Chapter 1

Jai Daishou labored up the side of the sharp peak alone, madra trickling through his body in a pathetic dribble. The white metal strands of his hair flogged his back with each step as he pressed against the wind, moving higher with every step.

Remnants blacker than the night sky lined his path. They were voids against the stars, their caws like shattering glass, their feathers drifting down like shredded shadows. The feathers hissed as they landed on the rocks, eating into the stone. They had dissolved his shoes already, but an Underlord’s flesh was not so easily seared away.

He felt his weakness in every step, as agony traveled up his ankles and into his spine like lightning. His spirit was no longer strong enough to prop up his fragile body.

A month ago, he could have made this journey without pain. But back then, he’d still had options. Many plans in play, many pieces on the board. He had already been dying, but not so quickly.

Now, he only wanted his clan to outlive him. Anything that prolonged the life of the Jai clan was a virtue. No matter what it cost.

As raven Remnants screeched at him, he climbed toward a gamble he never would have made, had he any other choice.

This was the first of his last hopes.

He reached the end of the road, a sharp cliff overlooking an ocean of clouds. It stretched out before him as though he stood before the end of the world, and overhead the stars glared down at him.

Mist swirled before the cliff as something moved beneath the cloud’s surface. An instant later, wings of shadow rose from the gray cloud. Each of these wings was the size of a ship’s sail, and the head that followed was bigger than a horse. It looked like a bird formed from living ink.

The vast raven filled his vision, floating in the air with still wings. It remained motionless, not disturbing the icy wind with a single flap, drifting like a ghost instead of a living thing. Curls of darkness rose from its feathers.

Jai Daishou inclined his head. As a supplicant, he should have bowed, but his back had locked up so tight he thought he might fold over backwards. His lack of respect might kill him, and that thought chilled him as much as the Remnant’s presence. No matter how much he had prepared to throw his own life away if necessary, nothing could prepare him to come face-to-face with a spirit of death.

“I greet you, Lord of Specters, and I come with an offering.” From his robes, he produced an ebony box, holding it out in both hands. He could only hope the spirit heard him over the screeching of its flock.

Not all those who sought the Remnant’s services brought an offering, but the wise did. It was quite separate from the raven’s price, but a freely given offering bought a measure of protection. Returning a gift with betrayal incurred a soul-debt, which the Remnant should want to avoid.

A gift would not save Jai Daishou if he truly offended the Lord of Specters, but it couldn’t hurt his chances.

Two of the raven Remnants fluttered down from their rocky perches, landing on his arms. They radiated a cold that infected him, stealing his warmth, seeping even into his spirit.

With an identical motion of two beaks, they flipped open the box.

A severed head lay on a bed of stained velvet, its skin waxy and blue, its tongue swollen out of its mouth. This was a servant of the Arelius family whose name Jai Daishou had never learned—he had needed a head, and so he had taken one. Better to steal from his enemies than from his friends.

The great raven opened its beak and inhaled. In the Jai Underlord’s sight, a dark and nebulous mist lifted from the corpse’s head like smoke from a fire. Death aura had once been difficult for him to see, until he had learned the trick of it. Until he had become accustomed to its presence.

Once the Remnant had its mouthful, Jai Daishou threw the box—head and all—out over the cliff. It would have been more polite to kneel and place the container on the ground, but his knees were giving him almost as much trouble as his back.

The Lord of Specters opened its beak once more, and a voice issued forth like a distant chorus singing a dirge. “Tell us the name of your enemy.” The screeching bird-spirits grew louder, their discordant song scraping his ears.

In the Blackflame Empire, when you wanted an Underlord dead, you had precious few options.

There were weapons that could do it, but killing an Underlord yourself risked reprisal from their family and friends. And most assassins were Truegold at best. Any poisons that could affect a body forged in soulfire would cost a fortune, and the refiners with the skill to make such poisons were difficult to silence.

Still, there were a few specialists, if you had the resources and the fortitude to hire them. Among them, the Lord of Specters was the most…palatable.

“The feud between us cannot be solved except by blood,” Jai Daishou said, raising his voice over the smaller, squawking Remnants. “I cannot kill him, and I fear that when I die, his family will tear mine apart.”

The raven remained silent, listening. Some legends said that if the Lord found your reasons insufficient, it would feed you to its flock.

“His name is Eithan Arelius.”

Instantly, the broken-glass screeching of the ravens died. The night was silent but for the wind, which gasped across the spear-sharp peaks of the mountain.

“Eithan Arelius will not be taken,” the Lord of Specters sang. “Choose another, or be gone.”

Jai Daishou stood in shock, like he’d taken a step forward to find his foot poised over a chasm. He had come prepared for a failure of negotiations, or for hostility, or for the Lord of Specters to demand a price too high. But not for an immediate, flat-out refusal.

“Lord of Specters, your servant can prepare a handsome price. Blood essences from life-Remnants more than a century old. Spirits sworn to your service by oath. Scales of death and shadow from the Path of the Twisting Abyss. Name any wish, and if it is within your servant’s power, I will fulfill it.”

The Lord finally flapped its great wings, and ice crawled along Jai Daishou’s spirit. His madra pulsed brightly in his channels, fighting against the darkness—a weaker sacred artist might have withered in that one gust.

“Eithan Arelius is a friend to the flock. He has given us great gifts.”

“Only to protect himself,” Jai Daishou insisted. “He wants to tie you down so that none can hire you against him; he has no loyalty to you.”

“Even so,” the great raven said. “To act against him would bind our soul with chains of debt. You may name another, but not a feather of ours will harm Eithan Arelius.”

***

“Let me tell you something about that family,” Mo She said, slamming his clay mug back down on the tavern table. “You don’t ever take a contract against an Arelius. Not a real Arelius, anyway. They always see you coming.” Mo She looked like a desiccated corpse someone had unearthed from an ancient tomb: a skeletal, shriveled man with skin tight over his bones and hair like drifting scraps of mist.

His eyes were mismatched; one a blind, milky white, and the other a statue’s eye carved of green jade.

“And then there’s this Arelius in particular,” Mo She continued. “He doesn’t just see you when you strike. He saw you when you got up this morning.”

Jai Daishou stiffened in his chair. He may be on the last leg of his mortal journey, but he was still an Underlord. He had enough power to punish insolence. “You speak of him as though he were above me.”

In the half-empty tavern, quite a few eyes turned to Jai Daishou. The barkeeper, polishing his counter with a towel, chuckled. A one-legged boy in the corner grinned at him, mocking.

They knew exactly who he was. They knew of his pride, but they showed open contempt for him anyway.

You did not join the Path of the Last Breath if you cared about staying alive.

Mo She held up his hand for peace, taking another drink as he did so. “Me and my boys would take a contract out on the heavens themselves, if the price was right. Worst that could happen is we die, right? But going up against somebody who knows you’re coming and can do something about it…well, there’s a difference between gambling and throwing your money down a well.”

From his robes, Jai Daishou withdrew a gilded box the size of his palm. He clapped it down onto the table, then slid it across to Mo She.

With his thumb, Mo She cracked the lid. As he did so, a gust of wind pushed the box all the way open, along with a pale green light. Wind aura gathered around the box, a gentle storm of green, and air rushed and spun all around the box. Mo She’s brown robes rippled in the wind, and his hair blew away from his face.

“A top-grade scale,” Jai Daishou said. “Forged by the Emperor himself. I have collected seven of these over the years, for my services to the Empire.” He had never meant to use them as currency, carrying them instead as badges of honor. But when the enemy was at the gates, you used any weapon at your disposal.

Mo She didn’t have anyone who could swallow the scale directly—it would take an Underlord to process even a fraction of this scale’s energy—but it could be used to power weapons of wind madra, to fuel a massive boundary formation, or to nurture wind-aspect sacred herbs. Failing that, Mo She could just sell it. This was the most valuable coin in the Blackflame Empire.

With clear reluctance on his face, Mo She forced the lid shut. “It’s a pretty offer, but you’d have to prove to me that he’s not watching us right now. You want somebody for a suicidal mission, sure, we're your guys. But this is just suicide.”

***

Even in the depths of night, the jungle air was still hot and choking. Water aura swirled in Jai Daishou’s spiritual sight, almost equal to the power of wind. But brighter than both was the vivid green of life aura, which made the dense mesh of vines and trees around him look like an emerald bonfire.

The trees loomed over him, swallowing the sky, filtering the sunlight through their wide leaves. The noise from the jungle's inhabitants was like a force itself. As ever-present as the heat, that mass of chirps, growls, screeches, and screams crushed his ears.

At the southern edge of the Blackflame Empire, this lush green expanse had once belonged to the Tanaban clan. Before they had been driven to extinction by the mad Blackflames.

Now, this was the home of a thousand squabbling families, none large or important enough to be called a clan. If the heavens provided, he could enter and leave without anyone ever knowing he'd been here.

A crash echoed through the jungle, and he tightened his veil: the technique that hid and contained his power as an Underlord. He forced his body to hurry despite the sharp pain in his knees, huddling behind a thick bush.

A tree lifted one mass of roots like a leg, taking another step forward, wading through the foliage like a man through shallow water. It crushed a sapling underfoot, and a panicked squeal cut through the noises of the jungle.

A plump creature the size of a dog shot away from the walking tree, whimpering loudly. A tenderfoot scurried off, thankfully not in Jai Daishou's direction. If he had to unveil himself and destroy one of these ancestral trees, the Underlady of the southern jungles would sense him in a blink.

Tenderfoots were like wild pigs with the long, floppy ears of rabbits. They bred quickly, fed on roots and leaves, and served as prey for most of the jungle.

A hand of vines reached down from the tree and snatched up the tenderfoot, which kicked its legs wildly as it was shoved into a widening gap in the bark. When the tree crunched down, blood and one severed leg fell to the ground.

There were thousands of ancestral trees in this jungle, and most of them fed on blood and flesh. When Jai Daishou had flown in on his Thousand-Mile Cloud, he had seen a dozen of them circling the ocean of leaves like sharks in the surf.

He had to withdraw his spiritual senses in order to maintain his veil, but he estimated this tree was only Jade. The Lowgolds could move faster, and some of them had developed eyes. The Truegolds could be crafty, in their way. Above that...

This was a vast and wild land. Some of these trees were truly ancient, and truly powerful.

When the tree had finished feeding, a flock of colorful birds fluttered down from its branches, fighting over the bits of flesh that had fallen from the plant's meal. They tugged the meat between their beaks, glaring at one another. As they fought, the nearby soil swirled up as though caught in a sudden wind.

Sacred beasts. They lived in the branches of the ancestral trees, feeding on leftovers and the occasional spirit-fruit the tree produced. In return, they helped defend their tree against rivals.

When the tree had finally gone, Jai Daishou progressed. The scripted eight-sided plate in his hands glowed softly blue to the north-northwest, so he headed that way.

He wasn't supposed to know the exact location of this prison, and it would go badly for him if anyone knew he'd marked it for later return. The Deepwalker Ape had killed thousands before it was finally subdued by the previous Empress, and officially it had been executed.

Unofficially, the bloodthirsty creature had been given to the Underlady of the South to imprison. One did not simply throw away an Underlord-level sacred beast. Not when it could be turned to the good of the Empire someday.

Jai Daishou intended to turn it to the good of the Jai clan instead.

He finally reached his goal in a clearing: a massive boulder the size of a house, dropped into a ring of trees as though it had fallen from the sky. Now that he was out of the shade, the sun beat down so hard that even he began to sweat. A human without a robust Iron body might have been killed by this heat.

The Underlord struck one unremarkable knob of rock, and a hidden circle lit white. He repeated that process six times in different places, and finally the aura in the area shimmered and dispersed.

A formation designed to lock the boulder in place. If he hadn't helped design this prison, he would never have been able to remove this lid. And only careful interrogation of some of his old friends, who had actually placed the seal, allowed him to find its location.

Now, though...

He braced his hands against the blistering hot rock, Enforcing his body with madra. The flow of power strained against his veil, almost revealing him, but he limited himself to the level of a Truegold. Even so, his soulfire-forged body had advantages no Gold could ever hope to imitate.

Jai Daishou shouted, both to chase away the pain in his joints and to focus his attention. He pushed against the rocky soil, shoving the boulder forward.

His feet started to dig down into the ground, and he used a quick Ruler technique to add force aura to his push. Force was not quite his chosen Path—sword aura was a specific adaptation of force aura, but in practice, they were cousins at best—but his mastery was such that it was enough. The stone slid away from its resting-place, slamming into a pair of trees with a crunch and knocking them over.

The lid's removal revealed a wide, circular pit ten yards across. A stench billowed up from within, like blood and sweat and carrion left to rot in the sun, but its contents were shrouded in absolute darkness.

Jai Daishou drew himself up despite the aching in his back, Enforcing his lungs. “Ape!” he shouted down. “Jai Daishou, Underlord of the Jai clan, brings you freedom!”

Except for the buzz of insects and scream of a distant cat, silence reigned.

He looked to the edges of the hole, where chains thicker than his wrists were still securely anchored. They were steel with veins of halfsilver, and they should anchor the ape's madra as well as its massive strength.

The last he'd seen the creature, it was half-mad with rage, and had sworn bloody revenge against the Imperial clan and every Underlord in the Empire. This beast would be a disaster, one that he was reluctant to unleash on the Empire, but it shouldn't be too hard to steer it toward the Arelius family first. Afterwards, it could be dealt with.

But he had expected it to howl and rage at the sight of him. Instead, it was quiet. Was it dead? Or had it learned patience in its long imprisonment?

Jai Daishou reached out to the power of the sunlight around him. There was no light aura in the pit, but it was strong up here. He gathered the light with his Ruler technique, focusing it, shining it down into the pit as though he were magnifying it through a telescope.

The beam shone down, revealing the distant bottom of the pit. The prison was a long cylinder, many stories deep, its walls circled with security scripts. The Deepwalker Ape should have waited at the bottom, staring up at him in rage. Or its body should have lain there, broken after decades of isolation.

Instead, the floor was spotlessly clean. No fur, no muck, no blood. Nothing.

Only two characters scratched into the stone floor, so large that they were visible from the entrance so far above.

Two words: “Nice try.”

Jai Daishou didn't need to have seen the characters before to recognize Eithan Arelius' handwriting.

He staggered back from the edge of the pit, clutching his stomach. All his life, he had heard of people coughing up blood in anger. He had always thought of it as an expression, an artistic way of illustrating the toxic feel of anger.

But now, he really felt as though he were choking back blood. It had taken him weeks to reach this jungle, far from his lands. And it cost him a small fortune to keep it secret.

All the while, he had been nothing but a fool dancing in Eithan's hand.

Jai Daishou actually did cough then, and he spat into his palm. The saliva was stained red.

So you could cough up blood in rage. Or perhaps his time was even closer than he'd thought.

In a fury, Jai Daishou tore away the veil over his core, uncaring of the consequences. He cycled his madra to its limit, and white blades of light shredded the trees, tearing apart the forest in time with his rage.

The Deepwalker Ape had been the last piece he could play with only one life on the line. The last weapon he could buy so cheaply.

But now? Now, he would see Eithan dead at any cost. If his clan had to burn, if the Empire itself did, Eithan Arelius would burn with it.

***

Lindon sat with legs crossed, surrounded by a ring of fifty candles. With his eyes shut, he could feel the aura around him.

Fire aura, bright and red, radiated from each of the candles. He pulled wisps of it into his core, pushing it through his madra channels in time with each of his slow, measured breaths.

In his time here—however long that had been—he had reached a deeper understanding of the Path of Black Flame. At first, he had seen fire and destruction as two entirely separate powers. He had wondered how he could possibly train both, without access to a dragon's den like the one in Serpent's Grave.

But the aura of fire and destruction went hand-in-hand. Even now, tiny sparks of black power surrounded the wicks of the fifty candles as they were burned away by the flames. Destruction aura. He could harvest almost five times as much fire aura as destruction, but he limited himself. Balance was important...or so he'd learned after his madra had revolted and he'd scorched the back of his hand.

In his core, he visualized a stone wheel grinding away with a deliberate, agonizingly slow rhythm. It pushed at the boundaries of his core, stretching him, expanding his spirit.

Even after all this time, the Heaven and Earth Purification Wheel still felt like breathing through a thin straw. Sweat covered his forehead, his lungs burned, and each inhale was ragged. Only determination kept him breathing in time with the cycling technique.

Of course, it was more than just the restrictive technique that was making him feel trapped. There was also the fact that he was, quite literally, in prison. Not that you'd know it from his surroundings.

The Skysworn had brought him here directly after leaving Serpent's Grave. They had dumped him into this room and left without answering a single question. If not for his twice-daily meals, he would assume that they had forgotten him.

At first, he hadn't thought of these rooms as a prison cell. They didn't look like one. For one thing, they were rooms. He had a privy equipped with water-generating constructs, a small bedroom, and a sitting-room. The furniture was polished and finely carved, and the walls were smooth wood. His meals were simple but varied, and he was served tea with each one.

He wanted to burn through the walls and escape.

Every time he shut his eyes to cycle, it felt as though the walls shrunk to an inch from his skin. He remembered his time sealed in the Transcendent Ruins, and sometimes he had to snap his eyes open to remind himself that he wasn't still there.

He actually had burned through a panel of the wooden wall to see if escape was possible. The wood was only a finger thick, with scripted stone beneath that did not give way to Blackflame. If he became more desperate, he might try blasting through even that.

He needed out. He didn't even know how long he'd been here—he had no window by which to judge the passing of time, and they'd confiscated his pack. He could have counted meal deliveries, but he hadn't thought of that until it was too late. The duel with Jai Long was approaching, and he wasn't ready. They might wrench open his door one day and haul him to his death.

It couldn’t have been more than a week. Could it?

Even if freedom was too much to ask, he just needed a word. He could speak to his jailors through the door as they delivered his meal, and they would provide him with any reasonable request. They'd given him a few books on cycling theory, several loads of candles, and a new teacup when he'd broken his first. But they wouldn't speak to him. He was at the point where he would trade one of his meals for a single—

Boots tapped against the stone outside. Mealtime already.

The steps grew louder, and he snapped out of his cycling trance. He jumped to his feet, wiping the sweat from his face and preparing a smile. They glanced in sometimes, and he wanted them to see him in control and friendly, not desperate. They might take desperation as hostility, and treat him as an enemy. An enemy might never get out.

The boots stopped. The top half of his wooden door could swing open separately, leaving the bottom half in place. There were bars behind the top half, and they could hand him his food and tea through the bars. Unfortunately, that always gave him a clear look at the person who was refusing to talk to him. If they were faceless, sliding his meals under the door, maybe he could forget that they were humans at all. Pretend that his food was delivered by construct.

As he had for every other meal delivery, he stood with back straight and waited with a smile for the top half to swing open.

This time, he was left smiling at his door. Firmly shut.

He kept his expression in place as each breath stretched on. He hadn't heard anyone walk away, so surely someone was still there. Was this silence designed to make him uncomfortable? Or had it only been a few seconds, and his frantic mind was stretching each instant into an eternity?

He took three deliberate breaths and confirmed that no, they really were making him wait. Why? Every other day, they had simply delivered the food.

An instant later, he was given his answer.

The door swung open.

Normally, a balding old man delivered a box with his meal in it, collected his old box, and left without a word. Lindon had deliberately not picked up his old box today, in the hopes of prodding a sentence out of the man—a demand, a curse, anything. It hadn't worked when he'd tried that before, as the man had simply gestured and the wind had carried Lindon's empty box to him, but surely anything worth trying was worth trying twice.

Eithan and Yerin stood outside, both smiling.

The Underlord had a smug grin on his face, hands in the pockets of his blue silk robes, long yellow hair tied behind him. He looked like a child who had the satisfaction of seeing a trick he'd pulled work flawlessly.

Yerin's smile came with a breath of relief, as though she hadn't expected to find him here. He stared at her like he hadn't seen her for months: her skin covered by razor-thin scars, her black robes sliced and tattered, and two silver blades hanging over her shoulders. A sword was buckled onto her hip, strapped onto a red belt that seemed to be made of liquid...or perhaps a living Remnant.

Even after all the times she’d saved his life, he’d still never been happier to see her.

Eithan...he couldn't be quite so happy to see Eithan. Usually, when the Arelius Patriarch popped up unannounced, that meant he was about to put Lindon through something dangerous.

Lindon stared at them for longer than was appropriate. He knew his eyes were wide and his lips parted, but he still couldn't quite believe that they were here. Now, with no hint and no warning.

“You like looking at me so much, I might get the wrong idea,” Yerin said, grinning and rapping her knuckles on the lower half of the door, which was still shut. “You going to ask us in, or what?”

Lindon stammered for a few moments before saying, “...in? You're not coming to get me out?”

Eithan put on an offended look even as he levered the handle and slid the rest of the door open. “Get you out? After all the trouble we went through breaking in here? That would just be rude.”

He shut both halves of the door behind them when they entered.

Yerin glanced around the room and nodded approvingly. “Not bad. Can't even call this a proper prison, can you?”

Eithan ran his hands over the scorched hole in the wall paneling. “Ah, what happened here? Training accident?”

“No, I was trying to escape. I stopped because I thought you might come for me.”

“Just to visit you,” Eithan said, leaning against the wall and folding his arms. “Looks like you have a cozy place to call your own. I wouldn't want to ruin that.”

Lindon had no response.

Yerin kicked the side of Eithan's leg so hard that it sounded like a hammer hitting the ground, but the Underlord didn't so much as flinch.

“The Skysworn say they haven't arrested you,” Yerin explained. “They like to fiddle with words. Basically, they're keeping you like a fish in a pond so they can keep an eye on you. You're not in danger.”

That was a relief, but it didn't explain why they weren't freeing him.

Eithan buffed his fingernails on the edge of his robe. “I'd prefer not to antagonize the Skysworn more than I already have, but I couldn't let your training stagnate with such an important deadline looming. So I decided to bring the training to you! We can all three continue our pursuits in this very room. Convenient, isn't it?”

Lindon wouldn't have called it convenient, but he still had to admit he was greatly relieved to see them here. At least he wouldn't be alone anymore. And there were some burning questions he finally had the chance to ask.

From his pocket, he withdrew a glass ball that burned with a blue flame in the very center. The Skysworn had confiscated it from him—along with most of his belongings—when they brought him here, but it had appeared beside him one morning when he woke up.

“You showed me something like this before,” Lindon said, voice low. “Where did you get it?”

Eithan tapped his fingers together. “That's an interesting first question. You don't want to know about my Path, perhaps? The techniques I could teach you?”

“Of course, yes. But this first.”

“Very well. I inherited it from my family.”

Lindon waited for more, but none came.

“Did you know all along?” He asked. “Is that why you...picked me?”

This was one of the questions that had needled him ever since he'd seen Eithan produce the marble with the void at its heart. Had Eithan really singled him out because he saw a singular opportunity, or because he'd recognized Suriel's marble? Was Lindon only special because of the glass ball in his hand?

Eithan patted the pocket on his right hip. “I keep mine in here. Close your eyes and stretch out your perception, if you would.”

Lindon followed instructions, reaching out to sense Eithan with the extra sense he'd developed when he grew to Jade. He was still growing used to the impressions given by his spiritual sense—it seemed to only feel the nature of madra, ignoring anything physical, so something could feel as though it was right next to you even if it was blocked off by a brick wall.

At first, he felt Yerin's power: sharp, cold, and somehow not fully formed, like a gemstone halfway through cutting. The sword on her hip gave off a different power, distant and cold as a far-off mountain. He couldn't get a grasp of exactly how powerful that weapon was. Her belt...he pulled his perception away from the belt. It always made him think of murder, of blood-drenched hands and the scent of a slaughterhouse.

He felt almost nothing from Eithan, as though the man were made of air. Eithan had mentioned before that he wrapped his core in a veil: a technique that allowed him to mask his power. Lindon wondered if Eithan would teach him, now that he had enough power to mask.

Sharpening his focus, he dove into Eithan's pocket and encountered...a gap.

He wouldn't have noticed anything strange if he hadn't been specifically looking for it, but it was like something in Eithan's pocket was hidden, concealed so that he couldn't sense a hint. He pushed further, tightening his perception, trying to penetrate it.

He may as well have saved his effort. Confused, he ran his perception into the marble he carried. Suriel's marble was warm and comforting, even to his spiritual sense, and it also brought a sense of order, of rightness. Like the flame added something into the world, rather than taking it away.

When Lindon opened his eyes, Eithan dipped into his pocket and withdrew the void marble. He held it up so that Lindon could see: a perfectly clear orb the size of a man's thumbnail with a perfectly dark hole in the center. Lindon still felt nothing, as though the object had no power whatsoever.

“The legacy of my bloodline works slightly differently,” Eithan explained. “An Arelius sees things as though with our physical senses, seeing and hearing and smelling rather than picking up on spiritual perception. As such, I saw the marble in your pocket like a ball of glass...but I could see nothing inside.”

He closed his own eyes and nodded. “Even now, I can see you holding a transparent ball, but I can see no blue flame.” He tossed his own marble up and caught it. “As for mine, however, I can pierce it quite easily with both my bloodline powers and my perception. It is the same for you, yes?”

Lindon nodded slowly. “So what did you think it was?”

“Naturally, I assumed there was something inside. I thought it was a Lord-stage barrier meant to protect a small treasure, or perhaps a pill or construct. And I was very curious to learn what Copper had caught the eye of an Underlord. It was only later that I began to suspect it had been produced by someone far above any Underlord.”

He held up the void marble, inspecting it. “As far as I knew, this was the only example of such a heavenly relic in the world. If I ran into another, I would have expected it to look like mine. How interesting that I was wrong.”

“I would love to hear that story,” Lindon said, sensing an opportunity. “I'm only too happy to share mine.”

“He is,” Yerin confirmed, fiddling with one of the edges of her outer robe. She must have been bored. “Shared it with me more than once.”

“And I would be delighted to listen,” Eithan said, closing his fist around his marble. “Later. Unless this heavenly messenger told you something urgent?”

Suriel had said he had thirty years, and he'd spent slightly more than one. He supposed he could wait a little longer, though the curiosity might kill him in the meantime. He sighed and shook his head.

The glass ball vanished into Eithan's pocket. “Excellent! Consider our conversation a prize for when you defeat Jai Long, hm? Something to look forward to.”

Lindon dipped his head in acknowledgement, but he wasn't satisfied. Suriel had seen something in him, even if he wasn't quite sure what that was. She must have seen something in Eithan as well, or at least someone else up there had.

Eithan had said more than once that he wanted to pursue the sacred arts to their height. And he thought Lindon and Yerin had what it took to join him.

Maybe the heavens thought so too.