Probationary Disciple Lin Feng of the Ascendant Flame Tower was a lie wrapped in grey novice robes, walking through a city of fire and truth.
His official life began at dawn with the Bell of Embers—a deep, resonant gong that vibrated through the stone, shaking disciples from their slumber. Lin's quarters were in the "Smoke Dormitories," a warren of small, cell-like rooms carved into the lower levels of the mesa, reserved for late arrivals, charity cases, and those with questionable potential. The air here was cooler, the ambient Fire Qi thinner, a subtle reminder of status.
His roommate was a silent, hulking youth from a frontier mining town named Goran. Goran's talent was brute-force Earth Qi manipulation, useful for the Tower's mining operations but considered unrefined for true cultivation. He grunted at Lin in the morning and spent his evenings polishing a collection of interesting rocks. It was a comfortable, wordless arrangement.
Lin's schedule was a study in controlled duplicity.
Mornings were for public, foundational classes in the "Basalt Halls." Here, among a hundred other novices, he learned the orthodox history of the Nine Realms—a sanitized version that spoke of glorious elemental specializations and said nothing of "Primordial Soups." He sat through "Principles of Fire Affinity" lectures, taking notes on techniques he could never safely perform. The instructor, a brisk woman named Mistress Volka, would demonstrate a simple "Palm-Ignition" technique, and the room would fill with the scent of ozone and the cheerful pops of a dozen small flames igniting above youthful palms.
Lin's palm remained stubbornly dark. He would concentrate, mimic the breathing patterns, and feel only the familiar, hollow ache. The best he could manage was a faint, pathetic warmth, like a stone left in the sun—a result of the tiny, stable amber energy in his sternum fracture, which he carefully did not reveal.
"Focus, Disciple Feng!" Mistress Volka would chide, her voice sharp. "The Qi is there! You must command it, not politely request it!"
Whispers followed him. "The Broken One." "The Professor's pet project." "Wasted space." They came from the scions of minor Fire Dominion noble houses, boys and girls who wore their family crests on their robes and whose palms glowed with inherited ease. Their leader was a boy named Kyrus, with oil-slick black hair and a smirk that seemed permanently etched on his face. Kyrus's Fire was a showy, aggressive orange, and he took every opportunity to demonstrate it, lighting candles from across the room or making his dinner utensils uncomfortably hot.
"Perhaps some are just meant to stoke the forges, not wield the flame," Kyrus announced loudly one day after Lin failed—again—to produce even a spark during a drill. A few sycophants tittered.
Lin said nothing. He kept his head down, his expression neutral, swallowing the bitterness. This was his cover. The incompetent novice. It had to be convincing.
Afternoons were for physical conditioning—grueling sessions of endurance running along the scorching mesa-top, weight training using heated iron weights, and forms practice. Here, Lin found an unexpected, bitter advantage. Years of feeling like he was dragging an internal void had given him a stubborn, deep-boned resilience. While Kyrus and his ilk relied on Qi to enhance their strength and stamina, Lin had only his own will. He couldn't outrun them in a sprint, but in the long, punishing laps under the artificial sun of the Heart Flame, he didn't collapse when his Qi reserves ran low—because he had none to begin with. He just… endured.
His forms were another matter. The "Nine Stances of the Blazing Willow" required channeling Qi along specific pathways to achieve fluid, powerful movements. Lin's movements were stiff, disconnected. He performed the stances by rote memory, an empty shell of the technique. The physical training master, a scarred veteran named Commander Flint, watched him with a disapproving but puzzled eye. "Your body moves like you're fighting yourself, boy," he growled once. "Unclench. The Qi should flow, not you wrestling it."
If only he knew.
Nights were the truth. After the final bell, when the Smoke Dormitories settled into the snores of the exhausted, Lin would slip from his cot. The amulets beneath his robes were his compass. He'd navigate the silent, labyrinthine corridors of the Tower's underbelly, the glowing veins in the walls his only light, until he reached the plain grey door of the sub-basement archive.
There, his real education began.
Archivist Lian was a merciless, precise taskmaster. The initial triumph of the amber spark was not repeated easily. The next step was scaling the process—creating a second point of fused energy, then a third, attempting to link them.
"Think of your fractures not as wounds, but as isolated chambers," she instructed, her golden eyes reflecting the light of holographic schematics. "Each chamber can host a unique amalgam. The goal is not to repair the connections between them, but to turn your entire meridian system into a… a mosaic. A picture made of broken pieces, each piece holding a different shade of the unified whole."
The work was agonizingly slow, a torture of microscopic spiritual adjustments. Some nights, he worked solely on drawing a hair-thin strand of Metal Qi from the ancient iron deposits in the rock, feeling its cold, sharp intent. Other nights, he practiced holding the Earth-Fire amalgam steady while introducing a wisp of Air Qi, trying to create a lighter, more volatile "Magma-Steam" energy. The failures were visceral. A miscalculation in balance would result in a painful feedback jolt—a sharp, electric shock in his spirit, or a wave of nausea, or a temporary blinding headache. The amulets would grow hot, their light flashing a warning, stabilizing him before a reaction could cascade out of control.
Professor Ignis observed these sessions, recording every twitch, every fluctuation, in a crystal log. "Your tolerance is increasing," he noted one night, after Lin successfully sustained three separate fracture-amalgams for the count of one hundred breaths. "The artifacts are calibrating to your neural patterns. You are becoming a more efficient conductor for their stabilizing field."
"What happens if I take them off?" Lin asked, panting from the effort.
The Professor and the Archivist exchanged a glance. "Do not," Ignis said simply.
One evening, about three weeks into his double life, Lin arrived at the archive to find a third person waiting. A girl, perhaps a year older than him, stood beside Archivist Lian. She was tall and whip-thin, with hair the color of raw copper cut brutally short. She wore the grey robes of a probationary disciple, but with sleeves tightly bound and trousers tucked into practical boots. Her most striking feature was her left arm—from fingers to elbow, it was encased in a intricate, form-fitting gauntlet of dull grey alloy, etched with faintly glowing green runes. It hummed with a low, mechanical energy that grated against Lin's Qi-sense.
"Disciple Lin Feng, this is Nyssa," Archivist Lian said, her tone indicating this was not an introduction but a briefing. "She is assisting me with a comparative analysis of artificial versus organic meridian damage. Her left arm's meridians were severed in an alchemical accident. The gauntlet is a prototype Qi-conduit, allowing her to manipulate Wood and Metal Qi through mechanical amplification."
Nyssa nodded, her green eyes assessing Lin with a cool, analytical curiosity that mirrored the Archivist's. "Professor Ignis says you're a natural fracture. I'm an artificial one. Figured we might have things to complain about." Her voice was dry, with a hint of a rasp.
Lin didn't know what to say. He'd been isolated for so long, first by his condition, then by his secret. Nyssa's bluntness was jarring.
"You will work in adjacent chambers tonight," Lian continued. "Nyssa will be cultivating a standardized Wood-Metal infusion for her gauntlet's calibration. You will be working on your Earth-Fire-Air triad. I wish to observe the differential resonance patterns."
It was the first time Lin had shared his secret training space. He felt exposed, vulnerable. But as they moved to the small, separate meditation alcoves—separated by a thin crystal screen that allowed energy patterns to be observed—he found Nyssa's presence oddly steadying. She wasn't looking at him with pity or scorn. She looked at him as a fellow experimental subject.
As he settled into his breath, focusing on the three delicate threads of Qi, he could feel the hum of her gauntlet, a consistent, artificial drone. When he lost his grip on the Air Qi, causing a minor, painful fizzle in his fracture, he heard a soft click from her side of the screen.
"Air's tricky," Nyssa's voice came, matter-of-fact. "Slippery. You're pulling from the circulation vents. Try pulling from the condensation on the cold pipes near the ceiling. It's heavier. More reluctant to move. Easier to control."
Lin blinked, stunned. He'd never thought about the source of the Qi, only its type. He redirected his awareness, finding the cool, damp Air Qi clinging to the water pipes. It was, as she said, more sluggish. Easier to guide. He woven it with the Earth and Fire threads. The triad stabilized, forming a warm, buzzing energy he mentally labeled "Stormstone."
"It worked," he said, amazed.
"Obviously," came the reply, followed by the sound of her gauntlet powering up, emitting a sound like grinding gears and growing leaves.
A strange, comradely silence settled between them, punctuated only by the hum of energies and Archivist Lian's occasional note-taking scribbles. For the first time since arriving at the Tower, Lin didn't feel entirely alone.
This fragile new normal shattered two days later in the Combat Principles class.
Commander Flint had decided on sparring drills. "Theory is ash without practice!" he barked. "You will pair up. Basic engagement rules. Qi reinforcement permitted, but no projectile techniques. Goal: yield or pin."
Lin's heart sank. He was paired with Kyrus.
The noble boy's smirk widened into a predatory grin. "Finally, a chance for some practical instruction, Feng. Don't worry, I'll go easy on you." His friends gathered at the edge of the sandstone training circle, snickering.
The bell rang. Kyrus flowed into a textbook "Blazing Willow" opening stance, his body instantly sheathed in a faint, rippling aura of orange heat. He moved forward, fast and confident, a fist lancing toward Lin's chest.
Lin reacted with pure instinct, the product of harsh village life and weeks of grueling conditioning. He slipped to the side, the heat of Kyrus's passing Qi washing over him like the breath of an open oven. He countered with a simple, direct punch aimed at Kyrus's ribs.
His fist connected, but it was like hitting warm, flexible iron. Kyrus's Qi-reinforced body absorbed the blow with a minor grunt. Before Lin could retract his arm, Kyrus's hand clamped around his wrist. The grip was searing hot.
"You hit like a child," Kyrus sneered, his Qi flaring. The heat intensified, a deliberate, painful burn. Lin gritted his teeth, trying to pull away, but the heat was spreading, threatening to blister his skin.
Panic, that old enemy, rose in Lin's throat. His body, sensing threat, reacted as it had in the village. His Void Channels, lulled into a semblance of order by his nightly practices, twitched. He felt a tiny, involuntary pull.
He wasn't trying to draw Qi. His terror did it for him.
A thin, desperate siphon opened from the point of contact—from Kyrus's own flaming Qi aura.
It was minuscule, nothing like the voracious flood from the wolf attack. But it was direct, and it was theft.
Kyrus's smirk vanished. His eyes widened in shock and confusion. The orange aura around his hand flickered, dimmed for a fraction of a second, and a strange, cold-warm-neutral sensation—a sliver of Lin's stolen, unassimilated energy—shot back up the connection into Kyrus's own channels.
"What—?" Kyrus gasped, releasing Lin's wrist as if stung. He stared at his hand, where his Qi was restabilizing, but now felt… off. "What did you do?"
Lin staggered back, clutching his wrist. The skin was red and tender, but unblistered. Inside, he felt a jolt of alien, agitated Fire Qi buzzing in one of his fractures, fighting against his own amalgams. He focused desperately on the Breath of the Cracked Vessel, forcing the stolen energy to dissipate through the cracks.
"I didn't do anything!" Lin said, the lie tasting like ash. "You burned me!"
Commander Flint was between them in an instant. "Enough! Kyrus, you were told reinforcement, not active burning. A point against you." He glanced at Lin's wrist, then at Kyrus's bewildered face. "Feng, you're outmatched. Yield and go cool that burn."
The class was murmuring. Kyrus was still staring at his hand, his expression shifting from confusion to suspicion to dawning, malicious understanding. He'd felt something. Something wrong.
Lin walked away, his heart hammering. He'd broken the first rule. He'd drawn attention. Not the dramatic, explosive attention of an eruption, but something subtler, more dangerous. The attention of a clever, entitled enemy who now had a puzzle to solve.
That night, in the archive, he confessed what happened to Professor Ignis and Archivist Lian. The Professor's face grew stern.
"A reflexive siphon. The artifacts suppressed the scale, but not the impulse. This is a critical weakness. Your control under stress is insufficient." He paced. "Kyrus Ignis is a minor scion, but perceptive. And he shares my family name, however distantly. He will investigate."
"We must accelerate the schedule," Archivist Lian said, her golden eyes gleaming. "He needs a visible, orthodox skill to explain anomalies and deflect suspicion. He cannot remain completely inept at Fire."
Ignis stopped pacing. "Agreed. We will teach him one thing. One simple, orthodox Fire technique. But he will power it not with pure Fire Qi, but with one of his stable amalgams. The output will look like Fire, mostly. But it will be his."
He turned to Lin. "We will teach you the 'Ember Palm.' A novice-level ignition and push technique. You will learn to channel your 'Stormstone' amalgam—the Earth-Fire-Air mix—through a specific fracture pathway to your palm. It will manifest as a burst of flame and force. It will be your mask."
Lin looked at his hands, the red mark from Kyrus's grip still visible. He thought of Nyssa's practical advice, of the humming gauntlet that let her function in a world she didn't quite fit. He thought of the mosaic inside him, a picture of broken pieces slowly being filled with color.
He was a lie. But perhaps, he could build a truth strong enough to hold the lie together.
"Teach me," Lin Feng said.