“Excuse my ignorance, Cousin, but has Elder Whisper blessed this hunt?”

Teris' ugly look was the only confirmation Lindon needed. Elder Whisper did occasionally allow the hunting of snowfoxes, but only under carefully controlled conditions. He most certainly would not tolerate three young Coppers running down a snowfox at the foot of Yoma Mountain.

Whisper was the reason the symbol of the Wei clan was a white fox.

But even his eyes couldn't see everything. Myth said the meat of a snowfox would strengthen the madra of those following the Path of the White Fox, as virtually everyone in the Wei clan did.

There was no logical reason it should be true, as far as Lindon knew, but many believed it. So Elder Whisper had therefore banned all hunting of snowfoxes without his explicit permission.

Teris formed a fist, and the air around it rippled as he gathered his power. “Are you being impertinent, Unsouled? I don’t like that look on your face.”

Lindon's heart tightened. Teris was only Copper, but the shield on his badge showed he was an Enforcer: born to focus his madra into physical strength. He could kill Lindon with a blow, even if he probably wouldn’t. Murdering someone below your level was an unspeakable shame. If Teris killed him, and the news made it back to the clan, Teris would remain a dishonored pariah for the rest of his days.

But there was something uniquely terrifying about facing down someone capable of caving in his ribs with a punch. No one was close enough to save him.

Lindon bowed again, and spoke even more humbly. “This one begs your pardon, Copper Cousin. Please, this one has gathered a few chips together, and it would be an honor if you would take them.”

He glanced up to gauge if Teris would take the bribe, but the Copper boy was looking past Lindon. Something had grabbed his attention.

And unless the snowfox had returned, there was only one thing back there. The ancestral tree.

Though it was a cool spring day, sweat gathered ran down Lindon’s back.

“What is this script, Unsouled?”

“This one is practicing his scripting, Copper Cousin. At the request of this one’s mother.”

Hopefully invoking his mother would grant him some mercy; unlike Lindon, Wei Shi Seisha provided a valuable function to the clan. She was widely respected among all the families.

Teris gave an ugly laugh, taking a step closer. “Oh, you look like you want to fight. Did you want to fight me?”

Lindon’s parents were…statuesque. They had both once been famous fighters, and he had the misfortune of inheriting their physique with none of their actual strength. He was taller than anyone else his age, broader across the shoulders, and people often thought they saw aggression when he thought he was being perfectly friendly.

He bowed even more deeply, hoping Teris would see it as a cowardly show of fear. Which, of course, it was.

Teris did ignore him, which was a success, but unfortunately he returned his attention to the tree. “You've set me behind on my hunt, so it's only fair that I set you behind on your practice.”

Lindon figured out what the other boy intended when Teris drew his fist back. “Stop!” Lindon shouted, but it wasn't soon enough.

Teris had not yet reached Iron, so his body wasn’t actually any stronger than Lindon’s. But Enforcers bolstered their strength with madra. When Teris drew on his Copper madra, he would be stronger than other sacred artists of his level, tougher, and faster. His punch landed on the ancient fruit tree, shattering the bark and leaving the imprint of his fist in the wood. The impact echoed through the forest, smashing Lindon's script.

Teris stepped away. Behind him, the tree bent in the middle. Deceptively slowly, it splintered and fell apart.

Icy cold shivered through Lindon's body, and it had nothing to do with the loss of the fruit. His odds of survival had just plummeted sharply.

“You idiot,” Lindon half-whispered. Teris froze.

“What did you say?”

Lindon dropped to his knees, hurriedly scratching symbols into the dirt. His tablet didn’t cover this script, so he only hoped he could remember correctly. “You've killed us both. That was an ancestral tree.”

Teris frowned at him, then looked at the broken trunk. Precious seconds passed as he digested the news.

Lindon had almost finished the circle, scratching frantically at the dirt with his finger. “Get behind the circle!” he shouted.

Then the Remnant rose from the tree’s corpse.

It was made from lines of vivid purple, like color sketched on the world by a celestial painter. The Remnant was thin and free of details like bark or leaves, as though it were the purple skeleton of the tree that once had been.

In reality, it was more like a ghost. A spirit without a vessel.

Remnants were constructions of pure madra, freed from their physical bodies. Whenever a sacred artist of enough power died, he left his soul behind him as a living force.

If Lindon died, his madra would dissipate into the vital aura in the atmosphere. The same would go for ordinary animals, or even Copper-level sacred artists. But sacred beasts and ancestral trees were on another level altogether. It would take an Iron- or Jade-stage practitioner to face one of these in combat.

And before Teris could react to what he was seeing, the purple tree-Remnant clenched a branch like a massive fist and slammed it into the boy's midsection. The young Copper flipped through the air before landing facedown on the forest floor.

Wei Mon Teris’ clothes tore where the tree-Remnant had struck him, but he was on his feet and stumbling away within seconds. Even in a possibly lethal situation like this one, Lindon had time for a brief flash of jealousy. A blow like that would have killed or crippled him, but Teris must have been drawing on his madra. He scurried off like a roach.

The Copper ran deeper in the woods without a glance back, rushing in the direction his friends had gone. Lindon fought the urge to hurry, finishing the last rune in the circle, knowing that precision was his defense rather than speed.

It was impossible to calmly take his time as the Remnant lumbered over to him, a skeletal ghost of purple madra in the shape of a leafless tree. Its branches swayed as it lurched forward in a pathetic parody of a man’s walk.

Lindon put his thumb to the final rune and closed his eyes.

He visualized his madra as a blue-white light, moving along lines like veins all through his body. He sped the flow of the energy, cycling it according to the Foundation technique he’d learned as a child. This technique was supposed to eventually become the basis for an entire Path, but Lindon had never progressed further. Any child in the Wei clan could do as much with their madra as Lindon.

But he could activate scripts.

The circle flared to life at the touch of his power, each rune burning with the same blue-white energy he’d seen in his mind.

When the Remnant loomed over the script, reaching out a long branch like a grasping hand, it passed through the light easily. No barrier stopped its movement. Lindon hopped backwards, out of the circle, and the Remnant stepped forward to follow him.

Lindon’s limitations were many, but he knew them well. He could never empower a script to block the Remnant of an ancestral tree directly, at least not with a script as crude as this one. But he could draw the Remnant in. Once inside, the spirit’s own madra would power the circle.

And the Remnant was much stronger than he was.