“Pardon, but who is Lowgold?”

She stuck a finger at him as though threatening him with it. “You’re proving my point for me. It’s not a who, it’s what you call the first rank of Gold.”

“Rank?”

“I told you Gold was a wide river. The weakest Golds are Lowgold, then Highgold, and Truegold past that. The gap between each one is ten times wider than the gap between Copper and Iron, and if you were a shade quicker and two shades smarter, you’d hole up here for a handful of years until you hit Lowgold.”

If he’d thought he was impressed before, this time his lungs froze. Gold? Even if it took him a few years, Suriel had told him he had three decades. Suddenly he didn’t feel as though he were on such a tight schedule after all.

She waved a hand at him. “That’s the sweetest view of events. Spine of the matter is, we’re not trying to catch the tide. A year or two won’t change much.”

Part of that statement stuck out to Lindon like a burning bush. We’re not trying to catch the tide. She’d included herself, as though she intended to stay with him.

That meant more to him than he was prepared to consider, carving into his heart with a sweet pain. For most of his life, even his family had only taken his side out of blood obligation. An Unsouled wasn’t headed anywhere except straight into the ground, and no one wanted to travel with him on that journey.

Now, here was someone who had already fulfilled her oath—she’d taken him out of Sacred Valley safely. He’d half-expected her to walk off and leave him the second he’d finished bandaging her wounds.

But in five days, she still hadn’t said a word of it.

Still kneeling, he bowed to her, pressing his fists together. “Gratitude,” he said.

She flushed and rubbed the back of her neck. “Well, every path has a first step. Let’s get you to Copper first. How’s that Starlotus?”

He closed his eyes and visualized his madra. He could just barely feel the power trickling through his spiritual channels, which he always imagined as a dim blue-white light running throughout his body like blood running through veins. The energy pulsed in rhythm with his breath, spinning out from his core and returning after visiting his extremities.

Before this week, his core had been located in the same place as everyone else’s: just below his navel, at his center of gravity, where people said the soul was located. Now, it was an inch to the right.

And to the left, it had a twin.

Both cores shone in his imagination, stretched like inflated bladders until they looked like the size of his fist. He could withdraw his madra into a core and cycle the other one, if he wanted to, but there was no point: both cores held an equal amount of the same madra. He’d cycled every night for the past five days, even using the parasite ring he’d stolen from the Heaven’s Glory School, and hadn’t gained an ounce of power since eating the Starlotus bud. He’d consumed one half of the flower to solidify his foundation in one core, and the other half went to the other. Now, according to Yerin, both cores had reached their capacity.

So it was time to advance.

“The flower’s madra has settled down,” he reported, eyes still shut. Though the Starlotus madra had gone down smoothly, his cores had still taken a few days to stop swirling like a pair of whirlpools. “They’re calm, they’ve absorbed everything I can give them, and I’m ready.”

His hands trembled on his knees, though he forced them to be still. Now that he was staring it in the face, he wondered if he was ready for Copper. He’d always thought that, by the time he reached this point, he would know more about the sacred arts and would be able to advance with confidence. Most people were following ancient instructions written in their Paths; the only Path he followed was the one he was making up as he went.

But those doubts were nothing next to the bone-deep hunger that gnawed at him. He didn’t just want Copper, he needed it, and his momentary misgivings couldn’t stop him.

And in front of him, he had a teacher more capable than anyone in Sacred Valley: a legendary Gold.

He exhaled carefully, inhaling again in accordance with his Foundation breathing technique. “I’m ready,” he repeated. “What do I do now?”

“Well, you somewhat squeeze it on down. Like you’re wringing water out of your clothes. Then you keep going until you’re done.”

He cracked one eye. “How do I do that?”

She spread her hands. “You somewhat, you know…” She made a fist. “Squeeze it.”

He closed his eyes again and pictured one core being squeezed, as though in the grip of an imaginary hand. Nothing happened.

“That doesn’t seem to have worked,” he said, carefully keeping any accusation from his voice.

“Well, that’s a rusty patch for you, then. You’re in your own boat now.”

He stared at her. “Is that all you can tell me?”

“First time I remember advancing, I was going from Copper to Iron. That puts me at about eight winters old. If I put this together when I was no bigger than a teacup, you ought to have it easy.” She scowled at him. “And don’t give me that look like you’re trying to stab me with your eyeballs, it’s not on my account that I never walked somebody through advancing to Copper before.”

“Forgiveness, I was only concentrating.” That wasn’t entirely true—she was supposed to be the expert. If he knew how to advance, he’d have done it already.

Once again, he closed his eyes and pictured both his cores. Madra looped out of one like web from a spider, and he withdrew it all, drawing his power back into the core. Even with energy as faint as his, he felt it when it was gone; his limbs weakened, his aches intensified, and the cool wind gained just a little more of an edge.

He focused on his core, tightening his awareness on it, and exhaled. Breathing circulated madra, and when he had finally pushed all the air out of his lungs, his spirit stilled. He focused on that one core, shutting out physical sensations, squeezing with all the pressure of his will.

Nothing changed.

He took another breath, and both cores spun lazily once more. This time, he let a little power slide out from the core on the right…but instead of taking it into his madra channels, he held it around the core like a layer of cloud.

It was a simple hunch. He could control the madra freely, as long as it was outside the core. So he used that madra like a fist to clench down on the core itself.

Lindon felt the result as pressure more than pain, as though his heart were gripped in a vice. His first panicked reaction was to give up, take a deep breath, and try again. But if he breathed in, the madra would cycle, and he’d have to start over. So, ignoring the warning pressure, he squeezed harder.

A spike of pain shot through the right side of his stomach, leading to a tingling, freezing cold that danced over his skin. But now, when he visualized both cores, the one on the right seemed a little smaller…and a little brighter.

He took that breath now, letting the madra cycle through his body and calm his nerves, then he clenched down again. The pain was sharper now, the spasm longer, the cold on his skin lingering. Wind pressed even sharper against him thanks to his sweat, which flooded out as though he’d sprung a leak.

“Yeah, you’ve got ahold of it now,” Yerin said, her excited voice close to his ear. He almost lost his concentration. “Keep ahold of it. I knew a man who stopped midway, and his organs—”