“Am I?” Lindon asked. It was the question he had been afraid to ask Dross.

No matter how many times Dross had slipped in his own opinion.

“That is a matter for scholarly debate,” Eithan answered. “In the past, the concept of a Sage was much more…fluid…than it is today. When manifesting an Icon, it is very important to understand the significance of your madra and to sense it deeply. Equally important is some kind of technique to regularly train your willpower. For years. An exercise that pushes your focus and concentration ever further, and that most people would give up or abandon for easier trails.”

The Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel.

Eithan’s head was sweeping back and forth, though Lindon was certain he didn’t need to watch anything with his eyes, and Lindon followed Eithan’s bloodline power with his own spiritual sense. He was searching inside the chests that flowed by in the crowd.

“Now, the specific Icon you manifest depends not only on the nature of your madra currently, but on a concept that has always been core to your identity. Even in childhood. Ah, here we are.”

Eithan slipped into the crowd, had a quick exchange with a startled-looking woman who had a bird nesting on her shoulder, and then came back to Lindon with a box a little bigger than his hand.

Lindon was uncertain whether he had asked the woman for this box or distracted her and then stolen it.

The chest cracked and revealed that it was filled with a smooth, white, lumpy rock.

Wintersteel ore.

It flew into Eithan’s palm and began slowly melting.

“Some ancient cultures, as you are aware, had a custom of wearing badges with symbols carved into them. Originally, those symbols represented the Icon that the wearer aimed to embody.”

Lindon’s real fingers ran across the halfsilver hammer badge on his chest, his fingertips tingling at the touch of the madra-disrupting metal.

“In those days,” Eithan went on, “Sage was not considered its own rank, but rather a separate mark of distinction that some Lords and Ladies achieved. Different materials were used for different cultures, but often Heralds wore badges of red and Monarchs of blue.”

Lindon thought back to his collection of badges. At least that was one minor mystery solved.

“Later, when the concept of a Sage became popularized as a stage of advancement in its own right, they began to make badges from a material that could only be worked by will.”

He held up the ore, which he had finished molding.

It was now a round, palm-sized wintersteel badge. A duplicate of the one on Lindon’s chest, only with no hammer.

Lindon took the badge. “I manifested the Void Icon.”

Eithan nodded to him. “Ah, but what symbolizes nothingness? A blank badge looks the same as one with no Icon at all, so rather than a picture, the ancients chose to write one character.”

At Eithan’s will, lines appeared on the wintersteel badge, etching out one familiar word in the old language: Empty.

Or, as they would say in Sacred Valley: Unsouled.

With one foreleg, Orthos shoved a severed wooden beam out of his way.

A fragment of pale light madra shone on the ground, the remains of a broken Forger technique. It had mostly dissolved to essence in the hours that had passed since the battle here, but a piece no bigger than the tip of his teeth had survived.

The splinter of madra slithered toward him like a glowing white snake before it, too, melted into particles and disappeared.

Sometimes he thought that everyone here practiced a light Path. What a waste. Light was pathetic next to fire.

Only that morning, this building had been an outpost of the Wei clan. In its basement was a training ground for light and dream aura, which was why Orthos had been keeping an eye on it. It was the perfect place for Kelsa to advance.

He had been considering burning the place down himself to claim the basement, but in the end someone else had done it for him.

The outpost was reduced to a pile of kindling, leaving the basement undefended. Orthos had come as soon as he’d felt the battle, but by the time he’d arrived, the attackers had left.

He didn’t know who had attacked the Wei clan or why, but he had his guess.

It was one of the invaders.

Shortly before his arrival in Sacred Valley, two other outsiders had punched through the defenses of Heaven’s Glory and gone into hiding. They hid from the three clans and four schools, just as Orthos and Kelsa did, so he’d never met the invaders himself.

But he was starting to suspect he knew them.

This was the closest he’d ever come to them, and the feeling of this leftover madra stoked his suspicions. He couldn’t be certain, but this felt like Stellar Spear madra.

Someone from the Jai clan was here in Sacred Valley.

Before he could continue poking around the ruined building, he felt a new surge of power from underground. Orthos grunted in satisfaction. The Path of the White Fox had a new Jade.

It was about time. He had spent months helping Kelsa attain a real Iron body, which would have been infinitely easier if she hadn’t advanced to Iron already. Retraining was always harder than learning the right way the first time.

Compared to getting her the Skyhunter Iron body, pushing Kelsa to Jade had been easy.

The trap door to the basement slammed open, releasing a gust of dream and light aura that traced phantom images in the air.

Kelsa emerged from downstairs, wearing a fresh robe. Her black hair was soaking wet, plastered to her head and neck.

He had left her with spare clothes and several buckets of warm water. Advancing to Jade was usually a mess.

She radiated satisfaction as she reached the top of the stairs. “Apologies for the wait, Orthos. Now we can begin.”

Orthos hated waiting around for no reason, but he wondered if impatience ran in this family.

“You just earned your eyes, and now you want to stare into the sun.” Orthos chomped into the end of the fallen timber. It had a nice singe to it that gave it a pleasant charred flavor.

A shiver passed through his spirit as Kelsa clumsily scanned him with her newborn spiritual sense. “I’ll need to practice, of course, but now I won’t slow you down if it comes to a fight.”

No matter how many times Orthos explained the difference in sacred arts outside the Valley, Kelsa didn’t truly understand.

She couldn’t, really. Not until she left and saw for herself.

“That’s the first step,” Orthos grumbled. “We still need help.”

She looked to him with a stern expression. “I’ve left my mother to suffer for too long already.”

She really had been patient all these months, training under his direction and preparing herself to reach Jade. But now that she had, he would have to sit on her to stop her from running off to rescue her mother from Heaven’s Glory.

But she learned a few new techniques and advanced one stage and thought herself invincible. Orthos knew better; it would be easier to burn the Heaven’s Glory school to the ground than it would be to safely free a prisoner.

They needed help.

As they left the ruined outpost, they continued bickering. Kelsa’s father couldn’t help, and no one else in camp met Orthos’ standards. Almost no one in the Valley did.

As they walked, he kept his spiritual perception extended, hunting for the Jai clan invader. He would be nearby, most likely under a veil, but Orthos hoped to feel him slip. Kelsa did the same, though her perception was wobbly and inconsistent with her lack of experience.