She fiddled with the hilt of her master's sword, restless. She wanted to be let out, to go...

To go and do what?

She wasn't sure what she wanted to do, but she couldn't sit here anymore. The fight earlier had gotten her blood flowing. And speaking of blood, her Blood Shadow was as riled up as she was, seething inside her soul. They both wanted a challenge.

She found herself thinking back to the Blackflame Trials, back in Serpent's Grave. She'd had a challenge then, something to try and overcome every day.

And she'd pushed herself forward to meet that challenge. With Lindon.

Images of the fight with the Skysworn rose up in her head. Compared to her memories of him in the Blackflame Trials, Lindon today was like an adult compared to a child. Only a month or so out of her sight, and he'd undergone a heaven-and-earth-shaking change.

He was strong now. Too strong.

He'd given her a brief outline of what had happened to him in Ghostwater, but she still wasn't sure about the details. Whatever had happened, it had rebuilt him from head to toe. And he had kept her from joining him.

She'd always hoped that he would catch up with her one day, but it had happened so fast.

Her Blood Shadow surged inside of her again, and she kept it suppressed with the strength of her madra. It still disgusted her, but it was supposed to be a ticket to great power. It hadn't done much for her so far, but maybe that was her way forward. Her personal Ghostwater.

She shook herself. It wasn’t like her to worry too much about someone else. She should focus on herself and her path to Underlord. That was certainly what Lindon was doing.

A knock at the door shook her back to reality, and she rose with Goldsign blades poised over each shoulder. A quick scan, and she knew who it was, though she was surprised to sense him here.

She felt oddly guilty as she opened the door for Lindon, as though he might somehow have heard her thoughts.

Maybe he was feeling the same way, because he wore an expression like he was smuggling weapons under his outer robe. He looked uneasy, which—on his severe face—made him look like he was plotting a murder. He ducked inside before she could say anything, glancing behind him.

He grabbed the door from her and slammed it shut, pulling a small object from his pocket: a nail. Without a word, he started scratching runes into the door.

“You kick Gwei between the legs and run, or what?” Yerin asked. It was helping her mood to see Lindon acting this way; if there had been something really wrong, she would have heard explosions. And he wouldn't have left Orthos and Mercy up there on their own. Which meant he was getting himself all worked up for something small.

Still, she was curious. Maybe it was a big problem. She could hope.

When he'd finished his script-circle, he ran some pure madra through it, and the runes erupted in light. The wood creaked at the force of the madra running through it, and some splinters flew off into the air, but Yerin's spiritual sense was suppressed.

Lindon relaxed, slipping the nail back into his pocket. “Apologies, but I think there’s an owl following me.”

He turned from the door to her, and suddenly Yerin was conscious of how small this room really was. It wasn't much of a room at all, more like a closet—she'd piled bags of uncooked rice into the corner in order to give her enough room to sit and cycle without cramping her Goldsigns. The training sword she'd jammed into the wall took up half the length of the space.

Her face was on the level of Lindon's chest, and she looked up at him, standing over her. The heat from his body filled the space, and the quiet aura radiating from his spirit was stronger than it had ever been.

He looked down, eyes intense, and her heartbeat picked up. He was the same old Lindon, but the strength in his soul made him feel older, more reliable, and somehow new, like she had taken her eyes off him for a second and he had grown up. And he was so close.

Lindon stretched his hand out, reaching for her face. She stared at the hand approaching, thoughts whirling in place. Her heart hammered harder.

But his hand moved past her, reaching the side of the wall. She turned her eyes to follow him.

A door opened in midair.

She let out a heavy breath as the space appeared, her face suddenly hotter than before. She was both relieved and somehow disappointed, but she didn’t examine either emotion too closely. She shoved them to the back of her mind, where she determined to forget them.

Instead, she focused on the most shocking aspect of this whole situation: “Where in heaven’s name did you get a void key?”

It was like looking into a closet that hadn’t been there before. A closet containing Lindon’s belongings; she recognized the box he’d once kept his Thousand-Mile Cloud in, but most of the rest of it was new to her. The space was packed with jars, bottles, and vials of all shapes and sizes, though they looked like he’d scavenged them from a trash heap. Little Blue stared at her from within a bundle of firewood, and there was a bone-handled axe leaning up against the wall.

Lindon hurriedly held up a hand, keeping his voice low. “The script doesn’t stop sound. Could you grab that closest jar for me?”

Close to the opening, beside Yerin’s feet, was a clay jar covered in hastily painted scripts that looked similar to the one Lindon had carved into the door. She bent down and scooped it up, and then the portal instantly vanished.

Without instructions, Yerin pulled the lid off of the jar, and Lindon didn’t say anything to stop her. Blue light rushed out from within, and she sensed the rich power of a high-grade elixir.

Her eyes widened, and she dipped a finger in, pressing a drop to her tongue.

It tasted like sweet spring water, but the energy within was enough to shock her spirit into action. It nourished her soul directly, her madra rushing through its channels.

“I don’t know what Naru Gwei would do if he sensed this,” Lindon said. “And Mercy…well, I don’t know her too well yet.”

“This…” she wasn’t sure she had the words. “This is like something my master would drink. With a sword to my throat, I couldn’t even guess how much this is worth.”

It took her another second to remember that she’d seen more bottles inside the void key.

Lindon’s eyes sparkled at her reaction, but he pretended to be casual. “It’s yours. As far as I’m concerned, you can drink everything I brought out. I had much more than this in Ghostwater.”

Yerin pushed the jar back at him. “I’m not too polite to take a gift, but this is brainless. You’ve got two cores to fill, and one of them is still Highgold.”

“That’s why you should have it. If you got the same chances I did, you’d be Underlord by now.”

A second later, he cleared his throat and added, “Besides, I doubt you’ll need all of it. Once you reach the peak of Truegold, I can still drink whatever’s left.”

Yerin slowly replaced the lid, unwilling to meet his eyes. She was ashamed of the tracks her thoughts had taken before he’d shown up; only a few weeks by herself, and she started thinking like she was alone again.

“Will it not work for you?” he asked anxiously. “I thought it would, but I couldn’t be sure. Did the Sword Sage give you something better?”

Yerin ran a hand over her face as though to check what expression she was making. “No, sorry, my brain had run off without me. Had to pull it back.” She slipped the jar into her outer robe—it was a little big for her pocket, so it would bulge out, but it wouldn’t be a problem as long as she didn’t fight. “You know I’ll put it to good use.”