A School disciple would be well within his rights to strike an ordinary clansman down with no explanation. If Lindon's fight offended the senses of the honored guests overhead, they could kill him from where they sat. The Patriarch would more than likely apologize for wasting their time.

A hand rested on his shoulder, and Lindon turned to see his father, face twisted in disgust. “Wipe your mouth,” he said. “We can't have the Kazan seeing you like this.”

Lindon hurriedly swiped at his lips with the back of his sleeve. “Apologies, Father. I did not realize the esteemed guests from the Schools would be in attendance today.”

“Ah, well, best not to shame us then. Though there are worse things than a clean death.”

Seisha pushed him aside, drudge still floating over her shoulder. “Keep your eyes open. Learn what you can. However it turns out today, it's not the end of your path.”

Behind her mother, Kelsa nodded. “Don't push yourself too hard. If they shame you too badly, I'll pay them back in the Iron trials.”

Lindon looked at his family. Each of them had shown up for a word before the matches, which was more than he expected or deserved. He was warmed by the mere fact that they had tried, and he dipped his head to show his gratitude.

But the warmth was balanced by cold knowledge: none of them expected him to succeed. Even his mother, who knew he planned to cheat. Even his sister, who had helped him train. Even his father, who led him to speak with the First Elder and leverage an additional reward. None of them actually believed he could do it.

In the end, he could only rely on himself.

There was an elaborate welcome ceremony involving the booming voice of the Patriarch, the blessing of each of the four Schools, and a parade of illusory snowfoxes from the Wei clan elders on the sidelines. Lindon watched none of it. His attention was inside, following the blue-white energy of his madra as it traveled through the complex network of lines inside his body. He guided it, matching it to his breathing, purifying the energy. Cycling it.

When the other children on his bench stood, he was ready.

There were hundreds of Foundation children participating, and he was fortunate—or unfortunate—enough to be in the first batch. He and fifteen others walked onto the stone stage, as directed by an elder of the Wei clan. He walked into a square, an eighth of the stage, against a boy with the jewelry of the Li clan. The boy looked no more than ten, and his eyes were wide as he took in the size of his opponent.

A few laughs drifted Lindon's way from the Li and Kazan sections, and he imagined them noticing the fifteen-year-old with the wooden badge. It didn't hurt as much as he'd expected.

He and the boy bowed to one another even as the other seven pairs did the same. A purple star flared in the air above them, created by a White Fox technique, and the elder's voice filled the arena. “Begin!”

Lindon stepped forward, bending to get low enough, and drove an Empty Palm into the boy's stomach.

The boy fell to his knees, his spirit failing him, and cupped both hands to his gut with a look of astonishment. Lindon shoved him over the lines marking the boundary of his square.

“Winner!” the elder announced, powerful Iron lungs carrying his voice into the distance. A second after the match had started, Lindon walked away. Bands loosened on his lungs, and he felt as though he could breathe again for the first time that morning.

He wasn't doomed after all. His trump card had worked. It had worked.

When the jeers sprouted up among the audience, even among the Wei, he only smiled.

“Cheater!” someone shouted.

“Coward!”

“Trash!”

His smile became a laugh, and he walked back to the bench chuckling. Their insults couldn’t touch his sheer delight. Words were nothing, less than nothing, compared to the facts: he had used the sacred arts to overthrow another sacred artist in battle. He was winning like a Copper.

Not like an Unsouled.

He tripped a girl after an Empty Palm, and she stumbled to her hands and knees. When she started to cry, the crowd's shouting redoubled. He grinned all the way back to his seat.

In the weeks leading up to the Seven-Year Festival, he’d trained every day to deal with possible threats. What if an opponent could resist the Empty Palm? What if they had a technique they could land on him first? What if his madra was exhausted before the later rounds?

But as the sun crept past noon and Lindon defeated his fifth opponent, he realized there was one scenario he’d never prepared for: easy victory. None of these children had a countermeasure for the Empty Palm, and once their sacred arts were disabled, superior size and strength made their loss trivial.

His hidden weapon, sealed in a jar and buried beneath the stage, would stay hidden.

He hoisted a Kazan boy by the red sash, tossing him out of bounds. The Kazan section rose up in a furious sea of red and gray, but he just waved at them as he walked away from the stage.

Joy burned in his chest like a torch.

***

Wei Shi Seisha stopped watching the exhibition matches as soon as it was clear her son would win. She had expected he would; he was older than all of his opponents, and had finally found a technique he could use in spite of his deficiency. She had every confidence that he would grow into a productive member of the clan now, though once she had doubted.

She began to pace the arena, checking scripts on the conductive pillars that held the illusory images of Elder Whisper. Sometimes visitors would deface scripts like this, but the mere presence of an inspector would reduce such occurrences significantly. She had almost an hour before Lindon would have to fight an opponent at the Copper level, which was plenty of time to make at least one lap around the arena.

The first anomaly appeared when she was passing the Li clan entrance. She happened to glance between the seating sections and noticed a Li clan elder—his jewelry all gold and jade, befitting his status as a Jade-stage practitioner—slipping out the door. She paused, curious, and another Li elder followed a moment later.

Seisha reached up and tapped the side of her drudge, carrying a drop from her spirit. The construct whistled an affirmative.

Drudges were all the tools a Soulsmith required rolled into one. They could measure madra output, determine its aspects, analyze the parts of a Remnant, and even help separate that Remnant into its components with minimal loss. Soulsmithing primarily revolved around deconstructing and reconstructing Remnants to take advantage of their unique properties, and without a drudge, it was almost impossible to do so accurately. Like a surgeon operating with her hands taped together and one eye shut.

In this case, Seisha had anticipated trouble from the Li clan, and so had gone to great lengths to acquire samples from Remnants similar to the ones they'd recently captured: the teleporting rabbit, vanishing bat, and space-warping mole. Her drudge could track a Remnant based on a sample like a hound taking a scent, and while trying to track three 'scents' at once would be complex, it was worth attempting.

With a specific pattern of madra pulses, she activated the drudge's tracking feature. It complied with a burble, unfolding tiny antennae as it executed the search. Those antennae were always the first thing to decay on any drudge, so she tried to use them sparingly, as they were expensive to replace. But this was a worthy cause. If the Li clan was attempting some kind of coup on the first day of the Seven-Year Festival, she had to clip this bud before it flowered.