The rage that Sesako had used to force the parasitic ghost away from control of his body thrummed in every vein, limb, and artery.

His heart pounded.

That despicably cowardly— That vile. That craven. The gutless. That —

He’d destroy him, annihilate him, pulverize and expel him.

Soon as he had sufficient leisure and a lack of other demanding duties, he would torture and torment the parasitic spirit, and he would destroy it.

Every last, small, tiny fragment of its residence inside of him would be removed like the crabbed cancer it was.

Control.

Ensure that this threat never, ever return — that he would always keep control over himself.

But beneath Sesako’s anger was terror.

Firmly and without excessive haste Sesako walked to his meditation room.

What had happened during the ritual to force open the fourth dantian that had allowed his body to be occupied by another mind?

Sesako’s expectation when he had begun the ritual had been simple: Death.

Oh — he’d judged that there was a fifteen percent chance that he would be able to guide the collapse of this untested and incompletely modeled ritual sufficiently well that he’d survive its failure without any crippling losses, and another fifteen percent chance that he would actually open his fourth dantian, like only one other before him ever had.

Instead, he’d been taken control of by a worthless, writhing wraith who intended to abandon his duties, his position, the Great Ones, his nation, and everyone to whom he had promised his faith and protection. All for the sake of spilling his carefully piled up wealth out upon worthless persons to whom he had no connection of friendship of obligation, no allegiance, and no blood relation.

It was open.

The fourth dantian was open!

Sesako sat down on the cushion in his meditation room filled with thousands of thin strands of paper on which the formulas for workings that enhanced the flow of chi had been inscribed. Everything about the room had been designed by the work of generations of cultivators with either complete or profound souls to enhance the flow of power.

He was only vaguely aware of it in his excitement.

The crimson power bubbled through the dantian, mixing around and around, building up. He tried to draw on it, to infuse it into the rest of his body. While truly developing the fourth foundation would take decades, there must be something he could do now that he had done the impossible and opened the fourth dantian. He had to now be able to save his people, his island, and the Great Ones.

Life did not run in the pattern of stories.

That was something Fitzuki had taught him years before during his apprenticeship in warfare under him.

But it simply would not make sense for him to develop the fourth dantian and then not be able to use it to win and gain his revenge.

Unfortunately, Sesako’s efforts bore no fruit. The power that slowly burbled out of the fourth dantian could not be controlled at the same time that Sesako kept the power in the blue profound dantian from spilling over.

Sesako was not worried at first.

He was no stranger to difficult problems, to the struggle of seeing ways to make power flow that was different from its natural tendency. He had not become the youngest to master a profound soul in several hundred years in an instant.

Yet after twenty minutes a foul frustration began to build.

This felt different, as though there was a barrier that was perhaps more than simply conceptual to using all four powers at once.

The world only knew one man — the emperor — who had opened his fourth dantian. And he had within twenty years gone from an obscure cultivator, cultivating in his mountain heights, to the ruler of an entire continent.

It was possible.

But it was not possible before tomorrow morning. He had made no progress.

There was no time.

Distant sensations spiked through his stomach, his chest, numbing his fingers and making his cheeks cold.

Sesako ignored that.

Power now. Needed.

But rage did not unlock the dantian. It had taken him three years after he opened his third dantian to fully master it. The fourth by expectation ought to take at least ten.

He turned his attention to the parasite.

To the body thief. To the wastrel who intended to spill all that Sesako was and owned away, like precious water into an endless desert.

It was a simple fact that there would always be poor and starving people, and if you can’t fix the problem, what was the point of destroying yourself to make it slightly better?

There was a set of barely sensible feelings, hidden thoughts, and an existence that ought to have no existence.

It was there.

A sort of buzzing or itching that was soft, but it grew in intensity. In just the twenty minutes he’d struggled to access and control the crimson power in his fourth dantian, that itching had grown.

The problem came when Sesako attempted to set bounds, spells upon himself, enchantments on his own mind to ensure that the discordant note would never sing over his noble music again.

He worked at it. And worked at it some more.

And yet again stymied.

Impossible.

Like trying to grasp a gusting wind or make a moonbeam into a physical thing.

Sesako’s confidence in his eventual success was undimmed. If he spent enough time — time measured in months rather than minutes — he could discover a surer method than the simple superiority of his will over that of the other to lock him away forever.

No time. Damn. Damn. Damn.

That floating volcano, a mile high, a constructed thing of vast scope, belching vast clouds of steam.

This ritual had not yet given an addition to his destructive and defensive capacities. Three days of unconsciousness.

What had happened during that time which allowed this odd, despicable, and damnable creature to take a thankfully temporary control over the person of a grand cultivator?

The next task before he went out to confer with the Fitzuki upon what his duties were to be during the defense was to talk to Hinete and correct… whatever misapprehension she was under about his plans.

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She was neither in their shared workshop nor in their private one. Sesako checked the dining room, knocked on her door, and then finally looked in the library — where she actually was.

A mournful tune of sitar music played from one of the musical stones they both delighted in enchanting.

It was the achingly beautiful song of loss and hope that she’d recorded when her uncle, Gakonga had played before the Great Ones for the summer solstice two years prior.

Sesako’s throat constricted. He remembered why it all mattered once more.

Her eyes lit up upon seeing him enter the room.

At first, he thought — hoped — that she would hurl herself into his arms again, like she had when he had been under the control of the other.

Instead, she stood off, and inclined her head. “Milord, have your plans changed, might I help you in some way?”

Emotion choked Sesako.

He felt an odd shame, but he still had to tell her.

She needed to know; in case the thief took control once more of his body. “Hinete, something happened to me which —”

She threw her arms around him suddenly. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry.”

“Whatever for?” He rubbed her back.

“I don’t know — you looked… odd. Wrong. There had been something off, I felt it. But now you… you look like you. What was — I saw the scrolls. I know you tried to open the fourth dantian, what —”

“Something went awry during my attempt to achieve a breakthrough, and another spirit took control over my body.”

Voice quiet. Calm. Clear.

It took a dozen breaths before Hinete stiffened and drew back from him.

She looked at him with wide, scared, alert eyes. “But…”

“Now I am wholly myself. But I fear there is some possibility that the imposter may regain control — he meant to flee. To steal my wealth and my person and flee the war.”

She pressed her hand to her mouth.

“You must understand — I shall need your help to lock away in the storeroom as much of what I own as possible. If one day, by some slight chance, he steals my body again, I will not let him steal that fortune from those I care about — come.”

There was a slight unfamiliar sense of guilt as he led Hinete down to the storehouse that made Sesako angry at himself: There were many tasks which only a cultivator with the third dantian open could achieve, and he was particularly skilled at doing these tasks. The fees from such efforts were great and an enormous fortune had been the result. It was his. He had every right to enjoy that for which he had worked. He was not obliged to give it to anyone else. If he did not want to, that was his right.

Sesako knew how to construct a locking enchantment which would key the storage room’s lock to Hinete instead of himself. Obviously, he could with time and effort still break through, but it would take at least an hour or two, and he was quite confident the imposter, if he ever gained control again, would flee as quickly as possible — and anyway, even with shared instincts, that rat like cancer in his mind was less skilled, and less… intelligent than Sesako.

Not that any of this would matter — the likeliest fate was that he would destroy that which could be destroyed before the city was taken, and that which could not be destroyed would be eventually recovered by the emperor.

Damnation.

As they went down the stairs, Hinete asked, half breathless, “But did it work — are you a celestial now?”

Sesako grimaced. “Only to a half extent. I have opened the dantian, but I cannot access the power, and I have no time to experiment sufficiently to develop the skill to use it in battle. I knew this was likely when I attempted the ritual, but the difficulty is even greater than I expected — you recall when you fully opened your first dantian, and how simply because the power was there, it took time before you could use it.” Damn, damn, damn. “Tomorrow morning. We only have until then. If only…”

She pressed her hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

She believed in him. She believed that he would do his best, and that his best would be enough.

Sesako only believed that he would do his best.

They returned to the storeroom, and he just tossed the expanded sacks onto the floor. There was not really time to put everything carefully back where it belonged and undo the mess that the other had made.

He handed the pouch with the potions to Hinete. He mostly made them for sale, since they were of little use to him, as a profound soul could gather and maintain energies vastly greater than what could be stored and stoppered in a potion.

But it was only to the seven profound souls of the island that these potions were useless. Those infused with the blue energy of the third dantian were part of his duty to make, because they were strong enough that even a purified core with the second dantian and the purple core fully developed could benefit greatly from the additional power.

Rings tossed about in no order. The armor shrugged off and was replaced by a more useful piece. Everything in place.

He had exhausted an important part of his supplies for the ritual… had it failed or succeeded?

“Everything we will give to the general defense,” Sesako said, and then the two of them began to gather amulets, defensive rings, hurlers, and staves.

“Odd. How you… he… was acting. But still — if it is an imposter, why was he able to use your power? He locked me out of the storeroom, neatly as you could, and…” Hinete shuddered.

Sesako wished he could hug her.

She hugged him.

But that was her prerogative, not his.

“Do not worry. He is full of faults, but not a violent man. I do not think he will seek to hurt you — I shall not allow him control again.”

That buzzing, that itch in the back of his mind, where the spectral spirit resided strengthened, minute to minute.

Sesako feared that time might make a lie of his promise.

“If it lies within my abilities to prevent,” Sesako amended, “He shall not gain control once more.”

Once they reached the door to the storeroom, Sesako ordered Hinete to place her hand on the door, and he then placed his hand over hers. “Use the Tirposian runic line, I will infuse your spell with power as it goes. Pay attention to the intention that you wish to control the door, that it belongs to you.”

She nodded.

Her eyes were wide, and she nibbled her lip. Hinete was anxious and unsettled. But that was one of the things about her — she always tried to do what he told her to, and she always tried her best. It made her an excellent aid at work, and a good apprentice.

The hand motions were not as solid as his own.

She took joy in working out abstruse enchanting problems that even he could barely follow, rather than the endless cycling and repetitive drilling of magical gestures and incantations that were the central part of the training of a cultivator.

He should — for her sake — force her to practice more.

Even though she was by no means bad. Her fingers flickered through each meaning filled symbol, tracing them against the door. The hands were always precise, and vastly faster than any ordinary human could move their fingers. It was just…

She was slower than he had been the day he unlocked his golden core.

And something in him had gradually come to want her happiness and success greatly, perhaps more than he had ever wanted anything else.

With each stage along the magical journey, the natural human process of aging slowed, until with his profound soul unlocked, Sesako aged less than one year for every ten. Though she progressed steadily —fast by the standards of most — Hinte was no exceptional prodigy. She would need several more years before she could safely tear open the second dantian and awaken her nascent soul. Each year of delay now shortened the total length of her life by a year.

There was exceedingly little chance that she would ever achieve the rare profound soul — though how it was achieved was mysterious, even to those who had succeeded in opening their third dantian, and sometimes people who had shown no particular excellence in their earlier stages mysteriously broke it open, and most of the most promising prodigies became caught and capped once they had perfected their purified core.

He should make her work harder.

But it was impossible for him to deny Hinete the joy she found in enchanting.

And…

Sesako feared that his selfishness was harming her. Once she had a nascent soul, the proper period of their apprenticeship would be over.

He did not want her to leave his tower. The five years since he had taken her as his new apprentice had been oddly happy and fulfilled. They had become close in a way he simply had not with the other apprentices he had taken.

He had never been happier than during the last five years.

When Hinete finished the long array of finger drawn symbols, she pressed her hand against the door, and looked over to smile proudly at him.

His heart leapt.

He smiled back at her, and then with a quickly whispered incantation, the spell finished.

The door now saw Hinete as its primary owner. He could not enter the room without her presence.

Sesako let out a long sigh. “Thank you. And… Hinete… if I am dead and all hope is lost, promise me that you will take as much of the wealth here as you can, and flee, and go elsewhere and live. Swear to me that you will flee rather than dying in a hopeless fight.”

“I cannot… you know I can’t. I cannot leave you. You mean to die.”

“I cannot abandon Her.”

“And I cannot abandon you.” Her face was set and firm. She clenched her hands and jaw, as though she were prepared to endure any sort of tongue lashing or anger or abuse, but on this point she would not budge.

Sesako sighed. “Hinete, please — I am not being arbitrary, nor… you know that you can’t—”

“I am no great fighter. And I will not… I will not charge some brilliant brute with a purified core and a spear. Even if you die, I will not try to die. But I will not flee. Not even if you have died. Not while the great ones still live.”

“But —” Sesako wanted to shake her shoulders. To scream at her. “Please, I would be happier if —”

“This has nothing to do with happiness. We are amongst those blessed by the dragon. We are —”

“Don’t die. You don’t deserve to die. You don’t — and remember, everything in here is yours if I die.”

“But your —”

“I have no children. I have no parents. I have only a second cousin who I dislike. But I…” He brushed his hand softly over her cheek. “I care very much for you.”

Her color was high.

“I swear I will not risk myself without a chance of some success.”

“You will take what wealth I own. I will have no argument. And now I must go to confer with the council and the others of the seven.”

She nodded. “Should I continue to work on the wardings, or prepare more of the hurlers, like Fitzuki asked?”

“The hurlers. Fitzuki knows his business — he’s more knowledge of warfare than any other ten of us together.”

She nodded, and then they parted, Sesako to his work, and Hinete to hers.