The needle pricked Kira's finger.
She was five years old, small for her age, with her mother's dark hair and her father's watchful eyes. She sat on a stool in the elder's cottage, the same stool every child in Ember's Hollow sat on when they turned five, and tried not to flinch.
"Steady now," murmured Elder Varen.
He was old—ancient, Kira thought—with papery skin and hands that trembled slightly as he held a small crystal to her bleeding finger. The crystal was clear as water, no bigger than her thumbnail. Every child knew what came next.
The crystal would glow. Brighter meant more mana. More mana meant a better future.
Kira watched the crystal. It stayed clear.
Elder Varen's eyebrows drew together. He pressed the crystal closer, held it there longer than he had for the other children. The morning sun through his window caught the crystal's edges, throwing tiny rainbows on the wall, but the crystal itself remained empty.
"No color at all?" Kira asked.
The elder didn't answer. He pulled the crystal away, examined it, then pressed it to her finger again. The small wound had already closed. He pricked another finger—sharper this time, harder—and tried again.
Nothing.
"Go find your mother," he said. His voice was gentle. That scared her more than anything.
Mara, Kira's mother, came quickly. She wiped her herb-stained hands on her apron. She listened to Elder Varen speak in low tones near the door, her face giving nothing away. Kira watched from the stool, swinging her legs, trying to hear.
"—never seen it that low," the elder was saying. "One point. Maybe less."
"One is still a number," Mara said quietly.
"Barely. And at this rate, by eighteen—" He stopped, glanced at Kira, lowered his voice further. "She'll have nothing to sacrifice. Even a Poor emblem would be—"
"She's five years old." Mara's voice was steel wrapped in silk. "She has years to grow."
"Growth requires accumulation. Accumulation requires base. With a foundation that small—"
"Thank you for your time, Elder."
Mara crossed the room and took Kira's hand. Her grip was warm and firm, the same grip that guided Kira through the mountains, that showed her which mushrooms to pick and which to leave, that never let go when the trails got steep.
"Come, little one. Your father will be back by dark."
They walked in silence. Kira's hand stayed in her mother's.
The Windrider home sat at the edge of Ember's Hollow, where the village gave way to forest and the forest gave way to mountains. It was a small house—one room for sleeping, one for living, a lean-to for drying herbs—but it held everything Kira knew.
Tobin returned at dusk, as Mara had promised. He was tall and lean, with shoulders curved from years of carrying packs and eyes that missed nothing. He set down a brace of rabbits and a sack of roots, then looked at his wife.
The look said: *What happened?*
The look she returned said: Later.
Kira pretended not to notice. She was good at pretending.
That night, after supper, Kira lay in her small bed and listened to her parents talk by the fire. They thought she was asleep. She had learned, early, that being small and quiet meant people forgot you were there.
"—one point, Tobin. Maybe less. The crystal barely registered."
A pause. Then her father's voice, rougher than usual: "So she's like us."
"Worse. We had twenty. Thirty. Enough to choose." A log shifted in the fire. "She'll have nothing to sacrifice at eighteen. Even if she wanted an emblem, there won't be enough to form one."
"Then she won't form one."
"Varen says—"
"Varen has an emblem." Tobin's voice was flat. "Varen sacrificed ninety percent of what he had and got a rank one Poor emblem in return. He's been rank one for forty years. Tell me how that served him better than us."
Silence. Kira held her breath.
"We chose this," Tobin continued, quieter now. "We chose to keep what we had, live outside their system, make our own way. It's not easy. It's never been easy. But it's ours."
"She's five years old. She doesn't get to choose. The world will choose for her—will see that number and decide she's nothing."
"Then we teach her that numbers aren't everything."
Another silence. Kira heard her mother sigh.
"She gets that from you, you know. The stubborn."
"Good. She'll need it."
Footsteps. The creak of their bed. Kira closed her eyes and tried to breathe like someone asleep.
The next morning, her father woke her before dawn.
"Up," he said. "We're going to the high meadows."
Kira rubbed her eyes. "Why?"
"Because the mist makes the mushrooms grow, and the mushrooms are worth more than anyone in this village understands." He handed her a small pack. "Also because you need to learn that the mountains don't care how much mana you have. They care if you can climb."
They climbed.
The trail was steep and rocky, and Kira's legs burned long before they reached the top. She stumbled twice. Her father didn't carry her, didn't slow down, didn't offer to turn back. He just walked ahead, steady and patient, and let her catch up.
At the meadow, knee-deep in mist and morning light, he showed her which mushrooms to pick. They grew in clusters near the old oaks, pale and fragile-looking, but he handled them like treasure.
"These," he said, "will keep a family fed for a week. These"—he pointed to another cluster—"will kill them in an hour. Tell me the difference."
Kira looked. Looked again. "The gills? On this one they're—"
"Good. What else?"
She learned. By midday, her fingers were stained brown and her legs ached and she had never been so hungry. They ate bread and cheese on a flat rock overlooking the valley, and Kira could see the whole world spread below—the village, the river, the distant smoke of other hearths.
"Father?"
"Mm."
"Elder Varen said I have no mana."
"He said you have one point. That's not nothing."
"Everyone else has more."
Her father was quiet for a long moment. Then he said: "Do you know why your mother and I never formed emblems?"
"Because you didn't want to?"
"Because we didn't need to." He tore a piece of bread, chewed slowly. "The system—emblems, ranks, sacrifices—it's a ladder. Everyone climbs, or tries to. But the ladder was built by people who started at the top. They put the rungs where they wanted them. And they made sure that anyone who starts at the bottom stays there."
Kira thought about that. "So I shouldn't try?"
"I didn't say that." He looked at her—really looked, the way he looked at tracks and weather and animals. "I said the ladder isn't the only way to live. Your mother and I chose a different path. Harder, in some ways. Freer, in others. You'll have the same choice when you're older."
"What if I choose wrong?"
"Then you'll learn. And you'll keep going." He stood, brushed crumbs from his trousers. "That's what we do, Kira. We keep going."
On the way down, she asked: "What if I never have enough? For anything?"
Her father stopped. Turned. Knelt so his face was level with hers.
"When I was young," he said, "I thought mana was everything. That having more meant being more. Then I met your mother, and she had less than me, and she was—" He smiled, a rare thing. "She was more than anyone I'd ever known. Still is."
Kira waited.
"The mountains don't care how much you have," he said again. "Neither do the mushrooms, or the rabbits, or the weather. They care what you do. What you notice. What you remember. What you endure."
He stood, offered his hand.
"That's what we'll teach you."
Kira took his hand. They walked down together.
That night, she tested herself.
Alone in her bed, eyes open in the dark, she reached for the small warmth that other children talked about—the feeling of mana inside, like a second heart. She'd heard them describe it. She'd never felt it.
But maybe tonight. Maybe if she tried hard enough.
She concentrated. Breathed. Waited.
Nothing.
No warmth. No second heart. No glow.
Just Kira, alone in the dark, with one point of something that might as well be nothing.
She closed her eyes.
Tomorrow, her mother would teach her about herbs. The day after, her father would take her to check the traps. The days after that would fill with mushrooms and roots and trails and weather, with learning the mountains the way her parents had learned them, with building a life out of what the world gave her instead of what it measured.
It wasn't the life other children would have.
But it was hers.
She kept going.