Dawn came with a brittle wind. Revyn sat cross-legged at the centre of the tower's broken floor, where the light slanted through the missing stones in pale shapes. The air was sharp and cold, biting at his cheeks. Though he did not move, the Ashlight pulsed faintly inside his chest, quiet, watchful. He focused on his breath, drawing it deep into his ribs, releasing it slowly. His fingers rested lightly on his knees, calloused tips faintly trembling, but his expression remained calm.
Footsteps approached him, light and deliberate.
"You're not bleeding yet," Liora said, her voice flat. "You're doing it wrong."
Revyn opened his eyes and looked at her, detached. "I've been cycling Qi since first light. It still feels somewhat scattered."
"Because it is."
She tossed him a talisman. "Left wrist. Not because it'll help you, but because you need to see how uneven you are."
He complied without comment.
She set down a flask. "Sip. No more than a mouthful. You're not strong enough to waste it."
The liquid burned his mouth. "Bloodroot and numen bark," she explained. "Focus. Pain. Both are useful."
Then she drew a circle in the dirt. "Get in. Anchor yourself. Root your will into the stone. Feel the weight of it. You're not here to move it yet, just to stop being moved by it."
Hours passed. Every time his breath faltered or his spine dipped, a sharp flick of gravel struck his forehead. "Still leaking qi through your left side," she murmured. "Fix it."
He obeyed. His Qi, a restless, sorrowful current beneath his skin, began to settle. Silence enveloped him, and memories rose.
The hermitage. A cave mouth beneath frozen cliffs. Winter winds carried the chants of his brothers, one by one falling quiet as the silent approach of death took them. His master's pale smile, the final one to go. Digging graves into stone, fingers cracked and bleeding. Standing over them as dawn painted the peaks crimson. Even then, a whisper inside him spoke.
'Endure.'
Time became shapeless. His legs went numb. His breath steadied into a rhythm he hadn't known he had. Her voice cut through, low and sharp: "Don't banish it. That grief is yours. Keep it. Shape it."
She handed him a dry piece of wood with a symbol etched into the exterior. A conduit used to train new cultivators to control their qi. "Shape, don't force."
He obeyed. At first, his Qi flared up and collapsed. Sparks danced over the rune and faded. "What's in you is heavy," she said. "Stop running from it. You'll only suffer more."
Hours bled into hours. His thoughts blurred, packing his few belongings the night he left, alone. Feeling the Ashlight stir in his veins for the first time. Passing the graves of the hermits without a backward glance. The way no one even noticed.
The rune sputtered. Glowed. Dimmed. Again. And again. His arms shook as he focused. His breath stayed steady even as his ribs ached. At last, the rune burned steadily for a full minute.
She nodded faintly. "Enough."
Revyn dropped the wood and began to pant s sweat dripped down his forehead and back.
The sun had already begun to sink, and shadows formed long across the cracked floor.
"Eat," she said. "Sleep. Tomorrow, we begin intent shaping."
At the door, she paused, hand on the frame. "Stop thinking about the graves. They'll still be there when you're strong enough to face them."
He blinked once. Then nodded.
'How did she know?' He thought, many different scenarios flooded his brain as he tried to come up with an answer.
When she left, he stayed where he was, the Ashlight humming, not loud, not angry. Just present.
He sagged against the wall, feeling the memory of wind and stone graves fade into his breath.
For the first time in years, sleep came without a fight.
Dawn broke again, pale and cold. Revyn woke to the faint hum of the Ashlight already waiting in his chest. He found Liora standing outside the tower, arms folded, watching the horizon. Without turning, she spoke. "Today, you stop shaping grief. Today, you shape intent."
She led him beyond the tower to a flat stretch of snow-covered earth. There she drew five concentric circles with a blade, inscribing strange runes into each. The marks shimmered faintly as her Qi flowed into them, illuminating the dirt with thin threads of light.
"This is not a demonstration," she said. "This is a reckoning. Your intent is not yet formed. You are only at the very beginning of the Qi Gathering realm, and barely holding even that. If you cannot project meaning into what you shape, you will never rise beyond it."
What followed was gruelling and merciless. Revyn's Qi was forced to extend beyond his skin, stretched into razor-thin lines to touch the runes at the circle's edge. Liora barked corrections whenever he faltered: "Narrow. Not empty. Aim it like a blade." He tried, and failed, and tried again, his control fraying each time she tested him with a strand of her own Qi.
Hours passed, the sun climbed and fell through the sky. His knees ached from kneeling in the frost. His breath became ragged in the cold air. And still she pressed him, weaving her intent through his and trying to collapse his shape. "Your intent is soft," she said. "You cannot afford to be."
By late afternoon, the runes glimmered faintly under his will, and the circles of earth began to hum from the tension between them. Threads of power hung in the air, faint but present, tracing his lines of thought. Liora's expression remained neutral, but she nodded faintly.
"You're starting to cut," she admitted, stepping into the circle and letting her own Qi meet his in a quiet clash. It nearly drove him to his knees before he gritted his teeth and pushed back, forcing her pressure aside. "Better," she murmured.
But she did not let him stop. For another hour, she forced him to hold his projection steady, striking at him with words and blows of intent to see if his shape held. When he finally collapsed forward, she stepped back and let the circle fade.
At dusk, she spoke quietly. "The creature you heard and what I was sent to kill, at the altar, it was not a spirit, nor a demon. It was one of the Threnavyr, a hollow abomination, some say they were once something greater, maybe even Ashborn. Their intent shattered, their will twisted into hunger. That is what happens when you lose sight of what you are shaping."
Revyn twitched at the mention of the Ashborn, he thought inwardly.
'How many people know about this?'
She turned to leave, then glanced over her shoulder. "There have been others like it. Others who let themselves unravel. Not you. Not if you keep your intent sharp."
When they returned to the tower, he sank to the floor, his chest heavy with exhaustion and thought. She lingered by the doorway, her voice softer now.
"You've made a start," she said. "But you're still just a boy with a spark. Tomorrow, we see if it can become a flame."
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment longer before she stepped into the night. Revyn closed his eyes.
Her gaze lingered on him for a moment longer before she stepped into the night. But before she fully turned away, Revyn's voice stopped her.
"Liora," he said quietly, still seated on the floor.
She glanced back, one eyebrow raised.
"What are the Ashborn?" he asked, his tone calm but intent.
A faint shadow crossed her face, though she quickly masked it. For a moment, she just studied him, her eyes narrowing slightly, as if weighing how much to say.
"They say the Ashborn were people. Once chosen or cursed to carry fragments of a god that was broken in a war so ancient the heavens themselves have forgotten it. These fragments were alive, in a way. Not fully a god anymore, but not merely spirit either. Too much for any mortal to bear for long."
Revyn's gaze didn't waver. "You said the Thenavyr might have been Ashborn once. Didn't sound like just a story then."
Liora tilted her head at that, watching him as though measuring something deeper. She exhaled faintly.
"I said what some say," she corrected. "There are whispers that those creatures, what you heard, weren't always what they are now. A long time ago, they were human. Carriers of something greater. Bright. Too bright. And when their intent broke, they burned themselves hollow. Nothing left but hunger and the echo of what they carried."
Revyn stayed quiet, absorbing her words. His expression was unreadable, but there was the faintest tension in his shoulders, a quiet question he didn't voice.
Liora's eyes narrowed slightly as she continued to study him.
"They burned brightly. Changed the course of entire sect wars, turned kingdoms into ash. Every record of them agrees on one thing. Wherever an Ashborn went, the world bent around them. But…" She tilted her head, a faint, humourless smile on her lips.
"Every record also ends the same way. Madness. Hunger. Collapse. Some call it the 'Hollowing.' Whatever they were holding… hollowed them out from the inside until all that was left was intent and rage."
"Were they all like that?" he asked finally.
Her eyes softened slightly.
"No one knows," she admitted. "The records are warnings, not histories. They say intent is what kept them whole, for as long as they lasted. Those who forgot why they bore their fragments were the first to fall. Living lives hunted down by those seeking their power didn't help either."
For a long moment, they simply regarded each other in silence, the night air cool between them. Then Liora straightened, her usual detached calm returning.
"Sleep," she said. "You'll need it tomorrow."
And this time, she did not look back as she stepped into the night.
Revyn closed his eyes, the Ashlight in his chest thrumming, and let sleep take him, her cryptic words about the Ashborn still echoing in his mind. Is he cursed to become a creature like that?
As sleep claimed him, the faint glow of the Ashlight settled into a steady rhythm beneath his ribs, no longer merely a burden, but not yet something he understood. Liora's words lingered like a quiet blade in his thoughts. that even the brightest could fall, that intent was all that kept the hollowing at bay. He did not know if he believed her. He only knew that tomorrow, he would rise again and try to shape himself into something that could not so easily break.