The forest breathed around him. Slow, suffocating, and ancient. Every gust of wind stirred the mist as he shivered. Revyn sat curled beneath a collection of blackened bark, knees pulled to his chest, the glyphs on his palms still faintly glowing like embers resisting the dark.
He hadn't slept a wink. Sleep belonged to the safe. To the unmarked. And Revyn was neither anymore.
The memory of the creature. The one who knelt, the one who sang, had been buried in his memory like a phobia. It hadn't just attacked. It had mourned him. Or mourned for him. That scared him more than the sword and antlers.
Every few moments, he looked over his shoulder, half expecting that haunting hum to return, slipping through the trees. But it didn't. Only silence followed him as he moved throughout the forest.
The Ashlight was quiet. Dormant, resting or watching as he sat in solitude.
With shaking hands, Revyn pulled the hermit's manual from inside his robes. It was water-stained, brittle along the spine. The first page was inked with only three words:
"Gather. Refine. Endure."
Beneath it, a faded diagram showed the five foundational pathways of Qi gathering, Earth, Wind, Flame, Water, and Spirit. None of them matched what burned in his core.
"Ashlight," he muttered. "How am I supposed to cultivate if I don't even know which pathway to take? Should I just take all of them?"
He flipped past the diagrams to a blank margin. With a sliver of charcoal pulled from a ruined pouch, he drew the glyph that had appeared on his palms the night before. It hurt to look at. It wasn't made for the mortal gaze.
The trees shuddered.
He looked up.
Movement, distant, something was running. Not the creature. He could feel that somehow. These were people.
He pushed himself upright, limbs aching, body stiff. If the hermits had sent someone after him, maybe he could be brought back, maybe they had changed their minds.
Then he saw the figures.
Three of them, robed in jade and iron. Their steps didn't stir the ground. Their gazes searched the mist like wolves hunting their prey.
Revyn ducked low, heart hammering.
Cultivators.
He couldn't say how he knew. But it was instinctive. These were not wanderers or woodcutters. They moved like unsheathed blades.
"We felt the tremor here," one said, voice cold and clear. "It must have woken up with the altar."
"There was a mark left in the Qi," another replied. "Residual Ash. Corrupted, not divine."
"Then it's true. A Threnavyr has reawakened. We must kill it before other sects discover its existence."
"It may have already devoured a mortal soul to cloak its presence."
Revyn's breath caught.
They were looking for whatever he had seen.
He pressed both palms into the dirt, forcing the Ashlight down, burying the pulse of it under silence. He didn't know if it would hide him, but he felt like he needed to try.
"Fan out," ordered the first. "If it's awakened, it won't run far. Not yet."
The third, a woman in crimson robes stitched with threads of moonlight, turned toward where Revyn lay hidden. Her eyes narrowed, staring directly into his eyes.
Revyn prepared to bolt at any movement.
She stared for a moment longer, then turned away.
They passed, disappearing into the mist from where he had come.
He didn't breathe until he was sure they had left.
When he finally stood, the forest felt thinner. The sky above had begun to lighten. Dawn, or perhaps false light through the fog.
He couldn't return to the temple.
He couldn't stay here.
Revyn picked a direction, any direction, and walked.
Each step hurt.
But the glyphs burned warmer now.
Not in warning.
In guidance, giving him an idea of where he can find civilisation.
They pulsed softly, like a heartbeat in his hands, thrumming in time with his breath. With each step, he felt the resonance of something older than language pulling at his bones. It wasn't a path laid before him, but a current, ancient and buried, stirring awake beneath the world's skin.
The trees began to thin. Moss gave way to stony ridges. Birdsong returned, faint and uncertain, as if the forest, too, exhaled in relief.
He hiked across a low rise and for the first time in days, saw the sun clearly. It was a disc, pale and heavy on the horizon. The ruins of an old watchtower stood crumbling nearby, a relic from a forgotten war. Revyn approached it.
Inside, the air was warmer. Dry. The cracked stones formed a half-circle wall, and in the centre, a basin was empty, once used for offerings.
"I haven't had food in days. I wonder when I'll be able to eat again."
He pondered, looking down at his malnourished figure. His onyx black hair contrasting his pale skin. Thankfully, being raised in a hermit group has accustomed him to going hungry every so often.
Something was buried here.
Not gold. Not bones.
Memory.
He closed his eyes. Letting the Ashlight rise, gently.
And he heard it. Faint, like the echo of a lullaby half-remembered. A hum beneath the stone, as if the place itself remembered what had once been sung.
Revyn didn't know why, but tears stung his eyes.
He sat beside the basin and let the silence wash over him, using it as a cradle.
Suddenly, there was a presence, no sound, no warning, just the pressure of another soul in the room.
Revyn opened his eyes, startled by the intruder. His pulse quickened. She was there again. The woman in crimson robes, standing just beyond the threshold of the tower's entrance, eyes gleaming like shards of moonlight in the twilight.
"You're far from the hermits now, aren't you?"
Her voice was soft, but her presence was commanding. The air shifted around her, an almost imperceptible distortion in the fabric of reality, like a ripple in a still pond.
Revyn stood abruptly, his hands instinctively gathering his remaining Ashlight, though he knew it wasn't necessary. She wasn't a threat, not yet. Still, the weight of her gaze unsettled him. This was no ordinary cultivator. He could feel the difference in the air, her Qi was heavy, refined and ancient.
She didn't approach him immediately, but instead, her gaze softened as she observed him, noting his emaciated form and the faint glow that seemed to pulse through his skin.
"Hungry?" she asked, a hint of amusement in her tone, though it didn't reach her eyes. She rummaged through a satchel hanging from her waist and produced a bundle wrapped in cloth.
Revyn hesitated, his mouth dry. The thought of food made his stomach churn with hunger. His body ached for food. He had gone so long without, so long that the thought of eating felt almost like a dream.
She stepped forward, holding out the food with practised calm. "You look like you've been starving. Here, take this. You need your strength."
He glanced at the food. Simple, yet nourishing. Bread, fruit, and dried meat. It would sustain him, more than enough to carry him for a while. But the offer felt too easy. Too convenient.
"Who are you?" he asked, his voice low.
She didn't flinch. Instead, she smiled faintly, her lips curling like a crescent moon.
"I'm a cultivator kid. My name is Liora. I saw you back in that forest and figured I ought to check if you were dead. You looked pathetic enough to be."
Revyn rose smoothly, movements measured. He hadn't heard or seen her enter. She leaned against the arch of the ruined watchtower, crimson robes draping as she watched. Her presence didn't stir the air, but it unsettled it.
"You were with the others," he said, voice cold.
Liora shrugged. "Briefly. They think you're some confused hermit brat who panicked during a tremor. Me? I think you might be something else."
Revyn twitched, wondering if she knew about the Ashlight mulling inside his body.
She stepped forward, unwrapping a cloth bundle and placing it on the edge of the offering basin. The scent of cooked meat and dried pear filled the chamber.
"Eat. You look like you haven't had a good meal in days."
Revyn took the food without hesitation. "Thank you," he said plainly. He began eating without haste, his eyes never leaving hers.
Liora watched him. "That Qi of yours… It's not just raw, it's unruly. Strange. It feels sad."
Her expression shifted, curiosity deepening.
"What kind of life have you lived? And why did you run away from the hermits? Don't they train young cultivators like you?" She questioned.
He shook his head. "Cultivation was survival, not art. I didn't leave because I wanted to, I left because they didn't want me around."
Liora raised an eyebrow. "You reached Qi Formation on your own? And they still sent you away?"
Revyn nodded once. Lying through his teeth, "Two months ago."
She let out a low whistle. "Fourteen, maybe fifteen. That's rare. Most sect-trained apprentices don't break through until seventeen with full spirit well access and medicinal enhancement."
She sat down across from him, but not close. "You ever heard of the Daybreak Alliance?"
"No."
"We clean up after the sects. The jobs they don't like to admit happen. Cults. Forbidden legacies. Sometimes missing prodigies." Her eyes flicked to him, impassive. "Between those jobs, I wait."
Revyn watched her. "Why come here?"
"You were interesting."
She said it like an afterthought.
"Didn't expect to find anything worth talking to."
"You're offering to train me?" he questioned.
"If you want. I've got a few weeks until I'm summoned again. You won't impress me, and I won't coddle you. But if you don't want to die before twenty, it might help."
Revyn finished eating. "I've never learnt anything beyond the qi formation realm."
"I didn't say you did."
"I'm not looking for charity."
"I don't give it."
They regarded one another in stillness.
Revyn said, "All right."
Liora nodded faintly. "Then don't waste my time."
They sat with a vast, silent understanding between them, neither friendly nor antagonistic. Simply coexisting.
The Ashlight within Revyn remained buried, quiet.
They sat without speaking for some time, the wind occasionally passing through the broken arches above.
Eventually, Liora spoke again, quietly, as though stating something no longer relevant.
"I used to be a well-known healer from a large sect. Before the Alliance. Before all this."
Revyn didn't look at her, but the shift in his stillness was noticeable. She continued.
"Had a family. Small home in the low valleys near the Whispering Coast. We lived life away from all the fighting among sects, and cultivation is the road to ruin we believed. I tended broken bones and wounds as a job. That was the life I chose. Away from the suffering and battles I was forced to participate in."
She didn't sound wistful. Just tired.
Revyn waited. She wasn't looking for sympathy.
"A cult came through. Demon worshipers, they even had a soul unity level cultivator if you can believe that. Blood rituals began, and I tried to run. I tried. The sects called it a backwater breach 'localised damage', they said. My family was part of that damage."
Her eyes remained fixed on the crumbling wall ahead.
"So, I buried the healer. Took up the blade again. Daybreak always needs hands, and I needed somewhere to put mine."
Revyn's voice was even. "How long ago?"
"Nine years. Give or take."
A pause.
"You miss them?"
She didn't answer immediately. When she did, her tone was flat.
"Missing implies time to grieve. I traded that for a purpose. Tracking down and slaughtering the ones that stripped that life away from me."
Revyn looked down at his empty hands.
"That's what you want for me? Purpose?"
Liora's mouth twitched. Not a smile, just movement. "I want you to survive. Purpose is your problem."
He nodded. "Fair."
She stood. "You can keep using this place if you want. I'll be around. Come morning, I'll show you how to stop leaking half your Qi into the floor below you."
Revyn's gaze stayed on the cracked basin.
"All right."
Liora turned, crimson robes whispering against stone. She paused at the archway.
"Don't expect me to fix you. I'm not that kind of healer anymore."
Then she stepped outside, leaving only the scent of dust, old blood, and meat behind.
Revyn closed his eyes. The Ashlight shifted once in his chest like a fog. Quiet, flickering, but not gone.