The small cottage at the edge of Winebridge City was worse for wear but served its purpose.

  Now known as Grandmother Hou, Li Nai watched three-year-old Hongyun stack wooden blocks just a bit too carefully and felt her heart both swell and ache. “Stack them high, little one,” she said, as she lowered herself stiffly onto the cushion beside him. Age had truly caught up with her, or so she liked to tell herself.

  Hongyun’s pale blue eyes lifted to meet hers, and there was something in their gaze that sent a shiver through her. “Like this?” he asked quietly, stacking each new layer of wood with such precise care that it looked almost impossible for a child of three to achieve.

  “Good job,” she said quietly, though there was something disturbingly focused in the way he concentrated.

  It wasn’t that he was easily distracted, as children of his age usually were, but rather, it was as if he were working through some complicated problem. At times she saw him staring blankly into space, lost in thought as if he were trying to recall something crucial that was forever just beyond his grasp.

  The next few years were a blur of growing awareness of the various small clues that eventually coalesced into significant concerns. When Hongyun was five, he was reading better than many seven-year-olds; he was devouring the few cultivation texts Li Nai kept hidden under loose floorboards.

  One morning, she found him sitting cross-legged in the living area, surrounded by texts on dream qi circulation, tracing the diagrams with one small finger. “Grandmother,” he asked quietly, “why do the books say the spiritual meridians flow like water? Wouldn’t it make more sense if they spread outward from a single point like the roots of a tree?”

  Li Nai nearly dropped the breakfast tray she’d been holding when she heard his words. The analogy he used was advanced enough to impress the junior disciples at many cultivation sects — let alone emerge from the lips of a five-year-old.

  “Where did you hear about tree roots?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” he shrugged. “It just makes sense.”

  By the time Hongyun was six, the cultivation experiments began in earnest.

  Li Nai had put off this eventuality for a long time, but his spiritual pathways were apparently formed to perfection when she studied them using her Dream Architect senses. It would be a waste of talent to delay any longer.

  “Close your eyes and feel the energy surrounding us,” she instructed, sitting opposite him in their tiny meditation room. “Dream qi is a very different type of energy than other forms of spiritual energy. It is lighter and responds more to emotions and intent than most forms of energy.”

  Hongyun closed his eyes and concentrated. For several minutes he was silent and motionless, his breathing regulated in the pattern Li Nai had taught him. Eventually, his eyes opened and reflected disappointment that seemed much too adult for his age.

  “I feel something,” he said slowly. “But it slips away every time I try to grab it.”

  Li Nai felt a knot form in her stomach, though she kept her tone supportive.

  “That is completely normal for beginners, little one. We’ll keep practicing.”

  However, as months and then years went by, the situation did not change.

  If anything, Hongyun’s failure to manipulate dream qi became more evident.

  By the time the boy was eight, Li Nai had exhausted every method she knew, reviewed every secret manual she owned, and even spent considerable sums of money purchasing various cultivation tools to aid a possibly clogged or damaged meridian system.

  None of it helped.

  “I’m broken, aren’t I?” Hongyun asked late one evening after a particularly frustrating session. At nine years of age, he was old enough to realize the gravity of his situation. “Most children can move a feather or make a candle flame flicker. I can do nothing.”

  “You are not broken,” Li Nai replied firmly, although her voice sounded less convincing than it had previously. In truth, she was starting to believe that Fu Yangming’s technique had damaged the boy in ways that had yet to become apparent. Maybe the damage had been so subtle that it targeted his ability to interact with dream qi and not his physical meridians.

  This realization haunted her nights.

  Her own condition was worsening rapidly. The problems she attributed to mere aging were actually a sign of a much greater issue. Some mornings, she couldn’t get out of bed without assistance. Her cultivation, which had long been stable at the Dream Architect level, was now unpredictable. On some days, she could create devastating constructs; on others, she couldn’t even sense dream qi.

  “Grandmother, are you ill?” Hongyun asked early one morning, discovering her doubled-over the kitchen table, gasping for air.

  “Oh no, little one,” she replied weakly. “Just tired.”

  In the year leading up to Hongyun’s tenth birthday, Li Nai realized she had to inform him of certain truths that she hadn’t wanted to discuss earlier. After all, she wasn’t sure how much longer she had left in this world.

  “Hongyun,” she called one evening, signaling for him to join her outside on the porch as the sun set.

  He came, moving with the gentle calm that had characterized his behavior from early childhood. Occasionally, she observed mannerisms that reminded her of someone else, although she couldn’t quite remember who.

  “I want to talk to you about your parents,” she began, watching his expression intently. “About your real family.”

  His pale blue eyes snapped into sharp focus; however, he didn’t appear shocked by this announcement. “I’ve guessed,” he said matter-of-factly. “We don’t look like each other, and sometimes I notice how upset you seem to get when you think I’m not paying attention.”

  Li Nai felt her throat constrict with a mixture of sadness and fear. Even at ten, he was more perceptive than most adults she had encountered. “Your father, Xu Weiming, was a great man, and the leader of the Xu clan in the Eastern Kingdom. Your mother, Xu Lianhua, loved you more than anything in the world.”

  “What happened to them?”

  He asked the question without drama, but Li Nai could sense the tension in his thin frame. “They died defending you,” she explained flatly. “There was a war, and they made sure you escaped safely, even though they couldn’t come with you.”

  For a long time, Hongyun was silent, digesting the information. Finally, he asked, “What’s my real name?”

  “Xu Kangwei,” she answered, and sensed something flicker in his expression.

  A recognition, perhaps, though that seemed absurd.

  “You are the rightful heir to the Xu clan, although that is a burden you may never need to carry. The clan lands are far from here, and the political situation...” She stopped, suddenly feeling the weight of her years.

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  The injury Fu Yangming had inflicted on her while they were fleeing from that battle was finally catching up to her; it leached away at her spiritual foundation like acid, and though she’d hidden it well, concealment became more difficult as the days went on.

  “Grandmother,” Kangwei said softly, stretching a hand out to touch her. “Are you going to die soon?”

  She shouldn’t have been surprised by the question, but she was. “Yes, little one, I think I am.”

  He nodded once, accepting it as he had so many other facts of the world.

  “Will you teach me everything you can before then?”

  The question, so simply asked, made her smile even as tears welled in her eyes.

  “Everything I can, yes.”

  ***

  The next year passed too quickly.

  Li Nai spent more and more time locked up in bed while an eleven-year-old Kangwei was left to fend for himself. He cooked meals for the two of them and made do with what few coppers they had left in the pouch, and even attempted to carry on his cultivation practice alone, though it proved to be fruitless even when Li Nai was there to help him keep his focus.

  More concerning, though, were the dreams that befell him at night sometimes, jerking him out of sleep sweating and muttering about things and places that didn’t exist, and reflections of strange qi forms and techniques that made little sense.

  “It heals,” he murmured during one particularly long night spent thrashing in bed. “But it also changes…. I have to be careful with the… or the…”

  Hearing this, Li Nai had clenched her fists tightly from the comfort of her own bedroom door.

  It broke her heart to see the boy she considered her son suffer.

  Whatever demons or memories that haunted him sometimes seemed more real than reality.

  There were times that she wondered if his nightmares were related to his inability to cultivate dream qi.

  Unfortunately, she didn’t have the time to figure it out.

  Her life was running on fumes.

  Knowing this, on the days when she was lucid enough to gather her wits together, she explained to him everything she knew about the politics of the world of cultivation, of the various clans and sects, self-defense lessons especially useful to someone without spiritual abilities.

  She knew that she couldn’t always be there to hold his hand.

  She wanted to make sure he could take care of himself and that he wouldn’t be used and abused as many others have been in this harsh, unforgiving world.

  “Remember,” she murmured between labored coughs in one of their final conversations. “You carry the blood of heroes. Your parents died to give you a chance at life. Don’t waste their sacrifice, my boy."

  “I won’t,” Kangwei replied seriously.

  But the boy was only eleven, he had no idea of the magnitude of the promise he was making.

  Li Nai passed away on a cold winter morning while Kangwei sat by her side experiencing feelings he didn’t have the words for. Sure, intellectually the boy knew it was coming, but when it had finally happened, it hit him in ways an eleven-year-old simply couldn’t prepare for.

  ***

  The next year was the hardest of his young life.

  The cottage didn’t belong to Li Nai; she had been renting it, but now with her death, Kangwei didn’t have the money to keep the place so within weeks, he found himself on the streets of Winebridge City with nothing but the clothes on his back and a handful of copper coins that wouldn't last long.

  Winter in the Wornwood Territories was harsh for those who lacked shelter, and Kangwei learned that the hard way. He got used to sleeping in doorways, rummaging through trash cans for food, and steering clear of the city guards who chased off vagrant kids. He was the only one on the street with pale blue eyes and refined features, so he was always a target for bullies and worse.

  “Hey, look at the little prince,” laughed Rat, the de facto leader of a group of street kids slightly older than Kangwei. “Too classy to beg like everyone else, huh?”

  Kangwei had learned to stay low and avoid trouble, but sometimes it caught up with him no matter how hard he tried. The beat-down he got that day left him with two cracked ribs and a split lip, but it also hardened him. He made a promise to himself that he would never be anyone’s victim ever again.

  So, to survive he did what his grandmother wouldn’t approve of.

  He started stealing, first food to eat, and later more substantial goods. His natural intelligence and the education his grandmother had given him helped him plan successful heists without getting caught. Even then, he never stole from poor families nor took more than he needed to survive. That was still a principle that he held tightly to.

  Throughout this time, the dreams persisted.

  As difficult as they were, sometimes they gave him knowledge that allowed him to live.

  Once, he dreamed of a merchant’s home having loose floorboards in the pantry and, when he investigated, he found a stash of dried meat that fed him for weeks. Another time, he evaded a city guard patrol due to something in his dreaming self warning him of their route. Later, news came to him that some of the other boys had been caught, beaten, and imprisoned.

  So, it was like this young Kangwei survived.

  By the following spring, the now twelve-year-old had toughened up and lost the softness of his youth to the rigors of living on the streets. He had learned to fight with his fists and makeshift weapons, to read people’s motivations from their body language and facial expressions, and to melt into the crowd or disappear into the shadows whenever danger loomed.

  Yet the pressure of everything had taken its toll.

  He was always hungry, always freezing, and always terrified that someone was out to get him.

  Most of what Grandmother Hou had taught him in terms of character had been abandoned in favor of practices that were necessary for survival, but no matter what he experienced, he found that there was always a fundamental aspect of his nature that wasn’t affected. He just wasn’t able to put into words what it was.

  It was on a particularly dire day in late spring that everything changed.

  Kangwei had been caught stealing bread from a baker’s stall and pursued by a vengeful mob through the market. He had managed to flee into the maze of alleys at the rear of the merchant district, although he suffered a thrown rock to the head that left him disoriented and bleeding.

  He had fallen in a narrow passageway between two warehouses, his vision spinning due to the combined effects of shock, exhaustion, and his unwillingness to abandon his search for food.

  The bread he had stolen lay scattered in the mud near him too far away to reach.

  It was at this point that Master Jian discovered him.

  The unassuming-looking swordsman had been traveling to the next town and had witnessed the disturbance in the market. There was something about the pursuit that had captured his attention, although he couldn’t explain exactly what it was.

  Following his instincts, Master Jian had tracked the chase to its end and found the lad lying crumpled in the alleyway like a discarded doll. Most would have seen the boy as just another street urchin who had finally exhausted his options, but the swordsman’s experienced eye picked out aspects that others would overlook.

  The boy’s hands, despite their grime and callus formations, indicated deliberate and careful development. His breathing, even while unconscious, revealed patterns indicative of some type of training. And perhaps most revealing were the small, delicate scars on his knuckles and forearms that suggested he engaged in deliberate combat training as opposed to mere street fighting.

  “Fascinating,” Master Jian muttered to himself as he kneeled beside the unconscious boy.

  As if responding to his words, Kangwei opened his eyes. Unlike most people who would be frightened and disoriented upon awakening to discover a stranger hovering above them, Kangwei evaluated Master Jian with considerable clarity.

  “Are you here to arrest me?” he asked, his voice coarse from dehydration yet firm.

  “Should I be?” Master Jian responded, smiling at the boy’s candor.

  Kangwei pondered this for a moment.

  “I stole bread. But only because I was hungry, and I don't have any money.” He paused, then added with brutal honesty, “I'll probably steal again if I need to.”

  Master Jian smiled again, appreciating the boy’s straightforwardness.

  “What is your name, young thief?” he asked.

  “Kangwei,” he replied, then caught himself. He had been extremely careful to refer to himself as “Hou” on the streets, however there was something about this man that made him respond with his actual name.

  “Well, Kangwei,” Master Jian said, “do you wish to learn something more dependable than stealing to feed yourself?”

  Kangwei’s pale blue eyes focused intently, although caution still existed.

  “What kind of something?”

  “Sword work,” Master Jian replied. “True sword work – not the flashy techniques most cultivators spend their time practicing. A hard, genuine training that builds inner strength.”

  Kangwei tried to sit up, ignoring the throbbing pain in his head from the previous blow. “I can’t cultivate,” he admitted. “I have tried to cultivate for years, but spiritual energy just runs away from me.”

  “Good,” Master Jian replied, surprising him. “Cultivation breeds laziness. People rely on cultivating more qi to solve their problems rather than developing true technique. You’ll have to develop real technique.”

  “You’re serious?” Kangwei’s voice carried a hint of desperation, though he tried to hide it.

  “Deadly serious.” Master Jian stood and held out his hand. “But I must warn you, the training will be tougher than anything you’ve experienced on the streets. Will you put in the effort required for what I’m offering?”

  Kangwei grasped the offered hand and pulled himself to his feet. Regardless of the constant hunger in his stomach, and the weariness in his legs, he met Master Jian’s eyes directly.

  “I’m willing to work for it,” he replied, and he meant each of his words.

  “Then we start today.” Master Jian nodded, satisfied by what he saw in the boy’s expression.

  As they exited the alleyway together, neither Master Jian nor Kangwei noticed the way the boy’s shadow appeared to move separately for a brief instant, nor the way his pale blue eyes flickered with depth that was much greater than what would be expected from a twelve-year-old.

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