Fire waited in the manual like a dare.
Wood feeds fire.
Fire makes earth.
The words were simple. The consequences weren't.
Yuan He spent the day repeating the partial loop in pieces the way you tested a bridge by walking across it, not by driving a truck over it at full speed.
Between chores, behind walls, in moments no one owned enough to guard, he ran the same stable sequence, then stopped on purpose.
Then he worked.
Then he ate whatever victory tasted like that day.
When night finally made the dorm forget him again, he slipped out to the drying racks and sat down with the cold ground under him like a warning.
He didn't bring the manual.
He didn't need doctrine.
He needed constraints.
He listened.
Insects.
A dog.
A soft shiver of leaves.
No close footsteps.
Good enough.
He set his tongue, relaxed his jaw, placed his hands in the seal. His shoulders tried to rise and he forced them down.
"Fire kills," he whispered.
Then, because the phrase alone wasn't enough to keep his hands from doing something stupid, he added, "So we do fire like a candle."
He started breathing slow and even until the anchor returned.
Then again. Same result.
Earth went in clean.
Metal followed with its thin, familiar static, and faded when he went neutral.
He waited a moment, breathing normally.
Focusing on water brought the tiny lift once again before settling back down.
No nausea.
Next was a little bit of wood, the quiet pull that made the shape want to connect.
He held still for one normal breath.
"Okay," he murmured. "If we're going to die, we die in a controlled way."
That was a terrible joke.
It helped anyway.
Fire.
He didn't change the cadence.
He didn't change the order.
He didn't let himself negotiate with fear by changing three things at once.
He treated fire as a pulse, not a step.
A candle, not a furnace.
He decided what "pulse" meant before he started, because deciding it during panic was how you burned a hole through your own rules.
One count.
Only one.
On the hold of the next breath, he let the idea of fire exist for exactly one count: a small, controlled warmth that belonged low, near the anchor, and nowhere else.
Then he exhaled.
Nothing surged.
Nothing climbed.
The anchor didn't jump. It didn't float.
It held.
A faint warmth lingered low, local, like a ring left in sand after a cup was lifted.
Yuan He opened his eyes in surprise and then immediately narrowed them, angry at himself for wanting it to be dramatic.
"Repeat," he whispered. "Don't lie."
He did not add another fire pulse to "make sure."
He closed the loop.
Fire makes earth.
So he did earth next, exactly as before: weight, settling, sand in a jar.
The warmth didn't flare.
It compressed.
Not painfully. Not sharply.
Just…contained.
Like a lid set gently over a pot that wasn't boiling.
He sat very still.
No nausea.
No upward drift.
No pressure spike in his chest.
No heat racing up his throat.
His breath stayed steady.
Recovery felt normal.
He swallowed.
Once meant nothing.
Once meant luck.
Luck was the most expensive currency in the sect, because it always ran out when you needed it.
He took two normal breaths, then ran the full loop again from the top, slow enough to catch mistakes.
Earth came first: weight, inertia, a containment shell settling into place.
Metal followed as definition, the compression edges, the feeling of a lattice clicking into a frame.
Water came only briefly, not as surrender but as moderation, damping and heat transfer, smoothing what wanted to climb.
Wood was last before the dare: a growth-bias, the quiet urge for connection, for the loop to carry itself without him forcing it.
Then fire, a one-count activation, a spark kept low on purpose.
He closed it with earth again, not to "add power," but to put a lid on what he'd just woken up.
The anchor held.
Nothing climbed.
Nothing broke loose.
The internal shape returned.
Not brighter.
Not stronger.
Just the same.
Repeatable.
Boring.
Relief tried to lift his mouth into a smile. He suppressed it. Smiling made you careless, and carelessness made you visible.
He breathed normally and ran his check, because checks were the point.
Head: clear.
Stomach: calm.
Chest: calm.
Heat: low and local, fading.
No discomfort.
No agitation, except the greedy part of him that whispered: Again. Again. Again.
He stared at the drying racks as if they were a whiteboard.
He had done it.
A full loop, minimal and controlled.
Wood to fire, fire to earth, earth to metal, metal to water, water to wood.
He didn't feel powerful.
He didn't feel like a cultivator from a story.
He felt like a man who had finally gotten a system to behave without lying to it.
He exhaled softly.
"Elemental Interlock," he murmured. "Version…"
He almost said something stupid like victory.
He didn't.
"Version 'boring,'" he whispered.
He sat for another minute, doing nothing, because doing nothing without fear was also a kind of proof.
Then he stood and slipped back toward the dorms.
No one saw him.
No one applauded.
No one could tell anything had changed, which was exactly what he wanted.
He lay down on his bunk and stared into the dark, feeling the faint memory of warmth low in his belly like the afterimage of a candle flame.
Fire still killed.
But tonight, for the first time, it had not killed him.
He whispered, barely audible, "We don't increase it."
Then he added, because he couldn't help himself, "If I ever get arrogant about this, I deserve the furnace."