Cien Fumador waded through an inferno of her own making, paying no heed to the leery eyes that followed her.

Season opener. Partridge Island GP. Relief, and more vexation. Two conflicting emotions and the sparks that flew from their conflict added fuel to the fires within Cien’s personal hell. She was glad—more glad than anyone else in the country, she would’ve wagered—to be back on the racetrack. She only hated that it had to be here on Partridge Island. Her hometown.

As she wheeled Einhorn through the starting grid (toward pole position, of course), the leery gazes around her stayed just that: watching and no more. There’d been a time, perhaps even just a year ago, when the attention from her competitors might’ve been more colourful in nature, consisting of insults, taunts, and accusations of nepotism.

But the 2023 season—and Cien’s record-breaking points tally during the campaign—had put a lid on the accusations for good. As for the taunts and insults, well… there was a limit to these things, wasn’t there? Most people could only fuck around so much before they got tired of finding out.

There was one man on the grid, however, who seemed to be simply incapable of taking the hint.

“Enjoy your offseason?”

The smiling eyes of Reese Ouyang—P2 on the starting grid—stared out from inside a sky-blue Lingshu helmet, noticeably wrinklier than they’d been this time last year. The man really was getting on in years. Long past any hope for a graceful retirement.

Cien ignored the smile and small talk, and took her place at the front of the grid. She tried in vain to settle her mind and refocus on her inferno, but old man Ouyang evidently wasn’t done being a nuisance.

“As for me, I took my family on a trip to Gallia. I know we Stormvasters tend not to get out much, but I really recommend it. Especially if you ever decide to have kids. It’ll be good for them to see more of the world, you know.”

See more of the world. Despite Cien’s best efforts to ignore him, Ouyang’s words curdled in her chest. Black flames jumped and danced inside her, conjuring an image from her childhood. A childhood spent watching the same unchanging scenery spin around her again and again and again and—

“But I suppose I’m preaching to the choir, eh? Coming from a family like yours, your childhood must’ve been a little different from an average Stormvaster’s, am I right?”

Cien did turn to meet Ouyang’s eyes then, with an expression as neutral as she could make it. The man’s wrinkly smile was as genial as ever, but if she hadn’t imagined it, it also hid a sheen of cold calculation.

Old wily Ouyang. He of the honeyed smiles and even sweeter words that masked the venom beneath. Cien inwardly retracted her earlier assessment of the Lingshu pilot. He in fact hadn’t missed his chance to retire gracefully. Not when he’d never possessed any grace to begin with.

“And here we are,” the man continued, along with an exaggerated gesture toward the grandstand, “back in your hometown. Are your family and friends watching? Must be. What a privilege. Well, I for one hope we could put on a good show for them. A race to make your uncle proud.”

At the mention of Valen Fumador, Cien’s head snapped away from her opponent and back onto asphalt. Back into her personal hell.

To Ouyang’s credit, he’d taken a different tack from what many other opponents had previously tried. His weren’t the usual monkey-hear-monkey-regurgitate taunts. They were subtle, insidious, and more than a little unsettling.

But little did Ouyang know that turbulence was exactly what Cien Fumador thrived on.

So, as the racers launched into their warm-up lap, Cien found herself focused fully on the race ahead, absent impurities of mind. Black flames raged within her with ever-expanding fervour and menace—and she had Reese Ouyang to thank for that. If you can’t make up your mind about when to retire, old man, she thought to herself as a smile curdled upon her thin lips, I’ll make that decision for you.

The first half of the race went almost exactly by the script. Most of the field, from 3 through to 25, had all but conceded that this would be a two-horse race. None of them fought Cien and Ouyang for the lead, opting instead to cannibalize each other in a free-for-all melee to squeeze onto the podium.

By Lap 11, the field had shrunk by nearly half, and Cien enjoyed a half-second lead on Ouyang, with both of them still largely untested. She knew that he’d have to make his move eventually. The man wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of digging up old family history if he didn’t intend on challenging Cien Fumador on her home turf. She was more than happy for him to try. For while Reese Ouyang had used the offseason to take his young children on an educational overseas trip, she herself had spent countless hours perfecting her new ‘weapon’. The Ten Mercies. And she’d been itching ever since to put them to the test.

The first exchange came at the infuriatingly named Ouyang Corner (for the veteran rider had gotten his own eponymous race feature on Partridge Island before Cien did!), where the Lingshu pilot unleashed Viperclaw. It was a heavily telegraphed attempt at softening up the leader for an overtake, and Cien played the dutiful prey. She slowed slightly and swerved to avoid the slithering snakes, thus leaving the inside track open for Ouyang to squeeze through.

But as Ouyang and his Foco Azzurro leaned into the apex, he put himself and his Chakram at their most vulnerable position. One that gave Cien Fumador her pick of the Ten Mercies with which to offer them absolution. Which one first? Something small, something just to unsettle him a little and get him asking questions. I don’t want him out of the race yet, not when there’s still so much fun to be had.

With a deft, practiced motion, Cien flicked her left hand over the horn of her unicorn: the razor-sharp protrusion that curved pilot-ward from Einhorn’s front fairing. She took care to let only the tip of her left pinky graze the sharpened edge of the horn, just enough to draw blood. A surge of pain. A specific, practiced one. She channelled, not through the Conduits embedded inside her Chakram, but via her own memories and understanding of the Original Void… and called forth Mercy of the Blind.

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A drop of blood flew from Cien’s freshly cut finger. This drop then hovered in the air before catching a sunray just right, such that it exploded into a flash of blinding light.

Reese Ouyang slowed precipitously, blinded while in the midst of holding the most precarious of lean angles. He had the inside track, but he failed to take advantage, instead falling farther behind the leader.

To most anyone watching the race live—or indeed on any number of screens across the nation—the sequence would’ve appeared strange but not entirely without explanation. There were plenty of reflective surfaces on a racetrack, Chakrams, or even the pilots themselves. Who was to say the sun couldn’t occasionally catch one of these surfaces just wrong, thus derailing an unlucky racer’s overtake attempt?

And yet, Cien could readily imagine the look of consternation behind Ouyang’s visor—and the questions that had started churning inside his old wily brain.

Ouyang made her wait three more laps before another engagement. Another opportunity to share her Mercies with the world. This time, the attempt took place on Fumador Corner: named, of course, after her uncle.

Reese Ouyang activated Ravenstorm and hid himself amidst a cloud of angry corvids. He again took the inside track, no doubt confident in his ability to defend against a counterattack. And to be fair, Ouyang’s Aegis Dark Matter did pose a tricky problem, one that would’ve nullified most any Auxiliary Cien might’ve thrown at it.

So, she simply let him pass. And as her vision filled with the back of the veteran racer and his sky-blue livery, she cut herself once more on Einhorn, this time with her right pinky. A drop of blood flew into her field of view, overlapping against her rival’s back. In Cien’s Void-lensed sight, she saw the blood, not as her own, but as Reese Ouyang’s, giving her a visitor’s pass to the bones, muscles, and nerves it serviced.

Mercy of the Frozen. The effect, while dramatic for the position ladder, was subtle on the eyes. Ouyang and his Foco Azzurro simply rode straight, with both pilot and Chakram rigid and upright. This wouldn’t have been an issue if he’d already course-corrected onto a straightaway, but here at the tail end of Ouyang’s turn, it forced him to drift far wide of his intended exit.

The effect was also brief. Ouyang eventually did regain control of his body, just in time to stay on the narrow side of the track boundaries and pull his Chakram back on-course. By then, however, he’d lost precious half-seconds, and his counterpart was already back in the lead.

Cien’s smile widened. Black flames jumped and danced. This was why she’d spent countless hours over the offseason stewing inside a bronze kettle. Why she’d shed countless drops of blood to craft her own brand of magic.

And it was also why her Chakram had to be Einhorn. The team had offered her Kirin Noir, of course. After all, with Lynx Giallo gone, Cien was now Equinox’s undisputed flagship pilot. But try as she might, she simply couldn’t draw out her own potential astride that sleek obsidian embodiment of state-of-the-art engineering. Couldn’t connect, neither with the Chakram nor with the Void.

It simply had to be Einhorn. Einhorn and its visceral fervour and menace that cared naught for its pilot’s comfort nor her ambitions but only for the amount and quality of the chaos they could together loose upon asphalt. Einhorn fed off the black flames that roiled within Cien Fumador, and she in turn took inspiration from its cutting edge. Ten fingers for Ten Mercies.

But just because she’d said no to Kirin Noir, that didn’t mean she hadn’t gladly ‘inherited’ the Conduits her former teammate had relinquished. And as the race neared the homestretch, there was no better time to showcase one of them—in a shape and form the Chakram racing world had never before witnessed.

Old wily Ouyang. Stubborn Ouyang. The perennial second-place finisher made his final push on the aptly named Fortune Hill, powering onto the incline to make his last ditch attempt at an overtake. As soon as Ouyang entered her domain, Cien activated Astral Divide. Instantly, five copies of herself and Einhorn spread out, trapping their rival inside a pentagram designed for summoning chaos. And as Cien flicked and cut her right index finger, all of her apparitions simultaneously mirrored her action—her ritual of pain and sacrifice.

Six drops of blood. This time, the memories Cien channelled were near and dear to her heart. They clawed into and erupted from the deepest cuts she’d endured and inflicted as a child—as the niece of a monster the rest of the world knew only as a hero. Black flames jumped and danced. Six drops of blood joined as one crucible of destruction. Mercy of the Bloodless.

To those watching from the grandstand, and upon the millions of screens across the nation, what happened next was strange but not entirely without explanation. Reese Ouyang, as any Chakram pilot might when under pressure and too eager for victory, had bitten off more than he could chew, thereby losing his traction and flying off the handle.

It was an accident like any other, one of thousands that accumulated on racetracks across the nation, year after year. But not all accidents were created equal. Simply put, some pilots were occasionally unluckier than others. And if one travelled at upwards of 200 mph when running into this spot of bad luck, the result could often be disastrous.

Foco Azzurro flew off the track, leaving parts tumbling and scattering in its wake. Its pilot followed close, with his sky-blue body ragdolling through the air and onto the dirt, with any and all training and experience across a long and illustrious career gone out the window. While the Chakram left a trail of metal, the pilot instead left a trail of blood. For Reese Ouyang had been unlucky enough to suffer multiple cuts, abrasions, and compound fractures, all in the space of a misguided overtake attempt.

Cien Fumador crossed the finish line to complete silence.

Behind her, the race too had come to a standstill, as officials waved red flags to indicate that one of the racers required immediate medical attention. Soon, the silence gave way to sirens as numerous personnel and vehicles converged on the twisted, crumpled, and motionless figure of Reese Ouyang.

As Cien pulled into the Garage, to the subdued greetings from her own team and uneasy stares from the others, she’d already forgotten about Ouyang. The question of whether the man had survived his crash didn’t even cross her mind. For she was already focused on her next mission.

Winner of the 2024 Partridge Island GP. She’d defended her home turf, for whatever that was worth, and she was on the board with her first 30 points of the season. The race had long finished, but black flames continued to jump and dance. Because Cien wasn’t done. Far from it. Before all would be said and done, she was determined to engulf Stormvast in the same inferno that raged endlessly within herself.

Besides, Reese Ouyang hadn’t remotely satisfied Cien’s bloodlust—her need to pit herself and her Ten Mercies against the best of the best. The Lingshu pilot was over the hill, already an afterthought before the season had even begun. No, the best of the best still lay ahead. Including a certain second-year pilot with whom Cien had a legitimate bone to pick.

Because that upstart from heavens-knew-where had stolen two things from Cien last season. One: a chance at the ultimate glory—of winning the Morrowtide GP. And the other: the love and attention of her greatest benefactor.

Which reminded her… it was time to give Daphne a call. To see about that upgrade she’d been promised.