Starwall City, the only settlement in Mother's Gift large than a market town, lay near the base of the fortification from which it took its name, along the westernmost point. It stood in a direct line with the gateway to the world beyond, sixty kilometers further east. Along the wall, the defensive towers of Ohlay and Uzay, sixth and seventh of the Twelve Sisters, flanked the city even as they loomed over it. Built of gray stone, red-faced timber, and black tile, the city held fifty thousand souls and was illuminated at night by a nearly equal number of braziers, lamps, and lanterns. Though Su Yi and Qing Liao's arrival did not occur until well after sundown, the city continued to teem with ceaseless activity. Braying livestock, hammering smiths, and singing entertainers all filled the air with a melange of interwoven noise that reached over the city's modest exterior walls.

  Or, at least half the city sourced such vibrant sounds.

  Starwall City was divided into two halves, tiered one above the other. The lower, situated upon the wide plain and surrounded by farm fields, sprawled out and offered the raucous cacophony known in any place where people gathered in celebration of the New Year. The higher, raised up on a wide circle of earth and stone vast enough to utterly swallow Qing Liao's little mountain village, was quiet. Massive buildings, circular and multistory in structure with complex internal divisions, dominated this artificial plaza. Smaller outbuildings, in the familiar series-of-courtyards design found in the homes of country estates, surrounded these vast pavilions and filled up much of the available space. Many of these stood dark and empty. Where there was light, it came from slender candles, sufficient only to illuminate isolated spaces for individual use.

  Su Yi brought them to the edge of this raised half of the city from the north, bypassing the densely inhabited region entirely. From that direction a lengthy stair wound its way up the ten meters that separated the grounds belonging to the sect from the thick soil of the plain. This path had been lined with torches in anticipation of the day's new arrivals.

  Through some trick of cultivator capability Liao did not understand at all, those standing beacons did not burn in ordinary yellow-orange, but bore flames of a deep violet shade. They offered little light, barely discernable against the shadowy backdrop left by the looming wall behind, but generated much foreboding menace.

  Stopping before the first step, Su Yi set Liao down. She shook herself briefly, muscles rippling against the stiffness of the endless repeated motion the journey demanded. “Come,” she declared formally. “This is the final step.” A warning followed, voice threaded with heavy caution. “At the top of this stair, one of the Grand Elders waits in review of all new recruits. Be cautious, they are greatly intimidating. Fear not, you will not be called upon to speak to them, and need only answer the questions put to you by the Head Librarian.”

  Looking up the steps, perfectly cut and straight with a precision level he'd not believed possible for masonry, Liao felt his stomach attempt to roll and spin at the same time. Beside the stairs there was nothing, empty open space surrounded the rise on all sides. Green grass, cropped down to almost invisible height by the actions of sheep, covered it in a perfectly uniform blanket. To ascend was the only way available.

  Lacking any other path, he borrowed such time as he dared stretching stiff legs and began the short climb. Seeking to distract his overburdened imagination, he tried to count the steps. Nerves saw this effort skip and double-count several, but he concluded that the total was a fairly mundane one hundred and twenty. Strange shadows cast by the flickers of violet flames followed him the entire way. Though the distance was in truth quite short, it felt somehow immense.

  At the top there was a simple open platform laid in perfectly flat concrete that extended outward as far as he could see. A low wooden table had been carried there, wide and expansive for writing, with a small stool behind. Upon that seat an elderly-seeming cultivator in the same white robes as Su Yi, but with a blue belt and ties, bent over a long scroll filled with names. Despite a heavily lined face framed by wispy and wild white hair, this man, who could only be the Head Librarian, had a fit form beneath his robes and dark eyes that seemed to pierce through solid stone. Witnessing the appearance of a new recruit, he took up his pen and dipped it briefly in a pool of thick black ink.

  Liao was barely aware the man existed at all. All his attention, the totality of his perceptive capabilities, gravitated to the woman who stood to the left of the desk atop the stairs.

  She was a luminous creature, an image of impossible beauty cast not in flesh, clay, or stone, but made of blue itself. Countless shades of the color melded together into a physical being that transcended the boundaries of human flesh, of the material entire, and stood instead upon the cusp of a sublime existence unbounded by the rules of the world. Her skin was primarily pale sky blue, but it glowed as light suffusing her core perpetually rose up to brighten it. Streaks of lightning-flash blue-white, searing against the retina, carved lines across it on her forehead and elsewhere, highlights of her unearthly nature. Her hair, swept up into a ponytail and then let fall down to surround both sides of her neck, featured a thousand subtle shades of midnight indigo. These served to match and augment the dark, nearly black, silk dress that seemed to float around the edges of her frame, a wave of shifting shadows interspersed but spots of twinkling starlight. Her face was narrow, and the chin tightly pointed. Soft sapphire lips, full and vibrant, waited beneath a sharp and prominent nose. Above those she possessed piercing eyes, blue-white upon blue-white, inhuman, impossible, and soul-searing to look upon.

  Where the Head Librarian might see through stone. This grand elder seemed to stare through space itself.

  Qi, even to Liao's barely nascent senses it could be nothing else, radiated from this woman with unbelievable potency. A midnight blizzard, howling through the mountain peaks, surrounded her endlessly. This storm embedded her in the primordial pulsations of the planet's energy even as her unearthly physical form stood perfectly still and utterly poised. A slender-bladed sword, the first such weapon he had ever seen, rested behind her left hip inside a scabbard whose veneer seemed to drink in light itself. It took only the barest brush against the edge of her qi to make it known that she could shatter hills and obliterate whole villages without ever needing to draw that terrible implement of death.

  He knew this woman's name, of course. He had seen that blue face painted on the temple wall once a week during services for the entirety of his young life. This likeness conveyed nothing of her true presence, but it sufficed to teach recognition.

  Itinay.

  Grand Elder of the Celestial Origin Sect. Youngest of the Twelve Sisters, the original disciples of Orday, the Celestial Mother.

  Seeing her in the flesh stole the words from his mouth. He could only drop to his knees and press his head to seamless gray pavement below. To find the strength, the will, to even look directly at one so far above him, an immortal, was beyond any conception of possibility.

  Itinay watched this display without giving any reaction. Kowtowing or not, he might as well have never existed.

  Unauthorized use of content: if you find this story on Amazon, report the violation.

  “You are the recruit brought by Disciple Su Yi?” The librarian's voice, firm but scratchy with age, shattered the tableau. Each word spoken by the elderly cultivator sounded like papers being shuffled together. “From Echuantun?”

  Liao did not know how the old man might know these things, he had not seen Su Yi reach the top step barely a stride behind him. He could only nod without daring to look up.

  “Come here,” the librarian tapped the butt of his pen against the edge of the wooden desk. “Record your name and that of your parents for the sect's records.”

  It took every fragment of resolve Qing Liao possessed to stand up beneath the searing potency of Itinay's gaze. Though he need take no more than a handful of steps across the pavement, they were the hardest of motions, as if an immense stone was tied to each of his knees. He dared not look toward the grand elder, or even at the librarian, and directed all his attention to the long scroll instead. Desperately, he sought to pretend there was no one to his right at all. Thankfully, his barely awakened sense of qi allowed this ruse to deceive his mind.

  The librarian proffered a brush and pointed a slender, long-nailed finger in indication of where he was to write. Haltingly, for Liao's calligraphy had been learned from the village priest and barely sufficed for even this task, he wrote down three names and the name of the village of his birth. Nothing more was asked of him.

  He did notice, in that moment, the presence of over a dozen names, freshly inscribed, above his own. It seemed he was far from the first to arrive. He could only hope he was not the last.

  “Qing Liao, you are now officially a recruit of the Celestial Origin Sect,” the librarian reached into a small box on the desk and passed over a small copper disk. It was marked with the most basic of symbols, zero. “You are assigned to room fifteen in the recruit's dormitory.” The elder turned about, a seamlessly smooth motion that belied his aged appearance, and pointed to a block-like grayish building some distance to the south. There were candles burning in the windows. It possessed no courtyard, resembling a warehouse more than any form of domicile. “You will report to the First Training Hall by the seventh hour tomorrow morning. Welcome to the sect.”

  Liao silently repeated the room number inside his mind, holding it tight, and bowed as formally as his frayed nerves allowed. Finding a place to sleep seemed to be a more than sufficient challenge for the remainder of this day. He could face the reality of being a cultivator in the morning, hopefully.

  “Hold,” this single word emerged from the lips of Itinay. Though barely more than the least whisper, it froze all present. Liao, Su Yi, and even the Head Librarian, an elder in his own right, stopped instantly. All was absolutely still.

  Suddenly, seemingly without ever moving at all, the grand elder stood directly before the young man. The stormy force of her being pushed down upon him. Pain spiked across his hips, back, knees, and feet. He felt snow piling up around him, higher and higher with each breath, as an unseen avalanche buried him alive.

  “Show me your hand,” Itinay ordered. A single glowing blue digit pointed to his right palm, the one not holding the copper badge.

  Refusal was beyond any contemplation. His arm moved of its own accord as he complied.

  “You are not a farmer,” the grand elder declared this following the barest of glances from her concentric colored eyes. “Or any kind of towns dweller. What is your father's work?”

  “He. Is. A. Trapper. Grand Elder.” It took a full deep breath to press out each word, the exertion of the entire strength his body could summon against the press of Itinay's ambient qi diffusion. The sensation of being buried in snow never lessened. Physically, the blue-skinned grand elder was not imposing, barely taller than Su Yi and of thin build, but her least actions matched the motion of mountains and rivers.

  “A trapper,” dark blue lips twitched slightly. “From the distant mountains. Unusual, but, possibly, that is a benefit.” These gentle musings swept all up in imagination, spun out countless fever dreams of possibility. “Or it may not matter at all.” She dashed aside those endless dreams even as they struggled to take shape within the mists. “Only the Heavens know. Find your bed swiftly, Qing Liao of Echuantun. The morning comes soon.”

  This was clearly a dismissal. Liao bowed, deep and rapidly as he dared, and then practically ran for the distant dormitory building. He might know nothing of the inner workings of the sect, but intuition sufficed to inform him that a recruit did not desire the attention of a grand elder. She was a snowfall, an avalanche, and if he stood in her path he could only be crushed.

  The Recruit's Dormitory was a squat box of a building that was clearly marked by signposts along the painted paths that divided the concrete platform the sect grounds occupied. Light here came from ordinary lanterns, their yellow flames familiar and warm. Liao rushed ahead, stumbling occasionally as he fought for purchase in the poorly-fitted ceremonial sandals. He cared nothing for the image of dignity. Everything relied on putting the grand elder as far behind him as possible.

  A simple wooden fence surrounded the dormitory. Up close the building revealed itself as a two storey stack of small rooms crammed together with shared walls. These were red timber, laid down over stone floors. Rammed earth did not suffice for the needs of even the sect's least members. A series of doors, each adjoined by a small paper-screen window, bore the painted number of its label. A privy had been placed behind the structure, just inside the edge of the fence.

  Behind the fence line, at the intersection with the main path, an attendant waited. He was a middle-aged man dressed in robes similar to Liao's own, but made of simple linen and dyed charcoal gray. His lined face wore a weary expression that took in the copper badge with a simple glance and professional restraint. “Room fifteen?” he questioned.

  “Yes,” the youth nodded.

  “Two from the end, on the backside.” The man pointed towards a distant door. “There is food waiting, you may eat, or not, as you please. It is requested that you remain awake until the seamstress arrives to take you measurements. Beyond this, you have no duties until you report for instruction tomorrow.” This man spoke very swiftly, and he accented his words in a manner unfamiliar to Liao, making it somewhat challenging to follow.

  “Thanks,” rather than mention this, Liao simply acknowledged the orders. Walking quickly, he found his way to the indicated room. The door, he noted, had neither lock nor bar. Not that he had anything worth stealing, but he supposed the sect had its own methods for insuring that neither members nor servants were foolish enough to dare.

  It was not a large room, nor did it contain much. There was a couch laid with bedding, a lap desk, a small empty shelf for books, and a tray laden with a wonderfully scented hot meal. A single fat candle, placed on the desk, provided light. There was no fireplace, nor had anyone placed a brazier, making the room very cold, especially for a young man in ill-fitting linen robes. Thankfully the blankets were stout wool, and thick. He felt warm again almost at once after draping one over his shoulders.

  This resumption of some semblance of normality brought with it the discovery that he was ravenously hungry, and he tore into the meal provided.

  His rate of consumption accelerated markedly after taking the first bite, for the food tasted incredible. There was no meat, and he vaguely recalled some of the legends mentioning that cultivators abstained from flesh for some unknown reason, but the bowl merged together rice, vegetables, nuts, and a spicy red sauce that more than satisfied his palate. Even the tea, which he normally did not much care for, offered a light and refreshing complement. Though the tray had held a large and heavy bowl, and Liao was not an especially built young specimen, he surpassed his initial expectations and finished every last mouthful.

  It so happened that he set his chopsticks down mere moments before the seamstress arrived.

  Being measured was not a new experience for Liao. His mother had done it every year to ensure the fur-lined garments she made from the family's trapping take fit properly. He was well-aware that the process could be embarrassingly intimate, something a number of other boys in the village had complained about as they entered their teenage years, but after an afternoon spent clinging to Su Yi it seemed unimportant. Not that it mattered this night, for the seamstress was a hunched and thin-eyed woman at least four times his age. She had weak vision but steady hands and when finished casually made the impossible announcement that he would receive a brand new, properly fitted hanfu, trousers, undergarments, and other articles by the end of the week.

  He had no time to consider such miracles of the sect further. As soon as the woman departed exhaustion claimed him.