Morning mist curled through the valley like a living veil, drifting along the river and threading between roots and stone. Birds stirred in the trees, wings wet with dew.
The air held the scent of moss, cold rock, and the faint metallic tang of Vitalis crystals buried deep beneath the soil.
Stoneheart Clan's domain rested in a fold of mountains, a natural cradle funnelling the main caravan road through its heart. From the cliffs the valley almost seemed alive. Terraced wooden houses clung to the slopes, rooftops curved like folded wings. Bridges arced over narrow streams. Trees leaned into the town, branches winding through balconies and trellises as though the settlement had grown around them instead of the other way around.
Whitewashed roads wound between gardens and courtyards, their surfaces smoothed by countless feet and cart wheels. Smoke from hearths mingled with resin and wet stone.
At a glance the place seemed untouched, peaceful, but those who lived here understood its value. This route was the gentlest path between mountains and plains. Whoever held Stoneheart held trade, influence, and wealth.
Rival clans watched from distant ridges, banners flickering in the sun.
A banner flapped above the terraces, gray as weathered stone. At its center a silver mountain rose within a perfect golden ring. Thin streaks of blue and green traced its edges like veins of Vitalis catching the light. Beneath the symbol, a single word shone in careful script: Perpetua.
A quiet promise. Stoneheart will endure.
Today, that promise would meet a new generation.
The shrine lay tucked just beyond the town, in a clearing where roots braided through the soil and moss softened every stone. Sunlight fell in shifting lattices of gold and green. Birds perched above, shifting with small, impatient movements.
Parents gathered along the rim, their voices low. A man muttered that sixteen was barely old enough. Someone else said sixteen was what the world demanded, and clans that waited longer fell behind.
A woman at the edge rubbed her son's shoulder, whispering reassurances meant as much for herself as for him.
Thalen sat on a smooth stone bench beneath the canopy. White hair framed his face, and his beard lay like frost on his chest. Age had carved shadows beneath his eyes. His muscles had thinned, his hands trembled if he reached too quickly, and his breath carried a small rasp.
Yet he held himself with the quiet authority of someone who had carried a clan for decades. His gaze drifted across the clearing, the caravan road, the distant banners. When his eyes reached the children lined up before the pedestal, a subtle weight settled in the air.
Stoneheart had not obtained lifespan relics in years. Once, the clan had traded aggressively, refining relics that promised stronger bodies and longer lives. Some elders had pushed to burn stores of wealth for a chance at such Relics again.
Thalen had refused. Refinement without patience was the quickest path to ruin. Lifespan Relics were rare and unpredictable, a promise only made when craft, timing, and discipline aligned. He would not hollow the clan chasing vanity.
He felt worry pinch lightly beneath his ribs. "Irondusk watches again," he muttered. "They always watch."
Beside him, Averith held a quill over a scroll. Silver streaks threaded her hair, catching the light whenever she turned. She looked young for an elder, but her gaze was sharp. Studying each child's posture, how their breath moved through shoulders and spine.
Hadrin leaned against a mossed trunk, arms folded. Half his hair had turned white, but the strength beneath his calm expression remained unweathered. "If only the world allowed them longer," he thought. "Sixteen is still a child."
Orven lingered in the shade, expression unreadable. His eyes scanned parents and children alike, measuring without comment.
Above the carved pedestal, the Mindwill Relic floated, a clear orb with a faint violet pulse. Its presence demanded reverence. Parents glanced at it with hope sharpened by fear.
Daren stepped forward first.
Dark brown hair fell into his eyes, never quite tamed. His clothes bore the quiet repairs of someone who had learned early how to make things last.
He stood with the guarded balance of street-raised instinct, weight centered, shoulders neither slumped nor proud. When his palms met the Relic, warmth stirred beneath his skin, slow and searching, like something testing whether he would answer.
Three breaths, shallow and held.
The warmth climbed his wrists.
Five. Pressure crept behind his eyes, bringing a faint wince he failed to hide.
Six. The orb brightened, its glow settling into a steady rhythm.
It had found his depth.
The elders exchanged murmurs.
Low D grade. Daren's shoulders dipped a fraction. His father released a single sharp breath and said nothing.
Others followed.
The orb answered each in turn. Thin, brittle hums for shallow roots. Fuller tones for those who carried more. A boy faltered when his light faded too quickly, and his mother drew him close, brushing hair from his face.
"It's enough that you're here," she said, voice low and even. "Aptitude isn't the whole road."
He nodded, blinking fast.
Hadrin watched with his jaw set, then loosened it. "Some fires burn small," he said quietly. "Still keep a house warm."
Aurella stepped forward.
Dark hair framed a composed face, her stride unhurried, precise. Storm-gray eyes moved once across the elders, the relic, the children waiting behind her, then settled. She didn't hesitate.
Her hands touched the orb.
Five.
Her hair lifted though the air stood still.
Ten.
A thin, glasslike ring shivered around the pedestal.
Fifteen.
Runes traced themselves in clean, steady lines.
Seventeen.
A middle B grade.
Aurella withdrew her hands and allowed herself a brief, thoughtful smile. She glanced back at the others, measuring nothing aloud, then turned aside.
Seryn came next.
Her smooth brown braid swung softly against the light outer robe at her waist, simple embroidery catching the light as she moved. Warm brown eyes carried an easy gentleness that followed her hands to the relic. A faint scent of spices lingered around her.
The relic answered without urgency.
Five.
A soft glow flowed along her arms.
Ten.
Her shoulders tightened, then relaxed.
C grade.
Low C.
She breathed out, satisfied.
Her father didn't share the feeling. His mouth drew thin, expectation unfulfilled. Averith recorded the result, but her gaze had already shifted to the next name, a small tension passing through her expression.
Kaelric stepped forward.
He stood taller than most of them, pale features sharpened by a narrow scar along his left cheek. He neither offered deference nor performance. He simply moved into place, each step economical, eyes forward.
The space around him felt different.
Not louder.
Denser.
The forest seemed to lean closer.
The orb reacted before he touched it, a quickening pulse, as if it had recognized an old debt.
Light climbed the pedestal. Runes smoldered. Sunlight shifted sharply, scattering across the stones.
One.
Five.
Ten.
Each breath felt like a stone sinking deeper through cold water.
Parents fell silent.
The metallic tang in the air thickened.
Fifteen.
Twenty.
The orb's glow condensed into a halo. A faint ringing emerged, thin, then doubled, two rhythms discordant.
Kaelric felt it answering him… and answering something else beneath his ribs.
A drumming rose in his chest. Soft at first, then pressing harder, out of rhythm with his breath.
Something beneath his ribs was moving, not violently, not painfully, but insistently, as though it had been waiting for this moment and found the signal imprecise.
It did not feel like fear. Nor like pain.
It felt like pressure remembering itself.
Averith's quill hovered mid-air. She saw it then, a second cadence under his aura, faint but wrong. Then it was gone as quickly as it came.
Hadrin unfolded his arms.
Thalen's lips thinned.
Twenty-five.
Twenty-six.
Pressure coiled beneath Kaelric's ribs, tightening past what the orb seemed built to receive. The space inside him constricted, then tore open in a sharp, breathless release, as if something had forced its way through a gate not meant for it.
The aperture snapped into coherence.
The orb's glow compressed. Its light pressed inward.
"Strange," he registered distantly. "It should not have ended like this."
Twenty-seven.
He withdrew his hands. The gate had opened, pushing further would only tear the frame.
The orb dimmed reluctantly. He felt a sharp pang around him, like a signal sent. He turned to look at the others, only seeing their awed and frightened expressions
"In my mind" he muttered "I need to calm down."
The forest breathed again, slowly.
A-grade.
A high A-grade, unheard of since Thalen's son, who died years ago.
A hush fell.
Some parents pulled their children closer.
Others stood rigid, awe battling fear.
A girl whispered, "Is he blessed… or cursed?"
Her mother shushed her, trembling.
Aurella's eyes narrowed in thought.
Seryn's hands clasped together, uncertain, worried.
Averith met Thalen's gaze, unspoken danger in her expression. Thalen felt an old fear stir, the kind he thought age had killed.
After the clearing emptied, Thalen approached Kaelric.
Averith examined the boy first. She asked him to sit; her voice was gentle, almost sisterly. Kaelric obeyed. Cool, silent, watching.
Averiths path dealt in repair, not destruction; she felt where things didn't sit right.
He tried to focus inward, to isolate the pressure coiled beneath his ribs.
What answered him was not clarity, but resistance.
An aperture was not a hollow vessel but a violet, glasslike chamber born inside the soul.
Behind the ribs, deeper than flesh, its walls shimmered like polished amethyst, containing a swirling fog of pale light. Even at the lowest rank that fog never thinned unless drained, it simply changed color, dim white to creamy to pure brightness, reflecting the cultivator's stage.
Relics rested within it like living things: some drifted, some prowled, some remained still as statues.
Mortals called apertures Heaven's gift, but cultivators knew better. Heaven gave nothing without reason.
There was a pale knot of light stirred there, translucent and cold, its edges indistinct, pulsing with a faint frost-blue hue that bled into the surrounding light. It did not settle when he noticed it. If anything, it pulsed harder, indifferent to his attention.
He had the unsettling sense that it was not revealing itself so much as tolerating his glance.
Perhaps it could hide itself.
Or perhaps it simply did not know that it should.
When Averith placed her hand over his chest, her eyes widened, just a flicker, before she bowed her head and whispered to Thalen:
"Dark-path natural attainment.
Absurdly high. Dangerous."
Thalen dismissed her softly, then faced Kaelric with the weight of decades.
"You will hear the truth from me," he said, voice low. "And you must never speak of this. Not to your friends. Not to your teachers. Not to anyone."
"If Irondusk or any rival learns of something strange, they will call us corrupted. Do you understand?"
Kaelric bowed. "I understand,"
But his inner voice sharpened:
When Thalen spoke only of his dark-path attainment, Kaelric felt a quiet loosening in his chest, a breath released before he realized he had been holding it.
"They noticed something," he thought. "But not enough."
The conclusion followed, not with satisfaction, but necessity.
If they cannot see it yet, that buys time.
Time was not safety.
But it was something.
He stepped away. Something beneath his ribs coiled like a blade waiting to be drawn.
Parents watched him pass, some with awe, some with fear, some whispering prayers.
Orven's stare followed him, cold calculation.
Hadrin straightened, posture sharpening unconsciously.
A guard shifted a half-step aside, not looking at him, yet leaving a clear path where there hadn't been one before.
Averith smoothed her scroll, knuckles white.
The town resumed its small noises, creaking carts, barking dogs, distant calls. But the clearing seemed to hold the memory of that pulse.
Later, Kaelric would insist the forest had simply shifted. The sphere under his ribs would pulse patiently, waiting for a command he did not yet have language for.
Later would be enough.
And later was the word he used like a scalpel.