She was tempted to try it out herself in her room, but reason prevailed. It would be much smarter to try out spatial transportation with two Sages around to supervise.

Her Blood Shadow rolled inside her, and rather than resisting, Yerin let her out.

She was trying to work with Ruby, so that meant giving her some time to walk around.

The red-haired Yerin appeared in a state of obvious excitement. “This is a gem and a half! Why are we waiting around?”

Yerin found a platter of fruits that had been delivered fresh that afternoon. She wasn’t really in the mood for fruit, but it was there, so she picked one up and took a bite. “You want to move straight into the side of a mountain?”

Ruby’s brow furrowed. “Doesn’t work like that.”

“And you’re an expert?”

“Open up and sense it yourself. You don’t have to steer it, you just tell it where you want to go.”

Yerin was tempted, but she was still waiting on the Sages. Especially over the word of her Blood Shadow.

Ruby shifted from foot to foot impatiently. “Come on, let’s go to Lindon!”

Yerin stopped chewing.

She had been wary of the way the Shadow looked at Lindon for a long while now. Was that something Ruby developed on her own, or was it some embarrassing reflection of Yerin herself?

Definitely on her own, she decided.

“We can’t bring him back,” Yerin said firmly.

“You think I give one burnt hair about that?”

Yerin did not like arguing with herself at all.

“The Soul said three days, and cheers for us, three days is what we have,” Ruby continued. “We can train with him!”

Now that Yerin thought about it, she could imagine how the Blood Shadow must see Lindon. Not only had the spirit’s mind developed by copying Yerin’s own thoughts and feelings, but Lindon had been the one to pull the Shadow out of Yerin’s spirit and manifest it in the first place.

And wherever Yerin had gone, Lindon had been there too.

Other than enemies and Yerin herself, Lindon might be the only person that Ruby felt any connection to.

Even with all that, and even if the Moonlight Bridge worked, it didn’t make any sense to go. They could do their best work here.

Yerin sympathized, and though she knew she wasn’t the most compassionate person, she tried to inject some understanding into her tone. “That would be all flowers and rainbows if that were possible,” she said with a sigh. “But it’s not. We have to train with the Bridge, we can’t have it down for all three days. And I still need to try to touch the Icon.”

Ruby gave her a flat stare. “You don’t need me for that.”

And, so suddenly that Yerin was caught off-guard, the Moonlight Bridge in Yerin’s spirit activated.

She tried to wrestle control back, but in a flash of sparkling white light, Ruby was gone. Yerin felt emptier, as though a big chunk of her spirit had vanished.

And left her alone, in her room, holding a half-eaten pear.

The black dragon slammed into the rocky ground. Lindon rode on top of it as it crashed, his hunger arm latched onto black scales.

The Heart of Twin Stars churned away inside of him, sending black dragon madra to his Blackflame core. He was assaulted by memories, but only flashes, a confusing jumble that he left to Dross to sort out.

The one impression that seeped through clearly, too strong for Dross to suppress, was an overwhelming fear. The black dragon panicked as it tried to escape from the hungry thing on its back, all the way to the end.

Life and blood essence flooded into him, but they did little good. This dragon had only been an Underlord.

He walked away from the corpse, still cycling, as another presence tried to seize control of his spirit. His fingers twitched and his body shuddered, but the will of the black dragon was easily overcome.

Lindon had been practicing.

The dragon’s chest rose and fell as it lay in the dirt. Whatever uneasy truce kept the other Heralds and their factions from collapsing on Fury, Lindon didn’t want to push it too far.

Then again, he wasn’t so concerned that he intended to stop.

[Oh, here’s an interesting tidbit!] Dross said excitedly. [This dragon is a regular critic of the gold dragons’ rule, he had no desire to be here, and he adopted several human children. Isn’t that amazing?]

“He’ll recover,” Lindon said defensively. “And it’s not like I can pick my targets.”

He needed a black dragon’s madra for the current step in his advancement.

Not to add to his core, exactly; his Blackflame core had reached its limit just as his pure core had. As far as he could determine, he had reached the very peak of what an Underlord could reach.

The Consume technique in his arm made his advancement so quick that it sometimes brought tears to his eyes. It was addictive, draining power from others and making it his own.

Which still left the bottleneck to Overlord.

He sat cross-legged and meditated, tracking down the intentions embedded in his madra.

More than just their aspects, madra carried deeper impressions. His Blackflame madra felt angry, aggressive, and his pure madra—since his bond with Little Blue—felt like a cleansing tide.

There was a connection there, and he was sure that diving into it would provide his Overlord revelation.

[You already know what the link is,] Dross insisted. [I’m telling you, your Overlord revelation is that you are my host body, born to carry me around.]

Lindon stretched out his spiritual perception, reaching not further, but deeper. The Path of Black Flame burned away the physical form, and Twin Stars now wiped away the spirit. Those had clear similarities: he could see them as direct opposites, one destroying the body and the other the spirit.

Pure madra even had parallels to water madra, which he’d known since he was a little boy begging a bowl of madra to freeze. Seven Principles called it the Principle of Fluidity, but he found it made a nice balancing contrast to Blackflame.

Which would have been perfect, if those were his only two sources of madra.

But his hunger arm was in the mix too, a ravenous presence at the end of his elbow. Northstrider had even emphasized discovering the common ground between his three madra types.

Maybe Blackflame devoured the material, pure madra devoured the spiritual, and hunger madra devoured everything?

That sounded like it could work, but Lindon found himself pushing for some confirmation. He sensed no trembling in the aura around him, as he had when he’d discovered his Underlord revelation, but he did feel something.

There was a deeper principle, a concept tickling his mind like a whisper just out of hearing.

He concentrated harder on his spiritual sense, pushing harder, trying to break through a barrier he didn’t understand. He strained to focus on all three types of his madra at once, drilling down, forcing a connection…

A crackling noise and a bright light filled the dusty clearing.

Lindon rolled to his feet, Blackflame running through him and dragon’s breath kindling in his left hand. He hadn’t felt anyone nearby, but he’d left himself open for an ambush by focusing his perception inward.

Stupid, he berated himself. He had wanted to chase down a moment of inspiration as soon as possible, but he should have at least gone back to shelter.

Yerin stumbled out of the light.