Ti’Lee left the loremaster’s office, taking off his glasses and rubbing his tired eyes. The man was finishing up some paperwork, so he sent Ti’Lee to tidy up the library before they closed for the night.

He opened one of the doors and walked across a hall sheltered between two shelves, hands behind his back. As he gazed upon the leatherbound volumes surrounding him, his heart sank.

So, this is my destiny? To fill the role of a scholar? Father and Mother expected it of him. His ancestors would want it, too. He could almost feel them watching from the Heavens, smiles on their ancient faces, heads nodding their approval.

That should have been a pleasant thought. And he should be happy! Why, then, did it twist his gut? He placed hands over his gnarled stomach, clutching the fabric of his dress shirt. He wondered, for just a moment, if this knot was a product of indigestion.

Pure hogwash! He hadn’t eaten for hours.

But thoughts of the privy reminded him of something.

My spiritsmithing tools. Most of them were hidden beneath the floorboards. The hammers and tongs his parents had seized were but a taste of his true collection.

My true collection . . .

His heart skipped, warming as if glowing with an inner light. Knowing they were down there comforted him somehow. But that didn’t make sense. He would never wield the tools again . . .

His face twisted in disgust. As his dress shoes clacked across the tile of the common room, he shook his head. He clutched a chair and shoved it beneath a desk, organizing the place, but his mind was beneath the floorboards of the lavatory. His spiritsmithing tools weren’t the only things down there. He’d brewed and fixed up all sorts of tonics and elixirs. If spiritsmithing was his number one obsession, alchemy was his second.

Your dream isn’t dead, a voice seemed to whisper

“It is . . .” he replied, though he didn’t quite believe himself. There still might be a chance. But he couldn’t just walk off and forsake the livelihood of his family. Couldn’t risk shaming the Lee name. He just couldn’t!

He trudged to the first of a long line of tables jutting from the windowed wall. They were draped with white tablecloths. Golden suns were embroidered along the hem of the fabric.

Small metal bowls sat at the center of each table. Light like curling ribbons of mist flowed from the base of each of the bowls. Ti’Lee couldn’t help but smile as he glanced into one of them. Light shone from a simple character etched into the bottom.

光.

Guāng. Light.

Only those on the Path of Rising Sun—or anyone with pure maqi—could activate the hanzi. Peasants had constructed these, but to Ti’Lee, they were priceless. How could anyone view spiritsmithing as a career restricted to the lower class?

He reached in to touch the hanzi. Misty light shifted at the movement of his hand, warm against his skin. He cycled maqi from his spirit core, moving it along the channels of his arm, then out his fingertips. When flowed into the metal, the glowing symbol dimmed. He itched to grab the bowl and stuff it in his shirt but he resisted the impulse. This was the library’s property. Not his.

He moved to the next table, adjusting stools and putting out the light. When he walked around the neighboring table, he tripped on something poking from the beneath the tablecloth. “Gah!” His knees slammed into the floor as he slapped his hands against the tiles. He knelt there for a moment, pushing the rim of his glasses back to the bridge of his nose. His knees were okay—thanks to the resilience of his Silver soul—but he couldn’t help but frown. Had the loremaster left something beneath the table?

Ti’Lee glanced over his shoulder.

A leg was poking from beneath the gold-rimmed hem of the tablecloth. Ti’Lee gasped, spinning while jumping to his feet. He stood there, motionless for several long breaths, brows curling to a frown. There’s a body beneath the table. He blinked. A body? His eyes bulged. A body! Was it an entire body? Or just a leg? Heavens, he needed to tell the loremaster!

He hurried across the floor, shoes clacking against the tiles, but a terrible thought hit his mind, and he stopped short. Was this a murder done by the loremaster? It wasn’t unheard of. People at the peak of Silver—or Gold Core for that matter—killed lesser souls all the time. And if it was for a reasonable cause, they couldn’t get punished.

Ti’Lee’s stomach shriveled with a sickening sense of nausea, and he could feel the blood draining from his face. How could someone live like that? People were people, no matter their rank or social standing. His head buzzed as bile bubbled up in his throat. He had to forcibly swallow the acidic stuff to keep from vomiting all over the tiles.

Ti’Lee stood there, unsure what to do, when he noticed movement.

From the leg.

It was slowly shifting.

Ti’Lee’s eyes grew as wide as teacups.

The person was alive? Was it a homeless guy? An orphan?

“Hello?” Ti’Lee whispered. His voice echoed through the empty air.

There was no reaction from the twitching leg.

With careful steps, he crept toward the table, curiosity driving him forward. He could only see the leg from the knee down—a bit of green fabric kissed the knee. Still, he wasn’t sure what to expect once he lifted the curtain.

He crouched near the foot of the table. “Hello?” he whispered again.

No response.

He carefully lifted the tablecloth. It took his eyes a minute to adjust, but he followed the leg up to a robed body. A nun with a headdress lay curled on the floor. She was trembling ever so slightly, which didn’t make any sense. It was summer, the room quite warm. Was she sick?

Glistening beads of sweat clung to her tight face and clenched hands. Her veins seemed to glow. With golden light. Light, that wasn’t her own . . .

Ti’Lee closed his eyes. When he opened them, his pupils shimmered, and the world around him changed. Instead of seeing physical objects, he saw their spiritual counterparts.

The table above was a rusty-brown ghost of its former self. Verdant veins of earth aura branched through the stone wall, and the tiled floor. But they paled in comparison to the nun.

Humans were a mix of several different auras: the rich blue of water, the comforting green of earth, the wispy gray of wind. She was a colorful humanoid—a brilliant hybrid of life. It was disturbing, though, to look at her belly and not see a spirit core. He couldn’t help but feel a pang of pity. Why couldn’t nuns develop one? He kicked the question aside as he scanned her veins. Golden light trailed through her meridians. Like incorporeal veins, they branched through her entire body, trailing with shimmering maqi.

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That’s Rising Sun essence, Ti’Lee thought. Light-maqi. Why did she . . .

Then, like a smack to the face, it hit him.

This was the girl he’d seen out the window. The one in the grasp of those Rising Sun practitioners. The one he should have saved!

She’d escaped.

Ti’Lee’s shoulders sagged as a weight—one he didn’t know he was carrying—lifted from his shoulders. He’d fretted over the nun for hours after witnessing her through the open window. He couldn’t help but imagine her weeping as Silver artists smacked her on the cheek, and tortured her for who-knows-what.

The loremaster had noticed how distracted he was. With a swift swing of his palm, he smacked the back of Ti’Lee’s head, forcing him to stuff the thoughts and emotions away and focus.

But now, here they were, coming back in full bloom.

And evaporating.

The guilt he’d experienced—for not climbing out the window and lunging to the nun’s safety—was no more. The tense frustration he harbored, for cowing before his master like a spineless fish, dissipated.

He sighed deeply. The nun was safe . . .

But the soul artists had left their mark. Light-maqi wasn’t a byproduct of their attacks. They’d purposefully filled her with the burning essence. And it looked as if her soul was purging the last of it.

Oh! He snapped his fingers.

He had the perfect tonic for this kind of thing.

Did he have time to fetch it? The loremaster hadn’t called his name yet. If he was quick, he good rush to the privy and get his—

The girl was moving, rubbing her head with shaky hands.

Ti’Lee blinked. His pupils no longer glowed. The world around him returned to normal, the nun no longer looking like a humanoid mass of aura. She was rubbing her temples, squinting at him. After she blinked a couple of times, she stiffened. Then her eyes popped open. She shot up, giving an alarmed cry.

“No!” Ti’Lee said. “It’s okay, I’m—”

She kicked him in the face, bending his glasses. As he fixed them, she scuttled away.

“Ti’Lee?” the distant voice of the loremaster called.

Ti’Lee’s muscles tensed. “Nun,” he hissed, rising to his feet. He didn’t see her, but he assumed she’d crawled beneath the cloth of the neighboring table. “Stay hidden.”

“Ti’Lee!” the loremaster said in earnest. “Is everything okay?”

Scat crap. Ti’Lee almost responded, but if he said something now, the loremaster would wonder why he waited so long to respond.

Ti’Lee clutched a stool, hearing the loremaster’s hurried steps. He moved away from the table then placed the stool on its side, then dropped to his belly. To sell the scene, he grabbed his glasses and threw them a pace. He groaned, rubbing his eyes as the patter of his master’s steps entered the common room.

“Ti’Lee!” the man shouted. “What happened?”

“Tripped on a leg.” His heart skipped. “A stool’s leg!” He glanced back at it. “Confounded piece of . . .” He huffed, pushing himself up. The loremaster helped him to his feet.

“Are you alright, son?” he asked.

Ti’Lee groaned, rubbing his forehead. “Yes . . .”

“Good,” the loremaster whispered. “Very good.” Then he whacked him on the head. His skull rang like a gong. Getting kicked in the face by a rankless nun was one thing. Earning a slap from a Lesser Gold Core was something else entirely.

He rubbed his head, bowing before his master.

“Respond when I call your name!” he shouted, his enhanced voice ringing in Ti’Lee’s ears. “I thought a band of ghouls jumped you.” He gave a shaky breath, smoothing out the skirt of his scholarly tunic. “Come now. I’m finished with my work.”

Ti’Lee pressed his hands together, bowing over his waist. “Allow me to finish putting out the lights.” He winced, head throbbing. Maqi was rushing to the bruise, healing it with the power of his Lotus-Blessed Silver Body.

“Be quick about it,” the loremaster snapped. “Meet me by the front door. If you make me wait long, I’ll give you three lashings, understood?”

“Understood!”

The loremaster turned and hurried away. Ti’Lee remained bowing until the clack-clack-clack of the man’s footsteps faded away. He turned and rushed to the table next to the one where he’d found the nun.

“Nun, please,” he said, kneeling. “I’m not going to hurt . . .” He lifted the tablecloth, and found nothing but empty space. “Huh?” He hurried to the next table, lifting the curtain. Nothing. “Nun?” He went to each one in turn, but she was nowhere to be found.

He quickly turned off all the lights, shrouding the room in the choking grasp of darkness. Then he blinked his eyes, accessing his spiritual senses—or, as many called it, his Tin Vision. A world of color lit up the room. It mainly consisted of green for the ground, and a ruddy brown from the wooden shelves and books. They appeared as ghostly replicas of their physical forms.

Making it easy to spot the nun.

She was crouching at the end of an aisle of shelves, one situated near the corner of the room.

“Nun,” Ti’Lee whispered. “Please. Don’t be afraid. I promise, I’m not going to hurt you.” He watched her from a distance. She looked like a multicolored ghost to his vision. “You’re safe with me. I . . .” He was about to say that he saw her out the window earlier, and that he had wanted to help her, but he didn’t want her to think he was a coward for holding back. “You can sleep here. I’m . . . sure you need a place to stay.” She was probably hungry too. “And I can bring you food in the morning.” He waited, watching to see if she would react in any way. She was as stiff as a bonefish, hugging herself tight. “Stay put. We lock the library at night, so you’ll be safe here. No one can get in without setting off an alarm . . .”

The loremaster was waiting for him. He didn’t want to make the man wait long, but before he left this place, he needed some kind of confirmation from the girl. He didn’t expect a verbal reply, but a head nod, or a sigh of relief would be nice.

She gave none of that.

I need to say what she wants to hear . . .

“I can escort you back to the monastery tomorrow.”

He really couldn’t. Not unless a monk or a nun invited him to give an offering to one of the gods. Once a week, someone was chosen to do just that, and everyone saw it as a good omen. Even those who professed themselves as agnostic, or atheist. His own father was strictly secular, unwilling to touch religion with a ten-foot pole. Mother on the other hand had a soft spot for Kaithism . . .

A devious smile was forming on Ti’Lee’s face.

He was grateful for the darkness that separated him from the nun. If she could see him now, she’d think him mad.

And perhaps he was, for one of the greatest of all master plans he’d ever devised was blooming in his young fertile mind. One that hadn’t even crossed his thoughts till now . . .

The Kaithist Monastery was home to perhaps the most famous spiritsmith for miles around. Zin Agar was his name. Everyone, from the greatest of smiths to the youngest of initiates, modeled themselves after the holy man—a man who was once the richest smith in the entire province.

It was a shock to the empire when he forsook everything to become a lowly monk—one who continued his practice, serving the community at no cost. That didn’t change how people saw him, nor did it dilute his name; he was still a master, honored for his skill!

Ti’Lee crossed his arms, bowing his head.

He was at a crossroads in his life.

Two ways split before him.

He was already heading on one of those paths—the path of scholarship. The path his parents expected him to tread. Spiritsmithing was becoming more and more of a desperate dream, but with this new plan developing before his very eyes, he saw a glimmer of hope.

Hope, in the form of Zin Agar.

And who better to ask for guidance than a holy man on the path he yearned to tread?

“Ti’Lee!” The loremaster's distant voice seemed to shake the walls.

Crap scat. “I’ll be back tomorrow,” Ti’Lee whispered to the nun. As he turned, he thought he saw her give a slight nod. That lifted his spirits. As much as he wanted to share his plan with her right now, he couldn’t. But tomorrow, after bringing her a warm plate of breakfast and a couple of pills for her spirit, he’d tell her everything.

And he hoped, and prayed, that she’d comply.