the back of his hand against the rush of silver. He knocked away the blow, but one tinkling scale was knocked free.

It took with it a drop of blood.

This time, the technique had felt right. It resounded in her master’s spirit, resonating between the two of them. She basked in that feeling, memorizing it.

Then the barrier in her spirit crumbled.

Her madra faltered, slipping from her fingers. This was the hazard of pushing for advancement in the middle of battle; it tended to throw you off your game. And this time, her opponent wasn’t sweet-minded enough to give her some time for herself.

Scenting blood, the Truegold dragon jumped down from his cloud.

“Page three,” Mercy announced.

Yerin had time to wonder why Mercy had said that out loud before an arrow the thickness of her arm pierced the dragon through the gold-scaled chest. Mercy’s Truegold aura blanketed the clearing in heavy darkness, and this time, the arrow didn’t feel like one technique. It felt like three different techniques crammed into one arrow, and two of them were not friendly.

The force of the arrow carried the dragon back, so he fell to the ground far away from Yerin, but he burned it away almost immediately. His scales oozed blood—so at least this technique did some damage, unlike the arrows Yerin had seen her use before, which didn’t even break the skin.

But now, the darkness that crawled over his skin felt like poison. He screamed, breathing fire on himself, but the darkness kept creeping.

That was all Yerin saw. Rivers of silver aura rushed to her, blinding her, filling her spirit. They flooded into her veins, far more than she could ever cycle, rushing to her core.

Her master’s Remnant blurred, soaking more completely into Yerin’s madra. The sense of his presence weakened again, as it had when she’d advanced to Highgold.

Then, like a deep breath released, the sword aura burst from her in a wave.

Every tree in the clearing exploded under the strike of a thousand axes. Mercy wasn’t spared; violet crystal covered her chest in a breastplate, taking the brunt of the force, but scratches still appeared all over her body.

The Highgold dragon Derianatoth had been webbed up by Mercy at some point. Yerin guessed when she was focused on the Truegold. She couldn’t defend herself, and her black cocoon burst into sprays of blood.

Blood spurted from the Truegold’s scales too, but it wasn’t enough to kill him. Not until she followed it up with a Striker technique.

Seconds after the wave of sword aura passed through the forest, his body fell into chunks of flesh and bone.

And then the forest was quiet.

Sunlight streamed down on them, unfiltered by branches. A chill wind blew through now that it wasn’t blocked by trunks. Mercy’s presence faded back to Lowgold, and her bow relaxed to a staff. She hobbled closer to Yerin.

“Congratulations! Should we run?”

“Not yet,” Yerin said, eyeing the bodies. “Can’t leave the Remnants to follow us. And we can’t look like cowards in front of our new guest.”

Guided by her Truegold perception, she turned to look into the forest.

A young man stood there, emerald horns shining very slightly in the shadow of the trees that still stood around him. He wore a faded gray cloak, leaned on a hammer as big as he was, and wore an expression like he’d died two days before.

“Looking to pick off the winner?” Yerin asked, her sword starting to shine with the Flowing Sword Enforcer technique. It hummed with a might she’d never felt before; the strength of a Truegold.

He took a long, slow breath, letting it out like it was his last. “…no,” he said.

It looked like it had taken him a week of effort to force out that one word, but she had Remnants to deal with. They rose like sunset-colored serpents from the bodies of the dragons. At least in death, they looked like proper dragons: flying, serpentine creatures of flame.

As she’d expected, they both turned to Yerin.

Sword aura wouldn’t do much against these non-physical Remnants, but madra would. She whipped a Striker technique at the Highgold, dashing at the Truegold herself. A few strokes of her master’s blade left the Remnant in a few hissing puddles on the ground.

The whole time, she’d kept her perception locked on the newcomer. He didn’t feel like he was ready to step in. He felt like he would fall over at any second.

“We have to go,” Yerin said to Mercy. She didn’t like running past an unknown threat, but the Lady was coming from the other direction.

Wait…no, she wasn’t.

Yerin’s spirit crawled. In the instant she’d taken her perception off the dragon, the woman had covered miles.

Dreading what she would see, Yerin looked behind her.

The Underlady stood there, a sword in hand. It crackled with orange lightning. “On my blood and my name,” she whispered, “I swear that you will suffer as none have suffered.”

Perfect.

Yerin’s Blood Shadow spun out from behind her, and this time she didn’t try to stop it. Like a red Remnant copy of her, it spread its Goldsigns. Its right hand flattened into another sword, and it leaned forward, ready to fight.

“Don’t suppose you have another one of those shields,” Yerin said. Mercy gave a flat, lifeless laugh.

The stranger stepped out of the trees, dragging his huge hammer behind him. It carved a furrow in the soil as he walked, as though he barely had the strength to pull it. “I am the Beast King’s witness,” he said with a sigh. “I witness a Lady attacking two Golds. Fall back, or he has cause to intervene.”

The dragon’s shrieking laughter pierced the forest. “And who are you?”

“Underlady,” he said, “believe me when I say that I am no one at all.”

Her eyes narrowed, and she took him in from the tips of the horns to the bottom of his time-worn cloak. She bared fangs. Then more.

“No,” she said at last. “I will not bow to you. Nor even to your master.”

With a sweep of her sword, she whipped a rush of liquid flame at Yerin.

Yerin had expected it all along. Together, she and her Blood Shadow both launched a Rippling Sword at the incoming Striker technique. The Blood Shadow’s technique did about as much good as a kitchen knife against a tree. Her own wave of silver energy crashed into the flow of orange flame.

But the Underlady’s technique, like a river of fire bursting through a dam, pushed right through.

Yerin met the madra with the flat of her master’s blade. It pulsed with the power of her Enforcer technique; though it felt like pushing against an ocean’s tide and the heat of molten metal all at once, she gritted her teeth and braced herself.

Mercifully, the onslaught ended, leaving smoke rising from her arms—singed again—and her madra dangerously low.

She’d stopped it.

The green-horned man watched the whole thing with flat, dead eyes. “Remember you said that, Sopharanatoth.” Yerin guessed that was the dragon.

Yerin’s spirit trembled as another powerful soul was unveiled somewhere on the island. Yerin couldn’t put a name to its advancement level, but it felt impossibly ancient.

Then the mammoth rose over the trees and raised its trunk, trumpeting into the sky. She could see it mostly as a pile of fur in the distance; it looked like a mountain’s pet dog.

The stranger pointed in that direction. “My friend was listening. He’s not happy.”

The golden Thousand-Mile Cloud the size of a town rushed in as though blown on a storm’s wind. Two Truegold dragons dropped from it, right in front of Sopharanatoth.

“Sophara,” one said. “We have to leave.”

The mammoth blasted another note.

“We have to leave right now.”

The Underlady raised her sword again, but was tackled by her retainers. She struggled against them, and though she could surely overpower them if she tried, they managed to wrestle her onto a smaller Thousand-Mile Cloud.

“Skysworn!” she howled. “I will come for you! Your Empire cannot protect you! You cannot hide from me!”

She kept wailing as the cloud carried her into the sky.

When she vanished, the giant Thousand-Mile Cloud started to slide away. It moved quickly, for something so huge.

Yerin took a deep breath of relief as the pressure was lifted, letting herself be soothed by the Truegold madra flowing through her. Mercy looked to her, and then to the newcomer.

“Hi!” she said brightly. “I’m Mercy.”

17

Lindon sensed no Eyes of the Deep in Harmony's possession, and his Goldsign was even more dense than before. It seemed like a hole hovering behind his head.

“He's only a step away from breaking through to Underlord,” Orthos rumbled. “He'll have a weapon in his soulspace, and he'll have soulfire in his body, but he won't be able to infuse it into his techniques yet.”

“Then we have nothing to fear,” Lindon said. He should have been terrified, but the Blackflame running through his channels was stronger than ever, and he felt nothing more than eager.

Harmony raised two fingers, and Lindon activated the Burning Cloak. He had seen this technique before.

Fingers fell, deceptively slowly, and a blade of shadow flickered between Harmony and Lindon. The blade sliced a shallow gash in stone, but a sidestep powered by the explosive Burning Cloak put Lindon five steps to the side. It would be hard to avoid if you didn't know how it worked, or if your body wasn't fast enough to keep up. But shrouded in the burning black-and-red of his Enforcer technique, he was ready for anything.

Harmony's eyes flashed, and his fingers moved in a complex pattern.

Half a second later, shadow-blades flashed at Lindon from every angle. His eyes widened, but he didn't have enough time for panic. He kicked forward, slid on his knees and bent backward to avoid a horizontal slash, rolled to avoid one coming from above, and raised his Remnant arm to seize the technique coming from his right.

The blade was thin as a string and not solid—it was a Striker technique, not Forged. The hunger madra crushed it easily.

Orthos slammed into Lindon's side, knocking him away, as a blade came from behind that he hadn't noticed. Orthos disappeared, his own Burning Cloak taking him away from the technique.

Harmony hadn't moved, looking at his own fingers curiously. “It's truly incredible,” he said. “I can see as Monarchs do.”

Lindon gathered dragon's breath into his left hand, but he didn't release the technique. “We have no grudge against the Akura clan. I serve on a Skysworn squad with Akura Mercy. Let's leave together.”

At the sound of Mercy's name, Harmony's expression twitched. Lindon couldn't read his expression, but the young man's spirit grew darker.

“Shouldn't have said that,” Orthos muttered.

Harmony pulled his hand up, and Forged black blades erupted beneath Lindon and Orthos. They split, dodging the technique.

And without discussion, they both rushed for Harmony.

They came at him from either side, and Harmony glanced from one to the other. He spoke as they ran at him, shaking out his sleeves. “Come, let me show you.”

Lindon struck with his Remnant arm as Orthos bit down on Harmony's left hand.

In an instant, the purple flooded out of Harmony's irises, filling the whole eye. It looked as though he had smooth gemstones in both eyes.

Gauntlets of purple crystal covered his hands, and he seized Lindon's arm in one and the back of Orthos' neck in the other.

Their charge stopped as though they'd been locked in stone.

Orthos struck with his front leg, Burning Cloak flaring, and Lindon slammed his half-formed ball of dragon's breath at Harmony's chest with his left hand.

Harmony spun in place, releasing them and avoiding their attacks. In the same motion, he struck each of them with the backs of his fists.

Orthos took it on the shell, skidding back a few paces.

Lindon flew across the room.

His ribs throbbed with pain. A month ago, the strike would have caved in his chest. But his Truegold Enforcer technique and weeks of eating sacred beast meat made him tougher than that.

Lindon hit the floor on his feet, but Orthos had already engaged Harmony one more time. He cycled Blackflame to his feet, ready to dash back in.

Until he looked up.

The jeweled tree shone down on him, the Eyes of the Deep soothing his spirit with their placid, thoughtful presence. Dross was up there, somewhere. He'd been too late.

Blackflame turned that failure to anger, and once again he prepared himself to return to battle...

Until he caught a glimpse of purple among the tree's cages.

He looked closer to make sure he wasn't seeing things. Dross wasn't as bright or violet as he'd been before, as though blue madra had seeped into him, but he was still a different color to all the other Eyes of the Deep.

Maybe he could still be saved.

“Hold on, Orthos,” Lindon shouted, and with the assistance of the Burning Cloak, he leaped into the iron branches of the tree.

Orthos gave him a wordless shout of frustration. Harmony had kicked him into the ceiling, and was now launching a series of shadow-blades at him. Only a few weeks ago, Orthos would have died there.

His mind, body, and spirit had been rejuvenated by his time in Ghostwater. This place had remade him just as much as it had Lindon. He twisted in the air, agile as a snake, not only avoiding the blades but flashing out with dragon's breath that scorched a line along the floor, forcing Harmony to raise a sword and to leap back.

But Lindon could still feel the turtle's frustration. He wouldn't win on his own, so Lindon would have to be quick.

He flipped open the cage, which was surprisingly easy. He had thought he might have to burn it open, but it didn't even seem to lock. Then he reached in with his left hand, pulling on Dross’ vessel.

It was locked in place.

Lines of light ran from the rest of the cage to the gem as madra sealed it inside. Dross mumbled something from the jewel, like a man mumbling in his sleep.

Lindon reached out his Remnant arm, hesitating before he touched the lines. He didn't know what severing this connection would do to Dross; as far as he knew, it might be the only thing sustaining the construct's life.

But Orthos cried out behind him, and he hooked a white finger around the line of madra. He didn't have time to examine this carefully.

With his finger, he cut the line connecting Dross to the other Eyes of the Deep. Dross gasped, and Lindon quickly sliced through the other connections and pulled out the gem.

Dross mumbled sleepily for another minute. “...I dreamed I was a thousand birds,” he said at last.

Lindon let out a breath of relief, turning back to the battle. “Dross, we need to leave. Can you activate the portal?”

The light in the gem shivered, as though Dross were shaking himself. “I can if we can get to it. Will Harmony let us, do you think?”

A wave of swords stabbed up from the floor, seeking Orthos, as the turtle flipped and spat fire over them.

“I don't think so.”

“Well, that should be fine. I have another idea.”

A purple spark flared over the stone basin at the base of the tree, and Lindon followed Dross' direction, hopping down in front of it.

“I know so much now,” the construct said in wonder. “More than I ever thought possible.”

“What do I do here, Dross?” Lindon asked. Blackflame blazed behind him.

The spirit flowed out of his vessel. Dross was slightly transparent again, as though he'd lost some substance, but he still looked the same as he had after the Life Well: a round body with one eye and a mouth. He extended two tendrils like arms, pressing them to the script around the stone basin.

The script flashed purple, and after a moment, a clear tube extended from the tree. A white pearl rolled down the tube.

“This is what Harmony drank,” Dross said. “Ghostwater.”

“Did it really give him the vision of a Monarch?” Lindon asked, watching the pearl greedily.

“Ha! No. He's a Truegold; the true sight of a Monarch would pull his mind apart like clay.”

The drop settled into the basin, and Lindon leaned for it.

“Wait! You kept samples of each Well, didn't you?”

“Only one vial from the Life Well.”

“That should be good enough. Probably. Open your void key.”

Lindon did, and the closet door appeared out of nowhere, Little Blue squeaking happily.

And Harmony's spirit locked onto Lindon.

Lindon ignited the Burning Cloak again, turning to face the Akura. He kicked Orthos away to glare at Lindon.

“You can handle this, Dross,” Lindon said, waving to the basin. Then he kicked off, launching himself at Harmony.

“Yes, of course I can,” Dross said behind him. “Of course. Handling it, that's what I'm doing.”

Swords shoved up from the ground, almost as tall as Lindon was, but he tore them apart with his right hand. While they tangled him up, a shadow-blade flashed at him at neck height.

Orthos plowed into Harmony from behind. The Akura turned, catching his shell with one gauntlet, but Orthos spun and whipped his tail into the shadow artist's chest.

Harmony flew back, gauntlets dissipating to essence and violet crystal boots appearing on his feet. They bit into the stone, stopping him instantly, as he fired another Striker blade at Orthos.

So he wasn't watching when Lindon broke through the techniques and landed in front of him, Burning Cloak blazing around him. He punched Harmony with his right hand, but white fist met purple as Harmony got his gauntlet up.

Lindon was pushed back by the force of the attack, but Harmony was only feet from the stone wall. He crashed back into it, his black halo eating into the stone even as his gauntlets cracked the rock.

Orthos landed at the same time as Lindon steadied himself, and once again they acted as one. Lindon brought his hands together in front of him, gathering a ball of black-and-red fire between his palms. Orthos cracked his jaws, dragon's breath forming in his mouth.

Two burning bars of Blackflame met on Akura Harmony's body.

* * *

Dross struggled, panting like he had lungs, to pull a single vial of Life Water out of the void key's open storage.

“You're not going to help, are you?” he asked Little Blue.

The Sylvan cocked her head at him and whistled.

Before his union with the other Eyes of the Deep, that would have been incomprehensible to him. It was still mostly incomprehensible to him, but there was clearly a pattern in the Sylvan Riverseed's communication. He had started to see it, so he could make out what she was saying. Mostly.

“It's not about carrying heavy things, it's about your attitude. Do you hear what I'm saying? Willingness to help, that's all I'm looking for. Moral support.”

Little Blue raised her arms in the air and gave a cheer that sounded like wind chimes.

“See, that's all I wanted.”

With superhuman effort, Dross stretched the vial in his arms over the basin. Shining green liquid splashed around the ghostwater pearl, with the white swirling inside the green. They hadn't mixed.

And they wouldn't. Not yet.

“The truth is,” Dross said to Little Blue, “all the hard work happens in the Wells. This tree just gathers it and uses it to fuel our thoughts.” He paused as he grabbed a vial of Spirit Well water, his mind drifting back to what it was like to be part of the collective.

It had been...expansive. He was far more now than he had ever been before, but when he was connected to the tree, he was a drop of water in the ocean. There was something empowering about being an ocean.

Little Blue squeaked, and violent power flared nearby.

Right, the fight. Time limit, and all that.

Dross heaved the second vial into the air. Each time he lifted one of these, he strained his physical substance. It didn't eat into his memory anymore; now he had an outer membrane that took on all physical strain. But sooner or later, that membrane would be exhausted.

Sooner rather than later, if he was reading his own body's condition correctly.

The blue water swirled in with the green and white, creating a pleasing whirlpool. The aura above the basin twisted like a storm as the powers clashed, and Dross lurched closer to the void storage again. “Just...one...more...”

He was having trouble dragging his body through the air. He moved his stubby arms in front of his eye, and he could see straight through them.

That wasn't ideal.

He drifted closer to the ground, and Little Blue hopped down from her perch. Her dress-like lower body twirled around his eye, and she looked down on him.

Dross tried to speak, but he was having enough trouble holding himself together without losing any of his real essence.

The Sylvan Riverseed dipped down, looking him straight in the eye, and her expression firmed. With the solid ringing of a bell, she walked over to one of the few remaining vials from the Dream Well.

With both hands, she pushed it out. It was almost half her body's height, and surely twice her weight, but she tucked it under one arm and dashed for the basin.

Dross looked up at the stone device, which loomed over him like a tower. “Why...didn't you...do that…before?”

By the time he reached the top, Little Blue had already upended the purple water. All four colors now whirled in the basin, the air around them crackling with power. She was as wary as he was; that power could tear them apart, or change them fundamentally.

Of course, that was almost the idea.

Dross stretched one of his arms beneath the basin, activating a hidden circle with a spark of madra. “Northstrider left some of his very own soulfire stored at the base. It's the last ingredient.”

Pure silver fire, like a mirror stretched into the shape of flames, flared up from the center of the basin. It spread to the water like a natural fire spreading through a puddle of oil, but it consumed nothing.

Rather, the water grew brighter. And it started to blend.

The swirl of white at the center extended out, staining the rest of the liquid, as the silver fire grew smaller and smaller. Sparks of blue and green and purple essence drifted upwards; soulfire burned away impurities, refined the physical vessel, and empowered madra.

Yet another thing he'd learned from the collective.

The silver fire was exhausted as it sunk into every droplet of the water. The liquid was solid white now, and it glimmered with a metallic sheen.

Dross gathered himself, looking for Lindon. One more step, and he needed a physical body for this part.

Then the grand work would be complete.

* * *

The dragon's breath met in a furious conflagration over Harmony's body, an inferno of black and red. The ball of fire devoured the nearby stone, so that it looked like they'd scooped out chunks of the wall and floor with a massive shovel. The rock glowed cherry red, but thanks to the destruction aspect of Blackflame, it left no molten stone behind.

Lindon and Orthos released their techniques together.

“Do we have a way out?” Orthos asked.

“Dross is working on it.”

“He should work faster.”

Harmony stepped out of the fading black-and-red madra, clad from head to toe in armor of violet crystal. The black disc hovered behind his helmet, and light shone where his eyes should be.

He extended one armored hand, and a metal axe shimmered as it appeared from his soulspace. It had a shaft as long as he was that looked as though it was made of one long bone, and its broad, curved head glistened with a red light.

When he gripped the weapon in both hands, Lindon felt Dross behind him. He clapped Orthos on the shell.

“Hold him back. I'll open the portal.”

“Hold him back?” Orthos repeated, but the axe was already descending on him. Snarling, he leaped away.

Dross panted as he arrived, even fainter than before. Lindon could see the wheels turning inside him, his madra channels looping around his core, and the spirit spoke between heaving breaths. “Let...me...in...”

Lindon didn't ask questions. He seized the spirit, drawing him into his core without hesitation, dashing toward the portal.

“How do I start this?” he asked, as the chamber quaked with Orthos' and Harmony's battle.

“Wrong way, wrong way!” Dross shouted inside his head. “Turn, turn, turn!”

Confused, Lindon turned so that he was facing the jeweled tree. Orthos leaped away from a crater of cracked stone, and Harmony was a violet blur as he pursued.

“Back to the basin!”

Despite his frustration, Lindon obeyed. “What are we doing?”

“That is called ghostwater!”

Lindon saw the shimmering diamond-colored liquid and understood. This was the fourth well.

“Will this help us beat Harmony?”

“Eh, well...it will help you fight Harmony, I can guarantee that much.”

Lindon stopped in front of the basin. Little Blue saw him and cheered like jangling coins, hopping back inside the void storage. Tapping his void key to close the door, Lindon looked down at the shimmering milk.

“Northstrider's grand work failed because this collective mind he created had no initiative or creativity, you see. It did only what it was told. Not to brag, but as it turns out, all they had to do was let a memory construct soak in the Dream Well for fifty years.”

Lindon ducked his face into the white water and drank deep.

“You could take this yourself, if you wanted,” Dross continued. “Your mind would be enhanced far beyond Harmony’s. But if you give it to me, we'll have finished Northstrider's project.”

As the water rushed through his body, it started to gather at the base of his skull.

Lindon seized it.

As tempting as it would be to see what the ultimate product of Ghostwater could do for his advancement, Orthos could only last so long. A Monarch artifact would go a long way here.

He guzzled down the ghostwater, cycling it all to Dross.

Orthos crashed into the ground next to him, Burning Cloak dying. He struggled to rise to his feet, but failed. There were new cracks in his shell, smaller but leaking light.

“I'm at my end,” he said, voice low.

Lindon couldn't turn enough to see Harmony, but he could feel the Akura behind him, like the shadow of death. Edged darkness gathered, approaching him as the scythe approached the wheat.

Dross was spinning in his core. The ghostwater gathered him, pulling him up through Lindon's channels, until the spirit rested where his neck met his head.

Lindon finished the last of the ghostwater, taking a deep breath. “What do I do?” he demanded.

There was a brief, sharp pain in his spirit, like a pinprick on his neck that cut straight to the soul. And then Dross was part of him, seared into his madra channels like he'd been nailed there.

Dross' voice echoed in Lindon's mind and soul.

[One battle plan, coming up.]

Information requested: combat solution against Akura Harmony.

Beginning report…

Now, you’re going to want to get right on this, because there’s a Striker technique about six inches from your spine that will split you like a fish.

One thin edge of shadow, a line stretching from floor to ceiling, approaches Lindon’s back. As it streaks away from Harmony, it cuts a line in the floor.

That armor of his is the bloodline legacy of the Akura family. That’s an advantage for us. He didn’t make it with his Path, so he doesn’t have full control of it. He’s not supposed to use the full armor until Underlord, anyway, so his movements will be wide.

The violet crystal armor encasing Harmony feeds on his madra. Lindon can feel it in his spiritual perception; it’s draining Harmony’s spirit and most of his attention. His core is on the edge of empty, and he has to Enforce himself to even move.

That axe is an Underlord weapon too. He can’t bring out its power. Silly, isn’t it? He thought of it as an emergency measure, but he would have been better off using a weapon he could handle. It will still take your head off, though.

The binding isn’t active. Now, with all this information flowing through him in one surge of images and emotions, Lindon can feel it. He’s shocked he didn’t notice it before.

The weapon itself is still powerful, but Harmony can’t activate the binding within.

First, get rid of the Striker technique. Shouldn’t be too hard for you.

Lindon turns, the technique in his white arm activating, and he sweeps the shadow-blade aside. His hand devours the madra, staining slightly dark.

Distract him. Throw sand at him or something.

He vents the stolen madra into Harmony’s face. Unshaped, the madra forms a handful of black needles. The shadow and sword aspects fight one another, so they’re not deadly, but they are a distraction. They confuse Harmony’s eyes and his perception all at once.

Right, now he’ll strike while he’s blind. You should block that.

The red-edged axe swings at him, and Lindon reaches for the haft. He’s not fast enough. The axe cleaves through hand, arm, shoulder, spraying blood into the air. The pain fades quickly as Lindon collapses to the ground, the cold haze of death closing in. The last thing he sees is Harmony raising the weapon for one final strike.

Er, sorry, I mean dodge it.

Lindon ducks, and the swipe of the axe passes over his head. He is unharmed, and Harmony is off-balance.

Disrupt his footing.

He reaches for Harmony’s armored ankle, heaving with a Burning Cloak-empowered pull. It’s too soon for Harmony to steady himself, and he’s hauled from his feet.

Take that weapon away.

Harmony’s spirit surges as his attention shifts from the fight to keeping his armor from fading. His grip weakens.

Lindon’s hand of flesh closes around the haft of the axe, and he wrenches it away.

When he hits the ground, he’ll strike out, so be prepared for that.

Harmony’s back slams into the stone, and he draws two diagonal lines in front of his chest. An X-shaped cross of shadow blades slashes upward at the place he last felt Lindon.

But Lindon has already moved. The Burning Cloak carries him far enough that he stands over Harmony’s head.

You can’t crack the armor, but you can make it too expensive to keep on.

With both hands, Lindon lifts the axe over his head and slams it down on the crystal breastplate.

It strikes sparks without penetrating, but the burden of madra is too much for a Truegold. The armor bursts into essence, purple light retreating back into Harmony’s irises.

Watch out for your allies.

Arm-thick dragon’s breath roars from Orthos, and Lindon sidesteps. The madra consumes Harmony’s body.

And that’s one dead enemy. It’s simple. It’s clean. And there’s only minimal chance for failure and a horrific death.

Now, go out and do it.

Report complete.

Reality returned as though Lindon had moved five seconds back in time.

He spun, slashing the Striker technique apart with his hand, absorbing its madra and immediately venting it into Harmony’s face. He ignited the Burning Cloak, ducking the blind slash of the axe and wrenching Harmony from his feet.

He snatched the axe and dashed from Harmony’s feet to his head in one movement. The cross of shadow-blades passed through the space where he had been standing.

Lindon plunged the axe down on the chest of Harmony’s armor, which burst instantly. Now he only had to stand aside and wait for Orthos’ breath to obliterate the Akura’s body.

Instead, he kicked Harmony to the side.

Blackflame carved a trough in the stone, but Harmony tumbled to one side, his Goldsign slicing the stone.

Orthos tracked Harmony’s movement, turning the dragon’s breath to the side, moving the stream closer.

Lindon stood in front of him, raising a hand. Orthos slammed his jaws shut, madra spilling from the sides of his mouth.

Finally, Lindon relaxed. That had been a risk. He could deflect a certain amount of Blackflame madra, but it wasn’t as though he would walk away unharmed.

“Kill him!” Orthos demanded. “What are you thinking?”

Lindon’s Burning Cloak faded away, and Lindon tapped his pure core. His madra channels were sore and aching after the fight, and he’d used up quite a bit of his madra.

He looked down into Harmony’s eyes, and he saw there only anger, humiliation, and exhaustion.

“We’re leaving,” Lindon said at last. “As a gesture of goodwill to the Akura family, I would be happy to take you with us.”

Without waiting for a reply, he walked over to the jade arch of the portal. Orthos followed him, speaking as low as he could. “If we bring him back, he will bring word to his family. The Akura family has more Underlords than you can imagine, and they do not suffer disgrace lightly.”

“Will they see this as shame?” Lindon asked curiously. “I would think they would see it as mercy.

He held out his left hand, conjuring Dross. The spirit rushed out of him, spinning into existence as a hovering purple head with one giant eye. Their connection did not weaken at all with distance.

Dross drifted over to the scripted panel next to the portal. [Hm, yes, this will be tricky. It will require all of my skill and enhanced knowledge.]

“Will it take long?” Lindon asked.

The script lit up, and suddenly a portal rippled swirling blue and green in the center of the arch.

[Honestly, that was much easier than I thought it would be.]

Fractures spread immediately from the portal, crawling away from the frame at visible speed. Clearly, the world wouldn’t last much longer.

Scuffling from behind told Lindon that Harmony was climbing to his feet. Dross’ mere existence helped him sort through sensory information much more clearly. It didn’t expand Lindon’s senses, like the powers of an Arelius might, but it helped him organize everything neatly with only a moment of focus.

Yerin would be jealous.

“The pride of the Akura does not bend,” Harmony said, his voice heated. “The next time we meet, I will be a Lord. And I will raze your home and burn your family, root and branch, until your name is used as a curse.”

Lindon turned to see Harmony reaching into space, pulling out a lump of chalk that glittered blue.

The Soul Cloak, which Lindon had already prepared, flared around him so that he shone in a cloud of smooth blue-and-white light.

Harmony’s core was all but empty, and Lindon sensed nothing Enforcing his limbs. The Burning Cloak lent itself to sudden, violent bursts of movement, but that also meant it was difficult to control.

The Soul Cloak, on the other hand, helped his body move almost before he thought of it. No sooner had he activated the technique than he stood before Harmony, clasping his wrist in one pale hand.

“That seems a little extreme,” Lindon said, plucking the gatestone from his hand. He hurled it against the wall, where it burst into blue light and another mess of spatial cracks.

The room was crawling with hairline fractures now, and they were getting faster and faster.

Harmony lunged for him, swirling the last of his madra to Enforce himself.

Lindon slammed an Empty Palm into his core.

As the Akura dropped, Lindon walked back to the portal. “He has refused our offer of a way home, so we’ll leave him to make his own way back.”

Dross drifted back into Lindon’s body, and nothing blocked the spirit any longer.

Orthos glanced back, but walked through the portal. They didn’t know where the doorway would take them, but at least it would be somewhere on the outside.

Lindon followed.

For one blink, they were buffeted on all sides by textured blue light. Then the air tore around them again, and they were standing inside a shallow cave.

Moss and bright mushrooms filled the space like grass, and the jade arch was set against the wall. Sunlight spilled through the mouth of the cave, and he could see it shining on an endless field of waves.

Lindon heaved a deep breath of salty air, feeling as though he had crawled out of a hole for the first time in weeks.

The portal, which was transparent from this side, showed a steadily cracking image of Harmony scrambling over the pocked and pitted floor left behind after their battle. He crawled for the portal as Ghostwater collapsed around him.

Lindon watched, locked in a debate. On the one hand, Harmony had made it clear that he wouldn’t cooperate. On the other hand—

Orthos blew a finger-thin stream of dragon’s breath through the arch, and the portal disappeared.

Lindon stared at the spot where the portal had been for a long moment.

“He asked for that,” Orthos said.

“…I can’t argue with that.” Lindon turned back to the ocean. “Now, Dross: where are we?”

[Oh, I don’t, ah, I don’t know. Is that the sun?]

18

The green-armored guards lifted their spears and stepped to the side, allowing Eithan to approach the tall doors to the Emperor’s audience hall. He was expected.

Fisher Gesha fussed with her hair, bowing to both of the Truegold guards as she walked in Eithan’s wake. She had left her drudge behind today, so the top of her head was barely above Eithan’s waist.

“This will not go as you expect,” she muttered. “Did you ask me what I wanted? Hm? No. You just drag me along, like luggage. He will not see me. Do you think Highgolds go before the Emperor every day?”

“Don’t worry,” Eithan said, marching forward. “He’s not as intimidating as you think.” Wind aura swung the door open before he touched them.

The doors opened onto a long hallway, decorated with enough opulence to shame the halls of heaven. Everything was sheathed in gold: the dragon statues hanging from the ceiling, the pillars lining the hall, even the floor tiles.

At the end of the hall, the Emperor sat on his throne of gold and jade. Naru Huan, Emperor of the Blackflame Empire, was the picture of a hero: he was powerfully built, with piercing eyes and a short beard that emphasized his square chin. His hair was pinned back by an ornate crown, and his wings spread to either side, flanking him in shining emerald feathers. His Overlord spirit spilled freely through the halls, pushing down on them with the weight of true power.

A shirtless man on one side of the door rang a massive gong as they entered. The air trembled as the deafening tone broke the silence.

A crier stepped forward before the throne. “You enter the presence of Emperor Naru the Second, Overlord and Patriarch of the Naru clan, Guardian of the West and Protector of the East, master of this land. Prostrate yourself before him, and show him your gratitude.”

Fisher Gesha threw herself to the ground, and even Eithan lowered himself to his knees. Though he wanted to roll his eyes at the useless ceremony.

The Emperor raised one finger.

“Stand!” the crier ordered, and Gesha scrambled to her feet. Eithan followed, brushing off his knees; there was a thin layer of dust on the ground. He would have to speak to the cleaning crew.

“Gesha, Highgold of the Desolate Wilds, approach the throne.” Trembling, each step a burden, Fisher Gesha pushed forward. She dared not raise her head enough to look directly at the Emperor, and she was clearly torn between obeying quickly and walking with a stately, respectful pace.

Eithan yawned.

When she was within a few paces of the bottom step, the crier held out a hand. “Stop! To your knees, and prepare to receive the word of the Emperor. Let all ears and hearts attend to his wisdom.”

She fell back to the ground, and Naru Huan looked on her.

“You have pleased us, Fisher Gesha,” he announced. “You have served us with distinction, standing even against an enemy Underlord. For this, we will reward you.”

One of the servants to the side of the throne stepped forward, carrying an ornate wooden chest. He squared his shoulders and cracked the box open for Fisher Gesha’s inspection.

Gold and purple light spilled out. The box was filled with rows of high-grade force scales, as well as three pills like shimmering balls of gold.

“Daughter of the empire, we grant you the way to Truegold,” the Emperor said. “Advance your Path and continue to serve us.”

Fisher Gesha pressed her forehead to the floor. “Forgive this old woman, Your Imperial Majesty,” she said, and Eithan’s eyebrows rose in surprise. He hadn’t expected her to speak. “I am too old for such a gift, you see? My family…they have followed me from the Wilds. They have just arrived, but they are young. Please, grant me permission to share these gifts among them instead. They will serve their people longer than I will, hm?”

Gesha’s family had joined her only recently. Eithan had found them with Gesha, setting up a Soulsmith’s shop in the floating city of Stormrock.

A smile flickered on Naru Huan’s face, but it was quickly gone, replaced by the mask of an emperor. “Though your request is admirable, we will not grant it.” On the floor, Gesha flinched. “These rewards are for you alone. You will serve us better as a Truegold.”

Two more servants, each carrying another box identical to the first, stepped out. “Your concern for your grandchildren does you credit,” the Emperor continued. “We will not forget them.”

Gesha raised her head, and her wrinkled face was wet with tears. “Heavens grant long life to the Emperor,” she said, her voice cracking.

“Go in peace,” Naru Huan announced. He looked up to Eithan, still standing at the far end of the hall, and his expression hardened. “We must have an audience with our Underlord alone.”

Gesha bowed her way out, flanked by three servants carrying boxes. As she left, she glanced at Eithan.

He winked.

When the doors slammed again, signifying that Gesha had left, the whole room relaxed. The Emperor pulled the crown from his head, withdrew his wings, and let out a breath. The crier knuckled the small of his back, stretching. Some of the servants started chattering among themselves. Even the gong attendant slumped down to the floor, leaning his back against the wall.

“Last audience for the day,” Naru Huan said, and his voice no longer echoed through the hall. He had been holding it with wind aura, probably all day. “At least you brought some good news. Panic and fear threaten to do more damage than the Phoenix did.”

“The Overlord still got away,” Eithan reported, strolling up to the throne. “And we saw no sign of their Sage, for which we should be grateful.”

Naru Huan folded his wings and hopped down from the throne, handing his crown to a servant. “He is currently on an island in the Trackless Sea, where he is matched by the Sage of the Silver Heart. If he were to leave to save his subordinates, she would follow him.”

That was interesting news. What was in the Trackless Sea to attract the Akura family and Redmoon Hall both?

“Then he’s in no position to threaten us now, but he will eventually. He doesn’t strike me as the sort to take the loss of half a dozen Underlords lightly.”

Eithan hadn’t learned that number until he’d reached Blackflame City. He, Naru Saeya, and Chon Ma had eliminated two Underlords, but the other teams had done as well. Six of the Underlord emissaries that had entered the Blackflame Empire had been killed, as well as many more Truegolds. They may have missed an Underlord or two, but considering the Blackflame Empire had suffered no losses, this was something to celebrate.

“This is a victory,” the Emperor said firmly. “We have won, and the Empire must see that. I allowed Gaien Arelius to revoke your position because he told me that you were not performing your duties as the head of the family, and I wanted to remind you that your service to the Empire is what matters. You have served me well, so I will allow you to return to your former position.”

Eithan waved a hand. “No, thank you.”

A bit of the Imperial authority returned to Naru Huan’s eyes. “This is the attitude that gets you into trouble. You do not have the standing to refuse.”

Eithan slipped hands into his pockets and walked alongside the Emperor as he strode away from the audience hall. “Huan, how long have you known me?”

“Long enough to know that you do what you want.”

“Do you suspect that I am not loyal to the Empire?”

Naru Huan gave him a sidelong glance. Servants pushed open a door for him, and he led the way through. “I suspect that, in your heart, you acknowledge no authority greater than yourself.”

That was close to accurate, but Eithan brushed it aside. “If I am allowed to do as I please, it will only benefit the Empire. I consider this place my second homeland. But I must be allowed to act freely. Especially considering what is coming.”

The Emperor halted, turning in the hallway. Servants around him bowed. “The Akura family might compete, but we won’t. We can’t.”

“When the Dreadgods begin to act strangely, the Monarchs look to one another. This upcoming competition will be a battle between Monarchs, and the Akura family will not allow us to stand aside.”

Naru Huan stared off into the distance, light rippling in his wings. “What can you do?”

“I have two, maybe three prospects for young Underlords. Given the opportunity to coach them directly, I believe I might be able to raise two of them in time.”

“You think they would impress the Akura family?”

“Huan,” Eithan said, “I think they could do a little better than that.”

The Emperor studied him. He spent a moment in deep thought, examining Eithan’s expression. “All the more reason to reinstate you as Patriarch.”

“No. All the more reason to let me join the Skysworn. I don’t know if you’ve heard anything about my training methods, but I like to supervise. Personally.”

The Emperor folded his arms. “You will operate according to Naru Gwei’s orders.”

“Of course!”

“And under no circumstances will you be granted any additional authority over the Skysworn.”

“I would never dream of it.”

Naru Huan thought for a moment longer. Then he nodded.

* * *

Using the Soul Cloak and his newly reinforced body, it was no problem for Lindon to climb up the cliff on the side of the island. Or it wouldn't have been, except that he had to drag Orthos behind him.

In his flesh-and-blood hand, he grabbed the rocky edge of the island, body and spirit straining. His Remnant fingers were under the lip of Orthos' shell; the turtle had retreated inside when he realized they had to climb up.

“Let me go,” the turtle commanded, his voice echoing from inside the shell. “Drop me into the water.”

Lindon heaved, the blue-and-white haze around him flaring for one last burst of strength. His spirit and body were already exhausted from the fight with Harmony, but now he needed a final step.

He dragged Orthos up, one-handed, muscles straining and face hot with effort.

Black madra oozed out the side of the cliff.

He released the cliff immediately, letting himself fall. If there were new enemies up there, it would be better to hit the water.

Dark, shadowy tendrils snagged him, stopping his fall, catching him in a quickly woven basket. More strands grabbed Orthos, who snaked his head out of his shell and looked up.

“We could have used you a few minutes ago,” the turtle rumbled.

Lindon looked up.

Mercy stood at the edge of the cliff. Her hair was cut close to the skull, and she was matted and dirty, as though she'd spent the last several weeks living outside. She ground her staff into the sand with both hands, channeling her madra through it, eyes closed and spirit straining.

He could feel her Lowgold power, and it struck him how weak she now seemed.

With long, deliberate breaths, Mercy controlled her madra. The limbs of shadow lifted them up, spilling them onto the grass at the edge of the cliff. Lindon landed on his feet, Orthos rolled over and over, and even Mercy collapsed to catch her breath.

She opened her eyes and gave him a bright smile. “We came to save you!”

We.

Lindon looked toward the trees, opening his spirit to feel for Yerin's presence. He felt only a flash of power as a black-and-silver blur crashed into him.

He stood his ground as Yerin threw her arms around him, squeezing him so tight that his ribs would have cracked a few weeks before.

“You're solid,” she said, from somewhere around his shoulder. “You made it.”

Slowly, hesitantly, he put his own arms around her. He had to avoid her Goldsigns, and he pulled his Remnant arm back when he realized it was about to touch her. Instead, he embraced her with his real arm.

“Forgiveness. It took me too long.”

She shook her head, squeezing tighter. If not for the month of eating sacred beast meat, his body would have...

Actually, his ribs were starting to crack.

“You're not missing any more pieces,” Yerin said, still not looking up.

Lindon tried to take a breath and couldn't. He tapped on her shoulder, trying to get her attention.

“Your cores still...” His spirit shivered as her perception passed through him, and she looked up at him. Her eyes were red, and they widened. “...Highgold? Truegold?”

Whatever she saw in his face startled her, and she released him so he could heave a desperate breath.

“That's what...took me...so long...” he panted, trying to give her a confident smile through the sharp pain in his sides.

She turned to look over the cliff. “Must have a dragon's worth of treasure in there. I'll be burned and buried before I leave that behind.”

Lindon grabbed her wrist as she started to walk away. “The portal's closed. And...” He felt the power of the madra running through her arm. “You too?”

She grinned back at him, scarred face beaming. “Looks like we're standing on the same ground. About time. I was sick of waiting for you to catch up.”

He realized he was still holding onto her wrist and started to let go, but she twisted her hand around and grabbed his in turn, so they were clasping each other's arms.

Lindon let himself relax. He was here, he was alive, and he was advanced enough to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with Yerin. Everything had worked out.

Mercy leaned in, eyes sparkling. She threw an arm around each of them. “Let's all be excited! We made it!”

“You changed your hair,” Lindon said. “I like it.” He still didn't know Mercy well; he wasn't sure what else to say.

She grimaced. “I don't. Makes me look like a twelve-year-old boy. Hair growth elixirs are pretty cheap, but I need to find a refiner I can trust.”

Yerin and Lindon released each other's hands. By then, Orthos had walked up, closing the circle. Yerin eyed him up and down, eyebrows raising. “You look all polished up. You get a new shell?”

The turtle raised his head, and Lindon felt a flash of smug pride through their bond. “I feel a hundred years younger. Now I can show you what a true dragon is capable of.”

Yerin shot another glance at the cliff. “You're sure that portal is—”

“Definitely closed,” Lindon said. They wouldn't want to travel back through it even if it was open.

A cloud passed over the sun, but the ocean still glistened, and for a breath of time Lindon just enjoyed that he was still alive. Little Blue crawled out of his pocket and sat on his shoulder, watching the ocean.

[That is the sun!] Dross said, popping up onto his other shoulder.

Mercy let out a quick scream. Yerin had backed up, her sword halfway out.

Lindon held up a hand. “Forgiveness! Forgiveness, please. I forgot. Everyone, this is Dross. He's a memory construct that I found inside.”

Yerin's eyes narrowed. “Memory? He's talking in my head.”

[I'm a special case,] Dross said, focusing his eye on her.

Mercy's purple eyes were only an inch from him, and she extended one finger to poke him in the side. She seemed surprised when the finger passed through him. “I like your color,” she said.

Dross turned to her, then yelped and leaped an inch back. [You, ah, you remind me an awful lot of the young man we just left to die.]

Lindon turned away before he had to face any questions. He'd tell Yerin what happened later, but he had to think Mercy would disapprove of him leaving an Akura to dissolve with the breaking world. “I suppose we should see if the Skysworn cloudship is still there. Where's Bai Rou?”

“Left him,” Yerin said. “I can tell you sure and certain: it takes longer to walk across this island than you'd think.”

“We could go find hammer guy,” Mercy suggested.

That hooked Lindon's attention. “Hammer guy?”

Yerin waved a hand. “He won't help. Ran back to his Herald without so much as dropping his name.”

Orthos pushed forward, looking into the woods. “Lindon is right. We should be heading for a way home. We will see if the ship is still there.”

Yerin and Mercy did not look forward to the prospect of marching through the woods, but Lindon was strangely excited. Everyone was together, he was Truegold, and he was ready to dive into the woods filled with the unknown.

“Just have to hope the dragons are gone,” Yerin muttered.

“Dragons?” Orthos asked.

Lindon remembered a wounded Truegold dragon passing through the blue flash of a gatestone. Had Ekeri survived?

“Tell us about the dragons,” he said.

* * *

Sophara knelt before the image of her master, cheeks still wet with tears.

“They took so much from us,” she said, her chest tight with pain. “So much.”

The Monarch's body was built from sand. It was a projection of his will; his true body was halfway across the continent, but this sand took his form. He looked like a human boy of twelve or thirteen wearing a mantle that covered him from neck to ankles.

Sophara was not worthy to look upon him directly. Instead, she studied his bare human feet.

“They took nothing from us,” her divine ancestor corrected her. “You gave it all to them.”

Her throat seized up, but she didn't dare argue with a Monarch.

“Your sister cornered a mouse and was nibbled to death. She was a shame to my blood.” He spat to one side. “I wasted my words on her.”

Sophara's claws gouged trenches in the wooden floorboards.

“You set Derianatoth and Nagatonatoth to hunt, and they too were killed by their prey. If their Remnants had not been destroyed already, you should have done it yourself. They do not deserve to be used in death. They were useless in life.”

She could hold her words no longer. “Divine king, whose wisdom spans the ages, please...please have mercy on me. They were my family.”

A finger of hard-packed sand slipped under her chin, tilting her face up. She squeezed her eyes shut so she didn't accidentally see his face.

“Look upon me,” he commanded.

His face was round and smooth, with no hint of its true nature. Unlimited power, hidden in a frail package. Perfect beauty, as Sophara had always thought.

“Truth does not care for your feelings,” he said. The sand-sculpture was so fine, she could see every nuance of his icy expression. “The truth is, they were stronger. You were weak. And thanks to your weakness, this trip to Northstrider's laboratory has gained us nothing and cost us much.”

Fresh tears oozed from her eyes. “I will accept my punishment with a glad heart.”

“What do I gain from your punishment? We face the facts. Aside from the Tidewalker sect and the Ninecloud Court delegation, we achieved the least of everyone in Ghostwater. And the Court cares nothing for any of this. Redmoon Hall retrieved what they came for, and the Akura family went to great lengths to hide their child's fate from me. He must have succeeded.”

He gripped her chin with his whole hand, and she knew that even with the strength of this projection, he could tear her jaw from her head without effort. “I looked weak. The difference between perceived strength and actual strength is smaller than you would believe.”

He released her, folding his hands behind his back. “Hear me, Sopharanatoth. You have begun a hunt. There can be only one outcome: success, overwhelming success. You must bring me glory that overshadows my shame.”

“Tell me how,” she begged. “Tell me and I will.”

“Soon, there will be another competition,” he said. “On a much grander stage. This year, it means more than it ever has before. Even their tiny, insignificant Empire will be forced to compete. You will face their champions, and you will kill them with the world watching.

“Only then will I smile on you.”

* * *

In a distant corner of the world, a dragon’s corpse lay stretched across an icy mountain range, its blood flowing in swiftly freezing rivers. Blood aura boiled up, covering the horizon like a cloud bank, rising from miles of sapphire scales. The sacred beast had died only minutes before. Its Remnant—the size of a city—was already dispersing back into aura.

On that corpse sat Northstrider, Monarch on the Path of the Hungry Deep. He sat cross-legged, in a cycling position, as the blood aura rose around him.

With a breath, he cycled it into his core. The vitality of dragons seeped into him, strengthening his body and his spirit. A spark within his soul carried the image of a dragon, majestic and roaring; it fed upon the imprint of the dragon’s life that remained in this aura. Every part of him was nourished by this creature’s power.

And now there was one fewer dragon in the world.

This moment of cycling after the kill was the closest to content that he ever came. That satisfaction was suddenly interrupted by an irritation in his spirit.

He opened his perception, stretching it across the planet to the source of that irritation.

It was the anchor he’d planted to keep Ghostwater tied to this world. It had failed. Ghostwater was seconds from destruction.

He spent a moment weighing whether recovering the information remaining in his pocket world was worth breaking away from his cycling, but that only irritated him further. If the Ghostwater project had succeeded in the way he’d wanted, he wouldn’t have had to think about the question at all. A Presence would have told him the answer.

Mood broken, Northstrider rose to his feet. He might as well go salvage what he could.

With a brief effort, he stepped out of space.

The irresistible blue currents surrounded him, buffeting him and trying to push him back to the world, but this was a battle of wills he’d fought many times. He kept his focus locked on his destination, and in seconds he reached it. There was no change in his surroundings, just the sensation of being carried in overpowering currents and then a certainty that he had arrived.

Relaxing his will, he allowed himself to be carried back into Cradle. Or, as he preferred to think of it: into the miniature world he’d tacked onto Cradle like a spare room onto a house.

The prime chamber of the Ghostwater facility was much as he’d left it decades before. It was a cave he’d hollowed out with one scoop of his hand, with an exit on one wall, his oracle tree on the other, and not much else of note.

It had splintered like glass on the edge of shattering. Some of the cracks in space were so wide that he could see the void through them; endless black like the depths of space, speckled with lights like spinning, colored stars.

Reaching out, Northstrider extended his will to every corner of the pocket world.

“Hold,” he commanded.

The spatial cracks froze.

Compelled by his presence, space slowly stabilized, knitting back together. Reality reasserted itself, and Northstrider paced across the stone floor.

As he walked, part of him noted the boy on the ground. It was a Gold, a battered young man with an empty core on a Path that felt like shadow and swords. Bits of violet crystal armor clung to him, as though he expected armor to protect him from spatial cracks. One of Malice’s brood, then.

There were only two things worth noticing about the boy. First was that he had managed to drink two drops of ghostwater. Northstrider could feel their weight between the boy’s spirit and his mind.

Second: he was still alive.

The boy gasped as the cracks that had pressed against his neck vanished. He caught sight of Northstrider and his purple eyes widened. Without another sound, he bowed until his forehead pressed against the floor.

Northstrider reached the oracle tree, the collective where his Eyes of the Deep compiled and compared memories. Out of four thousand and ninety-six possible Eyes, two thousand, four hundred and thirteen had been returned.

Not bad. A better harvest than he’d expected.

He produced a smooth black orb. It was based on the same principle as the Eyes of the Deep, but this construct was many generations more advanced. Someday, if his wish was ever granted, this would be his second mind.

He held up the orb, activating it. The oracle tree felt its pull and surrendered itself gladly, the hive-mind of constructs rushing out of its branches in a stream of ghostly light.

“Master,” the worm on the ground said, “I am unworthy to make a request of you.”

There was a brief flash of purple in the river of light. It felt like a wound, as though something had been added and then gouged out.

Northstrider froze the transfer. He focused his perception on the oracle construct, reading its history.

Something had been added. A mind. One of his constructs had become an interesting anomaly.

“If you take me from this place, I will forever be in your debt.”

The oracle’s memories told him most of the story. A Lowgold, raised to Truegold thanks to his Spirit Well. Nothing special about that. The children of many Monarchs enjoyed such resources, if they were worthy.

But he’d ended up cobbling together a living construct made from pieces Northstrider had left behind.

Well, at least someone had made something useful out of this trash heap.

The Monarch finished drawing the oracle out of the tree. He would check on the results of this rogue construct someday, if fate allowed. He might learn something, even from a failed product.

Until then, he would continue on as he had before.

“Though my service is worth nothing, my family would help repay you. Any of my achievements in the future would belong to you. And future generations would tell tales of your legendary mercy.”

The halo of shadow behind the young man’s face lent him the aspect of a specter. Determination was carved into every line of his smooth face. His purple eyes smoldered with resolve, and with the fires of vengeance. Northstrider honored this young man by meeting those eyes.

“No,” the Monarch said.

Then he stepped back out of space, leaving the world to collapse.

THE END

Cradle: Volume Five

Ghostwater

Bloopers

Mercy drew the string back, Forging a jet-black arrow as she did so. The point emerged between her weapon’s jaws.

“This is the weapon my mother carried from Lowgold to Archlord: Bowey McBowFace.”

* * *

Purple eyes snapped open, and she slipped her legs out of the branch.

She fell, arms blurring as she released the first arrow, pulling a second from the air, stringing it, and loosing it. Then a third.

Only then did the first arrow pierce the first leaf, pinning it to the ground several yards away. The second followed suit. The third arrow brushed by its target, sending the leaf spinning in the wind of its wake.

Mercy's head cracked as it hit the ground, and she crumpled.

Yerin folded her arms and waited. Iron bodies could take more punishment than that.

She waited. Mercy’s body rested, bent and broken, on the ground. Empty eyes stared into the forest.

Yerin walked up to Mercy and nudged the girl with her foot. “Mercy? You playing with me?”

A black Remnant peeled itself away from Mercy’s corpse.

* * *

The air ripped like a torn page.

Lindon stepped through the portal into a dry, dusty sitting room filled with ornate furniture. Sword-racks hung on the walls, some holding curved, single-edged swords, others sitting empty. A tall standing mirror reflected Renfei’s surprised expression as she, Lindon, and Orthos emerged from the portal together.

Renfei stared down into the Eye of the Deep, the sapphire dead in her hand. “This isn’t right,” she said. “Ghostwater is supposed to be…”

A shadow flowed from beneath the only door in the room, unfolding into a hunched figure wearing a dark gray cloak. The fabric was worn and tattered with age, and breath hissed from the darkness in his hood.

“I think we opened the wrong door,” Renfei said.

* * *

Back at the Life Well, Lindon cupped his hands and drew out a mouthful of emerald water to take a sip. It had a faint taste like a very weak tea, and he could feel it spreading to his body without his encouragement.

“Yes, this water will restore your youth,” Dross continued. “Unless you’re too young, and then it will overwhelm your life-force and instantly kill you. How old are you, again? I have the worst time telling humans apart.”

Lindon’s heart seized up, and he collapsed to the floor, dead.

* * *

Eithan leaned closer to Naru Gwei, Captain of the Skysworn, and stared him straight in the eyes. “Look at me. Look at me! I am the Captain now.”

* * *

Information requested: combat solution against Akura Harmony.

Beginning report…

Now, you’re going to want to get right on this, because before I can tell you how to beat Akura Harmony, I’m going to need you to slap that Like button and subscribe to my YouTube channel! Donate to DrossTheRobotGhost on Patreon, and at the $5 tier, I’ll tell you how to defeat one enemy once per month. At the $10 tier, I’ll share clever quips during combat. And at the $20 tier, you get access to my erotic fanfiction: ‘Humans Mating: a Tale of XxxCitement’.

Denied, report complete.

Underlord

Cradle Volume Six

Contents

Dedication

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Epilogue

Bloopers

To Patrick, who has been with me from the beginning.

Blame all the covers on him.

Prologue

Iteration 986

Pariana was the last Abidan stationed in this nameless world. Sectors Ninety-Nine and One Hundred had been completely abandoned, but they still clung to Sector Ninety-Eight.

All the sectors from Ninety up were border worlds in the process of stabilization. The Way had a tenuous grasp on 986, so it was strange, lacking many of the fundamental laws that kept other Iterations stable. It was a flat plane, not a planet, with a sky that was a patchwork of a dozen bright colors during the day. At night, it became a sea of black, with ethereal creatures flying slowly overhead instead of stars.

She loved it here. Pariana had been born far from the human standard—she was three meters tall, bald, and golden-skinned, an outcast even in the world of her birth. But the population here, workers trained to operate in border worlds, had been born in Sanctum: the home of the Abidan. They were used to stranger sights than her.

They treated her no differently for her appearance, nor for her power or status. She was only a one-star Titan, not too far above them. So they treated her as one of her own.

That was why her teammates had left Pariana behind, as they were called one by one to fight off other border incursions in the sector. She actually liked it here.

Ten thousand souls called this place home, and they had brought with them a collection of buildings and machines to support colonization. The longer they lived here, the closer the Way would become, until eventually this world would be stable enough to support a long-term population. At that point, it would either become a source of raw materials for the Abidan or be split into multiple fragments that would become new Pioneer worlds.

She had long felt sadness at the thought of that day approaching; the day she would have to turn over this Iteration to someone else. Now, she couldn’t wait to see that day arrive.

It would mean they had all survived.

The Abidan had been without Ozriel for too long. Corrupted fragments were spreading, so it took longer for worlds to stabilize, and even stable worlds could begin to fall apart. The Abidan were stretched beyond their means, leaving Pariana alone in a world that should have been protected by a small team.

Protected from invasion.

Across the multi-colored sky, three massive circles of arcane symbols flashed into existence. Kilometers wide, these formation circles were her specialty. She had been recruited by the Abidan not because of her power, but because of her skill in creating these energy formations.

The golden circles blazed with power, shining like the suns this Iteration didn’t actually have, and Pariana heard a warning siren in her mind.

[Impending spatial violation,] her Presence warned her. [World defense formations have automatically engaged. Sector Control has been notified.]

The sky cracked like glass in between the golden formation-circles, revealing darkness beyond.

Pariana heaved great breaths, her hands trembling. With a thought, she summoned her armor, which flowed over her in seamless white plates. Another thought, and alarms sounded all across the colony.

“Danger!” a mechanized voice shouted. “Danger! Seek shelter immediately!”

She didn’t look back to see the workers dropping tools and hurrying toward the nearest fortified structures. She didn’t need to see armored plates lowering over windows, or buildings sinking down into the earth for protection. She knew the security protocols. They had drilled for this, and everyone in this world was a trained volunteer.

Many of them were also her friends. Now, she was the only one standing between them and the invaders.

In minutes, the colony had sunk entirely beneath the ground, leaving only plains of crops and abandoned machinery. The cracks in the sky had widened until she could see the void beyond.

She cast out her will, taking control over the formation-circles. Even as the one who designed them, she found it difficult; these were complex structures, and controlling them one at a time required great skill and concentration. Controlling three was a point of pride.

As soon as her Presence indicated that someone had slipped through the spatial crack, she fired.

Each of the three circles released a white-hot beam of destructive energy that thundered through the air, focusing on the crack. She had over-fortified this world, both in her zeal to protect it and out of a lack of other things to do; any one of these formations was powerful enough to scour Iteration 986 clean in a single blast.

Three at the same time released a blinding light and a deafening roar. Her Presence automatically protected her eyes and ears, throwing up a barrier around her to protect from the furious explosion of wind that tore up the plains for kilometers, shredding crops, sending a ring of dust blasting into the distance.

As a Titan, she had been trained to produce shields and barriers of all kinds. With her best efforts, she could maybe have defended against one of these attacks. She would have no hope against all three.

She trembled and caught her breath as the dust settled, trying to convince herself that this would be all there was to it. Her defenses had worked. The threat was over.

[Incoming!] her Presence warned her, and Pariana drew on the Way.

A perfect cube of blue power surrounded her, protecting her. It was just in time.

A cloud of black smoke stretched out from the crack in the world, forming into a mouth full of razor-sharp teeth. It bit down on her, large enough to swallow her whole, but had caught a mouthful of her Titan barrier instead.

The teeth scrabbled on the solid edges of the blue cube for a moment, trying to find a purchase.

Then her barrier began to break.

Panic threatened to swallow her from the inside. She had yet to catch a glimpse of the enemy, and they had already shrugged off her best attack and casually broken her defense. This was not a probe or a scout; it was a true assault.

And she was alone.

Pariana reached out for her formations again, turning them onto her enemy, but a spike of pain lanced through her brain and suddenly she could feel the defenses no more.

[Your authority has been overridden,] her Presence told her.

Impossible. She had designed and placed those circles herself. How could someone take them from her this easily?

But even to her eyes, the truth was clear. The golden formations were shot through with red light, and as she watched, they turned to focus on her.

The jaws stopped chewing on her barrier, the column of smoke slithering back to its summoner. Only then did she get a look at her attackers.

Four enemies of the Abidan floated in the air before her.

The first looked to be a standard human with dark brown skin, wearing a helmet with a pane of transparent red glass covering his face. Red light streamed from his fingertips, and its signature matched what had taken over her formations.

The second was an aquatic-adapted human, with slick blue skin, no hair, and gills at the side of her neck. She carried a pair of sickles that looked as though they had been torn off of a giant purple mantis, each of which carried a dark power that suggested they should be sealed away in an Abidan vault. The woman looked at Pariana with clear hatred, as though the Abidan had personally offended her.

She could see nothing of the third figure. He, she, or it was covered in a mechanical suit of synthetic fabric and steel. They carried a rifle, and even without examining it carefully, Pariana could tell the weapon carried far more power than her formations had. It felt like the sealed form of one of the Judges’ weapons; it terrified her.

The final invader was another standard human, with pale skin and long, black hair tied into a tail that fluttered in the wind. She wore furs and leathers that looked as though they had been taken from a dark-furred lion, and they gave her a barbaric air. The black smoke drifted around her palm.

Her dark eyes surveyed Pariana with absolute disregard.

The Abidan’s Presence whispered, [All four match descriptions of tenth-generation Vroshir.]

Pariana didn’t ask for their names. It wouldn’t help.

The first generation of Vroshir had worked for the Abidan, long ago. They lived to shatter the Eledari Pact and see the Court of Seven cast down. It was not a grudge that she could resolve.

In the face of her death, Pariana reached out to the Way. The touch of its absolute order soothed her.

But she couldn’t fight the despair. Everything she had worked for, everyone she loved in this world, was coming crumbling down.

“Relinquish your Presence into our keeping,” the black-haired woman ordered, drifting down to hover over Pariana’s cracked barrier. “You shall be taken as a prisoner of war, and all others will be liberated.”

Did Sector Control respond? Pariana asked her Presence.

[No. I cannot confirm whether they received our report or not.]

Pariana closed her eyes. In truth, it wouldn’t matter even if Sector Control had heard them. No one else was close enough to respond, and even if they had been, it would be too late.

Destroy yourself before they capture you, she ordered.

[Of course. I am sorry I could not serve you better,] the Presence added, its voice tinged with sadness.

Smoke boiled out of the fur-clad Vroshir’s palm again. “Too late,” she said.

The mouth shattered Pariana’s barrier.

At the same time, the formations she’d created turned on her home. Impossibly hot pillars of light carved furrows through the crops, spearing into the bunkers beneath.

Pariana could feel the Way weakening as people died. She threw everything she had into a barrier to protect them, and a blue dome flickered into existence over the smoking hole in the colony, cutting off the weapon’s beam.

The gilled woman swept one of her sickles through the air, and a violet slash tore open a canyon in the earth. It split Pariana’s protection in half.

Earth blasted upwards as though a volcano had erupted underground, spewing fire and debris all the way into the atmosphere. The four Vroshir were surrounded by invisible barriers, protecting them and Pariana.

The Abidan Titan collapsed to her knees, soaked in tears. The smoky maw had left her alive. For now.

The armored figure had its rifle trained on her. Pariana surged forward—the Way was too distant for her to manipulate now, and her specialty had never been violence, but she had nothing left to lose.

He shot her.

The sound of the gunshot somehow pierced the deafening sounds of exploding earth. It drilled a hole through her white-plated armor, through her personal barrier, through her chest, and out the back.

Slowly, Pariana toppled to the ground.

She could feel her Presence trying to eradicate itself when it was seized by red power and dragged out, a mass of colorless light like a ghost. The Way had never felt more distant.

As she died, she desperately cast out her mind, trying to feel someone alive. Without her Presence to guide her powers, she was left with only her mundane senses. It was like going suddenly blind.

Armor and powers broken, Pariana drifted into death alone.

…but as the darkness had almost claimed her entirely, it stopped.

“Fear not,” said a woman’s warm voice. “I have come for you.”

The world reversed itself.

Pariana was pulled to her feet as though on a puppet’s strings, her vision returning, her flesh stitched up and her armor restored.

The cascade of debris fountaining into the sky froze, then drifted back down, sliding back into place.

Pariana’s Presence, a squirming mass of silver, ripped itself from the hands of the Vroshir in furs and settled back into her mind. She sobbed again, in relief at having this piece of her restored. One by one, she could feel the lives of the colonists coming back, like candles being lit once more.

The only things in the world that had not been reversed were the Vroshir themselves. They resisted, pitting their wills against the power that had rewound the entire Iteration. They all rose into the air again, facing the source of that power, and of the blue light that shone down on the scene.

Suriel, the Phoenix, Sixth Judge of the Abidan Court, floated with the power of the Way streaming off of her to either side like massive wings. Her mantle blazed behind her, like a river of light, her armor seamless and white—identical to Pariana’s. Ghostly correlation lines, like strings of gray smoke, ran from her fingertips to the back of her skull. Her hair drifted behind her, bright shining green, and her eyes blazed with purple formations that could see Fate. At her hip hung Suriel’s Razor, dormant now, like a meter-long ruler of blue steel.

Pariana sagged forward, lowering her head in both respect and relief. A Judge had come for her.

Now everything would be all right.

The woman in furs began to laugh.

Ignoring Pariana, she threw her hands to the sky. Black smoke gushed from her hands, covering the world. The man in the red visor swirled his fingers in a significant pattern, and the smoke was threaded through with red lights. Pariana’s golden formation-circles drifted beneath them, still under his control. The robotic figure pulled a mechanical device from behind him, like a computerized bear trap, activating it with a touch.

And Pariana realized she could no longer touch the Way. The lives of the people behind her had been restored, and her connection should have returned with them, but now it was as though the Way had vanished completely. The world had been cut off.

Suriel’s mantle dimmed, weakening immediately, but the scars in the earth finished knitting themselves together. Finally, the entire Iteration had been restored to pristine condition. Only then did her mantle gutter and die. Even the blue ‘wings’ streaming from behind her vanished, leaving Suriel surrounded by enemies.

Without the Way, the world’s laws would eventually crumble, which the Vroshir wouldn’t want any more than the Abidan would. They wanted to use this world, to add it to their network, not to see it dissolve into fragments with no causality or consistent physics. But that would take time. For now, they had simply rendered any Abidan in the world powerless.

This had been a trap from the beginning.

Suriel still floated in the air, but now she was relying on her own power, not her authority as a Judge. Pariana ran beneath her. “Do we have reinforcements coming, Judge?”

“Stand down, Titan,” Suriel said, and her words were calm and certain. “I am enough.”

A rifle, two sickles, three golden formation-circles, and a maw of smoke all turned toward Suriel. Each weapon carried enough power to rend continents and shatter space.

The Phoenix faced them all with nothing but her own personal power.

“Surrender, and I will grant you mercy,” Suriel said.

The black-haired woman bared her teeth in what Pariana hesitated to call a smile. “Keep your blighted tongue still, tyrant.”

With no discernible signal, all four Vroshir attacked at once.

The aquatic woman slashed her sickles together, sending a cross of violet power rushing through the air. The attack cracked space behind her, the world splintering for hundreds of kilometers in her wake. The earth quaked and shook, and Pariana could feel the world’s tenuous hold on reality begin to shake.

The woman in lion fur conjured a thousand ghostly mouths on worm-like bodies of black smoke. They dove for Suriel, and each one felt like a plague that could decimate planets. They carried ancient hatred that soaked Pariana’s soul, and only her Presence’s protection kept their energy from sending her into madness.

The armored man’s rifle cracked, and this time the sound echoed through the entire world. Air exploded away from him at the sound, and the bullet flashed forward with a thousand times the power he had used to kill Pariana the first time. That one shot alone carried enough energy to obliterate everything in this Iteration.

Finally, the red-visored man triggered the three golden formations. They fired pillars of superheated destructive energy. The columns of light blasted down.

Obliterating him instantly.

The attacks happened instantly and simultaneously, so Pariana had to piece the entire scene together afterwards. Without being empowered as an Abidan, and without the Presence’s effect on her mind, she wouldn’t have been able to follow what happened at all.

The formations fired, not at Suriel, but at the one who had taken them over. As she arrived, Suriel had taken control back, and neither Pariana—their designer—nor the red-visored Vroshir had noticed a thing.

Suriel flew through the air in an erratic pattern, a bright streak that dodged the thousand mouths of smoke effortlessly. The X-crossed slashes from the sickle had grown in size and power, destroying everything in their path from ground to sky, and they would not be avoided.

The Judge crashed through them.

The violet light burst, sending shards of power and malicious intent spinning chaotically through the world, carving serpentine scars into the earth. Suriel’s armor had cracked as well, pieces flying from it, and blood flew from her exposed skin, but she was safe.

When the bullet reached her, she met it with her Razor.

The sapphire steel hit the missile and sliced through it. Pariana had never seen anything like it. The Vroshir had obviously put their entire will behind the bullet, but Suriel cut it as though it were nothing more than physical metal.

Her weapon split the bullet, which broke into two halves that flew to either side of her, landing with the force of missiles.

In the same motion, Suriel struck back.

The Razor swept through the air again, though there was no one in front of her. Kilometers away, the armor-clad gunman’s head flew off, streaming blood.

As though by coincidence, Suriel’s chaotic flight path took her close to the fish-woman. Pariana didn’t see what happened, but the Vroshir pitched over. With no visible wounds, she went from alive to dead in an instant. Purple sickles fell from lifeless hands.

The black-haired woman in furs screamed, pouring all her power into her legion of spirits until the entire Iteration screamed with her fury and hatred. An ocean hundreds of kilometers away was whipped into a frenzy, and dead fish began to bob to the surface. The luminous creatures inhabiting the night sky died one by one, falling to the ground like distant, shining meteorites. Even Pariana’s consciousness began to fuzz.

Then her formation-circles, under Suriel’s control, fired again.

The Vroshir woman was swallowed up by another sun-bright detonation, and her army of ghosts dissipated. But when the light faded, she strode out, protected by the power of her ironclad will. She raised her hands and her power together, enough black smoke boiling behind her to depopulate worlds.

Still flying through the air, Suriel faced the Vroshir, and her voice echoed with transcendent authority. “Begone,” the Judge said.

Pariana felt like she were submerged under endless pressure, like all of reality had been squeezed like a damp rag.

Then the one remaining Vroshir simply disappeared.

All of her ghostly smoke was erased from existence, and her barrier sealing the world lifted. The Way shone through once again, a comforting warmth to Pariana’s senses.

A working like that took extreme concentration, even from a Judge. Suriel couldn’t have done that while fighting the others—Pariana couldn’t believe she had managed it even now. Wiping someone as significant as a full Vroshir from reality was all but impossible.

[The Way does not make a Judge strong,] her Presence said.

Suriel slipped her Razor back onto her waist, where it stuck. Her armor re-formed, her mantle reignited, and the wounds on her skin vanished. The devastation left by the battle was wiped away in seconds.

Leaving the Phoenix drifting in the air, in all her glory, pristine and unharmed.

“Glory and honor to the Judge,” Pariana said, once again bending her tall, golden body in supplication.

Suriel spoke softly, the formation in her purple eyes spinning. “There is still much to be fixed. Yours was not the only world under attack.”

1

Akura Charity, Sage of the Silver Heart, stood looking at the broken doorway into Ghostwater.

The jade doorframe, set into a cave in the side of the island, had been sliced apart from the outside. The smooth, fist-sized hole in the rock behind it told her what the technique had been: black dragon's breath.

She had other tasks on this island besides watching Harmony, but she had still kept her eye on him until the end. The interference from the collapsing space had grown too much, and the picture had grown less and less clear.

However, she had sensed it when the Blackflame artist and his contracted turtle had emerged from the pocket world. She had been surprised that her grand-nephew hadn't been the first out, but she hadn't worried much about it. She could still sense him, distantly, inside a Monarch's private space. She still had time before the world collapsed, and she didn't need a portal to enter.

But when she had tried to cross space, she had been denied.

A will greater than her own had locked Ghostwater down. She felt him arrive like a great ship passing by her in the ocean, stirring up the water with the weight of its presence.

With Northstrider there, she'd had no chance of breaking in. She had been forced to wait, hoping that the Monarch would bring her young grand-nephew home.

She had started carving a memorial for Akura Harmony in that moment. From everything she'd heard, Northstrider's mercy was a thin thread from which to hang her hopes.

When Northstrider's presence vanished, she tried once again to enter, but he had closed off the space. She slapped her power against his like a child trying to batter down a brick wall with her fists.

She felt the moment when Ghostwater crumbled to pieces. By that time, the spatial distortion had grown so great that she could no longer sense Harmony within.

Now, she placed a bust of her grand-nephew at the base of the jade doorway. Carved with her own hands, the sculpture captured his delicate features, the arrogant tilt of his chin, the distant look of determination in his eyes. Hair cascaded down his shoulders, and a dark halo hung behind his head.

A brief wave of sadness passed over her. His branch of the family had not produced someone so skilled in generations. He had hoped to become one of the legendary Akura clan pillars one day, like his great-grandfather Akura Fury or like Charity herself.

He would have had a long road to travel before he reached that goal, if he ever did, but he had been practically guaranteed a good life. She regretted the loss.

But she had buried younger relatives before. It was one reason she had never had children of her own. She stood in silence for many minutes, remembering Harmony.

The Sage looked from the bust of Harmony back up to the slice in the doorway. One of the Blackflames had broken the door behind them, trapping her grand-nephew in a dissolving pocket world.

They could not be allowed to take the Akura clan so lightly. An insult like this, gone without redress, would make the family look weak before their enemies. She was inclined to punish the sacred beast, simply on principle; any beast that dared to snap at a human should feel the consequences.

But one did not reach Charity's level without a certain amount of cold logic. And the Heart Sage had great control over her own emotions.

The Blackflame artist and his turtle had entered as the weakest individuals in Ghostwater. If they had truly grown to the point that they could threaten Harmony, then she couldn’t blame them for doing so. Harmony had competed in a game—one in which he'd started with all the advantages—and lost.

It pained her to think of one of her young relatives in such a way, but regret couldn't change the truth. She had known there was some risk to Harmony. Training him in the face of real danger was part of the reason they'd brought him here; no talents bloomed in a closed room.

And they needed talents. Now, more than ever.

That thought made up her mind. She would not cut off the Blackflame boy's growth, unless of course he demonstrated hostility against the clan itself. He might grow into another valuable asset of the Akura clan.

But she could apply some extra pressure.

And if the Blackflame bloomed under pressure, then he would be qualified to pay off his debt.

* * *

Lindon knelt in the cramped confines of the cloudship, pushing pure madra endlessly into a script carved into a wooden panel. At the center of the script was a fist-sized crystal flask containing a rolling green cloud—the madra that powered their flight. The ship creaked and shook as though in the middle of storm-tossed waves.

[You're doing great work,] Dross said in his head. [So great. In about five minutes, when we run out of cloud madra and fall screaming to our deaths, I want you to remember that you died doing your best.]

They had found the Skysworn cloudship where they left it: on the edge of the island outside Ghostwater. It had been more or less intact, but the crystal flask that stored its cloud madra was not entirely full. The green Thousand-Mile Cloud wouldn't have lasted all the way back to land, so Lindon had been stretching it with pure madra.

Unfortunately, that meant diluting it. They didn't have any wind or cloud artists onboard, so the Thousand-Mile Cloud got thinner by the day. Eithan had fueled a cloudship in this way before, but he had alternated between providing his madra and using scripts to draw aura. Either this cloudship couldn’t do that, or Lindon hadn’t figured out how.

Yerin and Mercy took turns piloting the ship. Mostly Mercy. When Yerin took the helm, she tended to run them too close to aura storms, hostile sacred beasts, and mountain peaks. Though she did make good time.

Lindon sent another pulse of madra into the script, and the green cloud rolling in the crystal flask weakened another notch. The ship shuddered, and he knew the large Thousand-Mile Cloud that was keeping them aloft had faded as well. He couldn't add any more power. Scripts on the ship’s hull would draw in aura from outside to replenish their stores, which was the only reason they’d lasted this long, but that system couldn’t keep up any longer.

“Let them know,” he ordered Dross.

He could feel it as the mental construct opened up his mind, projecting words into Mercy and Yerin at the same time. [Attention all crew: everything is fine down here, except that we’re out of fuel. As long as we make an emergency landing right now, everything will be totally safe.]

Lindon hurried up, bracing himself against the wall as the cloudship pitched. His pale right arm sank into the wood as though into soft mud, and it took him a moment to pull it free.

There were no windows below the deck. He had no way of telling if they were close to landing or not. They could be inches from the ground or a thousand feet in the air, and he would have no idea.

The worst part was not knowing, he decided. When the ship shuddered again and he lost his balance, he couldn’t tell if the turbulence was nothing to worry about or if they were all on the brink of death.

Finally, the ship stabilized again, so he shoved open the trap door and made his way outside.

The weather was beautiful. He had been down in the dark so long that he had pictured it storming and raining, but in fact the wind was calm and the sky was clear.

Yerin stood at a wooden panel covered in shining script-circles, her teeth bared and eyes furious. The two silver sword-arms behind her back had been jammed into the wood of the deck, nailing her in place. The control panel had been made for someone taller than she was, so it came up almost to her chin, but she glared down at it like she was about to crush it to splinters.

Nearby, Mercy had lashed herself to the railing with long tendrils of darkness. She sat cross-legged, nestled in the center of her web, purple eyes shining. It seemed like she was looking forward to the danger, though he would have thought she'd have gotten enough on Ghostwater's island. Her hair was still short, shorter than Yerin's; a reminder that it had been burned off by a dragon Underlady and she'd spent weeks—and a fortune in elixirs—recovering from the damage.

She raised one black-gloved hand and patted the wall of smoldering shell next to her. “We’ve got everything under control,” she said. “No need to worry!”

Orthos didn't poke his head out. He was tied to the deck by the same strings of shadow that bound Mercy. His voice rumbled out, echoing as though from a cave. “You're the ones who should be worried. Not one of you has a shell.”

Lindon could feel that the huge turtle was barely keeping his fear under control. That made it harder for Lindon to wrestle his own nerves, but there was still a spark of pure joy left in Orthos' soul. He had been practically reborn in Ghostwater, and he hadn't stopped celebrating for the past two weeks. Even now, withdrawn into his shell and preparing for a crash, there was a part of him that exulted in his new, strengthened body. That was enough to help Lindon fight his way free of Orthos’ fear and keep a clear head.

Lindon pushed his way out and along the edge of the ship, keeping a tight grip on the railing. They were definitely descending, though the trees were getting closer at a much faster rate than he was comfortable with. And the green cloud keeping them aloft had faded to a sort of lime-colored haze. Maybe it was better not to look.

Mercy had been controlling the ship until recently, when she ran out of madra, and then Orthos had tried before getting frustrated and threatening to blast a hole in the hull. Finally, Yerin had taken over, determined to land the ship even if it killed her.

Through the creaking of wood and the rush of wind, he heard the soft tinkling of glass. Little Blue scampered up to him a moment later, a tiny spirit in the shape of a woman made of deep blue light. Her flaring dress slid smoothly over the deck. She pulled herself up Lindon's leg, nimble as a monkey, and a moment later she sat on his shoulder. Chimes sounded in his ear as though she were filling him in on everything that had happened since he'd gone below.

Recently, he'd thought he was starting to understand her: she was telling him about the sights she’d seen during their flight. It could have been his imagination giving shape to the Riverseed’s meaningless squeaks, but he responded attentively nonetheless, nodding gravely at her and making responsive noises himself. If she was telling him something, he didn't want to seem rude.

Finally, he made it next to Yerin. “Apologies. I held on as long as I could.”

The ship pitched so far to one side that half the sky was replaced by an ocean of trees before Yerin corrected it. “We’re just a skip from some town. Long as there’s an Arelius family down there, we’re—”

The ship shuddered, and the lights on the control panel shone. Yerin growled with effort, gripping the sides of the panel so hard the wood splintered, her scars standing out brightly against her skin.

She shouted over the wind, sending another flare of madra into the panel. “Everybody hold tight!”

Lindon braced himself, gathering Little Blue in his left hand and holding the railing with his right. It was less than encouraging to know that if he stopped cycling madra to the limb he would immediately fly off and be lost to the wind, but that was all the more reason not to stop cycling.

The wind picked up, the boat shook, and they started to fall. Lindon couldn't tell if they were landing or crashing, and at that point, there might have been little difference.

[Oh look, the owl's still there,] Dross noted.

Lindon was determinedly staring at the deck and not looking over the edge of the railing, but Dross' comment made him realize he could see something at the edge of his vision. An owl—or at least a Remnant that looked like one—perched on the opposite railing. It was made of madra that looked like swirling silver smoke, edged with the occasional flicker of purple light.

The Remnant had been following them for days. Maybe ever since they left the island. It showed itself once or twice a day, as though to remind them that it was still there.

Lindon had tried to point it out to Yerin and Mercy, but the owl always seemed to vanish when they looked for it. Lindon might not have ever noticed it himself if not for Dross, as the thought-construct was far better at using Lindon's senses than Lindon himself was.

He didn't spare another thought for the owl. Some Remnants had strange, almost obsessive behaviors; maybe this one was stuck following cloudships. He certainly wasn't going to deal with it while they were in the middle of a crash.

The deck surged upwards, and Lindon almost thought they'd made a soft landing before he realized Yerin was pushing out the last of their cloud madra. After this surge, they would fall.

For lack of something better to focus on, he kept his eyes fixed on the owl.

Mercy sat up, staring at him. “Is it the owl? Is it here?” She craned herself around in her little nest of black madra, eager to see.

She had been desperate to catch a glimpse of the owl. She hadn't said why, but sometimes people could be superstitious about Remnants.

Silver light flared from the script in front of Yerin, and the console exploded into splinters.

The ship hung in the air for one brief, frozen second.

Yerin sighed.

Then the cloudship fell.

…roughly two feet.

It settled onto the ground with a crunch, rolling slightly on its side, and shuddering for another moment or two before it came to a halt. Lindon released his grip on the railing, sliding over to come to a stop next to Yerin.

He nudged her with his elbow. “Congratulations on your successful landing, captain.”

From behind them, Mercy cheered.

With her shoulder, Yerin lightly shoved him back. “Not the worst one of my life, I’ll give you that.” She eyed him. “You could have probably jumped down from the clouds and walked it off.”

“Well,” Lindon said, “thanks to you, I didn't have to.”

It had been strange for both of them, over the last week or two, now that they were at the same stage of advancement. The atmosphere between them had changed, and Lindon was still trying to figure out how.

The dark webs around Mercy dissolved in a rush of black motes of color, and she stumbled down the deck past them, bracing herself on her braided black staff so she didn’t slip. She looked back as she ran. “Next time, we should all jump!”

The ground rumbled as Orthos leaped over the side, landing on soft earth with a surge of relief that Lindon could feel. Gingerly, the turtle scooped up a bite of soil and grass, chewing with great relish.

Lindon released Little Blue from his hand, and she scampered off to go join Orthos. From inside Lindon's head, Dross gasped.

[Look, everyone! Look! Here come some friends! That’s a relief, isn’t it?]

Dross must have been sharing the message, because they all looked in the same direction at once.

They had landed in a clearing between trees, but the woods were thin enough that they had no problem seeing a nearby hill covered in low sandstone buildings. A large town or a small city—it was their destination, though none of them knew exactly where they were. They had simply planned to stop at the first town of any size to try and contact the Arelius family.

It would have been far easier to contact the Skysworn, who had agents all over the Empire. But given Lindon’s previous experience, a Skysworn squad would be as likely to execute everyone as to welcome them back.

Between Lindon and the town, only a few hundred feet away, a group of two or three dozen people had frozen in the middle of a celebration. Colorful ribbons were strung between trees, and they all wore fine clothing. There were a few different Goldsigns among the crowd: a green third eye in the middle of the forehead, a red flower of madra blooming over the heart, a wide and thick yellow-brown tail that was so dense it looked almost real.

Many of these onlookers were children, and the entire group stared at Lindon and the others with wide eyes. Some of them held drinks halfway to their lips.

But this wasn’t the group that had grabbed Dross’ attention.

[Wow, they were quick to show up, weren’t they? They must have been trying to catch up for days!]

Over their heads, on the horizon and approaching quickly, was a group of green Thousand-Mile Clouds. They were heading toward the cloudship’s wreckage.

Lindon’s heart clenched.

“Dross,” Lindon said aloud, “where did they come from?”

The clouds had gotten close enough that he could see their riders, wearing exactly what he had expected: deep emerald armor.

[Relax!] Dross said in a soothing tone. [They’re from the same organization as you are. Nothing to worry about! We can take it easy and let them carry us home. And look, they’re protecting us from every direction at once!]

Yerin whipped around to the other direction, checking to see if there were really people behind them as well. Lindon had no doubt there were, so he continued watching the group of approaching Skysworn.

“How many?” he asked.

[Four Truegolds, four Highgolds, and six Lowgolds,] Dross reported. [And I believe one Underlord. Nothing to worry about with him around!]

Orthos braced his feet, staring into the sky with eyes shining red. Little Blue stretched to her full six-inch height on his head, pointing into the sky and letting out a mournful flute note.

“The Empire is too big for a chance like this,” Orthos said. “We were hunted.”

“Don’t I just feel like the prettiest girl at the dance,” Yerin muttered, drawing her sword.

Seeing this, the people at the party began to run. Parents threw their food to the ground and grabbed their children, herding them back to the safety of the city. Lindon suspected the Skysworn would have evacuated the innocents as soon as they arrived, and indeed a pair of the Lowgolds broke off from the main group of Skysworn to dive for the fleeing party.

That did nothing to loosen the knot in Lindon’s stomach. They had agreed to go to the Arelius family first, precisely because they wanted Eithan on their side before they made contact with the Skysworn.

And Naru Gwei, the only Underlord in the Skysworn, had come already.

He represented a significant amount of the Skysworn’s total combat strength. Lindon could think of only one reason why someone so important would hunt them down in person: he had decided to be rid of them once and for all.

“We can talk with them,” Mercy said, though her face was pale and she had started running one hand nervously through her short hair.

“Run for the town,” Yerin ordered. “They’ll have to fight us in the streets, not rain fire on us from the heavens.”

Lindon sharply wished he still had his Thousand-Mile Cloud, but he took off running nonetheless. He and Yerin ran side-by-side, and the Skysworn ahead of them slowed their flight, pointing.

Lindon realized it must look as though they were chasing after the group of escaping families. His breathing came quick, Blackflame madra boiling up behind his eyes, and the nausea in his gut deepened.

The Skysworn had caught them too quickly.

He had thought they would at least make it back to a major city, and had a chance to contact the Arelius family before the Skysworn caught up to them. Even if they had been caught, he reasoned, it would be by one squad: a Truegold or two and a group of trainees.

He had never imagined they would respond immediately and with overwhelming force. Now, they had to hope the Skysworn were interested in talking.

Lindon glanced back to Mercy, sure she couldn’t catch up to him and Yerin, but she had straddled her staff and was flying on it only a few feet above the grass. Little Blue clung to the top of Orthos’ head, looking terrified, and Orthos glared up at the clouds.

The Skysworn, of course, didn’t let them make it to the town. One figure pulled up ahead of them and swept his arm in a low arc.

Wind rose between them and the town, bright green in Lindon’s aura sight, whipping and twisting in a transparent barrier. It was a Ruler technique, gathering up the wind to form a long wall of violent air a hundred yards long and dozens of feet high. Yerin skidded to a halt before she reached it, and Lindon followed suit. The wind-wall tore up chunks of dirt and grass from the ground, blowing them upward.

Naru Gwei stood twenty feet over them, as firm on his cloud as on solid ground. His arms were crossed over his battered breastplate, his matted gray hair pulled back. One of his eyes was burn-scarred, an old Blackflame injury, and a massive dark slab of a sword had been slung across his back.

Usually he looked as though he’d been woken in the middle of a nap, but this time his eyes were sharp and locked on Yerin.

Lindon’s heart raced as the worst-case scenario played out in his head. If the Skysworn launched Striker techniques from their clouds, he and Yerin and Orthos would be forced to defend themselves.

And while Mercy seemed to have plenty of non-lethal options to choose from, he and Yerin did not. The only technique he could use that would reach the Skysworn on their clouds was his dragon’s breath.

The Path of Black Flame was not suited for taking prisoners.

That was why he held up empty hands and tried not to cycle his madra too quickly. The minute blood was truly spilled, this would devolve into a brawl. And there would be no winning that. Not with an Underlord present.

“Faces against the ground,” Naru Gwei ordered. “Hands behind your backs. Spirits veiled. We’re taking you back for your involvement in the death of Skysworn Renfei and the assault and kidnapping of her partner, Bai Rou.”

His tone brooked no debate, but Lindon didn’t have to look at Yerin to know that she wouldn’t comply.

“We would be happy to explain ourselves,” Lindon said loudly. “There’s no need to restrain us, we will come willingly.”

Gwei gestured, and the four Truegolds began cycling their madra, preparing to launch their techniques. “Faces against the ground,” he repeated, voice harder.

Lindon spoke in a calm, even tone. “We’re on the same team.” Mercy nodded vigorously in agreement, but Yerin was still crouched with her sword out, her Goldsigns gleaming over her shoulders.

Naru Gwei’s face contorted. “You turn on Bai Rou, then ask for my trust?”

Lindon looked to Mercy and Yerin. He’d heard something about this over the last week or so, but he didn’t know what had really happened between them.

“Just a little scuffle!” Mercy called up. “No one was hurt!”

Yerin looked from Skysworn to Skysworn, paying special attention to the ones behind her. Lindon expected her to be angry or resentful, but she spoke to him in a calm voice. “If they’re supposed to bury us, why haven’t they gotten on with it?”

Lindon took that as encouragement, turning back to Naru Gwei. “We will give you a full accounting, I promise. Please, let us talk this out.”

The Skysworn Captain unfolded his arms. “We will listen when your spirits and bodies are shackled. Faces on the ground, final warning.”

Part of Lindon wanted to agree, but he had been locked up by the Skysworn before.

And he was growing tired of letting other people decide what to do with him.

“…I’m afraid if we do that, you are going to imprison us again.”

Finally, the Underlord’s spirit flared. He raised his hand to the sky as though clawing for the sun, and wind aura rose at his command. The air grew rigid against Lindon’s skin, and he felt himself pressed together by wind, stiffening up. Yerin, Mercy, and Orthos were chained in the same way. Orthos seethed, heaving against his bonds.

“You have no standing to bargain,” Gwei continued relentlessly. “My word is your law.” The four Truegolds descended, covered by Highgolds above them, and began moving toward their captives. Lindon felt a great weight bowing his shoulders, pressing him down. “You have not advanced enough to question me.”

And that was it.

Lindon’s fear ignited. When he’d been imprisoned by the Skysworn before, it was for no cause other than his Path. They had never trusted him to work for them, and had treated him like an enemy from the very beginning.

They had used their superior advancement to push him and control him and keep him locked in a tiny room. If he continued to allow that, it would never stop.

There had to be an end to it.

He swiveled his eyes to the side until he met Yerin’s gaze. He had planned to use Dross to send his intentions to her. But as soon as she saw his eyes, her lips curled up into a smile.

A Truegold man twice Lindon’s age seized his wrist in a gauntleted hand, extending a halfsilver manacle that would seal his sacred arts.

The Burning Cloak blazed to life around Lindon, covering him in transparent black-and-red flames. Power flooded him, explosive force that demanded to be used.

For an instant, Lindon struggled against the Ruler technique holding him in place. He was trying to swing his arm back, but it felt like he was pushing against a wooden wall.

With a shout and a flare of Blackflame madra, he shattered that wall to pieces. Wind rushed out as the technique was broken, and his left fist flashed backwards.

He hit the Skysworn with the back of his fist.

The man was a Truegold as well, and he had been on his guard from the beginning. He raised one armored forearm to block, pink light shining out from his Enforcer technique.

Lindon’s knuckles made contact.

The Skysworn blasted backwards.

He tore through the air in a streak of green, his passage kicking up dust, until he tumbled head over heels to land in a pile a dozen yards away.

Lindon’s hand of flesh stung, so he shook out his fingers, keeping his eyes on Naru Gwei. “I would prefer to talk,” he said softly. “But that doesn’t mean I won’t fight.”

The Skysworn Captain’s expression darkened. “Take them,” he ordered.

The other Skysworn attacked at once.

2

“Dross,” Lindon said. “I need a battle plan.”

The three remaining Truegold Skysworn surrounded them. Three wouldn't be enough, but four Highgold teammates covered them from overhead, their hands starting to shine with Striker techniques. The Lowgolds were either evacuating the party or protecting the city. The odds were already stacked against them, even if Naru Gwei didn't move himself.

Lindon needed an edge.

He braced himself for the world to slow down.

Instead, a lance of force pummeled Lindon in the chest, shoving him backwards. He twisted to the side as spears of golden light stabbed into the earth next to him, and Yerin slashed a spray of acidic madra from the air. Orthos roared as the Truegolds advanced under the cover of their Highgolds.

[Not a problem!] Dross said. [Not a problem. Give me a minute or two to gather enough information on their Paths and behavior, so I can model them just right. One hour, max.]

Lindon had missed his window to strike back, pressured by the Highgold attacks. Now a Truegold was on top of him—a woman with gray-streaked black hair and forward-curving yellow spikes emerging from her shoulders. Her armor had been modified to allow her Goldsigns to pass through the plates.

What can you do for me? Lindon asked desperately.

The woman drove her palm toward him, her hand Enforced with shining golden madra.

[Have you not noticed?] Dross asked, surprised.

The Burning Cloak ignited around Lindon, a black-and-red haze around his body. He jumped to the side, and the explosive power of the cloak launched him ten feet away. He landed next to one of the two armored Truegolds fighting Yerin, an older man with balls of swirling green liquid madra hovering around his head. He was gathering up a technique between his hands.

[Oh, this is fun, you're going to like this. By living in your head, I can handle some of your unimportant thoughts myself! Only a few of the smallest ones, but I can keep them from distracting you. You should notice an increase in your concentration and your processing speed, and your reactions should be a little faster.]

Another Highgold Striker technique was rushing toward his back; he could sense it. At the same time, the Truegold man had turned his attention to Lindon, seemingly unsurprised to see him land out of nowhere. He pushed the green liquid madra forward.

Lindon barely needed to think.

He spun to the side, catching a spear of golden Highgold madra with his right hand. He triggered the hunger binding for an instant as the enemy's technique made contact with his palm, just enough to destabilize the technique and cause it to break apart.

In the same motion, he kindled dragon's breath in his left palm, shoving it into the Truegold's newborn technique.

The gold spear dissolved into essence against his right hand as madra exploded in his left.

The armored Truegold staggered back, smoke and bright particles of madra essence blasting around him, but the power of the Burning Cloak had already detonated inside Lindon, searing his madra channels. He slammed his right fist into the man's breastplate with the full weight of his body and spirit, red-and-black madra flaring.

His opponent hurtled away. He slammed into the Truegold Lindon had knocked away earlier, falling on top of him in a pile.

[Look at that beautiful stack. Couldn’t have done that on your own, could you?]

Dross was right. The whole exchange had felt fluid and natural, and Lindon’s thoughts flowed like water.

Not to mention his strength. He'd known the meat from Ghostwater had enhanced his body, but for the longest time he'd had no one to compare to other than Orthos, Harmony, and a bunch of monsters.

The female Skysworn with the gold-spiked shoulders reached him only then, Forging a hammer of golden force the size of a wall. She slammed it toward him even as more Highgold Striker techniques converged on his location.

With a burst of Blackflame madra, he vanished.

He stood in front of Mercy, who had turned her staff into a bow. Had it been a bow the entire time?

She had an arrow nocked and was trying to track a target, but a tiny pink fireball landed at her feet. She stumbled back, but remarkably didn't lose the arrow. She loosed it at an armored Truegold who had noticed her, approaching with an axe that looked to have been made out of a living tree.

The arrow stuck in his armor and did nothing.

But Lindon was there now. He let his Blackflame madra drop, switching to his pure core. This time, the Soul Cloak sprang up around him, a fluid blue-white light. It passed through his body like a nourishing river, and his body responded without thought.

Since the fight with Harmony, he hadn't had enough time to explore his new capabilities. Between the sacred beast meat enhancing his strength, Dross speeding up his thoughts, and the Soul Cloak guiding his movements, it was like he was in control of a completely different body.

He stopped the swing of the wooden axe, dodged a Striker technique, kicked one of the Skysworn's legs out from under him, released a finger of dragon's breath to keep Orthos' opponent off-guard, tore the axe out of the Truegold's hands, dispersed another golden technique from behind him with his Remnant arm, smashed the Truegold with his own axe, then dropped the weapon and grabbed the woman following him by the spikes on her shoulders. She had already started pushing madra into her Goldsigns, but it was too late; Lindon had spun and thrown her with all the power he could draw.

The two Truegolds landed on the pile one after the other.

It had felt almost effortless. Like one long motion.

He was out of breath and his madra channels felt sore, but he spun, looking for the next opponent.

There came the chime of a great bell, and the four Highgolds—two on the ground, and two still on their clouds—all flew backwards at the same instant, sparks flying from their armor as though they’d been struck by invisible swords. The two in the sky fell, and Lindon launched himself toward the closest one: a girl with lines of crystal tracking down from her eyes like tears.

He couldn’t know what this girl’s Iron body was. Maybe she would be fine. But he’d worked too hard to avoid killing the others to let blood be spilled now.

The Highgold Skysworn apprentice flailed in the air, Forging a tower of purple crystal beneath her to try and catch herself. Lindon leapt up before the tower formed, catching her in his arms and landing on the grass. She shuddered in his grip, clutching the front of his outer robe.

He turned to see Yerin standing beneath the other falling Skysworn. As he was about to hit the ground, she reached out and caught him by his collar. His neck jerked backwards and his heels still slammed into the earth, but he was fine.

A second later, Yerin dropped him anyway.

Lindon gently placed the Highgold girl down on the grass…although now that he looked, she was probably older than he was.

Mercy cheered, and Orthos laughed. Lindon’s pile had already collapsed, three of the four Truegolds having risen to their feet, but none of them attacked.

Yerin looked from the Truegolds to Lindon. “Tell me true. What were they feeding you while you were gone?”

“Sea monsters,” Lindon said.

Naru Gwei surveyed the situation from his cloud, arms folded. In one long, slow motion, he pulled a finger-sized leaf from a pocket at his waist and placed one end into his mouth.

Behind him, the wind wall had already died to half its original height.

“No one is hurt too badly,” Lindon said. “We can end it here.”

Naru Gwei chewed on his leaf, looking from one of them to the other. Lindon couldn’t guess the Underlord’s thoughts, but he kept pure madra cycling quickly through his channels.

“Bai Rou,” Naru Gwei said at last, “says that you all are a calamity waiting to happen. A bunch of indiscriminate murderers.”

Lindon relaxed a fraction. The Skysworn squads were bruised and embarrassed, but all still alive. Naru Gwei knew as well as anyone how much easier it would have been for Lindon to kill someone with dragon’s breath.

Although their enemies hadn’t been out for blood either. The fight could have been a lot worse, on both sides.

“Looks like I need to take a look at you for myself,” the Skysworn Captain said. Reaching up for the sword hilt over his shoulder, he stepped off his cloud.

Massive emerald wings flared out behind him, and he glided over to Yerin, pulling his sword as he flew. The huge slab of dark steel was so pocked, pitted, and scarred that it didn’t reflect sunlight.

Yerin’s, by contrast, gleamed white, and her Goldsigns shone silver. All three blades flashed as she swung them, sending three madra blades slicing through the air.

He broke them with one sweep of his sword, but Yerin wasn’t finished.

She jumped at him as he was dealing with her techniques, smashing her weapon into his side. He responded quickly, swinging his own heavier blade, the two swords meeting with a deafening crash.

Yerin smashed into the ground, but Naru Gwei didn’t come out easily. He was launched back, his wings losing purchase on the air, flapping and twisting to try and land on his feet.

A bar of Orthos’ dragon breath blasted toward him.

He pushed one armored hand against the black-and-red stream, holding it off like a flow of water as he landed on his feet. He drove his sword into the earth, making a clawed fist with his now-free hand, and Mercy stiffened. She had been drawing an arrow into her dragon-headed bow, but now she was gripped by invisible chains.

She was only Lowgold…or, wait, she was giving off the pressure of a Highgold now. Had she advanced during the fight? Either way, she was still too weak to bother Naru Gwei. He had immobilized her to show that he could.

He pushed his way up the stream of dragon’s breath, shoving the Blackflame madra down, though his armor had dissolved around his hand and it was starting to disappear up his forearm. Orthos had finally had enough, biting off the Striker technique.

Then it was Lindon’s turn.

He dashed in with a sudden burst of speed from the Burning Cloak, launching a punch at Naru Gwei’s back. He didn’t know how much it would do to an Underlord, but he could at least knock the man off-guard.

With disarming speed, the Skysworn Captain spun around into a punch of his own. Aimed straight at Lindon’s.

Their two fists crashed together. Naru Gwei’s hand was bare, his gauntlet stripped away by Blackflame, and Lindon’s was a skeletal Remnant white.

Madra flashed, green against black-and-red, in an explosion that tore away the grass around them.

Lindon was knocked back, pain shooting up his Remnant arm as though he’d cracked a bone, his shoulder aching.

But Gwei backed up a step too. He shook out his hand as though it were sore.

Then the towering pressure of his spirit vanished as he veiled himself. A familiar exhaustion crept over his expression, and he sighed. “I need your word—all of you—that you will at least help me unravel this whole mess around you and Renfei and Bai Rou. Then I promise you fair treatment.”

They all agreed, though Yerin muttered something under her breath that Lindon didn’t catch.

Naru Gwei rubbed at the burn over his eye with one thumb. “You’ve taken up far too much of my personal attention already. And I’m not so flush with strong Truegolds that I can afford to throw them away.” The leaf in his mouth had been torn away in the fight, so he replaced it.

When it was between his teeth, he grumbled around it, “…now I’m going to have to see the smug look on that guy’s face.”

* * *

Naru Gwei and his team had come in a cloudship of their own, and it was three times the size of the one that had carried Lindon and the others. There was plenty of room for all of them onboard, though Lindon, Yerin, and Orthos were all wary of sharing a ship with the sacred artists they had beaten only hours ago. The woman with spikes on her shoulders kept pointing at Lindon as they boarded; one of her arms was held up in a sling.

Lindon didn't know if she was threatening him or pointing him out to her friends, but it wasn't comforting.

Naru Gwei left orders behind in the town for a crew to repair and recover the cloudship Lindon had traveled in on, and then their ship was leaving.

Though their previous cloudship had crammed them all inside, and this one had plenty of room to spread out, Lindon immediately found this trip the less comfortable of the two. No matter where he looked, there were Skysworn and Skysworn apprentices—some with armor, some without—all sporting injuries that he and the others had caused. They treated him like a vicious, wild dog let loose among them, avoiding him at every turn.

Yerin reacted by vanishing as soon as she could. Which left Lindon trying to find her.

He passed over the deck, stepping around the young Highgold woman with the crystal tear-tracks on her face. She seemed less hesitant around him than the others. He hoped that catching her had built up some kind of goodwill. She kept shooting glances at him like the others, though he didn't sense any hostility from her. Maybe she was better at keeping her wariness under control.

Past her, he walked around some Skysworn polishing armor to see Mercy leaning over the railing, staring down beneath her. Her hair had grown long enough to fall down around her face. She leaned so far over that Lindon thought she might pitch over the side, clutching her black staff in one hand.

She gave an audible gasp and whirled around. When she saw Lindon, she dashed over and seized him by the wrist, dragging him over to the railing.

“Look, look, you have to see this!”

She pointed with one black-tipped finger at a circular patch of burning forest.

It was only after a few seconds that he realized what he was really looking at. One massive tree, as big as a town but far below, with leaves that blazed. A quick glance at the vital aura showed him a huge sea of fire aura, but not nearly enough destruction—the flames were burning, but they weren't consuming anything. The leaves might have been made of fire.

Around the branches flew fiery birds. They almost looked like leaves drifting off of the burning tree, drifting on the wind.

There was a strange shiver at the base of Lindon's neck, and Dross spun into existence. The one-eyed spirit had pebbly purple skin and two stubby, boneless arms that drifted down to touch Lindon’s shoulder.

[Phoenixes! Oh, would you look at that! They're rated as the number one pet that you should never, ever bring to an underwater facility! I have a presentation memorized for the Ghostwater workers called 'You Will Never See A Phoenix.']

“I've never seen a wild phoenix before!” Mercy said, leaning over the railing again. “Just the ones my uncle keeps in his show garden.”

A cold spark tingled up Lindon's right shoulder as Little Blue climbed to take her perch opposite Dross. She stared and pointed too, chittering loudly and pulling on his hair to make sure he was seeing them.

Mercy turned around to look at the Riverseed. “Right? I've always wanted one!”

Did Mercy really understand her so easily, or was she guessing?

Little Blue made a bright sparkling noise.

Even from so far away, the phoenixes were impressive to watch. They left ribbons of red-and-orange light behind them as they flew, and their cries formed a symphony that drifted up all the way to the cloudship.

One phoenix swooped down into the burning leaves like a bat taking an insect, emerging with something huge and red in its beak. It opened wide, gulping it down.

This time, Lindon was the one to point in excitement. “Did you see that? It grabbed a fruit! The fire tree has fruit!”

Dross and Little Blue gave a simultaneous “Ooooooooh.”

“A wild natural treasure,” Mercy said. “It doesn't look like anyone is harvesting it. Well, other than the phoenixes. You couldn't ask for anything better for a fire artist!”

Lindon considered leaping over the side.

But the cloudship was moving too quickly. The fiery tree was already almost gone, the phoenix-song fading into the sound of the wind.

Mercy jumped up, pointing at something else. “Oh, look at that!” This time, it was a mountain that jutted straight from the earth like a spear. Its peak was covered in dark clouds flickering with lightning...too much lightning. It looked almost like a ball of lightning containing a little cloud.

“You must have seen more amazing things than this with your family,” Lindon said. Lindon had never spent much time watching the scenery, but he suspected that the wonders of a Monarch's home must dwarf these.

“Well, sure, we keep fountains and gardens at home for decoration. But I'm always training at home.” Purple eyes met his. “When you spend all your time training, you don't get to go out and just enjoy things, you know?”

Spent all her time training?

“Forgiveness,” Lindon said hesitantly, “but if you spent all your time on training, then how are you still...” He trailed off. “I'm sorry if it's too personal.”

Mercy looked down at the deck, laughing awkwardly and scratching at her cheek. “That's a little embarrassing, actually. The truth is, I used to be stronger.”

[And now the owl's back! There are so many birds around here. Maybe the bird aura is strong here. I know there's no bird aura.]

Dross drew Lindon's attention up, where he saw the silver-and-purple owl swooping down from the clouds above them.

Mercy saw him turn and followed his gaze. “Is the owl back? Where is it?” She sounded doubly eager to see the owl, almost like she was afraid to miss it.

“It went under the ship,” Lindon said apologetically.

Mercy kept surveying the horizon, gripping her staff tightly. “I'm afraid it might be a...family thing.”

That brought up a thought that Lindon had been avoiding for weeks, ever since stepping out of Ghostwater's gate. He and Mercy had never really talked like this before, and this was as close to alone as they were going to get.

“Speaking of your family, I wanted to—well, I wasn't sure how to bring it up. Do you know Akura Harmony?”

Mercy hurriedly glanced from side to side. “I'm not sure now is the right time to talk about this.”

“I'm afraid I have some...news. Harmony is mmmph.”

Mercy covered up the last word by pressing both hands against his mouth. Her Goldsign, the black madra that she wore like gloves, felt slick and cool.

“Ssssh! Nope! I don't need to hear it! I can guess!”

Lindon tried to tell her he understood, but she pushed harder. “I get it! I understand!”

She was still looking past him, as though desperately afraid of being overheard.

[That's right, I thought she looked a lot like Harmony,] Dross said, fortunately only to Lindon. [I mean, like how Harmony used to look. Not how he probably looks now. Sliced into a thousand little cubes by a collapsing world and left to dissolve in a sea of chaos and oblivion.]

When she finally noticed Lindon's nods, she released him and continued. “It's not as big of a deal to me as you might think. We were only engaged because—”

“You were engaged?” Lindon interrupted. His voice was a little too high.

Little Blue reacted to his surprise, letting out a startled peep.

“It was a family thing,” Mercy said hurriedly. “His branch of the family wanted to improve their status, so they wanted to marry him off to the Monarch's daughter. And he thought the only one worthy of him was...”

She trailed off for a moment and started fiddling with her fingers. “…the family genius.”

The cloudship shook, running across a moment of rough wind, and Mercy pitched over face-first. Only a quick string of shadow tied her to the railing fast enough to prevent her from slamming her nose into the deck.

Her staff—or maybe it was a bow, in the form of a staff—hissed as it clattered to the deck. She scrambled to retrieve it.

Lindon wondered in what area she had been considered a genius. A scripting genius? A refiner? Mathematics? Maybe she was a genius with shadow madra; he wouldn't be able to tell.

“Did Harmony—” Lindon started to ask, but Mercy grabbed her staff and pushed it into his face. The dragon's head on the top glared painfully bright violet light into his eyes, hissing at him from an inch away.

He was afraid to move with the staff so close, and he kept his eyes fixed on the dragon's snout, but behind it he could see movement. The silver-and-purple owl had openly landed on the railing next to them, only a few feet from Mercy.

Its wide eyes stared straight at Lindon.

“Good-bye, Lindon!” Mercy shouted. “It was fun talking with you! I'll see you later!”

The owl continued staring at him as Mercy pushed him away.

Dross spun off his shoulder and back into his spirit. [Some consider owls to be omens of death,] Dross said. [Especially mice.]

* * *

Yerin sat in the cramped confines below the deck of the airship, a sword in her lap, cycling. The aura was thin here, and she was almost wasting her time trying to pull power from the sword, but she would accomplish even less up above.

Lindon, Mercy, and Orthos were up there, but if Yerin spent more than two breaths on the deck, she'd end up drawing swords on somebody.

A few more breaths, and the weak aura finally broke her patience. She gave up and stabbed her cycling sword into the wall, where it stuck, quivering. If she had wrapped her madra around it, the weapon might have split the wall in two.

Cycling wasn't going to do anything for her, and besides, she'd spent most of the last couple of months cycling and running through the jungle. Lindon was back, finally; she wanted to do something, not sit here alone and wait on the mercy of the Skysworn. It was like getting a taste of freedom only to be hauled back by the collar.

She fiddled with the hilt of her master's sword, restless. She wanted to be let out, to go...

To go and do what?

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, but she couldn't sit here anymore. The fight earlier had gotten her blood flowing. And speaking of blood, her Blood Shadow was as riled up as she was, seething inside her soul. They both wanted a challenge.

She found herself thinking back to the Blackflame Trials, back in Serpent's Grave. She'd had a challenge then, something to try and overcome every day.

And she'd pushed herself forward to meet that challenge. With Lindon.

Images of the fight with the Skysworn rose up in her head. Compared to her memories of him in the Blackflame Trials, Lindon today was like an adult compared to a child. Only a month or so out of her sight, and he'd undergone a heaven-and-earth-shaking change.

He was strong now. Too strong.

He'd given her a brief outline of what had happened to him in Ghostwater, but she still wasn't sure about the details. Whatever had happened, it had rebuilt him from head to toe. And he had kept her from joining him.

She'd always hoped that he would catch up with her one day, but it had happened so fast.

Her Blood Shadow surged inside of her again, and she kept it suppressed with the strength of her madra. It still disgusted her, but it was supposed to be a ticket to great power. It hadn't done much for her so far, but maybe that was her way forward. Her personal Ghostwater.

She shook herself. It wasn’t like her to worry too much about someone else. She should focus on herself and her path to Underlord. That was certainly what Lindon was doing.

A knock at the door shook her back to reality, and she rose with Goldsign blades poised over each shoulder. A quick scan, and she knew who it was, though she was surprised to sense him here.

She felt oddly guilty as she opened the door for Lindon, as though he might somehow have heard her thoughts.

Maybe he was feeling the same way, because he wore an expression like he was smuggling weapons under his outer robe. He looked uneasy, which—on his severe face—made him look like he was plotting a murder. He ducked inside before she could say anything, glancing behind him.

He grabbed the door from her and slammed it shut, pulling a small object from his pocket: a nail. Without a word, he started scratching runes into the door.

“You kick Gwei between the legs and run, or what?” Yerin asked. It was helping her mood to see Lindon acting this way; if there had been something really wrong, she would have heard explosions. And he wouldn't have left Orthos and Mercy up there on their own. Which meant he was getting himself all worked up for something small.

Still, she was curious. Maybe it was a big problem. She could hope.

When he'd finished his script-circle, he ran some pure madra through it, and the runes erupted in light. The wood creaked at the force of the madra running through it, and some splinters flew off into the air, but Yerin's spiritual sense was suppressed.

Lindon relaxed, slipping the nail back into his pocket. “Apologies, but I think there’s an owl following me.”

He turned from the door to her, and suddenly Yerin was conscious of how small this room really was. It wasn't much of a room at all, more like a closet—she'd piled bags of uncooked rice into the corner in order to give her enough room to sit and cycle without cramping her Goldsigns. The training sword she'd jammed into the wall took up half the length of the space.

Her face was on the level of Lindon's chest, and she looked up at him, standing over her. The heat from his body filled the space, and the quiet aura radiating from his spirit was stronger than it had ever been.

He looked down, eyes intense, and her heartbeat picked up. He was the same old Lindon, but the strength in his soul made him feel older, more reliable, and somehow new, like she had taken her eyes off him for a second and he had grown up. And he was so close.

Lindon stretched his hand out, reaching for her face. She stared at the hand approaching, thoughts whirling in place. Her heart hammered harder.

But his hand moved past her, reaching the side of the wall. She turned her eyes to follow him.

A door opened in midair.

She let out a heavy breath as the space appeared, her face suddenly hotter than before. She was both relieved and somehow disappointed, but she didn’t examine either emotion too closely. She shoved them to the back of her mind, where she determined to forget them.

Instead, she focused on the most shocking aspect of this whole situation: “Where in heaven’s name did you get a void key?”

It was like looking into a closet that hadn’t been there before. A closet containing Lindon’s belongings; she recognized the box he’d once kept his Thousand-Mile Cloud in, but most of the rest of it was new to her. The space was packed with jars, bottles, and vials of all shapes and sizes, though they looked like he’d scavenged them from a trash heap. Little Blue stared at her from within a bundle of firewood, and there was a bone-handled axe leaning up against the wall.

Lindon hurriedly held up a hand, keeping his voice low. “The script doesn’t stop sound. Could you grab that closest jar for me?”

Close to the opening, beside Yerin’s feet, was a clay jar covered in hastily painted scripts that looked similar to the one Lindon had carved into the door. She bent down and scooped it up, and then the portal instantly vanished.

Without instructions, Yerin pulled the lid off of the jar, and Lindon didn’t say anything to stop her. Blue light rushed out from within, and she sensed the rich power of a high-grade elixir.

Her eyes widened, and she dipped a finger in, pressing a drop to her tongue.

It tasted like sweet spring water, but the energy within was enough to shock her spirit into action. It nourished her soul directly, her madra rushing through its channels.

“I don’t know what Naru Gwei would do if he sensed this,” Lindon said. “And Mercy…well, I don’t know her too well yet.”

“This…” she wasn’t sure she had the words. “This is like something my master would drink. With a sword to my throat, I couldn’t even guess how much this is worth.”

It took her another second to remember that she’d seen more bottles inside the void key.

Lindon’s eyes sparkled at her reaction, but he pretended to be casual. “It’s yours. As far as I’m concerned, you can drink everything I brought out. I had much more than this in Ghostwater.”

Yerin pushed the jar back at him. “I’m not too polite to take a gift, but this is brainless. You’ve got two cores to fill, and one of them is still Highgold.”

“That’s why you should have it. If you got the same chances I did, you’d be Underlord by now.”

A second later, he cleared his throat and added, “Besides, I doubt you’ll need all of it. Once you reach the peak of Truegold, I can still drink whatever’s left.”

Yerin slowly replaced the lid, unwilling to meet his eyes. She was ashamed of the tracks her thoughts had taken before he’d shown up; only a few weeks by herself, and she started thinking like she was alone again.

“Will it not work for you?” he asked anxiously. “I thought it would, but I couldn’t be sure. Did the Sword Sage give you something better?”

Yerin ran a hand over her face as though to check what expression she was making. “No, sorry, my brain had run off without me. Had to pull it back.” She slipped the jar into her outer robe—it was a little big for her pocket, so it would bulge out, but it wouldn’t be a problem as long as she didn’t fight. “You know I’ll put it to good use.”

His face relaxed into a smile. “Good! I was—well, never mind, that’s good! Don’t get too comfortable, though. I won’t let you get too far ahead of me.”

“I know you won’t,” she said.

And to herself, she added, I won’t let you.

3

In his Imperial palace at the heart of Blackflame City, the capital of the Empire, Emperor Naru Huan stood in a courtyard looking into the sky. He wore his full Imperial regalia, from the intricate crown on his head to the dragon-adorned layered robes that hung from his shoulders. Emerald wings spread behind him, shimmering in the setting sun.

An Emperor’s appearance was important. He exercised daily to keep his body firm and toned—a straight back and broad shoulders showed strength. His beard was neatly trimmed and close to his chin, and his gaze was level and piercing. He had been trained for most of his life to project strength in everything he did.

To his left, his first wife was radiant in robes that complemented his own. The smile on her face looked effortless and natural, but the way that she repeatedly lifted her hand to adjust her hairpin revealed her nerves. He wished he could calm her, but he was in need of some comfort himself.

Two Skysworn in full green armor stood behind them, spears at the ready, Truegold souls unveiled. Today, they were nothing more than marks of his status. He was the strongest sacred artist in this quarter of the continent, but his visitor could obliterate them all as easily as lifting her hand.

Behind the Skysworn were his contingent of four normal guards, all Truegolds themselves, as well as forty ministers, councilors, and advisers. Servants stood to the sides, carrying pitchers of wine or trays of food in case they were called upon.

Their half of the courtyard was packed, but no one crossed the invisible line separating the other half. That was reserved for their visitor.

No one wanted to accidentally offend the Sage of the Silver Heart.

She had sent word to await her, but she had not said whether she meant to come in person or not. Therefore, he had no choice but to prepare as though Akura Charity could herself appear out of thin air at any second.

As far as he understood the powers of a Sage, she might well be able to do as much. She was an Archlady, at the peak of the Lord realm, but most Archlords never earned a Sage’s title. There was something special about Sages, but only rumors and legends could tell him what that was. He’d never had a Sage to consult.

The sun sank down to the level of the roof surrounding them, and the general level of chatter in the courtyard faded with the light. She said she would deliver her message at the first touch of night, and the closer that approached, the greater the tension in the air grew. Some of the people behind him even trembled in their spirits, and he wanted to turn and command them to master themselves or leave. But it would be beneath him to lower himself to that level.

Shadows lengthened, and the sun disappeared.

As soon as it did, another light replaced it. An ethereal, flickering violet light.

The murmurs in the courtyard died out entirely.

The source of that light came into view only an instant later, as four horse-Remnants galloped side-by-side through the air, their steps like drumbeats. They were made of layered violet light, and flames of the same shade flickered around their ankles. They bared teeth and rolled their eyes as they ran, which was as much detail as he had ever seen on Remnants.

Through his spiritual sense, he felt the hidden heat of banked coals and the cool of a summer shadow. The Akura clan were famous for their use of shadow madra—it was not a distasteful power, like death or blood, but an aspect of madra as natural as wind. Even so, it had mysterious properties that were difficult to pin down. That made dealing with any shadow artist a trial. Dealing with the Akura even more so.

After first glance, it became clear that the horses were harnessed together. They pulled a black carriage behind them, wrought of iron and floating on a deep purple cloud. The Remnants slowed slightly, trotted down the air as though on a slope, and slid to a halt in the courtyard in front of the Emperor.

The black door of the carriage was marked with the symbol of the Akura family in silver: one great star flanked by two smaller stars, all rising over a mountain range. When he saw that, he inclined his head.

Everyone besides him bowed at the waist.

They held that pose for one long moment before the door swung open and a woman stepped out.

She was a slender, young-looking woman with black hair carefully bound behind her. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said she was only twenty, but her deep purple eyes carried the weight of ages. She was dressed as befit her station, in ornate wide-sleeved robes of black decorated with purple lines that glowed softly in the shadows. The lines evoked stars and moons, but also reminded him of a script-circle.

An owl stood on her shoulder. An owl made of feathery silver light, connected by ribbons and sparks of purple.

Charity had her spirit veiled, so the pressure of her presence did not weigh on the souls of everyone nearby. Even so, she still radiated an unquestionable dignity. All else stilled before her, and even his trembling Blackflame attendants quieted, as though she carried with her the calm of a peaceful night.

“Naru Huan, Emperor of the Blackflame Empire, I send you greetings on behalf of my family,” she said. Her voice was smooth and young, but she spoke with the confidence of an empress. “I, Akura Charity, Sage of the Silver Heart, speak with full authority for my grandmother and in the interests of the Akura clan all across the world. Heed me now, as this is the greatest service you have ever been required to perform.”

The Emperor was not sure if he was expected to respond, but he bowed slightly anyway. “The Blackflame Empire is eager to know how we may serve the Akura clan. If there is any hospitality we can provide, please do not hesitate to say so.”

His servants stepped forward slightly, but the Sage ignored them. She met his gaze with her purple eyes. She gave no signal that he could see or sense, but the door of the carriage behind her slammed shut. The Remnant horses whinnied—it sounded like they were doing so from underwater—and took off, trotting into the air once more.

When they were gone, the Sage continued.

“When they feel the time is right, the great Monarch clans hold a tournament for their students, measuring their star disciples against one another to demonstrate their strength. It is in this way that those of the young generation can test themselves and grow against equal opponents.

“This contest is known as the Uncrowned King Tournament.”

It was with no surprise whatsoever that Naru Huan thought, Eithan was right.

This was not news to Naru Huan, but it had never concerned the Blackflame Empire before. Their disciples were unworthy to compete at such a level. Had he not been warned by the Arelius Underlord, this sudden requirement would have caught him off-guard.

“This year’s tournament,” Akura Charity continued, “will be the largest in history.”

She paused, hands folded in front of her, as though she could sense his questions.

Naru Huan was unaccustomed to speaking humbly, but this was the time to show deference. “Forgive our ignorance, but affairs that concern Monarchs are far beyond us. If the Sage could enlighten us: what is so different this year?”

The owl of silver and purple madra spread its wings, and the slightest shiver passed through Naru Huan’s spirit. If it weren’t for his abundant experience, he would have thought he’d imagined the sensation.

“You have guessed correctly,” Charity said. “Old powers stir. No one will remain untouched. Now, more than ever, we must make the balance of power clear, and raise up defenders from a new generation.”

The Dreadgods. He had suspected as much, but it was disturbing to hear his fears confirmed.

“Therefore, our Akura clan will be inviting our vassal states to participate in the Uncrowned King Tournament as well. The coming years will challenge not only our head family, but all our subjects. So they all must be tested.”

Thus far, Naru Huan had learned very little new information. Eithan had made his predictions, and Naru Huan could infer some facts of his own. However, it had all been theoretical until this moment.

Now, he faced a very real problem.

“If we may ask, what stage must our disciples have reached in order to compete?”

“The tournament does not permit anyone above or below Underlord,” Charity said, “though advancements during competition are allowed. All competitors must be younger than thirty-five, and the younger your participant, the more favorably they will be viewed.”

As he’d expected. It would be hard enough for him to produce a handful of Truegolds under thirty-five, much less Underlords.

“We would give our lives to avoid disappointing the Sage, but we may not be able to live up to her expectations. For us, producing young Underlords is…”

Purple eyes swept over the crowd gathered around the Emperor. Most of them, including Naru Huan himself, were beyond the required age. And no one but him met the power requirements. He thought he saw a glimpse of pity in her gaze, and she let out a short breath.

“I am aware of your situation. For that reason, I will open to you the Night Wheel Valley, one of the sacred training grounds of the Akura clan. You should be grateful; this is where we often train Akura Golds.”

He was grateful, to the point that he had to fight to keep his expression dignified. His wife grabbed his elbow, fingers tightening, and gave a slight gasp. Depending on how many people he was allowed to send, this could be a huge opportunity for the entire Empire, not just the young Truegolds with the potential to break through to Underlord.

He opened his mouth to express profuse thanks, but she held up a pale hand to stop him. The owl on her shoulder let out a low whistle. “Of course, I have not given this opportunity to you alone.”

His smile turned bitter.

“I will open the way for the Seishen Kingdom as well. As the two weakest vassal states under our protection, you will compete with each other for the valley’s bounty. By the time summer comes, I will select the three young Lords and Ladies that will serve us in this tournament. I could choose all three from one kingdom, or the best from both. You will be richly rewarded for every young Underlord that I appoint, though if I cannot find even three worthy between you, you will all be…”

Her eyes flashed, and she let her veil slip enough to add spiritual weight to the next word. “…instructed.”

Naru Huan’s thoughts turned cold. After the devastation of the Bleeding Phoenix, the Blackflame Empire was hanging together by a thread. The Jai clan had fallen, and the Arelius family had yet to rise to their place, so the west was fractured and lawless. The attacks from the Trackless Sea up north had intensified, the wall that defended them broken by the Dreadgod’s rampage. To the east, the Wastelanders were having a difficult time holding back the dragons, and beyond the southern jungles, the Seishen Kingdom eyed his lands.

The Empire his mother had saved from the Blackflame family was now webbed with cracks. One firm tap could send it all crumbling to pieces. Over a hundred million people would divide into a thousand splinter kingdoms, all at war with one another.

The offered reward didn’t matter to him, although anything that came straight from the Akura family would surely be dazzling. No, the Empire needed stability. Training in the Night Wheel Valley would help him with that, as it would strengthen the sacred artists loyal to him. And competing on the world stage would allow him to make connections he could never have dreamed of otherwise.

His homeland would die or thrive based on the Akura family’s favor.

“We will not fail you,” he swore. He had no ill will toward his southern neighbor, the Seishen Kingdom, but he would crush them if he had to. Anything to distinguish his Empire to the clan that ruled them all.

The Sage’s owl took off from her shoulder, swirling over the heads of the crowd around the Emperor. He could feel them trying not to shiver. “One final note: I will be monitoring you to make sure that your competition with the Kingdom does not get too far out of hand. Conduct yourselves like honorable sacred artists with the reputation of the Akura clan behind you. However, the Night Wheel Valley will undoubtedly be dangerous. Only sacred artists willing to risk their safety should be allowed inside.”

The owl settled onto the head of a nearby servant, who looked like she would pass out. Akura Charity reached out a hand, and that servant scurried to present a tray full of drinks to her. She selected a shallow bowl, allowed the servant to fill it with dark wine, but she did not drink.

She looked down, staring deeply into the surface of the wine as she spoke. “That concludes our business on behalf of my family.”

Naru Huan was not fooled into thinking this meeting was over. She wanted something else, and was making it clear that she didn’t represent her family in doing so.

“I have kept my eye on someone from your Empire,” she continued. “A young Blackflame, contracted to a sacred turtle.”

Naru Huan remembered descriptions of Eithan’s disciple. “There is no true member of the Blackflame family remaining,” he hedged. He couldn’t lie to a Sage, but he wanted to know more about her interest in the boy before he gave her the answer she sought. The more he knew, the more advantage he might be able to squeeze out of the situation.

The Sage continued examining the wine. She did not increase the power of her soul.

But the rest of the world turned black.

It was as though only Naru Huan and Akura Charity existed, and everything else was swallowed by a sea of endless black. Behind the Sage’s head, an apparition loomed up, like the sudden appearance of a Remnant; it was a huge book, wrought of silver and purple light, with a shining Remnant eye in its center.

The eye swiveled, locking onto Naru Huan, and he began to sweat.

Out of instinct, he released the veil around his spirit, trying to fend off this attack with his power…but he failed. Nothing happened. His soul remained tightly bound, his madra still. His body trembled, as an inexplicable dread pressed in on him from the outside.

“You should not lie to me,” Charity suggested. She took a sip of wine.

As quickly as it had appeared, the darkness vanished. The book disappeared like a hallucination, and the fear snapped out of existence.

Leaving the Emperor, sweating and trembling in the middle of his court. His wife looked at him in concern, and all the others in shock.

They had only seen him lose his nerve for no apparent reason. He collected himself, pretending nothing had happened, but his face burned with shame. He swallowed his broken pride for the sake of the Empire, pushing his head down into a reluctant bow.

“We beg your forgiveness, Sage,” the Emperor said.

Then he told her about Eithan’s disciple.

When he had finished, Charity did not react. She told him nothing about why she had wanted to know, merely placed her now-empty cup back on the servant’s tray and inclined her head.

From above, he heard the warbling cries of Remnant horses returning, dragging the carriage behind them again.

“I will not be staying the night,” Charity said. “I must deliver the same message to your neighbors. In two months, I will return and open the gateway to the Night Wheel Valley for your Empire. In that time, you should gather up all your best prospects and strongest fighters here in Blackflame City.”

The carriage didn’t even touch the ground. It swept by, its door flickering open and closed, and she slipped inside in one motion.

The Sage’s voice drifted behind her. “Work hard, Your Imperial Highness.”

When she was gone, the courtyard erupted. Everyone questioned him all at once, or else offered their own opinions on what to do. Their decorum as members of his court was entirely forgotten.

He let them ramble. There was only one thing they could do: contact all the Underlords and have them bring their disciples to Blackflame City as soon as possible. It would strain his resources to contact everyone and have them return within two months, but he would spare no expense.

After that, he had only to hope that this generation had some hidden dragons.

* * *

The Skysworn’s flying city of Stormrock was built on a massive green cloudbank. Guard towers loomed over forbidding walls of black stone, even as one tower rose over the rest of the city.

Starsweep Tower. Headquarters of the Skysworn.

Other cloudships, Thousand-Mile Clouds, carriages pulled by winged creatures, and flying sacred artists had to stop at the gates of the city, but Naru Gwei’s cloudship soared over the walls without even slowing down. They headed straight to the highest floor of Starsweep Tower, where a broad path of stone jutted out like a bridge to nowhere. The dock for his ship.

Flanked on all sides by Skysworn, Lindon and the others followed Naru Gwei into the tower.

The last time they had visited, the Skysworn had treated them with outward hostility. This time, the looks from those they passed changed: instead of revulsion or pity, now Lindon saw more outright horror.

Dross made a soft hum inside Lindon's head as a green-clad woman pressed herself against the wall to slide past Lindon, even though there were several paces between them. [Oh, they're afraid! Are they afraid of you?] He lowered his voice, as though he didn't want to be overheard, even though he was speaking directly into Lindon's thoughts. [Do they hate you? On second thought, forget I said anything. Best not to dwell on it. They probably like you too much, that’s why they’re running from you.]

They didn't expect us to make it to Truegold, Lindon replied. At least, he assumed that was the reason. He couldn't imagine why else the Skysworn would be afraid of seeing them in the custody of their Underlord Captain.

[Good! That’s good. I was worried it was your face. And you know what? It makes sense. I didn't expect you to live to Truegold either. Every day you survive is a new surprise for me. Full of surprises, you are.]

Naru Gwei pushed further into the tower, slipping easily through the hallways. Skysworn stepped aside to let him pass. Finally, he stopped before a heavy door marked with the Skysworn emblem: a thick cloud surrounding a ball of fire. On Lindon’s apprentice pin, it had been the same, but without the fire in the center.

The Underlord turned to face them, arms crossed in his battered armor, chewing on a long leaf. As usual, he looked like he had been roused unwillingly from a deep sleep.

“I have more than one reason not to trust you,” he said. “But I'm willing to chance it. If you can help me settle one particularly disturbing report.”

Mercy leaned forward, smiling brightly. “We’ll do whatever we can!”

“Who’s this ‘we’?” Yerin muttered.

Naru Gwei rapped his gauntleted knuckles against the door, the sharp ring stealing their attention back. “You're here to gain my trust. Remember that, when I open this door.”

Mercy nodded, but Orthos blew smoke, and Yerin's eyes went cold.

Lindon knew the feeling; personally, he was happy to do whatever he could to get Naru Gwei out from in front of them, but the Underlord's attitude still bothered him. As Lindon reckoned it, Naru Gwei was the one who had mistreated them.

Little Blue crooned from Lindon’s pocket, and he reached down to pat her.

Then the door swung open, and Bai Rou was waiting for them.

The huge Skysworn man sat with a broad table between him and the door, his elbows propped up. Yellow eyes burned in the shadows beneath his wide-brimmed straw hat, and he didn't look the least surprised to see them.

The room looked identical to some of the other meeting rooms in the tower, with a few exceptions. It was a little larger, the table was covered in paperwork, and a giant Skysworn emblem—cast in bronze—hung behind the room's lone chair. A bundle of long leaves sat on the table to Bai Rou's left.

Naru Gwei waved a hand at the other Skysworn irritably. “Get out of my seat,” he said, and Bai Rou obeyed. The Captain drew his huge slab of a sword from his back, letting it rest on a metal rack in the corner that seemed designed especially for this purpose.

So this was Naru Gwei's office. Lindon was somewhat interested in looking around more, but a murderous aura filled the space, as though a battle had broken out. He didn't need to extend his spiritual sense to know where this sensation was coming from.

Both of Yerin's steel sword-arms were poised, she was gritting her teeth, and her eyes boiled with anger. Her scars stood out, pale against her flushed skin, and her hand was tight on her sword.

She didn't attack, but she didn’t withdraw the pressure of her spirit either. Lindon could feel the Blood Shadow clearly; its anger and its thirst for blood.

“Can't get rid of you, can I?” Yerin said.

“Try,” Bai Rou responded. He was standing at Naru Gwei's shoulder now, and though he made no outward move to attack, he started cycling his madra. The air was filled with a thick, oppressive atmosphere that reminded Lindon of a nightmare.

[Ew, that's...that is disgusting,] Dross said, making a choking sound. [Don't let him close to me.]

Alarmed, Lindon turned his attention to the construct. Is he hurting you?

[Ugh, it's like something slimy and sticky has a million legs and is crawling all over my face. If I could vomit, I'd be vomiting all inside your head. Right up in your spirit.]

But is he a threat?

[You know what? Let’s say he is, and just…stand a little further back. Ick.]

Orthos stood at Yerin’s side, taking up half the office on his own, smoldering with Blackflame. He wasn’t looking for a fight, but he was prepared for one.

“Bai Rou has told me that you attacked him in the field,” Naru Gwei said. “That you were unsatisfied with his commands, so you began to fight him in enemy territory.”

“That’s dead right,” Yerin said. “He was...” Her gaze flickered to Lindon for an instant. “...he held me back from saving lives. If we’d followed his orders, we’d have left half our squad in the grave.”

“You would have killed me,” Bai Rou said.

“You tossed me out of the sky!”

There was a green flash from Naru Gwei, and thunder rolled out in a deafening peal. “I have better things to do than listen to children bicker. Bai Rou, you say the Akura family has taken responsibility for Renfei's death, but losing her is enough of a blow. I’m not going to lose any more Truegolds if I can help it. Is there any way for you to set aside this personal grudge...”

The conversation continued, the Captain talking, Yerin and Bai Rou arguing, and Orthos burning quietly to the side. But Lindon didn’t listen to it. He’d been distracted by Dross’ sudden voice.

[That is the most dedicated janitor I have ever seen.]

Lindon immediately stopped watching the scene, glancing around. Where?

[Up. Higher. In the corner. Really, I'm using your eyes, so you shouldn’t need me to point him out.]

After a second, Lindon craned his neck to look up and behind him. The ceiling in the room was surprisingly high, criss-crossed with metal support beams.

And there, as he had suspected, was Eithan.

The blond Underlord floated on a deep green Thousand-Mile Cloud and wore armor of a matching shade, which was enough of a shock on its own. Since when had Eithan joined the Skysworn? Or was this a disguise?

He floated in the high corner, scrubbing at a spot on the ceiling with a rag. As Lindon stared, Eithan finished polishing the spot, snapping the rag and making it vanish into thin air. Now that Lindon paid attention, he realized that the entire ceiling and all the supports were spotless.

[There was a janitorial staff in Ghostwater, but I’ve never seen anyone so committed to their job! Come to think of it, what happened to…oh, right, eaten. They were eaten.]

Eithan glanced down to meet Lindon's gaze, his eyebrows raised in surprise. Clearly, he hadn't expected anyone to notice him. He waved, then raised one finger to his lips for silence.

Lindon looked back at the others. Yerin, Bai Rou, and Naru Gwei were still locked in a three-way argument. Mercy jumped in, saying something conciliatory on behalf of the Akura family, and Orthos had drawn his head back into his shell. Clearly, he was bored with the whole thing.

None of them had noticed Eithan.

Lindon couldn't sense anything of the Underlord, and apparently neither could anyone else. Eithan had always been skilled in veils. But for once, Lindon had caught him.

Dross made a throat-clearing noise. [Who caught him? Hm? It's not as though I need the praise, but a little credit...]

It was hard to concentrate on the argument after that. Yerin was red in the face, her sword-arms quivering, and her hands pressed down on the table hard enough that the wood creaked. Mercy stood next to her, leaning on her dragon-headed staff. Inside Lindon’s pocket, he could feel Little Blue playing with Suriel’s marble.

Bai Rou turned his whole body to Mercy whenever she spoke, looking oddly respectful. Finally, he said, “I will live up to your test, honored Akura.”

This seemed to surprise Mercy, and it caught Naru Gwei's attention. “You had better explain yourself, Skysworn.”

Bai Rou looked to his Captain, pressing his fists together in a salute. “I cannot say anything until the time comes.”

Naru Gwei bit his leaf in half, letting the other half drift down to the table. “I don’t like learning new things this late, Skysworn.”

“They gave me a glimpse of what is coming,” Bai Rou rumbled. “I swore an oath to reveal nothing before the proper time.”

Naru Gwei turned sharp eyes on Mercy. “And is the Akura clan planning something? Is this something the Emperor should know?”

Mercy looked as lost as the Underlord, stammering out an answer, but Lindon turned back to Eithan.

The Arelius Underlord drifted backwards to the corner of the ceiling, over Naru Gwei's head. Lindon was the only one watching him.

It was hard to keep his expression blank.

The Underlord withdrew his Thousand-Mile Cloud and released his veil at the same time, dropping to his feet behind the Skysworn Captain and clapping his hand on the man's shoulder.

Naru Gwei tensed up, his eyes closing as though he were holding himself back from taking a swing.

Mercy gasped, Yerin groaned, and Orthos stuck his head out of his shell. Bai Rou leaped back, conjuring a fistful of yellow liquid madra, and Dross choked again.

Eithan leaned in next to the Captain's face, grinning ear to ear. “Well, based on this new information, it seems I was correct once again. You should be used to that by now.”

“We have no evidence of that,” Naru Gwei said, clenching his hand into a fist.

Eithan turned to address Mercy. “Young miss Akura, I have suggested that this year's competition between Monarch disciples will spill over to affect us here in the Blackflame Empire. Tell me, have you seen any signs of your clan putting unusual emphasis on raising up their young elites?”

Yerin turned to him, suspicion on her face. “The Akura Sage said something with about the same shape to it. There's a competition coming, or so she said. It's why all those Truegolds were on the island.”

Mercy ran a hand across her shortened hair. She looked deep in thought. “If they sent Harmony and Aunt Charity to Ghostwater, then...I don't know if they'll involve you or not, but it does seem like the tournament is going to shake us up this year.”

Lindon still wanted to tell her exactly what had happened to Harmony. Or at least his role in it. But he wasn’t sure if she was afraid of being overheard or if she really didn’t care.

Still holding onto Naru Gwei's shoulder with one hand, Eithan reached out to lay a hand on Bai Rou. The Truegold Skysworn tried to dodge, but he might as well have stood still; Eithan's green gauntlet landed on top of his straw hat.

“Yet another reason why we can't afford to stifle the growth of such promising young talents!” Eithan said passionately. “Let us set aside the petty feuds of the young generation, and grow together for the good of the Blackflame Empire!”

It was a warm speech, but Naru Gwei spat the chewed-up remnants of his leaf at Eithan's feet.

Eithan smoothly slipped his shoe to one side and continued talking. “It's truly fortunate that I have come to support the Skysworn in your time of need, to raise our youth into responsible citizens and champions of the Blackflame Empire.”

“They have no loyalty to us,” Bai Rou said, eyes burning. “They are a weapon that will turn in our hand. They—”

Eithan cut him off by whirling on him and grabbing him by both shoulders. “Do you think I'd forgotten you? What a paragon of a young Truegold you are! Even among the children of the vaunted Akura clan, how many of them could possibly have talent to rival yours?”

Mercy started to speak up, but Eithan waved her to silence without turning from Bai Rou.

“How could you focus on this tiny grudge? It's beneath you! Let me take these children out of your way,” he turned to Naru Gwei, “and yours. I assure you, I will keep my sharpest eye on each of them.”

Dross spoke up. [Say, here’s an idle thought: do you think you could take me out of your head and put me in his? Not that I think he's better than you, or anything. Of course not. But uh...could you think about it?”]

Lindon wasn't actually sure if he could separate himself from Dross at all, but he started thinking very hard about pulling Dross out of his spirit and putting the construct back into a gem. Then dropping the gem into the ocean, where it would sit for decades.

Dross coughed. [Just a little joke. You know, a sense of humor would make you more popular. Maybe then people wouldn’t stare at you in the hall.]

“No,” Naru Gwei said to Eithan. “I trust you least of all. If I use them, I'll be splitting them up and stationing them in different cities.”

When Eithan spoke, his words reverberated in Lindon's spiritual sense like a gong. “I, Eithan Arelius, hereby swear on my soul that if I am allowed to take these young sacred artists as my Skysworn squad, I will do everything in my power to lead them to their own benefit and the benefit of the Blackflame Empire.”

His voice continued to echo, and Naru Gwei looked stunned. Eithan's smile crept upward, and he added, “In addition, I will follow your lawful orders in the course of my duties, and...” He paused for maximum effect. “...I will personally spend no more time in your presence than required.”

“Deal,” Naru Gwei shouted immediately, as though he feared the moment would pass. Their spirits both quivered, so that even Lindon could sense it, and Eithan spread his hands and his grin wide.

“Brilliant! Easy enough. Ladies, gentleman, turtle, if you will follow me, I believe I am now obligated to give our honorable Captain some space.”

Yerin looked around the room, then pulled her Goldsigns close to her back. She shook her head, a smirk on her face, and walked from the room.

Orthos chuckled and said something to Eithan, butting the side of his shell up against the Underlord's hip. Eithan laughed and rested his hand on the turtle’s head, and the two of them walked out as well.

Mercy looked bewildered, but she bowed to both Naru Gwei and Bai Rou before leaving, using her staff like a walking stick.

Lindon made sure he was the last to leave the room.

He was watching Naru Gwei, who melted into his chair with a sigh of absolute release.

Bai Rou spoke up. “He got exactly what he wanted,” the Skysworn said, his deep voice laced with anger. “You let him—”

The Underlord slapped the table, letting out a loud bang. He left an indentation of his hand pressed into the wood.

“Bai Rou,” he said, “shut up. Just...shut up.”

4

Only a day later, Lindon found himself with a new set of armor inside a Skysworn training facility. The room was a stone box reinforced by scripts to withstand the high-intensity sparring of Truegolds, and targets and training weapons leaned up against one wall while benches lined the other.

Yerin staggered stiffly in the middle of the floor, trying to bend her arms. The green armor sat on her like she’d been encased in stone, and she stomped around as though she had weights tied to each limb, her Goldsigns sticking out from the back. They had worked together to find adjustable panels on the back that could be removed in order to allow her sword-arms the freedom to move.

“It's like locking myself in a box,” Yerin grumbled. She tugged at her collar, but the leather padding of the interior was stiff. “If I have to fight in this, at least I'll be wearing my own coffin.”

Mercy propped one leg up on a bench, doing a few quick stretches in her armor. She actually looked more comfortable in the green plate of the Skysworn than she did in her normal clothes, and she looked pleased while patting her armor. “How do I look?” She straightened up from her stretch, transforming her staff into a bow and striking a pose.

With a sound like tinkling glass, Little Blue applauded. Mercy bowed to the spirit, and Yerin shot her a jealous look.

“This is the only sensible thing I've seen any human wear,” Orthos said. “But it does leave your head unprotected.”

Lindon hadn't put on a single piece of his armor, though he wore the tight-fitting cloth suit that you were supposed to wear beneath it. He was sitting nearby, flipping through the armor's manual.

He tapped a page. “There are defensive constructs in the armor that cover the head. That's the real defense, more than the armor itself. And there are protective scripts circling the neck.”

Orthos snorted. “Too complicated.” He slipped his head into his shell and back out. “You see how simple this is?” His head disappeared and re-appeared again. “The simple solutions are best.”

Lindon flipped the page, running down the list of optional accessories. “Oh, you can order a helmet, you just have to pay for it yourself.”

The armor was interesting. Ever since seeing Renfei die to a single attack from Akura Harmony, he had looked down on Skysworn armor, wondering what it actually did to protect its user.

It could do quite a bit. It came with a dream construct that could transmit messages, a Thousand-Mile Cloud contained in a compartment on the back, a triggered defense in the form of a wind barrier, passive defenses in the form of scripts that weakened hostile madra and spiritual attacks, and a long list of additional options that could be added by the Skysworn Soulsmiths.

However, he could see the limitations easily. For one thing, each of those constructs had to be powered. If it drew on itself for power, it would only last for a few days before needing replaced. If the sacred artist fueled the constructs, their madra had to be compatible. Even so, the armor would need near-constant maintenance, and the more options it had, the more expensive it would be to maintain. He suspected most Skysworn would have as few constructs in their armor as possible, and would activate them only rarely.

As for Akura Harmony's attack...

[Harmony used the Shadow’s Edge technique,] Dross said. [It's a Striker technique with shadow and sword aspects, and it cuts on the spiritual level as much as the physical. Harmony could slice a single page out of the middle of a book with it, and if the target has a spirit? That’s even easier. It’s amazing! You should see what it can do to a person. Oh, I guess you have. And if I had been a tenth of a second later, you’d have seen what it did to your spine. Good thing I’m around, isn’t it?]

Lindon shivered and turned back to his armor. He didn't have to worry much about madra compatibility, so long as he only used his pure core to activate the armor's techniques, but pure madra maintenance was only better than nothing. He would need to have Fisher Gesha take a look; he already had some modifications in mind.

For one thing, the communication construct could go. Its range and efficiency were poor, and Dross could do the same thing faster and more clearly.

That left only the passive scripted defenses, the Thousand-Mile Cloud, and the triggered barrier of wind. He had a lot of room to add constructs of his own before they began to interfere with one another.

It would take huge amounts of madra to activate multiple constructs at the same time, but that was to be expected. For one thing, he didn't have to activate all the constructs at the same time.

For another, he had madra to spare.

He was working with the right arm of the armor, trying to see if it would work with his Remnant prosthetic or if the white arm would obstruct the scripts, when Eithan popped open the door.

“No horrific mishaps yet? Good, because the Skysworn require us to take on an assignment soon in order to complete our registration as a squad.”

Lindon hoped it wouldn't be too soon. They had only been back in the city for one night, and he wanted to enjoy hot meals and clean beds for a while longer. Besides, he hadn't gotten to talk with Yerin enough on their journey back.

“So how about right now?” Eithan continued. “I happen to have found a terrific opportunity nearby!”

Yerin groaned. Orthos huffed out smoke. Little Blue let out a sad little tinkling noise and slowly climbed out of Lindon's boot. Even Mercy sagged against her staff, giving a sigh.

[A terrific opportunity? I was going to say we should pass up a regular opportunity and take a day off to rest, but a terrific opportunity? How can we say no to that?]

A worm of guilt ran through Lindon's gut. How could he even think of taking it easy? He had a long road to travel, and he couldn't afford to be lazy.

But last night, he had woken up half a dozen times in a sweat, thinking he was in danger. It had been too long since he'd slept in safety. In Ghostwater, he had never felt truly secure, and now he couldn't shake the feeling.

Eithan clearly noticed the mood, because his smile turned sympathetic. “Believe it or not, I do believe rest is valuable. You have worked hard, and any weapon pushed to its limits for too long will break. However, time does not wait, so I'm afraid I must push you one last time.”

Lindon was sure this wouldn't be the last time.

“In return, I am an open book.” Eithan spread his hands. “What would you like to know from me?”

Before Lindon could even digest the opportunity, Yerin answered.

“Underlord,” she said simply.

There were many things Lindon wanted a straight answer about, but that was the most urgent. He agreed without hesitation. “If you could guide us to Underlord, I would be grateful.”

Eithan turned to Mercy and Orthos, as though waiting for an objection, but neither said anything. Mercy looked like she was bracing herself for bad news, but Lindon felt eagerness—though muted and restrained—from Orthos.

“Well, all right then! Underlord it is.”

Eithan stroked his chin as though organizing his thoughts. “There are three steps to reaching Underlord. Mastering yourself, mastering the world around you, and then connecting yourself to the world. It’s the third step that’s the most mysterious.”

What about soulfire? Lindon asked Dross.

[That’s the by-product of connecting to the world around you,] Dross said. [And don’t worry, I know everything about advancing to Underlord. But since my memories are all jumbled up and pieces of them are missing, let’s listen to him first, right? Just to make sure he knows what he’s talking about.]

Eithan continued. “First, you must open your soulspace, which involves reaching the peak of Truegold and controlling your madra completely.”

Lindon had understood that much already. Jai Long had reached that state after absorbing and digesting as much madra as he could.

“Second, you must weave soulfire from aura. Many would-be Lords and Ladies fail at this step, but I have some tricks that you may find useful.”

[Oh, that's not terribly hard for any real sacred artist,] Dross said confidently. Lindon's spirits lifted. [Or so Northstrider said.]

Lindon wasn't sure if that was reassuring or not. On the one hand, a Monarch would surely have great understanding of the sacred arts. On the other hand, they might have impossible standards. What was simple as lifting a hand for him might be an incomprehensible riddle for Lindon.

“And for the third and final step,” Eithan went on, “you must call upon your soulfire to re-forge your body. Sounds simple, doesn’t it? It’s not.”

[That’s what Harmony asked me about!] Dross said excitedly. [Not me, but me when I was part of the tree. You remember. He couldn’t complete the third stage and advance to Underlord, so he asked me how.]

What did you say? Lindon asked.

Eithan continued speaking, cutting off Dross. “Many Underlords don’t know the secret to triggering the soulfire transformation, reforging your body and tying you to the world around you. Even though they’ve passed it themselves, they don’t recognize exactly which insight made it possible.”

[Remembering is…hard. There was more of me before. But Harmony…I told him to put his life at risk, and all would become clear.] Dross paused a moment. [Why would I say that? That sounds like terrible advice.]

Well, at least that helped explain why Harmony was so set on fighting Lindon.

“It is a personal revelation,” Eithan said. “A true, deep understanding of yourself that causes the soulfire inside you to resonate with the aura around you, activating your advancement.”

Yerin looked thoughtful, crossing green-plated arms awkwardly, her Goldsigns hovering over her head. Mercy looked surprisingly grim, though Lindon couldn't see why, and wistfulness drifted over from Orthos' soul, as though he'd heard a story about something he wanted but could never have.

Little Blue peeped and ran back into Lindon’s pocket, curling up for a nap.

Lindon committed the process to memory, though he was sure he'd write it down later. What else do you know about reaching Underlord? he asked Dross silently.

The construct's voice was filled with longing. [Everything…or at least I did. It was like being a piece of all knowledge in the universe, all of it at once, and then it was like getting rudely torn away and tossed into some human's head. Which is, you know…great.]

Forgiveness. I did not intend to hurt you. Even the smallest fragment of what you remember could be helpful.

[...you're too serious, I know I’ve told you that before. I was only complaining.] Dross sighed. [Listen, you won't have any trouble with the first step. Not once you get your pure core up to standard. It's scrawny right now, a little wimpy, so you’re going to want to beef that up. Put some meat on those bones. Second step...well, not to brag, but I can handle that one. No problem. You have to sense the unity of aura, which is a lot easier with a mind-spirit in your head.]

This time, Lindon wished he could take notes, but he still didn't want to expose his void key to Mercy. Or to Eithan, for that matter.

He wanted to surprise Eithan when he would get a better reaction.

[The third step is the weird one. You’ll want to discover your reason for practicing the sacred arts.]

That’s it? How does my motivation change anything? He had experienced dream tablets left behind by Lords, and he could still imagine the feeling of channeling soulfire. He was sure that the secret to advancement was a soulfire cycling technique.

What did his knowledge of himself have to do with advancement? It almost didn’t feel like sacred arts at all.

[If my memories of Northstrider have taught me anything,] Dross said, [it’s that the sacred arts only get weirder.]

Eithan clapped his hands, staring off into space. “As it turns out, we're even more limited on time than I expected, so now that we're all armored up, I'm going to give you a choice.”

Lindon started hurriedly pulling his armor on. He would have to keep his right arm under control until he could script some longer-term safety measures into the suit.

Eithan tilted his head to the left. “We can go on some secret missions I've discovered that would be of great benefit to the Empire, or...” He tilted his head the other way. “...we can embark on the most efficient way I know to train you to Underlord. It's entirely up to you.”

“The missions!” Mercy said, raising her staff.

“Underlord,” Lindon and Yerin said at the same time.

Eithan gasped. “This is an amazing coincidence, because the most efficient way I have to train you requires us to earn a great deal of money. And the most profitable prospect available to us—” He held up a stack of papers. “—is to complete missions for the Skysworn!”

Orthos chuckled. Yerin gave Eithan a flat stare. Mercy looked excited. Little Blue let out a little whistling snore and curled up tighter in Lindon’s pocket.

Lindon asked, “What about the Arelius family?”

He knew that Eithan was restricted by what the family would allow him to spend, but surely the greatest source of funding available quickly would be from the Arelius family.

Eithan cleared his throat. “We're having a temporary disagreement of sorts. Suffice it to say that I do not have the same access to family funds that I used to.”

Lindon didn’t want to pry further, but his heart fell. Without the resources of the Arelius family, advancing would become that much more difficult.

“I’ve come across some good fortune in Ghostwater,” he admitted, though it speared him through the gut to be volunteering his spoils of war. “Works of art I…recovered…from a gold dragon. They aren’t any help in the sacred arts, but Orthos suggested we could sell them.”

He hated to give up money he could use, but if Eithan really knew of a way to advance them all together, then Lindon would contribute.

Eithan clapped him on the back. “Generosity! Truly, the disciple takes after his master. Now, we have to get going! Those sewer spirits won't blow themselves up.”

* * *

Yerin had worked for the Arelius family before, and she'd never say out loud that she missed it. Working for the Skysworn was much the same.

It was nice to have a mission and a purpose that was simple enough to complete. Sewer spirits formed out of corruptive, toxic aura, and grew until they could squeeze their way up into homes, eating pets and weak Remnants. Just had to track them down and dice them up, then track them back to their source. The Arelius family would have to clean up the mess at the center of it all, but the Skysworn existed to keep the peace in the sacred arts world. Dealing with spirits that got too strong was their job.

A few days after that, they chased down a circle of renegade Soulsmiths selling faulty healing constructs. They had hired a pack of Truegold sacred beasts as muscle, so that one ended up getting a little heated.

For ten more days, they recovered stolen weapons, hunted Remnants to replenish their Soulsmith supply, and guarded a farm from a group that the Soulsmith called bandits. They ended up being hungry locals, driven from their homes after the Dreadgod attack, who agreed to stop making trouble in exchange for a crate full of food.

In between everything else, they had to supervise the Emperor's latest decree. He had called every sect, school, and clan that mattered a notch to Blackflame City, and even Stormrock was drifting in that direction. They passed over caravans, cloudships, and processions of sacred artists heading to the capital, and of course a few holds and sects that didn't want to listen.

Intimidating stubborn Truegolds into following orders was a bright spot in her day. Wasn't too long ago that they could have swept the floor with her, and now they had to straighten up their spines as soon as she walked in the door.

Besides, now that Lindon had a proper spirit in him, he had a natural gift for sharp looks. It made her heart warm to see him make a white-haired elder choke using nothing but a black-eyed stare. The baby squirrel had finally left the nest and grown into a...well, squirrels never turned into anything scary. Call it an ancient sacred squirrel.

They had taken their first steps toward becoming a real team, too. Mercy had no problem taking care of Remnants or feeding the hungry, but she couldn't scare so much as a baby kitten. Orthos had no interest in anything complicated; he just wanted to know what to knock over. A turtle after her own heart.

Little Blue...still wouldn't touch Yerin.

That didn't bother Yerin. Why should it? The spirit looked so happy riding around on Lindon's shoulder, pointing out the scenery they passed, scampering up on his head to get a better look.

...maybe she should get a Sylvan of her own.

Everyone was working as a merry team except one. On his own, Eithan could have done as much as the rest of the squad, but he seemed happier to sit back and watch them. He didn't talk to the citizens, he didn't fight, he only pointed them in the right direction and watched.

Lindon didn't say anything, but Yerin could tell it was pushing him to the edge of a cliff. He tried every night to get Eithan to train him in pure madra techniques, but Eithan always said Lindon wasn’t ready.

Yerin couldn't imagine what he was waiting for, but he was starting to get on the wrong side of her, too. What right did he have to treat Lindon like that?

Though she had to admit that part of her was relieved. With Eithan's personal instruction, Lindon might beat her to Underlord.

What if he made it, and she never did?

They flew back to Starsweep Tower, landing and withdrawing their Thousand-Mile Clouds. Yerin still hated the armor, but having a cloud you could summon and dismiss at a thought was pleasing.

“Where's dinner?” Yerin asked, as soon as they hit the pavement.

Lindon carried the papers proving that they had completed their day's assignment—tracking down a pack of sacred bats and 'persuading' them to stop attacking the cloudships that came and went from Stormrock. He would turn the missions in for payment, then join the rest of them.

“Fisher Gesha is cooking for her family,” Lindon responded, flipping through the papers one last time. “She invited us over.”

“What has she got cooking?” Yerin asked. She wouldn't put it past the old woman to boil up a pot full of spiders.

“Apologies, I'm not sure. Crab, I think?”

Crabs. The spiders of the sea.

Yerin looked to Mercy and Orthos, hoping they would have other plans, but Orthos was still shivering on the ground, relieved to get out of the sky. Eithan's Thousand-Mile Cloud was the largest, so he had to haul the turtle every time, and Orthos still hated flying. Mercy gingerly patted the turtle's head, speaking in a soothing voice.

Finally, she turned to her last hope: Eithan. Who was already staring at her with a big grin on his face.

That was never a good sign.

“Why don't the rest of you clean up and head over?” Eithan suggested, slipping an arm between Yerin's Goldsigns and resting it on her shoulders. “I'd like to have a moment with Yerin, if she doesn't mind.”

Mercy agreed enthusiastically and then guided Orthos away, paying no attention to the rest of them. Lindon looked up from the papers, glancing from Yerin to Eithan's arm on her shoulders. Then he turned his gaze to Eithan.

Sometimes it was hard to tell what Lindon's face meant. Yerin couldn't tell if he was waiting for an explanation for an Underlord or if he was glaring. It looked like a glare, but then, it always did.

Eithan pulled his arm back and coughed. “I have a few remarks I would like to share with her. About her training.”

Now that was definitely a glare.

Eithan waved a hand at him. “You know I haven't forgotten you, just go get our pay. We'll meet you at the Fisher's.”

Lindon looked less thrilled about getting the money than he had before, but he trudged off toward the accounts office.

Once he was gone, Eithan ushered Yerin into a nearby meeting room. The tower was riddled with identical rooms, which Yerin had seen before; Skysworn used them for everything from interrogations to filling out paperwork to throwing parties.

Eithan shut the door...and, for a moment, actually looked a little embarrassed.

It was strange enough that Yerin wondered if she should draw her sword.

“If you recall,” Eithan began, “a long time ago, I promised to give you a present. It was something I picked up from the Desolate Wilds, and only recently has it become appropriate to give it to you.”

Yerin eyed him. She'd never expected Eithan to give her anything. Lindon had needed more of his attention, and they shared a Path anyway.

Eithan rubbed the back of his neck, looking sheepish. “Over the last few days, I have come to remember that I have not been a good mentor to you. You have your own Path and your own direction, so I allowed myself to forget that you need guidance as well. For that, I apologize.”

The Underlord actually bowed at the waist, pressing his fists together.

Yerin didn't know what to say. Seeing Eithan without his swagger was twisted and wrong. Like night falling at noonday.

“It's nothing worth getting all chipped about,” she muttered.

Eithan straightened up, beaming again. “Excellent! I intend for us to stick together until we're slapping Monarchs and juggling Dreadgods, so it would be a waste to fall to a misstep now.”

“Right, well, I intend to walk to the nearest gambling hall and win every game all at once.” She extended a hand. “Never mind. You've got something for me?”

She couldn’t hope for too much. Eithan liked to talk big, and sometimes he even convinced her, but in the end he was only an Underlord. Saying that he wanted to bring them all to the level of Heralds or Monarchs was like saying he wanted to pull the sun out of the sky and stick it in his fireplace.

She and Lindon could at least stick with him until he failed.

Eithan looked into her eyes and smiled at what he saw there, which irritated her all on its own. He reached into his outer robe and pulled out a small bag, which clinked as he tossed it to her.

She plucked it from the air and glanced inside. Three stones, smaller than her fist, each covered in scripts. Otherwise, they couldn’t have looked more different: one of them was a chunk of crystal, one looked like it was made of dull rainbows, and the third was a smooth scripted river-stone. She scanned them with her spiritual sense—lightly, so they didn't activate—to confirm that they were what she thought.

“Dream tablets,” Eithan said, which told her nothing about how useful they were. That was like saying they were 'books.'

“Two of them, I took from the Transcendent Ruins. One is from a researcher who examined the Bleeding Phoenix directly, and the other is from the man who would become the Sage of Red Faith. They're his experimental Path notes as he learned how to cultivate his Blood Shadow. The third I added myself: it's the Arelius family library's analysis on the uses of a Blood Shadow.”

Yerin narrowed her eyes. There would be a hook in this somewhere. That all sounded too good to be true.

Her spiritual sense slipped into one of the dream tablets, not enough to fully activate it, but enough to get a glimpse of what it contained.

She saw a drop of blood transform: into a tiger, a wolf, a woman, a sword. Now it joins a thousand other drops, ten thousand, an ocean...and that ocean spreads its wings and lets out a searing cry. The earth and sky are stained in blood.

She jerked her mind back, breathing heavily. Before Truegold, she would never have been able to process this dream tablet. A glimpse of it agitated her Blood Shadow; it took her a long moment to get it back under her control.

“You were just...hanging on to these?” Yerin asked.

“The Sage's tablet requires you to be at least Truegold and firm of mind to view it at all, and the other two contain techniques that are only useful once you have a certain spiritual strength and insight into your Blood Shadow.”

His smile brightened. “I hang on to a lot of things.”

Yerin hefted the bag, hearing the dream tablets clink. It excited her to think of everything she could learn from these, but she was still a little disappointed that this didn't have anything to do with the Path of the Endless Sword.

She didn’t want to rely on her Blood Shadow; she knew Lindon would use everything he came across, that was stone-certain. But her recent breakthrough in the Endless Sword technique had made her think that maybe she could follow in her master's footsteps.

“Looks like I owe you some thanks,” she said.

“Don't thank me yet,” he said, and winked. “Once you're a new Sage, then you can thank me.”

* * *

The underground chamber was cold and dark, lit only by the essence bleeding from a dying Remnant. Of all the prison cells Eithan had ever seen, this one ranked near the very bottom.

Eithan pulled a chair from his void key and sat down. As he waited in the darkness, he watched his students do battle over fifty feet above him.

His bloodline powers showed him the scene: Yerin and Lindon, both in their Skysworn armor, stood in the entrance of a shoddy bar. The patrons had scrambled to leave the second the Skysworn had shown up, some of them fading through the walls or crashing through windows. The place was now deserted except for the Skysworn and the half-dozen ragged murderers they had come to collect.

This small organization had taken advantage of the influx of strangers into the capital, drugging people in the bar overhead, taking them downstairs, and then killing them for their Remnants. Some of the Remnants they sold to local Soulsmiths.

Others, they had used for parts.

They had been very careful to only abduct those without any family or connections, so their operation may have gone unnoticed by the Skysworn had Eithan not passed by this street the day before.

Now, Yerin singlehandedly suppressed the room with the Endless Sword. Whenever one of them reached for a weapon, an invisible knife sliced across his skin. If one tried to move, chips of wood would fly up from a nearby table. Though she said not a word, the message was clear: she had them all prisoner.

Meanwhile, Lindon—his eyes blackened—instructed the criminals to stay quiet and to keep their madra under control. They were to be detained and brought to trial. Orthos loomed behind him, blocking the main entrance and adding weight to his every word.

Mercy, meanwhile, was perched on the building across the street. Her bow was drawn, a black arrow nocked, as she watched and waited for a fight to break out.

It would, Eithan knew. He could see the signs too clearly.

As the murderers shouted and threw themselves into the hopeless battle, he stopped paying attention. He reached back into his void key—by habit concealing it as reaching into a pocket—and withdrew a pipe.

He packed it and tamped it down as Yerin flew into the middle of the opponents, throwing them away from her with pulses of tightly controlled sword madra.

The Sword Sage had really stumbled across a buried treasure. If only he had survived, he might really have been able to pass on his unique Sage techniques to his student. Eithan would have to make sure he honored the man’s memory by serving his disciple well.

Though nothing ever went as smoothly as it should.

He’d meant for the dream tablets to be only one part of her gift. Nine or ten months ago, he’d commissioned Lezaar—the most accomplished refiner of the Arelius family—to craft him a very specific pill. But he had been ousted as Patriarch before the pill was finished, and hadn’t returned since. As far as he knew, the rare and valuable ingredients he’d put into making this miraculous elixir might have gone to waste. Or the pill might have been taken by someone who would never appreciate it.

He caught his frustration before it bloomed into anger, instead pulling out a scripted fire-starter and lighting the pipe. He didn’t need the fire-starter, strictly speaking, but he enjoyed using it. The script lit up one rune at a time as it spiraled down the wooden script, pulling in red fire aura as it did so, culminating in a burst of sparks when it reached the end. So satisfying.

With nowhere to go, the smoke curled against the ceiling. He turned his attention to Lindon.

He was relying almost entirely on Blackflame, using his pure madra as a backup, which was a shame. But he couldn’t handle Eithan’s techniques yet. Despite having practiced the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel for a year and a half, he did not have the madra reserves yet. Nor could his spirit handle them before his channels and core were reinforced by advancing to Underlord.

Of course, there were still other things Eithan could teach him about the use of pure madra. But he was spread out too thin as it was, trying to master two Paths, Soulsmithing, the madra in that arm of his, and the upgrades to his body and soul that he’d found in Ghostwater. By watching him move, it was obvious to Eithan that Lindon had found a way to enhance his mind, which had pleased Eithan enough to make him dance a little jig. Privately.

Eithan breathed out another mouthful of smoke. No, giving Lindon more to do would be counterproductive. What he really needed was time to adjust to the abilities he already had. But no matter how many times he told Lindon as much, Lindon took it as an excuse.

Aboveground, Lindon smashed through a shield of madra and hauled a Highgold murderer up by her collar. Orthos stomped down on a man who tried to flee, Mercy put an arrow through a hand that tried to stab Yerin in the back, and Yerin sliced a spear in half.

He smiled around the pipe. They moved with a confidence beyond their age. He couldn’t have been prouder of them.

And he couldn’t wait to see where they went from here.

Only one of the murderers escaped; the lookout. Eithan’s students had never seen him. He had waited underground, veiled and peeking through a trapdoor. After seeing the Skysworn devastate his partners, he had scurried downstairs, pulling a scripted seal from his pocket.

He was muttering to himself, a crazed smile on his face, as he approached the vault. His last resort. Eithan could see the thoughts written on his face: he was going to release their secret weapon. The puppet construct they had created for emergencies. Stitched together from Truegold Remnant parts, it had not been crafted by a true Soulsmith, and as such it was all but uncontrollable. He couldn’t direct it; he could only unleash it.

The murderer placed the seal against the vault door, and the greater script on the door shone brightly. Interlocking metal gears began to turn, and the door slowly ground open.

The man laughed triumphantly as the vault was revealed, but his laughter slowly faded.

He stood face-to-face with Eithan, who sat on a padded chair in his Skysworn armor, calmly smoking. Behind him, a monstrous puppet-construct continued to dissolve into motes of rising light.

Eithan blew smoke into the man’s face.

5

A few busy days later, Lindon and the rest of the team landed on Starsweep Tower to find Cassias Arelius waiting for them.

He was flanked by two Truegold Skysworn, who must have escorted him to the top of the tower, but his bearing made them look like his attendants rather than his guards. He was only a few years older than Lindon, his curling hair the same blond as Eithan’s. Rather than sacred artist robes, he wore a pressed shirt and pants of dark blue with silver trim, and he stood straight as Starsweep Tower itself. His hand rested on the hilt of a thin, silver sword that he wore at his hip.

He glared at Eithan as the team landed, but he still spared a bow for the others. “Lindon, Yerin, Orthos. It has been too long. Your squad leader has been ignoring my messages.” He shot another angry look at Eithan as he turned to Mercy.

“I apologize, young lady. I am Cassias Arelius, and if you’ll forgive me, I’d say you must be Akura Mercy.”

“Pleased to meet you, Cassias!” She bobbed an unsteady bow. “Thank you for lending us your Patriarch. He’s always taking us to interesting places.”

If Yerin had said the same thing, it would have been sarcastic.

Cassias looked surprised, and glanced over to Lindon and Yerin. “Yes, ah, that brings up what I’m here for. But first, Lindon and Yerin, you’ve…advanced. Of course you have. Congratulations to both of you.”

He didn’t sound congratulatory, but weary, as though he suspected Eithan of pushing them far too hard. He had expressed concern for them before.

But Yerin accepted his praise proudly, straightening her spine and lifting her chin, her sword-arms extending.

Lindon bowed to Cassias in response. “Gratitude. We have been fortunate.”

“I truly hope you’re taking care of yourselves. Both of you. But I’m here because you haven’t taken our Patriarch away from us. Eithan forfeited that title months ago.”

Lindon shifted uncomfortably, stealing a glance at Eithan. Yerin was staring at him openly, waiting for a response, and Mercy made a face that suggested she’d rather not be hearing this. Orthos let out a long breath of smoke, and through their bond, he felt resigned. Like he’d heard his most troublesome child had caused a problem once again.

Eithan looked unconcerned, smiling gently as the wind pulled his long yellow hair behind him. He wore the emerald armor of the Skysworn more naturally than any of them, and Lindon had wondered more than once if he’d had the shape modified for style.

“I’ve been making the most of my freedom since you stripped me of my position,” Eithan said. “Making the Empire a better place one locked-up smuggler at a time.”

Cassias stepped forward, looking ready to draw his sword. “I did not strip you of anything, the branch heads did, and I took it on myself to inform you. And they had good reason. You don’t do your job, Eithan! They cut off your funding and authority to force you to come back and face the family. The Emperor himself allowed it! And we’ve heard less from you than ever!”

Eithan’s smile grew tight. “You don’t think we could do this somewhere more comfortable?” The sun was setting, and the wind was growing uncomfortably cold.

Cassias threw up his hands. “I think you’ll run off! I’ve spent the whole season trying to track you down, and now I think you’ll disappear if I take my eyes off you for an instant! You always do that!”

He did tend to do that a lot, Lindon realized. Though he appeared out of nowhere even more often.

“Very well, then,” Eithan said, and suddenly he radiated a presence that Lindon had only felt from him a handful of times before. It had nothing to do with the power of his spirit, which was still veiled. It was more subtle than that; a sense of authority, as though he was suddenly possessed by the Remnant of a king.

“When I arrived from the homeland,” Eithan said, “I agreed to take over the Patriarch position for the Blackflame branch of the clan, but I also made it clear to your father that I had plans and goals of my own. His memory is short, for only seven years later, I find that he is dissatisfied with my level of service. Very well, then. Let it be as though I never traveled through that gate.”

His blue eyes were cold. “If you cannot trust me, then leave me to my own devices.”

Cassias actually did draw a few inches of his sword, releasing the power of his spirit. It was only then that Lindon noticed that he’d advanced; he was a Truegold now.

Though, Truegold or Highgold, it was still suicide to throw himself at Eithan.

Cassias shoved his sword back harshly, but his words carried his fury. “Trust you? Why?”

His spirit was still unveiled, and he walked straight up to Eithan, unafraid, until they stood only a hand’s breadth apart. Eithan was three or four inches taller, but Cassias stared him down. “You tell us that what you’re doing is in the best interests of the family, but how are we supposed to know that? Do you know what it’s like to have to take something like that on faith? Truly, I mean it, do you even know? Do you know how frustrating it is to not know everything?”

Their blue eyes clashed for a long, frozen moment. Lindon knew they weren’t closely related, but at the moment, they looked like brothers.

To Lindon’s surprise, Eithan was the first to soften.

The intangible sense of authority faded. His shoulders slumped, and he raised an armored finger to rub his nose.

“That…is…a…painfully valid point,” Eithan finally admitted.

Cassias did not relent. “Come to the family elders. Most of them are on their way here. You can meet them before the Emperor’s deadline.”

Lindon and the team had spent much of their time over the last few weeks supervising the caravans of people traveling to Blackflame City to make the Emperor’s two-month timeline. He had called upon all major factions to send their best, especially their strongest and most talented disciples.

Lindon was vague on the details because the decree itself was. The Emperor did not see fit to explain his motivations to his Empire…or, at least, not in a publicly distributed command. Lindon gathered that the Blackflame Empire had gathered for a selection process, probably one associated with the international tournament coming up, but he had little to go on other than that.

Eithan probably knew the details, but that was to be expected.

“I will not meet with them,” Eithan said, holding up a hand to stave off Cassias’ anger. “But I will resume my duties as an Underlord. Not as the Patriarch, but I can produce scales and supervise the distribution of our personnel here in the capital. I know that we’re stretched to our limits with so many people in such a small area.”

Cassias took in a slow breath, then stepped back. “That will help. Thank you. But I have one further request.” He looked briefly at Lindon and Yerin. “It would help our standing greatly if our family could take one of the positions in the Uncrowned King tournament. We would be practically guaranteed to replace the Jai clan.”

“Uncrowned King tournament?” Lindon immediately repeated.

Yerin’s eyes widened. “Bleed and bury me, that’s the competition everyone’s all riled up about? I don’t even believe the Blackflame Empire can afford a seat to watch that tournament.”

Mercy looked to Yerin in surprise. “You’re familiar with it?”

Eithan smiled. “That doesn’t surprise me. Her master famously made it to the top eight three tournaments ago.”

“If the sun fell from the sky and landed on your head, would that surprise you?” Yerin asked.

Eithan pondered for a moment before answering, “Yes.”

Cassias took over the explanation. “The Heart Sage is choosing three Underlords from the young generation to represent the Akura vassal states in the tournament. I suspect Eithan—”

“—already has his candidates picked out,” Eithan said, throwing out his arms. “If it all works out, I’ll be able to provide all three candidates. And two of them officially have the name ‘Arelius,’ so it still looks good for us.”

Lindon and Yerin traded glances. He was clearly pointing to them, and they had been adopted into the Arelius family.

Cassias’ eyebrows raised. “Three?”

“Three?” Mercy repeated.

Eithan met her eyes and smiled. “Three,” he said. “…if everything works out, as I said.”

Cassias was quiet for a long moment, staring at Eithan and drumming his fingers on the hilt of his sword.

At last, he said, “I suppose I’ve taken everything else from you on faith. One more time won’t kill me.”

* * *

Two months since the Emperor had called for all the young Truegolds in the Empire to travel to the capital, Blackflame City was packed.

In his emerald armor, standing on a broad raft of cloud, Eithan led their pack. Orthos huddled behind him, head withdrawn, and Lindon could feel his nerves.

Mercy and Yerin followed afterwards, Mercy straddling her bow, and Yerin standing on a Thousand-Mile Cloud of her own. They all wore the green armor of the Skysworn, though Yerin looked no more comfortable in hers than she had two months ago.

Little Blue sat on Lindon’s collar, snuggling against his chin, though she was almost too big to do that anymore. She chirruped to him like a spirited bird.

Somehow, Lindon thought she was talking about the view.

[What? That's insane. Could you really? I don’t think you could,] Dross responded. Then he lowered his mental voice. [She's a little too enthusiastic about flying, don't you think? You should watch her so she doesn't jump.]

As nervous as Lindon had initially been about doing tasks for the Skysworn, he had ended up resting plenty over the last eight weeks. They often spent a few hours in travel to a simple job, and returned in time to eat, train, and sleep.

Now that the Skysworn weren't treating them like prisoners anymore—at least, not usually—he was enjoying the life. Even Yerin wasn't pushing for them to do anything more adventurous; she seemed to enjoy this period of relaxation as much as he did.

Today, Lindon let the chill of the early spring wind wash over him, warming himself from the inside with Blackflame madra. He still hadn't added anything to his Skysworn armor yet; he and Fisher Gesha were still studying it. Maybe they could arrange a heater with fire madra.

Their squad drifted away from the floating city of Stormrock, which had arrived over Blackflame City almost a week before. Lindon looked far below him at the capital of the Blackflame Empire.

It was surrounded by sharp, jagged walls of fractured obsidian so large that he wondered if they classified as mountains. Smaller gates had been carved through the walls all around, but the main gates rose as high as the walls themselves. Each gate was flanked by a towering statue in the same black stone: one, an Emperor with a crown and a long tail. He balanced a carved flame on one extended palm. This long-past Emperor stood facing his counterpart, an Empress with a similar crown and long tail, an identical flame on her palm as well.

Together, this Emperor and Empress stood watch over a city that dwarfed anything Lindon had ever seen. It was hard to determine distances from high up on Stormrock, but the imperial capital might have been the size of the entire Sacred Valley.

And every inch of it was crammed with people.

The crowds spilled out from every gate, backed up in lines miles long. An ocean of people battered against the walls like waves, waiting to filter into the already-teeming city.

There were plenty of Skysworn missions to go around, now that they had arrived at the packed city. So much population packed into a small space was a recipe for disaster, and the Skysworn were in high demand. Normally, Eithan allowed them to select their own assignments and lead the way when completing them.

This time, he had gathered them without telling them where they were going.

They flew in the icy wind, trusting Eithan to lead them to a destination only he knew. That was enough to make Lindon suspect they were heading somewhere unspeakably dangerous.

When they were a few miles out from the city walls, away from the roads, Eithan pointed to a cluster of hills. “We're setting down over there!” He went on about the lovely rolling grassland, but the wind swallowed every other word he spoke.

When they finally landed—to Orthos' great relief—and withdrew their Thousand-Mile Clouds, they were left standing on a grassy hill among many grassy hills. They could see Blackflame City off in the distance, the Emperor and Empress still peeking out over the hills, but there was nothing else for miles.

Eithan looked into the air as though he was watching the vital aura, though Lindon opened his Copper sight and saw nothing but the expected ribbons of color representing wind, earth, and life.

“Perfect!” Eithan said at last. “We arrived a little earlier than expected, but better early than never, as they say. Now, listen to me carefully, as we don't have much time.”

Little Blue chattered in his ear and pointed. Lindon followed her gesture and looked up.

In the distance, swirling around the clouds, was a silver-and-violet speck. He didn't need to see any greater detail to know it was an owl.

[That's not the same one,] Dross said confidently. [I can tell. No, wait...no, it is the same one. With those wings? One hundred percent sure. Hm. Wait...]

Lindon wanted to bring up the owl, but Eithan had continued talking. “Now, when the massive pillar of darkness erupts in front of us, run into it. You're going to have to fight the urge to run away.”

Mercy's grip tightened visibly on her staff, and her spirit suddenly felt disordered. Lindon was standing behind her, so he couldn't see her face, but he thought he sensed a dangerous pressure from her. “...a pillar of darkness? How did you hear about this?'

She didn't sound so cheery anymore.

Eithan gave her a knowing smile. “See for yourself!”

A deep thrum shook the earth, as though the hill on which they stood was a plucked string. From all around them, stone monuments covered in rings of script blinked into existence, embedded into the earth without disturbing it, as though they’d always been there. The closest one was only a few feet away.

[Ah!] Dross shouted. [Are those...were those there before? Did you see those before now? Are your eyes working all right?]

There were dozens of obelisks all over the hills. To Lindon, it looked like they formed a vast circle a mile or more across, and they were standing only a few feet outside the perimeter.

With a sound like the breath of a giant swallowing the clouds, a wall of darkness blasted up from the ground. The darkness was contained within the monuments, shooting up into the heavens, a perfectly black column of madra and light-devouring power that covered up half of Lindon’s view. Everything behind him was lit by a bright sun, and everything ahead of him consumed by night.

Eithan had been right: Lindon's instincts told him to run, but he cradled Little Blue in one hand and started running.

[Let's wait and think about this for a second,] Dross said. [I'm sure we can come up with a dozen reasons to...you're not listening. He's not listening to me.]

Yerin had stared in shock, sword drawn, bladed Goldsigns spread wide. Lindon grabbed her free hand and pulled her forward. She caught his momentum and started running.

Mercy wasn't running, but she also hadn't hesitated. She marched toward the column, and when Lindon finally passed her, he glanced back to see that her face showed cold determination.

Orthos, by contrast, had shot off running in the other direction.

It seemed Eithan had anticipated that, because instead of entering the tower of darkness himself, he had grabbed the turtle's shell with both hands and shoved him back into the night.

As Lindon rushed into the dark, a crushing weight pressed down on his spirit, but he braced himself as he had when running into the dark ocean of Ghostwater. Gritting his teeth, he plunged inside.

* * *

By the time Emperor Naru Huan sensed the massive pillar of darkness, he was ready.

Today was the promised day. He stood on a balcony at the top of his Imperial palace in Blackflame City, waiting for the signal he'd been promised by the Akura family. This was it, and there could be no mistake.

He walked out to the edge of the balcony, to get a better view of the column. He gestured with his wings, and he didn't need to extend his senses to know that his servants would be going to spread his orders.

By that gesture, he had summoned all the leaders of the major factions from all over the Empire. They had gathered here in the capital for this event, and he would need to give them their instructions soon.

As he stared at the mile-wide tower of shadow madra rushing into the sky, he saw a familiar chariot racing across the sky, pulled by horse-Remnants with shining violet hooves. The Akura family chariot came to a stop over the palace, and the Sage of the Silver Heart stepped onto the top of her chariot.

With her emergence, the sky turned purple.

The blue of the sky was stained as though someone had spilled paint, slowly spreading until the Akura family colors filled the heavens. Over the capital, a symbol was traced in shining white light: the Akura family crest. One great star flanked by two smaller stars, all three floating over a mountain range. Projected as it was, the stars looked real, the jagged mountains drawn in starlight themselves.

Charity began to speak, and while Naru Huan was close enough to hear the voice from her own lips, every word was also transmitted from the massive symbol overhead. It boomed out so that she could be heard across the city, and likely for miles around.

In the voice of heaven, the Sage spoke. “The darkness before you is a gate. It leads to a sacred land of opportunity, but for this opportunity, you must fight. Our family—”

That titanic voice hesitated.

“—our family requires the strongest of the young generation to fight for us. To bring honor to humanity, fortune to your Empire, and glory to yourselves...”

She went on, but Naru Huan knew why her voice had faltered.

She'd sensed the same thing he had a minute before, when he'd extended his perception at the appearance of the towering darkness. She had felt it a little later than he had, and her surprise had been enough to interrupt her planned speech.

A small handful of people had been waiting at the base of the portal. They had rushed into it as soon as it had appeared.

Upon seeing a massive pillar of black that stretched from the earth to the sky, who would willingly walk into it? Only someone who knew what it was and where it would appear.

Naru Huan's lips twitched into a smile.

Akura Charity continued. “Beyond this gate lies the Night Wheel Valley, which is filled with valuable treasures and great opportunity...but also great danger. We are seeking young Truegolds who wish to break through to Underlord, and young Underlords who wish to increase their power. Travel to our garden, and let your spirits grow.”

Naru Huan was still listening, but his thoughts had raced ahead of him. His servants would gather the Blackflame Underlords, who would bring all their servants and most promising students.

At first, they would enter the portal and gather all the benefits they could from the other side. He hadn't been able to learn much about the Night Wheel Valley, but if it was valuable enough for the Akura clan to consider it a treasured territory, even an Overlord like himself might get some benefit out of it.

But eventually, they would have gathered everything they could safely. For that, they had to prepare defenses.

Because there was an opponent in this game.

* * *

The elite of the Seishen Kingdom had gathered together in the Highborn Gardens to listen to the Sage speak. They were surrounded by carefully cultivated natural beauty: waterfalls spilling over carved miniature mountains, splashing into crystal-clear pools filled with bright fish. Trees with flower-bright leaves of orange, red, or pink provided shade for cushioned tables, around which the richest and most powerful in their kingdom shared sweet wine.

There was a forced cheer to the atmosphere, as everyone pretended not to mind that the sky had turned purple, and a heavenly voice was decreeing their fates from a massive triple-star crest.

Prince Seishen Kiro waited at the largest table, too nervous to touch his drink, though it gave off a tempting scent of berries and sunshine. That glass cost more than his monthly stipend, and had been poured only for a special occasion, but he couldn't appreciate it.

Kiro's father, King Dakata, munched merrily on cakes and tiny pies, only occasionally glancing up to the sky. He had committed to this casual pretense more than anyone. Dakata had united this kingdom through the force of his own personal sword, and he looked like it: he was built like a castle wall and reminded Kiro of an aging bear.

Kiro had inherited his father's size, but fortunately he had a somewhat more graceful appearance. He thought so, at least.

His little brother Daji, seated a little further down the table, looked more like a wolf than a bear. A bad-tempered wolf. He slumped down in his chair, glowering at the Sage. More than anything else, Daji craved combat, and he never did anything to hide that.

Not that the Sage of the Silver Heart would care what any of them looked like. From heights like hers, the Underlord princes of a small kingdom were nothing more than beetles crawling on the ground.

“...go forth, for the future of the Seishen Kingdom...and for glory,” Akura Charity finished.

She spoke without the passion Kiro usually associated with speeches, but there was something about the weight of her delivery that made her words effective. A cheer rose from the tables around him, led by his father, who brushed crumbs from his hands in order to clap.

Kiro joined in, though he had given the actual announcement less than half his attention. He understood enough to realize that only honor would bind them once they were actually in the Night Wheel Valley. He was focused on that distant moment.

But now the Sage's carriage drifted down, coming to land on the hill between a nearby pond and the royal table. Charity herself was still standing on top as the sky cleared, turning blue again.

Kiro's stomach clenched. He had hoped she wouldn't come to address them directly. This was nothing but an opportunity for his family to embarrass themselves; what could they say to a Sage?

Dakata rose, beaming, his arms spread as though for a hug. “Brilliant, Silver Heart, just brilliant! I have waited for an opportunity to show our worth to you ever since I took the crown!”

Purple eyes took him in and passed over the rest of the table.

The King chuckled. “As expected of a Sage! You see right to the heart of the matter.” To Kiro's embarrassment, his father walked around the table and clapped a hand on his shoulder. “This is the Underlord who will do you proud in the tournament! I can't say for sure he'll keep up with the young disciples from your family, but if he's not the strongest Underlord of his generation in the vassal states, I'll eat my sword!” Dakata threw his head back and roared a laugh, as though he assumed everyone else would laugh along with him.

A few people chuckled politely.

Daji glared. He was two years younger than Kiro, but the fact that he was only Truegold burned him. He pushed himself too hard to catch up, and he seemed to take Kiro’s every step forward as a personal insult.

Kiro forced a smile at his father’s words, feeling a surge of guilt. He wasn't even the strongest of the young Underlords within ten feet.

“Please excuse my father,” Kiro said smoothly. His training didn't go away even when he wanted to crawl in a hole and hide forever. “He is grateful for the chance to serve you, as are we all.”

Akura Charity glanced over him, then immediately pointed behind his shoulder. “Does that include the young Lady, as well?”

It would be inappropriate to sigh in relief, so Kiro kept himself under control. Inwardly, he thanked the Sage for immediately seeing the truth.

The real strongest young Underlord in the Kingdom—and maybe among all the Akura’s vassal states—stood behind him, tending to the trees.

Riyusai Meira knelt at the roots of the red-leafed tree that gave them shade. She stroked a hand along its roots, massaging green light into the bark and whispering soothing words.

When the Sage addressed her, she shot up, gray eyes wide. Though she was only twenty years old, her hair was as gray as her eyes, her skin pale, and her clothes drab. She would have looked colorless if not for her Goldsign: vivid green vines and pink flowers that grew out of her head and wove in and out of her hair. Kiro knew some of their peers found the contrast disturbing, but he had always considered it beautiful.

After staring stiffly at Akura Charity for a moment, Meira threw herself bodily to the ground. “This servant does not dare to address the Akura Sage, but is grateful for the Sage's attention. It is the honor of her life to serve the first prince of the Seishen Kingdom.”

Kiro stared at Charity's impassive face, which looked even younger than his own. Mentally, he urged her to mention Meira.

Though the gardener didn't seem to care herself whether she was singled out or not. Her first concern was, and had always been, for him.

Dakata cleared his throat, stepping between Meira and Charity. “We do not have so many young Underlords that we can afford to overlook this...precocious Underlady, but her Path is intended for the maintenance of the palace grounds. This is the first time anyone of any power has come from her family, and while we are of course proud of her, my son's future growth is immeasurable.”

Kiro would have traded all that growth to the heavens for the guts to stand up to his father. This would be the time to say something; Dakata couldn't back down in front of a Sage.

Meira is a genius. Someday, she will defend the Kingdom better than I ever will.

Saying it might change Meira's future...but it also might change nothing. Maybe the Sage wouldn't care, and he would have infuriated and embarrassed his father for nothing. More importantly, he would have lowered the Seishen Kingdom's appearance in the eyes of the Akura family by contradicting his king in public.

He couldn't do it.

Akura Charity looked to Meira again, but to Kiro's disappointment, she said nothing. Instead, she turned to Dakata. “Your Highness, I need you to understand what is at stake here.”

Dakata grew serious, clasping his massive hands together. “My mouth is shut, and my ears are open.”

“The Monarch factions do not move quickly,” Charity went on. “The Uncrowned King tournament does not begin for fourteen months. However, I will make my selections before the first day of summer, so that I have time to personally prepare my recruits.”

Kiro’s heart leaped. The Sage’s personal attention was a valuable prize in itself. He saw Daji’s jaw tighten; undoubtedly his little brother was redoubling his resolve to reach Underlord.

With the instruction of a Sage, Meira would ascend to the heights she deserved. Kiro had to make sure she got that chance. And if they had only the remainder of winter and into spring, it meant they had five months. At most.

The Sage’s purple eyes were clear and direct as she looked at the King, as though she meant to impart a hidden message through her gaze alone. “The Night Wheel Valley will only remain open until the last day of spring, by which time I trust you will have reaped great benefits from its riches. It would also make my decision significantly easier if one party’s young generation were to demonstrate itself decisively superior to the other.”

Kiro read the implication clearly. Of course, his father didn’t miss it.

Dakata chuckled. “Ah, and who among the Blackflame Empire has caught the eye of the famous Sage of the Silver Heart?”

“How strange that you ask,” Charity said, tone dry. “In fact, there is a young man—a Truegold—who was recently involved in the death of my own grand-nephew.”

The other nobles around the table, who until now had done a grand job of pretending to be somewhere else, audibly shifted in their seats or took in a breath. Kiro’s little brother leaned forward hungrily; Daji would relish the thought of an enemy.

Dakata's expression darkened, and Kiro's chest grew tighter. He hadn't realized how volatile this situation really was. The Akura family making their vassals compete wasn't terribly unusual, and might not escalate to the kind of combat he feared.

But if one of the enemy had killed a core member of the Akura clan, under such circumstances that the Sage felt like she couldn't act directly...

“As you gather resources in the Night Wheel Valley, some clashes are inevitable,” Charity continued. “I do not expect to lose talented members of the young generation, but I’m sure both sides would benefit from a…spar. And I would, of course, watch the results of such a contest closely.”

Kiro didn’t see how he could possibly distinguish himself in a fight against a Truegold. On the surface, the Sage was simply using him to vent her frustrations on this Blackflame. But she was a Sage. There had to be more to it.

It sounded like this situation was a better fit for…

Daji stood up so fast that he almost knocked his chair over. He looked furiously eager. “A Truegold! He is mine. I will carve the difference between us into his body.”

Charity did not move her eyes from the King’s face. “That would not be appropriate. As I said, I wish not to lose talented members of the young generation.”

“I swear to you on the name of our family that I will leave him alive to regret crossing you.”

Finally, Charity turned to him. “I will make myself clear. If you face Wei Shi Lindon before you reach Underlord, you will surely die.”

They were in a wide open space, but her voice seemed to echo, hanging in the air long after the words should have faded.

Daji’s mouth fell open a little, his face showing pure, almost comical shock. He had never faced a worthy opponent of his own advancement level. The very idea seemed to have ground his brain to a halt.

Mentally, Kiro upgraded the Blackflame Truegold to an actual threat. If he was so much better than other Truegolds his age, then he could not be allowed to advance to Underlord.

“Say no more,” King Dakata said. “Describe him to my oldest son, and you have only to sit back and watch.”

Charity looked to Kiro, who stood up straight, focusing on the Sage’s chin. He was too afraid to look into her eyes. “As first prince of the Seishen Kingdom, I swear to serve you with all my ability.”

He felt Meira behind him. This would be his way of living up to her expectations. If they could both be selected by the Sage, then he would thank the heavens. If they couldn’t, he could push her forward.

He could not match her in the sacred arts, but at least he could do his duty.

6

The darkness blinded more than only Lindon's eyes. All his senses, his spirit, and his Copper sight shut down one step at a time. Little Blue trembling against his Remnant fingers vanished first, and then the feel of Yerin's hand in his. There was a rushing sound in his ears, until even that faded to silence.

The presence of the others—the subtle force of their spirits—faded away, until he felt more alone than he had since leaving Sacred Valley. He had never realized how much he relied on spiritual sense until now; even Orthos' existence in his soul disappeared.

It was like being Unsouled again.

His instinctive reaction was to panic, to flail around and grasp for what he was missing, but he restrained himself. If Little Blue was still in his hand, and only his sensation of touch was missing, he could crush her if he lost control of himself. If they had been teleported separately, then she would be safe either way. The important thing was to stay calm.

But with his senses stripped away, he hung in an endless abyss.

Completely alone.

[I don't know that I've ever been anywhere this dark before,] Dross said. [There's always something around that glows. It used to be me.] He sighed. [I miss glowing.]

Lindon seized on the company. Dross! Are we being taken somewhere?

[Oh, yes. Classic spatial transmission. Here's a funny story: when Northstrider first tried to develop transportation gates to and from Ghostwater, everyone he sent into them died! They just, pop, blew apart! Even the slightest error results in messy, horrible death.]

The darkness retreated, Lindon's senses fading back in with the smell of wet earth and the comforting sensation of friends all around. Little Blue had scampered out of his palm and up to his shoulder. She gave a long whistling sigh when she saw him again, throwing cold arms around his neck. Yerin's hand was still in his, and she squeezed tighter when she felt him there.

[Ah, there we are. Nothing to worry about, as I expected.]

They stood on a grassy field, staring down the length of the Night Wheel Valley.

It was well named.

The broad valley was shrouded in darkness, with black clouds covering any trace of the sun. Most of the dim light came from purple lightning flashes deep within the clouds, and the long grass at Lindon's feet blew in a wet breeze.

Like a hurricane, the clouds swirled in a slow vortex over the entire valley, with the glow of purple lightning most intense at their center. Lindon had to assume that was the Night Wheel.

The valley ran between mountains on the east and west. While the western mountain was largely blanketed in trees, the eastern mountain was absolutely covered by what looked like one massive castle of black stone. Crenellated walls rose in layers up the side, marked by towers that blazed with purple bonfires. Windows and arrow-slits throughout the huge fortification shone with orange or purple light—the orange seemed to come from natural fire, and the purple from runes. He could see a few script-circles burning purple even from this distance, and for him to see them at this distance, each rune must be the size of a horse.

The spiritual pressure coming off that massive building was overwhelming. It pressed against his spirit like a lurking nightmare, until Lindon wished he could return to the darkness he’d just left.

Most of the valley, like the mountain to the west, was covered in trees. He couldn't see the far end of the valley because of the trees, except for the tower of darkness that rose from the ground to the sky. It was identical to the one on their side, which caused Lindon to put a few pieces together.

If there was a gate, that meant someone else would be coming through it. Of course the Akura family wouldn't simply give them an opportunity; they had to make it into a competition.

The trees were difficult to see in the gloom, and upon further investigation, he could see that their leaves were black with faint lines of pulsing light running through them like veins. The bark was dark gray.

They reminded him of the trees in the Desolate Wilds, though those plants had been corrupted by some disease. These didn't feel unhealthy; they radiated a sense of life, like any other trees, but somehow muted. As though he hadn't entirely shaken off the suppression of the portal's darkness.

Orthos poked his head out of his shell, looking around. “It was a gateway?” He gave a loud humph and bit a chunk out of a nearby blackened tree. Even its wood was a pale gray. “You should have said so,” he complained, through a mouthful of splinters.

“Who has time for thorough explanations?” Eithan asked, then pointed to Mercy. “Now, Mercy, where are we?”

Mercy had set her jaw, her eyes fixed on the massive house to the east, her staff gripped firmly in both hands. “This is one of my family’s properties,” she said. “I didn’t live here, but it’s where I was trained.”

Suddenly, the massive spiritual presence in the castle took on ominous significance.

“Does that mean, in the house...” Lindon was afraid to finish the sentence. From what Mercy had said before, he suspected the Akura Monarch could sense her name spoken anywhere in the world.

“Maybe,” Mercy said grimly. “My mother doesn’t live here, but she visits from time to time. Her presence…lingers.”

She pointed with the dragon head on the end of her staff, and its eyes flared with violet light. “This valley is like our family garden. I used to cycle out here when I was a little girl. The vital aura here is strong, and we have every aspect you can think of.

“Of course, the strongest aura here is shadow. It covers everything.”

Lindon could already feel that was true. Everything was soaked in darkness, and it felt like a ghost was running fingers down his spirit. He already wanted to turn back.

“This place is full of natural treasures,” she continued, and Lindon immediately throttled the urge to leave. “It's where we grow them, so to speak.”

The air seemed to push against Lindon. He felt heavier, and simultaneously hotter and colder. That couldn't entirely be explained by shadow aura, so he opened his Copper sight.

And immediately regretted it.

A canvas of solid black pushed against his eyes, with lines of bright color burning against it. It was so stunning that it seared his spirit, and he cried out, hurriedly shutting his senses.

Yerin moved her hand to his arm, checking to see what was wrong, and Little Blue gave an inquisitive peep.

Dross hissed in sympathetic pain. [For you, looking directly at the aura here is like staring into the sun with your human eyes, so try not to do that. You probably could have used that warning a minute ago, but uh…lesson learned! Let’s call that a win for practical education.]

“The aura density here is far greater than it was in the Transcendent Ruins,” Eithan announced. “Cycling aura here will be much faster here than back home, which will make reaching Underlord that much easier! Half of the reason that Underlords are so rare in the Blackflame Empire is that the aura is so thin, reaching the peak of Truegold becomes difficult. So for us, the opportunity to train here is a treasure all its own!”

“That’s…more than nothing, but how about the real treasures?” Yerin asked.

“That is the correct question! Your first step is to reach the pinnacle of Truegold and open a soulspace. You can get there with time...or with money. This place is a treasure trove. We are the first ones here.”

Eithan didn't say any more, clearly waiting for them to take over. He didn't need to say anything; Lindon understood.

“Mercy and Eithan are the two guides,” Lindon said. “Split up, cover more ground. Orthos and I should be separated. Go to the closest source of treasure, clean it out, and send a signal through your armor when you have. Then we'll assign new hunting spots so we don't waste time covering the same ground...”

He realized he was giving orders. He had grown used to making the decisions for his little group in Ghostwater, and doing missions for the Skysworn over the last two months, Eithan had kept himself out of command. Lindon had often slipped into the role, but why? This was Mercy's home, Yerin was stronger than he was, and Eithan was the only Underlord.

Lindon flushed and looked down at the ground. “...unless anyone else has another suggestion.”

“We don't,” Yerin said, turning to Mercy. “Lead the march. You, me, and Lindon. The turtle can go with Eithan.”

“I look forward to catching up with my old friend Orthos!” Eithan said, leaping over to the sacred turtle. “And my old friend Yerin!”

Yerin stopped in place. “...what?”

“Every second we spend talking is a second we’re not stealing! Begone with you!”

So Lindon and Mercy headed off together, trying to pretend they didn't see Yerin staring dejectedly after them.

* * *

Delving into the forest was like plunging into a dark, icy cave. The wind howled through the trees, fire madra doing little to ward off the cold, and unseen things shifted and hissed in the shadows...perhaps the shadows themselves.

Mercy had lightened up as they ran through the forest, and now she looked around with fondness. “I used to go on picnics out here,” she said. “This way!”

In only minutes, she led them to the edge of a short cliff. The drop was only ten feet down, and they overlooked a clearing about fifty yards square. It radiated an aura so forbidding that it stood out even from the deep shadows of the forest around it; Lindon shivered and slowed as they approached the cliff, afraid to glance down.

But Mercy walked up and looked around without fear, so he followed suit. Beneath them, filling the clearing, was a small battlefield. Skeletons littered the ground, rusted weapons sticking out of the earth. At first, it looked as though armies had clashed here, but all the skeletons were facing the same way. So an army had been obliterated here.

Between the bodies were brown grass and petrified vines, as though nothing could survive entering the clearing. The whole scene was shrouded in shadow like the rest of the Night Wheel Valley, but a spectral green light gave the field of death an otherworldly glow. At first, he couldn't make out the source of that light.

“The Valley has been in our family for generations,” Mercy said, walking to a row of long spears that had been driven into the ground on the edge of the cliff. The spears were covered in scripts, and were connected to the ground by long coiled-up cables. Their spearheads were dull. “The aura is so strong here that every big event leaves a permanent mark. This is where the Nutarou family tried to storm our house, believing that the family of shadow-artists living there was just a myth to keep them off the land.” She lifted a spear. “Their Remnants are long gone.

“Now, it's filled with death aura.”

With one motion, she hurled the spear into the land below—the momentum of the throw caused her to stumble and almost fall. Lindon caught her by the green-armored elbow, and she looked up at him gratefully.

“Sorry. Still don't have my legs back.”

“Back?” he asked.

While waiting for her to respond, he watched the spear. It landed between the bones...and for the first time, Lindon noticed black spots covering the bones. They almost looked like beetles crawling over the carrion, though they weren't moving. Maybe more like barnacles.

As the spear drove itself into the ground, cable uncoiling behind it, the scripts on the weapon's shaft activated. Those black spots darted over to the spear's shaft like bits of iron pulled by a magnet.

“My Puppeteer's Iron body gives me great control over my movements,” Mercy said, springing into a handstand. And almost immediately starting to fall. “Or...it used to,” she said calmly as she toppled.

Wisely, she had moved away from the cliff for this demonstration, so flopping onto her back only kicked up some dust. “Having my coordination sealed was one of the prices for leaving home. With enough training, I'll get it back.” She sat up, brushing herself off. “Looking on the bright side, I've learned a new appreciation for physical training! My Iron body made things too easy. Would you light up that circle for me, please?”

The long cable connected to her spear on one end was tied to a stake at the top of the cliff. The stake was driven into a stone block with a script on it, and Lindon activated it.

Immediately, the cable came to life and started drawing the spear back. The spear, now covered in black spots and glowing with a hazy green light itself, was reeled back like a fish on the end of a line.

“Incredible,” Lindon said, as he watched the process. “The death aura is too strong to go down personally, so you bring the natural treasures to you.”

“Not just the aura!” Mercy said, popping to her feet. “There are Sylvan Graveseeds and other natural spirits down there, not to mention nasty Remnants that like the power of death. It's safer from up here.” She gestured to the long row of spears. “Most of the treasures growing in the valley have some system like this when it comes time for harvest.”

“What do your servants do with the natural treasures they...harvest?”

This Night Wheel Valley seemed too good to be true, like walking into a forest and finding that every tree was heavy with ripe fruit. The Akura family obviously lived here, so why didn't they make sure not a single treasure went to waste?

Mercy glanced over the cliff at the spear, which had almost returned. “A lot of it is sold or burned for soulfire,” she said, and Lindon made a quick mental note of that.

“But the rest of it is stored in a vault not too far from here until it's needed.”

“This vault,” Lindon said, “would it be open to...any members of your family?”

The spear rattled up the side of the cliff, pulled by the cable, returning to drive itself into the ground again. The cable landed in a perfect coil at the end.

Now Lindon could see what the barnacle-like objects were covering the spear's shaft: they were skulls. Tiny, black skulls, from some that would have fit on the end of his pinky to a few bigger than his whole thumb. Each of them glowed from within with a soft, unearthly green light, and they radiated a sense of fear and decay that reminded him distantly of destruction aura.

Mercy stopped, mouth open in the middle of speaking. She held up a finger, then lowered it. She scrunched up her face. “I, uh, well...it actually is, but I've been cut off from family resources. Although technically they're not allowed to help me, so they would be the ones...” Finally, she shook her head. “No, I can't. This is Aunt Charity's property. She wouldn't notice the loss, but she doesn't tolerate cheating. She only allows a break in her rules in order to keep things fair. Or if she thinks it would bring enough of a benefit to the family.”

[It sure is a good thing no one in their clan knows you left Harmony to die,] Dross said. [That's a relief, isn't it? Such a load off your mind.]

Lindon pushed that thought away and walked over to the spear. There were baskets next to each one, which he supposed was how the treasures were meant to be collected. But how to remove the skulls from the spear? Surely you weren't supposed to peel death treasures off by hand.

“There's a separate script-circle on the butt of the spear,” Mercy said. “I'd activate it at a distance if I...were...how did you do that?”

Lindon had placed his fingertips on the end of the spear, where the death aura was weakest, and activated the spear as soon as Mercy had spoken. By the time she'd suggested activating it at a distance, it was too late, and the tiny skulls were already tumbling to the ground.

The nearby basket inhaled them, presumably as the result of another circle he hadn't seen activate, and it filled itself quickly with green-and-black skulls.

He stopped with fingers halfway back from the spear, suddenly panicking. Was that even more dangerous than he'd imagined? It hadn't felt too dangerous.

“Golds can't get too close to death aura,” Mercy said, waving her hand near the basket to demonstrate. A few inches away, her arm jerked away as though it had been slapped, her fingers curling against her side. “The life aura in your body reacts automatically to protect you.” She squinted at him. “I wish I could take a closer look at you. I've never looked at your lifeline before, but it must be thick as an oak!”

That must be... Lindon began to think, and Dross finished his thought.

[That's right. Life Well,] he said. [Doing its job.]

“Ghostwater,” Lindon explained aloud.

She slapped his armored chest with the back of her hand, which had about as much impact as a leaf blown by the wind. “I'm so jealous! Getting to tour Northstrider's pocket world...it must have been incredible.”

A second later, her expression was bright again. “But the Valley has some sights worth seeing too. We should move on.”

Lindon looked back over the field of skulls. “There's so much here, though.” He wasn't familiar with the prices of natural treasures back in the Blackflame Empire, but he knew he was looking at a fortune.

“Natural treasures are sold in mixed sets,” Mercy informed him. “It's better to grab as many as you can. And there's an ancestral tree not far from here that weeps gold.”

Lindon snatched up the basket. “Lead the way,” he said. Then he deliberately opened his void key.

He left it open for a moment, making sure that she could see the savage-looking axe with the bone haft sitting within. Harmony's axe.

He was trusting her with two things, now—the existence of his void key and of Harmony's weapon. But if they were going to be gathering treasures together, she was going to learn about the void key sooner or later. He couldn't tell her to turn around every time he wanted to pack something away, and he certainly wasn't going to leave any empty space in his void storage that could be filled with valuables.

And if she didn't want him to discuss Harmony aloud, he could try to bring it up without any words.

She stopped as she saw the inside of the storage space, her stance softening. A cloud passed in front of her face.

“It's all right,” she said softly. “What's taken in battle is fairly won. If...someone...wants the weapon back, they will simply ask you for it. You won't be punished for having it.”

Lindon left the key open for a moment, waiting to put the basket inside. “Gratitude. That's good to know. But you...”

He trailed off. He wasn't sure how to phrase the question, especially not without using Harmony's name.

He just wanted to know how she felt.

“No problem,” she said. “I understand.”

But as she led the way through the darkened forest to the next site, her steps were heavy.

* * *

In the dream tablet, the Blood Sage—the Sage of Red Faith—manipulated his own madra. It was the same pattern as a basic cycling technique, but all tangled up in some places and reversed in others. Rather than waiting for the Shadow to feed on his spirit, he was funneling his own madra to it.

When you choose to channel your spirit yourself, the Sage's voice said inside her head, it contains your own will. In the short term, this will give the Blood Shadow more power over you, which is why the weak and simple will never even think to try it. But over a few short months, the Shadow will begin to act as a true shadow of yourself. A blood copy of your own spirit.

This is but the first step on the road to true power. As for the second...first, tap into your soulfire...

Yerin released the dream tablet, as she always did at that point. The second step of the Blood Sage's instruction was set of soulfire control techniques, which at that point were about as useful to her as a bird telling her how to fly.

She and Orthos had followed Eithan to a patch of the shadow-drowned forest where the trees were covered in mushrooms that softly glowed purple or dark blue. They didn't look like soft, regular mushrooms, but rather like they were made of crystal. They felt like stone, too, but they still gave slightly in her hands. Like they were squishy, but covered in a hard outer shell.

The light hardly pushed the darkness back at all, and the aura the mushrooms gave off felt...strange. She couldn't put her finger on it, and since she couldn't open her Copper sight to look at it, she didn't even try to guess. But Eithan assured her they were safe to touch, so she peeled them off the trees and dumped them into sacks that Eithan had packed in advance.

Each one of the hand-sized mushrooms was worth more than a decent cycling sword back in the Empire, so she was cramming her sacks full. But that didn't make the task any less boring, so she kept her mind focused on advancement.

Or, at least, advancing her Blood Shadow. Her own advancement was on a smooth track until she reached the very end of Truegold or Lindon ran out of his miraculous water.

“This would be a fine place for a dragon to find an adventure,” Eithan said. He and Orthos had been chatting non-stop since they'd left, and Yerin mostly blocked them out.

“Once I'm at the peak,” Orthos responded, “the quality of the aura will not matter to me. You know that. It's a sacred journey.”

“One that is traditionally taken with family,” Eithan said. He was leaning with his arms folded and his back against a tree, but mushrooms still drifted into his sack. She normally didn't question how Eithan did anything, but pure madra couldn't lift and move anything. Curious, she extended her spiritual sense to him.

Vital aura was moving the mushrooms physically. He was controlling them with some kind of Ruler technique. How? Pure madra had no...

The answer came to her at the same time as Eithan said it aloud. “One of the uses of soulfire, Yerin. It grants you weak control over any aura, though it's practically useless in battle. Nothing even close to a real Ruler technique.”

She should have realized. Her master had lit campfires and brightened rooms with the wave of his hand, and she had long ago gathered that it had something to do with soulfire.

Then again, he was a Sage. No matter what he did, she wouldn't have found it strange.

Yerin ran her thoughts lightly over her dream tablets, drifting quickly through their memories. They had a lot to say about soulfire as well; the second stage of the Blood Sage's instruction was using her soulfire to push her own life and blood aura into the Blood Shadow. That would cause it to take on a version of her physical strength, personality, and appearance.

She focused on his vision of a complete Blood Shadow, raised according to his method.

Others, weak of vision and will, keep their Shadows as formless, shifting weapons. Or they feed the Blood Shadow with the powers of sacred beasts, creating monstrous forms.

She could feel his contempt flowing through her, even as his words were accompanied by flashes of image and memory. If she dove deeper into the tablet, she would find herself drawn into the vision, but she kept half her attention on harvesting mushrooms.

Such techniques show a pathetic lack of commitment. Bestial or formless Shadows are easy to control, but how can they stand up to mine? I am the first to perfect the true form of the Blood Shadow: an absolute copy of myself, a second body, with my own powers and will. It is often said that a Blood Shadow counts as an extra ally in combat. Is this true? Not for the weak and uncommitted!

For the dregs, it is worth only as much as a sacred weapon. What a waste of a Dreadgod's power! No—only those who follow my path to the end can truly be called masters of the Blood Shadow. It is a partner of absolute loyalty, who can operate in perfect coordination with me because its thoughts are my own. Such a partner is worth more than simply one more ally. Together, we form a greater whole.

She wasn't only listening to his words, but his thoughts. The Sage of Red Faith knew his technique for raising a Blood Shadow was an unrivaled power. He believed himself truly invincible against anyone of the same advancement level.

But he was also a revolting slime of a man who would do anything, to anyone, for his own personal power. He would think nothing of bleeding a village dry if his Blood Shadow was a tad thirsty, so why would he care about giving the Shadow a mind of its own? Of course it wouldn't revolt against him. He gave it everything it wanted.

Yerin stared deeply into the mass of blood madra sleeping inside her soul, and once again she was filled with revulsion. And fear. If she got too weak, and the Shadow remained strong, it would wear her like a husk. Not a day went by that she didn't have to wrestle it down at least once.

“I thought my Path was over,” Orthos said to Eithan. Yerin was still only listening with half an ear, focused on her own spirit. “Now, I face decisions that I...did not expect.” He stretched out his neck, biting off a crystal mushroom the size of a human head.

“Not yet, you don't,” Eithan said, pulling out a pipe. He filled it from a pouch as mushrooms continued to slowly drift over his shoulder, but lit it with a scripted fire-starter. Now, if he could control fire aura using his soulfire techniques, why didn't he use it to light the pipe?

“Soon,” Orthos rumbled, and Yerin thought he sounded sad. “Soon,” he repeated.

Eithan patted the turtle on the shell. “Don't be so grim! You sound like you’re facing down the end of your life, but you’re practically starting it again. How many years do you think that Life Well gave you back? A century? Two?”

Orthos shook his head as though to clear it. “I'm losing myself. It's the shadows.”

“Enough to cast gloom on anyone,” Eithan said, taking a puff from the pipe. “Speaking of which...”

He glanced over to Yerin. “There's more than one tablet in there, you know. You have options. It's not as though you have to train your Blood Shadow in the same way Red Faith does.”

“That's clear as good glass,” Yerin said, walking over to a tree to snatch up a mushroom.

She'd glanced through all the tablets already.

There were three paths before her:

The most common was feeding her Blood Shadow primarily with blood madra. Usually in the form of scales. It would still leech from her a little, but it would eventually become little more than a mass of easily controlled blood madra. This was what the Sage called a “formless” Blood Shadow, and allowed the Shadow to be used essentially as a weapon. It was the most common and easiest to both control and create...and the Sage of Red Faith spat on those who chose that path, because he considered it the weakest.

The second method, and the one that Redmoon Hall often encouraged, was feeding the Blood Shadow with actual blood. The Shadow would absorb power and substance from the blood, eventually taking on a monstrous form. It was like storing a very solid Remnant or a vicious sacred beast inside her spirit. The Sage considered a bestial Blood Shadow to have its uses—feeding the Shadow exclusively dragon blood, for instance, would eventually result in a blood dragon that lived in her soul.

But he favored the third option. The clone. He had cultivated his Blood Shadow further along this path than anyone else, and now he was effectively two Sages in one body.

It only meant that Yerin had to give the Shadow a mind of its own.

She had to feed it not just her own madra, but her blood aura—the power of her body—and her life aura. The power of her life itself.

It required soulfire techniques to control those aspects of vital aura, since her sword Ruler techniques certainly wouldn’t do it. So she couldn’t make her final choice yet, even if she wanted to.

But the day was coming soon when she would have to choose. Feed it her own life and power, or settle for a weaker weapon.

“You could turn your Shadow into a weapon,” Eithan said idly. “Or a pet. Or a clone of yourself that will make you an unstoppable force of pure destruction.”

“Hard work is quiet work,” Yerin said.

“Take your time deciding. Just because two techniques are relatively common and one is the legendary power of a Sage doesn't make one better than the others.”

“How has no one killed you yet?”

“Sheer laziness. Listen, you shouldn't worry: my wisdom is vast and deep. I have ideas about how to improve whatever Blood Shadow you create. There's a rare metal that can bond with a formless Shadow and still be stored in your spirit, which would give you a shifting, metallic weapon that responds to your every thought.”

A sword that could change shape as she fought. She could see some uses for that. What the Blood Sage considered the weakest option was only his opinion, after all.

Eithan breathed out a cloud of smoke. “Yes, if Lindon had chosen a Path other than Blackflame, I would have worked with him. Never let it be said that I stop people from making the wrong decision. Like, let’s say you don't want to combine the power of two Sages in one body—well, in two bodies...”

Yerin threw her sword at him.

7

Hours later, the group met back up, Lindon and Orthos drifting closer to one another over the course of the day. The whole group had Thousand-Mile Clouds stored in their emerald armor—except for Orthos, of course—but they all walked, comparing natural treasures.

Eithan assured them that there was no need to hurry anymore, and it soon became apparent why.

While the darkened forest had been largely empty on their way in, now that they were headed back out, it was bustling with activity. Sacred artists flooded through the trees, mostly Truegolds, but with Highgolds here and there.

The closer they came to the towering portal of darkness, the more people they ran into. Some were already clearing trees and assembling huts, or driving wagons through gaps in the forest. Shadows passed overhead, both cloudships and flying creatures.

The bustle reminded Lindon of the Five Factions Alliance in the Desolate Wilds, but when he emerged from the trees, he realized how wrong he’d been.

This was on a greater scale entirely. It looked like an entire nation on the move.

The ground for miles on either side—so far away that the distance was choked in shadow—was covered in an army streaming from the portal. The sky was packed with ships, and the earth with carts and wagons, all bearing the symbols of different Blackflame Empire factions.

He spotted mobile gardens pulled by the Redflower family, small contingents of servants under the banner of the Arelius family, emerald-winged flyers from the Naru clan, massive stone elephants draped with the emblem of the Kotai clan, small Skysworn squads here and there, and dozens of flags and symbols that he couldn’t identify.

His spiritual sense was suppressed by the overwhelming shadow aura of the Night Wheel Valley, and he couldn’t even see as far as normal, but the scope overwhelmed him. It looked as though every land they’d passed on their cloudship journey from Ghostwater had been squeezed empty of people, though he knew that couldn’t be the case. The Emperor had called to Blackflame City only the strongest and most influential, as well as their servants and staff.

So this was the power of the Blackflame Empire.

Without discussion, they all boarded their Thousand-Mile Clouds and took to the air, Eithan expanding his to accommodate Orthos. An official on a red cloud was directing streams of air traffic, though in their Skysworn armor, they were allowed to pass easily.

Eithan wove deftly through the chaos, and Lindon didn’t question that he knew where he was going. He led them down the outer edge of the army of settlers, where people were starting to find space to stop their wagons or begin erecting shacks.

They landed near a half-completed barn, where an ancient, miniature woman with her hair in a tight bun was ordering a squad of workers. And a bustling contingent of purple spiders.

“That’s worth more than you and me put together,” Fisher Gesha snapped at a young man unloading a huge wooden chest. “You want me to carry it myself, hm?”

Purple spider-legs of Forged madra stretched out from beneath her, raising her to ordinary height, and a hooked blade of gleaming goldsteel hung on her back. Lindon had seen her only a few days before, but he still wasn’t used to feeling her with the strength of a Truegold…although he supposed that went both ways.

“Fisher Gesha!” Eithan said pleasantly. “How wonderful to find you here.”

Gesha turned to stare at him through her mask of wrinkles. “Underlord. I can’t say that I’m pleased to see you wearing…that. Is this a work visit, then? Are you here for the Skysworn?”

Eithan put on a shocked look. “Fisher, what could you have done to possibly offend the Skysworn? I am here merely to pick up my order.”

She snorted. “Only finished this morning, and that was quick, mind you. Quick. Should have known you’d be sniffing around two seconds after I…”

Gesha continued grumbling as she dug through one chest after another, placing some gently aside and hurling others away so that they tumbled over the dirt.

Finally, she emerged with an ornately carved and delicately scripted chest, slightly bigger than Lindon’s two hands together.

Eithan reached for it, but she didn’t hand it to him.

“I don’t want to cast doubt on the Underlord’s reputation, but how about payment, hm? Easier for all of us.”

“Your words are especially sharp today,” Eithan said, which Lindon had noticed too.

“Apologies if I overstep myself,” Lindon said, “but it is nice to see you in such a good mood.”

Gesha’s lips twitched up in the smallest possible smile. She must have been excited to enter the Valley. Or perhaps for the business opportunities in his massive army.

Eithan placed both hands together, exhaled, and then a perfect blue-white scale appeared in his hand. Shaped like a coin, it radiated the power of an Underlord—this would be considered a superior-grade scale in the Blackflame Empire.

A scale had to be the perfect size, quality, and density, which could be measured by several common devices, but Gesha took this one and swept it with her spiritual sense.

The design of the coin didn’t matter, but Eithan had managed to Forge a sketch of a face in profile on one side. Lindon didn’t have to look any closer to know that it was Eithan’s face.

Gesha pocketed the scale, then waited. “Four,” she said.

“Right you are,” Eithan agreed, and reached into his pocket. “Remember this, Lindon: even if you have the madra reserves to make as many scales as you want, you should never Forge more than a few per day. A properly Forged scale, of sufficient density and stability, is difficult to produce and must be created all at once. It strains the madra channels. Too much can result in permanent damage.”

He pulled three more coins from his pocket and sighed. “But it’s so much more impressive to pull money out of thin air.”

Gesha snatched up the scales, idly scanned them, and then put them in her own pocket. Only then did she hand the chest over to Eithan.

He turned to them, holding the box out proudly. “Gather ‘round, children, gather ‘round!” he announced.

Lindon could feel Dross staring. Little Blue climbed out of his pocket and slid up to the top of his head. Yerin looked as though she’d exerted all her effort not to roll her eyes, and Mercy was leaning forward in excitement.

Orthos blew smoke. “Children?” he said, but Eithan had moved on.

“Behold, the wonders I commissioned on your behalf on the very day of our reunion, more than eight weeks ago. Four constructs of such power and delicate complexity that they straddle the border between elixir-refining and Soulsmithing itself.”

“Made me split the commission with a refiner,” Gesha grumbled. “Can’t stand working with them, can I? They always stink.”

“Ladies, turtle, spirit, one-armed man, for your enrichment and education, I present to you…the Heaven’s Drops.”

With a flourish, he flipped open the lid of the box.

Four orbs about the size of Suriel’s marble drifted up, hovering in midair over the box. They were transparent orbs of a dull gray-green, wrapped in rings of Forged script. Dim color swirled inside, and each orb spun slowly in place.

They looked…bland. As though they’d been made from Iron-level Remnants that weren’t quite stable. They felt weak to Lindon’s spiritual senses. Even Mercy looked skeptical, but Dross was making appropriately amazed noises. Lindon wasn’t sure if he knew enough to really be impressed, or if he was excited by Eithan’s dramatic presentation.

“Truly, each of these is a bottled miracle,” Eithan went on. “These special constructs can be taken like a pill, even by those who have not opened their soulspace. They will sit in your spirit and improve the quality of your cycling. For those as close to the peak of Truegold as you three, they will help you gain control of your souls in only a few short weeks!”

“…these?” Yerin asked, and the one word dripped with doubt.

“Ah, but these are incomplete! The Heaven’s Drops must be catalyzed with a soul-strengthening elixir before they are taken. Depending on the quality of that elixir, the Heaven’s Drop can be nothing more than a minor benefit, or a permanent transformation that will reshape your entire soul.”

Mercy looked around. “Oh, did you bring the elixir too?”

“I have prepared some,” Eithan said, “to the best of my limited abilities and resources. Alas, the supply of truly great elixirs in the Blackflame Empire is…nonexistent. I would certainly be grateful if someone had a soul-strengthening elixir of a higher grade.”

Mercy looked regretful. “I’m sorry, but I’m all out. I only brought a few. I have a few plants left…”

“If only someone,” Eithan said loudly, “had access to a substance that strengthens and refines the soul. One that might be prepared in a Monarch’s pocket world, for instance.”

Lindon sighed, reaching out for his void key. He should have known that he could never keep a secret from Eithan.

“Some kind of, oh, let’s say, spirit-enhancing water…”

“Please,” Lindon said. “I understand.”

He would usually be excited that Eithan had found a way to maximize the power of the water, but this time he felt defeated. If Eithan had known, why hadn’t he said anything? And now offering the water to Yerin had meant nothing.

He glanced to Yerin as he opened the void key, and she gave him a sympathetic look. His supply of Spirit Well water was getting low. Yerin had used it only sparingly in the last two months, but he had taken some himself, to push his pure core closer to Truegold. He only had three bottles left.

While he wanted to see the water’s effect on these pills, it was no longer entirely his to give away.

“I promised this to Yerin,” Lindon said. “This is her decision to make.”

Eithan turned gravely to Yerin.

“Would you allow me to use the remainder of this water? I assure you, we will be maximizing its benefits.”

Yerin chewed on her lip for a while, watching Eithan. She wasn’t trying to make up her mind, Lindon knew—she was choosing her words.

“Just so you know, I’d contend that Cassias had a good point. It really scrapes you raw dealing with somebody who always knows best.”

Eithan gestured, and Lindon took the bottles from the void key. Why resist? If the Heaven’s Drops worked as claimed, Eithan was giving them a great gift, even if it still felt like Lindon had lost somehow.

“What about when they really do know best?” Eithan asked.

“Even worse,” Orthos rumbled.

“I should have known you’d see the key,” Lindon said, handing over the bottles.

“I tried to respect your desire not to discuss it,” Eithan said. “But now that it’s all out in the open, let me say: you have truly exceeded my expectations. Strengthening your body like that must have been painful. Ghostwater was a treasure trove for you, but I know it pushed you to your limits. I could not be more proud of my disciple.”

He spoke so earnestly that it soothed Lindon’s disappointment. Eithan liked to show off, but he also always pushed Lindon forward.

Eithan threw his arms wide. “And quickening your mind! I had a sixteen-step plan for perfecting you as a Gold, but I couldn’t believe it when I saw you move. Mental enhancement at Gold is a rare and valuable thing. You have a stronger foundation than I ever dared to hope, and thanks to Northstrider, we’re ahead of schedule!”

His phrasing caught Lindon’s attention.

Dross, has he not scanned you? Lindon asked.

[You know, I don’t think so, but now I’m questioning it. I’m starting to wonder if he can see thoughts.]

“Once you reach Underlord, then your real training can finally—”

With a gentle effort, Lindon pushed Dross out of his palm.

The spirit manifested, one-eyed and purple, and raised one of his stubby arms in greeting.

Eithan froze in mid-speech, his wildly gesticulating arms stopping in the air.

[These things can be awkward, can’t they? I know who you are, but I’m not sure if you know who I am. Do you know who I am?]

Lindon imprinted Eithan’s expression of pure astonishment in his memory forever.

Eithan slowly lowered his arms. His spiritual sense swept through Dross, and then—in a focused probe—flicked through Lindon’s spirit. He focused especially on the spot at the base of Lindon’s skull where Dross usually lived.

“I had no idea,” Eithan breathed. “Even now…if I couldn’t see you before me, I would have no idea there was a spirit inside him. With a fully formed consciousness and madra system. Tied to…” His eyes widened, and he slowly shut the box of Heaven’s Drops, setting them to one side. “…tied to his brain…”

He waved frantically at the bustle around him, where workers and spiders were still moving around them. Some glanced curiously over at them, but most continued setting up Fisher Gesha’s barn.

“Fisher!” he shouted. “Would you clear the area for us, please?”

Gesha gave a loud ‘harrumph.’ “Underlord or no Underlord, if you’re walking into my place of business and telling me to clear out—”

Eithan pulled out one of the sacks of natural treasures, which—at Lindon’s rough guess—was worth enough to buy Gesha’s entire business. He shoved it at her, as well as reaching into his pocket and throwing an entire purse of scales after it, and Forging another superior-grade scale out of nowhere. He pushed it all at her, adding, “You can return if you like, but keep everyone else away.”

Gesha’s eyes bulged almost out of her head. “Right away! Never said I wouldn’t do it, did I? All of you! Drop what you’re holding! Drop it on the ground and get away!”

As the spiders and workers scurried away, Eithan fumbled behind him for a seat, pulling it up.

“I’m not used to asking this,” Eithan said. “What happened?”

So, with a certain pride, Lindon told his story in Ghostwater from the beginning. From finding Dross in the Dream Well, combining him with the Eye of the Deep, to upgrading him over the entire facility. All the way to the end, when they completed Northstrider’s grand work.

Orthos crawled off to chew on some nearby lumber—he had been present for the entire story. But everyone else, even Little Blue, listened attentively. He skimmed the parts with Harmony, for Mercy’s sake, though that left some holes in the story at the end.

He had shared most of these details with Yerin already, but not everything. He hadn’t had a chance. Now, he was glad to have the whole story out there. Fisher Gesha returned at some time in the middle, listening quietly.

Dross popped in every once in a while to add a correction or embellishment, but for the most part Lindon was allowed to tell the story without interruption.

When Lindon finished, Eithan sat quietly, hands pressed together, staring off into the distance. The darkness of the Night Wheel Valley settled around them, the wind cold.

In the end, he turned to Dross. “If I’m not gravely mistaken, then you are only a seed of what you will eventually become.”

[I don’t like to think of myself as a seed. Not very flattering, is it? Maybe an egg, but a really nice egg.]

“Oh, we will make sure you grow. Yes…” Eithan’s smile slowly widened until Lindon would have called it manic. “Planted in the fertile soil of Lindon’s spirit, we will grow you until you dwarf Dreadgods and tower over Monarchs! The world itself will struggle to contain you! When I fear I have set my sights too far, I find that I was not ambitious enough! Who will dare to hold us back when we have such an ally? Let the day you completed Northstrider’s work be known as the day that the very foundations of history trembled!”

He cackled like a madman, and Lindon honestly couldn’t tell if it was for theatrical effect or not.

A thread of doubt wormed over from Orthos, Yerin folded her bladed arms in front of her, and Mercy looked at Eithan askance. Little Blue pressed herself against Lindon’s head and shivered.

Dross, by contrast, laughed along with him. [Aw, go on! No, really, please continue.]

* * *

Eithan spread the four Heaven's Drops before him, hanging gray and dull in the air.

“What you are about to experience is a myth for many Golds. It is their life's ambition. The glory their families strive for.”

He lifted a bottle—provided by Lindon—over his head.

“Let's get it over with, shall we?”

He tipped the first bottle over a Heaven's Drop, spilling vivid blue water into the hovering construct.

Lindon, Yerin, and Orthos sat before Eithan in a lonely hollow amidst the darkened woods of the Night Wheel Valley. They hadn't sold any of their natural treasures in the camp, but had instead traded a few. They now had packages that exuded aura of many different aspects waiting for them nearby.

Mercy was next to them, but she didn't sit. She stood, toying with her staff, a complicated expression on her face.

The Spirit Well water fell into the construct and was absorbed, as though the energy drank it down. As the water vanished, the Heaven's Drop grew brighter and brighter, from a transparent and colorless gray-green to an almost blinding emerald. The scripted circles around the outside of the construct spun faster, until it spat out bolts of vivid green lightning.

Eithan stopped his pour precisely at that point, reserving the last of the water in the bottle.

“Orthos, if you would,” Eithan said. “Age deserves consideration.”

Orthos approached the Heaven's Drop, but not with the excitement Lindon had expected. Instead, the turtle felt resignation, almost fear. As though he had dreaded this day.

Other than when he was forced to fly, Orthos never showed this sort of apprehension. Lindon wanted to ask what was wrong, but the turtle snapped up the Heaven's Drop in an instant.

His madra began to swell almost immediately, growing more dense and potent by the second. Eithan had told them the effects would be quick, but in Lindon's experience, pills and elixirs always took time to cycle. Even the Spirit Well water worked best over time.

Eithan repeated the process with the second Heaven's Drop, emptying the first bottle and beginning on the second. When it shone like a green star and shot out lightning, he beckoned Yerin forward.

Yerin showed all the eagerness that Lindon had expected from Orthos; she couldn't swallow the construct and return to her seat fast enough, taking a cycling position.

While Eithan prepared the third construct, Lindon watched Yerin. He couldn't feel her spirit as clearly as he could his contracted sacred beast's, but he still sensed her growing stronger. In only seconds, her Goldsigns grew more solid and defined, as though they had been cast in real physical steel.

Then they slid back into her back.

More advanced Truegolds gained control over their Goldsigns, but the degree seemed to differ depending on the Goldsign itself. He hadn't imagined that she would be able to withdraw them like that, and seeing her without the sword-arms sticking out of her back felt incomplete. Like he was seeing her without her real arms.

A moment later, the Goldsigns reappeared...

Along with two more.

And two more.

Six arms of sword madra stuck out of her back, stretching farther until the ones on her left side almost stabbed Lindon. He shuffled out of the way, but she was only flexing them as she would her muscles, and had already pulled them back.

Her eyes were still closed in a cycling trance, but there was a gentle, content smile on her face. She looked warmer than she ever did. At peace.

There was another green flash, and Eithan called Mercy's name. Lindon recalled what he was doing and turned to watch Mercy.

...but as she faced down the construct crackling with green lightning, her face crumpled. “I can't,” she said. “I'm sorry.”

Eithan looked down at the flashing orb in front of him. “This is unfortunate timing.”

“I know. I'm sorry. I want to keep up with the rest of you, but...” She looked over to the east, where the massive castle took up the entire horizon. “I can't accept this. I would only have to admit my faults and return to my family, and my mother would shower me with resources like this. I can't take a treasure from you to preserve my pride.”

Eithan took a long look at her, then shrugged. “Suit yourself. Lindon?”

Lindon didn't move. “Apologies, but I'd rather Mercy have it.” That wasn't entirely true—he could find room between his cores for a second elixir easily—but he'd made his choice. “If you don't want to go back to your family, you shouldn't have to. Take it. We won't hold it against you.”

Mercy twisted uncomfortably. “It's a little more complicated than that.”

“I know what it's like to not want to return home.”

Eithan pointed to the glowing orb. “I'd really prefer you take this, and then we can debate the next one. This is losing energy by the second.” He added a couple of drops of Spirit Well water to it, sparking up its power again, but he was running low.

“It will be a waste if I take it,” Mercy said.

“That's all right with me,” Lindon responded.

Eithan watched them for another couple of seconds, then grabbed the construct. It hovered in the middle of his palm. “And the winner is...Lindon!”

He hurled it toward Lindon, who really had no choice but to take the crackling globe of energy himself. He swallowed it down, consoling himself with the knowledge that at least Mercy would have a chance with the last one.

Then he dropped into a cycling trance himself, watching the Heaven's Drop sink down between his cores.

[Now, that has a comforting glow to it,] Dross said. [Beautiful to watch. I'd like to keep one around, liven up the place.]

Lindon couldn't spare much concentration from siphoning the energy of the Drop into his channels, but he asked, Could you use one?

[Better for me if you have it. I'm basically a parasite infesting your soul.]

Lindon shook aside that thought and focused on the Heaven's Drop. If it was anything like using the Spirit Well water directly, it would slowly nourish his cores and channels, refilling them before...

In an instant, his pure core advanced to Truegold.

It was faster, easier, and smoother than his Blackflame advancement had been. Comfortable and effortless.

[Almost disappointing, isn't it? Too easy. It's always more fun when I get to watch you suffer.]

Not only that, but the Heaven's Drop spun faster in his spirit, pumping power to every corner of his soul. His madra was already dense and potent, thanks to long treatment by the Spirit Well, but his channels were washed clean, his cores filled to bursting. His Blackflame core advanced to the very peak of what it could contain, a dark sun hanging on one side of his spirit.

The blue-white core on the other side was now just as bright, shining for the first time as an equal to his Blackflame madra. After only minutes of cycling, it too was pushing at the boundaries of Truegold.

Lindon thought back to what Ziel had told him about pills that could take him to the peak of Truegold in minutes.

He never thought he'd see one.

Now that he had reached full capacity in both his cores, he could sense his spirit far more clearly than ever before. His spiritual sense was intensely powerful, and he could visualize his channels as though they hovered before his eyes.

For the next step, opening his soulspace, he'd already done some research.

From the Underlord dream tablets he'd found in Ghostwater and questions he'd asked Dross, he already had a sense of what was required. Many Truegolds reached this point in their lives; it was a measure of complete control over one's own spirit.

With his newly enhanced awareness, Lindon focused on a space between his channels, in the very center of his spirit.

Then he flexed his power, as though there were an invisible lung at that point and he was trying to force it to inhale.

It felt like straining to pull a breath of mud, but after a few seconds of straining, the space expanded.

His soulspace was a dark hole the size of a thumbnail at the very center of his spirit, but feeling it filled him with light.

He had opened it himself.

Not only that, but now he could hold simple constructs at the center of his spirit. Well, he would have to continue widening the soulspace before he could hold a real construct. He could at least start holding soulfire.

Soulfire. The real mark of an Underlord.

He opened his eyes to find Eithan grinning at him. “Well, I see we have a tie.”

Lindon wiped sweat from his brow—he hadn't realized he'd been sweating—and turned to Yerin.

A scar at the edge of her lips quirked as she gave him a lopsided smile. “I beat you to it,” she said. “Ten seconds to spare.”

Then he saw that Mercy was gone.

The fourth Heaven’s Drop was still there.

“Can we save it for her?” Lindon asked, and Eithan shook his head.

“We could, but we won't. We have to believe her that it's more complicated than we know.” He upended the last half-bottle of Spirit Well water, shaking it to get every drop into the flashing, sparking Heaven's Drop. “Sometimes, we have to let our friends make decisions that we believe are wrong.”

Lindon was disappointed, but he reached out for the Drop anyway. He could use it to replenish his pure core, or maybe cycle some of it to Little Blue...

Eithan pulled it away. “Yerin,” he said, and she looked as surprised as Lindon was. “If you'd like a quick upgrade to your Blood Shadow, there'll be no opportunity like this one.”

“Step easy,” Yerin warned him. “I've heard everything I intend to hear from you.”

He spread his hands. “No matter which method you pick of shaping your Blood Shadow, this will be nothing but a benefit.”

She watched him and the lightning-flickering Heaven's Drop before finally, with visible reluctance, she summoned her Blood Shadow.

It extended from her spirit, a crimson shade in her general shape. She didn't need to urge it any closer to the Heaven's Drop; it pounced forward like a hungry wolf on raw meat, gulping down the construct. The green light shone from within it as it passed down the Shadow's throat and into where its core should be, hovering there like a masked star.

The Blood Shadow shuddered, and it seemed to look in Lindon's direction for a moment.

Then it collapsed and withdrew back into Yerin's spirit.

Yerin shuddered. “Feels like I'll regret that.”

“Nonsense!” Eithan cried. “But you may want to keep that Shadow under control for now.”

With a last, regretful glance at Lindon, Yerin sank back down into a cycling trance and closed her eyes.

Lindon couldn’t help but be disappointed. He’d been excited about reaching the end of Truegold and opening his soulspace, but now here he was alone in a dark forest with Eithan and a meditating Yerin. He wanted someone to join him in his excitement.

[Wow, Truegold?] Dross exclaimed. [Amazing! Compared to when you did it months ago, this was way better. And your soulspace? Incredible. You could probably fit a…maybe a…bean. You could carry around your own bean!]

Lindon actually appreciated that Dross had tried.

“Apologies,” Lindon said aloud, “but where did Orthos go?”

He could sense the turtle’s location—he wasn’t far—but he hadn’t noticed when Orthos had left.

Eithan paused while packing up the sacks of natural treasures and the empty box that had contained the Heaven’s Drops. “Why don’t you go check on him?” Eithan suggested. “We still have to open Yerin’s soulspace and get you both weaving soulfire, but there’s no rush. Now that the Skysworn have caught up to us, they’ll want us working.” He waved a hand. “We have a while off, that’s my point.”

Lindon pressed his fists together. “Thank you, Eithan. I’m eager to continue.” If he needed a few weeks to adjust to his soulspace, he would take them, but the Heaven’s Drop had worked so well and so quickly that he was impatient to move on.

“Go find Orthos.”

Lindon did so, jogging through the shadowed trees. He activated the Soul Cloak to feel his Truegold pure madra, and he marveled at how easy the trip was. For fun, he leaped up and kicked off one tree, flipping over a neighboring branch, then slid down another trunk.

He followed Orthos in the most acrobatic way he could, spinning around, over, and through trees. He fell more than once, but always caught himself and sprung back up.

Little Blue joined him, leaping out of his pocket and scampering over the leaf-strewn forest floor. She laughed like tinkling bells as she danced after him, holding her arms out to the side while she ran. He paused to wait for her whenever she fell behind, and the creatures hiding in the shadows melted back from the feel of his Truegold spirit.

By the time he reached Orthos, he and Little Blue were both tired and laughing.

Orthos, however, was a somber presence in Lindon’s soul. The broad, black turtle stood out as a smoldering red presence against the dark of the Night Wheel Valley. He stood on a hill with the Blackflame Empire camp spread out behind him, looking up into the clouds.

He stared at the swirling purple center of the Night Wheel, and Lindon couldn’t tell if he was watching something or simply lost in thought.

Little Blue cooed out her concern, and Lindon scooped her up to carry her closer to Orthos.

“Apologies if we’re disturbing you,” Lindon said, drawing alongside the turtle.

Black-and-red eyes studied the clouds. “Only a few short years, and you have reached further than many sacred artists ever dream. The heavens have blessed you, Lindon.”

Lindon stood next to Orthos, reaching into his pocket. He pulled out the glass marble with the blue candle-flame burning steadily at the center.

“I am grateful,” he said. He owed Suriel his life…and a much better life than he would have had otherwise. “Not just to the heavens and their messenger. Without Eithan, or Yerin, or Dross, or you, I would be…”

Dead in Sacred Valley. Dead in the Desolate Wilds. Dead in Serpent’s Grave. Dead in Ghostwater.

“…buried somewhere, most likely,” he finished.

Orthos gave a deep rumble, and Lindon couldn’t tell if it was agreement or correction. “And now, you move on. If at least one of you doesn’t end up selected for this tournament, I’ll give up my shell.”

“We’re not Underlords yet,” Lindon protested, though privately he felt the same way. Underlord felt closer now than it ever had, and which young Truegolds in the Blackflame Empire had the advantages that he and Yerin did?

“You will be,” Orthos said. “Don’t pretend you don’t know it. Even if you wouldn’t fight and claw for Underlord, by now Eithan would drag you there whether you liked it or not. Once you’ve started to ride the tiger, it’s harder to stop.”

Lindon didn’t like Orthos’ tone or the melancholy feel of his spirit. “Why are we talking about me? You’re right there with us.”

Dross suddenly slipped out of Lindon’s soul, hovering on his shoulder. But contrary to Lindon’s expectation, he didn’t say anything. He only watched Orthos with his one wide eye.

Little Blue chirped, so Lindon held her close enough that she could pat the wall of black, leathery skin next to her.

Orthos blew a long cloud of smoke into the air, watching it drift up. “Sacred beasts advance differently than humans,” he said.

Lindon’s discomfort advanced to full-blown alarm. “Why don’t we head back to camp? I’m not sure what happened to Mercy, and Yerin is probably finishing up cycling by now.”

“Humans have to discover what drives their souls to action,” Orthos continued. “It’s the spark that starts their transformation. Sacred beasts do not have to discover who we are. We have to choose.”

“Can you choose to become a dragon? That would make it easy.”

Lindon had intended to lighten the mood, but he failed.

“Mmmm. Or a turtle. Or even a man. Traditionally, this involves a journey alongside others making the same choice. But I am the only one.” He turned to Lindon. “Until only days ago, I convinced myself I could make the journey alongside you. But you move so quickly, and I am, after all…a turtle.”

He gave a smile, but Lindon couldn’t return it.

“There’s time until the tournament,” Lindon said desperately. “Months until anyone is chosen. It might not be me! And the tournament isn’t for a year anyway.”

[Good-bye, Orthos,] Dross said.

In Lindon’s palm, Little Blue sobbed with a sound like pattering rain. She leaped from his hand, landing sprawled on Orthos’ head, crying.

“I won’t be gone forever,” Orthos said. “A few years. But by that time, I expect you’ll have left me far behind.”

When Lindon spoke again, his voice was thick. “Where will you go?”

“There are many places that could use a dragon.”

Lindon swept at his eyes, drawing pure madra, trying to keep his emotions under control. Orthos extended his head, resting his forehead against Lindon’s.

“A dragon is not ashamed of tears,” Orthos said.

And Lindon lost control. He threw his arms around Orthos’ neck and wept with Little Blue, as Dross drifted silently overhead.

After a while, a familiar feeling in his spirit drew his attention to the side. Yerin stood there, looking horrified, six Goldsign arms gleaming in the dim light. She was out of breath, her tattered robes in disarray, and dead leaves in her hair.

“Bleed me, but it looks like you’re trying to sneak off without me,” she said, and her voice quivered.

Orthos shook his head. “I would not dare.”

Lindon released the turtle’s neck only for Yerin to replace him an instant later. She didn’t cry, she just shook, and he murmured something to her that Lindon couldn’t hear.

Only a minute later, Orthos drew back, and Yerin stepped away, rubbing her own eyes.

“A dragon does not wait around,” he said, red eyes passing over them all. “Protect yourselves. I expect you to stay alive until I see you again.”

“What about Eithan?” Lindon asked. “Where is he?”

Orthos snorted. “I’d bet he knew I was leaving before I did. Of all of you, I worry about him the least.” He raised one leg, gently sliding Little Blue off his head and to the ground.

“Farewell, little ones,” he said, and then he turned, walking slowly into the shadows. Lindon watched until the red light faded into darkness. Then he held Blackflame as he felt Orthos’ spirit passing into the distance.

Eventually, Orthos passed through the portal back to the Empire, and was gone.

8

Seishen Kiro’s father, King Dakata, had erected a castle in the Night Wheel Valley. Made of raw stone called up from the earth by Ruler techniques, the castle stood in front of their portal, projecting the majesty of the Seishen Kingdom. Or such was the intention. Next to the awe-inspiring mountain-sized fortress of the Akura clan, it looked like a child’s toy.

In the heart of that castle, Kiro faced his proud father in horror.

“My King, we cannot attack.”

His father laughed uproariously, slapping the crude map of the Night Wheel Valley he’d spread across his table. “Why not? We have the chance to drive the Empire out entirely. All the sacred grounds of the Valley would be ours.”

Kiro looked over the markers the King had placed on the map. It was a simple plan: a sudden attack, ramming through the Blackflame defenses and shoving them back through the portal. It would work, so long as the Blackflames didn’t defend the territory with their lives. If they started retreating to protect the more vulnerable civilians at the heart of their formation, they would have to continue the retreat.

“Of course it will work,” Kiro said. “They don’t expect us to attack. But they don’t expect it for a good reason. Even if we avoid wholesale slaughter, this attack will not be bloodless. What if the Sage decides we have pushed too far?”

Daji, Kiro’s little brother, lunged hungrily at the map. He had a wolf’s smile on his face. “Don’t be a coward! The Sage needs to see our overwhelming strength.”

King Dakata waved a hand at his second son. “Quiet. This is a matter for Lords.”

Daji’s face fell. “I have no—”

“Quiet!” The King shouted, and Daji wilted back. “Your brother managed to advance where the aura wasn’t a tenth as strong as it is here. Can you not handle even this much?”

Daji’s dark eyes flared. It looked like he was trying to stab Kiro through the chest with his glare. Kiro’s heart ached, but before he could say anything, Daji had already stormed out the door.

“…he’s trying his hardest,” Kiro protested, once his brother had left.

Dakata grunted, returning to the map. “You were worried about the Sage. In my grandfather’s day, Akura Charity pitted our kingdom against the Winter’s Blade sect. While blood was spilled, she only intervened when they started to kill our children. She accepts a measure of bloodshed as the cost of competition, but we can’t weaken the Blackflame Empire too much. That, she would see as an affront to the Akura clan’s authority.”

Kiro knew his father was more intelligent than his appearance would suggest. He only looked like a bear, he didn’t think like one. But he was still somewhat surprised that his father knew so much about a Sage.

If he questioned the king too much, he risked punishment, but he dared to push a little harder. “There’s still our political relationship with the Empire to think of.”

King Dakata drove a spike of Forged madra through the corner of the map, pinning it to the table. “We have roughly two months remaining before the first day of summer. If we hold the Valley ourselves during that time, we can raise enough Underlords that our ‘political relationships’ will lose all meaning. You can forget about punishment. The Akura clan might even give the Empire to us.”

He surveyed the map proudly, as though looking down on his own newborn child.

Kiro pushed one more time. “This is still a gamble,” he said.

Dakata raised his head, and Kiro knew he’d pushed his father too far. “Even you won’t listen to my commands?” he asked quietly. “Even you? If my First Prince does not trust me to lead, how can anyone else?”

Kiro backed away, but his father had risen, his armor adding to his bulk. Kiro considered summoning his from the Divine Treasure in his soulspace, but that would only set his father off even further.

“Forgive me, father, of course I will follow your orders.”

He bumped against the back of a chair, his father looming uncomfortably close. Kiro may have been an Underlord, but his hands shook and his chest tightened.

In the Seishen Kingdom, they entered a period of intense personal meditation when attempting to advance to Underlord. It wasn’t clear what specific change triggered advancement, but the process could last weeks.

On Kiro’s successful attempt, he had spent most of the time terrified of his father’s reaction to failure. Kiro privately believed that it was fear of his father that had pushed his soul forward.

Dakata gripped Kiro’s shoulder painfully tight. “You are the only one I can trust,” he said, his voice low. “You are the face of the Kingdom. My words must come from your mouth.”

“Yes, father,” Kiro said, struggling to maintain eye contact.

Dakata cut off, his eyes sliding to the side. “Tell your gardener that everything is all right,” he said.

Meira stood behind the King. She held a long shaft of wood in her hands, and a scythe-blade of green flame extended from the end.

The blade curled into the King’s throat, stopping an inch away.

The Underlady’s eyes were icy. As always, she wore drab clothes that made her look like she had walked in from the garden only moments before, and the pink-flower Goldsigns shone brightly in her gray hair.

Meira may have been one stage of advancement lower than King Dakata, but from this position, she could at least damage his lifeline, slicing away at his life itself. He would kill her, but she’d take a piece of his lifespan with her. She might even manage to trade her life for his.

And she was ready to try.

Kiro pushed forward, separating them, terrified for both of them. He couldn’t allow Meira to die, but King Dakata was still his father. Not to mention the ruler of the Seishen Kingdom; losing him to an apparent coup might cause the Kingdom to collapse.

He bowed deeply at the waist. “I apologize, father, and take full responsibility. Please punish me in her stead.”

Meira hadn’t withdrawn her spirit. Now that she had been separated, his father could kill her with little effort, but she was still prepared to throw herself at him given the slightest opportunity.

The King stood with his spirit still veiled, but he could erupt into violence at any second. For a long moment, the room was frozen with tension.

“You live,” King Dakata said at last, “only because of your loyalty to my son.”

Meira nodded, lowering the scythe. Her madra retracted.

Kiro breathed again. His father knew Meira well enough to know that she had restrained herself. She would not have held back against anyone else that had threatened Kiro.

But he also knew that if anything happened to him, his father would have her executed within the day.

“The attack moves forward,” Dakata said, returning to the map. “Come here, gardener, this concerns you too.” He tapped a section of the map. “While the rest of us push forward, the two of you will be headed here.

“It’s where our scouts have seen the Blackflame boy.”

* * *

Lindon sat cross-legged in the center of the Night Wheel Valley forest, extending his spiritual sense to the vital aura around him. He couldn't open his Copper sight, but he could feel the power of the world pressing against him, and with his senses he could trace each aspect of aura back to its source.

[Follow the unity of aura,] Dross recited. This was a mantra that he had repeated constantly for weeks now. [Each aspect links to the next. Vital aura has no beginning and no end. It is all one. Follow the unity of aura.]

It had been a month since Orthos left.

In the Night Wheel Valley, they had settled into a routine. They patrolled for the Skysworn for most of the day, defending the border of the Blackflame Empire's territory within the Valley. Even at the border, they had only caught glimpses of the Seishen Kingdom's sacred artists. They hadn't clashed with any enemies except the occasional wild Remnant.

When they finished their shift, they followed Eithan or Mercy to unclaimed natural treasure deposits. Then, at night and in the morning, they practiced sensing the unity of aura and burning treasures for soulfire, progressing through the second stage of Underlord advancement.

They had repeated this every day for a month.

Under Dross' chant, Lindon finally felt connected to the whole world around him, from the cold wind to the decaying leaves on which he sat. It was a strange sensation, like he had stretched himself out for five feet in any direction.

It sometimes took him half an hour or more to sense the unity of aura, even when he was fresh—when he was tired, it could take him much longer. Now that he had, he quickly felt the power of the natural treasures lying on the ground around him.

A burning acorn carried the power of fire on his left side, balanced by a bead of spinning water on the right.

A death skull waited in front of him, and a blooming flower teeming with life behind.

In one quick inhalation, he pulled on the vital aura link between him and the treasures, reducing them all to ash.

And leaving behind a wisp of colorless flame that drifted into his soulspace.

Dross' mantra changed accordingly. [Soulfire is vital aura distilled. It is the power of the world condensed.] Lindon had never asked where Dross found this chant, but the spirit obviously hadn't made it up. It flowed too naturally and made too much sense.

[Feel how it resonates with everything around you, drawing you closer to nature. Now, follow that sensation back into yourself, deep into your soul. Into your mind. Now, tell me why....why do you practice the sacred arts?]

“To protect people,” Lindon and Yerin said at the same time.

Lindon braced himself, straining to detect any change in the soulfire inside him or the aura outside.

What was supposed to happen was a transformative resonance. Lindon's personal revelation would connect him to his own spirit, and the soulfire would carry that resonance to the outside world. For reasons he still didn't understand, that would draw on the aura to fuel his soulfire and burn away his old body and spirit, leaving him reborn as an Underlord.

The more soulfire he had inside him, the easier it was to trigger the resonance. Many potential Underlords, Eithan had told them, found their true revelation but failed to realize it because they hadn't gathered enough soulfire.

And the strength of the aura around them played a factor too. It was easier to connect to the unity of aura the thicker the vital aura was, and it made the actual advancement process faster and safer. Since the aura around here was a hundred times stronger than in the Blackflame Empire, it was a hundred times easier to cycle and to feel the unity of aura.

In fact, there had been many breakthroughs in the Blackflame Empire camp. Hundreds—maybe thousands—of Highgolds had broken through to Truegold, and Lindon had heard half a dozen stories of advancements to Underlord. None of them young enough for the competition.

But more importantly to Lindon, none of them were him.

He shot to his feet, stomping through the ashes left from his natural treasures. “This is ridiculous. I know why I started practicing the sacred arts. This is why.” He and Yerin had even tried different phrases for the same thing:

To protect those closest to me.

To protect those who can’t protect themselves.

To protect friends and family.

None of it worked. For either of them. Yerin had run down a few very different paths:

So I can do what I want.

To get revenge.

Because I enjoy it.

To get stronger.

…and she had sensed nothing. Still, for a change, she seemed perfectly content to take her time. It was Lindon who paced and shouted in frustration at the end of every day’s attempt.

[Maybe it’s because my voice isn’t soothing enough,] Dross suggested. [Do you think I should try for a motherly voice?]

Mercy hopped down from a nearby tree, where she had been watching over them. “I found it very soothing!”

With all the shadow aura around, Mercy had broken through to Highgold two weeks before. They had celebrated with her, but Lindon didn’t understand why she wasn’t Truegold yet. For that matter, he still didn’t understand why she had rejected the Heaven’s Drop. She gave up most of the natural treasures she gathered to Lindon and Yerin to fuel their soulfire, guarded them while they practiced sensing the unity of aura, and asked for nothing for herself.

It was starting to get on Lindon’s nerves.

Something tapped Lindon on the shoulder, and he turned to see nothing there. Wind aura.

Yerin sat ten feet away, still with her legs crossed. She wouldn’t be able to infuse her techniques with soulfire until she advanced, but she could still manipulate aura. A little. She was much better at it than Lindon was, perhaps because of her years of practicing a Ruler technique.

“I had a thought to try again,” Yerin said. “You aiming to give it another go?”

“Not right now.” At the moment, he thought he was just as likely to set fire to everything around him as to sense anything. “Do you need Dross?”

“I don’t suspect I do.”

Lindon nodded and strode off. He needed a break. At least when you were cycling aura, there was no chance of failure. Trying to trigger his advancement felt like rolling the dice day after day and getting nothing but losses.

He walked into the forest to catch his breath.

He knew it was Orthos leaving that had gotten him so worked up. He was short with Mercy and Yerin, he quit his cycling early, and he wanted nothing more than a good fight to clear his head.

Even Eithan was gone—either working for the Arelius family or for the Emperor. As an Underlord, he got called away every once in a while to serve the Empire in the fight against the Seishen Kingdom. The fight that Lindon still hadn’t seen.

He walked further into the shadows before Dross said, [Hang on. Do you hear that?]

Lindon stopped moving and strained his ears, but the Night Wheel Valley was always full of rustling.

[It’s your armor!] Dross said. [The communications construct. I’ll boost it, no problem.]

There was a moment of silence.

[Never mind, that makes it quieter. I’ll translate. Um, this is an emergency message for any Skysworn, ah, they’re under attack, there are some muffled screams, a few pleas for help, and then a lot of sobbing. Not much to go on, really.]

Which direction? Lindon asked silently.

[Must be nearby. Not much makes it through shadow aura this thick. Off that way, I’d guess,] Dross said, mentally indicating a direction. Away from their camp.

We’re going to check it out. Can you let the others know?

[I can, but they don’t have any way of contacting us back if the range on the Skysworn communications is that low.]

Lindon started sneaking through the underbrush, so Dross continued, […and I guess I will do that then.]

Creeping through the shadowed forest was like crawling through a nightmare, all shifting darkness and phantom sounds, but Lindon kept his senses focused on the battle ahead. Bursts of light lit up the forest, and the aura was in disarray.

After only a few minutes, he came to the top of a hill, peeking out of the trees down on a camp below. A wagon was overturned, flames licking up its wooden sides. There were no horses to be seen. The wagon displayed a red blossom: the symbol of the Redflower family.

Half a dozen people with matching Goldsigns stood huddled nearby, the crimson flower on their chests bright. They crouched at the foot of some trees as armored Skysworn fought for them.

And died for them.

A six-man squad had been dispatched here; two Truegolds and four students, one Highgold and three Lowgold. Four of them were still alive.

A Truegold in green armor faced their enemies with a sword in each of her hands and bright yellow spikes sweeping forward from her shoulders.

Lindon remembered her: he had hurled her onto a pile of other Truegolds only a few months before.

He didn’t recognize the rest of her squad, though he may have met them before. A young Highgold man stood next to her, holding a Forged sword of pale light in both hands. His eyes glowed as well, and Lindon couldn't tell if that was a Goldsign or an Enforcer technique.

Before them, a corpse in Skysworn armor lay covered in blood. And another body, split almost in half, wearing the pin of a Skysworn apprentice. One of the Lowgolds.

The four Skysworn, including the two surviving Lowgolds, stood facing their opponent: one lone Underlord.

He was at least as tall and broad as Lindon himself, but he wore plates of Forged gray madra over his entire body that made him look even bulkier. His helmet was a rounded fortress that shaded his eyes, and the plates of madra on his body interlocked so tightly that Lindon couldn't see a gap. He held a silver blade in one hand, which crackled with blue lightning. In his other, he held a rock-steady shield carved in the likeness of a lion's snarling face.

Both his weapons were covered in blood.

“Call him here,” the Underlord commanded.

“We can't,” the Truegold woman said tightly. “The shadow aura is too thick. No one can hear us.”

She was lying. Good for her. No reason to give anything away.

Dross, Lindon asked silently, keep an eye on the Underlord. I want a combat solution as soon as you can.

[Not a problem! As soon as he uses a technique, I'll keep a record of it. As soon as he does that.]

“Then I'll give you another chance,” the Underlord said, lowering his sword and shield. “Surrender to me. In my name, I will allow you to live, as long as you cooperate.”

The Truegold Skysworn closed her eyes. The Highgold shifted, looking nervous, and the two Lowgolds behind them simply clutched their weapons and stood over the Redflower family.

Lindon wanted to act here, but this was an Underlord. He would have better chances if he went back and gathered the others, and they all fought together. Or better yet, if they could put a call in for backup.

But he raised his eyes, looking over the sea of black trees. This was not the only place where light flashed in the darkness of the Night Wheel Valley. Lights streaked into the sky all around, and—distantly—he could sense power flaring all around him.

[This is not likely to be an isolated event,] Dross reported. [This looks like the Seishen Kingdom pushing against the Empire. Probably. There’s a good chance.]

If this was part of a coordinated attack on the Blackflame Empire, then he couldn't expect reinforcements.

He remembered another village he’d visited as a Skysworn trainee; a village that burned because he didn't defend them in time.

Yerin would fight here, Lindon said to Dross.

[Good, then let's call her here. While we watch her fight, I can compile a combat solution. I like that plan. In fact, watching this Underlord kill all these other people will give us some great information.]

The Skysworn shouted, pushing her swords forward, and a cluster of a dozen deadly yellow-white lights flashed toward her enemy.

The enemy Underlord raised his shield, which projected a half-dome of solid gray madra in front of him. Her Striker technique detonated harmlessly on the shield, the lights cracking like eggs thrown against a boulder.

Still a dozen paces away, the Underlord swept his sword at her. Madra poured from the weapon, Forging in an instant into an extended blade that slashed into her side.

There was a flash of light as she protected herself with madra, but the weapon cracked her armor, sending blood spraying into the air as her body was hurled to the side.

Lindon activated his void key and reached inside.

Stepping forward, the Underlord swept his enlarged sword around, bringing it down onto the Highgold boy.

The Burning Cloak sprung up in the air around Lindon, and his kick exploded against the ground.

He came to a halt in front of the Highgold, holding up a massive axe in both hands. Lindon's blade caught the Underlord's as it descended.

The Forged gray sword met Harmony’s blade and stopped.

The axe’s broad, curved head shimmered with a red light that felt like blood, and its shaft was one long bone. To his spiritual sense, the axe felt hungry. His right arm agreed.

[I was wondering when you were going to use that,] Dross said.

The enemy's blow rang through Lindon's entire body, almost driving him to his knees, but he held.

The Underlord pulled his blade back, the extra length dissolving into gray essence and blowing away on the wind. He even lowered his shield.

“Take your Truegold and run,” Lindon said to the Highgold beside him. The boy leaped to obey, running to scoop up his leader. Lindon couldn't tell if she was alive or dead, and he couldn't spare the attention to scan her.

His every sense was fixed on the Seishen Underlord.

“If she had told me she'd called you, I would have let her leave,” the man said. His helmet dissolved, revealing a rugged, handsome face with piercing eyes and a stately bearing. “I am the Seishen Kingdom's first prince, Seishen Kiro.”

Lindon's stomach dropped. A prince. Not only would he have been given the finest tutors and materials since childhood, he also would never go anywhere alone. He would surely have soldiers or bodyguards on the way.

“You should be Wei Shi Lindon.”

That gave Lindon a far greater blow. “Apologies; I didn't realize I had done enough to attract the attention of royalty.”

Kiro glanced skyward, and Lindon saw a silver-and-purple owl circling overhead. “I have heard of your deeds indeed, Wei Shi Lindon. In the name of justice, and with an honored witness, I have come to punish you.”

Lindon now felt like a mouse who had stepped into a tiger's mouth. An enemy Underlord had come looking for him.

[Oh no, he's here for justice,] Dross said. [You're doomed.]

Lindon tightened his hands around the axe. He could hear the Skysworn scrambling with the Redflowers behind him; if he ran for help, they would be in the Underlord's way. And what should he have done? Stayed silent and watched the Highgold get split in half?

What will the Akura family think of a Truegold who fights an Underlord?

[If you acquit yourself well, you will be almost guaranteed a spot in the Uncrowned King tournament. Assuming you also make it to Underlord by the deadline, of course. But the question you should really be asking is 'What will the Akura family think of a Truegold who recklessly challenges an Underlord and is murdered?']

Is that your honest estimation of my ability? If Dross could predict this fight well enough to visualize it ahead of time, and he saw Lindon losing, then Lindon would have no choice but to run.

Dross sighed. [...I don't have an accurate reckoning of the enemy. There is a chance you could win, and I don’t know how small of one. Probably very small.]

Lindon squared his shoulders, holding the axe before him in both hands, and cycled Blackflame. His eyes burned.

“Ready yourself, your highness,” Lindon said. And with a flare of the Burning Cloak, he launched himself at the enemy.

9

Dross' voice interrupted Yerin's cycling meditation.

[We're catching a Skysworn distress signal coming from close by. Don’t worry about us! But catch up as soon as possible if you have any compassion in your soul.]

She extended her spiritual sense, trying to pierce the dark fog around her, and was immediately assaulted by the sense of distant battle. She would wager her sword that the flashing lights on the horizon came from a dozen different fights beyond the range of her senses.

None of them came from Lindon.

She activated the dream binding in her bracer. It gave a squeal—dream constructs didn't like being activated by sword madra—and then conjured a flickering purple butterfly that hovered over her wrist.

“Contact Mercy,” she said. “Mercy, get down here.”

The purple butterfly dissolved, maybe invisibly going to deliver its message, or maybe failing entirely because of the shadow aura. She'd done what she could.

Yerin kept a tight rein on her own fear. If there was a broad attack from the Seishen Kingdom, as she feared there was, then there was no predicting what could happen. Lindon didn't know the limits of his own strength yet. He could easily find himself trapped with no way out.

Mercy dropped from a nearby tree, tendrils of darkness laying her down gently. “I'm down here!” she announced. “What's the problem?”

“We're saving Lindon,” Yerin said, straining her spiritual sense further. She caught something that might have been Blackflame madra and advanced toward it.

A cold spark touched her ankle, and she looked down.

Little Blue stood down there, her ocean-blue face anxious. She stared up at Yerin with wide eyes.

Carefully, so as not to startle her, Yerin lowered herself to a squat. “Easy,” she said. “I’ve got his trail.” She winked at the Sylvan. “Even if he wants to die, I’ll drag him back by his tail.”

Little Blue peeped, and Yerin thought she heard agreement.

Yerin sensed a change in the forest and rose to her feet. “Mercy, hold on to the little one. It’s about to get heated.”

From the darkness of the trees, a pale green light began to shine. That light brought with it an ominous weight, a phantom sensation of dreadful power. It was coming from a different direction than she thought Lindon had gone, which gave her a breath of relief.

A few seconds later, a woman stepped from those shadows. She was dressed in threadbare clothes—a colorless dress torn at the hem, no shoes, and sleeves shorter on one side than the other. Her gray hair was woven through with vines and pink flowers of madra, and her gray eyes were cold.

In her hands, she held the source of the light: a long wooden shaft with a scythe blade made of pale green flame.

She was doing nothing to veil her soul, and her spiritual pressure reminded Yerin of a vast, untamed forest. A life artist. And an Underlady.

“Where is Wei Shi Lindon?” the woman asked softly.

Yerin cycled her Truegold madra, releasing all three sets of her Goldsigns. She held her master's sword out in one hand, feeling the aura around it. “Mercy,” she said.

Mercy settled Little Blue into her void key with one hand, transforming her staff into a bow with the other. “Yes?”

“Can you cover me?”

“Of course!” Mercy said, full of confidence.

“Good.”

Because either way, Yerin was going in.

* * *

Kiro was surely blessed by the heavens.

He and Meira had split up to look for the Blackflame boy. Their information had suggested he was close to the border of Empire territory, which suited them; they were not allowed to risk themselves by delving too deep into enemy control. His greatest fear was that Lindon would have sensed the rest of the attack from the Seishen Kingdom and retreated. And his second fear was that Meira would find the boy first.

She would surely have contained Lindon and gone to contact Kiro, in order to give him the credit. That would have stained him with shame and guilt he could never wipe free; he would have enough trouble repaying the debts he already owed her.

But the heavens had favored him. He had been the one to find the Blackflame, and quickly at that. The Sage was watching him through her owl. He was being given a chance to prove his worth.

And Lindon had not only stayed to fight, but had charged straight at him.

He re-formed his helmet. His armor was a Divine Treasure that he kept in his soul; all he had to do was feed it madra from his Path of the Steel Guardian, and it would rebuild itself. The Treasure was created to work alongside his Goldsign: the breastplate and centerpiece of his armor.

The Truegold moved with explosive speed, his red-ringed eyes burning, a blazing black-and-red aura around him marking his Enforcer technique.

Kiro activated his Forger technique: the Titan’s Blade. It flooded into his sword, quadrupling the weapon's size in an instant with condensed madra. His blade met the bone-hafted axe an instant later, Kiro striking with all the force of his Underlord body.

The axe was an Underlord-level sacred instrument, Kiro could feel it. Which meant that Lindon couldn't control it yet. He would likely not be able to activate it at all, and even if he did manage to, he would be crippled for the rest of the fight. The axe was nothing but a weapon. And Lindon obviously wasn't familiar with it; his motions had all the subtlety of a servant chopping wood.

Kiro hit the axe with the Forged blade of his extended sword, intending to sweep through the axe and chop Lindon in half.

His blade ran into Lindon’s…and his arms rang with the impact as his blow was thrown back.

He managed to hang on to his sword, staggering back a step. The Forger technique around the blade cracked.

Lindon reeled back himself, gripping the haft of the axe in two dark green gauntlets. He raised black-and-red eyes to Kiro's, and Kiro felt his mind flooding in shock.

How was this the strength of a Truegold?

Kiro's Mountainroot Iron body activated, increasing his weight and keeping him bound to the earth. It made him heavier and more stable all the time, but when he poured his madra into it, a team of rampaging horses couldn't pull him from his feet.

This time, with his stance steadied, he raised his shield against Lindon's next attack.

Lindon lifted his axe in his white Remnant hand. He brought the other palm up to point at Kiro, and dark fire kindled.

Kiro had been waiting for this. This was the Path of Black Flame he had come to counter. He used his Titan’s Blade again, this time focused on his shield. This was one of the most versatile Forger techniques known to his Kingdom, and would enlarge any weapon. His shield was built to work with the technique; artists on the Path of the Steel Guardian were known as impenetrable bulwarks.

A half-dome of earth and force madra burst into existence around his shield, blocking him from Lindon. He was ready.

The bar of Blackflame madra, a liquid-looking stream of black and red, slammed into the barrier above his shield.

In an instant, the layers of madra began to dissolve. Essence flew away as particles of silver light, and the technique shrieked as the power of destruction eroded his protection.

If not for instinct pounded into him by years of drills and training, the bar of Blackflame would have blasted straight through his shield. On the reflex his tutors had created in him, he drew on his reserve of soulfire.

Colorless flame flickered through the shield in an instant, and his half-dome barrier went from a hazy gray light to a dome as solid as a stone wall. The Blackflame technique ended, leaving essence drifting up like smoke, but it didn't break his protection.

He released the shield to attack, but defending himself had taken too much out of him. He was a split second too late.

Now Lindon was bringing the axe down on his head, and he had to use his sword to defend.

Once again, the weapon came down with enough force that he would have sworn it came from an Underlord, but this time Lindon was swinging one-handed. Kiro was still stronger, and his stance was solid as stone.

He held off the blow, punching out at Lindon with his shield. Lindon caught the edge with his left hand, his white prosthetic arm straining to push his axe down, the other wrestling with Kiro's shield. Kiro looked into the man's black-and-red eyes and snarling face, and he thought he understood why the Sage of the Silver Heart had taken hostile notice of him.

He had the bearing of a violent demon, a savage fixed on violence. Akura Charity's nephew must have met a horrible fate at this brute's hands.

But Kiro's body had still been bathed in soulfire, and Lindon’s had not. In a few more seconds, the prince would win this contest.

Then Lindon's eyes cleared. The black and red bled out of his eyes like ink being wiped away. The aura around him faded away, and the pressure on Kiro eased up. He didn't understand why Lindon would drop his Enforcer technique, but he wouldn't miss an opportunity when he had one; he shoved the axe away and pushed harder with his shield, intending to bowl Lindon over. The Blackflame began to slide back.

A new aura of light surrounded Lindon, this time a nimbus of hazy blue-white madra. Lindon stopped sliding back, holding the shield. Only a second later, he was standing upright.

Kiro felt a chill. The other Enforcer technique had given Lindon explosive strength and speed, but this brought the feeling of steady strength, like a placid lake.

He was matched.

He swept down his sword, but Lindon reached up with one fist and struck his wrist. There was a pulse of madra, and Kiro's hand went numb.

The crackling light surrounding his sword went out. It was no longer drawing on his madra. And it felt heavy, as though his Enforcer technique could no longer reach it.

That was one mystery too many for Kiro. How had a Truegold met him in strength? How was he using what seemed to be an entirely separate Path? The Sage had mentioned nothing about that. How had he negated Kiro's madra? And how had he managed a hit like that in the first place? Hitting Kiro’s wrist as he struck with his sword sounded easy, but doing so in an actual battle required inhuman levels of control. Or insanity.

Burning his madra for a burst of strength, Kiro shoved himself away from Lindon, taking two steps back. The Blackflame didn't pursue him, burning with that cold light, waiting for Kiro to make a move.

Watching him.

Kiro held up his sword and shield, keeping the fear from his voice. “Who are you?”

Lindon's eyes started to bleed black-and-red again, the pale haze around his body fading away. “You came looking for me.” Coming from that face, the words felt somehow like a threat.

“Are you the grandson of the last Blackflame Emperor?” Kiro had come up with all sorts of theories ever since Charity had pointed out Lindon's existence. “Are you a secret weapon of the Naru family?”

He didn't entirely expect an answer, but sometimes pride got the better of sacred artists. Maybe Lindon would let something slip.

And he had to know. There was no way a Truegold that fought like an Underlord could come out of nowhere.

“Who sent you after me?” Lindon asked. “Tell me that, and I will gladly tell you about myself.”

He spoke pleasantly, even politely, but Kiro's spirit warned him. He extended his senses to the aura around him.

The darkness of shadow aura had retreated before a slowly swirling tide of smoldering red. The Redflower family wagon was still burning. Still releasing aura of fire and destruction.

And Lindon had been gathering control of that aura the entire time. It was spinning slowly, all around him, like a newborn whirlpool. And like the Night Wheel overhead.

Kiro had no time to say anything, only time to react. He threw himself to the ground, ducking under his shield, activating the Titan's Blade and covering himself in a shield that he poured soulfire into.

As he did, Lindon clenched a fist and activated the aura.

Kiro was consumed in swirling black-and-red fury.

* * *

Yerin dashed at the gray-haired woman, whipping a Rippling Sword Striker technique at her. The wave of sword madra and aura exploded forward, slashing a groove in the soft forest floor, and Yerin ran in its wake.

Mercy suddenly emanated the power of a Truegold. Yerin didn't have to turn to feel her conjuring an arrow on her string, and an instant later that arrow blasted toward the Underlady.

The woman raised her blazing green scythe, then pounded it against the earth.

Black roots shot up from the ground like Striker techniques. They wove thick as a web in front of the life artist, burning with the vibrant energy of Lord-level madra.

Mercy's arrow shattered into specks of shadow on the first root. Yerin's wave of sword madra cut through the first layer, but broke on the second.

Yerin hit the wall of roots herself and kicked off, flipping back to land on her feet.

The roots retreated to reveal the woman's face. It was so blank as to be a mask. “I am Riyusai Meira, keeper of the Seishen royal garden. Tell me now: where is Wei Shi Lindon?”

Yerin used the Endless Sword technique, activating the aura around her body and her six Goldsigns. They erupted into a storm of uncontrolled slashes; Yerin didn't bother focusing on making her technique like the wind. She didn't need one specific cut, but a host of aura blades to slice through a forest of brambles.

Mercy lowered her bow and actually responded to the Underlady.

“No!” she shouted.

And that said it all, really.

Meira reversed her grip on her scythe, leaning forward like she was about to use quarterstaff techniques. Yerin had trouble thinking of a scythe as a practical weapon, but the difference in power would make up for that.

“Where is he?” the Underlady asked.

The pressure from her suddenly flared, green light wrapping around her feet, and she dashed forward.

A blink later, Yerin was staring into empty gray eyes from five feet away, with a fiery green blade sweeping up from below.

Yerin jumped to the side, lashing out with the Endless Sword as she did so, and there was a sudden heat on her sword-wrist. Then a chill.

The green flames of the scythe had brushed past her skin. Without even cutting her, it had taken away a chunk of her life aura.

She didn't know much about her lifeline, but she didn't want to lose any of it. It represented the power of her life force itself. Had she lost a day off her lifespan? Or would she be weaker for the rest of her life, if she didn't replace it? She didn't know.

But she wasn't about to take a solid hit from that scythe.

She opened her Copper sight for an instant, bearing the pain that came from opening it in the Night Wheel Valley. She caught a glimpse of a green ball of liquid-looking green life aura hanging in the air where it had been chopped away from her. Meira's scythe swept after it, still hungry, looking for more of Yerin to cut.

Yerin activated the Endless Sword.

The silver aura around her sword rang like a bell, sending force resonating out. Yerin controlled it, directing it like a gust of wind, so an invisible blade struck the haft of Meira's scythe.

The Underlady's blow was knocked backwards, but Meira spun with it, reversing the scythe and bringing the butt of the weapon up toward Yerin's chest. One of Yerin's sword-arm Goldsigns swept up to intercept, and another lashed forward, sending a Rippling Sword technique at her opponent like a deadly crescent moon.

With one sweep of her scythe, Meira knocked the Goldsign aside, crushed Yerin's technique, and forced Yerin back a step. Her strength wasn't too much greater than Yerin's—her Iron body obviously specialized in something different—though she had been reforged in soulfire.

But Yerin wasn’t alone.

Mercy stepped up, radiating the power of a Truegold, firing black arrow after black arrow into the enemy. They seemed to blast from the surrounding shadows, impacting Meira’s wrists like ink stains. They didn’t seem to hurt the Underlady, but they slowed her down, forcing her to spend time and madra burning them away.

Yerin let madra flow into her sword. “So you know, you should keep away from that scythe.”

Mercy gave her a sidelong glance. “I planned on it.”

Light flashed like a green sun rising.

Meira stood, surrounded by a vibrant aura, her blazing scythe held in both hands. Around her, vines rose from the ground; some of them looked to be black roots manipulated by a Ruler technique, whereas others were clearly Forged of life madra.

“Where is he?” Meira asked again. “Where is he? Where is he? Where is he? Whereishewhereishewhereishewhereishewhereishe?”

Her gaze was no longer dead. Now it was feverishly hot.

More vines, both black and green, shot up from the ground. The pressure around the Underlady grew stronger and stronger.

“She's got one too many cracks in her head,” Yerin muttered.

Mercy poured all her spirit in to a single arrow that grew darker and darker as it absorbed layers of shadow madra. “Would you mind keeping her off me?” Mercy asked, voice tight with strain.

Would have been easy enough if their opponent wasn't a Lady. A tidal wave of plants slammed into them with the force of an Underlord soul, and Yerin pushed her Endless Sword as hard as she could. An invisible wall of sword aura churned the physical roots to mulch like a thousand spinning blades, but the bright green vines of madra were unaffected. They slithered through like hungry snakes, and Yerin had to slash and spin with her white sword and her six Goldsigns, keeping them away from Mercy.

After only a breath or two, Yerin was about to be overwhelmed. She pushed herself harder, but her madra channels were strained, and she was moving too fast.

Finally, when she could hold no longer, she leaped out of the way.

Purple eyes shone as Mercy faced the enemy, a black arrow thrumming with power sitting on the string of her bow. The weapon, taller than Mercy, was woven from slick black strands knotted like vines. Its violet-eyed dragon’s head sat in the center of the bow’s shaft, the arrow emerging from the dragon’s mouth. This was the weapon Mercy had inherited from her Monarch mother. She called it Suu.

Without a word, Mercy loosed the arrow.

It blasted through the air, growing in power as it went, until it flew like a dark and hungry void toward the Underlady. She stood with a loose wall of roots around her, and for whatever reason—whether she didn’t sense it coming in time, with all the shadow aura around, or whether she didn’t consider it a threat—the arrow struck Meira in the chest.

It slammed into her with what Yerin would describe as a flash of darkness, sending a chill through her spiritual sense.

…and it did nothing.

Mercy drew in a breath.

The black arrow stuck from Meira’s chest, but she glanced down at it dispassionately. A moment later, a flash of green reduced the weapon to essence.

Mercy’s spirit faded from Truegold back to Highgold. Her weapon shifted from a bow back into a staff, and she leaned on it, sagging down.

Yerin didn’t know if Mercy had truly given up, or if she was counting on her identity to save her. But Meira turned her attention to Yerin, which left Yerin with precious few options.

She looked within herself, to the red mass of ravenous power that had been strangely quiet throughout the fight. As though it had been waiting for her to call.

Yerin turned to the ball of life aura that hung in the air nearby, slowly dissipating. Vibrant green aura was running through her arm again, replacing what she’d lost, but it had come from the lifeline running down her spine. That line was getting noticeably thinner. Which couldn’t be good.

But there were chunks of her life lying around. She might as well put them to use.

“You hungry?” she asked.

The Blood Shadow surged out.

It was a featureless copy of her, like a rough model of red clay, and unlike the last time she’d seen it, six red blades stood out on its back to mirror her own Goldsigns. The Heaven’s Drop had increased its power to dangerous levels. And here she was, giving it more.

The Shadow flowed toward the life aura in the air, greedily trying to take it. And failing.

Meira lowered her scythe, preparing to dash forward.

Desperately, Yerin cast back in her mind for the method the Blood Sage had outlined for feeding his Blood Shadow. Her control over life aura was poor, her ability to weave soulfire only basic, but she strained to reach out to the life aura that had once belonged to her. To push it into the Blood Shadow.

She still felt a connection to the severed aura. She couldn’t swallow it—it was separate from her now and couldn’t be reclaimed. The Sage of Red Faith’s dream tablet had been very clear about that. But it had still come from her. She could choose to feed it to the Blood Shadow.

It was only that getting it to move with her pathetic control was like trying to tip over a bottle by blowing on it.

The hazy globe of green drifted slightly…

And the Blood Shadow snapped it up like a bird taking a fish.

She’d barely had to touch the aura at all. The Shadow was greedy for it, and the sense of its presence swelled as it slurped up the life aura. Its hair, a mass of red color, split into strands. Lines appeared on its face; suggestions of eyes, a nose, a mouth.

It was still tied to her by a strand of madra that extended to her core, and she could feel it suddenly pulling through that strand like it was inhaling through a reed.

Not life, this time. The aura in her blood. The strength of her body.

Weakness flooded her, and she fought back by powering her Steelborn Iron body with madra, but the Shadow was taking from her spirit too. Even the pathetic few wisps of soulfire she had managed to gather in her soulspace slipped away, devoured by the parasite. Its blades were becoming sharper, its eyes clearer. It was draining her dry.

The Blood Shadow had slipped its leash.

10

As the Underlord hunkered down under his shield, hiding from the Void Dragon's Dance, Lindon begged Dross for a plan. His madra channels were strained by the use of so many techniques so quickly, his spirit burning with the effort. His body ached, and he panted for breath even after such a short fight. He'd been strengthened in Ghostwater, but not enough to take on an Underlord for long.

[I’ve built a very nice model of Prince Kiro’s behavior,] Dross said. [If he doesn’t have any more combat techniques, then it will be completely accurate! But he absolutely does. No question.]

Lindon finally couldn't hold the Void Dragon's Dance any longer. The furious cyclone of fire and destruction would continue for a few more breaths, but then it would run out. And if the Underlord wasn't seriously injured, then Lindon was almost out of tricks. He had madra to spare, enough to drag the fight out for twice as long, but he'd been forced to push his body and spirit past their limits to keep up with an Underlord. He wouldn't be fighting at his peak condition, so he had no confidence in being able to kill or outlast the prince.

But the Skysworn and the Redflower family had gotten away.

Mission accomplished, Lindon said to Dross. He opened his void key for an instant, tossing Harmony’s axe back inside. Eventually, his soulspace would be large enough to hold the weapon, but he hadn’t reached that point yet.

After closing the void key, he ran.

Behind him, the Void Dragon's Dance began to fade away as Lindon sprinted into the shadows of the forest. The Soul Cloak sprung up around him as he ran, though his channels ached with the use of more madra. He would have to ask Little Blue for help after this.

[You were amazing back there, by the way. That ambush? And the way you hit him with a sucker punch before running away! Honestly, you've exceeded my expectations. Well done.] He sounded completely sincere.

Lindon felt a thrill as he ran through the forest of shadows. He'd done it. Ever since he'd traded blows with Naru Gwei, he'd wondered if he could stand up to an Underlord. And he had; he was no Lord yet, but he was standing on the stage.

How strong would he be once he finally advanced?

Having Dross in his head was the edge he'd needed. The way the spirit smoothed out his thoughts was a subtle advantage, but noticeable when he fought someone who had him outclassed in both power and speed.

Lindon vaulted over a fallen tree, ducking a shadowy creature that he couldn’t quite see. It was thanks to you, he said in his head.

[Aw, don’t mention it. I mean don’t mention it to me, because I already know. Do mention it to others. Spread the word.]

A moment later, he added, [And also, this is entirely up to you, but you might want to consider running faster.]

Lindon extended his spiritual sense behind him. Sure enough, there was a heavy presence crashing through the forest, barreling through trees like an ox through tall grass.

Kiro had recovered.

[And would you look at that, he does have more techniques! I knew he must.]

Yellow aura surged beneath Lindon's feet, and the earth surged up into a wall, trying to block him in. Lindon leaped, powered by the Soul Cloak, and the Ruler technique couldn't catch him. He rode on top of the wall for a moment as it rose, then jumped down.

A needle of gray madra speared through the wall of packed soil where he had stood a moment before. A Striker technique to follow up the Ruler technique.

Lindon kept running, glancing back to see Kiro crash through layers of stone, armor glowing with a silver-and-yellow corona. He didn't even slow down as the earth wall that he'd created slowly collapsed behind him.

[Oh, this is fascinating stuff. It’s all going into my model of him, let me assure you.]

Kiro thrust his sword forward, and the blue sparks on the blade flared. A lance of smooth blue lightning flashed forward; it clearly wasn't the prince's madra, so it must have been the binding in his weapon. It struck at Lindon's feet, and the ground beneath him burst.

Thanks to Dross' existence and the flexible power of the Soul Cloak, Lindon reacted even before he thought. He borrowed the force of the explosion, leaning forward, twisting in the air and grabbing a branch overhead, then swinging on the branch to throw himself forward.

[Woohoo!] Dross shouted. [Oh, that was amazing! Go back, let's do it again!]

Do you have a plan ready yet?

[I'm running on the excess dream aura produced by your mind, so I wouldn’t say I’m drowning in power up here. I’m most of the way done, though. Call it sixty percent.]

Lindon spared some attention from his Soul Cloak to send a trickle of pure madra to Dross at the base of his skull. He wasn't sure it would work, but it was similar enough to how he had cycled the power of the Spirit Well to Dross before.

[I appreciate that, I do, but it’s not really helping. Sorry. If you could upgrade your brain, that would really be ideal. Or some dream elixirs, those would be good too.]

Lindon resolved to get Dross some dream elixirs. So long as Kiro didn't catch them.

He heard a distant echo in his thoughts as Dross began to speak again, suggesting he was contacting the others. [Hello! Hello out there, we could use some backup. A little help would be nice before we're killed by this big armored man. Any assistance you could spare would be greatly appreciated. Any at all. Very soon.]

Lindon had been fleeing in the direction he'd come from, so hopefully they were close enough that Yerin and the others could hear them now. The shadow aura muffled everything, but maybe...

His thoughts were interrupted by a wall rising in front of him. He jumped and grabbed a fistful of compact soil in his Remnant hand, which sunk in more easily than his hand of flesh, but walls were rising on his left and right as well. He started climbing, but he felt danger behind and released his grip.

Gray madra speared through the wall again, and Lindon drew on Blackflame. His madra channels burned, and he spun around as he landed, unleashing a bar of dragon's breath two fingers thick. He swept it behind him blindly.

The attack splashed into Kiro's shield less than ten feet away and dissipated, leaving the metal glowing with heat. Lindon backed up, gathering more madra, but Kiro closed that gap in no time. He loomed, his bulky armor making him a massive silhouette, and then slammed his red-hot shield into Lindon's chest.

The impact crushed Lindon into the packed earth and stones, clipping his chin, bruising his ribs, and driving the breath from his lungs. He opened his void key, reaching for the axe with his left hand, but Kiro kicked his hand away. He couldn't reach, and after a moment he lost concentration on his void key and the opening vanished.

Pushing the shield against Lindon's chest, Kiro stabbed him.

He was aiming for the neck, but as the blade approached, Lindon twisted with all the strength he could muster, getting his left hand up and trying to push away the blade. The sword sliced into his shoulder, the inside of his arm, the palm of his hand.

He screamed at the pain, his mind fuzzing, but his body wouldn't let him lose consciousness. If he did, he would die.

So he lashed out with his right hand.

The fingernails of his Remnant arm were slightly tipped like dull claws, and they dug into Kiro's helmet. The Underlord ignored them for a moment...until he noticed that the hunger binding was active, drawing madra away. And his armor was made entirely of madra.

Lindon scooped away a handful of his helmet like butter, peeling it away from his face. The veins of his white arm filled with gray.

Kiro instinctively jerked back, pulling away.

And Lindon vented his arm.

Whatever Kiro's Path was, it had aspects of earth and force, so even aimlessly shoving it out carried a kick like a horse. The Underlord staggered back, giving Lindon an opening.

Though it burned his spirit, Lindon kindled the Burning Cloak and kicked away, shooting out of the earth walls that blocked him in on three sides. He fled as fast as he could without looking back, trying to ignore his agonizing wounds. He left blood trickling behind him.

[Oh! There's somebody! Hey, help!]

Dross' voice gave him new strength, and he looked up, fixing on the new figure.

It was Mercy.

Her purple eyes were wide as she popped out of the shadows, riding on her staff, pulling it to a halt as she saw him. Her hair had grown long enough to cover her ears now, and it whipped in the wind of her movement.

Lindon himself skidded to a stop. He took quick stock of his injuries.

Then he kicked off in another direction.

She may have demonstrated the power of a Truegold before, but she was still only Highgold. He couldn't put her in danger.

He glanced back to make sure that Kiro was following him. He hadn't gone far; he could still see the three-walled prison of earth through the trees, and the armored Underlord running away from it. But he wasn't running for Lindon.

He headed for Mercy, shield and sword in hand.

Lindon shouted to draw his attention, Burning Cloak flaring in spite of his madra channels' protest. He dashed back the other way, throwing himself at Kiro. With a quick motion, he reached into the void key and pulled out Harmony's axe.

Kiro reacted as though he'd expected Lindon to return all along, pivoting smoothly and bracing his shield for the impact.

Though his shoulder screamed in pain, Lindon hit the shield with his axe and all the explosive force of the Burning Cloak, slamming the Underlord backwards.

Or so he intended.

Instead of flying away, the Underlord stood as though he were nailed to the ground. The force transferred through him, kicking up a savage wind behind him that tore up soil and leaves, even stripping bark from nearby trees.

Undeterred, Kiro struck out with his sword, and Lindon raised his Remnant arm to protect his face. It wouldn't hold, but maybe it would prevent the Underlord from splitting his skull.

The sword rang like a bell, jerking backwards as though Kiro had struck an invisible stone.

Though Lindon couldn't see Kiro's expression, the prince must have been as shocked as Lindon was. He looked around for the new enemy, giving Lindon space.

Before Lindon could move, he was grabbed and tugged backwards. Black strings of Mercy's madra pulled Lindon away, and he let them pull him behind a large tree. Mercy crouched next to him, looking over him with worried eyes. She paused a moment when she saw the weapon in his left hand, but shook it off, wadding up a purple cloth to push against his injuries.

Lindon didn't spare another thought for her. His Bloodforged Iron body was pulling madra to his wounds, and he was trying to ignore his aches and pains and watch Yerin's fight. But it wasn't Yerin.

Not entirely.

Yerin's Blood Shadow stood before Kiro. Red robes flapped in the wind, a five-fingered hand held a pink-bladed sword, and six sword-arms stuck out from her shoulders. Yerin's eyes—painted in crimson—watched the Underlord, and Yerin's smirk was on her face.

Lindon had never seen the Blood Shadow with such detail before. At first, he was relieved; Yerin must have had a breakthrough of some kind in order to get her Shadow to this level.

But that wasn't the only possibility.

A shiver of dread passed through him, and he watched the trees behind the Blood Shadow. If the parasite completed its goal and devoured Yerin completely, it might have looked like this. If she were still alive, she’d be following soon.

“What is this?” Kiro asked. “Have you bound a Remnant to your service?”

The Shadow's red smile grew wider, and she beckoned Kiro with her sword.

A green light blossomed from the darkness behind her, and another woman came rushing out. She was gray-eyed and gray-haired, wearing a shabby dress, and she carried a scythe with a blade of green flame.

She looked only a little older than Lindon, and her spirit carried the weight of an Underlord.

She passed the Blood Shadow without a glance. Though the Shadow struck out with a Goldsign, the woman evaded without a thought, landing on one knee at Kiro's feet.

“First prince,” she said, “this place is not safe for you. Please leave it to me.”

He let his helmet vanish, giving Lindon a clear look at his face. He seemed surprised...and he was sweating. Maybe Lindon had pressed him harder than he'd thought. “Meira? Did you—”

He cut off, conjuring his helmet again, as a silver-and-black blur followed Meira out of the forest. Yerin hurled a wave of razor-edged madra at her prey, but Kiro protected the kneeling woman with his shield.

Yerin landed, panting. Her hair was in disarray, her Skysworn armor chipped, and her skin was pale. She breathed heavily, her eyes sunken, like she'd been fighting for days. Her appearance reminded him of the time he'd met her, after she had been on the run for weeks.

But she was still alive. She hadn't been swallowed by the Blood Shadow.

Lindon struggled to his feet, but he was in no shape to fight. He would have to find a way to distract the other two so they could retreat. But how would they escape from two Underlords?

“Dross,” Lindon said aloud, “keep calling for help.”

Neither of them knew if there was anyone in range, but Dross kept trying. They were closer to the Blackflame lines than the Seishen Kingdom, so there should be help coming. If only they could hang on.

And if the attack wasn’t as broad as he feared it was. Even now, he could hear distant, deafening explosions.

The gray-haired Underlady peeked over the edge of the shield. “You found the Blackflame? I will take care of him, my lord, don't worry.”

Yerin glanced over at Lindon.

Lindon hefted the axe. He still had madra left; his shoulder was already knitting together, and he couldn’t stand still. He walked out from the trees, gathering Blackflame into his left hand and holding his axe in the right.

[If Lindon fights again,] Dross said to her, [he’ll last…ten seconds? Five seconds. I’m betting five.]

Yerin turned away from him, holding her sword up to bar his way. “Catch a breath or two. You've had your turn.”

Lindon stopped. “He’s exaggerating. It isn’t that bad.”

“Yeah, I’d bet on ten seconds myself.” She tapped the bracer of her armor with one finger. “Caught two scraps of a message. It’s crumbling to pieces out there, but Underlords are heading to bail us out. Just have to hang on.”

“You can dance a round after you catch a breath or two. Hop in when you feel like I could use a ten-second holiday.” She strode forward, moving more naturally in the Skysworn armor than she ever had before.

As part of the same motion, Yerin and her Blood Shadow spread out, walking to either side of the Underlords. “You've about drained me dry,” Yerin said, looking across at her opposite. “Now let’s see if you can bury me.”

Both versions of Yerin raised their swords.

Meira laughed and brushed her hand to one side in a negligent gesture. Life madra flashed, affecting the aura, and branches twisted unnaturally down to grab at Yerin and her Shadow. Trees bent all the way over to snatch them.

Then they burst into chips of wood.

Entire trees exploded under the Endless Sword resonating from two sources, releasing a deafening roar like a million logs chopped at once.

Yerin dashed in, slashing at Kiro, who met her sword with his.

Her Blood Shadow lunged at Meira.

And in the first second, Lindon would have sworn he was watching a fight between four Underlords.

He had personally felt how strong Kiro's blows were. Without the enhancement of the meat from Ghostwater or his own full-body Enforcer techniques, he would have crumpled under a single strike. But when Yerin's sword clashed with his, the Underlord was the one under pressure.

Yerin struck more than once in every exchange. As he defended with his shield and inflated his sword to massive size, plunging it down on her, she ducked to one side, slashing grooves into his armor with the invisible claws of the Endless Sword. At the same time, she lashed out with a Striker technique that blasted at his eyes, forcing himself to raise his shield higher. She never stopped. Her every move flowed seamlessly into the next without a blink in between; when he raised his shield, she was already striking at his feet, moving to attack from a different angle, drawing her sword-arms back for a follow-up strike. She was a spinning, flashing whirlwind of destruction.

She held nothing back, throwing herself into the fight as though this battle were her last.

And her Shadow was her equal.

Lindon had heard that the Blood Shadows of Redmoon Hall made them worth two sacred artists of their level, but he'd never seen that to be true. Yan Shoumei, the Redmoon Truegold in Ghostwater, had used her Shadow as an extension of her sacred arts, like a cloak or a weapon. He'd never seen her fight all-out, but he couldn't imagine that the Shadow gave her enough of an advantage to count as a true copy of herself. At most, it would give her an edge over other sacred artists at her level.

Longhook, the Redmoon Underlord, had fought with his Shadow in the form of a weapon as well. Lindon had seen him overpower Eithan with it, but not to the degree that Lindon would have expected from a two-on-one fight.

But here, for the first time, he caught a glimpse of what the Blood Shadow could be. It fought like a mirror of Yerin focused on a different opponent. It sent silver-and-red crescents flying at Meira, tangling her scythe in sword-bladed arms and invisible clashes from the Endless Sword, cutting her like dozens of invisible knives. They didn't cut the Underlady's skin deeply, but left shallow gouges all over.

Her dress was still intact, as was the haft of her scythe, but wounds still appeared on her skin. This was the effect of blood madra; it affected flesh more easily than anything else. The Blood Shadow might have trouble cutting a tree, but it would have no trouble slicing through a cow.

Lindon wasn't sure if the Shadow was weaker than Yerin or if it had a more troubling opponent, because it was pressed on the back foot more often than the real Yerin. Meira pushed it back, shoving it away, keeping it on the defensive. Until it backed into Kiro.

Then, as though they'd planned it all along, the Blood Shadow spun and refocused on a new target.

Yerin struck at the same time, sending seven individual slashes of sword madra at Prince Kiro—one from her sword and six from her Goldsigns. Each crackled with aura, until the prince faced a silver storm. He flooded his shield with madra, calling up the gray half-dome in front of him that he'd used to defend against dragon's breath.

And behind him, the Blood Shadow drove its sword through his back.

The Underlord stiffened, his shield faltering. The last dregs of Yerin's techniques pushed through the fading wall, lashing him, stripping pieces of his armor from his back. That armor had prevented the Shadow's sword from penetrating all the way, but it still stuck about six inches into the back of his ribs.

Lindon only caught a glimpse of the wound for an instant before Meira, shrieking, hauled the Blood Shadow back. Her arms were shredded by the Shadow's retaliation, but she ignored her wounds, tossing the spirit one-handed into a nearby tree.

Her screams turned into sobs as she saw Kiro, and she dropped to her knees.

Green light flared around her. Roots and grass rose from the ground, weaving together in a wall, shoving Yerin away. The pink flowers in her hair shone, and vibrant green aura engulfed Prince Kiro's wound. A second later, he drew in a deep, shuddering breath.

Lindon released a bar of dragon's breath.

This wasn't a game. The two had attacked without warning—attacked sacred artists younger and weaker than they were. Lindon might not have been able to keep up with the fight in his condition, but one technique was enough. He had been waiting for the opening where it might do some good.

The fire punched through the roots easily enough, and he poured the technique through the barrier, drilling a hole.

When the Blackflame ended, he looked through the new gap in the wall. He saw only green.

Leaves of emerald madra spreading from the Underlady's hand had blocked his attack. Their edges danced with soulfire that they greedily absorbed. The black fire should have driven a hole straight through the leaves, but instead, the fire madra was dispersed into essence.

Hurriedly, Lindon readied another blast.

The green light around Meira blazed up into a column that stretched into the night sky above her. In an instant, the column bloomed into branches and resolved into the image of a tree; a massive, mythical tree that rose over the rest of the forest.

Lindon's gut tightened in fear.

Meira looked at him through the hole, her eyes absolutely empty. “You are all dead,” she said quietly.

Then she raised something in her fist: a loose blue stone that looked like a gritty ball of sand. A gatestone.

She crushed it, and in a flash of blue, she vanished.

The wall of roots fell when she disappeared, which allowed Lindon to see that Kiro had gone too. That was a pity; he had hoped to kill one of them. Now they would return.

[Here’s some good news,] Dross said. [If they do come back, I have a combat solution prepared for Prince Kiro. One hundred percent ready to go! It wasn’t too complicated, as these things go. I have a partial prediction for the one called Meira as well, though if you could spare some more Dream Well water, then I'd really knock your feet off.]

Lindon walked out, looking from Yerin to her Blood Shadow. “Gratitude,” he said, though his feelings were more complicated than that. He was grateful, but...he had also thought he'd caught up to Yerin enough to fight beside her. He felt useless.

“I've never seen you fight like that,” he said. “You were...”

He trailed off as Yerin's eyes rolled up in her head and she collapsed.

He was there in an instant, catching her in his arms. Her master's sword fell from limp fingers. Her breathing was rough, her skin pale and cold. She weighed practically nothing.

Before he could ask Mercy to grab Yerin's sword, the Blood Shadow appeared next to him. It looked into his eyes, and it was like he could see a spark of the real Yerin in them. It was unnerving.

He dipped his head to her. He wasn't exactly sure how to address the parasitic spirit living inside Yerin, but it was best to be polite.

“Thank you for your help,” he said.

The Blood Shadow smiled again, gave him a wink, and then crumpled. It coiled into a rope of red light and slithered back into Yerin's spirit.

Had it really winked at him?

It wasn’t the time to worry about that. Yerin was in danger.

He looked back at Mercy, who had picked up Harmony's axe and Yerin’s sword, putting them into her own void key. He couldn’t unravel her expression, except that she looked pained.

[Oh, I think I caught a bit of that message she mentioned,] Dross announced. [Blackflame Underlords are on their way! Two or three minutes, I’d say. They’re gathering us up for the…oh. For the general retreat.]

* * *

The Seishen Kingdom's attack had come out of nowhere.

The Blackflame Empire wasn't entirely caught unprepared. Most of the Skysworn were acting as scouts, so they had taken the brunt of the attack, with some of their individual squads folding back to warn the major clans. The Empire had engaged their major defenses: boundary fields that created walls of wind, huge launcher constructs that could destroy even Underlords at a distance, and the Blackflame Underlords themselves.

But the suddenness of the assault had done its damage. No one had expected the Seishen Kingdom to launch an all-out attack at all, just to skirmish over resources. They hadn’t thought the Akura Sage would allow it.

The Empire's border in the Night Wheel Valley had collapsed, the Kingdom’s forces pushing through. Blackflame defenses crumbled, and the shadow aura made it difficult to coordinate an organized retreat.

Cassias stood on a Thousand-Mile Cloud, spreading his awareness around him. Now that he was a Truegold, his spiritual sense and his bloodline powers had both expanded, leaving him feeling like he had eyes in the sky for miles. The deep shadow aura restricted him as well, but it was still a difference of night and day compared to his Highgold senses.

He caught glimpses, not full pictures, but he could piece them together. If there was a bright side, it was that the Blackflame losses were relatively small—the Seishen Kingdom would be afraid to push the Sage too far. They were pushing forward to gain territory, not to kill.

Though lives were still lost.

The Emperor had sounded a retreat soon after their outer defenses failed. Now, it was a mad scramble to get back through the portal.

But Cassias was far from there. He had been left where the fighting was hottest. And the more desperate the battle, the more restraint began to slip.

His wife, Naru Jing, hovered next to him. Her right wing glistened emerald green—the Goldsign of the Path of Grasping Sky. The other was an almost skeletal orange-yellow, built out of madra, a prosthetic replacement created by Soulsmiths. Her left eye was the same color, taken from the same Remnant. She waved a hand, and her wind madra cut a volley of Enforced arrows from the sky.

She had been powerful before, as the top-ranked Highgold in the Empire. Now, the two of them had taken the opportunity to train in a place where the aura was richer than ever before. He doubted they were the top two ranked among Truegolds—there were some real monsters among the Truegolds of the Blackflame Empire—but he suspected they would be in the top two or three hundred. If the heavens were kind, they might even break through to Underlord before the end of this contest.

But with that power had come extra authority, and with the authority, duty.

Cassias relayed the situation he'd seen to Jing, who informed her father via courier. Her father was a significant figure in the Naru clan, and had taken to direct their defenses.

This hilltop, the headquarters of the Naru clan on this side of the shadowy portal, was the last site of fierce fighting. The Emperor and the Underlords were fighting elsewhere, and while they would likely return, the winged members of the Naru clan were being pushed back. Their losses were still manageable, but they had no one to match the enemy's Underlord: a woman with long, burning hair who shouted loud threats as she burned her way through the forest.

Cassias was singlehandedly doing the work of twenty scouts, and might have been the only reason they were able to maneuver around the fiery Underlady. Wherever she was headed, they gave ground, reinforcing their lines elsewhere. No matter how much stronger she was, she couldn't be everywhere.

The Naru clan could outpace her, falling back through the air, but it would mean leaving their servants and workers undefended. Servants like the Arelius family.

A fireball streaked like a comet through the air, and it took all of Naru Jing's attention to disperse it. Through his bloodline ability, Cassias saw the Underlady's fix on him, drawing a spear of burning madra from thin air. He pulled his awareness back.

“Time to leave,” he said. He ordered his Thousand-Mile Cloud to plummet downward, pulling out a caged purple butterfly as he did so. He whispered a quick message to it, informing the Naru clan that he was repositioning. He wouldn’t last long with an Underlord-level sacred artist targeting him.

He regretted the full retreat. Though he trusted the Emperor’s judgment, every day they stayed in this aura-rich environment was a fortune to their sacred artists. If they stayed here long enough, he might even reach Underlord himself.

He was focused on delivering his message when his wife tackled him.

The cloud he had been standing on exploded, the focus of not just the Underlady but her contingent of Truegolds. They fell, Jing's wings straining to hold them, her artificial eye blazing with effort.

Then, suddenly, Cassias landed.

It confused him, because he was sure they had not come close to the ground yet. And the landing felt as soft as if he had landed on a pile of pillows. He looked down and saw the emerald green cloud that had appeared beneath him.

Then he looked up, to the Skysworn armor. And the man wearing it.

Eithan shook his head, closing his eyes as though he couldn't bear to watch. “Shame. It's such a shame that I am duty-bound to the scouting mission the Skysworn have given me. I can't possibly help you.”

Cassias sagged back in relief, leaning into his wife's arms. She let out a long breath.

“If only I were the Patriarch, my spot would be here beside you, but alas I was ousted from my rightful position...”

Cassias raised the purple butterfly, using a brief flicker of madra to scramble the message from before. Instead, he spoke a new message clearly into it: “Re-form the lines. Rescue has arrived.”

Eithan opened one eye. “No, no, I couldn't possibly help you. How could I ever—”

Cassias opened the cage, and the butterfly construct flew off.

“...they have an Underlady,” Eithan pointed out. “She looks dangerous.”

Naru Jing waved to her courier. “The fight is over!” she shouted. “Tell my father to regroup and prepare to transport wounded.”

“Am I being ignored?” Eithan asked.

“Now you know how it feels,” Cassias muttered.

“It would be more fun if you sobbed out your apology and begged me for my assistance.”

“Don't you have some work to do?”

Eithan's mouth quirked into a familiar smile. A spark returned to his eyes.

“Well then. I suppose I do.”

11

Outside the walls of Blackflame City, hundreds of medical tents had been set in long rows. The Lowgold injured shared huge tents with dozens of people, the Highgolds and members of important families had tents with only a few others, and the Truegolds and children of large clans were allowed into the hospitals within the over-crowded capital city.

Or that was how it was supposed to be. The Seishen Kingdom had continued pushing to the very edge of the portal, and the number of wounded flooded their capacity. The tents were stuffed with beds, and mats when those ran out. Wounded were shoved into whatever space could be found regardless of rank, and Brightcrown healers scurried from one battered sacred artist to another, trying their best to conserve madra.

The most important among the wounded, the ones who would usually have been given rooms inside the city, were still given special attention. But they couldn’t get through the walls. Even the sky over the walls had been locked down after too many cloudships had run out of power and been forced to make emergency landings.

Lindon had heard that the Seishen Kingdom attack hadn't cost too many lives, as these things went, but hearing the moans and screams from agonized wounded, it was easier to imagine that the Blackflame Empire had been massacred.

Though Lindon could see nothing of the suffering patients, because he had a tent of his own. And a bed. A bundle of yellow-striped flowers on a table beside him, radiating calming dream aura that even soothed his spirit. Steady rain pattered down, but the fabric of the tent was flawless.

A medical attendant from the Brightcrown family stood inside his tent, attending to Lindon alone, hands folded in front of him. Lindon had wondered about the family name before he’d seen one; each member of the family had a floating golden crown over their heads. As the Arelius family commanded the cleaning crews and maintenance workers all across the Empire, so the Brightcrowns controlled organized medicine.

Lindon made a show of rubbing salve over his wounds again. The wounds were still raw, but it had been about twelve hours since the battle—his Bloodforged Iron body had taken care of the worst of his injuries already.

“I'm really feeling much better,” Lindon said, twisting his left arm to demonstrate. It stung, but he didn't show that on his face. “I think it's time for me to leave. I can only imagine how busy you are.”

Somewhere nearby, a grown man sobbed.

The Brightcrown healer—a small, tidy Highgold with gray at his temples—bowed to Lindon. “To answer the Truegold, I could not live with myself if I allowed you to leave before your treatment was complete, especially not in this rain. The reputation of my family is at stake.”

Extending both hands, he sent a breath of golden madra toward Lindon. It not only eased his wounds, but gave him a pleasantly peaceful feeling that made him feel as though he'd had a long night's sleep.

They'd had this exchange a dozen times already over the course of the night. Lindon had returned with Yerin in his arms, both of them covered in blood, with Mercy stumbling exhaustedly after them. Lindon had no idea where Mercy had gone since, but she was unhurt.

He'd kept his spiritual sense locked on Yerin, who was in a tent of her own only two hundred yards away. She needed the attention.

But the Brightcrowns had scanned him, then immediately shuttled him into this tent, with a personal attendant.

“I do not need all this,” Lindon said firmly. He had initially considered his wounds merely scratches, but the course of the night had made him realize that they were deeper than he had imagined. And there were more of them. Even so, he should have been in and out in two hours.

“You are a Truegold ranked among the top one hundred combatants. It is my duty to return you to battlefield condition as soon as possible.”

That was new. “Top one hundred?” Lindon asked.

The man smiled proudly, brandishing a sheet of paper. “I received confirmation only minutes ago. The oracles convened last night, examining what they could of the battle.”

He bowed, ushering the raindrop-stained paper to Lindon. It was a listing of one hundred names, in order; at the top were the words “Truegold Combat Ranking 1-100.”

“Pardon me if you were already aware, but this is an incredible honor. There are fewer Truegolds than Highgolds, certainly, but the top one hundred is even more competitive than the Highgold list. The truly talented do not stay at Highgold; they spend most of their lives at Truegold. And this list does not discriminate by age. The top ten are all old monsters that can compete with some Underlords.”

Toward the bottom of the list, Lindon saw his name: Wei Shi Lindon Arelius, Path of Black Flame. Age: Eighteen. Backing: Arelius family.

Number ninety-six.

[Eighteen years old?] Dross said. [Sorry, I know I’m supposed to be focused on your rank, but…are they sure? I thought eighteen-year-old humans were supposed to be fresh-faced and youthful.]

Lindon was surprised by his age, too.

By the standards of Sacred Valley, he would be considered seventeen still, so these Blackflame oracles must have scanned his biological age. Even so, he couldn’t believe that his second autumn since leaving home had ended while he was in Ghostwater. In all that time, he had climbed higher than he had ever imagined.

Ninety-six. It was only a ranking, and he still had a long road to travel, but his spirits lifted. This was proof of how far he'd come.

He pulled on the shadesilk ribbon around his neck, hauling out the golden hammer badge. Soon, he would be trading it out for...what was the color of the badge that represented Underlord? He would have to check.

[Oh, and look who's eighty-seven!]

Drawn by Dross, Lindon scanned up the list until he saw another name.

Yerin Arelius, Path of the Endless Sword. Age: Nineteen. Backing: Arelius family. Number eighty-seven.

Nine places higher than his.

[You’re closing in!] Dross said. [And just to think, you've come so far since you started. I imagine.]

Lindon stared at the number next to Yerin's name. It wasn't jealousy he was feeling. He knew his power wouldn't stay the same for long, and Yerin wouldn't care what some paper said her strength was anyway. If he had to put a name to it, he would call it despair.

He had foolishly thought they were on even footing.

With her Blood Shadow, she had fought two Underlords to a standstill. Her image, spinning and dancing in sync with her Shadow, had haunted him all night. It was the most extraordinary thing he'd ever seen from her.

And they were at the same stage of advancement. He’d known he was neglecting real combat training, and now he'd dropped the entire burden on her.

Yerin's madra spiked, and his dark thoughts were cut off. She was awake.

The Brightcrown stood in front of the tent flap, bowing to him. “Pardon me, Truegold, but I couldn't possibly allow—”

Lindon pushed him aside.

He passed an open-sided tent, filled with bleeding and groaning figures as well as exhausted healers mixing concoctions or forcing out their madra. The area beneath the tent was packed solid, so there was barely room for them to walk between the beds. The steady rain soaked the feet of those on the edge, who couldn't entirely fit under the covering.

The Brightcrown man stumbled after Lindon, who marched straight for Yerin. Some of the other Brightcrowns and their assistants—each bearing the crest of a crowned oak tree—hurriedly bowed as soon as they saw him. He even saw a few servants in the dark blue Arelius uniform dragging bloody laundry.

Lindon's healer tried his best to stop him without touching him. “Please, this will ruin my reputation. I beg you to return to your tent.”

“Put someone else in my tent,” Lindon commanded. It was easier to assert himself, he found, when he was focused on something else. “Take three or four people out of the rain.”

“Your tent has to be empty and waiting for you when you return.”

Lindon still didn't look at the man. He was concentrating on a tent that looked identical to his, but which held slowly cycling Endless Sword madra.

“If I return and I find that tent empty, I will find whoever is in charge and demand that you be punished,” Lindon said. Then, because he couldn't help himself, he added, “Apologies.”

The man sputtered something, but he ended up leaving Lindon alone.

Lindon would have to get used to the new truth about himself. He wasn't the same person he'd been before. He was a Truegold now, and a highly ranked one at that. He could go wherever he wanted.

A young woman in the brown robes of a servant stood in front of Yerin's tent, her hair tied back in a rag, damp from the rain. She held her hands up for Lindon to wait, but Lindon brushed past her. He felt a little uncomfortable doing it, but he had to adjust to his new status. He decided where he could go, not her.

He ducked into the tent and froze.

Yerin sat on the bed, staring to one side. The tent was crowded with three more Brightcrowns, all sporting the glowing Goldsign, all of them women. Lindon was looking between them, so he saw Yerin in glimpses. Her tattered black robes were folded on a chair next to the bed, and her armor sat in a pile.

She had blankets pulled up to her waist, but otherwise she was completely bare. Her body was slender, her skin pale in the light of all the golden crowns, thin scars glistening in the light.

Lindon took one glance and immediately pushed back out of the tent.

Lesson learned. He couldn't go anywhere he wanted.

The Lowgold servant woman outside the tent gave him an icy stare. She couldn't say anything to a Truegold, but she clearly wanted to.

“Apologies,” he said, bowing to cover his burning face. “I, ah, should have listened.”

[Why?] Dross asked curiously.

Lindon did not answer.

Only a minute or two later, the other three healers emerged. They were led by an older woman, a Truegold with her gray hair tied up in a bun. She turned to Lindon with a serious expression.

“Lindon Arelius?” she asked. Lindon wasn't sure when that name had become commonly known, but he nodded.

“Her lifeline is severely damaged,” she said in a low voice. “We have stabilized her, so it will not be extinguished tonight, but we cannot fully repair the life-force she has lost. With regular elixirs and infusions of life aura, she can live her remaining time normally, even return to the battlefield if she must.”

“How much...” Lindon began, but his voice caught, and he had to start over. “How much time?”

“Two months,” the woman said. “Maybe a little more or less. Then her life will be exhausted. It will be painless.”

Lindon stared at the healer's face. He kept staring at the same spot even when the woman said something to comfort him, told him a treatment plan, and walked off. And when the Lowgold Brightcrown asked if he needed anything. He meant to respond, but somehow he didn't.

There was a question he wanted to ask, but he couldn't bring his thoughts together.

Dross, he said, and the spirit filled in the blanks.

[I know,] Dross answered, his voice uncharacteristically grave. [Yes, this is exactly what the Life Well was meant for. It would heal her. It could even take that blood spirit of hers up a notch.]

How much would she have needed? Lindon asked.

It didn't matter. He hadn't saved any. But he wanted to know.

[One spoonful.]

Every question he asked sharpened the pain, but he pressed on. How much did I drink?

[Fifty or sixty times as much, but your lifeline was healthy. Most of it went to waste, but the rest of it did reinforce you.]

Mercy had commented on his lifeline already. He had known.

So, if I had taken those hits instead of Yerin...

[You would have shrugged it off,] Dross said. [I’m sorry. I didn’t know how much damage she’d taken before we saw her.]

Dross was using Lindon’s senses. And Lindon hadn’t opened his Copper sight, because the aura was too strong.

Lindon felt like he was being crushed beneath the pressure of an Underlord. He had made sure that Dross and Orthos had all the water they needed from the Life Well, because they could use it. He had ignored the rest because he hadn't seen any use for himself.

[Uh, Lindon? Are you feeling all right? I'm growing alarmed. Alarmed is a good word. 'Afraid' is another one.]

Without looking, Lindon reached out with his right arm and seized the Lowgold Brightcrown. She shook as the Remnant hand closed around her upper arm.

He turned to her, and she flinched back. Was he squeezing her too hard? No, he was being gentle. Maybe it was his face. Still, he withdrew his hand.

“A new lifeline,” he said. “How do I get one?”

The Lowgold girl looked from side to side. “It's not something...I mean, you can't replace it. It's a representation of how strong your life is.”

“So I could pour more life aura in?”

“Ah, no. That's like filling broken madra channels with more power. It won't fix the damage. The power will only leak out.”

“Something restores broken lifelines,” Lindon said.

The Life Well did. Northstrider can't have been the only one to have done so. And he wasn't the only Monarch in the world.

The girl rubbed the back of her neck. “If she were Lowgold, I would say advancement. That helps everything a little, even your lifeline. But she's Truegold. This is as far as she goes.”

She looked at him as though expecting him to be angry, but he felt as though she'd pushed a mountain off his shoulders.

From her perspective, no one could count on advancing to Underlord. By most common sense, the journey of a sacred artist ended at Truegold.

But not for Yerin.

Just in case, he checked with Dross.

[Oh no, advancing to Underlord is worlds better than advancing to Highgold. Your body and spirit are remade.]

“Gratitude,” Lindon said, and she looked confused.

Lindon started to push his way into the tent, but hesitated. “I'm coming in,” he called, waiting for Yerin's response before entering.

She sat in the same position as before, though now she had a loose brown robe wrapped around her shoulders. She stared into her master's sword, its white blade sitting in her lap.

“I heard,” she said. “Nothing like a deadline to push you past your limits, true?” Her tone was supposed to be light, but she was forcing it.

Lindon sat on the edge of the bed and put on a brave face. “Who needs two months? You fought two Underlords at once last night. You'll be breaking through any time.”

Yerin pushed out a smile. “Yeah. Cheers and celebration for me.” Her eyes were sunken, and her face was paler than usual.

She still hadn't looked at him, staring deep into her master's blade. She was gripping the hilt hard...too hard. Her knuckles stood out white, and from Yerin, Lindon suspected that meant she was squeezing hard enough to crush rocks to dust.

He put his hand over hers, partially to comfort her, and partially because he was afraid she would hurt herself. Her grip relaxed, at least a little, and she looked up at him.

He looked into her dark, questioning eyes, and racked his brain for something to say.

What could he say? What could he do?

Lindon's mouth spoke before his brain had entirely confirmed the idea. “...I want to go back home.”

Her expression turned confused.

“After we're Underlords. We won’t be strong enough to fight off a…monster, or a Dreadgod, or a Monarch, or whatever’s coming, but we can hold our own in the world out here. Even if nobody listens to me, we can grab my family and get out. Take them to the Blackflame Empire; Underlords here are treated like kings. We could even wander around, like you and your master used to do.”

The look in Yerin's eyes shifted over a long moment, like a ship slowly turning to another course. “We've got to fight in the tournament.”

“Why? We can advance on our own terms.”

Anything to keep her talking.

“Did that prince chip your head? Steel sharpens steel. You want to toss away a chance to cross swords with the best in the world?” Her grip on the sword loosened further, and she was sitting straighter. “My master lost in the solo matches to Del'rek of the Shann. Said it was the sharpest battle of his life; worth more than ten years of practice on his own. And Del'rek joined up with the Eight-Man Empire.”

“I would miss the prizes,” Lindon said. Though no one had explained what the actual prizes were, they had to be substantial.

“It’ll be a tall cliff to climb, but worth every inch. You make it past the first round, and the Ninecloud Court make a floating castle just for you.”

Lindon started. She actually knew what the prizes were? Why had he never asked?

“If you survive the second round, you get an Archlord weapon that makes that castle look like a pig pen. Third round, that’s a gift from some other faction. One of the ones you didn't come from, if you’re following me. Factions compete over who can give the best gifts, so you'd be looking at the storm phoenix feathers, fruit from the Heart-Piercer Tree, thousand-year spirits...my master got a dream tablet showing a heavenly messenger swinging a sword.”

“And after that?” Lindon asked. He had intended to distract Yerin, but now he was getting drawn in.

“After three rounds, we’ve whittled it down to eight fighters,” she said. “From there, they fight solo matches, one-on-one. Everybody who makes it into the top eight gets the mark of the Uncrowned. It's like a tattoo of a broken crown, and it's unique in all the world. Anchors to your spirit, so it can never be removed. Somebody wants to fight you, you show them that, and they'll think twice. On top of that, you get personal lessons from a Sage.”

“Not a Monarch?”

Yerin's head jerked back as though he'd slapped her. No, if he'd slapped her, she wouldn't have budged an inch. “You think Monarchs are like dirt farmers? If one or two of them show up to watch, and you hear a whisper of their voice, you'll be lucky. Add to that, Sages don't take disciples, so this is a once-in-your-life chance.”

At Lindon's look, she added, “Most Sages. You can’t pass on Sage techniques, but they’re still peak Archlords. With my own eyes, I’ve seen my master turn down land, cloudships, Remnants, secret Path manuals, and a fistful of marriage proposals from Ladies who wanted his word on their techniques.”

Yerin pulled her hand away, setting her sword aside. Some color had returned to her cheeks, and she was moving her hands when she spoke, eyes sparkling. Like the Yerin from yesterday.

She continued without his prompting. “That’s top eight. Now, top four? My master talked about top four, but he scraped himself to the bone making it to the solo rounds at all. The honor and glory from top four are more than nothing; they’d stretch your name all across the heavens.”

“Honor and glory are—” Lindon began, but she cut him off.

“Not your sorts of prizes, that’s a truth. See if this doesn't light a fire in your shoes: the top four each get a gift from all the other teams. Seven gifts, each one hand-picked with your name on it. Not even mentioning that everybody who has ever made top four in the Uncrowned King tournament has ended up as a Sage, a Herald, or ascending to the heavens.”

“What does the winner get?” Lindon asked. He realized he was leaning forward, waiting for the final prize.

Yerin leaned back against the stack of pillows behind her, folding her arms. “You're asking me, but who am I supposed to ask? Sure as the sun rising, they get something worth burning your own soul for, but I don't know what it is. And I'm not likely to find out.”

Lindon's breath stopped. Had she given up? Did she expect to die before the tournament?

“First place is just a dream,” she went on, and Lindon started breathing again. “Akura Fury won one year, and he's a legend. Reigan Shen won, and he ended up as a Monarch, though that was an age and a half ago. First place is for freaks who were born eating Truegolds alive.”

“I’m surprised to hear that coming from you,” Lindon pointed out. “Why fight if not to aim for victory?”

“Victory is making it to the solo fights at all. That's as far as my master made it, and he was older than me when he did. If I pushed that far, he’d be...I mean, I'd...”

She ran a hand roughly through her hair. “Ah, bleed and bury me if I know what I mean to say. Too soon for me to be dreaming about eighth, anyway. I've got a long trail to walk before I'm the eighth strongest anything in this Blackflame corner of nowhere.”

“Underlord is the first step,” Lindon said, as casually as he could manage.

Yerin nodded along. “Yeah, and you've got a wall in front of you, that's sure and certain.”

“Me?” He’d been trying to keep her from realizing how difficult her journey looked; he hadn’t expected her to turn it around on him.

“Somebody stitch your ears shut? That prince and his...crazy bodyguard, or whatever she was...they were after you. Don't want you to make it to Underlord, I'd say, though I couldn't tell you how the prince of another country heard your name in the first place.”

Someone had directed them to him specifically, but he didn’t know anyone who had contact with the Seishen Empire. It could have been Akura Charity, but she wouldn’t need to act through surrogates.

“They failed,” he said. “Next time I see them, I'll be an Underlord.”

“You sound sure and certain, but they knew where to find you. Best make preparations for them to pop up at the worst time. And I...” Her face fell. Her gaze grew long again. “…you might be walking alone this time.”

Lindon spent a long moment wrestling with his thoughts, trying to figure out what to say. Dross stayed quiet and let him think, for which he was grateful.

What does he tell her? Does he say he can't go on without her? Or how there was no need to worry, because they'll make it?

He realized she had returned her hand to her sword, and he had never moved his. His fingers rested on hers.

She looked into his eyes again. He couldn't read anything from her expression, but she was waiting for him.

[He is truly an artist when it comes to lurking outside doorways,] Dross said. [Do you think he’d teach me?]

Though Dross had to use Lindon's senses, the spirit seemed to get far more use out of them than Lindon did. Lindon felt nothing until he directed his perception backwards and found a presence of pure madra poised outside the tent. There was a train of people, of all different strengths and madra types, stretching out behind him.

Eithan was waiting for his opportunity. He was going to burst in.

That would be a relief. Lindon wouldn't have to figure out what to say, and it would be Eithan's fault.

Tell him to wait, Lindon said. He couldn't use the Underlord as an excuse. He had too much to say to Yerin, and now was the time. If he didn't say it now, he wasn't sure he'd ever get the chance.

Dross projected something to Eithan, and Lindon could feel Eithan's surprise. The Underlord didn't enter immediately, which meant Lindon had his moment. He had to say something now.

“Yerin,” he said, “this won't stop us. You're going to be fine.”

It wasn't what he needed to say.

He could feel it, and so could Yerin. She forced another smile, pulling her hand back. “Couldn't beat me this easy.”

The silence after her words seemed to stretch. His hand sat dead and heavy on the sheets next to her.

[I don't know what the right thing to say was, but that was wrong.]

The entrance bulged inward.

Lindon stood up and sent a pulse of unshaped pure madra at the entrance. “Stop!” he shouted.

Eithan slowly retreated, the flap sliding back into place.

Yerin was frowning at the entrance, but Lindon sat down and grabbed her hand in both of his. He thought he might have been better off using only his real hand rather than his Remnant replacement, but there was no turning back now. If he lost his courage, he'd never regain it.

“Yerin, I don't know what I'd do if you were gone. When I think about the future, you're in it.” He didn't know what he was trying to say, but the more the words spilled out, the easier they came. “I don’t care if we go home, or stay here, or end up wandering in the wilderness, as long as you're with me.”

He was surprised to realize that his eyes were hot. “Please…I don’t want you to leave me behind.”

He was shaking, and every word had felt wrong. He had messed it up, and now he couldn’t read her expression, so he didn’t know how badly. She hadn’t pulled away from him yet, so maybe he’d have another chance.

“Well,” Eithan said from behind him, “I think—”

One of Yerin's Goldsigns emerged from her back, pointed at the Underlord. “Eithan, keep your teeth together or I will skin you like a deer.” She looked back at Lindon. “I want to meet your family,” she said. “And I want to see the parts of Sacred Valley that aren't trying to kill me.”

Hope sparked inside him, and some of his nerves faded. Her gaze was intense, and her grip on his hand was slowly getting tighter. “I've never seen much of it outside the clan.”

“I don't care. And I want us both in this tournament. Wishing for top eight might stretch the heavens, but top sixteen would be a gem and a half.”

“…out of how many?” he asked, but she was already moving on.

“And I need you to be an Underlord. Get your brain spirit to dive around in there and dig up whatever you need, or I'll be squeezing your soul for secrets myself.”

“You first,” he responded seriously.

She gave him a lopsided grin, and the old Yerin was back once again. She squeezed his hands one more time, then released him. “You’ve grown some kind of spine, if you think you’ve got room to worry about somebody else.”

Lindon felt something and turned to see Eithan leaning over them, his fingertips pressed together, smiling like a madman. “Yes,” he hissed. “Good, good, very good.”

[You know, it’s nice to see someone with such a positive outlook on the world,] Dross said. [Positivity, that’s what you need.]

Would you call that positivity?

A second Goldsign emerged from Yerin. “I thought you put a higher price on your skin.”

Eithan recoiled. “Not my skin! It's my second-best feature!”

Lindon still felt at least a dozen presences waiting outside, so he stood up and pushed open the tent. It was something to do to distract him from thinking about the fact that Eithan had heard every word he’d said. If he dwelled on that too much, his shame would burn him up from the inside out.

“If you don’t mind me asking, who are all these people?”

A long train of servants in dozens of different colors wove throughout the rows of medical tents, each of them carrying a tray piled high with food. Some of them pushed carts.

Eithan followed him out of the tent, holding it open so Yerin could see. “I was hoping to pop in with a surprise. On our way out, I came across an Underlady from the Seishen Kingdom who had been preparing herself a personal feast from the bounty of the Night Wheel Valley's forests. After we had a little talk, she kindly donated it to our cause.”

Lindon felt a silent moment of pity for the unknown Seishen Underlady.

“It is time, everyone!” Eithan announced, directing the servants one-handed as though he were conducting an orchestra. “Come, come, these people are hungry!”

Servants slid between and among the wounded, handing them plates of food. Lindon expected the healers to protest, but he could sense the spiritual weight of the food himself: slices of meat rich with strengthening blood aura, crystalline vegetables woven with healing strands of life, shining fruits that nourished the soul, jugs that emanated the feel of elixirs.

Eithan held out his free hand, and a servant in Arelius colors delivered him a massive platter piled with enough food for at least five people. A jeweled pill sat on a satin cover, glistening like a ruby. A stoppered bottle sat next to it, leaking shining green smoke.

He swept back into the tent, trusting Lindon to follow. He replaced the flower next to Yerin's bed with the tray, setting the plant on the ground.

“The meat increases the density of blood aura, strengthening the body. The vegetables cleanse the body, the fruits cleanse and restore the spirit, and also there's some rice in there. Rice is good for you. The pill is a Flowering Heart pill, and the bottle contains a Lifeseed Elixir. This will give you more life and blood aura than any single human body could possibly hold.”

Lindon saw a faint hope in Yerin's eyes, and it reflected what he felt himself.

She sat up straighter. “Will this...”

“Heal you? I'm afraid not.” He didn't sound terribly concerned. “Damage to your lifeline is not so easily cured. What it will do is get you back into fighting shape quickly...and more than that. It will contain excess aura that you can do with as you wish; feel free to feed it to whichever spiritual parasite you’d like.”

He swept a hand toward the tray. “Eat, my child! Eat and grow strong.”

How much power is in that meat? Lindon asked Dross, watching Yerin tear a chunk off a bone with her teeth. He had passed out the first time he had tried a bite of Silverfang Carp meat.

[A little less than in the Carp, but still a deadly dose,] Dross said grimly. [She’s in for seizures, organ failure, paralyzing pain…]

Lindon tensed, but he held himself back when Eithan looked calm.

Yerin took another bite. Then another. Then she took a sip of elixir-laced water.

[...unless she has a stronger body than you did, of course. Then she’ll be fine. You’re very tense right now; you need to relax.]

Lindon accepted a plate of his own, which was less than a quarter the size of Yerin's, and dug in.

Eithan sidled up next to him, whispering into his ear. “By sheer coincidence, I have also stumbled upon a gift for you.”

Lindon edged away from him. “Please don’t whisper like that.”

“I wasn't talking to you. To your purple friend.”

Dross slid out of Lindon's spirit, materializing in his floating one-eyed form. His mouth—full of tiny fangs—moved when he spoke, even though he spoke in the mind and spirit as always. [For me? Oh, that’s flattering.] He glanced from side to side. [It’s not food, is it? Not that I don’t appreciate food, but I don’t have a stomach, that’s all. Or a digestive system of any kind.]

Eithan flourished his arm in a grand gesture. “This is too humble a place in which to present your gift, but not to worry: I will bring you to the proper stage!”

Dross made a disgusted sound. [Where am I supposed to put a stage?]

12

Mercy had worked hard to find a spot to herself. The land around the Blackflame capital was packed for miles, and she didn’t want to go too far from Yerin. She ended up worming herself between medical tents, sitting with her back against a pile of supplies.

She spread a cloth beneath her so she didn't have to sit directly on the mud, draping another over her head to keep off the rain. Cold water still seeped through, but it was as dry as she was going to get without taking up space in one of the tents.

She cradled Harmony's axe in both hands, eyes and perception fixed on the feast happening only a few dozen yards away.

Yerin was seriously injured. She needed to advance, or she would die. Mercy yearned to help...and there was one thing she could do to make a difference.

But she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

Mercy consoled herself with the thought that surely, Yerin wouldn’t need her help. She would reach Underlord soon, and everything would be all right.

Guilt pricked Mercy like a thorn. For the sake of her own selfishness, she was leaving a friend to suffer.

A silver-and-purple owl fluttered down to land by her.

“Are you after him because he killed Harmony?” Mercy asked quietly.

“He or that beast of his left him to die,” the owl responded in Akura Charity's voice. “They sealed the exit.”

Another thorn pierced Mercy's heart. Before they had reached the island, she'd had no idea that anyone in the Akura family would be anywhere near Ghostwater. Even if she had known, there would have been nothing she could do about it. But she still felt somehow responsible.

“Was it my fault he was there?”

The owl flapped up to land on something invisible in midair...and then the veil was lifted, and Akura Charity stood with the owl perched on her shoulder.

She wore the ordinary, even rough, clothes of a peasant worker. A cloth belt tied around a brown dress, with a rag to keep her hair back. With her spirit so thoroughly veiled, she might have been a young Lowgold servant.

“If you hadn't left the family, it's possible you would have been sent in his place,” the Sage told her. “But it's also possible we would have sent him to gain experience on his own. You didn't need any help to reach Underlord.”

No, she had needed help, just not in the same way Harmony did.

Mercy looked to Charity. Her 'aunt' was actually her grand-niece, but the Sage was so much older that she had always referred to Mercy as a niece. Mercy felt more comfortable with this arrangement. It would have been too strange to have a woman a hundred and fifty years older than her call her 'Aunt Mercy.'

“Are you all right?” Mercy asked. Harmony was Charity's grand-nephew. She had watched him grow up. It must have gouged out her heart to be right there and unable to save him.

Even though the Heart Sage should have absolute control over her own thoughts and feelings, she was still human.

Charity looked away, revealing an unusually troubled expression. “Lindon could not have stopped me from saving Harmony. Nor, I think, would he have wanted to. I could not see into Ghostwater clearly at the end, but I believe it was Harmony that pushed their conflict to the level of a feud. You know he could be...competitive.”

Harmony had shattered a statue and denounced her publicly, breaking off their engagement when she had defeated him in swordsmanship in front of a crowd. It had been embarrassing, but also a relief.

Harmony had not lived up to his name.

“Someone stopped you?” Mercy asked. Who even could?

“I suspect Ghostwater's owner is still alive,” Charity said grimly, and Mercy's eyes widened.

Northstrider, the legendary dragon-eating Monarch. He had been a walking myth since before Mercy's own mother had risen to power.

“Poor Harmony,” Mercy said. She hadn't liked him much, but she had known him. She didn't want to think of him locked in a crumbling world.

Charity nodded. “Whoever was at fault, the Blackflame boy still intervened with the Akura clan. He needs to know that he cannot get away lightly.”

Mercy held out the axe. “Take this back. Please stop sending the Seishen Kingdom Underlords after him. That's not teaching him a lesson, that's just cruel.”

The rain running down Charity’s face made her look more real than she often did. More mortal. She tapped her chin thoughtfully. “Do you think I am a cruel person?”

“No, I don't mean that. But...I think you can be, if you want to be.”

“I did not send young Meira and the prince after Lindon as a punishment. I am finding the best competitors for the Uncrowned King tournament. Eithan Arelius' two apprentices are the most appropriate opponents for the two Seishen Underlords. It will push them all forward, resulting in a net gain for us. Indeed, it has already done so.”

Mercy's guilt turned to anger. “Yerin was badly hurt.”

“Advancing will heal her. I cannot imagine a better incentive to reach Underlord quickly.”

Mercy was familiar with Charity's Book of the Silver Heart. It contained seven techniques of shadow and dreams, so Charity lived in a world of abstractions. Of thoughts and visions. Her plans were so far beyond Mercy that Mercy could never comprehend them, but she tended to lose sight of other human beings.

Mercy's anger faded as quickly as it had come, as it usually did. “I would call that cruel. And no matter how you look at it, you put two Underlords against two Truegolds. That's not a fair competition.”

“You were there.”

“I don't count,” Mercy said bitterly. There was a lot to enjoy about her exile from the family, but it was tough to relish the feeling of helplessness. And yet, if she were to take advancement resources from Lindon and Yerin, she would feel like a rich woman robbing a pauper.

“Of course you do,” Charity said. “And the Truegolds acquitted themselves well. If the roles were reversed, with your friends at Underlord and their enemies at Truegold, how do you think their skirmish would have gone?”

“Yerin and Lindon would have left them in pieces,” Mercy said with a sigh. They could be ruthless, at times, but no more so than her own family.

Charity reached up to run a hand down her owl's back. Maybe the spirit was more than a technique after all, because it leaned in to the motion, cooing softly. The rain passed straight through it. “Kiro has a noble bloodline and the finest tutors his nation can afford, but he is at the end of his mentality and his talent. He may reach Overlord someday, but barring a substantial evolution, that will be his limit. Meira's talent and skill are exceptional, but she is blinded by obsession. She has created chains in her own mind that are difficult to break. I would like to use them to push your teammates to advance, which would fill my quota. Or perhaps they will be pushed to the brink instead and exceed my expectations of them. Who can say?”

“It seems like a lot of suffering,” Mercy said, looking out over the tents full of wounded. The rain had slackened slightly, and the food Eithan's servants brought had done much for the atmosphere. And maybe for the injuries; Mercy heard fewer groans now than before.

“They compete because there is a limited opportunity, and everyone wants it badly enough to spill blood for it. Not because I make them.”

Mercy looked at her skeptically. That was not a strong argument. “When you throw a steak between two starving dogs, is it their fault for fighting over it?”

She turned, brushing water from her forehead, and looked in the same direction: at the many tents. “I concede that I may have leaned too hard on your friends in part because of your relationship to them.”

Another thorn jabbed into Mercy's heart. She wanted to be outraged, but she wasn't entirely surprised. That was as much Mercy's fault as Charity's; the Sage could afford a heavier hand, because Mercy could embrace her former power and save Lindon and Yerin whenever she wanted. Mercy's mother would encourage such tactics.

“Therefore,” Charity continued, “I acknowledge that I owe you a favor. Call it in as you wish.”

Mercy looked up to the other woman in surprise, watching Charity's flawless face looking down on the mortals in front of her. A favor from a Sage was no small matter. This had to be a concession on Charity's part.

“Thank you, Aunt Charity.”

“The boy still owes the family for Harmony. I can't let that go entirely, and he may be useful.”

“I understand,” Mercy said. As long as Charity took a strict stance, to show that the Akura clan can't be opposed lightly, Lindon could be let off with nothing greater than a proverbial slap.

Mercy had thought the Sage would melt back into thin air at that, and so she was surprised when the other woman spoke. “You were young for the last Uncrowned King tournament.”

“I was eight,” Mercy said, smiling at the memory. She had spent most of the tournament in the head family's floating platform, watching a projection of the fights. She hadn't been interested in the fighting at all, and had spent most of the time trying to catch a glimpse of her mother. Who, she later found out, had never come in the first place.

“This will put the last one to shame. All of the current Monarchs will be in attendance.” Charity looked deeper at Mercy, as though to ensure that her message was clear. “All of them.”

Mercy shook. It was hard enough for her to get an audience with her own mother. She didn't know if anyone alive had ever been in the presence of all the Monarchs at once.

“What's happening?” Mercy asked.

“The movements of Monarchs are beyond even my understanding, but something last year disturbed the flow of fate. Many things that we once thought were certain are no longer so. One Dreadgod has risen early, and the others are stirring.”

Charity's purple eyes shone through the rain. “We have no records of the last time all four of them rose together. It resulted in the eradication of the previous generation of Monarchs.”

That was too heavy for Mercy, and fortunately far above her level. So she kept her tone light. “Good thing we're having a tournament to keep everyone’s spirits up!”

At the moment, Charity looked as though she had never heard a joke in her life and wasn't looking forward to the first time. “War is coming. If not with the Dreadgods, then with each other; now that the future is uncertain, there is no trusting anyone. This is our chance to demonstrate our power and to raise up a new generation of warriors.”

“...I was only joking,” Mercy muttered.

“We must at least fill one spot in the top eight of the individual matches, to show that our next generation is as strong as that of the others. That is no small order. That would be a challenge even for you at the height of your power, because you can be sure that the others will do everything they can to put forth the winning candidate. This is also a chance to take power from the others, in the form of the prizes. If we do not hold to at least that standard, it will mean losing territory. We will have less of a voice in the operation of the world. And perhaps it will mean a loss to humanity as a whole.”

Charity was nothing if not vigilant against the non-human factions, but Mercy understood why. The Akura clan were not the only Monarch faction on this continent; they shared it with Seshethkunaaz, King of Dragons. His territory was a lawless jungle where the weak were food, and only strength reigned.

Not somewhere where human civilization could flourish.

“You only need three!” Mercy said brightly. “Between the Blackflame Empire and the Seishen Kingdom, there must be three that won't embarrass us. And who will care about the vassal states, anyway? There are plenty of extraordinary talents in my generation of the family.”

“There was one extraordinary talent in your generation,” Charity said.

Mercy coughed and shifted her eyes.

“Your mother won't say so, but she regrets letting you go. When she did, she thought we had plenty of time and that a journey on your own would be good for you. We no longer have such luxury, but she cannot revoke her given word.”

Charity was none-too-subtly trying to guilt Mercy into embracing her destiny and returning, and it was working. At least a little. It hurt to think that she had pushed her responsibility on others.

“How's my brother?” Mercy asked.

“He feels that his sister abandoned him,” Charity said, the owl on her shoulder giving a whistle. “He is in pain, and he has let that pain drive him to try and fill your shoes. In doing so, he has worked tirelessly, and has finally reached Underlord.”

Mercy let Harmony's axe slip. She tried to rise to her feet, stumbled, and ended up having to brace herself against a barrel. “Underlord! That's amazing! Can he compete?”

“He is currently fighting the heirs of the other family branches for the right to fight on the Akura team.”

Mercy's heart was now so full of spikes that she could tear it out of her chest and call it a hedgehog. She had abandoned her little brother.

But no matter how Charity framed it, Mercy had plenty of reasons to walk away from the Akura clan. At least for a time.

Mercy met the Sage face-to-face, staring her down as though they were equals. “You know it isn’t healthy. The family isn't fighting for a cause, like you or Uncle Fury. We're fighting to keep power over those beneath us, and for approval from those above us. That isn't right.”

Charity met her gaze, and Mercy felt the strong, gentle, ocean-deep power of the Heart Sage behind it. “You could change that. You could lead the family in a better direction, regardless of their personal motivations, as Fury and I do. On your own, you lead only yourself.”

Mercy stayed silent. Charity's words battered at her.

“If you returned without being forced, it would go a long way toward demonstrating your maturity. You are not the only one who has had trouble facing the truth of yourself on the brink of becoming an Underlady.” The face of a Sage cracked, and then Charity was a concerned aunt looking down at her niece. She placed a hand on Mercy's arm. “And you must surely be frustrated by these restrictions. Such a weak soul. A body you can barely control. Come back.”

Mercy pulled away, thoughts whirling.

She liked it on her own, but she still wanted to go back. Was she fooling herself by thinking she could accomplish anything out here?

“I can’t lead anyone,” she finally said, “if I’m always fighting for mother’s approval like the rest of them.”

Charity tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear, still looking at Mercy with motherly concern. “The revelation is nothing more than a trigger. It means accepting who you are, not who you will always be. You can still grow and evolve afterwards.”

“But I don't accept myself the way I am.”

The peaceful sounds of the rain settled around them, along with the murmur of the people in the tents nearby. Those had gradually transformed from the cries of the wounded to the laughter and muttered conversation of a feast.

Charity shook her head, letting out a long sigh. “I suppose I understand. We all need to see the world outside the family sooner or later. But it's a shame.”

Shadows started to devour Charity from the feet, slowly moving up. Mercy sensed nothing; either this was one of her mysterious Sage powers, or her madra control was at such a level that she could completely avoid Mercy's senses. Probably both.

“Fury has yet to make his selection for our primary team, but you were to lead, and I had chosen Harmony to be the second. If your brother Pride can replace you, that still leaves an empty space for Fury. And one for me.”

The shadows had reached her neck, and her face started to fade away. “And I can fill that slot however I want…”

Her vivid purple eyes faded last, along with the echo of her voice.

Mercy shivered. “That's spooky, Aunt Charity, stop that. And what do you mean?”

She was probably still around, veiled and invisible, but Mercy could neither see nor sense anything.

Only the wind answered her.

“Aunt Charity? ...Charity?”

The silver-and-purple owl fluttered and flew away.

13

Since flying was temporarily forbidden, it took Eithan all day to lead Lindon through the massive camp outside the city walls and to Fisher Gesha. By the time they arrived, the sun was setting.

Dross had spent the entire journey trying to guess what his gift was and trick Eithan into giving him hints. His guesses had ranged from ‘a mind sword’ to ‘an egg that hatches into a monster.’

During their time in the Night Wheel Valley, Fisher Gesha had finished constructing her barn…and, in fact, had mounted it on massive purple spider legs like the ones she used to walk. Her mobile Soulsmith foundry had roamed around to provide service to the entire Blackflame camp.

Now, the barn sat with its legs withdrawn amidst the packed sea of refugees around Blackflame City.

Eithan ignored the 'Closed for Business' sign and pushed through the door, striding in as though into his own home.

Gesha stood hovering in the middle of the room on her spider-drudge, which was suspended from the ceiling by its own extended legs. She held a lens up to one eye, through which she examined a dangling Remnant's corpse. It looked like a donkey fashioned of rainbows, and it bled motes of multicolored essence up into the air. If not for the scripted strips of cloth she'd wrapped all over it, the dead matter would have dissolved completely.

The tiny woman spoke without looking. “Are you trying to get beat, hm? Closed! The sign says closed! I do not work at night.”

When she did finally look at them, her one eye magnified because of the lens over it, she seemed disappointed. “If a customer was rude enough to come in at this hour, I would give them a beating. Who should I beat now?”

Eithan gestured grandly to Lindon. “By all means, satisfy yourself! But meanwhile, I have an experiment for you.”

Gesha's drudge released the ceiling one leg at a time, driving its spiked feet into grooves in the walls as it slowly made its way down. Its central body remained steady as it lowered.

After only a breath or two, the construct reached the ground and skittered over to Eithan. The legs extended, raising Gesha until she could squint into Eithan's face from equal height. “You have another Underlord for me to shoot, do you?”

That caught Lindon's attention, but Eithan laughed it off. “I'm afraid I'm not up to anything quite so much fun. Dross, it's time.”

Dross spun out of Lindon, his single eye shining. [Oh! Is it a horse? I bet it's a horse.]

Eithan reached into his outer robe and pulled out a shallow, slender box. It was so wide that Lindon wondered how Eithan could possibly keep it in a pocket without it showing.

It was impossible, he realized. And this wasn't the first time that Eithan had pulled something seemingly out of thin air.

He was either hiding these things somehow, or he had a void key of his own. And drawing from his pocket was his way of disguising the key itself.

Lindon needed to figure out a way to do that himself.

Eithan met Dross' eye, resting his fingers on the top of the box. “Within this box rests the key to unlocking your gift.”

[You know what, never mind, I couldn’t do anything with a horse. Stupid idea. If it’s a horse, don’t tell me.]

With a grand gesture, Eithan whipped open the lid, revealing two rows of scales. Ten in total. They were shaped like coins and stamped with the crest of the Blackflame Empire, Forged from purplish madra that swam with vague images. They gave off a hazy, illusory light. Dream madra.

They radiated the power of a Truegold, which made them high-grade scales. Valuable, but not the best Eithan could have afforded.

If Eithan had made them travel all day and visit Fisher Gesha just so he could hand Dross a box of scales, Lindon was going to set him on fire.

[Oooooh, dream madra! This is...very exciting, but...are you sure there isn't more to it?]

Eithan picked up one of the scales and held it out to Dross. “Why don't you try cycling one? You might like it.”

Dross' eye swiveled to Lindon as though looking for approval, but he snapped up the scale between his teeth before Lindon could say anything.

[Mmm ga mmph muph,] he said.

Did having something in his mouth really stop him from talking clearly? Or was he imitating humans?

Dross slurped up the scale, making an exaggerated gulping sound and then closing his eye. He started to shimmer with a violet light, and Lindon could feel madra passing through his channels and into his core.

[Yes, yes, I think I do like this. It's kind of a tingly feeling.]

“This is only the key,” Eithan reminded him. “I want you at your peak condition before I try my experiment. Can you show Lindon an illusion?”

Gesha let her drudge walk her over to a nearby table, where she started polishing a tool. “Do they need to be in my place of work?” she said loudly. “No. Bothering me at all hours. Could have come and found me when I was needed, done all the rest of this outside.”

[Anything specific?] Dross asked.

“Dealer's choice,” Eithan responded.

Dross thought for a minute, and suddenly Lindon saw a horse burst through the doors. It wasn't a very convincing horse; it was largely transparent, and as it tossed its head, sparkles flew from its mane. It trotted around the room, demonstrating that it was as long as a wagon train and had sixteen legs.

[Majestic creatures.]

“How is it, Lindon?” Eithan asked.

“It's a beautiful horse,” Lindon said to Dross, “but it isn't quite realistic.”

[Well, maybe I didn’t get the shading down. Or the shape. It’s really a lot easier if I have something to model it on.]

“Keep cycling,” Eithan instructed, then turned to Gesha. “Fisher, I apologize for the delay. Could you give Lindon a project he might complete, given a little experimentation? Something with the materials you have here.”

Fisher Gesha grumbled, looking Lindon sharply in the eye. Without a word, she let him know that if this ended up being a waste of her time, he would be the one to suffer.

But in the end, she popped open a series of boxes, laying out the ingredients for a simple construct. First, a crimson Truegold-level fire binding shaped like a thin, twisting corkscrew, which hissed as it sat on the table. Second, three collections of dead matter, like piles of Remnant bones: one pile white, one gray, and one striped in multiple colors that she had no doubt stripped from the rainbow Remnant that day. Finally, she set down a Forged circle of madra the rough size and shape of a scale: the sample of the customer's madra.

“The customer would like an explosive construct that will detonate when he wants it to, with minimal power loss, and of course without exploding in his pocket, hm? However, he has brought us only one binding to work with. What would you do?”

Lindon knew the problem. He had to test the interactions between the binding, his own madra, and the sample from the customer without destroying the binding itself. Then he had to try it with all three types of dead matter, choosing the best one. Incompatibility might result in weakening the binding to Highgold or Lowgold output, effectively wasting the Truegold technique. But instability could result in the construct exploding on its own.

If he had three bindings, he could be fairly confident of success. If not in his own safety. With only one...

“Apologies, but I can't do it. I would need a drudge.” A drudge would be able to test each sample in detail, giving him a much more thorough understanding of the composition and how they should interact.

“Hold that thought!” Eithan said. “Instead, use your perception to sense each piece deeply. Get a complete feel for it, and how they relate to one another, as though you were the drudge yourself.”

A still-cycling Dross cracked his eye and drifted slightly closer, as though he found the task intriguing but didn't want to admit it.

This was an exercise in futility, and Lindon looked to Fisher Gesha for support, but she gestured for Lindon to get on with it. He would never be able to duplicate all the functions of a drudge himself. If he could, there would be no need for drudges.

But he tried, spending five minutes apiece on the binding, the customer's sample, and all three piles of dead matter.

At the end of the process, he had a guess, but it was like guessing how to glue together a broken vase using only his sense of touch. One of the piles had come from a force Remnant; would force madra add the right punch to the fire binding, or so much that it canceled out the flame? Would the rainbow Remnant's lingering resentment spitefully interfere with the bomb's activation, or not? He couldn't tell.

He pointed to the third pile, the white parts that looked like a disassembled claw and felt like razor-sharp wind. “This matter in a shell around the binding, bound with pure madra, should have minimal interference with the customer's madra.”

Gesha's wrinkled face was a mask, giving him no hint if he had succeeded or failed. She turned to Eithan.

“Dross,” Eithan said, “did you still sense what Lindon felt?”

Dross' eye opened, and he frowned at Eithan. [How could I? I'm all the way over here. I would have to reach into his memory and...oh, never mind, I actually did. Sorry, I was paying attention to something else.]

“If you would, please simulate the experiment in Lindon's head.”

Dross helped Lindon visualize the experiment. Lindon saw himself taking the white Remnant pieces and Forging them into a shell around the corkscrew binding. The whole thing turned a pink color, bound with his pure madra, and sealed into a shape like a lumpy stone. He rolled it across the floor and activated it with the sample of the customer's madra, and it detonated violently, blasting a crater into the floor and cracking the walls and ceiling, filling the room with smoke.

In the vision, Lindon felt no impact, only observing the successful explosion.

[It's a very nice image,] Dross said, [but I couldn’t tell you if it’s what would really happen. Here, look at this.]

The scene repeated successfully with the gray dead matter. And with the one made out of rainbows. And when Lindon sealed the construct with Blackflame, which changed the entire nature of the experiment.

[See, I can make it show any result I want. Couldn’t even tell you which one was most likely to work.]

Lindon sighed and opened his eyes. “He will tire himself out at this rate. The only way he'll be able to accurately project the experiment is by using my senses to understand all the madra completely. And if I could do that, I wouldn't need him.”

[That seems deliberately hurtful.]

“He's still a great help,” Lindon hurriedly added, “just like before. But he can't replace a drudge.”

Eithan smiled as if Lindon had stepped into his trap. “So he's lacking knowledge of madra aspects and how they interact.”

[You know, it's nice that someone pays attention and speaks properly. Hey, what do you have there?]

Eithan held up a ball of spinning copper plates. He caught a glimpse of colored lights flashing from between the plates themselves.

Lindon's heart leaped. The Arelius family library had all the information about Paths and techniques they had collected over generations. It could simulate hundreds, maybe thousands, of different Paths and their permutations. Lindon had missed it ever since leaving Serpent's Grave.

“I was surprised to find it here as well,” Eithan said. “Cassias carried it with him when he left Serpent’s Grave, and I…borrowed it. This is your gift, Dross.” He held up the ball of copper in one hand. “Dive in, and learn what you can.”

With a gasp, Dross gleefully leapt in and vanished, like a child into a pond.

The light at the center of the spinning copper turned purple, and Lindon heard Dross' exclamations of wonder echoing out from the ancient construct.

He couldn't help but worry. “He has consumed a lot of other memory constructs. You don't think he'll empty it out or ruin it somehow?”

“If he can break this,” Eithan said, “then he is welcome to do so.”

Dross emerged from the library, gasping like a drowning man. [No, this is too much! It’s too much! It's like being part of the tree again, only there's no space for me, and everything's moving too fast! I think I'm going to be sick.]

Eithan shoved another scale into his mouth. “The deeper you can go, the better.”

Many of the information constructs that Dross had absorbed back in Ghostwater were left by Soulsmiths, so he had a solid foundation in Soulsmithing, but their memories were fragmented and often contradictory. The more Dross learned, the more connections he would be able to make. Or so he and Lindon suspected.

Dross spent a few moments gasping for breath—though surely he neither needed air nor had any lungs—then nodded, diving back inside.

A few minutes passed, during which Lindon and Fisher Gesha speculated on what changes Dross would experience, while Eithan sat nearby with a content smile. Then one of Dross' stubby purple arms emerged, quivering, from the construct. He seized the edge of the copper, sluggishly dragging himself out.

Lindon extended a hand, and Dross rested limply on it, face-down. He felt like a damp rag, and was a little too big to fit entirely in Lindon's hand, but he wasn't heavy.

[No more,] Dross said. [That's all I can take. I need to digest.] He groaned.

“While you're digesting, why don't you try our little experiment again?” Eithan suggested.

Dross slowly dissolved, slipping back into Lindon's hand and up to his spot at the base of his skull.

Dream madra filled Lindon's head.

Fisher Gesha and Eithan vanished. Otherwise, the room existed in complete detail, so that Lindon couldn't tell whether his eyes were open or closed. He moved over to the table, closing one hand around the binding.

This time, he could visualize the experiment with perfect clarity. The white madra was actually a dud, and would not detonate at all. He tried it with the force madra, and the bomb went off early.

He repeated the experiment six more times.

The actual solution was a shell of the rainbow madra, but if he used too much, he would smother the binding and weaken the explosion. The shell should be mostly hollow, with only a few columns connecting the binding inside to the outside. The whole thing transformed into a smooth ball that was fifteen different shimmering shades of red.

Completely stable, totally compatible with the customer's madra, and it expressed a power even greater than the binding alone.

Dross released him, and Lindon could feel the spirit’s exhaustion after holding the simulation for so long.

Eithan and Gesha both asked Lindon how it had gone. Without answering them, he moved to the table.

He had to be very careful to move exactly as he had in the vision, which was trickier than he'd thought. Without the enhancement Dross' presence gave to his concentration, he would have slipped and blown up the table.

In fact, Fisher Gesha tried to stop him more than once; he wasn't supposed to actually perform the experiment without safety gear. Eithan stopped her, and Lindon continued working. He was afraid that if he let his focus slip for even a moment, he’d lose what he had learned.

He finished in only a few minutes, and the final product looked exactly like it had in his dream. It was so smooth and easy, it was like magic.

He stared at the construct. Gesha stared at it. Her spiritual sense brushed out.

“Beautiful,” she said. “Did you take in the Remnant of some famous Soulsmith, hm?”

Together, they stared at the bomb some more before she halfheartedly smacked his arm. “This is a cheat. You're cheating.”

“Apologies. I will—”

“No, no, cheat some more.” She cackled, rushing to another box. “We're making another cannon!”

Lindon's thoughts ran to what Yerin had said. What if he did have to fight Kiro again before reaching Underlord?

He looked down at his right arm. The jagged, angular Remnant arm was losing its luster. The white material was patchy where he had hastily repaired it with hunger bindings taken from dreadbeasts. It had been effective in peeling away Kiro's armor, but he was supposed to lose it when he advanced to Underlord.

He would rather keep it. He and Fisher Gesha made it together, and hunger madra was supposed to be special. He had ideas for it.

Dross was murmuring something in his head about sleep, but he asked the spirit one last question.

How do I reinforce my arm to withstand the advancement to Underlord?

[Easy question. No problem. You need a source of Lord-level hunger madra. Now be quiet and let me soak up the aura around your brain.]

Gesha was still pulling pieces out of various crates, laughing to herself, and Eithan looked like a cat who had delivered a dead mouse to its owner.

Lindon pressed his fists together, saluting Eithan. “Gratitude. This is more than I can repay.”

“It's more than you can repay...right now.”

That had an ominous ring to it, but Lindon pushed through. “Nonetheless, though I am ashamed to even ask, I must beg you for one more favor. Would it be possible for you to get me the Archstone?”

Eithan's eyebrows went up, and his gaze shot to Lindon's arm.

“I know you want to keep the arm, but that’s quite a request. You’re talking about a potent weapon stolen from an ancient, cursed labyrinth and confiscated from a traitor to our Empire's leadership. It's in the Emperor's personal vault. Do you think I can do the impossible?”

Lindon had known that was unlikely. “Apologies. In that case, do you know another source of Lord-level hunger madra? Maybe a powerful dreadbeast?” No sooner had he asked the question than he realized he should have asked Fisher Gesha; she used to hunt dreadbeasts back in the Desolate Wilds.

Eithan looked unaccountably disappointed. “Wrong!” he shouted. “You were supposed to say, 'Yes, Eithan, of course you can do the impossible.' I'll have it to you in a few weeks.”

Lindon stared at him doubtfully. Cut off from the Arelius family as he was, he was having trouble raising money for their regular advancement resources. If he had a strong enough connection to the Emperor to get a treasure from his personal vault, how could he be lacking scales?

Though he had no choice but to rely on Eithan. Dipping his head, he said, “Thank you. That is more than I deserve.”

Eithan folded his arms and looked down on Lindon proudly. “I look forward to the day when you and I can stand together as equals.” He pointed one finger to the ceiling. “Now, I have not a moment to delay if I am to rob the Emperor blind! To the vaults!” He turned and strode out of the room, his turquoise outer robe shimmering behind him like a jeweled cloak.

Leaving Lindon and Gesha in the foundry, to explore the limits of Dross' newfound power.

Gesha clutched so many tools, pieces, and containers to her chest that Lindon couldn't see her face. She spilled them over the table, revealing a wild expression.

“Sacred instruments,” she said. “Can he make weapons, hm?”

“Can you help me make weapons?” Lindon asked aloud.

[Let me sleeeeeep,] Dross moaned to both of them. [And of course I can. So long as I have blueprints.]

Lindon wasted not a second in tearing open his void key. “I'm getting my Skysworn armor.”

She rubbed her hands together, laughing gleefully. “Thanks to the Emperor, I've got enough blueprints to choke a dragon. Boy, you are going to make me a fortune.”

* * *

Yerin stared up at the ceiling. Lindon had been gone for hours, and even the Brightcrown healers had drifted away. For the first time since the battle, she was alone with her thoughts.

At least, she wished it was just her thoughts.

She had stuffed herself with the food and elixirs Eithan had sent her, and they’d done a mountain of good, but she hadn’t finished even half of the platter. The rest sat there, cold now. And every few minutes, her Blood Shadow would try to lunge for it.

This time, instead of holding it back, she let it go.

The Shadow surged to life, flowing into a red mirror of her. It wore her sliced-up robes, not her Skysworn armor, and it held its six bladed Goldsigns out like the legs of a spider. It dove for the food, seizing a pitcher of life-infused water and pouring it into its mouth. Its jaw extended unnaturally wide, and it drained the pitcher in seconds, tossing the empty vessel aside and snatching up a muddy brown gourd. It took a bite with crimson teeth.

Yerin thought she might empty her own guts all over her bedsheets. Watching this parasite gorge itself with her face was all her childhood nightmares come at once.

She could still remember the Shadow tearing its way through her family. Their faces had become blurred with time, but the feeling remained crisp and vivid. She made it from day to day by not thinking about this thing living inside her, because when she thought about it too much, she wanted to gouge it out with her bare hands.

But she couldn’t get rid of it. It might be her way forward.

It kept scarfing down food. The Blood Sage’s tablet had talked about this. It could sometimes feed on its own, which should be encouraged, but only rarely. If the Shadow was allowed too much freedom, it might break away.

Yerin stood; she wouldn’t face this monster lying down. She tightened her brown patient’s robe and walked forward until she was only a few inches behind it.

It turned around lazily, still chewing, holding a roasted hunk of meat in one hand. It gave her a lopsided grin.

This thing even had her scars.

Yerin had to stop herself from pulling her master’s sword and carving it up. She didn’t know what that would do to herself, but she was willing to roll those dice.

Instead, she spoke. It had enough of a mind; it should understand her well enough.

“Why didn’t you end me?” she asked.

It could have. She had lost control of it completely. It could have hollowed her out from the inside and made her into a nest.

Instead, it had released her after only a few seconds, suddenly loyal as a dog. It had even fought beside her, and she didn’t know why.

The Blood Shadow’s grin widened, and it took another bite of meat. It made a low, growling noise, almost a purr.

The sound sent another shudder of disgust through Yerin, but she sensed satisfaction. The Blood Shadow was satisfied with the way things were going, it had just been a little hungry. It was happy to be growing physically, spiritually, and mentally.

If it had killed her, it would have had to feed itself.

Yerin ground her teeth. This was why she hadn’t wanted to develop the Shadow according to the Sage’s instruction. She knew, as Eithan had said, that turning it into a clone was her strongest bet. She wasn’t so blind that she couldn’t see the advantages of a second copy of herself, but every inch she gave the Blood Shadow was a loss. One step at a time, she was bringing a monster to life.

But when she’d already lost the life aura, she hadn’t seen any other choice. Now she was committed.

With every mouthful, the Blood Shadow became a shade more solid, a notch more real. Its eyes had a glimmer of life to them.

Yerin stepped closer until their eyes were only an inch apart. Of course, it was her exact height. “We’re hitched to the same wagon now, but heaven’s truth, I will bleed and bury you given half an excuse.”

The Blood Shadow lifted the meat to its mouth and took a huge bite, chewing loudly. It didn’t back down or look away.

“If I don’t advance, you’re going off this cliff with me,” Yerin said. “No more free meals.”

It continued chewing, but she thought it was listening.

Yerin would try to advance there in the Blackflame Empire, but if she couldn’t make it before too long, she’d have to go back through the portal. The Seishen Kingdom would have guards or walls built, but she’d risk it. Lindon would go with her; she hadn’t talked it over with him yet, but he would. The two of them could punch through and sneak around the Valley until she advanced.

Or they couldn’t, and she’d be doomed. No matter what they tried to do, she couldn’t afford to have a stranger fighting for the reins of her soul.

“You want us both to live?” Yerin went on. “You listen to me like I’m the voice of heaven. I say frog, you jump. I say snake, you crawl. I say dog, you—”

A nightmarish voice scraped out of the Blood Shadow’s throat.

“Woof,” it said.

Then it gave her a bloody grin.

14

Back in the Starsweep Tower in Stormrock, Lindon sat cross-legged on the carpeted floor of his room among the Skysworn. Full Skysworn got much better rooms than trainees—his previous quarters had been little more than a closet with a bunk crammed in.

He sat with natural treasures strewn around him. A knuckle-sized black skull, glowing with the power of death, sat to his left. A budding flower sat to his right, vibrant with life. Before him, a bottle of water that swirled on its own, occasionally rising into the shape of a curious face. Behind him, a crystal containing a spinning red flame.

He found it easier to follow the aura when they were arranged in contrasts. Reaching through the fist-sized ball of gray soulfire swirling inside him, he extended his senses. The treasures radiated great power, but it was still nowhere near as easy to sense as it had been in the Night Wheel Valley.

He traced the lines of color back to their sources, but stretched further. To the yellow veins of the stone beneath him, the green feathery breath of the air around him, the faint heat radiating from his own body. He could feel the connections, the subtle blending as one power became another. He was ready.

Lindon focused inward.

I need the power to protect my family, he thought. He filled himself with the desire to protect, focusing on the horror he'd felt as Suriel had shown him Sacred Valley, on his desperation to save Yerin.

Nothing happened.

He strained to detect any change in the aura. If some Truegolds who were qualified to be Underlord missed it, then it must be a subtle change.

[Yeah, but you’re thinking of backwoods Truegolds from an aura-poor nation with only a handful of Underlords,] Dross said. [They missed it because they were…I don’t want to say they’re stupid. Ignorant? Poorly educated? Backwards savages stumbling through their Paths like blind men?]

Lindon's balanced sense of aura trembled, threatening to collapse, the fire aura suddenly much more vibrant than the others. He steadied himself, calming his emotions, holding his perception in place.

“I fight to save my family,” he said, this time aloud.

Had the earth aura beneath him shaken? He focused on it, which caused his spiderweb-thin meditative state to crumble. His perception reeled back in, the vital aura a mishmash of disconnected colors again.

Lindon kicked to his feet, scattering the natural treasures and not bothering to pick them up. He strode over to a table against one wall. He had already arranged tools and boxes here to give himself something to work on. He needed to focus on a problem that was possible to solve.

Dross spoke in a soothing, even voice. [Take deep, calming breaths. Relax. That's it...relax. Breathe deeply. You have three whole days left! You could do a lot in three days. Like reaching Underlord! Theoretically.]

Lindon grabbed a yellow-and-black striped binding shaped like a blooming flower and demanded Dross make a Soulsmithing model. He had spent much of the last eight weeks with Fisher Gesha, crafting constructs; if Yerin hadn't been dying, the Fisher would have chained Lindon to her foundry and worked him to death.

A certain failure rate was inevitable in Soulsmithing, because every sample of madra was unique. Even an experienced Soulsmith like Gesha tried to prepare two samples of her materials when she could, because she'd fail two or three out of every ten times.

So being able to run the experiment in his mind, as many times as he wanted, was the Soulsmith's dream. It exhausted Dross, and there were still madra interactions Dross was unclear on—if Fisher Gesha's success rate for simple constructs was seventy-five percent, Lindon's was now ninety. Not one hundred percent, but miraculous nonetheless.

However, there was more to Soulsmithing than simple constructs. Sacred instruments—like weapons or the Skysworn armor—were beyond him. At least for now.

Once Eithan returned with the Arelius technique library, or Dross had the chance to absorb dream tablets from more Soulsmiths...Lindon couldn’t imagine all the possibilities.

This time, Lindon was working with a common binding and a type of simple construct he'd made before. He only needed to run it through in his head once before he could pull the ingredients together on his table, Forging them into a shimmering red-and-orange ball.

He was working inside a protective script, this time. A ninety percent success rate still meant a ten percent rate of failure, and he was making a bomb.

When he was finished, he placed the bomb into a scripted case with the others.

He would not return to the Night Wheel Valley unprepared.

A knock at his door surprised him. Yerin should have been trying to advance, and who else would come visit him?

He opened the door warily to see Mercy standing there, eyes shining, her hair long enough that she could pull it back into a ponytail again. She wore her smooth purple breastplate over a black-and-white set of sacred artist's robes, so she looked just like when he'd first met her. She leaned again on Suu, the dragon's head at the top hissing at his presence.

“Hi! Are you meditating? Ooooh, no, you're Soulsmithing! Can I watch?” She stepped forward, and then hesitated. “Ah, can I come in?”

He ushered her inside politely, but was still unsure. Mercy had never visited him before.

She ran over to the table, stumbling once but catching herself on the edge of the bed. When she got to his Soulsmithing tools, she picked up the goldsteel-plated tongs for holding tricky pieces of madra and held them up to the light, examining them.

“I always thought it would be fun to be a Soulsmith,” she said. “But I never had the knack for it. My sense for Forging is good, but shadow madra isn't the most widely compatible, and my tutors said it was better to concentrate on my talents.”

“My mother was a Soulsmith,” Lindon said. “It's always been an interest of mine. I have to say, I didn't expect to see you here.” He didn't want to be rude, but he did want to steer this conversation toward a quick conclusion. Every minute wasted was a minute Yerin moved closer to the edge.

She placed the tongs back down and faced him. “How are you?” she asked.

He almost started to talk about what he was doing, the preparations he was making, but he stopped himself. He knew what she meant.

“I should be Underlord by now,” he said at last.

He expected her to say that he shouldn't be upset. Many people went their whole lives without the chance to reach Underlord. Instead, her eyes went wide in sympathy, and she nodded. “It's the most frustrating advancement. Some people go from Truegold to Underlord in an afternoon. I had a cousin who spent five years chasing sillier and sillier truths about herself before finally figuring out that her real revelation was that she practiced sacred arts for no reason. She just enjoyed it. Once she admitted that, her way was clear. It's hard, because you can never figure out when you're on the right track and need to push deeper, and when you're totally wrong.”

“Yes!” Lindon said. “Until now, advancement has been clear. You make yourself one step stronger every day, keep practicing and cycling aura and strengthening your spirit, and it adds up. Now, all of a sudden, it's different.”

Mercy pulled out the chair beneath the table, sitting down and leaning her staff against her shoulder. “There are a lot of sayings about it, at least in my family.” She imitated a deeper voice. “'To know the world, you must first know yourself.' 'You must deepen your connection to your own soul if you wish to command the world.' 'Underlord is the end of the path you walked for others, and the beginning of your own path.'“ She waved a hand. “They make it sound like it fits, but they’re all guessing. I did get one practical piece of advice from my tutors, though.”

She leaned forward, looking deep into his eyes. “Follow your fear. It's a trick that sometimes helps to figure out your revelation. A lot of people push themselves into deadly situations, to figure out what they care about enough to die for, but you've done plenty of that. Obviously that isn't it for you. So...follow your fear.”

“I'm afraid of a lot of things,” Lindon said. Especially at the moment. Losing Yerin, failing to advance and being left behind, failing his family. He was afraid he had left home for nothing and was wasting his time out here playing at being a sacred artist. He was afraid Eithan would see his effort on Lindon as a waste, afraid that Orthos would never return, afraid that Dross would somehow grow out of control and consume his mind, afraid that Blackflame madra would one day scorch his soul with damage he couldn't heal...

“Too many things,” he added.

Mercy thumped the carpet with the end of her staff. “Let’s try it now! We don’t have much time left, so it’s worth a try, right? Cycling position!”

It was somewhat embarrassing to start meditating on command in front of someone like this, but it wasn't as though she hadn't seen him cycling before. He climbed back down, sitting and closing his eyes.

“Now, follow your fear. Trace it back to the beginning. What are you really afraid of, underneath it all?”

Feeling self-conscious, Lindon traced it back. He was afraid of losing Yerin.

[Ah, but is that what you're afraid of?] Dross asked. [Maybe you're really afraid that she might not be around to protect you anymore.]

Lindon searched his soul.

No, that's not it, he said.

[Well then, I'm out of ideas.]

It connected, at least as far as he understood it, to his attempted revelation earlier. He wanted to protect the people around him. He had left Sacred Valley because he was afraid of losing his family.

“I'm afraid of losing people I care about,” he said aloud, “but isn't everybody? That can't be unique to me.”

“Your motivation doesn’t have to be rare, just personal. Hm. Was your fear of loss what drove you to practice the sacred arts?” She sounded like she was imitating a wise old elder asking probing questions.

“I left home because I was afraid of losing my family.” That was at the center of his motivations. It was what had made him want to pursue the sacred arts enough to leave.

Mercy made a curious noise. “If that was all you wanted, then wouldn't you have stayed home? To be closer to them, to protect them?”

I would have if I could, he thought, but he quickly realized that wasn't true. Protecting his family was his goal, it wasn't his motivation. It was what he walked toward, not what pushed him from behind.

He'd left because, back in Sacred Valley, he was the least. The weakest.

He had wanted to escape.

So what was he afraid of now? What was his fear telling him about his family, about Yerin, about Eithan and Orthos?

That he was still weak. Powerless. That he was still the same useless Unsouled who could change nothing.

Lindon reached out with his spiritual sense, connecting to the aura around him. It was easier this time.

I fight so I won't be worthless anymore, he thought. It felt the same as the hundreds of other declarations he’d made over the last two months, spoken and unspoken, calmly or desperately or burning with quiet hope. He still wasn’t sure if his answer was correct.

But this time, the soulfire in his spirit quivered, and the aura around him shook with it. He would have never noticed if he hadn't been paying attention. At that moment, he had enough of a connection to the vital aura that all he had to do was pull...

Something slammed into him, knocking him to his back, breaking him from the trance and pushing him down. His eyes snapped open.

Mercy lay on top of him, her breastplate pressed against his chest, her nose an inch from his. “Stop!” she yelled into his face.

Lindon withdrew his spiritual perception, looking into her panicked face. “Did I do something wrong?” he asked.

She gave a relieved sigh, leaning both black-gloved hands on his chest and pushing herself up. She wobbled as she got to her feet, but then moved back to her chair. “If you trigger the advancement now, in this weak aura with only these few natural treasures, the transformation will occur slowly over two or three weeks. And once you start, there's no ending it early. Sure, that's better than nothing, but you know what your revelation is now, don’t you?”

He nodded, both excited and embarrassed. He was on the brink of Underlord, but he couldn't help but feel that his motivation was...pathetic.

“Then you should wait until you’re in the Night Wheel Valley. If you’re planning to go back, then advancement can happen like that.” She tried to snap, but the Goldsign on her fingers was too slick. Giving up, she clapped her hands together instead. “Like that. Sometimes. It could take longer, but still faster than here.”

As he thought, his embarrassment retreated and his excitement grew. He was there. He had reached the final step.

He looked at her with new respect. “I should have trained with you from the beginning.”

“If I had known I could have helped, I would have said something the first day!” She waved a hand. “I didn’t think it would work. There’s no trick that works for everyone.”

“What about you?” he asked. “You've helped me. How can I help you?”

Mercy shifted in her seat. “No, no, don't waste anything on me. My family used to give me the best resources and instruction, so I'm passing along what I can.”

He stood up, meeting her eyes directly, though now that he was standing, he loomed over her. She shifted her gaze. “Do you have any of those resources left?” he asked.

“...no.”

“And you would have to return home to get more?”

“...yes.”

“But you don't want to do that. And you don't want to take ours because you feel like you're stealing from us.”

“Not stealing, exactly.”

Lindon held out a hand to her. “Now I owe you. Next time, you won’t have to worry about taking anything from me, because I’ll be repaying your favor.” She took his hand, and he pulled her to her feet. “…two favors, actually. I’d like to ask you for one more.”

* * *

Yerin knew her advancement would take longer if she triggered it here, but that didn't matter anymore. If she only started the transformation, her soulfire would begin rebuilding her lifeline. She could afford to take a month to become an Underlady, because the advancement itself would extend her lifespan.

But that was only if she could do it.

She was surrounded by eight natural treasures, the most powerful she and Lindon could gather that would stay relatively balanced. Her perception was absolutely focused on feeling the unity of aura.

It was useless.

The aura back in the Blackflame Empire felt even weaker after staying in the Night Wheel Valley for so long. Here, she wasn't sure she'd feel the advancement even if she did trigger it.

She focused on her desire for freedom, to become so powerful that she could do whatever she wanted, go wherever she wanted, with no one to tell her no.

She meditated on the joy she felt in a fight, the satisfaction of seeing her skills grow and her strength improve.

She concentrated on the contentment of traveling with her master, and the old and faded love of a real family. The pain of losing them. The desire to protect the people in her life now.

All around her, the aura didn't change.

None of those were her revelation, unless maybe they were, and she hadn't pushed them hard enough yet. Or maybe the response from the soulfire had been too subtle and she'd missed her opportunity.

She trembled with the effort of holding her perception in place without losing the hazy sense of aura merging into one. Sweat rolled down her face.

Then, down the hall, she sensed Lindon.

His spirit had swelled for an instant, then ebbed. Had he done it? No, he hadn't broken through, or she would sense his power as an Underlord. What had happened?

She took a moment to unravel herself from the nearby aura; losing the sense of aura all at once could be disorienting. Then she rose to her feet and left. Maybe distracting herself was the answer. She could still afford to lose a minute or two, right?

As soon as she looked toward Lindon's room, she saw Mercy rushing toward her.

The Akura girl held her staff over one shoulder, apologizing to the other Skysworn she brushed past. When she saw Yerin, she waved eagerly, coming to a stop carefully to avoid pitching over on her face.

Lindon ran up behind her, and she could read his excitement. But he hadn't broken through.

Had he figured it out?

“Follow your fear!” Mercy shouted, pushing Yerin back into her room. “I didn't think it would work, but it did!”

Lindon followed, carefully shutting the door behind him. “It did. I felt it.”

Yerin's fist tightened. “Don’t ease me along. What happened?”

He looked suddenly hesitant, glancing at Mercy and then down at the floor. “I...don't...want to be useless. I move forward to prove that I am...worth something, I guess.”

Mercy visibly softened, reaching up to pat him on the shoulder.

His words pierced Yerin. That was stupid. He wouldn't be useless, even if he stayed at the same level he was forever.

But hadn't she treated him the same way?

She'd been afraid he couldn't keep up with her. Afraid she would have to leave him behind, or that he would leave her behind. Even in her own mind, she'd thought of their advancement as the most important thing about them both.

She wanted to tell him that wasn't true, and even to apologize, but she couldn't put words to the feeling. Then Mercy was in her face, gripping her arms.

“Now you try!” The Akura girl said. “Cycling position!”

With one last look at Lindon, Yerin sat on the floor. She would have plenty of time to untangle her words later, once she didn't have to worry about the threat of death hanging over her head.

“Trace the aura,” Mercy said, not that Yerin needed any instruction. She had already settled into sensing the unity of aura, her perception bleeding into the world around her.

“She's so much faster than I am,” Lindon said.

Dross' voice echoed in all their heads. [And I’ve been speeding you up. There's no substitute for good training. Or practice. Or talent, can't forget about that.]

A smile threatened to break Yerin's concentration.

“Now,” Mercy said, “what are you afraid of?”

She drilled down into herself. Her desire to protect people probably stemmed from a fear of loss, and her desire for freedom maybe sprang from the fear of losing that freedom to the Blood Shadow. Though the Shadow had been mostly docile, ever since she started training with it regularly, it was still there. Lurking in the back of her spirit. Waiting to take even her body from her.

But in the end, one fear outshone all the others.

Sensing the vital aura around her, she was too aware of the line of green life aura running down her spine. The dim, crooked, flickering line of light that could go out at any second.

Trying to think about other fears while her life hung by a frayed thread was like trying to see the stars with the sun in the sky.

Maybe that meant it was her revelation. Was survival the desire that drove her to the sacred arts?

That rang false. She wasn't fighting to live forever, or she wouldn't be so reckless with her life.

Mercy continued talking to her in a low, soothing voice, but Yerin grew increasingly frustrated. Her touch on the aura shook, the sense of unity growing thin.

This wasn't working.

When her meditation was interrupted by a flare of wind and dream madra and an alarm echoed through the room, she was relieved at the excuse to drop her trance.

Mercy looked disappointed, but Lindon was watching the echoing bell-shaped construct on the ceiling.

“Yerin,” Naru Gwei's voice said, “come see me. And if the Blackflame boy and the Akura girl are with you, bring them. They're not in their rooms.”

The construct—which had emerged from a shining script in the stone of the ceiling like a suddenly appearing weed—shrank back into the rock. The script faded away.

Yerin rose to her feet, brushing dust from her knees. “More orders. Bleed me dry if I have anything better to do.”

* * *

Naru Gwei surveyed Lindon and the others lined up before him. His burn scar pulled one eye into a wince, and his limp gray hair hung loose around him. He was unshaven, and looked as always like he hadn't slept for a week.

“The Blackflame Empire is giving up on the tournament.”

Lindon started to protest, but Naru Gwei held up one battered gauntlet for silence. “We're not formally withdrawing our candidacy. It's up to the Sage, whatever we say, and she might still pick one of us. But there’s nothing we can do in three days that will improve our chances.”

“At least Yerin and I could go back in,” Lindon said. “You’ve been sending scouts, and they’ve returned. Only a day or two inside, and maybe you'd have two new Underlords.”

Naru Gwei reached up to the map that hung on his wall, pulling it down and spreading it over his desk in one motion. It was a map of the Blackflame Empire.

To the east, his finger traced the Wasteland, a largely blank stretch of empty paper that looked like desert. “The Wasteland. Their sacred artists are the farthest thing from unified, but they're a thin fence against the dragons even further east. After the Dreadgod attack, we've lost contact with much of our territory against that border. The Wastelanders could be moving in even now, claiming whatever territory they want, and who's to stop them?

“Beyond them are the dragons,” he said, gesturing beyond the scope of the map. “They stay away because of a few real monsters in the Wasteland, and out of respect for the Akura family.” He jerked his chin at Mercy. “Our favor with your family tells the dragons how important we are. If you all like us, then you'll respond quick. If you don't, then maybe you'll look the other way while they push through the Wasteland and snap up a few villages.”

He turned his attention to the south, which was mostly covered by trees. “The jungle only stays peaceful because of constant Skysworn supervision. I've left a few teams down there, but most of us are here over the capital. The longer we stay here, the more towns and sects and schools and villages will be swallowed up by the jungle.

“To the north is the Trackless Sea, the widest ocean we know. Covers half the world, by our maps. The Kotai clan mans this wall—” He traced a long shape down the beach. “—which keeps the ocean tribes out. Those enemies are glad to know that we're focused somewhere else. They're hungry for the land.”

Naru Gwei kept talking, but Lindon focused on the west. He saw the Desolate Wilds, marked as a black smudge, and recognized a range of mountains by the coast. Closer to the western sea than he'd ever realized.

It was unnamed. The map had it listed as “Restricted Territory—Dangerous and Forbidden,” next to the seal of the Akura family: one big star and two smaller stars over a mountain range.

That's where Sacred Valley was.

His eyes moved across the Wilds to Serpent's Grave. Then to the capital, where he was now. He had skipped across dozens of regions, towns, notes and names scribbled on the paper. Names he'd never heard of, places he'd only passed over without thinking.

He was a long way from home.

Naru Gwei stared over the map, his usual weariness taking on a melancholy tone. “Empires are fragile things. They are prone to fall.”

Lindon's eyes were locked onto Sacred Valley as he processed. “Apologies, but why does the tournament matter so much to the Empire?”

“Contact with the other nations and major factions of the world is more valuable than you think,” the Skysworn Captain said, feeding a long leaf between his teeth. “Usually, we only hear from our neighbors on this continent. The Akura family all the way to the south, their other nearby vassal kingdoms, like the Seishen Kingdom. Our enemies, the dragons, who own the east. We can contact the Arelius homeland every ten years, and there are a few other connection points.” He sighed. “Establishing trade or any relationship is worth a great price. And if we can distinguish ourselves in front of the world, we can show them that we're strong enough to defend ourselves.”

He looked to Mercy again. “Not to mention that your family promised us a hundred million high-grade scales for each qualified competitor we provide, and further gifts if they give a good performance in the tournament. If the dice had fallen right, we might have gained ourselves glory we haven't seen for hundreds of years.”

Naru Gwei straightened up from the map, looking back at them. “Now, it's too late. Rather than ‘giving up,’ it’s more accurate to say we’re finally admitting our loss. Got more Underlords than we lost, and that will be good for security.”

Yerin had withdrawn her Goldsigns, but the sword-arms started peeking out of her back again, which meant she was distracted. “You're not spewing at the mouth for no reason. What do you want out of us?”

He locked eyes with the three of them in turn. “I want to know if you have any input on the movement of the Skysworn.”

Lindon wondered if there was some hidden meaning in the words, or if Naru Gwei was really asking them for advice.

“The Empire is sending everyone home from the capital, that's decided,” the Captain said. “Too late to do anything else. If the Sage picks one among us to fight for her, that’s good enough for us. But the Skysworn can move independently, so I wanted to know if you had any thoughts about our withdrawal or our strategy going forward.”

He watched their faces and grumbled around the leaf in his mouth. “I asked all my Truegolds this same question. And she's the only Akura in the Empire, so maybe she knows something worth hearing.”

Mercy frowned at him, pinching her chin as though deep in thought, but Lindon was still staring at the map. They had three days left, and the Seishen Kingdom had used their last two months to mint Underlords. They would have been desperately improving their power, showing off to the Sage.

He had to save Yerin...but he wanted to win. Was there a way to do both? To seize and hold a piece of the Night Wheel Valley, increasing her chances of advancement, and also show they were the best the vassals of the Akura family had to offer?

His first thought was assassination. If they killed Kiro and Meira, that would be two of the Kingdom's star Underlords out of the running. But not only did they have an Overlord defending them, Lindon also wasn't happy about assassination being his first answer. And the Sage of the Silver Heart had restricted bloodshed.

Then he remembered something he couldn't believe he'd forgotten.

He turned on the spot and seized Mercy.

Her purple eyes widened.

15

Though there were sixteen Underlords in the Empire now, only eleven of them could be gathered on short notice, including Naru Gwei. They were squeezed around one side of a table in one of the larger Skysworn meeting rooms, rubbing shoulders as they faced the end of the room.

The Emperor was seated in front of them, in as close to a throne as the Skysworn had been able to dig out from storage. He was dressed plainly for an emperor; his iridescent wings were nowhere to be seen, withdrawn back into his spirit, and he wore sapphire robes wrapped around with dragons. A shimmering cap on his head was his only headdress, and his bearded face was neatly trimmed. Lindon could only see the back of him, but Naru Huan still radiated a heroic air; maybe that was Lindon's spirit warning him against the only Overlord in the room.

The rest of the room was jammed with Truegolds.

They stood packed in behind the Underlords, many of them in Skysworn armor. Lindon hadn't worn his, so now he was shoved between the shoulder pads of an armored woman and Yerin's Goldsigns, which she had kept out in order to keep people from crowding her.

They had organized themselves by combat rank in order to save room, so Lindon and Yerin found themselves close to the front. Only a few white-haired men and women stood in front of him, and he could see over their heads.

At the very end of the room, speaking to all of them including the Emperor himself, was Akura Mercy. She craned her neck to look to the back.

“It seems like we're all here. Can we begin?” She spoke as brightly as ever, and Lindon was surprised that she was so comfortable addressing everyone. But then, to her, the Emperor of the Blackflame Empire was one of her family's servants.

“You may,” Naru Huan said.

“Our family regularly harvests the Night Wheel Valley,” Mercy said. “We keep the excess natural treasures in a vault, which we use periodically for training or Soulsmithing. But natural treasures can lose their power over long travel, so that vault is located inside the valley itself.”

There was a stir in the room, and some of the Underlords muttered to each other. Naru Saeya, the Emperor's sister, perked up in her seat. The peacock feathers over one ear bristled.

“Thank you for bringing this to us,” Saeya said, “but why now? The secrets of your family should be shared lightly, but if you were going to tell us, then why not when we could reach them?”

Mercy smiled. “Now, Akura Charity owes me a favor. She owns the Night Wheel Valley, and the vault itself. She might not give me the treasures, but if I took them, she would look the other way. It would be a nice consolation prize for being forced to leave.”

“Too shaky,” said a large, bearded man with a hammer on either hip. The stormcloud hanging over his head reminded Lindon of Renfei’s Path of the Cloud Hammer. “No offense to you, Akura, but we cannot rob a Sage based on your judgment of a relative's possible actions. What if you are wrong and she kills us all?”

“Oh, she knows who is responsible,” Mercy said, waving a hand. “The punishment would fall on me, not you.”

She had treated his concern too lightly, Lindon could feel it in the room. They didn't believe her, though she wasn't taking the situation seriously. It didn't help that she lurched in place a moment later, steadying herself against the wall.

“I think we can do it,” Saeya said, leaning forward. “All at once. Scouts show that the Kingdom isn't holding our portal tightly. They're concentrated on the center of the Valley, where the aura is thickest. We punch through, everything we've got, and seize the vault. Where is it?”

“Even better news!” Mercy said. “It's slightly closer to us! Just outside the southern walls of the house.”

The room went silent as they all pictured the imposing Akura nightmare fortress that had taken over an entire mountain.

Naru Saeya leaned back.

But her older brother spoke up. “This could be done,” the Emperor said. “They have only one Overlord, and he cannot come alone. It will take them time to gather their forces. At our maximum speed, we could be in and out in two hours. Long before they can gather enough strength to challenge us.”

He laced his fingers together. “However, we will not act without the Sage's permission. With her mediation, even if we fail, we will only be sent home in shame rather than annihilated. And only with her approval can we be sure we will not face her wrath, even in victory.”

Mercy shrugged. “Then ask her.”

Her eyes rose up to the corner of the room.

Everyone in the room turned. There, in the high ceilings, waited a silver-and-purple owl that none of them had seen.

Naru Huan stood and bowed. “The Emperor of the Blackflame Empire greets the Sage of the Silver Heart,” he said.

Seeing the Emperor doing so, everyone else in the room except for Mercy stood and bowed as well.

“This is how she monitors the battlefield,” Mercy said. “She has seen and heard everything. If she allows us to move forward, then she approves.”

The owl gave a soft rustle, like wind through leaves.

The gray-skinned Kotai Underlord, an old man with a stone gauntlet for a hand, snorted. “How could we be sure this is really—”

The owl turned its eyes on him. There was a flare of dream aura, tightly concentrated, and the Underlord's eyes went out of focus for a second.

When his consciousness returned, he trembled, pressing one giant fist against one normal-sized one and bowing deeply. “I apologize for questioning the Sage.”

There were a number of questions directed at Mercy, which she answered as she could, but the tone of the room had shifted. The Underlords were gathering themselves. Lindon could feel their spirit slowly turning. None of them had liked retreating and waiting around either, and now they were restless for the chance to return to battle.

Finally, Naru Saeya slapped a hand down on the table and stood up. “What time do we leave?”

* * *

All the Lords, Ladies, and high-ranking Truegolds of the Seishen Kingdom had been gathered on top of their castle in the Night Wheel Valley. The roof had been turned into a celebration banquet, and even the gloom of the Valley was dispersed by shining scripts, lights, music, and soaring bird-Remnants of every color.

Seishen Daji, Kiro’s little brother, stood on a platform of Forged madra that lifted him above all the others. He wore traditional robes of Seishen royalty, which were plated to give the impression of armor, and a silver crown gleamed on his head. He looked out over the crowd with a triumphant, arrogant expression.

And he did nothing to restrict his spirit, which pulsed with the power of a newly minted Underlord.

The other important members of the Seishen Kingdom were taking turns standing up to languish the second prince with praise, whereupon he would respond with either false humility or praise in return. With every word, Daji puffed up further, shooting the occasional glance at his father. King Dakata stood to the side of his son’s stage, the very picture of pride.

Kiro leaned against the wall, out of the center of attention, watching.

A hand gently brushed his back. “Are you not feeling well?” Meira asked, a hint of panic in her eyes. She set aside the bowl of food in her right hand, beginning to conjure life madra.

“I’ve been fine for weeks,” Kiro assured her. She had healed the stab wound in his back instantly, and the Kingdom healers had given him far more medicine than he could possibly have needed.

He had passed out during the healing process, and later found that his father had been furious. Meira might have been executed, if she hadn’t been even more distraught than King Dakata himself. He had been forced to personally restrain her to keep her from diving through the Blackflame Empire portal and attacking all on her own.

Instead of picking her bowl back up, Meira chewed on her thumbnail, her gaze growing distant and empty. “We could demand her as our prize,” she said. “The Sage would give us one sword artist.”

“We won’t see her again,” Kiro assured her. As far as he was concerned, that was a good thing. The young woman with the sword and blood techniques scared him as much as Lindon did. He had been skeptical of his father’s plan to drive the Blackflame Empire away, but if it had prevented those two from becoming Underlords, then it had been worthwhile.

Meira finally picked her food back up and started eating, tearing into her food as though it had personally offended her. She was disappointed that they wouldn’t get a chance for revenge; she and Daji were alike in certain ways.

Suddenly, the colorful lights and the music dimmed, as though the shadows of the Night Wheel Valley had crept inwards.

The woman who had been giving a speech about Daji froze, her drink raised. Conversation died, and Kiro couldn’t tell if it had happened naturally, or if the shadow was dampening sound.

King Dakata stepped forward, unleashing the spirit of an Overlord, but the shadows deepened in front of him. They melted together and rose into a lump of darkness.

Akura Charity stepped out of the dark, face-to-face with the Seishen King.

Hurriedly, Kiro and everyone else there swept into a bow. Charity looked Dakata up and down, then turned her attention to Daji. He had bowed only reluctantly, with a clearly resentful look on his face.

The Sage of the Silver Heart raised her delicate hands in front of her and, after a long pause, clapped exactly three times. The sounds echoed through the silence.

“Congratulations to the Seishen Kingdom,” Charity says. “It seems you have benefited greatly from my garden.”

King Dakata had already withdrawn his spirit, controlling his madra. He recovered quickly from his surprise, laughing loudly. “Of course, of course! How could any land of the Sage’s be less than extraordinary? There were a few pests, but not to worry—we drove them out for you.”

He laughed even louder at that. A handful of brave souls joined him.

Charity looked out over the crowd. “Hm. Bold of you, to drive them out as you did. You pushed at the edges of my command for restraint.”

Her words were completely calm, but Kiro thought his father was about to start sweating nervously.

“We were very careful not to do anything that might weaken fellow servants of the Akura clan,” King Dakata assured her. It was strange to see him taking such a submissive stance, like seeing a tiger acting like a lapdog. “But we knew bold action was necessary to grasp the victory.”

Charity’s eyebrows raised. “Victory?”

For a long moment, silence reigned.

Dakata laughed awkwardly. “Of course. We have produced many Underlords since then. Surely more than the Blackflame Empire. You may take your pick of our youth.”

Charity raised one finger on each hand. “This is the current…score, if you would like to put it that way. There is one young Underlord from the Blackflame Empire who has been my choice all along. And I have had my eye on one young Lord or Lady from your Kingdom from the beginning.” She lowered her hands, folding them together. “None of your actions have changed the situation. It remains as it was months ago. There is still no third person at the Underlord level who meets my requirements.”

Daji stepped forward, anger clear on his face, and Kiro knew he had to act quickly before his little brother got himself killed.

“Honored Sage,” Kiro blurted out, “is there nothing we can do to distinguish ourselves in your eyes?”

He had been speaking mostly to draw Charity’s attention away from Daji, but she surveyed him for a long moment. After a second, she produced a folded sheet of paper from nowhere, flicking it toward him. The letter soared gently on the breeze, landing in his hand.

“The Blackflame Empire will return,” the Sage said. “The details are contained within.”

Kiro unfolded the paper. It was a map of the Night Wheel Valley, much more detailed than the one his father had cobbled together, with a single location circled. He read the label, as well as the instructions below.

Then he looked back to Charity, shocked.

She met his eyes calmly. “Send your three candidates to the location I have indicated and follow the directions I have left for you.”

The letter predicted everything the Blackflame Empire would do. As well as the actions of three of their young Golds.

The Sage wanted to see another competition.

“This time,” Charity went on, “I want to see you demonstrate your skills fairly. Hold nothing back. I have only one reminder for you.”

Kiro knew what she was about to say. It was written on the bottom of the letter, in large characters, circled for emphasis.

“You should not harm Akura Mercy,” the Sage said.

The same words were repeated on the paper beneath the map. You should not harm Akura Mercy.

The phrasing bothered him, but before Kiro could question it, King Dakata pounded a fist against his chest and boasted, “We will not let the Sage down!”

Charity looked back to Daji. “Truly,” she said, “I hope you don’t.”

Then, without warning, she faded back into shadow, leaving silence behind her.

The celebration had been ruined. Most of the bound Remnants had fled or quivered in fear, the musicians were too paralyzed with shock and fear to touch their instruments. The guests only murmured to one another, their food forgotten, and Daji clenched his fists in rage on the stage.

Dakata strode over to Kiro, plucking the Sage’s letter from his hands. He read it once, his back straightened, and he read it again.

He slapped the paper back into Kiro’s hands. “This time, you will meet them with our full force. Everything we can spare. You will grind them into dust!” Finally, he barked orders to his servants. “Tell the Soulsmiths I need that new armor finished within the day. We will spare no expense.”

The closest servant cringed. “How many sets must we prepare, Your Highness?”

“Two,” the King commanded, “one for each of my sons. If we have to use up every treasure we’ve gathered since we came here, I want them finished by dawn.”

“Not two suits,” Kiro corrected. He kept his gaze on Meira’s face, drawing from her the strength to correct his father. “Three.”

Her gray eyes widened with shock, and his father swelled with fury. Still, he kept himself fixed on Meira.

“I don’t want you behind me any longer,” he said quietly. “I need you by my side.”

“I will not fail you again,” she swore.

She thought he was giving her the means to serve him better. It was the opposite; he was trying, for once, to serve her.

“You’ve never failed me,” he said.

Between his fingers, he gripped the Sage’s letter tight.

He was the one who couldn’t fail again.

16

Just outside the walls of Blackflame City, the Imperial cloudship waited.

It was a hundred paces long and forty wide, with three levels, and it rested on a bed of shimmering jade clouds. Mounted on the back were five scripted tubes that looked like backwards-pointed cannons. Those contained spinning wind constructs that thrummed with an Overlord’s power, and the scripts around them shone green. A brief question of Dross informed Lindon that they were there for propulsion; this was the fastest cloudship the Empire possessed.

Forty-eight of the strongest Blackflame Truegolds were gathered on the deck, as well as thirteen of the sixteen Underlords. Eithan stood chatting with Naru Saeya, who leaned against the railing suppressing a smile. Naru Gwei spoke with a veiled Underlady Lindon didn’t recognize and the Cloud Hammer Underlord, Chon Ma. Four or five of the gathered Underlords stood in a separate group, bristling with pride—those must be the newest additions, who had advanced in the Night Wheel Valley. None of them had less than a full head of gray hair.

Mercy and Yerin stood with Lindon, all wearing their Skysworn armor. Lindon had made some modifications to his, only a few of which were obvious to the naked eye. There were lines of script running down many of the armor’s joints, and the bracers and greaves on his right arm had been removed, leaving his white Remnant limb bare.

Over the heads of the crowd, Lindon spotted Cassias and his wife, moving over to greet them. Cassias was excited that Eithan had made up with the family leadership and wanted to know what had prompted that decision. Lindon had no idea what he was talking about, and said so.

Together, they discussed their situation. Fueled by the Emperor’s power, they were supposed to dash through the portal, head straight to the vault, empty it, and return. The Seishen Kingdom had erected some defenses on the other side, but they were token efforts at best, and the scouts were certain they’d spotted them all.

It wasn’t as risky as it sounded, Cassias assured them. The Seishen Kingdom could not have time to mobilize a force like theirs, and the strongest sacred artist on their side—the King—would be overwhelmed by sheer numbers. If they had an Archlord, this would be suicidal. As it was, they had little to lose.

Lindon understood all that, but he couldn’t help a case of nerves. Yerin’s life was riding on this.

He, for one, intended to attempt advancement as soon as they were on the other side. As for Yerin’s revelation…he knew it would be easier to sense the unity of aura on the other side. Maybe she would have the insight she needed. And maybe they could loot enough natural treasures that they could replicate the aura-rich environment on the other side.

But the hourglass was running down, and Lindon couldn’t think of anything else to do. How could he push someone else toward a personal revelation?

Mercy waved good-bye and headed off to the Emperor—she was to be the native guide on this expedition. And, Cassias informed them, Eithan and Naru Saeya were serving as navigators.

Lindon glanced around to where he’d last seen Eithan and instead found the Arelius Underlord standing not three feet away, grinning at him.

Startled, Lindon took an involuntary step back.

Eithan reached into his robe, withdrawing an object with a flourish: a smoky orb a little smaller than a man’s head. Shapes seemed to eddy and shift in its misty depths.

The Archstone.

Lindon could feel a resonance with the hunger madra in his arm, as though they longed to reunite.

The Truegolds around them exclaimed, parting to create an open space around Eithan, and the binding wasn’t even activated.

“You have no idea the things I had to do to procure this for you, my beloved disciple,” Eithan announced clearly, so that the entire crowd could hear. “The indignities I had to suffer, the depths of depravity to which I had to sink.”

Lindon reached out to take it, but Eithan pulled back.

“Truly,” he cried, “the heavens must have wept the day they created a man of such generosity, such selfless spirit, as your master! Please, do not weep! Instead, take this gift and know that I would gift thee with my very beating heart should you request it.”

With that, he bowed low, extending both hands and offering Lindon the Archstone.

The Underlords at the front of the ship, no doubt used to Eithan, shook their heads and returned to their conversations. The Truegolds clearly had no clue how to respond. Some of them applauded. A few looked curiously at Lindon. He spotted Bai Rou against the railing, his yellow eyes burning beneath his wide straw hat. It was hard to tell, but it looked like the man was glaring at him.

Face burning, Lindon took the Archstone. He wanted to open his void key, but he couldn’t reveal its existence to this many people.

Instead, he drew it into his soulspace.

It was somewhat like devouring madra through his hunger madra arm, but when he looked within and inspected his madra, he could see the Archstone floating among his madra channels with perfect clarity. It hung above his cores, a white moon above a blue star and a dark one.

He had practiced bringing objects in and out of his soulspace ever since he’d opened it, but he hadn’t determined what to keep there. Maybe, if he ever learned to use a weapon and bonded one, he would store a sacred instrument. Or maybe he wouldn’t fill it with anything permanently, but would keep surprises in there. The Archstone counted.

“Gratitude, Eithan,” he said, trying to ignore the stares. “Please, lift your head. Really, please.”

As though he had done nothing out of the ordinary, Eithan straightened up. “I would wait to break that until you’re ready to Forge it, by the way,” he said, sweeping his long yellow hair back over one shoulder. “You don’t want the madra to lose any potency, and you never know what it will do if you break it uncontrolled.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.” He saluted, fists together. “And I am truly grateful.”

Eithan accepted that and said a few words to Cassias and Naru Jing. But as he turned to go back toward the Emperor, he paused as though he had forgotten something and turned back. To Yerin.

He placed a hand on her head. “Be calm, little sister,” he said quietly. “You have many years ahead of you.”

Then he spun and walked away, waving behind him as he did so.

Yerin looked as though she had seen the heavens and earth flip upside-down. Lindon moved to stand next to her.

Cassias tightened a glove. “One day, I will see him truly surprised. I think the shock of it might kill me.”

The wind picked up, swirling around them. Power gathered to the propulsion constructs in the back of the ship, until the entire vessel thrummed with palpable force.

All eyes naturally turned to the front. To the Emperor.

He had changed clothes again, and this time looked like he belonged on the battlefield. He wore green sacred artist's robes, his wings spread behind him, and he gave off the air of a warrior king. He spread his arms, and in Lindon's Copper sight, the aura around him burned a pale green.

The ship lifted up, the propulsion constructs gathering even more power. Lindon could hear them now, like spinning blades.

With one gesture of the Overlord's hand, the cloudship shot forward.

Mercy stood to his left, tethered to the deck with Chainkeeper madra. Eithan and Naru Saeya stood on his right, each peering forward.

As they blasted away from the Blackflame capital and into a column of dark power.

Yerin's face was tight, her spirit in chaos. The lowest pair of sword-arms had driven into the wood of the deck, but the others had been withdrawn. She stood with hair whipping in the wind of their passage, eyes focused on the darkness.

Lindon had knelt, letting his Remnant fingers stick into the wood and materializing them enough that he could get a grip. He held himself in place as they flew, reaching the portal in only a few breaths.

Underlord waited on the other side.

As they passed through the seemingly endless darkness, the others faded from Lindon's perception. He took the moment to steady his own breathing.

Are you ready? he asked Dross.

[Ready? Of course I'm ready. I'm looking forward to it, actually. A bit of excitement. I'm a lot more worried about Yerin. She could die, you know. And it's all on her, whether she makes it through or not. We're completely powerless. Nothing we can do to help.]

Lindon couldn't feel much of his own body, but he was sure he had tensed up.

[But I'm sure she'll be fine,] Dross added.

Slowly, the world returned.

They emerged from the column of shadow far faster than Lindon ever had before. Eithan and Naru Saeya were pointing and shouting to the Emperor, though Lindon couldn't make out what they were saying over the wind.

A massive wall of light, knitted together from strands of silver and yellow, barred their way. It encircled the Blackflame portal, covering the space from earth to clouds, radiating eternal force.

The Emperor's voice boomed out. “Chon Ma. Kotai Reina.”

The Underlord of the Cloud Hammer school pulled both hammers from his belt, the stormcloud over his head flashing with lightning. He leaped forward, ahead of even the ship.

He was joined a step later by one of the new Underlords, an Underlady with gray skin and long, flowing silver hair gathered behind her in a purple ribbon. She looked like a grandmother who had aged well, and as she flew, vivid blue constructs bloomed into the air around her like flowers.

Chon Ma ran on the air, a dark cloud blooming under his foot with every step. As he reached the yellow-and-silver wall, he let out a roar, swinging both hammers. Mist blasted out from him in an explosion.

At the same time, the Underlady lifted off the deck, blue flower-constructs spinning around her. They opened, releasing streams of lightning-bright sapphire energy that pierced the wall in half a dozen places.

The cloudship didn't slow down.

Chon Ma leaped up as the ship caught up to him, landing on the deck. The Underlady drifted back down in a dignified manner. Together, their attacks had left a web of cracks that covered the face of the wall, but they had only punched through in small holes. Nothing nearly big enough for the ship to pass through.

Lindon braced himself as the cloudship struck.

The wall shattered like glass, shards exploding as the prow of the ship broke through. The noise was deafening, a sharp-edged detonation, and pieces of silver-and-yellow madra careened through the air.

Lindon had to release the deck with his Remnant hand, leaning low to avoid being blown backwards, so that he could reach up and slap away a fragment of power the size of his chest.

No one on the deck was weak enough to be caught up in the destruction; none of the fragments came even close to Yerin, and Eithan was able to casually stand in front of Mercy. The madra simply dissolved when it came close to his skin.

And they were through, shooting over the dark trees of the valley. The Night Wheel itself spun slowly overhead, gathering purple light, and the strength of the aura here felt like diving into an ocean of power. The ship turned, making for the huge layered fortress that had swallowed up the eastern mountain, lit only by spots of violet or orange light.

Lindon gripped the deck again. The cloudship was tilted now, the bow rising, so that he was in danger of sliding backwards.

He pushed his perception outward, sensing the unity of aura, preparing to advance. But he knew the problem even before Dross said anything.

[I don't want to discourage you, but you'll need your full concentration if you want to advance. Which means you won't be able to keep aura cycling to your arm, and you will fall.]

It was even more complicated than that, Lindon knew. He wanted to Forge the Archstone into his arm as he advanced, and in order to do that, he would have to let go of the deck or the hand would remain permanently fused there.

Lindon looked up to Yerin, who offered a hand without a word. He took it in his hand of flesh, once again concentrating on the unity of aura. She held him as securely as if he were tied to the ship.

[Oh! That's a better idea, so long as you don't care about what happens to Yerin. She's not ready to advance yet, so the soulfire will burn her hand off. But then, you have a Remnant hand...]

Lindon released his perception, shook his head at Yerin, and took his hand away.

“I can wait until we land,” he conceded. Though the rich aura pressing against him tempted him. He was so close. But he wouldn't be able to lay out enough natural treasures around him here either; he would have to pull them from his void key and leave them in his lap. Unless he could draw on their power by opening the key? Questions for later.

They ran across a few Seishen Kingdom sacred artists, who flew back to report what they had seen.

That was expected, and it encouraged Lindon to feel their spirits retreating in the opposite direction as the Akura family castle grew closer. Their information suggested that the bulk of the Seishen forces were concentrated in the heart of the valley, and it was nice to have that confirmed.

Of course, even if everything went according to plan and they emerged from the Akura vault with their ship bursting with enough natural treasures to fuel the entire Blackflame Empire, that still might not be enough for Yerin.

At Mercy's wild gesturing, the ship started to slow. The prow lowered gradually as the Emperor's power retreated, until eventually Lindon could release the deck.

They were at the base of the Akura family fortress, which loomed over them as a wide, jagged mountain against the dark sky. Its shadow covered them, the purple and orange lights making for strange silhouettes on each layer.

At the bottom layer, a scripted stone wall rose a hundred feet from the ground. And at the base of that wall, a wide gate carved with constellations.

The ship settled in front of the gate, the green cloud landing gently on the grass.

“You all have your assignments,” the Emperor announced. “Underlord first team, escort Akura Mercy to the gate. Truegold first team, with them. Truegold second team, fan out to the forests. Underlord second team...”

He continued to give orders, but Lindon and Yerin were in the first team. They walked over to Mercy, joining Eithan, Naru Saeya, and the silver-haired Kotai Underlady. She gave Lindon and Yerin a glance as they joined, but kept her attention mostly fixed on Mercy.

“A smooth flight,” Eithan observed. “Nothing makes me more nervous than a smooth flight. If your ship doesn't crash, then is it even a real—”

His head jerked to one side, his eyes growing suddenly serious. Naru Saeya drew her sword a moment later, its rainbow-colored blade shimmering.

“Ready for battle!” she shouted, her voice booming out with enhanced force.

Then Lindon felt the power encircling them. A script running underground had activated.

Misty white light rose from the ground. A boundary field.

Unlike the wall that had surrounded their portal, this one was not a rigid plane of force. It filled the air with a strange dream aura. His thoughts grew thick and slow, his perception—already limited by the darkness of the Night Wheel Valley—blunted and clumsy.

[Ew,] Dross said, [what is this? I don't like it.]

A purple light flared in Lindon's spirit.

Suddenly, the weight on his thoughts released. He could still see the Ruler technique floating around them in the form of white mist, but he was untouched.

[Not to hurry you, but I only have so much madra. This is another good reason to make me stronger, isn't it? Make a note.]

You saved me, Lindon thought, projecting gratitude in the spirit's direction. He grabbed Yerin, who was stumbling around the deck, and pulled her with him. It took her eyes a long moment to focus on him.

Conversation would be pointless while she was under the effects of the boundary field, so he pulled her toward Mercy. She was still tied to the deck by strands of her Chainkeeper madra, staring at the sky with an empty smile on her face.

Instead of reaching for her, he reached out to the Underlord next to her: Eithan.

Eithan's madra was already cycling, his eyes closed, but it was moving slowly. Lindon shook him with his Remnant hand, but Eithan didn't respond.

Lindon was about to abandon him when a pulse of pure madra passed through the Underlord. His eyes snapped open, and he took a deep breath, looking Lindon up and down.

“Another advantage of having your own personal mind spirit,” Eithan said, straightening his outer robe. “I envy you. I can't keep this up forever, and I'm as vulnerable as the rest of you once my madra runs out.” He looked to the sky. “Where's Little Blue?”

“In my void key,” Lindon answered, but he understood Eithan's intent immediately.

As one, both of them turned toward the Emperor.

Eithan's voice was low, and his spirit started to cycle faster as he pulled more deeply on his power. “Quickly. They're already here.”

Shadows closed in from the depths of the white light, emerging from the forest. Underlords.

Lindon stopped counting at ten. He couldn't sense them all, and there were more in the trees around them.

He touched the key hanging next to his badge, still not releasing Yerin's hand. She was looking around, moving from one spiritual presence to the next, clumsily readying her spirit for battle.

The void key opened, the closet-sized door appearing next to him. Some of the surrounding Truegolds frowned, trying to push their muddled thoughts into figuring out what he'd done.

Little Blue sat with her chin in her hands on the edge of a jar of Dream Well water, her dress kicking out like a child kicking her feet on the edge of a swing. When she saw him, she brightened, giving a high chirp and scurrying over to him.

Then the white aura touched her and she swooned, swaying in place, leaning against a nearby box to steady herself.

Lindon scooped her up in his Remnant hand, careful to keep the hunger madra under control. “I'm sorry, but I need your help,” he said softly. “Can you cleanse their spirits?”

It was an alarmingly long moment before she gave a dreamy peep of agreement.

Without hesitation, he pushed her onto Yerin's hand. Little Blue didn't show any of the usual reluctance toward touching Yerin, only reaching out and sending a spark of deep blue power into Yerin's soul.

The madra traveled lazily, as though it too were addled by the boundary, but it slid through Yerin in long loops. After a few breaths, her eyes sharpened, her breath coming quicker.

“Well, that's a kick to the head.”

Now that Lindon had confirmed it worked, he hurried over to the Emperor. The man had summoned a sword, holding it with both hands, but otherwise he was simply standing still, seemingly trying to gather himself.

Lindon had intended to release Little Blue onto the Overlord as soon as possible, but he couldn't help pausing when he saw the sword. It had a long, straight blade of dense black, with red layers streaked through it in a pattern that reminded him of rising flames.

It was Blackflame. The Emperor had a sword made from the Path of Black Flame, and from the pressure it gave off, it was at least an Overlord-level weapon.

After that brief moment of hesitation, Lindon set Little Blue onto the Emperor's shoulder. She leaned into his neck, pushing a bigger orb of blue into his madra channels than she had used on Yerin. It took her a hair longer this time, either because she found it harder to affect an Overlord or because the field was affecting her more strongly.

Lindon pulled her back, moving over to Mercy. He wanted to help everyone on the ship—some of them had started acclimating, staggering around or preparing techniques, but none of them were anywhere near ready to battle someone of their own level. He could bet the Seishen Kingdom would have ward keys for this boundary field.

And another cloudship had approached, carrying multiple Underlords and one greater power. The King of Seishen, and—Lindon guessed—his royal family.

Whatever happened to the rest of the ship, Lindon had a goal.

He passed Little Blue onto Mercy as the Emperor took a long, shuddering breath. His eyes flicked to Lindon, and he gave a nod, but his mind was clearly on business. His wings spread and he rose into the air, confronting the smaller cloudship.

Mercy shook herself as she woke, and she brightened when she saw Little Blue, cradling the tiny spirit in her hands. “Did you save me? Thank you! Oh, what's wrong? Can you not help yourself?”

Little Blue gave a sad little peep, sprawled on Mercy's black-gloved palms.

[She can help your human spirits cleanse themselves,] Dross said. [She wouldn't be affected if she were more powerful, but right now she's too weak. Oh, and it won't last long. Other than you and the Arelius, the rest of you have maybe...ten minutes before the field goes to work again.]

Lindon gathered Little Blue up again. Her color had grown lighter, and her edges had started to fade slightly. She curled up to sleep in his hand, and he placed her back in the void key.

“That's the best she can do,” Lindon reported to Eithan, who was radiating as much power as he could to slow the approach of the enemies. He couldn't tell if it was working or not; the Seishen King was still moving forward steadily.

Eithan looked to the Emperor. “Twenty-nine Lords and Ladies, one of which is an Overlord. How many do you think we're worth?”

“Ten,” the Emperor said immediately, still watching the skies. “I can match the Overlord, and in a fighting retreat, perhaps one or two Underlords more. I trust you to tie up three without getting yourself killed, though I doubt you can finish them.”

“I'm honored by your confidence in me,” Eithan said. “Though it depends on their deployment. A few of them are old and dangerous, and I would hesitate to face them even alone. They would ruin my hair.”

“Your students can stand in for one more, or perhaps two, and the rest of our passengers can keep four or five at bay, even in their current state. The enemy does not seem to have brought any Truegolds.”

“They haven't,” Eithan confirmed. “But that's still only a third of what we're facing. Should we surrender? The Sage will intervene.”

The Emperor squared his shoulders. “Not until we have tried everything. We abandon the mission. I will overload the propulsion constructs. We leave.”

“I was somewhat looking forward to a desperate do-or-die stand, but I agree. We were never going to succeed with them ready for us. Cut our losses and retreat, with surrender as the final option. But I disagree on one point.”

Eithan shook out his sleeves. “I'll overload the constructs myself. They'll need some maintenance when we return, but I need you to deal with that.”

A small cloudship, the size of a lifeboat, emerged from the white haze.

17

The Seishen King stood at the bow of his ship, which rode on a vivid orange cloud. His rough black-and-gray beard and shaggy hair lent him the aspect of a bear, but his Forged gray armor made him look deadly. In his left hand, he held a shield that reminded Lindon of Kiro's: a heavy metal disc with a lion's face on it. In his right, he clutched a massive sword.

His helmet was missing, and he smiled broadly down on the Blackflame Empire ship. “You're looking sleepy, Naru Huan! Why don't I give you a place to rest?”

The Emperor kept his Blackflame sword in both hands even as he rose into the air on emerald wings. “Seishen Dakata. Are you not ashamed to show your face? You broke the peace by attacking my people first, and here you lure us in with shameful traps. Are you still so afraid of us, even with all these Underlords?”

King Dakata wore his emotions openly on his face. He went from gloating to suspicious in a moment. “You appear to be in fine health. At least your tongue is quick enough.”

Naru Huan swept his sword through the air, leaving a trail of fire and destruction. “A trick like this could never hinder us. Ah, but we have failed to greet your son.” Now, the Emperor had risen above the level of the cloudship, and he looked down upon the armor-clad prince. “Prince Kiro, who bravely managed victory over a handful of Golds.”

Prince Kiro was armored like his father, and he did not react visibly to the Emperor's words. He dipped his head in respect. “I apologize if my actions disrespected you, Emperor Naru.”

A younger man in similar armor stood nearby, though he didn't stand as comfortably as the other two. He held a sword in each hand, and glared at the Emperor as though he were about to attack. From the look of him, and the fact that he stood to the Seishen King's left, Lindon took him to be Kiro's brother.

The bottom of Lindon's stomach dropped out when he realized the younger brother was Underlord too. He couldn't be much older than Lindon.

He sensed more Underlords on the ship, but didn't see Meira. From this distance, it would be hard to spot their madra.

Eithan had disappeared, presumably to the propulsion constructs, but Lindon had turned his attention away. Down to the gate to the Akura vault.

Yerin stood looking over the edge of the railing. The sense of her madra withdrew as she veiled herself, and Lindon knew what she was thinking.

She glanced back over her shoulder, meeting his eyes.

Then she leaped over the side.

The Akura family wall guarded the ship on one flank. None of the Seishen Underlords could be approaching from that direction, and even with ward keys, their spiritual senses would have to be restricted. The Night Wheel Valley already made it harder to see or sense anything. Under those conditions, using a veil, Yerin had every chance of reaching the gate undetected.

But that wouldn't be her plan, he realized. She hadn't brought Mercy; she couldn't enter the gate. She would hide nearby, meditating. Trying to trigger advancement.

The Emperor and the Seishen King traded barbs, and Eithan's madra spun as he readied himself to unleash it on the cloudship.

Dross, will this boundary field reach into the vault?

[If it's filled with natural treasures? Not possible. It'll have to be locked up tight with scripts that block aura.]

That was all Lindon needed to hear. He reached for Mercy...

But she had already grabbed his arm, pulling him closer to the railing. Her spirit was veiled.

“You know we're going after her,” she said. “Follow me!”

Leave Eithan a message, Lindon told Dross, then he pulled his pure madra in tight and jumped after Mercy.

She rode her staff the short distance down to the ground, where she raced to the gate.

Yerin dashed out of a nearby thicket. “You're cracked in the head. What if I'd been gone already?”

“Then we would have followed you,” Lindon said, and ran toward the star-covered gate.

The constellation patterns on the gate shifted and danced at the touch of Mercy's hand, and the thick stone entrance—wide enough to drive a pair of wagons through—began to slide open.

Lindon braced himself for the grating of stone-on-stone and a huge, visible hole in the wall, but the stone melted soundlessly up, leaving enough room for them to scurry inside.

If he had thought the aura outside was rich, inside it was like drowning in power. He was scared to open his Copper sight. It felt as overwhelming to him now as the Transcendent Ruins had back when he was a Copper.

It was the perfect place for them to advance.

Which was fortunate, because they were locked in once they entered. They wouldn't be able to leave for days, with the Blackflame Empire retreating. Maybe they would have to stay inside after the competition closed, and the portal back to the Empire vanished.

If he and Yerin made it to Underlord, it would all be worth it. As long as Yerin made it, really. Lindon wasn’t about to turn down a chance to advance himself, but he was far more worried about Yerin.

Lindon glanced back as they ran, seeing the propulsion constructs flare green at the back of the cloudship. A few silver lances blasted from the Seishen side as some of the Underlords managed to release Striker techniques, but the only one that mattered was from the King: an enormous battering ram of solid gray force shaped almost like a fist that formed out of nowhere. It plunged down onto the ship.

And was met with a wave of Blackflame.

The fiery power raised the temperature everywhere, incinerating the King's technique. Then there was a pulse of wind, and the ship turned into a beam of color as Eithan's madra shot them away.

The Seishen Kingdom followed immediately, their smaller cloudship streaking afterwards, and all the other Underlords flying away on clouds or techniques of their own. None of them noticed Lindon hurrying toward the gate.

[Did you invite someone else?] Dross asked.

Lindon immediately spun around, but saw no one. Was someone following us?

[Most of my attention is going to keeping you from sleeping on your feet. You should pay attention to your own senses.]

Nonetheless, when Lindon passed under the stone gate, he looked to Mercy before even looking around. “We need to shut the gate behind us,” he said.

She peered around him to look into the white haze. “We can, but then we're at Aunt Charity's mercy. The door can be closed from the inside, but it can only be opened from the outside by an Akura. I could call for help, but...my family...” she gave him a hopeless shrug.

“Someone's trailing us?” Yerin asked, her Goldsigns bristling and white sword in hand.

“Dross thought he noticed someone,” Lindon said.

The purple spirit spun into existence, hanging over Lindon's shoulder, and gave a fake cough. [I have to work through your body. If anyone's eyes are playing tricks on me, they're yours.]

Yerin peered into the distance for a long moment before turning to walk deeper into the vault. “Doesn't change what we have to do.”

He supposed she was right, but he hated leaving an opening behind them. Lindon gave one last glance over his shoulder before following her inside.

* * *

Kiro watched his father's cloudship speed after the Empire, feeling the King's fury. They had approached cautiously, waiting for their boundary field to do its work, only to find that the Emperor hadn't been fazed by their dream aura at all. Did he have protection against mental techniques? Maybe that was his Iron body. Nonetheless, even with him awake, the Blackflame Empire could gain nothing here.

Especially since Kiro, Daji, and Meira had leaped off the ship before it had departed. Without the Sage's warning, they would never have noticed a few veiled Truegolds slipping off the Empire's massive cloudship. They would have pursued, missing their chance.

Kiro still hadn't sensed anything, but thanks to Akura Charity's map, he knew exactly where to look. And as they approached, they saw the gate open a crack.

The flowers braided in Meira's hair blazed pink, and her smile was cold. She was beautiful in her new armor, thin and sleek, her scythe making her look every inch the Lady of Death. But he couldn't take advantage of her preoccupation with him. Besides, she deserved someone who could give her his full attention.

“We're in luck, Your Highness,” she said. “They came. Their Emperor can say whatever he likes, but we have the prize.”

Shame rushed through Kiro at her mention of the Emperor's words, though he showed none of it. Naru Huan had seen through him.

Daji gripped his swords, pacing forward. “I'll take them myself. See what the Sage thinks when I paint her halls with their blood.”

“Restraint,” Kiro reminded him, though he did follow his little brother toward the gate. “If we are not careful, we will disgrace ourselves in her eyes instead. And we cannot hurt Akura Mercy, even by accident.”

He had chewed on her words ever since she’d appeared, and her phrasing still disturbed him.

Her note didn’t say 'Do not harm Akura Mercy,' or 'You will be punished if you harm Akura Mercy.'

It said 'You should not harm Akura Mercy.'

That could be taken as a command...or as a warning. Either way, Kiro intended to obey.

Daji made no comment, but together, the three of them entered the gate to the Akura vault.

* * *

The interior of the Akura vault was enormous. It must have extended beyond the outer wall and into the mountain itself. Lindon found himself in one hallway about fifty yards long, the ceiling far overhead. The hall ended in a wide, circular atrium with a central spire that swirled with script. Scripts on the spire shone in a host of colors, drawing aura from all over the facility, and Lindon felt like he could guess at its function even without opening his Copper sight. It must siphon any excess aura that escaped containment and funnel it elsewhere to the rest of the house.

The hallway was as wide as the gate had been, and into the stone walls were carved house-sized nooks that contained the natural treasures. After walking into the hallway for a few paces, he stared into the first such opening on his right.

A massive scripted cauldron, big enough to cook an ox in, sat in the center of the display. It was filled to the brim with those black death-aura skulls, from as small as a fingernail to bigger than an actual human skull. Other, similar objects had been placed in the corners, or on shelves around the walls: a black vase that spilled ominous green aura, a sword with a blade stained in green-edged black, and a little statuette of a cat licking its own paw with eyes that blazed green-and-black.

The whole display radiated death. There was nothing that walled off this nook from the hall except a line of script around the inside of the entryway. If Lindon stepped across that line, he was certain the death aura would kill him instantly.

And there was another nook above that one. Two rows per wall.

Opposite the hall, on his left, was a similar display filled to bursting with the power of water. The center of that display was a fountain rather than a cauldron, and its shelves sported seashells, clear blue fruits, crystal-clear clouds that wept rain, bars of reflective blue steel, and swirling orbs like trapped whirlpools in every size from small enough to fit in his palm to bigger than his entire body.

He scanned down the hall. There were ten such displays in each row on either side, and both an upper row and a lower row. So forty natural treasure displays in this hall alone.

There were four hallways radiating out from the central atrium. And maybe more, further down; who was to say that this was the only crossroads in the entire vault?

“There has to be one of these filled with swords,” Yerin said, looking hungrily from one to the next.

[If you find one for dream aura, I promise I will stop altering your memories while you sleep,] Dross said.

Lindon missed a step.

[Kidding! Or am I? You won't know unless you bribe me.]

“There are sixteen for shadow aura,” Mercy said, hobbling down the hall on her staff. “As I'm sure you noticed, darkness is thicker than weeds out there.”

Even with the spire at the end of the hallway drawing off excess aura, there was still enough power here to overshadow the Night Wheel Valley many times over. Lindon felt like he was about to advance just thinking about it.

But he kept a close eye on Yerin.

“We can give you as much time as you need,” he said, but he was hoping that being here would somehow lead her thoughts in the right direction.

They reached the spire, which was ringed by a waist-high wall. She hopped up onto it, sitting high enough that she could look him in the eye. “No sense in that. You advance, then we stuff our pockets. I'll keep an open eye.”

“First, why don't you—”

“Listen,” she interrupted, “I'll be thinking 'till my skull pops while you do it. Maybe the feel of you advancing will set a spark to my torch and light my way forward. But whether it does or doesn't, we could use an Underlord right now.”

Lindon's conscience wasn't entirely at ease, but he already felt like he couldn't wait anymore. Without further argument, he sat on the ground, resting his back against the wall. Yerin's armored boots dangled next to him, and Mercy's staff ground into the stone on his other side. They would make sure he was undisturbed.

Facing back down the hallway, he tapped his void key and opened his storage. He felt ridiculous using his own natural treasures when he sat here in an endless treasure vault, but he didn't want to spend the time to select the perfect balance of aura. He decided to think of it as emptying his storage so he could fit more in later.

Lindon carefully withdrew the set of natural treasures that he carried for his advancement, placing them around him. Then he closed his eyes, letting his perception flow along the lines of aura, tracing the source.

It was many times easier here than it had ever been before. He felt connection to everything all of a sudden; from the stone beneath him to Yerin's beating heart. Her lifeline felt so thin that it pained him. It was a central pillar holding up a house, but it had chunks taken out of it like bites. How long would it hold up under the weight?

He refocused his mind, feeling his connection to the world around him. The soulfire echoed that connection, forming a bridge between his spirit and the aura.

I practice the sacred arts, Lindon began, so that I—

Yerin's spirit and Mercy's flared at the same time. The script around the entrance was disrupted for an instant.

Someone had entered the vault.

He snapped his eyes open, deactivating the void key so that he could see. He therefore had a clear view of the Underlords marching on him.

Kiro walked in the center, helmet on, his armor working smoothly around him. Unlike the crudely Forged madra he'd worn before, this was clearly Soulsmith work, and through each seam in the other layer of dark gray madra, Lindon caught a flash of bright silver or dull yellow beneath. Nothing of Kiro himself showed through. He carried the same sword with the bright blue spark curling around its edge, and the lion-faced shield.

The young man Lindon took to be his brother sauntered along with him on the left. He held two swords and no shield, and his armor was slightly thinner. He was also walking with his helmet dismissed, and by his expression was eager for violence.

Meira walked to Kiro's right. Unlike the last time Lindon had seen her, she wore armor as well. Her armor was sleek and smooth, seemingly made of plates of polished wood with green shining beneath. He could see no trace of her hair or the Goldsign running through it, only an ornate chestnut-colored helmet that shone from within with a verdant green light. He only recognized her by the scythe she carried propped up against her right shoulder, the blade a standing banner of life-fire.

Three enemy Underlords, and clearly they had come here for him. Behind them, a silver-and-purple owl fluttered within, perching on the edge of a nook on the upper row.

[Okay,] Dross said, [this could be good! It isn't the worst possible scenario. It is the...fifth worst.]

Lindon scooped up the natural treasures he’d prepared for advancement, hurriedly tossing them into his void key. It wasn’t the most dignified thing to be doing in front of the enemy, but he didn’t want to leave the wealth behind.

He rose to his feet, cycling pure madra and activating the communication construct in his left arm. He had removed it from his previous armor, but after re-examining the suit with Dross, they had found the space to return it. And they had decided to do so, in the case that Dross needed to preserve his energy.

And when he wanted to send a message to the Skysworn without broadcasting his thoughts to every mind within range.

“Three Seishen Underlords in the vault,” Lindon said quietly. “Require assistance.”

The butterfly-shaped construct hovering over his bracer flashed once, then vanished. If Eithan knew their situation, he would find a way to help.

“Come at me all at once,” the younger brother shouted, his swords flaring blue.

Yerin tilted her head. “Whose little brother are you?”

The youngest Underlord's face turned purple as he ground his teeth together. “Your Remnants should remember the name of the man who killed you! I am Seishen Daji!”

Mercy waved. “Hello, Daji! I'm Mercy!”

Dross, how fast can I advance? Lindon asked.

[There are records of Truegolds advancing to Underlord in one breath under ideal conditions, and these are ideal conditions. Except for the people waiting to kill you. But I wouldn't count on doing it that fast. Say...two minutes, to be safe? That's two minutes in which someone won't stab you to death, so probably not these two minutes.]

He didn’t have that long. Even if he ended up being one of the people who advanced in a breath, Kiro only needed one breath to spear him through the chest with a Striker technique.

Lindon cycled Blackflame. “Yerin, are you feeling enlightened yet?”

Her sword was in her hand, the power of her spirit scraping at the edges of her armor. Her six sword-arms bristled around her, gleaming silver. “Can't say that I am.”

He turned blackened eyes from her to his enemies. “Then I don’t see a reason to leave,” he said. “Do you?

She drew aura around her sword as she passed it through the air. “I'm starting to like it here.” Her tone was deliberately casual, but he caught the strain. She was afraid.

[That would be the correct reaction,] Dross said.

Mercy's staff melted, the dragon's head sliding down to the center as it transformed into a bow. She pulled the string, manifesting an arrow. “Three of them, and three of us. Could be worse!”

Dross slid out of Lindon and held a tentacle over his mouth as he cleared his throat. [Ahem. AHEM.]

Mercy brightened further. “So we outnumber them!”

Meira's voice rang out through the hallway. “We expected you to use this time to surrender,” she said. A ball of green light appeared on her upturned palm. “I'm glad you didn’t.”

A line of life energy burned the air toward Yerin. At the same time, a crackling blue light streaked out from Kiro's sword, and a silver-gray bar of Daji's own madra.

No one was caught off guard.

Lindon's dragon's breath met Kiro's sword-blast, and the beams deflected one another. Blackflame left a line of red-hot stone in the floor, though it didn't melt anything—the Akura vault was not so easily broken. Kiro's blue madra traced a thin line on the ceiling.

At the same time, Mercy's black arrow met the line of force madra from Daji. The arrow was blasted aside. Yerin blocked his attack with one bladed arm, though it took a great effort of madra, but it didn't stop her from retaliating with a wave of sword-madra from her Rippling Sword technique.

Which left the green line of life madra blasting for her.

Lindon reached out his right hand.

He activated his hunger madra, swallowing as much of the green light as he could, but this was the attack of an Underlady. The light knocked his white hand back, splashing him with madra that attacked his lifeline.

It was like trying to chop down a tree with a paper axe. Before Lindon's lifeline, which had been reinforced by Ghostwater's Life Well, Meira's madra withered away.

He pulled the green madra from his arm into his body, but not into his core. The madra went wild, trying to harm him, but his Bloodforged Iron body was already feeding on it. The life madra attack dissipated, accomplishing nothing.

But he didn't have time to relax or retaliate, because after that volley of Striker techniques, the Underlords were upon them.

While Lindon was still recovering, Meira hacked at Yerin with her scythe. Yerin leaped backwards, and the Underlady narrowly missed cutting the spire at the center of the room. Lindon didn't know what would happen if she broke those scripts, but it wouldn't be anything good. Yerin fled down one hallway, with Meira chasing her.

Lindon tried to chase after, but Daji dashed for him, and he readied himself to meet the new Underlord’s attack. An instant later, he didn’t have to: Mercy’s Strings of Shadow technique snared Daji’s feet, tangling him up. He tore through her power easily, still set on Lindon.

Then a black arrow took him in the cheek.

He conjured his helmet, roaring at her, and finally changed his target.

Daji swiped at Mercy, but she turned her third page, radiating the power of a Truegold. In an instant, she was pulled away on Strings of Shadow. The young prince followed her down a different hallway, shouting.

Leaving Lindon standing and facing Kiro. If he turned his back on the prince, he would die.

Slowly, the Underlord raised his shield. “I expected you to run,” he said.

“You were wrong.”

Lindon was afraid for Mercy; she was completely outclassed in this contest, but she was an Akura inside her home. Killing her would mean swift and certain execution for the Seishen Underlords.

He was even more afraid for Yerin. If they had to fight Kiro and Meira again, Lindon had intended to be the one to fight Meira. But he had missed his opportunity to take that fight, so he had to turn his focus to the one ahead of him.

He had to end this quickly.

“Let Yerin advance,” Lindon said quietly. “Leave us alone, and I will swear an oath right now to turn down any nominations for the tournament.”

Kiro stopped his gradual advance. His shield lowered slightly.

“I beg you, please stand down. She is dying.”

The prince hesitated. Lindon thought he sensed uncertainty in the man's spirit, and for a moment Lindon hoped.

Then Kiro shook his helmeted head. “I can't. I bear greater responsibility than you can imagine.” He lifted his sword, his shield rising to match it. “And why should I make a deal with you? You're not even an Underlord.”

Lindon's Blackflame madra surged, and he reached into his void key.

“I don't care,” he said.

Then he pulled out a cannon.

18

The Emperor’s ship fled through the darkness, flanked by enemies on all sides. Even Eithan’s sight was restricted by the shadow aura of the Night Wheel Valley, but he could still see Underlords dashing through the trees on either side, pitching Striker techniques at their hull.

Most of the Truegolds were either maintaining defensive scripts in the ship or using their own techniques to defend them. Cassias and Naru Jing were no exception, standing at the railing and taking shots at distant enemies.

They were only inches away from where Eithan stood, pouring his madra into the ship’s propulsion constructs, fueling their flight. Eithan reached one hand over to tap Naru Jing on the arm. “Would you hold on to your husband for a moment? The skies are about to get rough.”

She looked confused for a moment, but then her yellow Remnant eye flashed, and she threw her hands around Cassias’ shoulders.

“Your turn,” Eithan called, and behind him, the Emperor spread wide emerald wings.

“We know,” Naru Huan said. His spirit surged with power.

A different Overlord’s madra swept over them all, coalescing into a gray blade that hung over their cloudship. It plunged down, stabbing into the deck. Eithan was certain that the attack was intended not to kill, but to destroy their vehicle and scatter them, leaving them at the mercy of the Seishen Kingdom.

From his soulspace, Emperor Naru Huan pulled out his weapon.

It was a long, straight-bladed sword that looked as though it had been made from black glass rather than from metal. As his spirit flowed through it, waves of red began to shine like rising flames all over its dark surface.

Blackflame ignited on the Emperor’s blade. The madra trailed behind his swing as he swept his weapon at the sky, slashing at the sword descending upon them all.

Red-and-black fire drove up through the Seishen King’s technique, splitting it in half. The Blackflame madra tore it apart, reducing it instantly to a cloud of gray specks.

The clash of Overlord techniques shook the cloudship like an earthquake. The deck shuddered violently, sending sacred artists tumbling in every direction.

Naru Jing flapped her wings, hanging in the air, Cassias steady in her arms. Naru Saeya, the Emperor’s sister, used her Grasping Sky madra to seize half a dozen Truegolds before they were lost, pulling them back down to the ship.

Eithan was tossed in the air as well, which broke his contact with the propulsion constructs. A gray-bearded Truegold stumbled past him, destined to fall over the railing, but Eithan seized the back of the man’s robe. While still in the air, Eithan pulled the old man back, though that only accelerated Eithan’s trip over the side.

He silently thanked his Raindrop Iron body as he twisted in midair, grabbed the railing, and pulled himself back on one-handed.

Without the reaction speed his Iron body gave him, he’d have fallen to the forest below. Which would have been beyond embarrassing.

The Seishen King’s smaller cloudship had caught up to them, which had been inevitable as soon as Eithan had lost his grip on the propulsion. Enemy Underlords caught up to them, flying up from the forest to land on their cloud base or cling to the sides of their hull.

It was a pity. The portal to the Blackflame Empire was just in front of them, a tall column of darkness leading into the night sky.

Now the King himself looked down from his tiny cloudship, a grin splitting his bearded face. He had a lion-headed shield in one hand and a sword in the other, and his armored form loomed over the Emperor.

“Rude of you, Naru Huan, trying to leave without greeting us.” He laughed heartily, though no one else did.

Green wings stirred the wind aura, and Naru Huan drifted up, trailing Blackflame madra from his weapon. “Would you attempt to stop us from returning to our Empire?”

King Dakata hefted his weapons. “I couldn’t waste this chance to give my Underlords some exercise. And it’s been a long time since I could stretch my own spirit. What do you say, Huan? Should we exchange techniques?”

By this time, Seishen Underlords had crawled up onto the ship from all sides. Some of them floated on Thousand-Mile Clouds, Remnants, or flight techniques. Others had pushed their way onto the deck.

Naru Saeya drifted over to Eithan, her sword of rainbow glass shimmering in one hand. She looked as grave as the situation deserved, but if he didn’t know better, he’d have said she was enjoying this.

She kept her voice low. “You think the Sage is watching us?”

There were two silver-and-purple owls observing them at that moment, and considering the restrictions Night Wheel Valley put on his bloodline powers, perhaps many more. “I have no doubt,” he said.

“Good,” she said. “This is my chance to give her a show.”

Overlord madra detonated above them, as the King and the Emperor clashed, and that was the signal. The fight began.

Saeya dashed out, wings shining and rainbow sword flashing. She zipped from one Underlord opponent to another, engaging them in the air. They struck at her with her own techniques, but she was already gone, moving to the next target. With her speed and senses, if she kept that up, she might be able to tie up five or six opponents.

While musing, Eithan casually slapped aside a ball of wheeling golden energy that would have crashed into Cassias’ back.

The Underlords on either side would avoid bloodshed as much as they could, but there were many Blackflame Truegolds onboard. Accidents happened, and Akura Charity would not hold a handful of deaths against anyone.

So Eithan had to hold those accidents back, at least until the Sage herself intervened. And she would.

After his students finished their business.

* * *

As Fisher Gesha told it, she’d been working in her foundry some months ago, working on ways to get extra output out of Gold bindings. It was a known fact in Soulsmithing that some techniques would resonate with one another when activated together, producing a result greater than the sum of its parts. However, it was a rare enough phenomenon that it was difficult to count on.

The Fisher had, on paper, worked out a plan for a launcher construct that relied on this effect. And not only one pair, but three pairs, all working together.

It was only viable in theory. A fun but impractical thought experiment. Until Eithan had found it and helped her make it real.

His bloodline legacy had been invaluable for tracking down the right Remnants, his connections had given her the materials, and weeks of experimentation had produced one workable prototype.

Made of six Truegold bindings, linked together by a Fisher Soulsmith, washed in soulfire, and activated by a Highgold, it had scored a deadly hit on a Redmoon Hall Underlord.

She had told him that she couldn't have been the first Soulsmith to think of such a method, but the practical considerations were too great. First, finding six bindings and linking them all with not just each other, but with the Soulsmith's madra and the user's...it was exponentially more difficult than creating a regular launcher construct. Second, the weapon was 'loud,' spiritually speaking. The enemy would sense it coming. Third, the six bindings put a heavy strain on the construct's physical form, so it could only be used a few times. Three shots, if you were lucky. One if you weren't.

So three days ago, when Lindon had discovered what Dross could do for a Soulsmith, Gesha's resonance cannon was among the first projects he'd turned his mind to.

He'd expected to fight Kiro again. And if he did, he wanted to have something to punch through that shield.

The cannon he pulled from his void key was made entirely of Remnant parts. It looked like it had been created from slick bones of black light; it was too big to be used in one hand, and it had a rounded, organic appearance that came to sharp points. Its mouth was the snarling maw of a dragon's skull, and it was made of black madra with ripples of dark red.

Blackflame dead matter. He'd raided the Skysworn foundry for a Blackflame Remnant; if it hadn't been for his status as a Truegold in the top one hundred, he would never have been allowed to take it.

This was his solution to the second problem of Gesha's. It was easy to sense coming? Not if he kept it in a separate space.

Now that he pulled it out, it practically screamed in his spiritual sense, and the aura around him screamed with it.

It sounded like a dragon's roar.

Seishen Kiro put up his shield, the lion facing Lindon, and flooded it with madra and soulfire. The shield expanded immediately into a solid gray dome that protected the Underlord.

For a moment, the world was silent. Then devastation thundered from the cannon.

There were six techniques bound up in Lindon's resonance cannon.

Spear of the Golden Sun, from a Path of light and fire.

Heart-seizing Claw, from a Path of blood and destruction.

Phoenix Wing Burst, from a Path of force and fire.

Song of Falling Ash, from a Path of destruction.

Gravetouch, from a Path of death.

And black dragon's breath, from the Path of Black Flame.

All of those techniques were Striker techniques, all of them lethal, all compatible with one another, and all compatible with the Path of Black Flame.

The combination of techniques was too bright to examine directly, though Dross had shown Lindon its effect in a dream simulation. It was a riot of colors, from ragged thorns of red to a rushing spray of fire, all synchronized to feed on one another.

The madra closed the gap between Lindon and Kiro's shield in a blink of an eye. The floor, which had only heated from the passage of dragon's breath, exploded outward, sending chunks of rock flying to either side. If they breached containment on the wrong natural treasures, all of them would die, but it was too late for caution.

The Striker technique struck Kiro's shield. The soulfire-infused Forged barrier burst like a soap bubble, exploding with enough force to send a roar echoing down the halls and hurl the Underlord backwards, but that was all Lindon saw.

The cannon was under great strain. It could last for another shot or two before it was depleted of its essence and destroyed.

Had Kiro's shield withstood the impact? Had Kiro himself?

If he waited to see the effect, it would be too late. He couldn't let up. He had to assume the prince had survived.

One of the other drawbacks of the weapon was that it took a moment to refresh itself, the bindings drawing new power from the stockpile inside the weapon. In another battle, perhaps he could wait the few seconds it would take.

Lindon dropped his cannon and pulled out a second.

Before the dust had cleared from his first shot, his second was already in the air.

This one wasn't made from Blackflame dead matter—the materials he had used in the first were too rare and valuable to be used too frequently. This one was a sacred instrument, like Gesha's original prototype—it was a construct in a physical shell. Plates of goldsteel restrained the excess power of the bindings, and scripts focused them together. These techniques weren't as compatible or as destructive as the first set.

He blasted Kiro anyway. The force lit up the hallway with another flash and a roar, tearing a groove in the floor.

This time, he caught a glimpse of the Underlord again—the man's body was spinning through the air, his armor chipped and smoking. His shield was nowhere to be seen, but his sword was still in his hand.

Lindon had already dropped the second cannon and picked up the first again. The hallway roared.

Still, he couldn't let up. This battle couldn't take a second longer than necessary, or Yerin would pay for it.

“Dross,” he said. “Battle plan.”

Information requested: combat solution against Seishen Kiro.

Beginning report…

Not to criticize, because it’s nice to be needed, but are you sure you need a plan for this? Sorry, I'll focus.

First, he's hurting, but he isn't dead.

Lindon empties both cannons into Kiro's flying form, driving him back to slam into the wall over the open gate. His body falls from there, crumpled onto the floor, but he pushes himself shakily to his feet.

That is some high-quality armor. Prime stuff. The Seishen Soulsmiths were not playing around with this, I can tell you that much.

The outer plates of gray madra are cracked and split, smoke leaking from the armor, but the broken plates only reveal shifting parts of silver and gold beneath. Kiro activates his armor, and a network of bindings trigger all over the suit, linked by a method that Dross doesn't understand. Gold light shines from within the helmet and through each joint.

You're looking at, oh...Enforced strength and speed, a Forged barrier inside the armor, and a Ruler attack that has its own guidance construct. It will aim straight at you.

The chunks of stone, pieces of the floor broken by Lindon's cannon, are shaped by yellow earth aura into fist-sized balls. Yellow light flashes and they're hurled at Lindon, who dodges the first, deflects the second with his armor, and by the time the third arrives, Kiro is on top of him, sword in hand.

Without the new armor, he'd be dead already. I give you fifty-fifty odds of surviving, and only a twenty percent chance of killing him.

Wow. Looks like you really did need a plan.

Wind bursts from Lindon's green armor as he activates the Skysworn's emergency wind barrier, knocking Kiro back a step and grabbing the enemy’s armor with his Remnant hand. The hunger binding devours the strength of the armor.

It works: the Ruler binding stops shooting Lindon as it loses power, and just in time. Lindon's armor had been starting to crack. Kiro tries to fight back, but he can’t muster enough power in time. He falls to the ground, trapped in powerless metal.

It doesn't work: Kiro takes a step back, and Lindon reaches out with his white arm, but the Underlord is too fast. He brings his sword up, and Lindon has to pull his arm back or lose it.

Now Lindon is on the back foot, and Kiro has every advantage. The Ruler construct keeps pelting Lindon with projectiles, breaking his Skysworn armor piece by piece, as Kiro pushes him backwards.

Eventually, Lindon runs out of tricks, and is pinned to the stone by the Underlord's sword.

You'll have better odds if you fight to run away, but I know that’s not what you want. You want to win, I can tell.

I’ve got a plan for you, but it’s not an easy one. You’re going to have to take some risks...

* * *

Yerin used her Endless Sword like the wind, and an invisible blade struck Meira's scythe, knocking it back before it could slice into her.

“You stabbed him,” Meira muttered as she leaped down the hall, swinging her weapon at Yerin. “You cut him. You hurt him. You made him bleed.” The green flame of her scythe passed without harm to the stone, but each swing was more pressure on Yerin, pushing her back down the hall.

Meira’s body had been reforged in soulfire, but Yerin’s Steelborn Iron body gave her more than enough physical strength to match her. Unfortunately, physical strength wasn’t coming into play as much as Yerin wanted.

That was her only edge. She couldn’t summon her Blood Shadow unless she had no other choice. It was too strong now; it could even speak. It was only holding back from draining her dry because it felt like it. What if it changed its mind? Would it hollow her out and wear her like a suit? Would it be her, walking up to Lindon while he had his guard down?

No, the Blood Shadow wasn’t an option. She had to win this one herself.

“I'll kill you,” Meira said, her voice suddenly pleasant.

“You're cracked in the head,” Yerin said, whipping a Rippling Sword at her opponent. The silver slash flew through the air, and Meira avoided it effortlessly, but the point was to buy time. Yerin created a few more feet of distance between them.

Meira's helmeted head twitched. She reached out one hand, gathering up a ball of green light, and then pointed to Yerin.

A lance of life-madra blasted at Yerin, who managed to get the flat of her white blade up in time to catch the beam.

“I'm not insane,” Meira said, suddenly calm. “I owe him a debt. He took me in, when his family didn't want him to. He trained me at his own expense. He has been with me every day since I was a girl. He will be a wise, selfless ruler, and I have sworn to protect him.”

She drew back her scythe, the blade burning green. “And while he was under my protection, you stabbed him in the back.”

Sweat rolled down Yerin's face. She had barely stopped that Striker technique, and her lifeline was shaky as it was. If she slipped and let one attack like that through, one more sweep of the scythe...that was it. Her Path was over.

If Meira had followed up that attack instead of stopping to talk, she might have been dead already.

Yerin shivered at the feeling of death passing so close, but her training took over as the Underlady dashed back at her.

She activated the Endless Sword with all six of her Goldsigns, conjuring a storm of silver power. The vital aura was strong here, but not much of it was sword-aura...and even if it had been, the aura was too strong for Yerin's Gold spirit to control completely. So the Endless Sword was no stronger than usual.

But she poured her madra into it and didn't bother with control.

She rang like a bell as a thousand invisible blades chewed through the air around her. Her own green armor was chipped and gouged, and a handful of new paper-thin wounds appeared on her skin as the technique passed a little too close to her.

Meira slammed into the Endless Sword head-on.

Her armor screamed and sparks flew as the blades of aura tore long scratches in her brown plates. A chunk of her helmet was torn away, exposing green and silver Remnant parts beneath, and smaller pieces on her chest, shoulder, and limbs tore away as well.

But Meira didn't defend herself.

She pushed through, heedless of defense, scythe swinging for the kill.

The blade of green flame closed in, with Yerin raising her master's sword to meet the weapon, but she could feel death breathing down the back of her neck.

Silently, she apologized to Lindon. To Eithan, to Orthos. And even to Mercy. She knew the pain they would go through after her death.

But she also felt a little relief. At least, by going first, she wouldn't have to feel the pain of losing them.

Something in her soulfire stirred.

Yerin’s sword reached the scythe, and the scythe reached her. She couldn't tell which would strike first.

Then a red hand reached out of her chest.

It grabbed the scythe, stopping it long enough for Yerin's blade to connect. The weapon was knocked aside, but Meira spun into a kick aimed at Yerin's back.

The Blood Shadow rose completely.

It was a more complete copy than when she had seen it last, so it must have made good use of that meal. It had her hair, but bright red, her skin except pink. The whites of the Shadow's eyes were almost really white, its irises fully detailed but red. Six blades gleamed metallic red on its back, and it even wore a sacred artist's robes. Crimson, of course.

Its bladed Goldsigns caught the kick before the attack connected with Yerin, pushing it aside. Meira backed up a step, bringing her scythe around.

From a sheath at its belt, the Blood Shadow drew a pink-bladed copy of her master's sword, pointing it at Meira.

Horrified, Yerin tried to pull the Shadow back inside her, but it resisted easily. Yerin shook; how much control did she have over the spirit? How much control had she ever had?

At least it was pointing its sword in the right direction, but how far could she trust that? How long would it protect her, and what might make it change its mind?

For the moment, Yerin set her thoughts about the parasite aside. Something had shifted in her soulfire a moment ago. What was it?

She was relieved to her bones that she hadn't been killed, of course, but for a second she had touched on a deeper fear even than that. She felt like, if she could only examine her thoughts for a moment, she could touch it again.

An explosion echoed through the halls, along with a flash of light.

Yerin felt it in her spirit: a detonation of many different techniques all at once, howling with power like a dragon Lord's roar. Even through the overwhelming aura in here, it was easy to sense.

Meira spun around, ignoring Yerin, her head turning down the hall. Around the corner, they saw a billowing cloud of smoke and debris. And Lindon, standing there holding a launcher construct that blazed with spiritual power.

The Underlady screamed in rage and panic, and green light flared from the gaps in her armor. She was Enforcing herself. She no longer cared about Yerin anymore; she was too focused on Kiro.

Terrified of losing him.

Yerin's thoughts snapped into place. She'd been on the right track before, but hadn't taken it far enough: she wasn't growing strong in order to protect the people she cared about. She pushed herself because she wanted to avoid the pain she'd felt so many times before. The pain of loss.

I practice the sacred arts, she thought, because I don't want to hurt anymore.

For an instant, the soulfire inside her thrummed, and she could feel the aura around her vibrating in sympathy. Maybe it was because of the environment down here, but she could sense the unity of aura clearly, even without having intentionally extended her perception. It was all so clear that she wondered how she had ever missed it in the first place.

Though her revelation was so embarrassing she wanted to die.

Heaven’s truth, I wish it had been about protecting people.

Meira hurled herself toward Lindon, leaving a streak of green behind her. First, she had tried to kill Yerin. Now, she was trying to take someone away.

Yerin used the Endless Sword.

At the same instant, so did Yerin’s Shadow.

A storm of blades surrounded Meira, visible only by the sparks and pieces they kicked up from her armor. Now, through the gaps, Yerin could see sprays of blood shooting up.

Meira tried to push through this one too, but the Blood Shadow's added assistance made it too much. She turned, her armor ragged, one eye visible through her broken helmet. There was a familiar fear in her eye.

Yerin raised her sword.

“Did I say you could leave?” the Truegold asked the Lady.

With an ear-piercing shriek, Meira turned from Yerin and raced away once again, trying to escape.

Yerin and her copy followed.

* * *

People had always looked down on Seishen Daji.

His father was so proud of Kiro because Kiro was born first. And was good with people. Well, Daji had made it to Underlord earlier than Kiro had. His swordsmanship tutors said he was savage, which he knew was a compliment. He'd used his sacred arts to beat a dozen other students at his own stage into the ground.

Even the Sage was looking down on him, saying he wasn't ready to compete in her tournament. He'd been born to fight, everyone said it. He'd show the world. He hadn't been an Underlord for a week, but he knew he could go toe-to-toe with anyone of his generation.

Meira...didn't count. Her Path wasn't meant for combat, and that she could fight anyway was because she'd been born a freak. She was so obsessed with his brother that it scared him a little. Only a little.

Now, even this Highgold girl was looking down on him.

In more than one way.

She stared down at him from the ceiling with those purple eyes, hanging from her black strings, mocking him. She kept slipping through his hands like a fish, and to make matters even more humiliating, she even found the time to launch an arrow at him every now and then. They didn't hurt him, but they might make him trip a step or blind him for a second, and then he found she had scampered even further away.

By this point, as she pulled him further down the hallway like a mouse leading a cat, his rage was making it hard to breathe.

“STOP RUNNING!” he roared.

An arrow smacked him in the face.

“No!” Akura Mercy said, and he felt her running again.

Daji wasn't sure what he did next, but somehow he activated the armor that his father had given him. Its power Enforced him without costing him any madra, and he blasted down the hallway. A yellow light flared on the floor beneath him as a Ruler technique gathered up loose stones and dust and turned them into deadly projectiles, which flashed at the Highgold.

His grin was furious, though she couldn't see it through his helmet. He gripped his swords, seeing her avoiding the pebbles that flew at her faster than arrows. He almost had her.

The whole vault shook, and there was a flash of light and power behind him.

He skidded to a stop, boots scraping on the stone floor. That had come from his brother's direction.

He couldn't see much from his vantage point, but he saw dust and flying stones. That hadn't been Kiro attacking, he was sure of it. Kiro had poured everything he had into defense.

Why did Kiro get the real fight, while Daji had to play catch-the-mouse?

He hated to let his prey go, so he turned to look back over his shoulder. “Stay right there,” he said. Then he ran for Kiro.

There was another thundering crash, and he was filled with regret. He was missing an actual fight. Kiro and Meira had told him that these Truegolds could stand up to Underlords, but he hadn't believed them. Now, they had stuck him with the—

Something grabbed his foot as he ran, and he tripped, slamming headfirst into the floor.

He kept a grip on both his swords, but he was sprawled out on his chest. Behind him, there was a steady chuff-chuff-chuff as his armor's Ruler construct kept launching stone missiles.

He craned his head to look at his foot, where a sticky tendril of black madra gripped his ankle.

Mercy dipped around a rock, launched an arrow, smacked another rock out of the air, and launched an arrow. It was a display of skill he would have never thought he'd see out of anyone below Underlord.

Each black arrow stuck where it landed, spreading into sticky goo, but the ones that hit him in the armor had another technique embedded in them. They burned his soul and his flesh, eating into the constructs of his armor, a hungry acidic venom that chewed at him. They couldn't do much against his soulfire-enhanced body, but they stuck up the joints in his armor and interfered with the scripts.

Then she tripped.

The next pebble pelted her, and she cried out in pain. Now she was under pressure herself, doing everything she could to defend herself. She had been trapped.

He slowly pushed himself to his knees, tearing free of the black webs. More arrows came, but he knocked them aside with his swords.

It was strange; he felt so angry that his body could not contain it all. Like his wrath had gone beyond him and was controlling him from the outside.

That was it. He was done.

His armor was almost out of power, but he used the last of the fading Enforcer technique to rush down the hallway. Mercy saw him, Forging a string to pull herself up to the ceiling.

He'd seen that trick before.

He triggered the Striker bindings in both his swords. Blue crackling light lanced from his blades, one slicing through her string, one stabbing at her chest. Her green breastplate split under the attack, sending her tumbling backwards. But it hadn't killed her; the armor had done its job.

Daji Forged both blades to a massive size with the Titan's Blade technique. With the strength of an Underlord, he slammed them both down on her. It was enough force to spray her all over the stone.

When he removed his swords, he saw she was covered in purple crystalline armor. A full suit, like his. And she was giving off the pressure of a peak Truegold; had she advanced? Had she always been Truegold, but hiding her power? And how many layers of armor did she have, anyway?

Not that he cared.

He slammed his massive blades down on her, again and again. The armor she wore looked Forged, like his Goldsign breastplate. It looked like it had grown onto her, not like it had been crafted by Soulsmiths, and it didn't crack.

But it would sooner or later. And beating on her was healing his mind.

Finally, he paused. The armor dissolved, and she writhed on the floor. Her eyes looked like they were made of the same purple crystal her armor had been, but they soon retreated back to normal. Her spirit returned to Highgold, and she gasped for breath.

With a shaky smile, she pushed herself up on her bow, which had now straightened into a staff. “I lose,” she said quietly.

Daji released his Forger technique, letting the increased length of his blades dissolve back into essence. He stood over her, swords in his hands, panting with effort, but he didn't quite feel the satisfaction of victory yet.

So he slammed the flat of his blade into the side of her head.

She almost flipped in the air as she collapsed, making a sound like a dying cat. It made him feel better.

“You think you have it that easy?” he asked her.

Of course she did. She was an Akura.

Her whole family looked down on him.

He put his boot on her arm, pinning her down so she couldn't move. Then he pulled off his helmet to look her in the eyes. They were filled with fear...but not as much as he'd expected.

He crushed her arm, which broke with the sound of splinters. This time, she didn't make much of a noise, but her eyes went as wide as they could possibly go. She gasped until her lungs were full, trying to pull in more air, and she writhed. He kept her arm pinned.

She had wasted his time.

He took his boot off of her, looking down, trying to decide whether to kill her or not. His anger had slackened a little, now that he'd had a chance to let it out, and it would be stupid to kill her. He knew that. He was in the basement of an Akura fortress.

He resented having to do what they told him just because they were stronger, but he wasn't entirely stupid. For now, he had to listen to them. And when he got stronger than everyone else, they would do what he said.

Daji spat at Mercy's feet in disgust, about to walk away.

Mercy forced out her next words. “Don't...kill them,” she said, between pained breaths.

Daji stopped.

“Just...leave, okay? Take...your...victory. Don't...ruin it...now.”

Even while begging for her life, she was still telling him what to do. On the brink of death, the Akura still thought she could command everyone with her family name.

Her lips were pale and trembling, but she pushed them into a smile. “...please?” she added.

Anger rose up in him, ugly and hot. “Maybe I can’t touch you,” he said, “but the Sage doesn’t care about your friends.”

Daji turned to leave, hefting his swords in both hands. He had beaten her, but he hadn’t truly won yet. Only crushing all three of them would be a true victory.

He had taken the first step when motion caught the corner of his eye. He raised his blades, spinning back to battle.

Akura Mercy threw herself on his swords.

The weapons pierced her ribs, and her purple eyes widened in pain from only inches away. For a moment, he stood frozen in shock. She had pushed herself to her feet, stumbled over to him, and intentionally lunged into his blades. She hadn’t even tried to defend herself.

She slid down, leaving her blood on his swords, her lips stained red. He saw sadness and pain in her, but no fear.

Was everyone in the Akura family insane?

Daji shook off his surprise, marching back to the fight. He didn't care about a Highgold Remnant. His armor was almost out of power, but he could tear it off and fight without it.

The Sage of the Silver Heart wouldn't be happy with him for killing an Akura clan member, but it had been an accident. Surely she would see that. If he was able to fight in the tournament and win glory for them, they'd forget all about this. As always, strength was the deciding factor.

Daji's body stopped.

A second later, his thoughts stopped.

And darkness flooded the vault.

19

Information requested: Akura Mercy, daughter of Akura Malice.

Beginning report…

Even by the standards of the Akura clan, Mercy is born a genius.

The strength of the Akura bloodline legacy varies among the children of the clan; many must have their ability strengthened with elixirs while they are still young. Mercy’s is so strong that she has to have it suppressed, lest it place too heavy a burden on her spirit.

At Copper, Iron, and Jade, she outclasses all her peers in madra control, technique proficiency, and shadow aura compatibility. She sets new records in combat with bows, staffs, flying swords, and puppet constructs.

The children of Akura Malice must prove themselves in order to be acknowledged as the Monarch’s true sons and daughters. Over the centuries, one hundred and eight children fail to inherit a sufficient measure of her talent, and are relegated to distant branches of the family. They have no rights as Malice’s children, and never meet their mother after the day of their birth.

Even for favored children, they have no chance to prove themselves to their mother before reaching Lowgold. At that point, if they inherit one of her Books or demonstrate enough talent in another area, she will favor them with an audience.

Even before advancing to Copper, Mercy meets with her mother at least once a year.

Instead of a Remnant, Malice’s direct descendants attempt to bond with Divine Treasures created by their predecessors. These Books require an open soulspace as well as a Jade core, so special—and expensive—means are used to open the soulspace early without harming the child.

There are many such Books, each left behind by an Akura expert, each with seven pages and seven techniques. Malice’s descendants are tested by the Books, taken into a dream-world where they are given trials by the Divine Treasures themselves. Those who pass and truly embark on the Path of Seven Pages are recognized as members of the head family. Those who fail are still given the full protection of the Akura clan, but are sent to branch families.

Only one book has never been claimed before: the first book, the one crafted by Malice herself for her successor. Her idea of a perfect shadow Path. It contains the seven techniques that the Monarch would have learned herself, if she could start her journey anew. It is the guide to the Path she wishes she had walked. The Book of Eternal Night.

All of Malice’s children are given the chance to activate the Book first. None ever do. For some of the geniuses in the line of Malice, like Akura Fury or Akura Charity, this is their first taste of failure. It is meant to show them the difference between a Monarch’s expectations and their own.

Mercy falls into a trance at first sight.

The Book finds her perfect. By the time her tutors report the incident to Malice, her bonding is already complete. She is Lowgold.

That night, her mother declares Mercy her heir.

Mercy passes through Gold with ease, setting new family records at every turn. She is the object of jealousy, admiration, fear, and awe in the clan. As she grows, she learns more of her family.

She does not like what she sees.

They scrape and debase themselves before those more powerful than they, while demanding those beneath them do the same. Their behavior is undignified. It’s petty. Mercy is determined to do better.

She treats those beneath her with respect, and her kindness becomes legend within the servants of the clan. There are those who wonder if her mother looked into the future to give her a fitting name, for there is truly mercy in her soul.

By the time she reaches the peak of Truegold, she knows she has escaped the trap that has ensnared the rest of her family. She does not demean herself for approval, or elevate the opinions of the powerful as they do. She practices the sacred arts for the benefit of others.

Then she discovers her Underlord revelation.

The truth frightens her.

Mercy abandons her advancement seeks a hearing with her mother. She begs Malice to let her leave, so that she can find an identity of her own.

Her mother, who sees far, agrees.

But she includes the following restrictions.

Mercy’s body and physical skill will be sealed, as these were inherited from her mother.

Her advancement will be reverted, as that too was a result of Akura family training. She will return to Lowgold, and she will have to advance from there without the assistance or guidance of the Akura family.

She may keep only her personal belongings, as well as her bow and her Book, for neither of those can be taken from her without damaging her spirit. However, as a Lowgold, she will be able to evoke only a small fraction of their power.

Mercy and Malice make a bet.

For as long as Mercy can survive on her own under such limitations, without the full measure of her talent or her family’s support, Malice will place no requirements on her. She will live without the weight of responsibility, as she pleases.

However, if she cannot—if she fails or dies—then she must embrace her identity and become the heir to the Akura clan once again.

Suggested topic: Akura Mercy’s little brother, Pride.

Denied, report complete.

* * *

As the swords slipped through her ribs, Mercy felt one thing through the overwhelming pain: regret. She’d lost.

Not the fight.

Her bet.

After Seishen Daji turned to walk away, he froze. Everything did, including—thankfully—Mercy’s pain.

Shadows rushed through the halls, casting the world in darkness. Only one point of light remained, like sunlight beaming down through clouds. Into that light stepped a woman.

She was beautiful, with a full figure and the poise of a queen. She wore a rich, black dress of silken fabric hung with a web of delicate silver chains, as though she had been draped in the world’s most expensive spiderweb. Each of those chains bore fat amethysts, which flashed in the light streaming from above. One silver chain wrapped around her forehead, holding the largest amethyst over her eyes.

Her hair flowed down to the small of her back, darker even than the night surrounding her. It hardly looked like it was made from real strands, but from liquid smoke or boiling shadow. Her hair billowed behind her, twisting and curling with a mind of its own. Her skin was pale, her lips painted black. At least, Mercy had always assumed it was paint.

And her eyes blazed with pure, endless purple light.

“Hello, Mother,” Mercy said.

Her voice came out a little strained around the wound in her chest, though she couldn’t feel it. The gemstone over Malice’s eyes flashed, and Mercy’s flesh knitted together. She took a deep breath, rising shakily to her feet.

She held Suu in one hand, and the bow’s dragon head swiveled down to look at Malice. The dragon’s eyes closed in respect. Mercy had to lean on the staff to push herself to her feet.

“You admit your loss?” Malice asked, her every word graceful.

“Yes.” Mercy had chosen to give up her bet so that she could save Lindon and Yerin, but she still felt some regret. And a touch of despair. She had enjoyed being out on her own.

But it had been worth it. If Daji had joined Kiro or Meira, Mercy’s friends wouldn’t have survived.

Her freedom for her friends’ lives was a good trade.

Malice sighed, reaching a hand out for her daughter. Mercy took it. The Monarch’s fingers were perfectly soft. They didn’t feel like they could crush steel like butter.

“This is not the end of your freedom, Mercy. It is the beginning. Power is the ability to do as you wish. You will always be the toy of those who have more of it than you do. You have seen that.”

Mercy had felt that lesson pushed through her ribcage. With her sacred arts sealed, she couldn’t stop Daji from doing anything he wanted.

“I have. But I still don’t understand the rest of the family. They would sell their own firstborn if they thought you would grant them favor. Why? What’s the point?”

They’d had this argument already, on the day Mercy had left the family. She hadn’t been satisfied with her mother’s answers then, and she still wouldn’t be now.

But Mercy continued spilling out her feelings. This was probably a waste of a rare audience with her mother, but she couldn’t help it. “Why do we have to beg and crawl for every scrap?”

“You,” Akura Malice said, “don’t.”

She raised her free hand. Her nails had been painted the same purple as their bloodline armor…or maybe they had crystallized that way.

With her daughter’s hand in her left, she held her right over Mercy’s forehead. Cool, dark power flowed around her, and the Divine Treasure rose from Mercy’s soulspace. She knew it would be hovering behind her, a massive book of Forged madra that contained the power of her Path.

Malice’s voice now resonated with the oath she and Mercy had sworn together. “Akura Mercy, do you agree to abide by the restrictions of our pact?”

Mercy closed her eyes and thought of her Skysworn team. She hadn’t known them for long, but she would miss their time together.

This was the last thing she could do for them.

“I will return to the family,” Mercy said. “And my role and responsibilities therein.”

The oath loosened around her, pressure on her madra channels relaxing slightly. She had every intention of fulfilling her promise, which satisfied their soul oath. Though she did feel a pang of grief for opportunities lost.

She had wanted a little more time.

“Then in return, I lift the seal on the Book of Eternal Night. Let your power be returned to you.”

The first page flipped to the second, and Mercy felt her mastery of the Shadow’s Edge returned to her in full. Then the third page, and the Nightworm Venom flooded back.

Her spirit surged from Highgold all the way to the peak of Truegold on the edge of advancing. Where it belonged. Soulfire rushed from the book back into her spirit.

Mercy looked up expectantly. She was looking forward to what happened next.

A smile touched the edge of Malice’s lips, and she waved her hand again. “And also, I return to you the full measure of your physical talents.”

It was like her skin had been a poorly fitted suit, and now—with a shudder that passed through her bones—it had been tailored for her. She took a deep breath, stretching one arm, then another. She wiggled her fingers.

Her eyes grew hot with tears. It had been too long since her body had been hers again. To prove she could, she sprang into a backflip, spinning her staff all the way around her body as she did so. She landed in a handstand on the top of her staff.

Then she released one hand, holding it out to the side as she balanced on the other. There was nothing holding her up but the staff, and it didn’t even tremble.

Effortless.

Mercy dropped, spinning Suu into the air and catching it. She didn’t stumble. Didn’t fall.

“That was the worst part,” she admitted.

“To strip away what the family gave you, I had to include your Puppeteer’s Iron body and the results of your training. Even with your spirit restricted, you would have had it too easy.”

Malice rarely explained herself, but she looked as though she was relishing her daughter’s joy. That warmed Mercy’s heart, and she squeezed Malice’s fingers in return.

“The others curry favor with me because they can strive for nothing more,” Malice said. “You should be different. Ascending to the Lord realm means accepting who you are, not who you will be.”

“That’s what Aunt Charity said.”

“And who do you think taught her?”

Mercy smiled up at her mother, but Malice’s face was no longer pleasant. She was looking over Mercy’s shoulder, into the darkness.

“As per our arrangement, I expect you to advance immediately. I need you as an Underlady, not a Gold. Once you have, report directly to Charity for transport. You may not return to the Blackflame Empire.”

“Yes, mother,” Mercy whispered. Then she realized what Malice had said, and she looked up in confusion.

“You will lead our team in the Uncrowned King tournament. Fury and Pride will be informed. I expect you to represent us in the individual matches, so your instruction will resume at an increased pace. You have missed a year of training, and I need you in shape.”

“Did you say…are you not taking me now? Are you leaving me here?”

The shining purple eyes of the ancient Monarch met hers. “Do you not have unfinished business here?”

This was Mercy’s chance. She released her mother’s hand, bowing low. “I beg you, as a personal request from me, to save my friends.” Damage to Yerin’s lifeline was a minor inconvenience to a Monarch, and she could send their enemies back to the Seishen Kingdom with a thought. Or evaporate them. “For me, will you intervene on their behalf?”

“I don’t need to intervene,” the Monarch said. “You will.”

* * *

Kiro's armor was falling apart, he'd used far more madra than he could believe, he'd lost his shield, and his arm was trembling so badly that he felt like he was about to lose his sword. His body ached all over, and his left arm was numb.

If he let Lindon keep shooting him, he was going to die.

He burned everything he could of the armor's power, and it shone at the edges, flooding him with strength. It wouldn't last long, especially not with so much damage, but it would make him far faster than his own Enforcer technique.

Before Lindon could activate his launcher construct again, Kiro was on him.

He slashed at Lindon, who reached into his void key once again. The Blackflame pulled out his axe, its haft a long bone, its sharp edge gleaming red.

Kiro's sword was turned, but he struck with enough power to force Lindon backwards. He couldn't let up; again and again he struck, and again and again Lindon was overpowered. The Truegold’s white arm began to crack, spraying madra into the air like blood, and Lindon flinched with visible pain.

But Kiro couldn't get that final hit. He was faster and stronger, but Lindon kept slipping by.

The Titan's Blade technique expanded the size of his sword tenfold, and he slammed it down on Lindon like a hammer of judgment.

Lindon stepped aside as though they were dancing and he knew all the steps. A fiery black-and-red haze sprang up around him, his eyes glowing, and Kiro braced himself to receive an attack.

Then the Truegold turned and ran.

His Enforcer technique gave him explosive strength, and he dashed around the central spire. On instinct, Kiro chased after him. His mind only engaged afterwards. Had Lindon run out of madra? Was he weaker than Kiro had expected?

Kiro launched a bright blue lance at Lindon's back, but once again, Lindon slipped aside like he had eyes in the back of his head. Maybe Lindon practiced a core cycling technique that improved his spiritual sense; it would explain how he always escaped with his life.

Rounding the spire, Kiro caught a glimpse down the halls at the two other battles. Meira was engaging the sword girl and her Blood Shadow. The Truegold had lasted longer than he'd thought; he would have expected her to be dead by now. It looked like Meira was struggling to escape, but there was no way that could be true.

She would be fighting to save him.

Well, there was no need to worry about her. Daji looked like he had his fight in hand; some Forged strings of black madra hung from the ceiling, and he was holding a bloodstained sword in each hand.

Kiro could only pray to the heavens that his brother hadn't killed the Akura girl. He should never have left her to him…but then again, he couldn’t have left his little brother to face that Blackflame cannon either.

Then he turned the corner, chasing Lindon, and lost sight of Daji. Meira was fighting in the hallway opposite him, but he focused on his prey.

Lindon had come to a stop in the middle of the hall, tossing his axe back into his void key. The closet-sized entrance zipped shut, leaving him holding nothing. He stood, quietly watching Kiro.

The lights went out and flickered back on in an instant, flooding Kiro with panic, but when the shadows faded, Lindon looked as confused as he was. He hadn't followed up on Kiro's instant of distraction.

So Kiro would be the first to move.

His sword swelled with the Titan's Blade, and Kiro thrust forward, the power of his armor fueling the attack. It was so fast that it astonished even Kiro, almost instant. There would be no dodging this.

Lindon caught it in the palm of his white hand.

The Remnant limb fractured again, barely holding together, and Lindon shouted in pain. A binding triggered deep inside, and Kiro felt his Titan’s Blade destabilize, the technique fading. He pulled his sword back, its length ordinary again.

The Truegold stood in front of a natural treasure display, panting and cradling his broken prosthetic arm. It was difficult to look past him; the light from the display shifted and danced, and it was hard to make out exactly what was in there. At first, it looked as though the nook was filled with living creatures scuttling and squirming, but then Kiro would have sworn it was filled with paintings. Actual paintings, framed in canvas or spread out on huge wall scrolls, decorated every surface. But no, maybe they were statues...

He blinked to clear his eyes. Those would be the dream treasures. Or maybe light and dream, with some illusionary aspect.

Lindon didn’t miss that moment. He dashed forward, slipping behind Kiro while he was distracted. Kiro spun into a slash, using the Titan’s Blade again.

The Forged blade slammed into Lindon’s forearms, which were held up to shield him. The Truegold cried out, armor cracking, and his white arm hanging from the elbow by only a thread. But he wasn't pushed aside. He fell to his knees, then sprang up, slamming his shoulder into Kiro's breastplate.

Kiro was pushed back a step or two. The dream aura whispered behind him, dangerously close.

From down the hall, Meira screamed his name.

She always worried about him, but this time, her concern was wasted. Lindon had accomplished nothing with that attack. He was off-balance, too slow, and his Remnant arm was falling off.

Kiro had him.

His enlarged sword swept through Lindon's neck in a flash. He felt no resistance, and for an instant, he was sure he had decapitated the man so smoothly that he'd felt nothing.

But then his senses caught up, and he realized Lindon had, once again, ducked out of the way.

Something shoved him from below, a burst of wind, and he staggered back. Only a step or two.

He crossed over into the dream display, and his senses were overwhelmed.

* * *

Darkness flickered before Daji's eyes and was gone.

He looked around, wary, but he didn't sense anything to worry about. It was like he'd blinked one extra time.

Meira's presence was growing more and more chaotic, and Kiro's was weak and distant. Meira would be fine, but his brother needed help.

He couldn't wait to be the one who saved Kiro's life.

Daji dashed on, suddenly eager, but the power had run low in his armor. He had to deactivate the scripts to save madra, but it had taken too much structural damage. Now it hung heavy on his body and his spirit, making running awkward.

Still, he was an Underlord. He drew on his own madra, Enforcing his whole body, and kept running until he reached the central spire. He spotted Meira down a hall to his right, shining green and surrounded by a storm of slashes. Her opponent was the scarred girl in green armor, six bladed arms sticking out from her back. She fought to keep Meira pinned down as a blood-drenched twin mirrored her on the other side.

That was a strange technique, cloning yourself. He had heard of such, but only in legends.

It looked like Meira was fighting to escape, though that was impossible. Her opponent was only Truegold. Maybe he should help—saving Meira would look even better than saving Kiro.

As he paused in indecision, she saw him. Screaming, she pointed down another hall. “Kiro!” she shouted.

He turned, following her finger, and saw his brother.

Kiro's shield was gone, and his armor was a smoking mess, venting yellow and silver madra. Those huge blasts earlier had done quite a job on him. He still held his sword, infused with the Titan's Blade technique, and he swung it at the Blackflame. The strike was so fast it was almost impossible to see, a blur in the air even to Daji's eyes.

But the Blackflame, Lindon, ducked as though he'd known it was coming, and the air around him exploded soundlessly. Some kind of wind technique. Kiro was shoved backwards.

Into one of the natural treasure displays.

Daji sauntered forward, waiting for his brother to emerge. Most of these nooks didn't contain anything dangerous to an Underlord. Even if they did, if it didn't kill him immediately, Kiro would only have to take one step to leave.

But he didn't take that step.

A spark of concern kindled in Daji's chest, and anger along with it. How dare this Truegold touch his brother.

Daji shouted, drawing the Blackflame's attention; black-and-red eyes fixed on him. A rectangle the size of a closet door suddenly appeared next to Lindon, and he reached inside with his one remaining good arm.

Daji didn't care what kind of weapon the Gold had inside. He had weapons of his own. He raised his swords, reaching out for their Striker bindings.

Then tendrils of shadow grabbed him from behind and pulled.

He was hauled off his feet before he could react, dragged back around the corner and down the hall.

In a second, he flexed his full strength, tearing the strings loose around his arms and slicing them apart. He rose to his feet again, ready this time, looking around. Maybe he had activated a security measure, or someone new had shown up.

Akura Mercy stood at the end of the hall, holding her bow in one hand, straightening her ponytail with the other. Her green armor had been broken, and he could see bloody holes in the robe beneath, but the skin of her ribs was now whole.

Daji suddenly felt danger.

She was Truegold again, and stronger this time, but she had suddenly raised her advancement before. It hadn't helped her then.

This time, she had returned to life.

Something strange was going on.

Daji summoned the shield from his soulspace, replacing it with his left-hand sword. Now he held the shield in front of him, approaching with caution.

“Why did you have to threaten them?” Mercy asked, and for the first time he saw anger in her eyes. “You think killing them will make Aunt Charity happy?”

Aunt Charity. This was the Heart Sage's niece.

Daji's anger receded a little further, replaced by fear. If Mercy had stayed dead, he might have been in some real trouble.

But she was alive now. Everything was all right, he just had to be careful not to kill her this time.

“This is a battlefield, not a playground,” Daji said, firing a beam of blue lightning from the point of his sword. To be safe, he aimed at her leg.

Mercy's hands blurred, there was a flash of darkness, and his Striker technique deflected to splash onto the wall between natural treasure displays.

She had blocked it.

With an arrow.

Daji decided to change tactics. “How about this?” he yelled, his tone challenging.

He raised his sword, letting her think he was about to attack. Then he poured all his power into his shield.

He used the Titan’s Blade, injecting the technique with soulfire, and a curved gray wall bloomed from floor to ceiling. It was solid as stone, at least for the next few minutes, and it would block her off.

He wasn't allowed to kill her, but he hadn't seen her use any big destructive techniques. She would be trapped in there while he rejoined Kiro and Meira. Then, once they'd gotten rid of the other two, they could decide what to do with the Akura.

Daji ran away, proud of himself. Kiro had looked like he was in the most trouble, so Daji would go to him first. Then...

The aura of the vault shifted, like a river suddenly changing course. Suddenly, a spirit began to swell with power.

* * *

Sweat ran down Yerin’s face and her spirit trembled as she held her technique. She had never maintained the Endless Sword for so long before; it wasn’t like her to fight for a stalemate.

But the longer she could hold Meira in place, the better.

The Underlady’s armor had practically crumbled off her by now, and strands of gray hair were falling to the ground. Still, she tried to push forward, as though pushing against a strong wind.

The light blinked off.

For a second, Yerin wondered if her eyes had quit on her, but only a moment later the younger brother Daji ran around the corner, his footsteps pounding on the stone floor. His armor hung heavy on him, and it wasn’t glowing as brightly as before. It was almost out of power, she was certain.

Not that it mattered for her. The swords he held in his hand would bury her well enough.

He turned his helmet toward her, adjusting his grips on his weapons, and the bottom fell out of Yerin’s stomach. This was it. She always figured she would meet her end in a hopeless fight.

Then Meira extended a finger and screamed, “Kiro!”

Yerin felt hope again.

Daji turned away, running the other direction, but she couldn’t relax. Daji was going after Lindon. Even if Lindon could hold his own against one Underlord, he wouldn’t stand up against two any better than she would.

She pulled harder on her spirit, though her madra was getting dangerously low, her channels aching and strained. A little more, and maybe she could hit the Underlady hard enough to matter. Her Blood Shadow sensed the same opportunity, and though it must be running dry just like Yerin, it pushed harder too.

Yerin’s knees buckled.

She fell, bracing herself against the floor with her hands. Her Endless Sword technique faded, and rather than pushing against a strong wind, Meira staggered forward.

Yerin’s vision doubled, and she was seeing two of her master’s sword lying on the ground, then four, then six.

She turned her sense inward.

Her lifeline was gone.

Instead of an unbroken line of green running down her spine, it was like a faint wisp of green gas. She had gone too far, and now she was out of time.

But the fight wasn’t over.

With the last dregs of her strength, she stumbled to her feet, raising her master’s sword. She couldn’t let Meira get away…

Meira wasn’t running. She had sensed Yerin’s condition and turned, scythe spinning up.

Yerin’s Blood Shadow snarled and rushed in, firing a blood-fueled Rippling Sword Striker technique, but Meira batted it aside. Yerin moved in, lifting her white sword, though it felt a thousand times heavier than normal.

Only minutes ago, she had thought she was ready to die, but now everything was different. Now, she was an inch away from Underlord.

She was too close to give up now.

Her Blood Shadow swept a sword at Meira, but the flaming blade of the scythe cut into its side. The spirit shrieked, stumbling back. Yerin prepared her own sword.

Then the aura swept down the hall as Lindon started to advance.

As soon as Yerin sensed it, she moved. Meira would be distracted. This was her chance.

Sure enough, the Underlady shifted, her attention moving to the other battle. To Kiro. She let down her guard for an instant.

Yerin tumbled forward, sliding her sword through the gap in the woman’s helmet as she passed.

She ended in a heap on the other side of the hallway, out of strength, as Meira screamed and clapped a hand to her eye. Yerin wanted to follow up with another attack, but this time something caught her attention: a shimmering silver display that she hadn’t seen before. It looked like a blacksmith’s shop, packed full of spears, axes, knives, and blades of every description.

Natural treasures of sword aura.

Using her master’s sword like a cane, Yerin pushed herself to her feet. She shoved her way over, inching forward one step at a time.

Life madra erupted from Meira. It formed a pillar connecting her to the ceiling, and then the top of that pillar bloomed. Spreading outward into leaves and branches.

Meira stood in the center of a towering tree of life madra, her scythe dangling from one hand. She hovered a few inches off the ground, more fragments of her armor plinking to the floor.

The ruin of her eye healed in an instant, flesh knitting itself together, and she wiped the blood away with her hand. She was the image of a furious Underlady, and without a word, she raised her hand.

Yerin scooted closer to her Blood Shadow, which was growling in defiance. She had only seconds left to live—she didn’t know how many, but it wouldn’t be long. She was almost out of madra and options.

But she stirred the last of her spirit and held on.

* * *

From a crouched position, Lindon triggered the emergency wind barrier in his Skysworn armor. Kiro staggered backwards, crossing over into the dream display, and then went limp. His mind was out of his control.

[I envy him,] Dross sighed. [Now, you should hurry. Dragon's breath would drill through that armor eventually, but it’s not like murdering him will help you beat the other two. You should advance.]

Dross' combat report had been harder to follow this time. It had involved more steps, and each one could have gone wrong in a dozen ways, but it had worked. Lindon had survived, and Kiro was trapped in a display.

The effort had left him strained and exhausted. His madra channels had been in better condition, his body trembled with effort, and his Remnant arm was a mangled, useless mess that bled white sparks of color into the air. But all of those problems could be solved.

Then he heard a wordless shout from down the hall.

A helmeted Seishen Daji sprinted at him, his armor dimly glowing gold at the joints, a sword in each hand.

Bloody swords.

At the sight of him, Lindon felt an instant of fear. Not for himself.

The second prince had been fighting Mercy.

The fear turned to anger, and he used his void key. The cannons were not the only weapons he'd prepared for today. He would see if the younger brother could stand up to the same punishment as the older.

Daji pointed his swords, and then Strings of Shadow grabbed him around the arms and shoulders, pulling him around the corner.

Lindon stared, blinking at nothing, for a frozen moment.

[Looks like she's fine,] Dross said. [Onward, to Underlord!]

Lindon reached into the void space, seizing the bundle of natural treasures he'd arranged for his advancement, spilling them out onto the ground. Hastily, he sat down, calming his spirit and reaching out.

The unity of aura came easily now. He felt connected to the displays around him, like deep pools out of reach, and the soulfire inside him trembled. He spent a moment breathing, cycling, steadying the connection.

From his soulspace, he pulled the Archstone, placing it on the ground in front of him. His Remnant arm dangled from his elbow, twitching occasionally, growing weaker by the second. He had to grab it with his left hand, placing the right palm on top of the Archstone.

The arm’s binding was unstable. He could use it maybe one more time, and the longer he waited, the less likely he would be to succeed.

The time had come.

“I follow my Path,” Lindon said, “so I won't be worthless anymore.”

For an instant, his perception expanded, so that he touched all the aura in the vault. Just for a moment.

The transformation began.

Soulfire flooded out of him, passing through his clothes and armor without harming them, consuming the natural treasures piled around him. The gray fire swelled until he blazed with it. Then it focused in on him.

Everywhere the soulfire passed, he was reborn. Remade. His madra channels were rebuilt even as they burned away, his bones strengthened and reinforced, impurities in his spirit cleansed. It wasn't painful; it felt like being scrubbed clean for the first time in his life.

He couldn't move his body well, but he could still control his spirit.

He triggered the hunger binding in his arm, then thanked the heavens when it worked.

The power in the Archstone churned like water swirling down an unplugged drain, funneling down into his arm. The limb flooded with power, far more than it could normally hold, but Lindon kept the binding going. Only an instant later, the stone cracked, shattering into pieces.

And Lindon took control.

He had practiced this next part with Dross. He touched the fragments with his pure madra, binding them to his Remnant arm. He focused his will on Forging them together, holding the image of his new arm in his mind. The power of ghostwater made it easy to keep the images in his mind, and the simulated practice gave him perfect timing.

Shredded pieces of white madra melded together, fusing to the limb and repairing it, chunks of madra filling in as he watched. The jagged edges of the skeletal Remnant arm smoothed out according to his mental vision, forming into a rough model of a human hand.

The true transformation began as the soulfire passed through the arm. It burned away the weakest elements in the madra, strengthening what remained, restructuring it to better conduct power. If he hadn't reinforced it with Lord-level madra, the limb wouldn't have had enough material left to stay intact, and would have fallen apart. Now, when the soulfire passed, he was left with a perfect human arm, a match for his left, only pure white.

At least he didn't have a monstrous arm anymore.

The soulfire passed over Dross...and left him untouched.

[Ah. That's disappointing. I was hoping to get double-soulfired. That's not how it works, I know, you don't have to say anything.] A moment later, he added, [Have you, perhaps…checked on Yerin recently?]

Now that Dross mentioned it, Lindon could feel an overwhelming sensation of life madra coming from near Yerin. He practically couldn’t feel her at all.

Alarm shot through the pleasure of advancement, and Lindon urged the soulfire to hurry, but he could no more speed up the transformation than he could speed up the tides. He cycled his madra, bolstering his spirit, but there was little he could do.

Life madra raged, and Yerin was certainly fighting for her life. And here he was, with no option but to wait.

Though the change was not physically painful, every wasted second was agony. The soulfire gradually continued its transformation, changing him from the soles of his feet to the tips of his hair. Slowly, the soulfire died out, and his eyes opened.

With no time to waste, Lindon expanded his spiritual sense. It unfolded stronger than ever before. He could feel everyone so much more clearly. Mercy seemed...better than ever, actually.

Then he found Yerin.

Ignoring Kiro, Lindon ran back to the crossroads.

Kiro finally staggered out of the dream display behind him, and Lindon could feel the prince’s spirit. It was unsteady, but getting steadier. He had to save Yerin before Kiro caught up.

Running normally now felt as smooth and powerful as using the Soul Cloak had when he was a Gold. His body responded instantly, and he marveled at its power as he reached the central spire, opening his void key and withdrawing the axe.

He ran to Yerin’s hall. Meira was covered in overwhelming life madra, which had bloomed into the form of a tree that stretched from the ground to the ceiling. The power was astonishing; he couldn't imagine anything killing her with that much life energy running through her.

But that didn’t mean he wouldn’t try.

He raised the axe, running his Underlord madra through the binding. The red light running down the savage blade strengthened, rolling like crimson waves, and spectral hands of madra began to reach out of the weapon as the binding activated.

Yerin and her Blood Shadow were together, defending themselves from whips of green madra. Yerin’s presence felt shaky, like she was a flame that could go out at any moment.

As he was about to release the Striker technique in the axe, his spirit flared a warning, and he spun back.

Kiro had fired the technique in his sword, blue lightning piercing the air. At the same time, he'd released his own Striker technique from his left hand, pouring soulfire into it.

Lindon swung the axe.

He hadn’t been able to test the weapon before. Harmony’s spirit hadn’t been strong enough to activate the binding inside it, and until now, neither had Lindon’s. But he and Dross had spent some time examining the axe, and they thought they had an idea of what it could do.

The reality was so much greater than he had imagined.

Blood and destruction madra erupted from the axe, forming into a wave of red, spectral hands. Thousands of spindly arms stretched out from the blade, reaching for Kiro. His Striker techniques punched through the cloud of madra, destroying a few hands, but there were many more to replace them. His attacks were swallowed up as though they had landed in the sea.

Scarlet fingertips clawed forward in a flood, wailing loud enough to hurt Lindon’s ears. They swept down the hallway without slowing, but all Lindon could see was a wall of red.

What had it done to Kiro?

When the red light started to fade, Lindon strained himself, looking quickly for Kiro. If the Underlord had survived…

A hulking figure like an armored giant stumbled up to Lindon.

He almost panicked, but this was bigger than Kiro had ever been. The Remnant had a smooth boulder for a face, with twisting ribbons of metallic madra for flesh.

It looked at Lindon, who lowered his axe and kindled dragon's breath in his free hand.

After inspecting him for a moment, the spirit wandered away.

20

Mercy felt Lindon advancing to Underlord, and she let out a breath of relief. From everything she’d seen, these Seishen Underlords would stand no chance against him. Eithan Arelius had done a strangely excellent job of building his foundation, though Lindon wasn’t as well-trained as she would have expected in someone of his power.

Lindon would be fine, but Yerin was still in danger.

Mercy formed an arrow from all three of her techniques and the full force of her spirit. It formed so quickly, she almost wept; she was going to love having her full power back.

She faced the wall standing between her and Seishen Daji. She couldn’t break it all at once, but she had to stop him from joining his teammates.

So she took aim through the wall.

The arrow blasted through, leaving a finger-thick hole in the gray madra. The effort of penetrating the wall had caused it to lose some of its power, so it only splashed against the back of Daji’s armor, causing him to lose focus. She had accounted for that.

In a breath, she unleashed three more arrows through the hole the first had left.

They pierced his back, spreading venom and webs of force madra all over him. The Nightworm Venom technique would eat into his armor, corrupting it, leaving him stripped of its power. He would have to tangle with that while she waited for the wall to fall.

But she couldn’t afford to wait around. Yerin was in danger.

She slipped into one of the many shadow displays, grabbing a stone covered in a shroud of darkness. Then into the treasures of light, selecting a crystal that shone brightly. From a display like an overgrown jungle, she took a flower that teemed with life, and from a crimson display she took a shard of bloodstained steel.

Spreading them on the ground before her, she stretched out her spiritual perception. The unity of aura was so blessedly clear, as it had been before.

The vault roared and there was another flash of light through the hole in Daji’s wall. That worried her for a moment, but the blast had felt like Blackflame. Among other things.

She closed her eyes and spoke. The Underlord’s revelation should always be spoken, she’d been taught.

Even if one was ashamed of it.

“I walk my Path,” she said, “so my mother will be proud of me.”

The soulfire sparked, consuming the treasures in an instant, and passed through her body in a single breath.

It was as much of a change as when she’d shed her curses and returned to her power as a Truegold after most of a year as Lowgold. She gasped, feeling the new power in her spirit and body.

She was Underlady now, and it had only taken a second. She wanted to cheer.

But now wasn’t the time. She had a job to do.

“Chapter two,” she said, and the power of the Book of Eternal Night surrounded her. Its pages began to shift.

“Page four.”

An instant later, her new arrow shattered the wall.

She walked up to Daji, who had struggled his way free of her webs. She placed a hand on his head, and he looked up, rage and terror warring in his eyes.

“Learn from this,” she said.

Then she unleashed the Strings of Shadow technique. The first technique she had ever mastered.

Leaving him wrapped in a dark cocoon, she hurried forward, only to run into Lindon running from the other side. He looked so different that it startled her, but now wasn’t the time to gape.

Yerin needed their help.

* * *

Pulling back the rushing vines of green life madra, Meira glared at Yerin. “If Kiro is dead, I will kill your friends. I will kill your family. I will kill everyone you’ve ever loved, you’ve ever known. I will kill, and kill, and kill, and kill, until you wade through a river of blood with every step.”

Lindon was already an Underlord, and he was moving closer. She could feel him.

Red light flashed, and screams echoed through the halls. Yerin had never sensed that technique before, but from the feel of it, she could guess what it was: Lindon’s axe.

“He’s dead,” Yerin said.

Meira screamed, and vines shot from the tree again. Yerin’s Blood Shadow leaped, stopping them with its Goldsigns and rasping out a whispery laugh.

It could laugh now. That was…horrifying.

Yerin needed the distraction. She hobbled over to the sword display, which she could only sense once she got close enough. Its power pushed against the script like the weight of a river against a dam.

The Blood Shadow was overwhelmed in an instant, slammed against the wall. Yerin felt a distant pain as Meira’s tree tore the spirit-parasite limb from limb. It made a wet tearing sound every time, and there was something especially disturbing about seeing something like that happen to your own body. Especially when the Shadow’s hungry grin never faded, even as it broke down to essence and flowed back to Yerin’s spirit.

Yerin’s body and spirit shook. Her sword trembled as she held it down and to the side, but she forced one more technique through it. The Flowing Sword. Her blade began to glow.

“Don’t you look all…” Her voice failed her for a moment, but she pushed on. “…all bright and shiny new,” Yerin called. “How many pieces am I going to have to cut you into?”

Meira didn’t answer, shouting again and launching more vines at Yerin.

“Let’s find out,” Yerin said. And with the Sage’s white sword, she scratched the scripted stone around the sword display.

Sword aura gushed out. If she moved an inch, it would slice open her skin. With the last of her madra, she seized that power. Controlled it.

Ruled it.

The Endless Sword gathered around her six Goldsigns, around the sword left by the Sword Sage, and aura blasted out from Yerin in a storm. Far more than she could ever hope to gather or control; she only activated it.

And Meira was overwhelmed.

If the Underlady had been able to move, she could have broken Yerin’s control, or dodged, or set up a defense. But Yerin had already seen that this tree required Meira to stay in one place.

The rest of the Underlady’s armor shredded away as she screamed, followed by her clothes and her hair. In only an instant, she collapsed onto the floor, a bloody mess.

Her scythe fell after her, plinking to the stone, its haft notched and pitted.

Yerin stood watching her, unable to move. With her madra exhausted, she couldn’t move the sword aura out of the way, so she was frozen. And her legs were already trembling with weakness. If she fell to her knees again, she would end up like a butchered pig.

When her Remnant shows up, I’m in a pile of trouble.

Lindon and Mercy ran into view, and both of them had obviously changed. Mercy looked an inch taller, her hair longer, her eyes brighter. She moved with an unfamiliar speed and grace, though maybe she would pitch onto her face in a moment and spoil that impression. Her armor was broken, the inner robe pierced on the left and right sides of her ribs, but unharmed skin showed underneath.

She had advanced. Probably to Underlord, given what Yerin had sensed earlier, unless Lindon had somehow managed to advance twice. How had she gone from Highgold to Underlord? With her spirit as weakened as it was, Yerin’s spiritual perception was too weak to figure it out.

Yerin felt a spark of jealousy, but there was no point in thinking about it too hard. It had never made sense that Mercy was so weak to begin with, so this was the restoration of the natural order.

But Lindon looked like an entirely different person.

His right arm looked like a human’s arm now, only chalk-white, and she was surprised at how much better it suited him than the monster limb. His Skysworn armor was cracked all over the place, but he carried it lightly. It was the smallest details that showed the largest change.

First, the soulfire transformation left him looking healthier than ever. His skin was clearer, his chin more defined, and he seemed to stand straighter. He looked like he had aged five years, but in the best possible way. He looked less like a sect leader’s evil son, and more like…well, a sect leader.

He and Mercy took in her situation, looking from Yerin to Meira, and only then did Yerin realize there was no Remnant. The shining green tree was still there.

Beneath the sheet of blood, Meira was healing.

Lindon approached Yerin slowly, keeping an eye on Meira, but his expression was concerned. “How do you feel?”

Yerin’s vision doubled again, and she sagged in place, the aura slicing into her.

Lindon couldn’t open his Copper sight in here, but his spiritual perception should have been honed as a Lord. He grasped the problem quickly.

An instant later, a colorless light passed from him as he called on his remaining soulfire. The pressure of the sword aura around Yerin retreated, and she drooped forward, almost stumbling.

He caught her.

She didn’t have the strength to stand, melting into him, but she tried to make a joke. “Usually it’s you collapsing and me picking you up.”

Her spirit shivered as he scanned her, and he stiffened. “Mercy, get me some treasures. Right now. Yerin, are you…ready?”

His voice trembled with fear, and Yerin forced herself to stand up straight. “I’ll show you what ready looks like.”

Mercy was already darting from display to display, pulling random objects from each. Yerin was having trouble focusing on her, and everything had started to turn gray around her.

Lindon gently lowered her to the ground, eyes concerned. Underlord really did suit him; now he didn’t look so much like he was trying to glare a hole through her.

Dross appeared over his shoulder, one big eye taking up most of his purple body. His voice slid into her mind, guiding her through the unity of aura, but she had already drifted off.

She didn’t need any more instruction. She could feel it.

Her spiritual sense spread out as easily as spilled water, and her connection to the world solidified.

“I train in the sacred arts,” she whispered, “because…”

She hesitated, the reality of the situation slapping her in the face. Why had she said this out loud? You were supposed to, but there wasn’t supposed to be anyone around to hear. But now stopping would be more embarrassing.

And besides, she was dying.

She blurted the rest out in a jumbled rush. “…because I don’t like people around me dying, and it hurts, and I’m afraid I’ll have to feel that again, so I try to get stronger so I won’t have to. And that’s all.”

Yerin squeezed her eyes shut harder, hoping that it would work and she wouldn’t have to repeat herself.

The aura froze, as though unsure, and after a long second, her soulfire responded.

With a surge of relief, she felt the advancement take over.

* * *

Yerin rose to her feet, washed in soulfire, and Lindon stared at her. Just stared.

She had been remade.

Her Goldsigns now looked absolutely real, as though actual steel blades grew on metal arms from her shoulders. Her green armor was pitted and cracked, but her scars had been wiped away, leaving her skin clean.

It was in the little touches that she had really changed. That, or the loss of her scars had changed her appearance more than he'd thought. Her eyes seemed deeper, looking from within the veil of her hair, and she looked more mature. She hadn't grown any—her head still only reached up to about his shoulders—but that made him feel too tall.

More than anything, she was alive. Her lifeline, which only a moment ago had been a breath away from fading out, now shone as healthy as a young sapling.

The relief was so strong it shook him physically. His fingers trembled, and he leaned back against the wall. How many seconds had he been from losing her?

Mercy danced up to Yerin, glancing her up and down. Then Mercy threw her arms around Yerin’s neck and wept into her shoulder.

“I’m glad…” Mercy sobbed. “I’m really glad…”

The stress and exhaustion must have gotten to Lindon, because the world started looking misty all of a sudden. Even Yerin’s eyes watered, and she wrapped her own arms around Mercy in return.

A moment later, Yerin had evidently had enough, dabbing at her eyes as she pushed Mercy away. She had to brush strands of her hair aside. Yerin’s hair had grown some, as his and Mercy's had. Now it hung down into her eyes, extending past her shoulders.

She saw him looking and blew the hair out of her eyes. “Yeah, it's longer than I like to work with.” A brief whisper of power, and the hair in her face was sliced away. Her attention moved to the back.

“I think it looks nice,” Mercy said cheerily.

“So do I,” Lindon added.

The movement of Yerin's spirit stopped. “Nothing like trying out a change,” she said. “Might like it how it is.”

Dross spun out onto Lindon's shoulder, squinting his eye at Mercy. [Who are you? I’m warning you: I have a large sacred artist attached to me. He fights.]

Mercy looked startled. “Are you okay, Dross? It’s me.”

Lindon had assumed all along that Mercy's advancement had been temporary. She could make herself a Truegold for a while, why not an Underlady? But as he scanned her spirit, he found that the transformation was stable.

“You really advanced,” he said, astonished. “How?”

She shifted in place, rolling Suu between her hands, looking at the tips of her shoes. “I was, uh...always a Truegold. I left home because I didn't want to be a Lady.”

Yerin's eyes narrowed. “If that was a veil, I'm a leaping fish. You took an Underlady's fire to the face.”

Mercy's hand shot to her cheek before she pushed it down. It looked like an involuntary reaction. “Not my veil. My mother's.”

Together, Lindon and Yerin nodded as though that explained everything.

It almost did. She had left home, but her mother had sealed her power in exchange.

“I would like to hear the full story later, if you're willing,” Lindon said. “But first...”

He looked down to the regenerating Underlady at his feet. She was unconscious, but her technique was still going, leaving her healed. And naked. And caked in blood from a thousand cuts, so there wasn't much to see, but he still looked away.

Mercy had raised her gaze to the ceiling, where she pointed to the silver-and-purple owl. “Aunt Charity,” she said, “we've won.”

The owl didn't move, but Akura Charity stepped around a corner as though she'd been waiting for that exact moment to appear.

Though it was Lindon’s first time seeing her, something about her face struck him as familiar. As though he’d glanced her before. Maybe that was just her resemblance to Mercy.

She appeared much younger than he had expected—roughly his age—but she carried an intangible sense of wisdom along with her. Her silken black robes were adorned with softly glowing lines of violet that looked like script, and while he didn’t know the significance of the clothes, they must be expensive.

“They have won,” the Sage said. “You've lost.”

Lindon looked to the squirming black cocoon that his spiritual sense told him contained Seishen Daji. He couldn't imagine that counted as a loss, but Mercy didn't disagree.

She also didn't look happy.

“You promised me a favor, Aunt Charity,” she said. She sounded hurt.

“I will add a gift of my own to the Blackflame Empire in compensation,” the Sage said serenely. “I will also allow each of you to take all that you can carry from this place.”

Lindon's void key zipped open.

Everyone looked at him.

“Apologies,” he said, cutting off the flow of madra. “Forgiveness, please.”

He wondered if 'from this place' included looting the Seishen Underlords. What about Kiro's Remnant? That was morbid, and for a moment his thoughts sobered.

[Yes, terrible thought, but what did happen to that Remnant?] Dross asked.

“You warned the Seishen Kingdom,” Mercy accused her, and Yerin's gaze sharpened. “You put us all in danger.” Lindon had assumed as much, but what was he going to say to a Sage?

“Everything was under my control,” Charity said, but that didn't comfort Lindon. He would bet his own Remnant that she would have watched him die as easily as she had watched Kiro. Mercy might have been safe, but he doubted that protection extended outside her family.

Seeing that Mercy didn't seem appeased, the Sage added, “And everything worked out perfectly well for you, in the end. I don't see any reason for you to be upset.”

Mercy glared, but her aunt swept a hand over the vault. “Ten minutes,” she said. “Then we leave. I must announce the results.”

[Go to the dream one!] Dross said. [The dream one, the dream one!]

Lindon did, but he had to trust Dross to protect his mind from illusions.

Ten minutes later, Lindon had filled his void key, and all his pockets, and every line and fold in his clothes. His robes bulged like a chipmunk's cheeks. The fire treasure he had stuffed in his sock was starting to smolder.

He had picked up the broken pieces of armor from what remained of Kiro's body, stuffing them into the bottom of his void key. He had even managed to take the helmet, greaves, and one gauntlet from a struggling Daji, who promised bloody revenge.

The armor of the Seishen Kingdom was far more advanced than his Skysworn armor. He could learn something.

Yerin filled her pockets and carried an armful of treasures out, but she still stared resentfully at the copper key around his neck and muttered about how it wasn't fair. Even though he told her he would share.

Mercy didn't take anything. She chatted as Yerin and Lindon bustled around, stealing everything they could. Lindon guessed this didn’t matter to her; it was one vault of the many her family owned.

Outside, a black carriage waited on the ground, pulled by six Remnant horses whose hooves flashed with violet fire.

The doors swung open, and Charity gestured for them to wait as they approached. Lindon stopped too abruptly, and a silver bell fell from a pouch strapped to his armor. Each chime, as it tumbled, sent wind aura rippling.

A pair of silver-and-purple owls flew out of the ruins, each carrying a body. Daji was still wrapped in black strings, and thankfully now Meira was too. They each bobbed along peacefully in the grip of an owl, their eyes blank. The Sage had calmed them with a touch and a pulse of shadow and dreams.

[Now, I'm not suggesting this is a good idea,] Dross began, [but do you think you could take a little sip of her madra for me? I promise I won't be mad if you cycle it to me.]

You want us both to die?

[I want to be able to do that to their minds! Look at that! They're completely senseless! Imagine if I could do that to someone, bam, just knock them out like that.]

Lindon gave it more thought than he should have.

The Seishen Underlords were bundled into the carriage with them, which made for an uncomfortable hour-long ride. Lindon, Yerin, and Mercy sat on one side, staring into the empty eyes of Daji and Meira. Which left Lindon with the knowledge of what he'd done to Daji's brother.

He didn't quite regret it. He hadn't had much choice, and he had tried to stop the battle before it started.

But he was...sad for the necessity.

Finally, the carriage descended, coming to a rough landing before it slid to a halt. Lindon pushed the door open to see the massive pillar of shadow that was the portal. Hopefully, the one back to the Blackflame Empire.

The Emperor's cloudship was frozen almost touching the darkness, trapped in a purple haze. The Seishen King stood on his tiny cloudship, sword and shield hanging limply at his side.

Behind him, among the forest—and some in the air, either under their own power or on Thousand-Mile Clouds of their own—were his remaining twenty-five Underlords.

Charity had ridden outside the carriage in the driver's seat, and now she dismounted, flicking her wrist. The purple haze dissolved, and Lindon sensed the subtle power binding all of those Lords and Ladies dissipate.

Most of them sagged in relief, and none continued the battle.

Charity spoke, and this time her voice rang in all their minds like Dross'. “This battle has concluded, and entry to the Night Wheel Valley will soon be closed to you. I have chosen the three young Underlords who will represent the western vassals of the Akura family. They are all three from the Blackflame Empire.”

A sudden cheer rose up from the Emperor's ship, and an equally loud exclamation from the Seishen Kingdom. Especially from King Dakata, who looked ready to explode.

But none of that could drown out the Sage's voice in their minds.

“I therefore award the Blackflame Empire three hundred million high-grade scales,” she said. “In addition, to ease reparations caused by this competition, I will gift the Emperor with an Archlord defensive construct from my own collection.”

Even the cheers went deathly silent as everyone processed this news.

“As for the Seishen Kingdom...it seems you have trained your Truegolds well in this short time, to have raised so many new Underlords. I hope that the benefits you have reaped from the Night Wheel Valley will serve you well.”

Nothing. They would get nothing.

Only Lindon's confidence in Charity's power made him feel safe against the glare of the Overlord King.

King Dakata's spiritual sense swept roughly over the carriage, and his eyes went wild. “My son! What have you done with my son?”

“Of course,” Charity said. Owls swooped into the carriage and then emerged, carrying Daji and Meira. “I have subdued them for their own safety. They will wake unharmed in the morning.”

“What about—” the King began, but a void key the size of a barn opened next to him.

Inside it was complete darkness. Lindon wondered if that was a characteristic of Akura void keys or if it was a protective measure to keep people seeing what you had inside.

Slowly, an ornate table slid out of the darkness, floating on a purple Thousand-Mile Cloud. The table bore an ornate, lacquered jar, with a few characters painted on. It was too far away for Lindon to read, but he suspected it read “Seishen Kiro.”

Not a jar, then. An urn.

“I made the urn by hand and painted it myself,” Charity said. “That is the little solace I can offer you. That, and the knowledge that he died fighting honorably.”

Trembling hands reached out for the urn.

“Who?” he asked. “Who did this?”

Charity faced him calmly, hands folded. “He walked onto the battlefield as a Lord, and he was prepared to die a Lord.”

“WHO DID THIS?” he screamed, red in the face. Lindon thought he would crush the urn, but he contained his strength.

Lindon concentrated on not taking a step back.

Charity's voice was cool as water. “Your grief is understandable, Your Highness, but your disrespect is unwise. You will have your answer in the morning, when your remaining son and your...servant...awaken.”

King Dakata did not respond, but he didn't keep screaming, either. His gaze moved between Lindon and Yerin. He didn't seem to include Mercy.

Whenever those eyes landed on Lindon, his spirit boiled up in preparation for a fight.

[That is not a fight we want,] Dross assured him. [Although, maybe with some of that Sage's madra...how about a little taste, hm? Just a taste.]

After having stared at them for too long, while the owls deposited Daji and Meira onto the Seishen cloudship, the King finally turned his ship around and began flying away. Individually and in small groups, his Lords and Ladies followed him.

“Like a pack of whipped dogs,” Yerin muttered.

[Well,] Dross said, [they did lose. So it's only appropriate they look like losers.]

Charity's voice slipped into their minds again. “People of the Blackflame Empire, congratulations. I will deliver your winnings and announce my selections for the team in person, and I look forward to your team doing my family proud in the Uncrowned King tournament.”

The people aboard the cloudship let out another loud cheer. Yerin and Lindon looked to each other, and then to Charity. Were they supposed to leave? It seemed so; the Sage hadn't stopped them.

They began to walk toward the cloudship, which slowly lowered to pick them up.

“Do you think we're on the team?” Lindon asked.

“Can't see what else might have changed her mind,” Yerin said. “She decided on the team tonight, so that leaves the three of us. Probably won't be all...”

She stopped as she realized at the same time Lindon did.

Mercy wasn't following them.

They turned back to see Mercy. She had removed her Skysworn armor, wearing only simple black-and-white robes. She leaned with one hand on Suu, waving the other. They walked over to her, but she hurried to meet them.

“This is what comes with getting my power back,” she said wistfully. “I'm working for the family again. I have to go home.”

Yerin grabbed her by the shoulders, but she didn't seem to know what to say.

Mercy gave a sad smile. “I'll see you at the tournament,” she said. “Even if we will be on different teams.”

Yerin threw her arms around Mercy, and Mercy's eyes welled up with tears. She patted Yerin on the back, avoiding the sword-arms, and met Lindon's eyes.

Lindon wasn't sure what to do. He wasn't even sure what he was feeling, other than tired—too much had changed in too little time.

But he pressed his fists together, one white and one of flesh and blood, and bowed deeply to her.

She nodded back to him. Then a second later her face started turning purple.

She tapped Yerin with one black-gloved hand. Then again, with increasing urgency. “Yerin,” she wheezed. “Yerin, I need...”

Yerin released her, and Mercy doubled over, heaving a breath.

Wiping at her eyes with the heel of her hand, Yerin walked stiffly back to Lindon. “See you at the tournament,” Yerin called back.

Lindon waved again, walking off with Yerin.

“Where are you going?” Charity's voice rang again in his mind and his ears at once.

Lindon thought the Sage had still been speaking to everyone, so he glanced around, but Yerin had kept walking. When he stopped, she continued another step before looking at him in confusion.

He turned to see the Sage behind him.

Her young face clear of expression, Charity held out a hand. “I would like the axe back.”

Oh right, the axe.

Hurriedly, Lindon opened the void key and pulled out Harmony's axe. He was reluctant to hand it over, now that he could actually use it, but its power was a little unnerving. And giving up the weapon was better than having the Akura clan making him answer for Harmony.

The weapon vanished as soon as Charity laid one finger on it.

“Now, I have retrieved my gift to my nephew.”

Lindon started to sweat.

Nephew.

[Just to be clear: that's not too closely related, is it? For humans? I know if you left her son to die, she would be after you for bloody revenge, but a nephew isn't too bad, right? That's just, what, a harsh scolding?]

“I am sorry about what happened to Harmony,” Lindon said, keeping his voice steady. “I never had any ill will towards him.”

Not until the very end, anyway.

Charity's purple eyes were cool. “Whatever your intention was, you knowingly opposed a member of the Akura family. And in doing so, you cost us a potential competitor in the Uncrowned King tournament. You owe us a debt.”

It might have been the exhaustion, but Lindon's fear turned suddenly to anger. He kept his words respectful, but his tone had a bit too much of Orthos in it. “When the world began to collapse around us, I offered to take Harmony back. There was no feud between us. No reason either of us should die. He refused, and not only did he refuse, he said he would turn the resources of the Akura clan against me and not rest until my family was destroyed.”

He hadn't intended to tap Blackflame, but his eyes burned. “My family lives in territory owned by the Akura clan. Even so, I did not kill him. But I did leave him.”

He left out the part where Orthos had destroyed the portal.

Something flashed across Charity's face, but he couldn't tell if it was anger, grief, regret, or something entirely different. It was gone too soon, her voice as placid as ever.

“Even so, Harmony was my selection for our team. You owe me, and I collect on debts incurred intentionally or otherwise. I have been watching you, Wei Shi Lindon Arelius, and as of tonight, you have become qualified to pay me back.”

Far behind Charity, Mercy's eyes went wide, and her spirit shook. “Aunt Charity, no!”

“I do not select you as one of the three competitors from the Blackflame Empire,” she said.

Lindon hadn't realized how much he'd been looking forward to competing in the tournament. Nor how much he'd expected to be selected. The disappointment stabbed him through the chest.

Why? It didn't make sense for it to hurt so badly. He was still an Underlord, and he could still advance. No one had expected him to make it far enough for any of the best prizes anyway.

But Yerin would surely be selected, and Mercy as well, on a different team.

He was the only one not going. He wasn't sure if he would even be allowed to watch.

Mercy still looked horrified.

[Aw, cheer up,] Dross said. [That could have gone a lot worse. Imagine what else she could have—]

“Instead,” the Sage continued, “you will compete on behalf of the great Akura clan.”

At first, he couldn’t comprehend the words.

“I will take you with me to our headquarters, where you will be trained to compete to our standards. I am confident you will bring honor to our name, and if you do not perform up to my expectations, you will be punished.”

Lindon turned to Yerin, whose eyes met his. Her Goldsigns were extended, and she had a white-knuckled grip on her sword. She stared at him, silently begging him to say something.

His mind churned, searching vainly for a way out. “Honored Sage, I apologize, but surely I cannot perform up to the Akura’s standards,” he said.

“Not yet,” Charity said. “Training begins now.”

Shadows swirled around his feet, and he could no longer move them. He began to sink into the darkness.

He looked up to see Yerin staring at him helplessly, her eight arms hanging limply at her sides. What was she supposed to do?

He raised a hand to her. “Apologies,” he said.

Then the darkness closed around him.

Epilogue

Suriel dashed through the Way. The Abidan were under attack all across their border worlds, from Sectors Ninety through Ninety-Nine. Sector One Hundred had already been lost, and the others were soon to follow.

The Vroshir couldn’t maintain an attack of this scale for long, but the Abidan were likely to give out first. They were simply spread too thin.

She was not the only Judge to have flown straight from emergency to emergency for months; Gadrael and Razael had not stayed in one Iteration longer than it took to win a battle.

Wherever a Judge went, victory followed. But they could not be everywhere, and they were the only three Judges that could be spared.

Now, she hurried to Iteration 943. It was another nameless border world with a small, primitive population, but Sector Ninety-Four had not been able to evacuate it in time. She would probably have to revert an entire Iteration again, which strained both her mantle and the world’s connection to the Way. A handful of lower Abidan were defending it, so it should last until she arrived.

In the middle of endless blue, Suriel slammed to a halt.

It was as though a wall had appeared in front of her before she could slow down. She felt the impact in her mind, and for a moment she floated in pain, aimless and disoriented.

When her vision returned, she stared ahead, at the flow of the Way that would have led into Iteration 943.

Instead of a smooth sapphire passage, she stared into a ragged black gash. It was fuzzy at the edges, as though the Way had been severed completely. The World had been cut off.

[No barrier detected,] her Presence told her. So it hadn’t been sealed away.

She pushed into the dark hole, which was as difficult as digging bare-handed through packed earth; without the Way to lead into the Iteration, there was no easy path for her to follow.

But she managed it, determined to rescue any surviving fragments of 943.

She found nothing. She floated in endless emptiness, the pure void. Even the distant swirls of color that she usually saw in the void, wild fragments of broken worlds, were so distant that she couldn’t see them. This was a pure lack of existence.

It frightened her more than anything she’d seen in years.

[Warning: the Way has begun to repair itself. Recommend immediate return.]

She could survive in the void, but not forever. It would begin to corrupt her, breaking down the influence of the Way, turning her into an incomprehensible Fiend. At that point, if she didn’t find an Iteration or a fragment to latch onto, the void would continue to break her down until she no longer existed.

She stepped back into the Way, the endless power of order comforting her, but she still shivered internally at what she’d just seen.

Iteration 943 had been erased.

“What could do that?” she asked her Presence.

[Request denied,] her Presence said. Without her permission, the ghostly doll formed in front of her, looking at her with its featureless face. The construct couldn’t truly disobey her, but it could act independently when it needed to.

This time, it sensed that she was looking away from an uncomfortable truth, and it met her with a gaze that had no eyes. [You already know.]

There was only one weapon that could erase a world so thoroughly.

The Reaper’s Scythe.

* * *

Yerin sat with her forehead on the table next to a bowl of soup. All around her were the sounds of celebration and the smells of expensive food.

It was the Emperor’s celebratory feast. She sat at the head table, in a place of honor.

One of her sword-arms dangled in her soup.

The seat next to her was empty, the old Underlord next to her having risen to go speak to someone else, or to relieve himself, or to die in the corner as far as she cared.

Someone else sat down. Someone in a shimmering pink outer robe.

Eithan’s hand patted her on the back. “I’ve never been good at consolations, but do cheer up. You’ll see him again at the tournament!”

“He’s gone,” Yerin muttered into the table. “He took Dross and Little Blue with him. Mercy’s gone. Even Orthos is gone. Everyone I talk to is gone.”

Eithan cleared his throat.

She turned to glare at him without lifting her head.

He cleared his throat again.

“You got a chicken bone in there?” she asked. She raised the Goldsign out of her soup, its tip glistening. “You want me to get it out for you?”

He leaned closer to her. “Did you hear? Akura Charity announced our team.”

Yerin sat bolt upright, Eithan dodging a blade to the face. She grabbed his collar. “When?”

“It was a private address to the Emperor last night,” he said. “Very private. No one could possibly have heard anything.”

Yerin shook him. If she wasn’t selected for the tournament, she’d be the only one left out.

“You’re in it!” Eithan said, his teeth rattling.

She sagged with relief. Her master had reached Underlord at about the same age she was, but he had competed in the Uncrowned King tournament years later. She would have settled for fighting in the next one, if not for Lindon. And Mercy too.

But soon, the pall on her spirits returned. “It doesn’t matter,” she muttered. “Do we even have a team left?”

“Oh, I think we’re okay,” Eithan said. “We have you and Naru Saeya, the Emperor’s sister. She distinguished herself in battle against the Seishen Empire. Fought with great skill against two Underlords at once, while you were sneaking around in that vault. It was very impressive, and it’s always nice to have a teammate with wings.”

Yerin waited. He was leaving out the final competitor intentionally, she was sure.

“And, of course, there’s the team leader,” Eithan said casually. “The captain, if you will. The Sage’s first choice. The one who will lead the team into battle against the enemy.”

Yerin waited.

Eithan smiled.

“Who?” she asked.

He smiled wider.

“…who is it?” She was starting to worry that she knew the answer.

“What?” he asked innocently. “I’m thirty-four. How old did you think I was?”

* * *

Information requested: preparations for the eighteenth Uncrowned King tournament.

Beginning report…

The favored young Underlords of the Akura clan are lined up. For some, this will be their first time seeing the Monarch in person. Each Underlord and Underlady drops to their knees as Akura Malice emerges from shadow, her favored daughter at her side once again.

More than five thousand miles to the northeast of Akura territory, dragons of every shape and color fly around a volcano. Their roars fill the air and shake the earth as a small figure hikes closer and closer. In the form of a cloaked human boy with golden eyes, he approaches: Seshethkunaaz, the wandering King of Dragons.

Sha Miara, Luminous Queen of the Ninecloud Court, throws a tantrum. She wants to fight in the tournament. Her tutors have reached the end of their patience; there is no sport in sending a Monarch to do battle with Underlords. She’ll keep her power veiled, she insists. She will compete fairly, and no one will recognize her. When they continue to deny her, her wails conjure a storm indoors.

One at a time, the Eight-Man Empire call up would-be squires from all over their territory. For those who want to join the Empire one day, this tournament will be a good test.

Emriss Silentborn, the Monarch Remnant, watches gravely over the Wandering Titan. The massive Dreadgod, like a mountainous statue, has stirred earthquakes in its sleep. It is beginning to awaken, even before the Bleeding Phoenix has gone fully dormant. Emriss must choose her champions carefully; it is likely that this next generation will inherit a world at war. They must be ready.

Northstrider walks the boundary between Akura territory and that of the dragons. He has no family and leads no sect. He is the Monarch of unbound sacred artists, those with no master or home. He goes into the Wasteland, where he seeks out the Beast King. The Herald might have an eligible student who can bring honor to the name of Northstrider.

The Arelius clan, in the ruins of their ancestral home, is still in mourning over the loss of their Monarch. Their clan has as deep a foundation as any, so they are invited to participate in the Uncrowned King tournament, but there is fierce debate. This could be nothing more than another blow to their reputation. Grimly, they determine that their fate will be even worse should they try to hide.

Reigan Shen looks out over those he has newly recruited to his cause. Redmoon Hall, with their Blood Shadows in a thousand different forms. Abyssal Palace, their faces concealed beneath hoods and stony masks. The Silent Servants, whose mouths are bound, and the Stormcallers, who ring their arms in scripts that crackle with lightning. The cults of the four Dreadgods look to their new Monarch, who raises hands of benediction over them all.

Suggested topic: connections between the Arelius family’s fallen Monarch and Eithan Arelius.

Denied, report complete.

* * *

Wei Shi Kelsa crouched in the underbrush of the orus groves, keeping her breath slow. Night had always been bright in Sacred Valley, but Samara's Ring cast harsh shadows. She waited in those shadows now, silently begging the heavens to keep her hunters away.

A figure walked boldly through the trees to her right, holding a lantern of bright green madra. He was doing nothing to conceal himself as he searched for her. She pressed lower against the ground, sliding under a bush as far as she could without rattling it and giving away her presence.

The Fallen Leaf School had glimpsed her stealing fruits before, so they had increased security. She tightened her grip on the bag of fruit that she'd managed to fill before tripping a hidden security script. Even if she got caught, she couldn't leave without this food.

Her pursuer swept his lantern from side to side, searching for her. Summer had begun, but the ground was still cold as she pressed against it. She kept herself from shivering. Even the slightest motion could catch his eye.

Fallen Leaf elders wouldn't lower themselves to personally hunt for a thief, so this man wouldn't be Jade. Probably Iron, like her. She would have a chance to fight her way free.

But she couldn't afford to antagonize another School. As it was, if caught, she wouldn't be killed on sight. Instead, they would turn her over to Heaven's Glory.

Which might be worse.

The Fallen Leaf guard raised his lantern as a signal and called out a greeting. She flinched at his sudden voice, but he was looking past her hiding spot. Behind her.

Another green light approached from within the forest.

She had to move.

Slowly, so slow that it was agonizing, she inched out of the bush, sliding the bag of fruit along with her. While the guards were focused on one another, she could slip away.

If she opened her Copper sight, she could have seen the haze of dream aura around their heads. She was a Ruler on the Path of the White Fox, and could send them a distraction.

But then they would know for sure she was around. For the time being, it would be better to slip out unnoticed.

Her spirit shivered.

It was a Jade's spiritual sense. She'd been scanned.

The scan felt like a curtain of icy water passing over her, and the shock was so sudden that her body jerked. Her elbow snagged on the edge of the bush, which shook like a squirrel had passed beneath. In the quiet night of the grove, she might as well have rung a gong.

The two Fallen Leaf guards turned toward her.

Kelsa bolted.

She ran all-out, bag slung over her shoulder. Fear brought every detail of the run into focus, from the harsh scrape of her breath to the pounding of her feet on the earth. The Fallen Leaf guards raised a cry and sent up a signal as soon as they saw her, running after her.

She was tall, with long limbs, and she ran as part of her daily training. She would be able to outrun most other Irons, as long as none of them were an Enforcer.

A quick glance behind her showed her that the heavens had abandoned her. A young Fallen Leaf woman with an iron badge had cast aside her lantern, dashing after Kelsa with coils of green light around her legs. An Enforcer technique. She would catch up in seconds.

Kelsa kept a grip on her rising panic, forcing her breath into the right patterns, twisting her White Fox madra into a technique.

When the sound of footsteps grew close, Kelsa turned again, reaching out with her madra to the aura around the woman's mind. The Fox Dream settled around her head like a cage.

The Fallen Leaf woman slid to a halt, eyes wide, glancing around her. The specific illusion was born from the target's mind, so Kelsa could only vaguely shape what she would see. In this case, Kelsa didn't care what it was; anything that would attract the guard's attention was good enough.

In that opening, Kelsa started running again.

By now, she could hear cries coming from all over the grove, see sparks of green moving through the shadows. She would have to dodge all of these Irons and Coppers to escape Fallen Leaf territory, but that wouldn't be the end. She couldn't lead them directly back to her camp, so she'd have to run in the wrong direction to lay a false trail, then hide out for the rest of the night.

She gripped the bag of fruit as though it contained goldsteel treasures. Even if she had to crouch in a wet, freezing ditch for another day, it had been worth it. She had food.

So long as she escaped with her life.

Kelsa looked quickly for the largest stretch of shadows. Wherever she could see a gap, she'd take it.

The shadows were deepest to her left, so she dove into them, cycling her madra to her limbs and urging them to move faster and faster. A dull red light rose up from the darkness in front of her, but it wasn't green—at the very least, this wasn't Fallen Leaf madra.

Still, she altered her course to run around it. The guards weren't the only threats out here. Wild beasts, Remnants, and rogue sacred artists wandered the Valley, each presenting their own kind of threat.

Last fall, two young outsiders had torn through the Heaven’s Glory School, breaking their way into Sacred Valley. They were still at large somewhere, hiding just as she was. If she ran into them, she would fare even worse than the Heaven’s Glory Jades had.

It was best to avoid anything unknown.

A bulky shadow stepped out of the trees, cutting her off.

It looked like a mound the size of three horses side-by-side, glowing dull red and giving off a haze of smoke. She staggered as she tried to turn away at the last second, catching herself against a tree.

Two eyes, like circles of red in the darkness, moved toward her. A voice like rumbling earth said, “Wei Shi Kelsa?”

Kelsa jerked to a stop at the sound of her name.

“Took me long enough to find you,” he grumbled, “but a dragon does not give up.” Kelsa heard crunching. When she focused, she could see that this creature had leaned down and snapped up a tree branch. It chewed and swallowed a moment later.

Now the beast stepped forward, and she could see it in the light of Samara's Ring, paler and brighter than moonlight.

It was a turtle.

Kelsa gathered up her madra again. It must have been the Heaven's Glory School who had sent the sacred beast to hunt her. He hadn't attacked her yet, but that only meant he was under orders to take her alive.

“I am called Orthos,” the turtle said. “I come from your brother Lindon.”

Her madra trembled, her technique dissipating. She was still tense, her body telling her to run, but she also couldn't move.

“He's alive?” she whispered.

Green light swelled in the forest, and shouting voices grew closer. She spun and saw that she had already wasted too much time; the net had tightened.

“We have to get out of here,” she ordered. “Can you run?”

Red-and-black eyes surveyed the people following her, and the ground began to shake. After a moment, she recognized that it was the turtle laughing.

“I am pleased by you already, Wei Shi Kelsa. And I cannot run.”

He walked forward, brushing past her, facing her pursuers.

“Not when I can fight.”

THE END

Cradle: Volume Six

Underlord

Bloopers

“A wild natural treasure,” Mercy said, looking down at the tree a thousand feet below. “It doesn't look like anyone is harvesting it. You couldn't ask for anything better for a fire artist!”

Lindon leaped over the side.

* * *

The Skysworn Captain’s expression darkened. “Take them,” he ordered.

The other Skysworn exchanged glances.

“I don’t know, they have a giant fire-breathing turtle.”

“Look at that guy’s eyes, he looks like he wants to eat me.”

“What if we accidentally hurt a member of the Akura family? Won’t we all be executed?”

“I recognize her, that’s the Sword Sage’s disciple. I, uh, think we’re going to sit this one out, Captain. They’re all yours.”

* * *

[And now the owl's back!] Dross said. [There are so many birds around here. Maybe the bird aura is strong here.]

Dross drew Lindon's attention up, where he saw the silver-and-purple owl swooping down from the clouds above them.

Mercy saw him turn and followed his gaze. “Is the owl back? Where is it?” She sounded doubly eager to see the bird, almost like she was afraid to miss it.

[Don’t worry, it’s coming toward us! It’s fast, too. Is anyone else alarmed at how fast it--]

In a flutter of intangible wings, the owl dove past Lindon’s shoulder, catching Dross in talons of silver madra. Before Lindon could react, the owl grabbed Dross in its beak and tilted its head back, swallowing the spirit down its gullet like a mouse.

“Aunt Charity!” Mercy cried. “Make it spit him back up!”

The owl burped.

* * *

“Starting to get hungry out here,” Yerin said, as they marched on their patrol route through the Night Wheel Valley.

“Not me,” Lindon replied. He pulled the object from his soulspace and popped it into his mouth. “I have a bean.”

* * *

From his armor, a purple light shone from Lindon’s wrist. “This is the communication construct,” he said. A cloud manifested from behind him, flowing beneath his feet. “And this is the built-in Thousand-Mile Cloud.”

A parasol unfolded over his head. “For shade.” A blue light bloomed from around his neck, and icy wind blew past his face. “In case it gets hot. I’ve also got a detachable knife, a heater, a light, a telescope, a towel, and twelve books in case I get bored.”

Yerin looked him up and down. “What if you get thirsty?”

From the construct on his wrist, Lindon sprayed water into her face.

* * *

“I’ve been thinking about splitting my core again,” Lindon said.

Eithan raised his eyebrows. “You don’t think you have enough on your plate as it is?”

“It’s strange…every day I don’t split my core, I hear these screams, as though thousands of people far away were shrieking in frustration at once.”

“Well, have you tried splitting your core?”

“I have. Watch.”

He sat down and began cycling according to the Heart of Twin Stars technique. Just as his pure core began to stretch apart, there came a chorus of distant screams.

“Are those the same voices you heard before?” Eithan asked.

“No, I think that’s an entirely different group of people.”

“You’re right,” Eithan said. “That is strange.”

* * *

With a flourish, Eithan flipped open the lid of the box.

A disc floated within, suspended in midair. It was made of two flat, black discs on the outside, containing between them a layer of creamy white. It smelled sweet and tantalizing, and Lindon began to drool.

“Ladies, gentlemen, turtle: for your enrichment and education, I present to you the greatest spiritual elixir ever invented by mankind. Behold…the O’ree’o.”

About the Author

Will Wight lives in Florida, among the citrus fruits and slithering sea creatures. He’s the author of the Amazon best-selling Traveler’s Gate Trilogy, The Elder Empire (which cleverly offers twice the fun and twice the work), and his series of mythical martial arts magic: Cradle.

He graduated from the University of Central Florida in 2013, earning a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and a flute of dragon’s bone. He is also, apparently, invisible to cameras.

He also claims that WillWight.com is the best source for book updates, new stories, fresh coriander, and miracle cures for all your aches and pains!

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Also by Will Wight

Cradle

Unsouled

Soulsmith

Blackflame

Skysworn

Ghostwater

Underlord

Uncrowned

Wintersteel

Bloodline

Cradle: Foundation

Cradle: Path of Gold

The Traveler’s Gate Trilogy

House of Blades

The Crimson Vault

City of Light

The Traveler’s Gate Chronicles

The Elder Empire

Of Sea & Shadow

Of Dawn & Darkness

Of Kings & Killers

Of Shadow & Sea

Of Darkness & Dawn

Of Killers & Kings

For the most up-to-date bibliography, please visit WillWight.com