Rain hammers Millhaven's muddy streets. Sixteen years old and Leo Yeager kneels in the training ground's center—alone, drenched, bleeding from split knuckles where they struck the wooden dummy for the thousandth time today.
The dummy doesn't move. Doesn't acknowledge the impact. Doesn't care.
Just like everyone else.
Leo's hands shake. Not from the cold—though the rain's turned icy as night deepened. Not from exhaustion—though his body screams for rest he won't give it.
From the effort of pushing himself upright. Again.
Around him, the village sleeps. Smart people are inside, dry, warm, safe from their own futility. They've accepted what tomorrow brings. They've made peace with their limitations.
Leo hasn't.
Won't.
The training ground spreads around him—packed dirt churned to mud by the downpour; six wooden practice dummies arranged in a circle like silent witnesses to his daily humiliation. During daylight, this place fills with children his age. Younger, now. They come here to practice techniques that make the air ripple with power, to refine strikes that crack wood and stone.
Leo comes here when they're gone. When no one can watch him fail.
His knuckles meet wood again. The impact jars up his arm—bone against unyielding resistance, flesh splitting wider where it's already torn. Blood mixes with rain, painting brief red streaks down the dummy's surface before washing away.
Nine hundred seventy-three.
Nine hundred seventy-four.
The numbers matter. Structure matters. If he stops counting, stops tracking, he's just another fool beating his fists bloody for nothing.
At least the counting makes it something. A ritual. A promise that tomorrow the number will be higher.
His body knows the truth, his mind refuses. There's no chi reinforcement making his strikes meaningful. No energy circulation turns ordinary punches into devastating blows. His fists are just meat and bone, hitting wood, creating nothing but pain and proof that biology determines destiny.
Around him, the village sleeps.
Smart people.
Two years ago, everything was supposed to change.
The memory surfaces without permission. It always does, usually during the nine-hundred-and-something strike, when exhaustion strips away the walls he's built against remembering.
Age fourteen. The awakening ceremony in the village commons.
Everyone gathered—parents, elders, Lord Renfell himself. The ceremony happened once yearly, when the previous year's fourteen-year-olds reached the age where Dantians should form. Some awakened early, at twelve or thirteen. Most waited until fourteen, fifteen. Everyone by sixteen.
Leo had watched ceremonies before. Knew what to expect.
The children stood in a circle, similar to where he kneels now. Except they'd been surrounded by hope, by anticipation bright enough to taste.
Then the first Dantian formed.
A girl—Leo couldn't remember her name anymore, just the way light had erupted around her, visible even to those without cultivation. Her chi manifested as crackling energy, making the air hum. Her parents crying with joy. Masters from the three nearest sects are already calculating offers.
Then the second. The third. The tenth.
One by one, the children transformed. Their bodies learning to hold power, to shape the energy that would determine everything about their futures. Some manifested Flame Chi—fire dancing across their skin. Others showed Titan Chi—their frames visibly thickening, muscles densing with supernatural strength.
Leo had stood in that circle. Waiting.
The first hour passed. Everyone else had awakened. Parents were hugging children, masters were making notes, and arrangements were being discussed.
Leo kept waiting.
Matron Elara's hand had found his shoulder. Her voice was soft, careful. "It's okay, Leo. Sometimes it takes longer."
But her eyes. Her eyes had said what her mouth refused.
It's not coming.
The second hour. The third. The commons were slowly emptying as families departed, taking their newly awakened children home to celebrate. To plan futures suddenly bright with possibility.
Leo stands alone in the center. Still waiting. Still hoping.
Until Elder Yuna had approached, her face carrying the same carefully constructed gentleness that preceded every terrible truth.
"Leo, dear. Perhaps we should—"
"It's coming." His voice had cracked. "It's just taking longer. Like Matron said. It's—"
"Tomorrow," Yuna had said. "Tomorrow we'll have Old Maren examine you properly. To understand what's happening."
Tomorrow had come.
The clinic. The chi-sensing formation array—a circle of stones that glowed when detecting energy pathways. Leo had stood in its center while Old Maren activated the formation, while light had pulsed through the array searching for what should be there.
The stones had stayed dark.
Old Maren's face. The careful way he'd touched different points on Leo's body, checking meridian locations that should exist, circulation pathways that should respond.
Nothing.
The old healer's voice had been gentle. Clinical. The worst kind of kindness.
"Complete absence of chi meridians. I've never seen this. He possesses no Dantian, no circulation pathways, no... I'm sorry, Leo. He cannot cultivate. Ever."
Medical reality, delivered like a death sentence.
Because in Millhaven, in Grifna, in this world—it was a death sentence. Just slower than a blade.
That was two years ago.
He's still hitting the dummy.
Leo forces himself upright. Mud clings to his knees, his clothes, his skin. The rain keeps falling. The dummy keeps standing.
Nine hundred seventy-five.
The pain's familiar now. Almost comforting. At least pain means his body still works, still responds, still exists enough to hurt.
His philosophy—if beating yourself bloody in the rain counts as philosophy—is simple.
Stopping means agreeing they were right.
Accepting that biology determines worth. That the medical examination spoke truth when it said he'd never matter, never protect anyone, never be anything but society's proof that heaven rejects the unworthy.
He refuses to live in that world.
So, he doesn't stop.
The rain intensifies. Water streams down his face, blurring vision that wasn't great to begin with. The dummy becomes a dark shape, rain-slicked wood reflecting torchlight from distant homes.
Nine hundred seventy-six.
His knuckles are past pain now. Reached that point three hundred strikes ago, where nerves start shutting down, where the body decides it's done reporting damage and just accepts the breaking.
He knows—somewhere beneath the stubborn refusal that passes for consciousness—that this is pointless.
Knows that two years of this haven't changed anything. Hasn't made him stronger in ways that matter. Hasn't produced the miracle he keeps not-quite-praying for.
Knows that every rational person, every kind voice, every medical authority says the same thing.
Let it go. Accept what you cannot change. Find another path.
He knows they're right.
He doesn't care.
Because stopping would mean they won. It would mean agreeing that sixteen years of existence were biology's mistake, that his life has no worth because he was born without what others take for granted.
One more strike. Then home.
Always one more.
His fist rises. The rain makes everything heavier—clothes, limbs, the air itself. The dummy waits, patient as tomorrow's sunrise, certain as Leo's continued failure.
Nine hundred seventy-seven.
Impact. The dummy shudders—barely. Not from the force. Just from wood being struck by meat.
Leo's legs give out.
Doesn't decide to kneel. Just finds himself there, mud soaking through trousers already soaked through, staring at hands that look like someone else's. Knuckles split in half a dozen places, skin hanging loose, blood washing away faster than it can flow.
The rain keeps falling.
The village keeps sleeping.
The dummy keeps standing.
Leo's breathing comes ragged, each inhale burning in lungs that have forgotten what rest feels like. His vision swims, exhaustion or blood loss or both creating halos around the distant torchlight.
Two years. Seven hundred thirty days of this. Waking before dawn to train while others sleep. Training through afternoon when chores allow. Training through evening when darkness hides him from pitying stares.
Changed nothing.
He's still the weakest person in Millhaven. Still the biological impossibility that medical science confirmed should accept his limits. Still the orphan everyone tolerates out of pity or ignores out of discomfort.
Still just surviving.
The thought crystallizes, sharp as the rain, cold as the mud.
How much longer will you just survive?
Not Matron Elara's voice. Not Finn's careful encouragement. Not even the memory of mockery from children who can do in seconds what he's spent years failing to achieve.
His own voice. Asking the question he's been avoiding since that examination two years ago.
The orphanage waits in the distance. Warm. Safe. Matron will have clean bandages and quiet understanding. Won't ask why he does this. Won't tell him to stop, though her eyes beg it every time she treats his self-inflicted damage.
The dummy stands ahead. Patient. Eternal. Mocking him with continued existence.
Just like everyone else.
Leo's hands press into mud. Push. His body resists—every muscle screaming that standing is negotiable, that staying down is mercy.
He stands anyway.
Because staying down means agreeing. Means accepting that biology is destiny, that the world's judgment is final, that sixteen years of existence were heaven's mistake.
Means surrendering.
Not today.
His legs move before his mind fully agrees. Away from the dummy that's witnessed two years of pointless persistence. Toward the orphanage where the only family he's ever known waits without judgment, offering shelter he doesn't deserve and kindness he can't repay.
Tomorrow he'll come back. Strike the dummy nine hundred seventy-eight times. Then nine hundred seventy-nine.
He knows it won't matter.
He doesn't care.
The rain follows him through empty streets, washing blood from knuckles that'll split again tomorrow, cleaning mud from clothes that'll collect more in twenty-four hours.
Behind him, the training ground settles into silence.
The dummies stand patiently.
Waiting for morning, when the real cultivators return to practice techniques that make reality bend.
Waiting for tomorrow night, when Leo returns to prove—to himself if no one else—that refusing to quit means something.
Even if that something is just the difference between dying forgotten and dying having tried.
His hand finds the orphanage door. Pushes. The warmth inside hits like a physical force after hours in the rain. Somewhere beyond, Matron Elara will be awake. She always knows when he comes back bloody.
The door closes behind him.
The rain continues.
And tomorrow—like every tomorrow before—he'll wake and do this again.
Because stopping means they were right.
And he refuses to live in that world.