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Chapter Text

In the wee hours of the morning, Tomas kneels alone in the Grandmaster’s sanctuary. The majority of the clan is asleep, for them, another ordinary evening bleeding into another ordinary day. Those who are awake do so for him alone. He has been ordered to wait. For how long he does not know, as that is a closely held secret.

Soon he will leave this place, and if the gods are willing, will return from his trials as Lin Kuei.

Incense is not to be lit in the dark, but the smell of it permeates the floor and stains the walls from a hundred years of fire. Normally, the smell would be meditative, but now it only gives him a headache. This place is too still, too cold, it feels like a grave. It is not right to be here when the sun cannot consecrate the painted wood and carved shrine. Even the light of his lantern seems not to flicker, frozen in time, waiting for permission to burn.

Tomas often sees them in his meditations. The voice of reason always wears his mother’s face. She kneels seiza beside him- a pose she never took in life, in the same clothes she wore on the day of her death.

‘You have nothing to fear,’ she says, ‘for many years you have trained hard.’ She speaks with his adopted mother’s voice, for she cannot remember her own. Tomas breathes deep, focusing on her voice, and finds solace despite his discomfort. How many years has it been? She seems to get younger each time he prays, barely older than he is now.

'Your family has been good to you. They will not lead you astray.’

Questioning her judgement is unwise but her words unsettle something in him. He knows the criticisms the Grandmaster has faced taking him in. Even after all these years there are still those among them that would deny Tomas this rite. Their disapproval is no longer strange to him, but he knows how their words affect the others. How they affect Bi-Han. How can a ghost know anything about the living?

‘It is not the rite of our ancestors.’ He argues. She sighs; a sad distant sound and he immediately feels a fool. There was no room for self-doubt during the trials. Self-doubt was how men got themselves killed. The urge to open his eyes and face her is great, to apologize for his insolence, but he resists. He knows too well that doing so will only cause her to leave and the promise of heartbreak for disappointing her is unbearable.

‘Our ancestors don’t matter anymore, Tomas. Our clan has ended, today you will be Lin Kuei.’

‘But what if I cannot be?’

‘Then you will be something else.’

Behind him, Tomas hears the door slide open, and the soft padding of bare feet approaching. Someone takes his mother’s seat beside him. He opens his eyes expecting to see the Grandmaster has come for him but is surprised when Kuai Liang kneels beside him.

His brother does not acknowledge him, instead bowing low and reverent before the altar, seeking his own wisdom in this place. He brings with him a fire that dispels the chill in the room. That familiar heat eases something in Tomas’ mind, and he finds that he doesn’t mind that his mother has left him. Tomas closes his eyes once again, focusing on that warm presence as they pray together in silence.

Except Tomas does not pray, he waits. The still air of the sanctuary is suffocating in his anticipation.

Eventually, they stand together and finally his brother looks upon him.

Tomas expects him to say something, but for the second time this evening Kuai Liang surprises him. He reaches out and straightens out Tomas’s collar and reties his tasuki. His brother has been anxious for weeks, short, irritable and distant, even going so far as to snap at Tomas in the middle of a training match. At the time, Tomas had not been sure what had set the man on edge, but now he can't help but feel silly for how oblivious he had been. It was forbidden to discuss the trials with those who had not yet undergone them, but the price of failure was no secret. There are no second chances and those who fail are never seen again.

His brother has moved onto tugging at his belt, a slight furrow in his brow.

“I haven’t forgotten how to dress myself, Kuai Liang.” It's gentle. He’d meant for it to be humorous.

His brother pointedly ignores him. He lets the man continue to check every strap on his uniform. Lets him smooth his hands over every wrinkle. This had been one of Kuai Liang’s responsibilities back when Tomas was still learning. It has been years since he last needed help.

His hand finds the bone-handled knife strapped to Tomas’ waist. His mother had worn it the same way on the day that she died. It is one of the last remnants of her existence. Everything else had burned with their pyres. It’s his most prized possession.

“Give this to me.” He orders. Tomas hands it over without question.

“Many drop them.” Kuai Liang mutters, barely more than a whisper. It's dangerously close to forbidden speech, and it suddenly dawns on Tomas that no one had sent Kuai Liang here. The punishment would be severe if anyone were to catch them. From Kuai Liang’s own obi he pulls a karambit, tucking it into Tomas’s belt and securing it with a leather knot.

When there is nothing left to inspect, he stands there, looking at Tomas’s feet, a slight furrow to his brow and a sad weight to his shoulders.

“Kuai Liang...?” It is hesitant. He doesn’t know what he means to ask but it was not like his brother to look so uncertain. Tomas hates it. He doesn’t get anything else out before he is pulled into a crushing hug. Kuai Liang isn’t much taller than him anymore but he is warm and his grip is so encompassing that something inside of him cracks. It feels like Tomas is 10 years old again.

“You are going to be great.” He mumbles into Tomas’s hair. He sounds like he speaks more to himself than his sibling. At that moment, Tomas is struck by a horrible terror. What he stands to lose should he fail- what would his family think?

A long shuddering breath escapes him, as he buries himself in Kuai Liang’s arms. Should he fail, he’s already said goodbye to his friends and goodbye to his mother. He will say goodbye to his father when he’s summoned for the trials. He was not given the chance to say goodbye to Bi-Han.

“Shit.” Is all he can utter under the sudden weight of it all. He wasn’t afraid before, but now the gravity of it feels like it could crush him.

Kuai Liang pulls back first, but doesn’t let go of him. His eyes search Tomas’s face for words he cannot find. He’s looking for a goodbye, neither of them want. Tomas doesn’t allow it. Like a dog with a rabbit he shakes his head, forces his fear into a box, and steels himself with a finality and a grunt unbecoming of a Lin Kuei. “I will see you again at sunbreak, Brother.”

As if struck by lighting, Kuai Liang straightens, tall and proud he seemed again.

“More stealthful than the night.”

“More deadly than the dawn.”

No other words need be exchanged between them, and Kuai Liang leaves the sanctuary with the same silence he entered with.

Tomas stands alone, staring at the door. Why, he does not know.

Eventually, he kneels again. Breathing deep and steady, focusing on the comforting smell of old incense. His mother does not return but his brother’s heat stays with him for hours, until the sun starts to rise and bloody light spills under the crack of the paper door.

With a whisper, the door slides open again. This time, Tomas is ready for it. He rises and bows low before his Grandmaster. The man regards him with cool dispassion

“Bring me a coin from the shrine at Dīyǔ Fēng and we will forge you the mark of your rank.”

So, he will not get this goodbye either. Hours ago that would have caused him grief, but he is already changed.

He bows again before his father. And so his trials begin.

Chapter Text

When he was a boy, Tomas had nightmares about the forest. Once, the forest had been an exciting place. It was where his father took him to hunt. His earliest memories were of following the man, learning to walk silent and carrying his water. His father was fearless, there was not a river he would not cross, a mountain he would not scale, nor a beast he could not chase. And then one day, monsters had come out of the forest. Monsters more fearsome than any beast that had killed his father in front of him and ripped his mother to ribbons.

He doesn’t remember much from that time, but he remembers the trees. How not even the walls of the mighty Lin Kuei fortress could keep them from looming above, like knives thrust into the sky. Back then, simply passing the gate, looking out into that cold abyss was enough to turn his stomach.

He had wanted to run, to flee from these strange, cold, men. He’d tried once, slipped out in the middle of the night. But fear of those trees had frozen him solid at the gate. He’d stood staring out into wild land, the full moon catching on distant mountains, the impassable spine of some enormous beast, slumbering, waiting. That night he’d slunk back to his bed, ashamed of himself, and never tried to run again.

Today, for the first time- and perhaps the last- he steps out from under the gate, alone.

It is still dark, the sun little more than a wound across the sky. It casts odd shadows that follow him, hiding behind the trees. They slink away, curious but shy. He is not afraid anymore.

The road to Dīyǔ Fēng cuts through the village at the bottom of the valley. He doubts its coincidence that his Grandmaster’s order should bring him there. He could go around it but he's never been permitted to go there before.

The people who live there keep secrets, was a common saying within the clan. He had once asked Bi-Han what it meant. The older boy had looked at him with that same cold judgement that he always wore when asked a question. He was like their mother in that way, always defensive, always wary of ulterior motives.

“They are superstitious.”

“So are we.” Tomas argued.

Bi-Han had smiled a little at that. A brief crack in the cold mask he rarely let anyone see.

“They are more so. They-” he paused looking at the ceiling for the correct words, “-are not like other layfolk.”

“Are they dangerous?”

Bi-Han’s expression went cold again. “Not usually.”

He walks, not leisurely, but unhurried. Deliberately. It is a long way to the bottom of the valley, but he can make it in one day so long as he does not stop.

Eventually, trees give way to farmland. Here, fields are haphazardly cut into the rare, small patches of flat land. The trail widens to a proper road, scarred with the deep grooves from a tractor. He sees the first villager when the sun is beginning to dip again. An old woman, tending to a field of crops. She’s quite a distance away, yet when she spots him her curved spine straightens and she stares as he walks by. He does not meet her gaze, but he can feel the way her eyes follow him. Empty farmland on either side of a long road provides him no cover. It feels like an eternity before she looks away.

Does she know what he is? He wears no disguise, just a simple grey traveling cloak over his uniform. It is too late to regret that decision.

The village itself is little more than a few dozen homes sitting like sick, old men huddled around a table. It doesn’t take long for the people here to notice him. A group of men lingering outside a house with smoke that smells of cooked meat go quiet as he passes. A woman leading a cow stops in her tracks, and turns to walk the other way.

He keeps walking, ignoring their stares, an uncomfortable feeling prickling at the back of his neck. In a village this small they must know him as an outsider. It is a strange feeling, knowing you do not belong, yet familiar in its strangeness. He felt like this often before he had learned their language.

A flash of something red catches his eye. A bloody smear of movement near the peak of one farmhouse. A bird perhaps.

Or something else.

His heart skips a single beat. It was no mistake that his father would have Tomas cut through this village. His hand finds the knife hidden under his cloak.

Hours of walking without rest, water, or food has left him tired. A fight here would be disastrous. Too many people have seen his face; too many people would get in the way. A woman, half his size, maybe smaller, her hand shifts minutely around the mattock she leans on. She must be 60 years old.

Does the Grandmaster truly expect him to slaughter a village of the elderly? He wants to imagine that such an outcome would be unthinkable but he knows his people and their traditions, and his stomach sinks with the knowledge that may not hold true.

He watches the roofline out of the corner of his eye, keenly aware of the presence of people he cannot see. People moving in their homes. The creak and groan of wood being sawed. The shouts of laboring men in the distance. Unfamiliar eyes watching him, listening to him.

Someone is following him now, he is certain of it. Another flash disappears behind a wall, a deadly glittering of color.

He’s too busy watching it. He doesn’t see the man step out into the road in front of him.

He grabs Tomas’s shoulder before they collide.

The knife is pulled from its sheath. It’s bright, freshly burnished steel, catches the light and gleams like a death sentence. But Tomas is fast, and he doesn’t pull it out from under his cloak before he catches himself.

He blinks.

For a second, he doesn't know where he is because the man who looks back at him wears his brothers’ face. Behind a mask, he could recognize Bi-Han by eyes alone. Now he looks at the cut of his nose and the twist of his lips. The furrow to his brow is an expression he has seen on Kuai Liang more times and he can count. This man in front of him is neither of them, and yet is somehow both of them.

Tomas is quick to re-sheath the knife. The man glances down, and looks back at Tomas curiously.

“My apologies, friend.” He steps back and adjusts his grip on the sack of rice he has thrown over one shoulder. He waits for Tomas to say something, and raises his eyebrows when no response comes.

“Are you a traveller?”’ His voice is smooth and expressive. Nothing like either of his brothers, who are careful to hide their intentions behind stony masks.

“‘No.” Tomas answers, too quickly.

This man- no, this boy- is by far the youngest person he has seen in the village, likely younger than Tomas himself, though it is hard to be sure. Clearly, a farmer from the look of his dirty, sun bleached clothes.

“Oh.” He sits on the word, befuddlement written in every line of his face. “Are you looking for someone?”

“I’m just passing through,” Tomas says at last.

The boy looks at him strangely. Of course he does. As if it could not be more obvious Tomas was lying.

“Well.” He looks up at the sky, judging the time by the rapidly sinking sun. “I am sorry, friend but this road ends here. There is nowhere else to go.”

“I know where I am going.” he insists, trying to step around the boy.

“No,” he says, stepping in front of Tomas again, “You are mistaken. Come.” He reaches out and takes hold of Tomas’s elbow. His mind snaps to six different ways he could break this boy’s wrist. He grips the knife again. Tomas wants to pull away, snatch his arm back from this unwelcome touch, but he doesn’t. This is a layman, he reminds himself. They don’t know who they put their hands on.

“It’s not safe to be out after dark.” When Tomas doesn’t answer, the boy tugs him lightly. Tomas could kill him before the other villagers could cross the narrow street. “Come, my mother always makes too much. You’ve come a long way.”

He does not want to argue with this boy. Not here, it’s too exposed, too many people around. He can feel the sweat starting to bead on his collar. Whatever it was that had caught his attention before is gone now, but surely it is still watching him. Against his will, his feet move letting the boy tug him out of the street and away from the prying eyes of the village. It does little to ease his simmering ill-ease, but at least he doesn't have to worry about laymen getting caught up in whatever fight is clearly waiting for him.

The boy is speaking to him as they wind between sagging homes and under thatched overhangs, but Tomas is barely listening, instead focused on whatever it is that follows them.

Before he can orient himself to where he is being led, darkness engulfs him. He blinks, momentarily blind before his vision adjusts and sees that he has been pulled through the doorway of an ancient farmhouse. It’s dim, the only light coming from between the cracks of the walls, and a small fireplace in the center of the room.

Behind him, the boy- Gi he had called himself- bars the door with a heavy wooden beam. It slides into place with a loud thunk that seems to rattle the entire frame of the house. Its existence strikes Tomas as odd. It is clearly not intended to keep him inside, as any reasonably strong man could simply push it aside yet, he knew very well there is nothing in these forests that could break down a door with a beam even half the size of this one.

Gi must read his mind, because when he turns back to face Tomas, he looks embarrassed by it, shrugging awkwardly.

“Wait here,” he mumbles with a timidness that looks wholly out of place on his brothers’ face. He ducks to avoid walking into a massive wood joist that must have been hewn from an incredible tree and scurries off into a back room.

The centuries old floor creaks under Tomas’s boots. It’s loud, loud enough that he can clearly hear the boy moving in the other room and the distinct shuffling of an old woman’s feet somewhere beyond them. These thin walls betray Gi’s every intention as the boy’s muffled words drift in like a secret impossible to keep.

Tomas is still in the doorway, when he returns a moment later, waving a map where he can see it and beckoning Tomas over. Even the stealthiest among them would have difficulty sneaking up on him in a place like this. So, he slides his boots off, wondering idly if his mother would disapprove more of him removing them when an enemy lurks, or wearing them as a guest in someone’s home.

Gi’s map is well worn, clearly decades old and out of date. It’s something that was made in a far away factory with cheap ink that has lost most of its vibrance over time. There are grooves in the paper where landmarks have been drawn and erased. Paths through the mountains, homesteads outside of the main village, graves and fishing spots are all permanently imprinted into the thin paper. Instinctually, Tomas glances to where he knows his clan to sleep. The fortress and the trail to it remain hidden on unblemished paper.

Gi points to his own village, isolated and alone it sits tucked away in the shadow of Dīyǔ Fēng. The next nearest settlement is almost 200 kilometers away, along a dirt road impassable on anything faster than a mule. On the map, the mountain is unnamed, just another peak on the spine of Earth.

“If you only look at it on a map, it looks like you can travel through here. This is where you got lost, yes? Do not feel bad, you are not the first traveller to make this mistake. The gorge is impassible, there is no bridge. You’ll need to turn around.”

Lin Kuei maps are different from this layman’s map, he thinks to himself. His father had made him study them until he could draw them in his mind, so as to never risk being captured with one in hand. They have their own trails, their routes into town, and names for places. Theirs are ancient and secret. None of them are marked on this map.

“Rest here tonight,” Gi says, “You will only get lost worse if you try to travel in the dark.”

He sighs softly, knowing his departure will cause this family undue worry if he leaves now. He owes them nothing, but how can he begin to explain what he is or how he must keep moving or risk putting them in grave danger?

He resigns himself to stay a little longer and will slip out into the night once they have gone to bed. At least a few hours here would be better rest than the camp he was planning on making further along. It would likely be safer from ambush, as well.

His mother, as it turns out, is a woman who looked to be nearly as ancient as her house, fragile and half blind. She serves them a humble meal of watery soup and sour beer, around a table that is neither properly square nor properly flat.

“What is your name?” She asks.

“Michal,” he lies.

“A Western name.”

The statement takes him off guard. It is earnest in a way he isn't expecting. In spite of himself, he laughs, deep in his chest and genuine, “I am a Western man.”

Though she is frail, her laugh is strong. It’s bright and clear like a bell, a lovely warm sound born of someone unburdened by a harsh life in the mountains. She laughs with a playfulness far too young for her, that thaws the ice in the room.

“Yes, I suppose that is obvious,” she chuckles, “You speak well for a Western man.”

It has been a lifetime since he last lived amongst laymen. He had forgotten what it felt like to be among people who laughed so easily and welcomed strangers into their home. It makes something in his heart ache.

Dangerously, it makes something in his heart grieve.

For a moment he forgets the strangeness of this place. He debates lying again. Layfolk are more open than the Lin Kuei. They are simple. Honest. He can’t help but be charmed by this crooked farmhouse and worn family. It reminds him of something he would be wise to forget. He shouldn’t be talking to these people. His father would disapprove, Bi-Han would scold him. Were he here, even Kuai Liang would pull him aside and warn him against such transgressions. Yet, to be cold in the face of their generosity feels unnatural. It feels too much like the man someone else carved him to be.

“I have lived here many years.” Against his better judgement, he chases that warmth, if only for a few hours.

Her smile is permanently scarred into the wrinkles of her face. She asks about his life and his home. Mostly he lies. But they are soft lies. He tells her about a wife that does not exist and a house in a faraway village, about a stern brother and a wise one. She tells him about the shrine to her ancestors, old as the mountains, the final resting place of brave men and fearsome women, and in return he tells her a story about breaking his arm on his mother’s birthday.

Gi lights a lantern and his mother orders him to bring out their most valuable liquor. Tomas politely declines it, but smiles with them all the same, while they laugh and carouse long past a reasonable hour. At some point in the evening, when they have already gotten too drunk, Gi interrupts.

“Mother, tomorrow I will take Michal to the road. So, I can show him the proper way through these mountains.”

“You needn't do that.” Tomas doesn't know why he says it. He is already planning on slipping out into the night, unmolested. It is not Bi-Han he speaks to. He need not justify his actions to these laymen.

“No, he is right, Michal. These hills are haunted. My ancestors are not kind. Especially not to outsiders.”

“I’m not-” he starts to say, but remembers himself, “-afraid”, he corrects.

“Yes, that is the reputation of your people.” It’s a playful jibe.

“My people?”

“Yes. Your people like to get onto boats and run away to faraway places, get themselves killed for it. You’re far from the first traveller to come through this village, my son.”

He laughs, but something in her statement does not land right. Gi chuckles drunkenly into his cup. When grins he shows all his teeth. He is not the first. The words lay between them like a corpse gone unburied.

Realization hits Tomas slowly.

He knows why the Grandmaster has sent him here.

When he was a boy he had nightmares about the forest and the dark shadows that stalked him from beyond the walls of his home. But it wasn’t his first home- it wasn’t even a home at all. It had always been a grave dug for someone else's body.

Here he is now, in a stranger’s home, built in the shadow of that mountain whose very name is too sacred for words. This place, like everywhere else, is a cruelty disguised as a gift.

“Your ancestors,” he asks, though he already knows the answer, “they haunt Dīyǔ Fēng?” The words sound hollow in his own ears, a mourning bell tolled too late.

Her eyes flick up at him, two shards of ice in dark water. It is as if a winter wind sweeps through the cracks in the wall, and the world goes cold. She looks for something in his face, but the lantern distorts the light, casting strange shadows over his face that dance like dying sunlight in the trees.

“It is forbidden. They will kill you.”

“Yes, they will.” Tomas agrees.

She stares at him suddenly sober. Gi’s brows furrow, confused. The fire, now nothing more than a pile of glowing embers, cracks and shudders. It paints the room in dim red light and washes the color from their skin. Her hands tremble.

“There is a bridge,” she says, staggering and uncertain. She shrinks, becoming frail again, crumbling under his stare. “It is only for ghosts.”

“...Mother?” Gi asks, alarm written in every line of his face.

“You think me a ghost?”

She does not answer.

Gi tries to speak but she silences him with a raised hand.

“Forgive him,” she says, averting her eyes, “he is too young to remember. Please.” It's not quite begging, but almost. The floor does not creak when Tomas stands. Gi tries to protest, but again his mother stops him. She mumbles under hushed breath, but Tomas can hear it. She tells him to hide his face, for it is a great insult to look upon the dead.

They do not move when he pushes that heavy wooden beam from the door, and shiver when the moonless sky looks back at them. He laments that he would have liked to stay longer by the warmth of that fire. But it was not for him, nor was it ever.

“I will pray for you,” she calls to him, as he steps out the door, “and-”

He pauses, regarding her without turning around.

“Your wife….and children. I am sorry.” Remorse paints every syllable.

He nods, and slips out into the cold spring night, barely a whisper and less than a memory.

Chapter Text

That night Tomas meditates under a moonless sky.

He can’t sleep. He’s going to regret it in the morning, but the people in the village weigh heavily on him. Distant relatives. Those who didn’t make it. He has no photos of his father and his memory of the man is cloudy with age, but that woman- whose name he hadn’t even bothered to learn- she had recognized him.

He knows all of the stories of the dangerous spirits who haunt these hills, about the dead men who walk with no graves and destroy those who look upon them. He wonders how long the villagers would have let him stay, and if he had stayed, might he too become man once again?

Despite his fatigue he’d hiked for hours without rest to get away from that question. It’s safer to sleep during the day anyway. At night he can move through the forest as a shadow. There are only a few short hours left until the sun peaks through the canopy, he only needs to push a little further until he finds shelter, and then he can try again to sleep.

Despite his ill ease he finds himself wishing he stayed a little longer in the village. If only he had gotten a few hours of sleep by the fire, gotten a chance to rest, he might be able to banish the empty feeling keeping him awake.

Around him, the air grows cold and the trail disappears. Snow covers these mountains year round, only thawing for a few weeks at the bottom of the valley. Warmth did not last here, made to bow under the oppressive weight of ancient glaciers.

The cold is a familiar enemy. The elders liked to say that the Lin Kuei are born from the ice. That ice cannot kill them for their bones are made from it and their blood runs cold. It was those same elders that sneered when he shivered, called him warmblood under their breath, and as they got bolder, to his face. As a boy, Kuai Liang always offered him warmth, told him to huddle close, and the jeers stopped while he was in earshot. Until one day when Tomas had pushed him away. Understanding, Kuai Liang never offered it again.

He cannot light a fire, lest he give away his position to the ghosts he knows haunt this mountain, so he huddles between two trees, so at least the wind cannot cut him too. Meditations are as elusive as sleep. Frost sneaks under his cloak and claws at his skin. He can’t focus. Around him, the wind makes the trees shudder and rattle like dry bones.

When Kuai Liang had left for his own trial, he’d been gone for six days. It was as if some terrible fate had befallen him. No one would speak of it, his own mother had gone about her life as though he had never existed at all. Bi-Han looked away when Tomas had asked if he would ever return.

Tomas remembered how Kuai Liang had looked when he’d come back. Triumphant, but under that, lost. People had come to their home to offer their congratulations. He accepted with a bright smile that looked painted on. Tomas had gone to him late that first night, forced to wait until all their elders had had a chance to congratulate him. In the quiet of his room Kuai Liang had wrapped one arm around his shoulders and pulled Tomas into a weak hug. They’d sat there in silence, letting Kuai Liang lean heavily on him. He’d looked so proud in front of the others, but now he just looked exhausted, too tired, even for words.

Bi-Han’s trials are harder to recall. He remembered the limp, though. The way Bi-Han hadn’t been able to walk properly for what seemed like ages afterwards. Tomas had spent the following weeks helping him in and out of his boots. He wished the man had stayed around long enough for Tomas to say his goodbyes. In some ways he wasn’t surprised Bi-Han made no effort to see him off. Of them all, it was Bi-Han who was a man made of ice, like the clan he was born to inherit. Though Tomas always knew that about his brother, out here, alone and cold, it stung all the worse.

He hears the telltale creak of ashwood straining.

There is just enough time to turn his head before a heavy, steel-tipped arrow sinks into the wood next to his ear. He’s on his feet and gone before he even has time to fully register it.

But, he does not flee.

He knows these forests and he fears no man nor beast within them. Light is a crutch he doesn’t need. He sprints up the mountain, weaves between trees he’s never seen before and leaps across a blind trench. All of it without making a sound. In the distance he can hear someone chasing him. They are quiet but he is quieter. Whoever follows him is clever. From the sound of their footsteps he can tell they don’t hear him, but rather they know him. They pursue him not where he is, but where they know him to go.

No. Not they. She.

He slides under a fallen log. It’s a terrible hiding place, too obvious, too exposed. He’s too smart to hide in a place like this, so he knows she’ll never find him here. A moment later, Sektor leaps over him in a single swift movement, inches away from where he lays, and doesn’t break stride as she races further up the mountain.

He waits, listening for any sign that she’s caught onto the trick and is doubling back. The forest goes quiet again as her footsteps vanish in the distance.

In hindsight it was obvious who had been following him. Sektor was a cruel teacher who would have no qualms against maiming a student. There is no doubt she moved with every intention to kill. His breath is steady, unafraid because a threat known is no threat at all.

He slips out from under the log. She will not catch him. Sektor isn’t a fool. She will figure out eventually that he is behind her, but it is already too late.

He moves silently over the ground, quieter than a memory. Shadows watch him now, entertained by the little fox playing clever games with a wolf.

The elders were liars. He’s always known it. There was only a single man made of ice- everyone else shivered all the same. There was no ancient blood magic that made his clan strong, just the indomitable will of men unafraid to face the cold.

As he climbs the snow grows deeper and the winds more intense, but still no sign of Sektor. Spectres gossip in the trees. They reach for him, and call for him, and chuckle when he ignores them. His exhaustion is forgotten, beaten down by years of training. The body is weak compared to the mind. Tomas pushes upward. There was no choice.

It’s too late to turn back now, it’s too late to rest. It’s been hours since he last caught sight or sound of Sektor. The wind laughs openly now. It jeers at him, taunts him, urges him on. It snarls at him with threats of what it will do should he stop. He has followed her right into the storm. Was this her true intention all along? The slope in front of him is a sheet of white, the wind so intense now that he cannot tell where the ground ends and the sky starts. Even in the dark the pristine snow is so bright it looks to be glowing.

Tomas wedges himself into outcropping of stones. He needs to rest. There is no hope for sleep up here, but he tries regardless because exhaustion is just as much a killer as Sektor.

But he has gotten the attention of the wind, and they are relentless in their taunts. Neither truly awake nor truly asleep, fatigue paints his dreams with strange memories. Kuai Liang sits atop one of the boulders, looking down at him curiously. He says something, but the words are swallowed by the frozen wind. Tomas blinks up at him, asks him to repeat himself. A grins, bright and crooked cuts across his face, an expression he hides from most of the world these days. Tomas still can’t hear him but the expression alone makes him chuckle. It’s absurd and entirely unserious, like an unsaid joke they’re both in on.

And then his eyes flick up to look at something just beyond Tomas’s shoulder and it’s the only warning he gets before Sektor is on him. It’s a blur, a flash of red on white before a sharp pain pierces his side. His feet get tangled underneath him, made clumsy by sleep and cold. His head smacks into the stone behind him and a heavy weight settles on top of his ribs.

She laughs. It’s a wicked, malicious sound.

He reaches for his knife, but his hand only falls on an empty sheath. The blade hangs like a tiger’s claw over his face. Its razor sharp point presses into his lower eyelid. A bead of blood wells up under it, and his vision blurs.

Smoke chokes him as he vanishes. His magic is sloppy and uncontrolled. It burns his nose and flips his stomach. He can't hold the form for long, and rematerializes on the other side of her, stumbling and grabbing a tree to stop himself from falling. His stomach rebels and he vomits.

He needs to stop, take a second to steady himself and control his magic before it makes him sick again. But there is no time, and Sektor is already up again and reaching for him. The knife sinks into his cloak, and catches in the thick material before it can flay the skin from his back. He’s out of the cloak and running again before she can free the knife.

Her laugh echoes from somewhere behind him. It bounces off the trees, distorted by the wind, into an angry, snarling sound. Black soot bubbles from his lips when he trips. The sound of her is all around him, the crunch of her boots, her breathing- her laugh mixes with the jeers of vengeful revenants. It's too loud, it shouldn't be possible. It sounds as if it's right behind him. It sounds like something ripped from a grave.

A wound opens up in the sky, painting the snow a deep crimson. The trees thin and die. Every breath hurts as frozen air stabs him from the inside.

He should not be running when the sun is up, he needs to sleep, but this high into the mountain there is no cover. He stops, he can't but he has to. He desperately needs to find somewhere to hide but there is nothing but stone and ice and wind around him. Without his cloak, any protection he had from the storm is gone.

Either Tomas turns around and faces Sektor, unarmed and exhausted, or he pushes forward through the blizzard and hopes he can make it to the summit before he freezes to death. It's not really a choice at all. The higher he goes the more rugged the landscape becomes. He keeps stumbling over increasingly large stones hidden under the blanket of snow.

The trail narrows into a single path. On one side, a sheer cliff of ice- the edge of a glacier perhaps- on the other, nothing. Nothing but a thundering abyss. In the storm he can’t see it, but he can feel its presence. One wrong step and he will be gone. The gail is so powerful he’s sure it will sweep him away completely if he tries to use his magic.

So he does what he must and keeps moving forward.

The decision enrages the storm. His world becomes a wall of swirling white. The wind is in his nose and in his lungs. Knives of ice slash at his face. Tears freeze on his eyelashes.The voices on the wind are drowned out by something louder, something primal and wild.

It isn't long before the snow is up to his knees and inside his boots. Snow falls faster than it melts, and his wool robes become laden with it. Something buried trips him and it takes him far far too long to get up. Tomas doesn't know how far he needs to go, or even if he is moving in the correct direction anymore. All he knows is that he cannot stop until he has found shelter.

If there is even shelter to be found.

A rogue gust of wind grabs him unexpectedly. Stronger than any human it tries to drag him over the edge of the cliff. He drops to his knees to grab anything he can, but there is nothing but slick ice and snow. He curls in on himself, giving the wind nothing to grab while it snarls in his ear. It only takes a moment for the blizzard to nearly bury him like this. Snow sneaks under his collar and into his robes. An icy hand drags down his back. He shudders, violently.

But eventually, it relents.

He tries to push himself up, but his knees don't respond. Not now, not here. Just a little further and then he can rest. There has to be somewhere safe on this mountain. His father would not have sent him up here to die.

He ignores the voice in the back of his mind that tells him otherwise. It takes every ounce of strength he has left, but he manages to pull himself onto his feet. Three steps, just enough to get him away from the edge. Just far enough so he can collapse against the cliff face. He only needs to rest here for a moment, long enough to catch his breath and keep going. His back is pressed against the wall of pure ice, and yet it doesn’t feel cold. Of course it doesn’t, it’s not possible to get any colder. Instead it feels warm, like it is not a glacier he leans against, but a person. He huddles in tighter, trying to chase that feeling. It’s an illusion, and a sign of hypothermia.

Jealousy stabs him. As a boy he’d watched in awe when Bi-Han walked across the ice with bare feet and bare skin, and when Kuai Liang waded across the river in deep winter turning the water to steam as he moved. It occurs to him that Sektor knew she never needed to catch him to kill him. Tomas would run and he would slip away, and he would sneak like a coward, until she chased him into the jaws of the one enemy he had never been able to fight. He’s nowhere near the summit, and he is moving at a snail's pace. He tries to pull his cloak tighter around him, but remembers how he’d left it behind.

Something collides with his side.

A grey figure stands above him, ice whipping ferociously around them. He squints, trying to make out the person in front of him, but it is like trying to look at the center of a hurricane. Angry wind howls at him, deafeningly loud. He peeks open an eye but his attempts only enrage the storm further. He hears them clearly now shrieking with the voices of dead Lin Kuei. Tomas should have known better. The people in the valley tried to warn him. These are not his ancestors.

The phantom reaches for him.

He gets one foot under himself and loses control of his limbs. One second he is kneeling, the next he is choking, yanked up by the back of his shirt.

He’s hauled up like a wayward kitten, pulled up like he weighs nothing. It's not Sektor, it's far too strong to be Sektor. A second hand grabs him by his front, drags him two steps and then the world flips upside down. A blast of warm air hits him and he is plunged into darkness.

It takes his eyes a second to adjust. He blinks painful stars out of his eyes and squints at the figure who had dropped him graceless to the floor. Above him, Bi-Han looms, silhouetted by bright light.

He frowns down at Tomas.

They hadn't had a chance to say goodbye. Bi-Han had vanished four days ago. On an urgent mission, Kuai Liang had said. He was too caught up in his own preparations to question it. It feels like the air has been stolen from his lungs.

The cave is silent compared to the howling gail outside. It’s quiet enough to hear dripping water far behind him. Dripping water? He cranes around to look for the sound. It takes strength he doesn’t have just to look.

With the last of his strength he forces himself deeper into the cave. It’s only a few feet until he collapses against the wall. Warm air flows up from a crack in the floor. It’s some kind of thermal vent, he realizes. It’s still frigid, and without his cloak he shivers violently, but its nothing compared to the outside. More importantly, it's hidden. Tucked against the wall he vanishes into the furthest dark he’s ever known.

B-Han watches the storm rage just beyond the cave’s opening. A ragged cough rips itself from Tomas’s lungs. The taste of black soot sticks to his tongue and stings his throat. Back when he had first been learning to control magic, the smoke had often made him ill. More than once, he had woken up their home, with terrible coughing fits from ash coated lungs.

He doesn’t miss the way Bi-Han turns ever so slightly towards the sound.

His mind drifts and he falls into an uneasy slumber. In his dream, Bi-Han looks at him with eyes like dying embers. His body is consumed by a cold fire, smoke billows in dark plums from his mouth and nose. He looks more like a monster than a man. Whatever it is that looks back at him is not Bi-Han, but something evil.

The sound of voices jolts him awake. Bi-Han has not moved, but that dark spot is gone. Next to him, Sektor speaks, hushed. Despite it, Tomas can hear her clearly, her voice echoing on the cold stone walls. “What are you going to do?”

“What do you mean?” Bi-Han grunts “I’m not going to do anything.”

“Scorpion will be furious.”

Bi-Han says nothing. From here, Tomas is close enough to hear the way he shifts his weight, the quiet squeak of his leather boots. A shadow is the only thing that hides him from them. In four steps Sektor could be on him. There is no way he has the energy to escape her a second time.

She turns, glancing into the cave.

“We don’t know that he fell.” Bi-Han says. She turns back toward him.

“And if he doesn't fall, he's going to freeze.” She laughs. It dies quickly in her throat when Bi-Han doesn’t join her. She huffs, it sounds annoyed. “Drop the storm, I’ll go out and find him.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“Then, you're going to kill him.”

“What choice do I have?” The way he says it- it’s cold. Dispassionate. Like the words belong to someone else. It sounds practiced, though Tomas is sure he’s never heard Bi-Han say such a statement before.

“I just want to make sure you know.”

They stay like that for a long time, nearly close enough to touch, and yet oblivious to his presence. Bi-Han doesn’t say much else. Tomas wishes he could see his face, but Bi-Han never turns, and Tomas never sees any more than his back.

That’s how he falls asleep, two strides away from a woman who tried to kill him only a few hours ago. It’s freezing and uncomfortable. He still hasn’t had a proper meal in two days. But he’s safe, and that’s all his tired body needs to drift.

He dreams of black smoke.

When Tomas awakes, the cave is quiet. Outside the storm still rages- though perhaps it is quieter. He looks around for Bi-Han, but he knows without knowing that he left a long time ago.

His bones creak as he rises. His muscles protest. His stomach revolts. It would be so easy to hide in this cave. To rest, forever. It would be peaceful. But peace was never the fate of his ancestors, and death now would only turn him into another vengeful revenant in the wind. The decision is easy and he pushes once again toward the summit.