Perfect.

Yerin struck the Endless Sword, the weight of battle keeping her mind tightly focused. The claw bounced away, struck aside by a blade of sword-aura, but a second had already closed, a hair's breadth from tasting blood.

Another pulse of the Endless Sword knocked it back, but the claw had been so close that it nicked the side of Yerin's chin.

She'd done it twice, and that second technique had been both faster and more precise.

“Are you...practicing a technique right now?” The dragon asked. As she spoke, Yerin could hear her disbelief turn to fury.

She roared, swiping with both claws.

Yerin stopped them both with one pulse of the Endless Sword, but it still wasn't fast enough. Not sharp enough. She could do better.

Another claw was deflected in a spray of sparks, and Yerin stepped closer. The sense of danger in her spirit spiked, but that was what she was looking for.

After a second flurry of blows was met by invisible swords, the dragon backed up.

Yerin, still with her sword in its sheath, stepped forward.

The dragon may have been furious, but she wasn't stupid. She recognized sword aura and filled her mouth with orange-gold light.

A black arrow slammed into her from above, tying her jaw shut.

Madra sprayed from the sides of her fangs, and the arrow dissipated, but it had done its job. Yerin turned her attention to offense.

Her sword rang again, and three white lines appeared across the dragon’s throat. That was a step forward; only three lines meant she was more controlled. But when it was like the wind, her Endless Sword would leave only one line. And those scales would be nothing.

Now the dragon was truly infuriated. She dashed away and pushed her madra to its limit, shining in Yerin’s spirit.

“You should run farther,” Yerin advised.

“Who’s running?”

A Truegold aura flared in the distance, taking to the sky immediately.

Yerin regretted the loss; she could tell she was only a finger away from a real breakthrough in her understanding. But they couldn’t play any longer.

“Truegold,” she called to Mercy, dashing away. “Game’s up.”

That burned. This was an opportunity she hated to pass up, but she’d pushed it too far already. There was a line between flirting with death and throwing yourself at him.

Then another light dawned in her spirit, much brighter. The Lady.

She was close.

Yerin skidded to a halt, Mercy right behind her. The Lowgold’s senses weren’t as sensitive, and she gave Yerin a look of confusion.

“Underlady,” Yerin said.

Mercy instantly drew her bow back and loosed an arrow. There was a screech from Derianatoth. “To the tent?”

That was the decision. They could try and hide again, but the Truegold and the Lady were close. If they were found this time, that would be the end.

“No,” Yerin said.

There was only one way out now.

She rushed back the other way, running for the approaching Truegold. As she ran, she pushed deeper into her spirit, reaching out to her master’s memories.

Give me something, she begged silently. Anything.

Madra flowing through her Steelborn Iron body, she ran like a rushing river. The Highgold dragon was waiting for her, but she leaped over the giant golden lizard, still aiming for the Truegold.

There was one great thing about the Endless Sword, however she used it: it didn’t take much madra. She had plenty left for her Iron body.

A stream of orange madra spewed out behind her, but she flipped around a tree and kept running, focusing on her spirit.

This was it. She was in the final, no-escape corner that her master had always said was the best for forcing an advancement. She’d advanced to Lowgold after her showdown with his spirit, and Highgold in the middle of the battle with Jai Long. It was time to go beyond herself again.

She had to make it if she wanted to reach Lindon.

But as she thought of it, that reason rang hollow. It wasn’t wrong, but it also wasn’t enough. There was more. Something deeper.

If she didn’t advance, she’d have to rely on her Blood Shadow.

That wasn’t it either. She knew she’d have to get used to the Blood Shadow soon. As much as it sickened her, she couldn’t run from it forever.

She dug for more.

If she didn’t advance, everyone else would leave her behind. Lindon would keep growing, she’d never catch up to Eithan, and even Mercy had her advancement written out for her.

The Truegold appeared over the treeline, glittering in the sun, standing on a small golden Thousand-Mile Cloud. His draconic face turned down to her.

A memory boiled up, and Yerin couldn’t tell if it came from her or from her master’s Remnant.

She was maybe ten years old, standing with her master beside a stream. Every morning, he would bring her a boulder and have her try to cut it in half with the Rippling Sword. Every morning, she failed, and he took the stone away, only to bring a new one the next day.

She’d thrown her training sword aside in disgust. “I can’t do it,” she had said.

“Been waiting for you to say that,” he’d responded.

He had taken her to a cave behind a waterfall, where he had kept all of the stones she had tried and failed to cut. There were the marks of her failure: slashes in the rocks where her madra had cut. The scars started faint, but they got wider and deeper. And the stones got bigger.

“This is what you did yesterday,” he’d said, pointing to the largest rock, the one with the deepest cut. “I can’t wait to see what you do tomorrow.”

At the time, neither could Yerin.

Now, she stood under the dragon, feeling the echoes of her master’s spirit inside her.

“Surrender yourself, Highgold,” he said. “We will not make this painful.”

Yerin’s sword rang like a bell.

He reacted to the sword aura, striking with the back of his hand against the rush of silver. He knocked away the blow, but one tinkling scale was knocked free.

It took with it a drop of blood.

This time, the technique had felt right. It resounded in her master’s spirit, resonating between the two of them. She basked in that feeling, memorizing it.

Then the barrier in her spirit crumbled.

Her madra faltered, slipping from her fingers. This was the hazard of pushing for advancement in the middle of battle; it tended to throw you off your game. And this time, her opponent wasn’t sweet-minded enough to give her some time for herself.

Scenting blood, the Truegold dragon jumped down from his cloud.

“Page three,” Mercy announced.

Yerin had time to wonder why Mercy had said that out loud before an arrow the thickness of her arm pierced the dragon through the gold-scaled chest. Mercy’s Truegold aura blanketed the clearing in heavy darkness, and this time, the arrow didn’t feel like one technique. It felt like three different techniques crammed into one arrow, and two of them were not friendly.

The force of the arrow carried the dragon back, so he fell to the ground far away from Yerin, but he burned it away almost immediately. His scales oozed blood—so at least this technique did some damage, unlike the arrows Yerin had seen her use before, which didn’t even break the skin.

But now, the darkness that crawled over his skin felt like poison. He screamed, breathing fire on himself, but the darkness kept creeping.