She cut off in a rustle of cloth and a whispering rasp that said she’d stood up and drawn her weapon, and Lindon’s eyes almost opened before he forced them shut again. The core he’d compressed was fluctuating now, beating in an irregular rhythm, and it took all his concentration to wrap another layer of madra around it.

He could feel that she was right, though she’d cut off before the important part. He tried not to listen to her footsteps as she padded around him, facing some danger. If he left his core alone, it would go wild in his body. In the worst case, it could tear him apart from the inside.

He flexed his madra again, and the core reduced in size by another layer. He shivered as icy needles pricked him all over, this time even in the depths of his ears, under his fingernails, in the back of his eyes. He shuddered, but forced his breathing to stay steady. Though he had never followed a Path, he’d practiced his cycling technique for years. His madra didn’t slip.

After the pain in his ears, he heard nothing but a high-pitched whine, though he felt the impact in the ground as something landed next to him. Once again, he focused completely on his core.

If it had been the size of his fist before, now it was only as big as Suriel’s marble, and brighter. The larger core seemed hazier by comparison, less substantial, as though it were half a dream. The Copper core was brighter, more vivid. He hardly had to work at all to visualize it, floating inside him like a star.

Once he’d wrapped it more thoroughly in a tight fist of madra, he squeezed one final time. Yerin’s voice came to him then, though she sounded so distant that he couldn’t make out her words, and he couldn’t be bothered to spare the attention anyway. His whole body stung and tingled, more painfully than before, until each of his muscles twitched. His core was resisting this time, like a nut unwilling to crack, and he had to bend all of his will and all his madra to push.

His core snapped down to a tiny pinprick of light, and he shuddered violently. An icy hand slapped the back of his skull, and he passed out.

He woke only an instant later, or so it seemed to him. The fire flickered with sullen red light, just as it had the last time he’d seen it, and its heat lay on him like an oppressive blanket. He began to move away, only to come to two startling discoveries.

First, as he lay sprawled out on the ground, his injuries should have been torturing him. He’d spent the last four nights snatching only the occasional handful of sleep because of the pain in his back, his ribs, his limbs. All that was gone, replaced with an unsteady weakness, as though he’d slipped into someone else’s body. Despite the occasional cold tingle across his skin, just like the ones he’d sensed while advancing, he felt whole.

Second, there was something wrong with the fire. Spectral red lights drifted around the blaze in an orbit, like flames that had left their candles behind, growing in number at the center of the heat. He had to focus strangely to see the phantom campfire; it felt more like watching his core than something physical, as though he saw with his spirit instead of with his eyes.

Even when he moved his gaze away, the world was awash in color. The ground beneath him ran with veins of bright yellow as far down as he could see, each wriggling slowly like lightning trapped in jelly. He was seeing through the ground itself somehow, which gave him a dizzying impression like he was trapped on the outer membrane of an endless ocean, and he could fall through any second.

The logs in the fire sprouted phantom limbs of green that slowly blackened as they burned, and a furious red current ran beneath his own skin, as though his blood had started to glow.

He tried to sit up, but instead he curled like he’d pulled the wrong string on a puppet. After a few awkward attempts, he finally flopped one arm underneath him and pushed up, muscles trembling. He had to fight his way up to a seated position. He felt as though he’d wrung out each of his muscles like dishrags, but advancing usually left a sacred artist immobilized for a while. He’d recover soon.

Above all, the weakness was proof that he’d made it. He was Copper. By all reason, Copper should be the first, unremarkable step on anyone’s journey, but he felt as though he’d been climbing a mountain for his entire life and only now had reached a ledge.

The thought of Copper sparked a memory, and he snapped his head up again, sparkling with excitement. If the biggest advantage of Copper was the ability to cycle vital aura from heaven and earth, that meant…

The bright ghosts of his surroundings had vanished. It was easy to lose sight of them if he wasn’t focusing, as though they only existed when he held his eyes a certain way. As soon as he concentrated, looking beyond, the vivid phantoms returned.

The floating red flames in and around the campfire felt as though they meant heat, like they were symbols written in a language he had just learned how to read. When he realized what he was looking at, his heart leapt in pure joy.

This was fire aura. He’d always wondered what it looked like. This was the power that everyone absorbed and Rulers controlled.

He corrected himself before his thoughts had gone too far: out here, anyone could learn Ruler techniques. It had nothing to do with your birth. Everyone was a Ruler, and a Forger, and so on, but no one was Unsouled. The possibilities were dizzying.

He still didn’t understand some basic mysteries—his family harvested light aura, not fire, but he didn’t know how to spot the two, much less tell them apart—but the fact remained that he could see aura all around him. With training, he could draw the aura into his own madra, changing its nature and adding to its power.

The key to true strength lay all around him; he was awash in an infinite ocean of treasure.

He clawed for his pack, ready to write down his impressions before he forgot them. He pulled out a loosely bound bundle of yellowed papers that had once been nothing more than the technique manual for the Heart of Twin Stars technique. Now it was his instruction manual for the Path of Twin Stars.

As the founder of a Path, he had to make careful notes on every step. If he traveled as far down this Path as Suriel had suggested he could, his Path manuals could guide young sacred artists for generations.

When he’d finished scribbling down his thoughts—about squeezing his core, about how long it had taken him to cycle the Starlotus bud, about the fact that only one of his cores had reached Copper while the other felt the same as before—he realized the rest of the camp was absolutely quiet.

He didn’t hear anything from Yerin.

In his excitement, he’d forgotten the sounds he’d heard while advancing: Yerin drawing her weapon, something landing heavily next to him.

Lindon glanced to the side, where a ragged spike of Forged green madra had been embedded into the dirt. It was longer than his finger, and judging from the noise he’d heard in addition to the shallow crater blasted in the ground, it must have impacted with significant force.

He scrambled to his feet, swaying with dizzy weakness and shivering from the cold. Something had attacked him, and he hadn’t even known. In a moment, he was sure that fact would seize his heart with fear.

For now, he didn’t have time to consider the fact that someone had been inches from killing him before he could react. There was a threat out there somewhere.

And Yerin was gone.

Chapter 2

Yerin’s unwelcome guest shifted around her waist, where she'd wrapped it as a belt and tied it into a great ribbon of a knot. Just as her master had shown her. The Remnant hissed, flickering with blood madra until its sullen red glow threatened to give her away.