Chapter 1

Information requested: the Path of Black Flame.

[WARNING: Significant deviations detected. Report accuracy compromised. Recommend renewed contact with Iteration 110 to restore functionality.]

Beginning report…

For over five centuries, the Blackflame family held their empire by virtue of unstoppable force. Before facing a single Blackflame sacred artist, an entire sect would surrender.

All across the Empire’s lands, rebel strongholds and rival Schools were burned in dark fire. None stood against the Blackflames because none dared; to be suspected of insurrection was to be destroyed.

The Path of the Unstained Shield excels in protection, the Path of a Thousand Hands in versatility. The Path of the Cloud Hammer is respected for mobility and force, the Path of Silver Grace for its elegance. The many Paths of the Redflower family grow food and bring rain throughout the Empire, and the Path of Jade Eyes is unmatched in healing.

The Path of Black Flame was stolen from ancient dragons. It is the art of pure destruction.

But mortal humans are not suited for the power of dragons. Slowly, the Blackflame family declined, their minds and bodies eroded by the destructive power of their sacred arts. Eventually, even the citizens at the heart of the Empire thought of the imperial family as symbols and legends.

More and more of the day-to-day workings of the Empire were left to the Blackflames’ traditional servants: the Naru clan. They became the face of the Blackflame Empire, with their loyal reputation and shining emerald wings, and the people grew to know and trust them.

Fifty years ago, when the Blackflame family had faded to ashes and myths, the Naru quietly ascended the throne.

The first Naru clan empress has since moved into private seclusion, and her son now rules the Empire.

As for the Blackflame family themselves, most died out decades ago, gradually eaten from the inside out by their own madra. The only remaining Blackflames are [DATA NOT FOUND].

If their family and their Path are revived, the consequences could be—

Connection severed.

Restoring connection…

Connection failure.

[Archived information regarding Cradle remains accessible, but analysis of current conditions and projections into the future will be disabled until contact with Iteration 110 is restored.]

Report complete.

***

Goldsteel tongs poised, Lindon knelt over the carcass of a twisted wolf.

The dreadbeast looked as though it had been subjected to dissection and decay already, its skin bloody red with spots of diseased black, but it had looked that way even before death. It was cobbled together from mismatched parts, a botched and diseased creation.

He might have passed out from the smell if not for the perfume-soaked cloth wrapped over the lower half of his face, and even so he tried to breathe through his mouth.

Lindon had already made his incision down the ribs of the creature, pinning flaps of skin back to get a look inside. He’d had to saw through a layer of meat and tendons, and his gloved hands were speckled with foul blood.

Now he tried not to choke on perfumed air as he took a deep breath to steady himself.

Fisher Gesha loomed over him, a disapproving presence. Gesha was possibly the oldest person he'd ever seen, like a shriveled pile of wrinkles packed into a sacred artist's robes. Her gray hair was tied into a tight bun on the top of her head, and eight legs of mechanical Forged madra stuck out of the bottom of her robes, lifting her high enough to see over his shoulder.

“Carefully, now, carefully,” she directed. “You hit the binding at the wrong angle, you’ll chip it like a teacup.”

Lindon dipped his head slightly in lieu of an apology, then slid his hand into the wound.

Back home, he’d helped his father clean meat from a hunt, but this body had started to rot even before its death, and Lindon struggled not to gag.

He could only get two fingers past the ribs, but they quickly ran into a mass of sharp, solid edges, as though someone had glued broken glass into a fist-sized bundle of shards. He hardly brushed the binding with his fingers for fear of shattering it.

He withdrew his hand most of the way, holding open the incision.

“In a Remnant, the binding would be easier to remove,” Fisher Gesha told him, still watching from the side with hands clasped behind her back. “No muscle to cut through, hm? Simple, simple, simple to remove. But dreadbeasts keep their souls in their bodies, nasty little things, so they leave no Remnants. Their techniques grow in them like this, alongside their organs.”

She was trying to cram as many lessons into him as she could before Eithan took him away, so that the Underlord couldn’t say she’d been neglecting his education. While Lindon appreciated the effort, it was something of a distraction to have to listen when he was trying to remove a delicate piece of Forged madra from a corpse.

Inserting his tongs, he got a solid grip on the binding. Madra could react unpredictably with physical objects, but goldsteel was a unique substance. His tongs looked like ordinary gold until the light caught them, and then they flashed pure white.

Goldsteel could get a firm grip on virtually any kind of madra, which was why it was often used for Soulsmith tools and defenses against hostile Remnants. He held the binding firmly in place, careful not to squeeze too hard and shatter it.

Then he slid two fingers back into the dreadbeast, next to the trapped binding. He pinched a bundle of slick muscle.

And, cycling madra to Enforce his fingers, he tore it away from the binding. It was like pulling apart warm bread.

He would never have been able to tear meat so easily only a week ago, before advancing to Iron. And the dreadbeast was dead, so it was no longer Enforcing itself with its own madra supply.

After he had ripped free every connection from the binding to the surrounding body—and tilted his tongs a few degrees in every direction, to make sure it could move freely—he gradually slid the binding out.

It was a ball of jagged spikes, the yellow of its material barely visible beneath blood and bits of tissue.

He wasn’t sure how the madra of such a binding would interact with the physical body, but he still winced at the sight. This had been inside a living creature. It must have caused agony every time the beast moved.

Then again, the binding may not have Forged itself into existence until the wolf died. And it wasn’t as though Lindon cared for the suffering of a dreadbeast anyway.

He dropped the blood-soaked binding onto a tray that Fisher Gesha had prepared for the purpose, then something caught his eye. He turned back to the wolf’s body, inserting the tongs once again.

There was a glimmer of something behind the wet space where the binding had once rested, a speck of white too bright and clean to be bone. He pushed some of the muscle away, though he found himself leaning at an awkward angle to get around the ribs.

The white object was a tiny spiral no bigger than his thumbnail, but it was warped out of shape, like a half-melted wax seashell. The white was speckled with a rainbow of other colors—and, of course, drenched in blood—but he reached the tongs in for it.

At the first touch, the binding dissolved like chalk in rain.

Fisher Gesha smacked him on the side of the head. Before his advancement to Iron, she might well have killed him.

“You don’t touch madra you know nothing about,” she warned, shaking a finger at him. “Very dangerous.”

Lindon bobbed his head to indicate he’d heard her, but he couldn’t just leave it alone. “But honored Fisher, I believe I saw one of those before.”

In fact, he suspected he had one in his pack. His white spiral binding was large and pristine, whereas the one in the dreadbeast had been small and shot through with other colors, but he thought they may be the same crystallized technique. The same technique that had gone into the Jai Ancestor’s Spear, allowing it to steal madra.

She slapped him again, on the other side of the head this time.

“You’ve seen one? I have seen a thousand. Spent my life hunting these woods, you think there are surprises here for me?” She jabbed a finger in the direction of the corpse. “When a dreadbeast eats an animal, the meat goes to its stomach. When it eats a Remnant, the madra goes there.”

Lindon brightened. “If this can steal and process madra, like the Ancestor’s Spear does, doesn’t that make this a treasure? Every dreadbeast has the material for a new spear!”

He was working himself up with every word, envisioning himself standing in an arena against Jai Long with a white spear of his own. And a core bursting with stolen madra.

Gesha brushed her hands off on the front of her robes, though she hadn’t touched anything. “In my grandmother’s day, they tried such a thing. Used those bindings to make weapons and take power from the ones they killed. But it did to men the same things it did to…them. Everyone who used such weapons became monsters, hideous and deformed.” She shuddered. “If we could make the spear of the Jai ancestor ourselves, why would we prize it so highly, hm?”

Clearly, she didn’t know what he’d taken from the Soulsmith foundry at the top of the Transcendent Ruins. “But Fisher Gesha…I have the notes from the ones who made the spear.” He watched her as he spoke, anticipating her shock.

Without changing expression, she reached into the pocket of her outer robe and pulled out a wooden document case. “You mean these notes? Yes, you left them out the other night. These are ancient, you should be more careful with them.”

He would have reached for them if not for the gore on his hands. “I’m sorry, I was overeager.”

“Mm. These are brilliant; they will provide you with years of study and inspiration.” She tucked them back into her pocket. “Someday. First, you must learn the basics.”

Disappointment tightened into panic—he had wanted to use knowledge of the spear as a trump card against Jai Long. “If I may speak openly, honored Fisher: I was hoping to create a weapon according to those notes.”

“If an infant wishes to forge a sword of his own, should his interest be encouraged? Hm? No. I will return these to you when you have learned to stand on your own feet as a Soulsmith, and not before.”

Lindon wanted to argue, but he was unlikely to earn anything more than another hit on the head. And the smell was getting worse every second he knelt over the dreadbeast’s corpse.

Reluctantly, he let the topic slip away.

He dropped the tongs onto the tray next to the one binding they had secured, then staggered away to take a deep breath. They had left their belongings many paces away, to avoid the mess and stench—Lindon’s carried in a bulky pack that he normally wore on his back, and Gesha’s in a sealed chest of polished wood.

Lindon stopped to remove his bloody gloves and rinse his hands at a station he had set up for this exact purpose. With a wisp of his spirit, he activated a blocky blue construct that he’d nailed to a tree.

Blue liquid trickled from the box, madra Forged into water by a binding inside. Not real water, but anything would do to wash off this tainted blood.

It was only a crude device, barely worth calling a construct at all, as Gesha had repeatedly reminded him. But it worked, and water madra was common here in the Desolate Wilds, as the disciples of the Purelake School outnumbered most everyone else in the region.

Given that most of the nearby trees were at least spotted with black corruption if not entirely black, and the wildlife seemed to share the affliction, Lindon could see why pure water might be a valuable enough commodity to support a powerful School of the sacred arts.

When he’d cleaned his hands, Gesha had already rinsed off the binding and stripped away the extra muscle, leaving the Forged madra exposed: a spiked crystal of yellow madra, streaked with layers of deep red and pale orange.

Most other Forged madra tended to be one solid color, but this chaotic blend seemed to suit the dreadbeasts. They gave off a riot of conflicting auras, as though different powers warred within them.

Lindon thanked Fisher Gesha as he reached for the tray. “Are you sure you want to guide me so far? Rinsing a binding for me, that could be considered holding my hand.”

It was only intended as a light joke. Those had been Eithan’s words when he sent Lindon out to train his Soulsmithing with Gesha: “Don’t guide him too far, if you wouldn’t mind. I don’t need someone who can’t walk without his hand held.”

Thus far, Gesha had taken the Underlord’s instructions seriously, refusing to even carry her own trunk out into the forest and making Lindon haul it himself. But she’d seemed to relax as they’d hunted over the last two days, so he thought a small joke might ease the remaining tension.

Apparently he’d judged wrong.

Her face darkened, and she shoved the tray at him with enough force that he stumbled back. Despite her age, she was still a Highgold, and he was only an Iron.

“You want to report me to the Underlord, hm? You want to waste his time? Well, see if I help you any further!” She turned to shout at the air, as though she suspected Eithan was hiding close by and listening. “Not a finger more, you see? Not a breath!”

“Forgiveness, honored Fisher, forgiveness. This one intended no offense.”

“Offense? No offense, but see if I risk landing in a boiling kettle with the Underlord just to help you. If a dreadbeast comes up to nibble your toes, see if I pull you out of the fire. ‘You told me not to help him,’ that’s what I’ll tell him.” In a quieter voice, she added, “...and I told you to stop with 'this one, that one.’ That is what offends me.”

Lindon gave her a shallow bow and then turned to her trunk, throwing it open. On the top level were all her most common Soulsmith’s tools save her drudge, on which she stood. The spider-construct had identified the location of the binding in the dreadbeast’s body, and it would take much of the guesswork out of building a construct, but he wouldn’t have access to a drudge until he built one himself.

The tools all had components of goldsteel or halfsilver, the gold surfaces flashing white and the silver ones embedded with stars. They weren’t made entirely from the exotic metals, but there was still enough inside the trunk to count as a fortune back in Sacred Valley. Here, where the materials were even more rare, they might qualify as a sect’s treasure. He was lucky the Fishers had allowed Gesha to take them out…although, with Eithan Arelius standing behind Lindon, they may not have had a choice.

Before selecting his tools, he ran his madra through the binding. It drew one of his cores almost dry, using it to launch a technique. A knuckle-sized bolt of golden light blasted from the binding, tore through the leaves and earth, and smacked into the tree, chipping away a piece of bark.

“Striker binding,” Gesha said immediately. “Aspects?”

“At least earth,” Lindon said. The color reminded him of earth aura, so he went with his instincts. “Maybe force? Some wind? If you could take a look with your drudge, we could know for sure.”

“Not for sure. A drudge only checks for what you tell it to check for. There is no substitute for experience. Now then, what would you do with this binding?”

A construct, essentially, was a puppet with a single technique embedded in it. The binding was the technique. Scripts could tweak the specifics, but the bulk of a construct’s abilities were determined by the power of the dead matter in its shell and the binding at its heart.

Lindon reached into his pack and slid out a book Gesha had given him only three nights before: The Combination of Spirits. It was written by hand, rather than printed by construct like most of the books from Sacred Valley, but he found the observations of ancient Soulsmith teachers fascinating. “I haven’t had time to study in depth, but I had some inspiration. You see, here it mentions a Striker construct that won’t activate until a certain amount of time passes. You could put one circle on an arrowhead—”

“Launcher,” Fisher Gesha interrupted. “You think my question did not have a correct answer, hm? It does. The correct answer is: a basic launcher construct.”

Lindon hesitated. “I’m sure that would work, but the binding serves the same basic purpose already.” A launcher construct was little more than a container with a Striker binding in it.

As far as constructs went, launchers were boring. Nothing of what they did amplified or enhanced the binding’s technique in any way. In Lindon’s opinion, you might as well just keep a Striker binding in a script-sealed box and take it out when you needed it.

Gesha reached into the pocket of her outer robe and pulled out a second book: Soulsmithing for Coppers. On its cover was a picture of a smiling tree holding hands with a friendly-looking Remnant.

“You forgot one of your new books, hm? Lucky I grabbed it before we left.”

She tossed it to him, and he forced a smile. “Thank you for correcting my careless oversight, Fisher Gesha.”

“Mm. You’ll find instructions for a launcher inside.”

Lindon peeled open the book, flipping past overly large illustrations of children putting simple constructs together. It was a grating reminder that he had first Forged madra only a few weeks before.

Technically he supposed he was at the level of these children, but he was pushing himself in every other aspect of his sacred arts. Why did he have to start from the beginning only here, as a Soulsmith?

But Gesha’s stern gaze did not relent, so he sighed and walked back over to her trunk, removing the claw of an earth-Remnant, which still twitched with life if he held it too close to the ground. It would serve as the ideal body for this weapon.

With a goldsteel scalpel, he split it open, placing the binding within.

He ran his spirit over the loose construction, letting his power drift into the dead matter. With focus and a few deep breaths, he took control of the Remnant pieces.

The claw began to shine again, like it had when it was part of a Remnant. Lindon felt when his spirit filled the dead matter and the binding equally, empowering them both.

Then he fused them together.

The claw shrunk, compressed, and reshaped itself slightly. The binding melded into the substance of the claw, sealed inside so it was all one piece.

And that was all.

Now it was a shining yellow rod tipped with claws, which would launch a blast of rock-hard energy when provided with madra. It wasn’t much of a weapon, but it counted as a success nonetheless.

All the Soulsmiths in Sacred Valley had been Forgers because the process of creating a construct was similar to Forging: you take control of power and give it form. Lindon could have re-formed the dead matter to look more like a sword, or a box, or most anything else, but he hadn’t bothered. It was just a launcher.

More than Forging ability, Lindon had learned, crafting a construct required compatibility. The power of the Soulsmith soaked into the power of the construct, and some aspects of madra did not blend well. In those cases, the Soulsmithing process could result in a useless product, or a deadly mistake.

Pure madra was compatible with everything, but it was also weak. It added nothing. Fisher Gesha’s madra was attractive—as in, it literally pulled objects together—and that meant she could fuse dead matter to bindings with no trouble at all, and her madra was still compatible with most everything. There were a few powers she couldn’t re-Forge without danger, but she had a drudge to identify exactly when those were present.

Pure madra wasn’t the best for any given construct—it weakened the original power of the madra like water added to wine. But it did technically work with anything.

Lindon would take any advantage he could get.

Back in Sacred Valley, every Forger thought they knew something about Soulsmithing, because making a construct was fairly easy. But making one safe? One that performed as intended every time, and lasted for as long as possible?

You had to measure the dead matter and the binding precisely to avoid unexpected interaction, handle the materials correctly, dissect the Remnant properly, and know how to customize and tweak the functions with scripts afterward.

Unless you were making a launcher.

Gesha nodded approvingly. “You move quickly, and with confidence. This is good. Only another week or two, and we will take further steps.”

He tried to keep most of the disappointment out of his voice as he said, “A week?”

Gesha’s hand struck like a hawk taking a mouse, slapping him on the back of the head. This time, it really stung. “Keep your eyes on the present, not the future, hm?” Her spider legs shuffled, turning her back on him.

“Your instruction has been invaluable, honored Fisher,” Lindon said, although in truth she hadn’t taught him much at all before the last few days. It seemed that his endorsement from Eithan had promoted him from ‘servant’ to ‘student.’ “I bow to your wisdom.”

She reached over her shoulder, resting a hand on the hilt of her hook. Like all the members of the Fisher sect, she carried a giant bladed fishhook as a weapon, sharp on the inside. Hers was plated with goldsteel, and he’d personally seen her dissect all sorts of Remnants with it.

“You wish to run before you can stand up straight,” Gesha said firmly. “You do not travel any Path by skipping steps.”

He had skipped every step he could, and ever since leaving Sacred Valley, he had succeeded beyond his wildest dreams.

But he didn’t say that out loud.

“The honored Fisher is wise.”

“Mm. You are blind.”

“Yes, Fisher Gesha.”

“Oh, you know this?”

“Yes, Fisher Gesha.”

“That is strange to me. A man who knows he is blind would be very careful of his surroundings, lest he be taken by surprise.”

Something grabbed Lindon’s ankle and pulled him off balance.

Before his Iron body, slamming his chin against the hard-packed earth would have blinded him with pain, and perhaps lost him a tooth. Now, he only felt pressure hitting his jaw, and he instantly twisted to see what had snared him.

A line of purple madra stuck to his ankle like spider’s silk, stretching back to a figure of purple light lurking in the trees. Like all Remnants, it looked like a collection of brush-strokes, as though someone had painted it into existence. This one was tall and sunken, with inhumanly long limbs and the gaping face of a fish. Its thin, webbed fingers were tipped in claws, and its blank purple eyes were fixed on Lindon.

His heart hammered, and he had to focus to keep his breath even and steady so that his madra didn’t slip out of control. Not long ago, he would have panicked at this sudden attack.

But that was before Eithan had locked him in a stone ruin alone for two weeks. Panic could wait until the fight was done.

The spirit was still two dozen yards away, but it already had him. The purple string fastened to his ankle stretched back to the Remnant’s outstretched hand.

Lindon filled his hand with madra and struck out, driving an Empty Palm into the string…but the line only quivered. It remained fastened to his ankle, one end stuck as though it had grown out of his skin.

The Remnant made a sound like a bubble popping, and the line started dragging Lindon across the forest floor.

His breath came in ragged gasps, and he was having more trouble keeping his breathing technique steady. When he tried to grab the string and pull, his hand passed right through the madra.

Gesha was drifting alongside him, the legs of her spider-construct matching his pace. “You think too highly of yourself, and this is what comes. A Jade would have sensed my approach when I returned to camp. A Jade would have felt this fellow coming.”

“Honored Fisher,” Lindon grunted, straining to reach one of the goldsteel tools that remained on the dirt. “Help me, please!”

“An Iron child in these woods should have no more pride than a mouse, no more courage than a rabbit. But you have your eyes on the future. You stare only at your goal far away, so you miss the traps before your feet.”

Mustering all his strength, Lindon Enforced his arms, driving his hands into the soft earth. The Remnant pulled him through the dirt for another moment, plowing two furrows before his momentum stopped.

Gesha stopped as well, still speaking idly. “This is a lesson for all sacred artists, not just Soulsmiths. A snake who tries to swallow an elephant will only choke.”

Lindon may have been too preoccupied with the Remnant trying to eat him than with Gesha’s instruction, but he couldn’t see how her lesson applied to his current situation. Certainly, he should have taken the time to put down some sort of alarm circle around the camp before he started working on his construct. But he didn’t see what that had to do with his unauthorized Soulsmith experiments.

And did they have to have this talk now? He was face-down in the dirt, clinging desperately to earth with arms outstretched, shoulders aching so badly they were starting to shake.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Gesha slowly draw her hook and examine it in the light. Clearly, she was in no rush to help him.

“You are always trying to skip steps, yes? To cheat. This is carelessness, and it will land you in more trouble than this.”

“I understand, Fisher Gesha,” Lindon gasped. “Please, let me free.”

Something grabbed him by the right hip, and then by the back of the neck. More webs, stretching out from the purple Remnant.

“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t.” Fisher Gesha beckoned with her left hand, and a purple line appeared between her fingers and the Remnant. “One way or the other, do not tell the Underlord I helped you out of danger.”

She heaved on her line, and the Remnant was jerked off its feet as though it weighed nothing, tumbling over the ground as her purple string shortened. When it was dragged to her feet, she swept her goldsteel hook through the spirit’s neck.

Bright sparks of violet essence sprayed into the air like blood, and the Remnant’s head fell away.

The force pulling on Lindon released, and he sagged into the ground, his arms and shoulders crying out in relief. “This one humbly thanks you, Fisher Gesha.”

“Not this one,” she said. “Before we return, tell me what you have learned today.”

“I am careless. I overstep myself, leaping forward when I should progress slowly and carefully.”

“Mm. So long as you have learned.”

He didn’t tell her what he had really learned.

He would have caught the Remnant’s approach if he were Jade. And she, a Highgold, had swatted it like a fly.

That was the real lesson: if you were powerful enough, you could accomplish anything.