The orus fruit treasure had long vanished, its power incorporated into his own, and he no longer felt the tingling lightning in his core. He felt no stronger, but his results spoke for themselves: he could practice with Kelsa for hours, using the Empty Palm ten or twelve times, before he gave in to fatigue. And that was due to his sister’s relentless beatings more than spiritual exhaustion.

Three days before the Festival, only a few hours before noon, Lindon spotted an opening in his sister’s stance. He took it, driving an Empty Palm at her belly.

She knocked his wrist wide, stepping in to put a fist into his side…and froze, her elbow cocked back, loose strands of hair drifting in front of her face. Her eyes were fixed on something behind him, beyond him, and he knew at once something was wrong.

“Kelsa?” he asked, taking a careful step back. She didn’t respond, and if he couldn’t hear her breaths, he wouldn’t have known whether she was still alive. In fact, she was still breathing in rhythm according to her Foundation technique.

Her eyes still glazed over, she folded up and sat on the grass. Her hands rested on her lap, her breathing deepened, and tiny balls of foxfire began to dance in the air around her.

When Lindon realized what was happening, he ran for his parents.

He found them together, outside their house, his father cleaning a boar as his mother did something similar to a Remnant. A bucket of bloody guts sat next to a scripted basin containing loops of light and color. Claws of Forged madra slowly fizzed into nonexistence next to slabs of meat leaking blood.

Lindon skidded to a halt in the yard. “Kelsa’s advancing to Iron,” he announced, then he ran back the other direction.

His mother overtook him in seconds and his father wasn’t far behind her, hobbling on his cane faster than Lindon could run. They both reached Kelsa before he did.

Sweat already soaked her training robes, plastering her hair to her neck. Her breath came in labored gasps, and each exhale was tinged with White Fox madra. Phantom images danced in the vital aura around her, complete with sounds; half-formed, unrecognizable ghosts that screamed, laughed, growled, and muttered as they were born of dreams and light.

White Fox madra swirled around her in a cyclone of illusion and color. Purple and white predominated, but every color flickered through, like bright-scaled fish flitting in and out of the light. Purple sparks twisted in the air, cast off Kelsa as though from a bonfire.

Nearby, the underbrush rustled, and a snowfox peeked its snout out to watch. It was young—only one tail trailed behind it in the bushes—but it was still drawn to the madra it sensed was so similar to its own. According to legend, the first Wei Patriarch’s ascension to Jade had drawn snowfoxes from all over Sacred Valley in a pilgrimage that lasted three days.

Kelsa’s eyes drifted closed and then snapped open, blazing with purple-edged light. All around her, vague dreams bloomed from the earth like squirming flowers.

“Second stage,” his mother noted, scribbling as she watched.

“She might be as fast as I was,” Jaran said, a proud smile on his twisted lips. “Copper to Iron in less than an hour, and no worse for it.”

“Then we should prepare for the third stage,” Seisha said.

“Prepare?”

“Not us,” she said, with a significant glance at Lindon. “You should leave, son.”

Lindon rarely defied his parents, but this was an exceptional chance. He’d never seen anyone advance to Iron before, and this was his sister. “I’d learn more if I stayed to the end.”

“Too dangerous,” Jaran said, hobbling over to take him by the arm.

Then a ripple of purple-white madra pulsed out from Kelsa, and Lindon learned what his father meant.

White Fox Forgers used the Fox Mirror technique to create illusionary copies of exact appearance but no real substance; some built false walls, or hid in fake trees, or adopted the clothes of their enemies. Legend said the Patriarch could create a twin of himself as indistinguishable as his own reflection.

Enforcers kept their madra close, even inside, and White Fox Enforcers deceived their opponents by hiding their steps or subtle movements in a skill called the Foxtail. Their punches looked slightly longer than they were, their steps shorter, their motions faster, their reactions slower. In battle, where victory or defeat could ride on the accuracy of split-second judgments, Enforcers of the Wei clan could be the most frustrating enemies.

Strikers cast their madra out to use on others, and White Fox Strikers learned to manipulate foxfire. They could make a target feel like he was burning to death, or illuminate a target with a spark only they could see, or cloud an enemy’s vision with phantom lights. The Striker technique was considered the weakest in the Path of the White Fox, but nonetheless it had certain advantages. Foxfire did no real damage, but it did inflict pain, and its purple-and-white flames could not be extinguished.

Rulers worked differently. Rather than manipulating their own madra, they used their madra as a catalyst to control vital aura. As for Rulers on the Path of the White Fox, they directed aura of light and dreams to trap their enemies in a Fox Dream.

As Kelsa’s power flew out of control, Lindon’s vision fuzzed as though every surface crawled with ants. One of the nearby bushes seized the ground with one branch and hauled itself out of the earth, its exposed roots trailing dirt. It scooted toward him, pale blue cloudbells bobbing. Shadows giggled and whispered, flinching away when his gaze moved to them. They scuttled away in shy groups to spy on him from another angle.

One of the clouds dipped down from the sky to look him in the eye, until his vision was filled with cottony white. Once it was pleased with whatever it saw in him, the cloud left on its merry journey.

He recoiled after a single glance at his parents’ faces. The scar at the side of his father’s lip expanded until the man’s face was only one giant mass of tissue, pale and puckered. His mother’s eyes glowed, and every word dropped from her lips with the weight of heaven’s decree. The earth shook as she spoke, and Lindon clapped his hands over his ears.

When the earth righted itself, he found that he was curled up fifty feet away from where he’d started, and his hands weren’t over his ears at all. They were contorted into claws, and his wrists were firmly pinned against his chest by his father.

“You won’t tear your eyes out now, will you?” Jaran asked.

Lindon shook his head, too afraid to say anything. He had hated the times when Kelsa injected her madra into him, but she hadn’t ignited any vital aura then. His delusions had been much more detailed this time, like an utterly convincing dream. Last time, shapes and colors had lurched around until he couldn’t tell where anything was, but this time…he had seen a plant uproot itself in full color, and now the cloudbell bush sat planted as solidly as ever.

“Even you can develop a defense against this sort of thing,” Seisha said, though most of her attention was on her daughter. “Your spirit has supreme control inside your own body.”

Lindon was very interested in learning more about that, but for now, one thing mattered more. “How is she?”

It wasn’t common, but there was always the possibility of disaster during advancement. When someone was interrupted while advancing, or tried to advance during a fight, or used elixirs to force an advancement early, they could end up facing a backlash. Their madra could turn against them, killing them or removing their ability to practice the sacred arts.