Ren wandered all night, jumping at every sound, suppressing his ragged breaths so as not to draw attention. By morning, his ankle had swollen up and the soreness of his feet and the gnawing in his gut and the chill in his bones warred for his attention.

But then the sun rose, and for several beautiful hours his body thawed. Once the threats of night had subsided and the night patrols of the City Watch had ended, he was able to sit down against a wall and the only problem left to him was the matter of the monster in his belly that threatened to start eating his own flesh.

He couldn’t bear it any longer. Moaning, he gripped his stomach and tried to think.

Ren put all his might into stilling his mind. He tried to let the hunger say its peace and drift off like a passing cloud. Only hunger was like a screaming petulant child—no, it was a many-clawed beast tearing at him, snarling.

Okay, drifting cloud meditation was off the table then.

His uncle Irah, the wanderer, had taught him about meditation. He’d told tall tales of monks who weren’t even cultivators but could go months without food, of hermits who would stand on one leg in a river for years, of wise men who walked through fire, and of madmen who could shape the world with their whims.

Ren had always wanted to learn the secret meditations of a cultivator or a monk or a wandering dervish. How to breathe in power and wisdom. He wanted a manual, a Master. But his uncle always laughed it off, claiming the boy was too young and the man not wise enough to teach. His uncle taught him many things, but never the path of power. He did, however, always encourage Ren to find his own path.

“If you can’t find your path, you must make one.”

Yes. Hadn’t he also said that meditation was its own kind of adventure? That you could meditate on anything, toward anything, and that both treasures and dangers lurked along that hidden path that led within.

Ren closed his eyes and breathed deep. The hunger snarled and lashed out. He breathed again, this time giving it a pat on the head. There, there, he thought at it.

The hunger settled into a whimpering whine. It was working!

Then the wind shifted. Clouds covered the sun, but Ren didn’t pay them any mind. The wind had brought something else. Something deep and warm and savory. The bakery on the corner at the end of the block had just opened its door and a smiling couple emerged carrying meat filled buns, munching as they walked.

Hunger screamed, and he was hunger. He would savage those two. He would rip off their smiles and eat them as a seasoning on the buns once he stole them. They would watch as what was theirs became his!

But another voice arose in his mind. His mother. It was the day that they’d sent him away. The day that they’d saved him and stripped him of his name in one cruel stroke of love. The day he’d lost everything. And even as she was about to be taken away, she’d wrapped her arms around his shoulders and held him tight. Even as he froze and failed to save them. Failed to do anything. She held him and cried for him. Not even for herself. For him.

“Ren, you have a good heart. I know you’ll make us proud. Don’t lose that. Don’t hurt others, don’t steal. No matter how hard it gets. It will only make things worse if you go down that path.

“You will find your way. You don’t owe us anything, but I hope someday to see you healthy and whole and happy and free my dear, sweet boy.”

She’d squeezed him tighter than he’d known she could, like she was trying to pull him through her skin and flesh and into her. She’d kissed him on the forehead, and then she’d gone with the debt collectors, holding his sister and brother as they cried. And then they were all gone.

The emptiness that day was so much deeper than this hunger, than any hunger. He could bear it. He would. Even if he was completely worthless, unable to help anyone, even himself, at least he could honor her last request.

Besides, he was too weak right now to mug anyone.

And then Ren noticed the clouds. They were long and twisted and wispy. And though he didn’t know much of anything about the world, he knew they were the kind that foretold the approach of storms.

Commotion drew Ren to a crowd that gathered along the edges of Copper River Ave, and he climbed atop a crate to see over their shoulders. A mass of red and grey and glinting steel marched into the city, a thousand boots hammering on the flagstone in unison. The people cheered and a woman cried as her husband restrained her from running out to look for her son. There weren’t many women in the parade, but even the Republic of Ardus didn’t turn away good soldiers and the few Ren saw looked even more determined than the men marching beside them.

But the infantry weren’t who he was looking for.

Metal gleamed as the sun peeked through to illuminate a group of men on giant steeds. Their armor, painted with the images of beasts, covered everything but their eyes . They were mountains. Real life heroes. The Asbar.

The masses erupted again, they’d been saving their real cheers for these men, along with the flowers that filled the air.

Reverie took Ren, and he saw a vision of himself riding into Katarn atop his own war mount. His armor polished to mirror the sun itself, raising a giant sword above his head as the people celebrated him and welcomed him home.

It was a fool's dream. He could never be one of them. All the same, he allowed the fantasy to hold him for as long as it could. For a moment, he even forgot about the aching in his gut.

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He didn’t find any food that day, and still hadn’t found a new place to sleep by the time night fell.

Weak and thin. Ren had always been scrawny, but this was the kind of weakness that ate at you. It was more than a lack of strength. He ached. His body felt like the slightest thing would shatter it.

The boy with no family name lacked the courage to go deep into the alleys that night. He didn’t have the energy to be afraid anymore, but nonetheless, some part of him knew that if he went into that maze he’d never make it out. Especially with Basher looking for him and his ankle too swollen to run on.

So he stayed in the shallow shadows, the alleys that bordered streets and neighborhoods. Drunks stumbled home, privileged assholes ushered young ladies into carriages, and Ren sighed as the rain started to fall. It began slow, just a few light drops, but the air pressed in, moist and surprisingly warm, the wet kiss before a storm.

The rain built steadily over the minutes that passed, and he found himself in an alley he hadn’t explored before. It was the shallow kind that didn’t meet up with the others, the kind that was used for deliveries and trash. This inn had its own alley and he didn’t even have a dry place to lie down. There wasn’t an overhang to shelter under, but maybe he could hide under the refuse or something?

Ren walked in deeper.

Then he jumped. Something moved in the darkness against the wall, amidst the heaping trash. The shape spluttered out a mumbling curse of some sort. It was a woman.

By the light of the lanterns that glimmered through the rain, casting their golden light into the alley from the street beyond, he could make out shimmering shapes on her body, no doubt jewelry. This lady had some wealth. Wealth he could see. Wealth he could take.

She was helpless there, curled up against a wall, so drunk or high that she couldn’t even tell it was raining.

Money meant food. It might mean shelter. If there was enough, it could even mean an apprenticeship. A life.

I know you’ll make us proud.

Could he really turn this down? This golden ticket? Rich people always hoarded too much. Was it wrong to take a little for himself?

No matter how hard it gets.

He thought about turning around. He didn’t owe anyone anything.

Then the sky flashed and roared.

“Gutter piss!” Ren swore.

Squatting down beside the woman, he could make out the sharpness of her features, like a bird of prey, made all the more dramatic by the deep shadows.

His hand reached out and shook her by the shoulder.

“Honored Lady,” he said, “is there somewhere I can take you?”

She mumbled something unintelligible.

He berated himself even as he hooked an arm under her shoulder and helped her out of the alley. He could only hope she was staying somewhere close.

The inn adjacent to the alley, maybe?

As they walked, something clinked to the ground from the lady’s pocket. Ren leaned her against the wall and picked it up.

A key attached to a token with a crude depiction of a wine bowl. Holding it closer to the light, it read ‘Garam’s Inn’. By the roughness of the engraving, he guessed the place was on Blade Street.

The hour it took to find the inn felt much longer, supporting nearly the full weight of the lady when it was already painful just to walk normally on his ankle. But they finally made it there.

It had been a long time since he’d been welcome in any business. At least the rain might have washed him off a bit. Ren held his breath and pushed through the door.

*******

The man in the cloak had seen the boy meditating. Interesting.

He was certainly no cultivator, but he likely knew one.

Osai had been wandering for many decades. With his one good eye, he’d seen the far corners of the Phoenix Lands, visited every province of the Red Dragon Empire, and even broken bread with the children of titans in the immortal lands. He’d seen kind people and cruel people, and over the years he’d come to understand that kind and weak were not the same.

He’d learned so much since becoming a mortal. But he still hadn’t learned whatever his Master was trying to teach him.

The first years were spent just getting used to functioning without his power. Then he spent decades trying to get them back. Years of effort achieved more frustration than progress. He’d regained a few paltry tricks, but most of his power was far beyond reach. His energy body had been shattered and sealed.

He’d be lying if he didn’t admit that there had been days—no, more like years—that he’d doubted his Master’s wisdom and intentions. Every day was wracked by pain from the storm that raged inside him, burning and charring, even after it had destroyed his eye. The world of cultivators was cutthroat after all. He’d spent a very challenging three months in Valbrais convinced that his Master had tricked him into this because he’d been threatened by Osai’s rising might.

The frustration of feeling all that power within him, unable to control it, unable to save himself from its ravages—

But now… now he was old. And with the slowing of his body came a slowing of his temper. Somehow, though his body was more limited and weak than it had ever been, his mind had never been so free.

And this was why he could now follow threads, not unlike his master had. Immortals often got a sense of the flow of things. But it was limited. Limited by their own ideas and desires. As sharp and narrow as a needle. The sense he had now was broad and open. And though it was a subtle, soft thing—a thing the old him would never have seen—there was something special about this boy. Not that he had any magnificent talent or otherworldly destiny, but there was an intersection of threads that glowed bright even though Osai couldn’t track their source or goal.

In that moment when the boy had reached out his hand, he could have sworn he saw his Master’s face. A visage that brought life to his withered heart. It was a trick of his aging mind of course, but this boy might just have something he needed.

He resolved to watch a little longer.

Osai followed in shadows and crowds. And even as night fell like a dark wet blanket and the boy wandered, he followed. The boy failed to find food or shelter, pulling himself along on shaky legs, little more than a quivering blade of grass waiting to get stomped on.

Then it started raining and the boy came upon a curiously familiar stranger. The old man laughed inwardly at the providence that had led these three threads to this one alley on this night.

Though he ought to have felt differently—indeed, he took his emotions as evidence of his lacking wisdom—Osai had been relieved for the boy. He was not a fan of theft but pity moved his heart, and years of wandering had twisted his sense of morality. Of honor. What was honor to an empty stomach? It was a game of privilege and power, nothing more. He smiled ruefully remembering a lifetime of duels over high minded principles and verbal slights, over misinterpreted facial expressions and blood debts. Like that business with Alucard of the Wailing Willow Sect. So foolish.

The truly strong had no need to play such games to prove themselves. All his centuries of cultivating hadn’t taught him as much as these past decades. In the ways that mattered, he’d still been wearing the shroud of youth’s foolishness when he became a mortal again.

But the boy didn’t steal from the stranger. He picked the woman up and limped her to her inn.

So very curious.

Osai resolved to stay in Katarn a while longer.