The sun hung low, filtered through a sky heavy with dust and ash.
Children were lined up near the central well, their small hands clasped behind their backs, their clothes scrubbed cleaner than usual. Even the orphans wore threadbare robes that hadn't been stained in days.
The villagers watched in silent anticipation, their eyes flitting between the carved stone altar and the hooded man who stood before it.
The Seer of Ember Hollow had arrived.
He wasn't a grand figure—short, hunched, with a limp in his right leg—but his presence bent the mood like heat bends metal.
He carried a staff made of blackened wood and a pouch strung with spirit stones that shimmered faintly in the dim light.
He didn't speak much. He didn't need to.
The test was simple. You stepped forward. He pressed a piece of cold, jagged metal—the Root Stone—to your chest.
It resonated if you had talent. If your spirit root was unblocked, attuned to any of the Five Flows—earth, fire, wind, water, or metal—the stone would glow.
One color meant spirit alignment. Two colors, rare potential. Three? Genius. A prodigy destined for greatness.
No color?
You were less than dirt.
---
Arion stood near the back of the line, watching.
The first boy stepped forward. The Root Stone flared yellow. Earth root. Strong, steady. The villagers nodded in approval.
Next, a girl. The stone shimmered blue. Water root. The weavers clucked their tongues and whispered about marriage prospects.
A third child—a tall boy named Fen—elicited a faint red pulse.
Then it was another. And another.
Dozens.
Each child walked away changed. Some lifted their chins with newfound purpose. Others cried from shame when the stone stayed dark.
And then—
"Arion. Step forward."
It was time.
He walked steadily toward the altar, small feet silent on the cracked earth. He had no illusions. His real spirit root had been crushed or blocked—he didn't yet understand how or why, but the signs were clear. He wasn't hoping for a miracle.
He was here to confirm the parameters of the prison he'd been born into.
The Seer frowned as he pressed the Root Stone to Arion's chest. The crystal was cold—unnaturally so. Arion felt it draw something from him. Not pain. Not heat.
Possibility.
And yet—
Nothing.
No glow.
No flicker.
No hum.
The silence that followed was louder than any explosion.
"He's barren," the Seer said flatly, pulling his hand away as though Arion were diseased.
A murmur rippled through the crowd.
"Another one born wrong."
"Maybe the heavens are angry again."
"Best he learn to dig or herd. He'll never cultivate."
The Seer turned his back on Arion without another word. The line moved on.
Arion did not.
He stood there, staring at the stone.
So this was it.
No root. No power. No path.
The system was closed to him before he even began.
But strangely… it didn't feel like defeat.
It felt like clarity.
If the game is rigged, he thought, change the rules.
---
That night, Arion sat alone beneath the crumbling eaves of an abandoned granary. He held a pebble in one hand and scratched lines into the dirt with a stick in the other.
The others wept. He calculated.
The system depended on spirit roots.
But the body had blood. The soul had rhythm. The mind had memory.
What if there was a way around the root?
A different method of drawing energy.
A technique not based on inheritance or heavenly favor—but on structure.
If they won't give me a path…
He drew three vertical lines and crossed them with five horizontals.
Then I'll build one.