Xo stood near the stern of the ship, a broad silhouette outlined by the slow rhythm of moonlight breaking across the waves. The deck beneath him swayed with the ocean’s breath, not rough, just constant—like something that wouldn’t let you forget the world was always moving. He rested his hands lightly on the rail, the wood cool beneath his palms. The wind played with the hem of his coat, salted and steady, but he didn’t notice. His gaze stayed fixed on the horizon—on the thin line where sea met sky, both empty and infinite.
The door behind him creaked open, closed again with a soft click. Nozomi’s steps were quiet, but deliberate. She came to stand beside him without a word, close enough to share the view, not so close it asked for anything more.
“Sea is calm tonight,” she said, after a long while. Her voice was quiet. Not tired. Just measured.
Xo nodded. “Not calm. Just waiting.”
“For what?”
He didn’t answer right away. His eyes didn’t leave the sea.
“Storms always come,” he said. “Even when it looks like they won’t.”
Nozomi leaned on the rail, elbows resting on worn wood. “That’s a heavy way to watch the ocean.”
“It’s the only way I know how.”
Another silence. The water lapped gently against the hull below, steady as breathing.
After a while, Nozomi asked, “You always been dramatic like this?”
Xo tilted his head, the faintest shrug. “Since I was twelve.”
She didn’t press. Just waited. And slowly, he spoke again.
“My family lived in a small village. Qingxia. South of Midori, past the forest line. Quiet place. Good people. Or so I thought.”
His fingers curled slightly on the rail.
“My father was a soldier once. Water affinity cultivator. Respected. He came home after his service, helped the people. Led the village. He was the kind of man who could calm a crowd with a look, clear a field with one sweep of Qi. I thought he was invincible.”
Nozomi said nothing. Her breath was slow beside him, waiting.
“Then the sickness came. First in the water. Livestock died. Then people. The wells turned sour, and the air changed. It wasn’t just a fever. It was fear. Panic.” He paused, his jaw tight. “And panic needs a reason.”
Her voice came low. “They blamed him.”
“They blamed us. Said his Qi had poisoned the rivers. Said my mother cast spirits into the fields. Said we were cursed.”
He stared out at the waves again, the sea taking his words like it had heard them before.
“They came at night. Flames. Voices I knew—people who’d eaten at our table. I remember my father carrying me through the smoke. My brother running ahead. I turned back for one second…”
His breath hitched. Not from emotion. Just remembering.
“I saw a man in the fire. Not a villager. Not a face I knew. Soldier. Black cloak. Dragon-ring on his hand.”
Nozomi’s head turned slightly.
“My parents died. My brother too.” He exhaled. “Later I found out I was wrong. About a lot of things.”
He shifted, the wind catching his coat again. The silence between them bent—more taut now.
“I ran. Hid. Fought. Lived long enough to want revenge more than answers. And then… that changed, too.”
“What changed it?” she asked.
“A lie, maybe” he said. “From the man I killed.”
They stood in stillness, the sea below, the stars above, and too many years between.
After a while, Xo asked, without looking at her, “And you? What brought you this far from home?”
Nozomi didn’t answer at first.
The silence stretched again, but not uncomfortably. Just long enough that the question could settle, root itself somewhere in her ribs. She watched the water for a few breaths more, then spoke—quiet, as if her voice might break something loose if she raised it too high.
“I came from a village too. Akaltel region. Flat land. Windy. You could walk for an hour and still be in the same cabbage field.” A faint breath that wasn’t quite a laugh. “We weren’t important. Just poor.”
She tapped one knuckle lightly against the rail, not looking at him. “My mother was the only one who could read. So people brought her their taxes, their letters, their hopes. She helped them. For free, most of the time. But when the harvest failed one year, there was no coin left to help.”
Her eyes shifted down, watching the sea catch a bit of starlight.
“She went to the city, to work in an office, a shop or whatever. Said it was just for a while. Said she’d send money. Said she’d write.”
Nozomi’s jaw moved slightly, like she was testing her own words before letting the next ones go.
“She didn’t.”
Xo turned his head slightly, but didn’t speak. The only sound was the low creak of the mast above them, the groan of rigging shifting with the swell.
“My grandmother got sick after the first frost. Died before the second. I waited. For months.” Her hands curled around the rail, fingers loose but pale at the knuckles. “Then I walked to the city. Alone. Thought maybe she just hadn’t found a way to write. Maybe she’d be waiting at the gate.”
She gave a small shake of her head. “I saw her. Eventually. I didn’t recognize her at first. She was wearing silk and cheap make up smeared under her eyes. She was… gone. An hollow husk. Working in a brothel near the river.”
The wind stirred again, cooler. Nozomi’s voice didn’t change.
“I tried to ask for help. An official. A cultivator woman dressed in blue silk and gold. She laughed in my face. Called me a flea.”
She let the silence hold for a moment longer, then said:
“That’s when I stopped believing the Empire served us. Or even noticed we existed. That it was called the Blue Sky Empire because the sky was the only thing they would look at. Us, little people on the mud, unworthy of their attention.”
Xo’s voice came low. “So you joined it?”
She looked at him then. Not hard, not cold. Just steady.
“No. When I discovered I had an affinity, I joined the exam for the strike force. Not for the Empire. For the tools. The training. The chance to be in the places where things happen.” She paused. “Where they make decisions that leave girls like me behind.”
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
Another long moment passed between them.
“And now?” he asked. “You still want revenge?”
Nozomi’s eyes drifted back to the horizon. “Maybe. But not the loud kind. Not the kind you scream about.” Her voice softened. “It’s more like… I want to take something from them. The ones who sit too high to see what they’ve broken.”
Xo didn’t speak for a while. When he did, it wasn’t to question or comfort.
“I think I get that,” he said.
They stood in silence, not watching each other, just the dark stretch of ocean ahead.
“I’m going to check on Lei and Liu. I think Liu keeps asking the stone if it wants to be friends.” Xo eventually told her.
He said nothing of the tear he saw on her cheek when he left.
“…so, like—when you breathe, does your Qi, like, glow inside you? Or is it just invisible until you shout or something?”
Little Xiao Bo’s eyes were wide with wonder as he leaned forward over the crate he’d claimed as a stool. His hands flailed in front of him like he was mimicking the explosion of a firework. “Because in stories, they always shout. And there’s, like, wind. Is there always wind? And lightning ?”
“No,” Lei said, with a dry smile, “but sometimes there’s steam. And blood.”
Liu chuckled beside him, back against the hull wall, long legs stretched out over the floorboards. “Mostly it just feels like… breathing deeper. Standing straighter. Until someone sets you on fire.”
Bo’s mouth dropped open. “You can set people on fire?”
“We didn’t say that,” Lei said quickly, and nudged Liu with an elbow. “Stop corrupting the youth.”
“I’m inspiring the youth,” Liu said, then glanced at Bo and added, “And no, we don’t go around lighting people up. Cultivation is discipline. Not fireworks.”
Bo frowned, thoughtful. “So… it’s more like training a muscle?”
“More like listening to one,” Lei said. “That doesn’t talk much.”
The boy scrunched his nose. “That’s not in the stories.”
“That’s because the stories were written by people who wish they had a core,” Liu muttered, then took a swig from his canteen.
The creak of the ladder cut off any further questions. Xo descended slowly into the small storage hold, ducking under the low beam and squinting around. “Kid,” he said, voice rumbling like he hadn’t spoken in a while, “don’t you have work above deck?”
Bo looked like he was about to protest, but thought better of it.
“Yes, sir,” he muttered, then scrambled up the ladder.
Once he was gone, Xo crossed the room and sat on a crate across from the others.
“He’s got more questions than a census form,” Liu said.
“He’ll make a terrible cultivator,” Lei agreed.
“But an excellent distraction,” Xo murmured.
They sat in silence a moment.
Then Xo reached into his coat and pulled out a folded parchment. The forms Shen had left them—brush-written stances and channeling cues for suppressing their aura.
“I’ll work on this,” he said. “No sense walking into something unknown still leaking Qi like rookies.”
“You sure you’re good?” Liu asked. “You got tossed pretty hard.”
Xo shrugged. “I’m breathing. That’ll do.”
Lei was already adjusting his seated posture. “We’ll meditate. See if these stones are worth the hype.”
Liu grinned. “And if they’re not?”
“Then I’m blaming Bo.”
Xo let out a sound that might’ve been a laugh. Then he turned, unfolding the parchment, and began reading the quiet strokes of a soldier’s gift.
The others followed suit, the hold settling into silence. Liu was the first one to dive into the secret of his stone.
There was a wind—cold, dry, full of dust—and it dragged the scent of something old down a mountain path.
The pass was narrow. Too narrow for carts. Barely wide enough for people to move through in lines of two or three. But the way was open, and they were running. Dozens of them. Faces wide with fear, legs pumping, clutching what little they could carry—blankets, satchels, children.
And in the center of the pass, he stood.
A man. Not young. Not unscarred. But rooted, as if he’d grown from the stone itself. Behind him, the narrow road wound down into safety. Before him, only dusk. And rising from that dusk—
Waves.
Of monsters.
Looking half alive and mostly dead. Limbs twisted wrong, skin tight and grey, jaws unhinged. Some crawled, others ran. Some walked like they remembered how. Shadows filled in the gaps—creatures made of ash and the memory of bone, of war, of plague. Hunger on legs.
They didn’t roar. They didn’t howl.
They just came.
And the man didn’t move.
His sword was planted at his side. His shield slung across his arm like something he’d carried for a hundred years. He didn’t shout, didn’t brace, didn’t pray. He only stepped once—back, slow—and slid his foot into the ground behind him.
A stance. Final. Unyielding.
And then he spoke:
“Let fire be my armor when steel is not enough.”
It began in his chest—Qi rising not as heat, but pressure. It climbed his ribs, slid down his spine. His skin did not blacken. His body did not scream. The flames curled up from his arms, over his thighs, his legs, his shoulders—shaping not destruction, but defense.
Fire wrapped him like lacquer. Held him like iron.
And then it spread.
A pulse. A dome. A breath that became a barrier—slow, low, and absolute. The fire rolled outward from his feet, not in a blaze, but in a wall. Six meters. Then ten. A ring of light drawn into the dirt by something deeper than will.
The first wave of monsters hit it—
And stopped.
No wails. No burning. Just the thud of momentum crushed against something they could not understand. They pushed. The fire held. They clawed. The wall didn’t flicker.
It didn’t matter how many came.
There was no need to move when they rush into a blazing oblivion.
The man’s eyes never left the dark. His blade stayed still. His stance never shifted again. And behind him, the last of the villagers made it through the pass, disappearing into safety beyond the ridge.
Liu opened his eyes. The Qi in his chest mirrored the fire. A shield, absolute. He smiled.
A faint scent of smoke reached his nose. He looked down. “Oh crap.”
Across the room, Xo lifted his head. The corner of his mouth twitched. “You know,” he said, “burning the boat you're sailing on? Not the best tactical move.”
On the far side of the hold, Lei sat with eyes still closed, as if nothing had happened.
His breath slowed. Then, as the Qi took shape, the world fell away…
The world was fire.
Smoke thick enough to drown in, heat rising from broken steel and shattered bodies. The ground was slick with blood and trampled with bootprints that led nowhere. The banners had fallen long ago. What remained were cries, and the silence that followed them.
And in the middle of it all stood a woman.
Armor cracked. Face smeared with ash. A gash on her side, too deep to forget. She held no weapon now—only breath. Shallow. Controlled. Her gauntlets trembled, not from fear, but from weight. The weight of knowing she could no longer lift the blade and that, perhaps, she no longer wanted to.
She raised her face to the sky.
Above her, the sun glared—unrelenting, empty. A few pale clouds drifted like ghosts, too high, too soft, untouched by the ruin below. She watched them. Not pleading. Just… listening. Then she closed her eyes.
A tear slipped from the corner of her eye. It did not fall fast. It traced a slow, quiet line through the grime on her cheek, like it, too, was reluctant to leave.
She raised her arms.
Not in surrender. Not in prayer.
But as if she were reaching for something she'd once known and had almost forgotten how to hold.
The sun dimmed.
Not all at once. Not like nightfall. Just gently, as if it, too, understood it was not its time.
And the clouds began to thicken.
They didn’t roar or spiral. They gathered. Together. Above her. Around her. The light shifted, softening. The heat did not vanish—but it paused, uncertain.
Then, the first drop fell.
It struck her cheek and hissed, steam rising from skin too long exposed. Another drop landed on her arm. Her side. Her back.
Then the field.
Rain. Not heavy. Not loud. But present.
Each drop a note in a song deeper than war.
And slowly, the battlefield stilled.
The wounded blinked through the haze. The dying stopped screaming. Even the unfallen enemies—men with raised blades and blood on their hands—froze where they stood, looking up, blinking rain from their eyes.
A man dropped his axe.
A boy let go of a spear.
And beneath the sound of falling rain, wounds began to close.
Not all at once. Not with spectacle. Just… healing.
Tiny cuts vanished as if they’d never been. Broken ribs drew breath again. A soldier clutched at his chest, feeling no longer blood, but skin. Another sobbed once, seeing fingers returned that moments ago had gone.
They looked at each other. And no one raised a weapon.
Not one.
They turned. Quietly. Slowly. And walked home.
And the woman?
She stood in the center of it all—still and unshaken—rain dripping from her armor, her arms slowly lowering back to her sides. Her breath deeper now. Her wound already closing.
When Lei opened is eyes, the Qi in his core pulsed once. Acknowledging the pattern of the skill. And on his face, a tear ran, carrying memories ages old.
