“Are you a dullard?” The cultivator said. “I spent a long hour freezing out there today. Before that, I was imprisoned and forced to endure a storm. I fasted on molding bread and in the company of mortals. And now when I thought I can lay down and rest my eyes, I’ve been disturbed by an order to entertain your anxiety.”

Lahrs Sarnasia looked hurt. “I only wanted to tell you something.”

“Save your thoughts until the snow melts.” She spun, glared at Pria, and then left.

The young master had a complicated expression on his face. Pria decided to seize the chance. “I… may not have been soft enough, young master.”

“It wasn’t an order.”

She looked away. “It was my mistake.”

Pria closed her eyes and waited. As he walked toward her, she steeled herself, knowing that he would punish her in some form. That would make him drop the act, and she wouldn’t have to feel this unbearable parasitic feeling within her.

Lahrs put a hand on her shoulders. “Capture some rest, Pria. I’ve made you work too much, haven’t I? Well, there’s three of us now. When you force someone to work too much, it’s not a surprise that they’ll slip from time to time.”

She found herself looking up at him. He was red-faced, and without a doubt, ashamed that he called the cultivator here in the first place. After all, he could’ve gone to her room and requested an audience if he truly was being polite.

She brushed his hand off. “Your concern is wasted on me.” She bowed hastily and left.

She spent the entire day avoiding the young master. Instead, she busied herself with their basement’s food stock, which, she noticed, was severely depleted, and they would have to fast until she hunts on the morrow.

They do have an ample supply of old oil barrels, but the manor’s history never piqued an interest in her, and the oil themselves looked appalling, so she ignored it.

Luckily, there was enough flour left and she could steam dumplings.

He had stressed her. So much in fact, Pria had only cooked the two dumplings for herself. Well, let them starve for the night. They could at least feel what it was like to be a mortal.

It was approaching midnight when she cursed the heavens for her duties. She hadn’t yet cleared the tiled roofs of snow. She placed the dumplings on the platter and walked down the hallway to her room.

Pria Summerborn wished she hadn’t seen the cultivator. She could’ve ignored the entire stupidity on display, eat her dumplings, and go to bed.

But the door was slightly open, and candlelight flickered to her attention.

Through the open slit, a blood was drawn. If the cultivator Reimallia Mars continued to slice her wrist down her arm, she would bleed to death.

Pria found her feet gave way to the cultivator, and her hand reached for the other, and she said, “Are you courting death? Are you mad?”

The cultivator was flushed. “Out! Out with you. Get out!”

Pria felt herself heat in anger. “You sound like a child. Is this how you wail for your misfortune? What a cultivator you are.” Then, she thought, the cultivator might’ve been a child.

She looked no older than eighteen—younger even. She had the callous of a trained individual, but her skin had never cracked or seen deformations, and her eyes…she could be as old as the young master.

“If you want to die, do it somewhere else,” Pria said. “You’ll stain the floor with blood. Do you know how difficult that is to clean up?”

Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

The cultivator glared at her. Then she started to laugh weakly, and tears pooled up around her eyes. “Good. That’s what I hoped for. That’s all I am now, isn’t? My sect will have forgotten me in a year. I’ll never get out of here. What do you know? Why do you care? You have the gall to pretend like you do. Save your platitudes for your master.”

Pria scoffed. She snatched the knife and was surprised the cultivator didn’t resist.

“Woe is the cultivator,” she mocked. “Who lived in the golden cities and dined with imperial princes, only to be cast out like freshly picked bone,” she said. “Well, spit on you! Keep me out of your company of miseries, I have enough of it myself. If you intend to truly die, then dig your grave outside the manor and count the rocks you unearth. At least then the young master will appreciate a cultivated soil, and he’ll less likely to be furious and lash me on the back if I can convince him to grow spiritual herbs on your grave. Do you think you’re special? Every single man here in the north has their pity story, and your misery is copper.”

The cultivator flinched.

“We all have our stories, cultivator,” she continued. “You know that as well as I do. They throw criminal mortals and demons here and cultivators they wish to enslave. Then they build a wall so high we can’t see our home. They want us to die a slow death so they can bathe on warm summers and stroke themselves with comfort that they spared us the axe and gifted us their mercy.”

“I gave them everything,” she said. “And I’m rewarded by being enslaved and thrown in a prison to be sold.”

Pria stood up. “You think so?”

She rushed outside to the hallway, leaving the dumplings on the ground, and walked as fast as her feet would permit to the young master’s room.

It hadn’t been a minute before she returned to the girl, who stared at her wide-eyed. She tossed the keys to the cultivator’s lap.

“There. Take it.”

The cultivator held up the keys. “But why? You bought me for a hundred silvers.”

Don’t ask me, she thought. “I asked the young master who happened to be in a mood to act like a moral compass. Don’t trust him. He’s every bit as cruel as you are.”

She sniffed. “What do you mean cruel? Your young master’s a walking stick that can snap like a twig.”

“No, he’s not. A twig that can snap a mortal in half, perhaps.”

She locked eyes with the cultivator, sharing a relationship of confusion on both ends. Then the girl looked away.

With trembling hands, she slipped the keys into the keyholes, and they clattered to the ground harmlessly. Pria could smell her qi even stronger now.

It was Pria who broke the silence. “Are you hungry?”

The girl cultivator rubbed her nose and gave a small nod.

“Do you want some tea?”

Another nod.

Pria left the room in a daze. Cultivators are selfish and deceitful and cruel, she thought. Then she looked at herself and what she had done.

She served the young cultivator girl with her dinner of dumpling and tea, leaving her with only a single one to eat. They knelt facing together at the low table. Pria was staring at the blood on her wrist.

Softly, the cultivator said, “I never caught your name.”

“Pria. Summerborn.”

“Have you eaten anything?”

“No, but does it matter?”

The girl split the dumpling in half and extended a hand.

“I have one already,” she said.

The cultivator sniffed. “Take it,” She said. “I may be unbearable. I have been known that my words cut skins, but don’t come under the impression that I don’t return favors. I’m not an honorable woman but I keep my gratitude better than anyone in the imperial court.”

She’s just a girl, Xiao Qin thought, as she bit onto the food. We all bleed the same shade of red.

----------------------------------------

Kal was hungry. He was snoring in his room when he heard a shout from the other side, listened for a hot second, and decided to ignore it.

But what most surprised him was that Pria Summerborn dispensed with the courtesies and asked demandingly for the keys. “Do you still wish to free her?” She had said.

He rubbed his stomach. He walked out, yawning, observing the moonlight in the garden. He wanted to create an avatar as soon as possible, but it wouldn’t be a simple sacrifice. He needed something that had potency.

A good one would be a five-hundred year old sword with a history of ten mass murderers. There was a story there, and his avatar would reflect that story.

Something that could be valuable and rare.

He found the Pria Summerborn in the kitchen, staring at the ceiling. There was a single dumpling on the countertop. She failed to notice him. He wanted to ask what happened, but he could compartmentalize that for now until she had her grips.

He pointed at the food. “Is this all the food we have?”

“Uh. Yeah.” She caught herself in the daze. “We don’t have any food stocked left. I’ll need to search for my traps at dawn.”

“You’ll need an extra hand.” He took the dumpling and bit on it. She stared at the food. “Have you eaten dinner yet? Is this the last of it?”

“Mm.”

He carefully split the dumpling in half, then passed one over. “Take it.”

As his thoughts turned to wander, he noted that he would need to find more about cultivation. What if he could learn it? He had the cultivator’s vessel, and his ability to create aspects and avatars were tied to his soul.

He turned to leave, glancing over to watch her stare numbly at the food.