Huang Ming set the pole across his shoulders and lifted. The pendant at his throat tapped against his chest—cheap wood, rough-carved—made by his father's hands before the coughing sickness took him. Ming touched it once—a habit—then adjusted his grip and walked into the cold.

  Dawn in the village came gray and cold, and Ming's shoulders ached from yesterday's work and the day before that and every day he could remember. Sixteen years old, and already he knew exhaustion by name: how it settled in bone, slowed fingers, made thinking feel thick.

  But not his dreams.

  His dreams stayed sharp.

  "Ming!" His mother's voice cut through the morning mist. "The Chen family needs the wall finished today. Don't make me explain why my son is lazy."

  "I'm not lazy, Ma." He felt the familiar bite of wood and adjusted his grip. "I'm just slow."

  "Same thing to people who pay."

  She was right. She was always right, in that hard, practical way that came from raising a son alone and counting coins until numbers turned into fear. Ming didn't argue.

  The Chen family's wall took him until midday, stacking stones with hands that had learned the right fit by touch. Old Chen watched for a while, smoking a pipe that smelled of bitter herbs.

  "You're good at this," Old Chen said. "Patient. Strong for your size."

  "Thank you, Uncle Chen."

  "You should apprentice with a mason. Good trade. Steady work."

  Ming's hands kept moving, stone finding stone. "Maybe."

  But his eyes drifted, as they always did, toward the edge of the village where the road curved toward the city. Toward Foshan. Toward the martial schools everyone talked about and no one from his village entered.

  The stories filtered back like smoke: masters who could break stone with their fingers, fighters who moved like water and struck like lightning, schools where talent mattered more than blood or money. Places where a poor boy with quick hands might—

  "You're dreaming again." Old Chen's voice was not unkind. "I can tell. Your eyes go somewhere else."

  "Sorry, Uncle."

  "Don't be sorry. Just don't let the dreaming make you drop my stones."

  Ming finished the wall as the afternoon shadows lengthened. Three coins pressed into his palm—less than he'd hoped, more than he'd expected. He walked home through the village's single mud street, past other hovels identical to his own, past children who would grow up to haul water and stack stones.

  The wooden pendant tapped against his chest with each step.

  What would you say, Ba? he asked himself silently in his head. If I told you I wanted more than this?

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  His father had been a carpenter. Good with his hands, good with people, good at laughing even when the rice was thin and the winter long. The coughing sickness had taken him in three weeks, and Ming—eleven years old, suddenly the man of a house that barely qualified as shelter—had learned that goodness didn't protect you.

  He remembered a night near the end of winter, before the coughing started.

  His father had sat by the lamp with a scrap of wood and a knife that was more chipped than sharp, turning the block in his palm like he was listening to it. Ming had watched, hungry in the way children were hungry—always, for everything.

  "Hold it like this," his father had said, guiding Ming's small fingers around the wood. "Not tight. You squeeze, you slip. You cut yourself. You ruin the grain." The blade had moved slow and sure, and curls of wood had fallen like pale ribbon.

  Ming had frowned in concentration.

  His father had laughed—soft, warm. "You're allowed to take your time," he'd said. "Hunger makes people rush. Rushing makes people cruel. If you remember anything, remember that."

  But he hadn't stopped being good.

  Near the village well, he found Little Feng crying in the dirt, her basket overturned, vegetables scattered. Her family was poorer than Ming's, which shouldn't have been possible but somehow was.

  "What happened?"

  "The Zhu boys." She wiped her nose with a filthy sleeve. "They said... they said things. And then they kicked my basket."

  Ming looked around. The Zhu boys were bigger than him, meaner, and their father owned the only proper house in the village. Getting involved was stupid.

  He knelt and began gathering the vegetables anyway.

  "You don't have to," Little Feng said.

  "I know."

  "They'll be angry if they see."

  "They're always angry." He placed the last turnip in her basket, careful not to bruise it. "Go home. Quickly. Stay off the main path."

  She scurried away, basket clutched to her chest, and Ming stood there in the fading light feeling the familiar weight of having nothing and still giving something away.

  Stupid, he thought. That's what Ma would say.

  But his father's pendant warmed against his skin, and for a moment Ming didn't feel quite so hungry.

  A stranger came to the village.

  Ming noticed him immediately: the way he stood, the way he moved, the way other people's eyes tracked him without quite knowing why. He wore traveling clothes, unremarkable, but his hands were scarred in patterns Ming had only heard about in stories.

  Training scars. A fighter's hands.

  The stranger asked questions. Ming didn't understand why until Old Chen pointed toward him.

  "That one," Old Chen said. "The water-carrier's boy. Huang Ming. Good hands. Patient. Works harder than anyone his age."

  The stranger looked at Ming for a long moment.

  Ming looked back, and something in his chest—something that had been sleeping his whole life—woke up.

  "You," the stranger said. "Show me your hands."

  Ming held them out. They were calloused, scarred, permanently dirty. Poor hands. Worker's hands.

  The stranger turned them over, examining them like a jeweler examining rough stones.

  "Can you read?"

  "A little. My father taught me before he—"

  "Can you follow instructions without asking stupid questions?"

  "Yes."

  "Can you endure pain?"

  Ming thought of cold mornings and empty stomachs and the weight of water buckets that never got lighter. "Yes."

  The stranger released his hands. His expression gave nothing away.

  "There's a school," he said finally. "In the city. They're looking for students. Not rich boys playing at warriors. Real students." His eyes narrowed. "Hungry ones."

  Ming's heart pounded so hard he was sure everyone could hear it.

  "I am," he said. "I'm starving."

  The stranger almost smiled.

  "Good," he said. "Starving is where it starts."

  He gave Ming a location, a time, a single word to speak at the gate. Then he walked away without looking back, and Ming stood in the middle of his nothing-village with his nothing-life, holding a chance so fragile he was afraid to breathe on it.

  When he told his mother, she cried. Angry tears, scared tears, tears he couldn't quite interpret. Then she pressed the family's small savings into his hands and told him not to come back until he was somebody.

  "I'll send money," he promised.

  "Don't send money. Become someone."

  Ming touched the wooden pendant one last time before he left.

  I'll try, Ba, he promised silently. I'll try.

  He walked through the night toward Foshan, toward the school, toward a future he couldn't yet imagine but could finally begin to believe in.

  The hunger in his belly had a twin now.

  And that hunger would never be satisfied with stones and water.