Chia Ru Meng hardly slept anymore. He would wake up in the middle of his sleep, pick up his coin and start muttering the same incantation over and over in a corner of the room. His father must have noticed, because he started to tell him to get some rest, something he had never done before.

His father was a little different ever since that day as well; he brought home a crude toy for Ru Meng the other day, like some sort of inadequate peace offering. It was a dusty rattle drum, sewn so poorly that the drums themselves barely made a sound when hit. Ru Meng eked out a meek ‘thank you’ and went back to his coin, now with a small bloodstain on it.

Ru Meng knew he was not a talented sorcerer. At best, he was mediocre, though his difficulty with the most basic of spells suggested a remarkable lack of talent. It was not for lack of trying, nor a clumsy tongue, but as his father explained, it was a lack of attunement with the magic of the natural world.

“The world is a complex system of laws, and magic is accessing and wielding those laws to our benefit. Spells are phrases of power, often in ancient and long-forgotten languages, that are able to interact and bend the laws of nature.

The natural laws are incomprehensibly complicated. Every codified system of magic only has access to certain aspects of those laws; they are incomplete but self-contained frameworks with their own strengths and weaknesses.

The fundamentals of Taoist sorcery begin with the understanding that the world lies in balance, Yin and Yang. The Five Elements, also known as the Five Phases, are not just the elements themselves. More importantly, they describe the dynamics of change and movement—fire is destruction, earth is fusion, metal is accumulation, water is immersion and wood is growth. Each element exists in relation to one another, in perfect balance. We, as sorcerers, can see this balance and break it to powerful effect. We can transmute materials, manipulate objects and even affect the body. This, Ru Meng, is our birthright. The heritage that the British scums want to strip from us by branding our magic as illegitimate.

You might not have great talent, but you can choose to be persistent. Train hard. Accumulate. Even the largest of mountains started from a tiny pebble. Hone your blade. Sharpen it for the day you will need it,” said his father to him when he was only six years old, handing the old coin to him as he said it.

Ru Meng hardly understood his father then, but he understood now. A fire burned in him ate away at his insides, made him angry all the time, but gave him a clarity he had never found before. When he looked at the coin, he remembered what happened that night, how he had failed to stop the dagger. He felt bitter at himself. His blade had not been sharp enough when he needed it. He had not honed it enough. Things would have ended differently on that night if only he had worked harder. The night that he arrived on this conclusion, Ru Meng successfully cast the spell for the first time in his life.

He had the same dream again. His father had pushed his uncle into a lake and he was flailing his arms, splashing water everywhere. Meanwhile, he was just watching from the sidelines, perched on the edge of the water, just watching. He could do something, jump into the water perhaps, shout for help, or beg his father to save his uncle, but he just watched. No matter how many times he had the same dream, he didn’t move. He sat on the edge of the water and watched as the thrashing and screaming slowly quieted down until there was nothing but the soft lapping of the water. He looked down and saw that the lake water had risen to his ankles, warm and blood red and smelling of copper, like the old coin. He woke up.

He gently got up from the straw mattress he shared with his father, careful not to wake him up. He groped his way around the darkness, finding the coin on the wooden table and feeling its familiar weight in his palm. He turned it between his fingers, brushed it with his fingertips, feeling every groove and every mark on the rugged coin. The coin he had looked at, touched, felt, and grieved over for hundreds of thousands of times. He couldn’t see in the pitch black and he couldn’t feel it on the coin either, but somehow, Ru Meng knew exactly where his uncle’s bloodstain was on the coin. He knew this coin. He knew what to say. Slowly, solemnly, he whispered under his breath, “Mo.Yi.Chü.Ke, Zak.Tin.Yün.Mo.”

He felt the coin’s weight lift from his hand. He reached with his fingers and there it was, suspended in midair. Ru Meng focused his will on the coin and made it stand on its edge on his palm. He then made it spin slowly, then quicker and quicker, until—

Rustle.

The sound of his father turning in his sleep snapped Ru Meng out of his concentration. The coin wavered and stopped, falling into his palm.

Ru Meng gripped the coin tightly. He should be happy, but he only felt more rage at himself.

If only I had managed to do this back then…

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He opened his palm and repeated the words into the darkness again, “Mo.Yi.Chü.Ke, Zak.Tin.Yün.Mo…”

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When Ru Meng’s father noticed that he had finally grasped the spell, he opened his mouth and said a single word.

“Good.”

He offered to take Ru Meng out to the market, as a reward for his efforts. Ru Meng barely pondered the offer before refusing, asking for one more coin instead. Later that day, his father returned with the same coin as the one he had, not the small ones with the faces of royalty printed on them, the sort that they used on the surface. The coin was what their people used before they came here to the land of Malaya, his father explained, round with a square hole in the middle and inscriptions on both sides.

His father made him sit at the table and held the new coin between his fingers.

“Luo.Yi.Fan.Cheng, Chak.Nok.Ooi.Mun,” he chanted and the edge of the dull copper coin glowed slightly.

Still holding the coin between his fingers, he drove the metal into the wooden table. The coin sank into the wood as if it had been made out of mud, until only half of it was visible.

“The Spell of Sharpening, the second tool to add to your arsenal. A very subtle spell, but versatile and deadly if used properly,” said his father, before proceeding to repeat the incantation and explain the intricacies of the spell as it related to the Five Elements and its various dynamics. The better the sorcerer’s understanding of nature’s laws, the greater their attunement to a specific spell and the better their mastery over it.

His father was home more often from that day forwards and hardly went missing for more than two days at once. Under the dim, hazy light of a talisman, he gave Ru Meng lessons on the Five Elements, meticulously explained each and every line of the Tao Te Ching, and illustrated his teachings through the demonstrations of spells. Despite all his efforts, Chia Song Yu had only been the apprentice to a local priest and was certainly not a teacher. Ru Meng was working as hard as he could, but the concepts that his father was explaining were far too abstract and his pedagogy far too crude. Try as he may, he only understood a fraction of what was being taught, but he really tried. Every waking moment when he wasn’t eating or practicing his spells, he was repeating what his father had said to him. He did his best to memorize everything, one word at a time, and repeated them to himself, as if he would eventually gain some sort of insight as long as he kept at it.

The random outbursts and beatings stopped as well. Just as the incident on that night had changed Ru Meng, it seemed to have changed something inside his father as well. His father was more reserved now, more in control of himself, more sullen than angry. Instead of shouting at him or grabbing him so hard that it hurt, his father would simply nod and explain something again when he didn’t understand. Sometimes Ru Meng was grateful for this new, kinder father, but almost immediately he would be reminded of his uncle. He couldn’t help but feel horrible, feel so wicked that his uncle now lay buried somewhere under six inches of dirt, while he sat in the peace of his home with his father. Most times, Ru Meng dug a hole in his own heart and buried these feelings by throwing himself into practice again.

His father did not teach him any new spells other than the Spell of Sharpening. Setting aside the learning curve of a new spell and Ru Meng’s lack of talent, part of a sorcerer’s ordinance includes the refinement and mastery of already learned spells. Faster recitation times, greater concentration, more precise control; there were a variety of things that could be improved, even if the fundamental strength and power of a spell could not be changed. Fortunately, there was nothing Ru Meng did better than repetition and practice.

Day by day, over and over, Ru Meng recited the same words again and again. He gained more control with the Spell of Metalworking, such that he was eventually able to control both coins at the same time, but everything else about his studies had barely improved. Days of minimal progress turned into weeks into months, until one day his father came home and put a dagger in his hands. He squatted down to the floor and secured the sheath around Ru Meng’s waist with a leather strap.

He took Ru Meng’s hand into his own and pulled him out of the house without a word. He held up a light talisman in his other hand as they left the Nameless Town and ventured deep into the caverns, dark and brooding and unknown to a ten-year-old. As they left the house, Ru Meng slipped his two coins into an inner seam in his shirt. He felt nervous excitement tingle through his limbs and down his fingers. He had never been out here, somewhere so different from the comfort of home, exploring. He thought about the stories his father used to tell him, back when he was still very little, of mythical heroes slaying monsters, of demigods battling monstrous creatures and he imagined himself as one of them, brave, mighty and righteous.

Then, he remembered the dagger hanging from his waist and his blood went cold. His hands started sweating, and his feet turned as heavy as lead. He began to drag his feet, but his father didn’t seem to notice, or if he did, didn’t seem to care. He just kept walking, pulling Ru Meng along with his grip as tight as iron.

It wasn’t even the same dagger. That one was hanging from his father’s waist. All of a sudden, all Ru Meng could see in the darkness around him were no longer pictures of heroism or ferocious monsters waiting to be conquered. All he could see were specters of his uncle, middle-aged men waiting around corners with their lifeless eyes and motionless bodies. He could hear the breathing, heavy and leaking as if life was slowly seeping out of his nostrils with every heave.

His breath was short and shallow now. He wanted to leave and go back home. He wanted to tell his father to put out the light and let the darkness suffocate him. He didn’t want to be here. He reached into the pouch and clutched his coins. Frantic and desperate, he recited the words he knew so well like his own personal prayer, “Mo.Yi.Chü.Ke, Zak.Tin.Yün…”

He didn’t finish. His father let go of his hand and slapped him across the face. His father grabbed his cheeks and hissed at him to shut up.

Ru Meng stifled the tears welling up in his eyes and swallowed a whimper. His father grabbed his hand and he followed him into the deep, deep darkness.