Defeating a small army of demons from the Tree of Heaven had taxed Makoto Kanashii to his limits. It would have been wiser to wait until the First Elder could be called upon to help eradicate them, but he had been shocked into action. They had offered him the skin of his own fox as if it were a princely gift, an animal left to him by his late wife. Obviously, the demons had not recognized the significance of their actions. They had been unprepared for his attack, and all the more unprepared to recognize him as a true opponent, one who could cause them genuine harm. Just like the others.

The small demon was clearly a juvenile. It had the face and body of a doll; a child’s toy, exquisitely crafted and then enlarged to life size. It was taller than Makoto, and where the great demons had been blocky and harsh in their construction, this one was smooth and glossy. Not quite forged metal, not quite lacquered wood, its skin was something like nacre.

This one among all the others had not tried to fight him. Instead, it stood with its head bowed as if in respect. Of course, fear and respect were often interchangeable, but that did not diminish the value of one or the other.

Children were not responsible for the sins of their fathers. Makoto nearly scoffed aloud at the foolishness of his own thoughts. Children were held responsible for the crimes of their parents as a regular matter of civil law, not to mention societal expectations outside of the law. His own son, Kiyato, had suffered for the pride of his father.

He pushed the memory down, down like the mana condensing in his core. Saffron Ascendancy had a way of making him contemplative when he used it to this extent. Despite their lack of mana, and the absence of any meaningful core in their bodies, the demons were almost as physically tough as a first-step two-star cultivator. That was why it was necessary for the town to have someone like him watching the border.

The juvenile stood demurely before him, a weakling as well as a coward. Makoto needed to finish what he had started and then report the whole mess to the First Elder. Despite their lack of usable cores, if these demons were like the last group to come to the Land, their corpses would still be a good source of high quality crystal.

But he did not want to kill the child. He was old and he was tired, so he picked up the skin of his old friend and slung it over his shoulders before telling the small demon it could say goodbye to its elders. As strange as these metallic demons were, they were not mindless animals. They had rituals, and a culture of sorts. This had been observed.

The large ones were durable, and Makoto watched as the juvenile managed to share a few final words with the demon that had presumably been their leader.

He should kill it. He knew that he should. Even if the juvenile posed no threat now, there was no foretelling what it could become if given a chance to learn and to grow in the Blessed Lands. The First Elder could interrogate it first, however. The foremost pure artist of Fringe Village would be displeased if he learned that Makoto had made so many decisions involving the public good without him.

“Are you ready?” Makoto asked.

“I am,” the small demon said, as meek as a student meeting his master for the first time.

Makoto was still yet to relinquish his Ascendancy technique, and it was as if the mana coursing through his meridians, shining from his eyes like twin flames, prompted what he did next. Orange was a color associated with balance, grace, and poise, both physical and mental. It was said that intuition arrived only to a harmonious mind, one that did not resist the flow of the universe, but drifted within it.

He touched the young demon’s cheek, causing it to meet his gaze at last. Its eyes were dark orbs, without iris or white, but in another moment they had changed, becoming a mirror of his own.

He saw his son.

Kiyato had been a once in a century genius. All the elders had agreed that the boy would claim three stars by the time he reached maturity, potentially advancing to the point where he would no longer be able to be a resident of Fringe Town for fear of disturbing its precious crop. Makoto remembered every day of that boy’s life with pride. His loss to the Reaping was a blow from which the border guardian had never fully recovered.

The graves of those lost to the Reaping occupied a place of honor near the flags where the men of iron had died. It was said that their spirits aided in the defense of the realm, an old tradition, and a false one. The elders knew well enough that those who died in the Reaping were consumed wholly and for all time. Their spirits became the fertilizer for next year's crop.

Makoto did not often visit his son’s grave because his son was not there. In that place, there only rested a stone marker, a silk streamer, and some calligraphy. Not his son. Still, it was the closest he could come to him. Or at least, it had been, until he had touched the child of iron.

At his touch, a new material flowed out of the demon’s nacreous flesh from a thousand weeping pinpricks. Makoto withdrew his hand before it could be covered, and watched with fascination as fresh skin established itself on an alien frame. It thickened, changing the demon’s features until it appeared utterly human. No longer an it. It was a him.

It was his son.

No. His son had died before reaching this age. Makoto blinked. What stood before him was an adolescent version of himself, captured in the stage just before the full maturity. Sixteen, seventeen? It was hard to remember exactly what he had looked like then, but here was his mirror into the past.

“I’m sorry,” the demon said, “I thought this would make things easier.”

How was this possible? Makoto was no ultraviolet artist, able to peer into another’s soul, but he was more sensitive than most cultivators of his level. He touched the boy again, ready for another drastic change, but he offered no resistance, so Makoto closed his eyes and concentrated on his spiritual sense instead.

What he found there shook him. He took two steps away from the demon and released his Ascendancy technique, wanting to clear his head. The light of his orange mana died, sinking back below his skin.

“You have a core,” he said.

The demon’s face took on a quizzical look. “You mean my quintessence organ? Yes, my fathers fabricated one to help me assimilate with the magical mechanics of your world.”

Though the demon spoke the Pure Tongue without an accent, it was still clearly hampered in its understanding of it by a lack of the proper cultural background. “Your core is the seat of your soul,” Makoto explained, “it is where mana flows into and out of, allowing you to commune with the soul of the world and achieve feats of cultivation.”

“Yes,” the demon nodded. “I have one.”

Makoto did not know what to think about this. The juvenile was different from the other metal demons in more ways than one, both those of this group and of the last. The First Elder would surely want to study him, but Makoto wasn’t sure if he wanted to give him up so readily. Fate was a real force in the world, for good or for ill. It had been his fate to lose his son, and then his wife, and finally even his fox. Fate had taken everything from him, and he had mostly resigned himself to living with the scraps that remained.

Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation.

Now there was this…thing.

“How did you change your face?” Makoto asked. “It was not a cultivation technique. Your core is too underdeveloped to accomplish anything like that.”

“That’s correct,” the demon said, “I don’t have magic. But there are still things I can do because of the way I was designed. My skin is a nanoshell that can generate phenotypic expressions based on genetic information obtained from human subjects.”

Makoto Kanashii considered himself a man of learning, but this was nonsense.

“What are you saying?”

“I’m sorry, I should have adjusted my vernacular parameters. Your appearance is written in your flesh, and I can take on that appearance, with certain limitations, using information obtained by physical interaction.”

Makoto almost killed him then, and when the dangerous moment passed, he thought to command the demon to return to its original guise, but then he had relented. The truth was, the guardian of the border did not want to lose sight of the face that was so like his own and like his son’s, even if it was only a trick. Even without the Ascendancy technique influencing his intuitions, there was still an opportunity here that he could not let pass, something he wasn’t yet able to put into words.

"Keep it," he had said. "Keep my face, and take with it my name."

"Your name?"

"Yes, my name. From this moment forward, you will be a Makoto, as I am." He paused, grasping at the very edge of an idea. “Your name will be Makoto Shishio.” It felt right.

"I don’t understand."

"Of course you do not understand. You are a stranger to the Blessed Lands, and the life that extends before you is the life of a prisoner and a curiosity. If you wish to live as anything else, then you will keep my face and my name, and you will be known as my young cousin, sent from the Middle Kingdom to serve Fringe Town as best you can."

They walked together from the border and the bodies of his Sunwhisper’s fathers. He was totally at the mercy of this man, whether he agreed with him or not. To refuse him anything would only end in his annihilation.

"So, I am your young cousin, but why are you helping me? Isn't this a risk to yourself?"

It was a risk, and Makoto couldn't answer fully, because he did not know his own heart. There was no reason for him to protect this demon, and lying to the First Elder would result in the loss of his position if he was discovered, potentially even banishment. An old man like him, wandering the Tree of Heaven, he would not be the first to end his life that way, but it would not be an honorable end.

"You are my cousin," he replied, answering nothing.

"And I can no longer use my own name?"

“Do demons have their own names?” Makoto chuckled. “No, they have the names men give them."

"I understand." The demon said.

Good, young Shishio. It is important that you forget who you were if you wish to survive in the Blessed Lands. I do not ask, and I do not care to know where you came from. You have a core, but it is very weak. Your meridians are as thin as a newborn's, and that is important for our story."

"My meridians?"

"The channels through which mana passes in your body. A cultivator develops his meridians to achieve the pure arts.”

"Cultivator?"

"You truly do not know? No wonder your people were such pitiable fighters."

The demon lost his step. It was only a fraction of a second before he recovered, but Makoto knew that he had stung him, and was glad to be able to take that small measure of his heart.

"I apologize for my ignorance, cousin."

"Good, good, I can see already that you are suited for this role. It is difficult for me to tell if you are truly respectful, or if your heart seethes with anger at the one who killed your companions."

The demon’s face, so like his own, was blank. A cultivator could not be controlled by their emotions, and the demon was either emotionless, or very well controlled.

"Your silence reveals much," Makoto said. It was natural for him to project his own ideals onto the alien. He would have been seething in the demon’s place, but he would have controlled his anger until the opportune moment for its expression arrived.

"Perhaps I want to die," he had said thoughtfully, and again, there was no response.

"I have family in the Middle Kingdom,” he went on as if his prior statement had never occurred, “you were sent here from that region because of your injury."

"My injury?"

"A cultivation deviation, the reason you are so weak. You broke your core, and now you are barely a man. It is why you can no longer dwell in the Middle Kingdom. It is also why you know so little about yourself and our world. Your mind was fractured by your mistake. This is a shameful thing, and it will not be questioned closely. I must speak with the elders about where you will stay, who will care for you, and how you will contribute."

"What of your hospitality?"

"You will remain in my home for a few days, but the guardian of the border will not be your permanent host."

“As you say, teacher.” Already the demon held himself like a cultivator and spoke like a man of Fringe Town. Makoto marveled at his ability to mimic him, deeper than the physical change, and he was confident that their fictional relationship would be accepted.

What an incredible ability from one who had virtually no access to cultivation techniques. Perhaps that was why he wanted to keep this one a secret, simple curiosity. It was rare that visitors came from the Tree of Heaven, and usually they were more beast than human. This was the second time that men of iron had come to the border, and he would have to thoroughly question the boy himself to learn if these groups were the prelude to an invasion of some kind.

But already, the boy seemed more human than some of the cultivators Makoto had known over the years. So much potential in so unlikely a shape. It was too bad that he would almost certainly die in the Reaping.

Makoto brought the demon to his own home and left him there before traveling the rest of the distance into Fringe Town to beg an audience of the First Elder. Makoto was an old man by any reasonable standard, over one hundred and fifty years of age, but the First Elder was twice that at least, and he looked it. The last remnant of his youth and beauty was in his eyebrows, which were like steel swords.

Fringe Town was a sprawling village with more land than its citizens could ever require. Anyone who wanted a house could have one, as there were buildings all over the territory whose most recent occupants had been lost to a Reaping.

The First Elder lived in a house as old as he was, with good bones, and vines growing out of the siding. His servant bowed to Makoto and ushered him inside.

"The First Elder awaits you," the girl said.

"Of course he does."

Nearly everyone who lived in Fringe Town was a member of the Soga clan, and the First Elder was the clan leader as well as duly appointed mayor of the town. He was said to have eyes and ears in every corner, and he was likely already aware that there had been an incident at the border.

Like Makoto, he was a cultivator with an earth affinity, though his associated color was gold instead of saffron, and the decoration of his home's interior made that more than obvious. There were real gold treasures in every room, and yellow paint on the walls. Makoto thought the display was ostentatious, though he would never have said so aloud. Such a statement would have a way of being repeated.

"Ah, young master, so good of you to see me."

Makoto bowed deeply. There were three stars on the First Elder's forearm to his two, so it was clear who was the master between them.

"First Elder, I am your humble servant. How may I be of use?" Makoto expected to have to explain the incident at the border immediately, as well as spin the lie about his cousin, but the First Elder had something else on his mind.

"Makoto, you are the second most skilled cultivator in the Soga clan."

"You do me too much honor."

"It is simple truth. You would not be trusted as the border guardian otherwise."

Makoto bowed in place.

"A visitor is coming to Fringe Village in three weeks, and I will need you at my side to make a good showing."

"A visitor, Elder?"

"Yes, your cousin Yuyu."

Though his exterior remained impassive, inwardly, Makoto swore to the seven hells.