The evening meal at the Yue family’s quarters felt different from the moment Tian entered the house.

  The food that his parents had prepared was a modest yet carefully laid-out meal of steamed fish with ginger, rice wine chicken and vegetables from their small garden.

  It gave the sense of ‘celebration’ even in their reduced circumstances.

  “You seem lost in thought tonight,” his mother Wu Yunmei said as she put down her chopsticks when they were all done. “I mean, more than usual.”

  Tian looked across the low table at his parents and noted how the lamplight picked up the silver strands in his father’s hair and the calluses in his mother’s hands from doing her own domestic chores.

  They had both been affected by the rapid decline from their former status.

  Even then, they bore it with patience and dignity and never let him see or hear their struggles.

  “I need to tell you something,” he said quietly. “There’s an opportunity.”

  His father Yue Tianming sat upright slightly, as he always did when he sensed important information. Even though he was crippled, he carried himself with the self-assurance of the Oneiric Sovereign he had once been.

  “What type of opportunity is it?”

  “There was a traveling swordsman in the village square yesterday. Master Jian. He was testing to see if anyone had any talent for martial arts.” Tian stopped briefly to choose his words carefully. “Afterward, his servant approached me and offered to allow me to join them when they leave tomorrow.”

  There was a prolonged period of silence that allowed Tian to listen to the sounds of the night drifting in from outside: crickets chirping, voices from neighboring courtyard homes, the soft rustling of the wind through bamboo.

  “A traveling swordsman,” Yunmei repeated slowly as though she was making sure she hadn’t misheard. “And you want to leave with them?”

  “Yes,” Tian replied. “Even though Master Jian himself told me that I don’t have any talent, his servant, Hongyun… he saw something else. He thinks that there might be answers out there about who I am and why I can’t cultivate.”

  “Son, we’ve talked about this before,” Tianming leaned forward, looking concerned. “The world beyond these mountains is dangerous, especially for someone who can’t cultivate. How would you be able to protect yourself?”

  “I won’t be alone,” Tian replied. “Master Jian can defeat Thoughtshapers. And Hongyun… there’s something different about him.”

  “You’re talking about leaving home,” Wu Yunmei placed her teacup down with fingers that were now trembling. The thought of her son going away was hard for her to accept. “Leaving us to chase after dreams with strangers.”

  “I’m talking about finding out why I exist,” Tian said louder than he meant to. “I’m fifteen years old, Mother. I don’t have anything. No cultivation, no spiritual awareness, no chance of getting married. What future do I have here? Copying texts for the clan library? Caring for gardens? Watching younger children surpass me in every area possible?”

  His words hit his parents like a physical blow and the anguish on their faces made him immediately regret the bluntness of his words, but he continued:

  “You both sacrificed everything to bring me into this world. The least I can do is make something of myself.”

  “We didn’t sacrifice anything, Tian!” Tianming stood up before having to sit straight back down as his cultivation flared up with old pain. “We gained everything. You’re our son, not some investment that needs to proof its worth.”

  “But what if I could be more?” Tian asked quietly. “What if there are answers out there? What if the reason I can’t cultivate normally is because I’m supposed to accomplish something entirely different?”

  “And what if you’re wrong,” Yunmei touched his hand across the table. “What if you leave us and find nothing but disappointment and danger?”

  “Then I’ll at least know,” Tian said. “At least I’ll have tried.”

  Their discussion continued late into the night, cycling through similar concerns and hopes multiple times. Tian’s parents posed practical questions about money, security, communication.

  How would they know if he was still alive?

  How would he get on without family support?

  What would happen if these strangers deserted him in a foreign city?

  Tian provided what responses he could and acknowledged the things he couldn’t.

  Yes, it was risky, but he would send letters when he could.

  No, he didn’t have a specific plan, but he would earn his keep.

  As for what he would do if they abandoned him, he didn’t know, they didn’t seem like the type.

  But he couldn’t no go just because he was afraid.

  Staying in Moonhaven City as the failed prophecy child and watching his parents slowly break under the pressure of their reduced lifestyle felt like a slow form of death.

  “I’ve felt lost my whole life,” he finally said as the hours grew late. “I’ve felt as though I’m supposed to be someone else, somewhere else. When I met Hongyun yesterday, for the first time in years, I felt like maybe that feeling meant something.”

  Tianming studied his son’s face in the lamplight for a long time before finally speaking.

  “Your mother and I, we’ll need to speak about it before we decide anything.”

  “I understand,” Tian said, that was the best he could expect. “But they’re leaving at dawn so please decide before then.”

  After Tian went into his bedroom, his parents sat together in the kitchen, whispering about what to do.

  Tian heard fragments of their conversation through the thin walls: concerns about his safety, debates about whether they were being selfish for wanting him to stay in Moonhaven City, debates about the wisdom of trusting strangers.

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  Sleep came fitfully, filled with dreams of a different world that his soul knew but his mind couldn't name.

  ***

  It was gray and cool outside as dawn arrived — mist clung to the peaks surrounding Moonhaven City like the cold breath of sleeping dragons. Tian found his parents already awake in the kitchen; their tired faces reflected their exhausted bodies from a sleepless night.

  "We've decided," Yunmei said bluntly. "If this is really what you want, we won't stop you."

  A wave of relief hit him hard enough that he nearly fell onto a chair. "You mean it?"

  "We mean it," Tianming said. "But there are conditions."

  He pulled out a small jade pendant from his robes and held it up for Tian to examine. The surface of the pendant was intricately carved with protective symbols that glowed softly with a remnant of spiritual energy.

  "I made this when I was at the height of my cultivation abilities. This is keyed to our family's bloodline and will turn on automatically if your life is in extreme danger. It has one burst of defensive power in the form of Oneiric Sovereign level energy."

  Tian carefully took the pendant in reverence, feeling the weight of countless generations in the carvings on the jade. "Father, this must be worth an incredible amount of money. What happens if I lose it?"

  "Well, then we'll know you needed it," Tianming said matter-of-factly. "That's why family keeps treasures: to protect each other."

  Yunmei handed Tian a cloth-wrapped package.

  "Traveling clothes, some dried food, and as much money as we could save for you."

  "And this," Tianming continued, handing Tian a sealed letter. "Take this letter to Elder Chen Wuxian at the Heavenly Palace Sect if you ever end up in the capital. He owes our family a favor that goes back decades. He'll give you a place to stay and help you out without asking any questions."

  The goodbye that followed was awkward.

  None of them were good at dramatic farewells.

  They instead enjoyed a quiet breakfast together, discussing practicalities and ignoring the fact that this may have been the last time they would sit as a family together.

  After the meal ended, Tian got up to collect his belongings. His bedroom appeared smaller than normal. He gathered the few possessions that were important enough to carry. Travel clothes went into his luggage, along with his writing tools and the small collection of books he'd assembled over the years.

  He stopped at his desk, where a small clay pot sat by the window in the patch of light that came through every morning. Inside the pot grew a delicate vine that he'd been tending for three years now, one of the only plants that had ever responded to his care despite his complete lack of cultivation ability.

  The thin green stem wound itself around a simple wooden support stick, and its leaves were a deep, vivid emerald that seemed to catch whatever light touched them and hold it there, as though the leaves were drinking the sunlight and savoring it.

  Most people would have looked at it and seen a weed. It produced no flowers and bore no fruit and showed absolutely no signs of developing spiritual properties, which meant by any reasonable standard of measurement it was worthless.

  But it had grown under his attention when nothing else would, and it responded to his voice and touch in ways impossible to understand and which long ago he had given up on explaining.

  On his worst days, the days when his failure to cultivate felt like a stone sitting on his chest, he would sit by the window and talk to the little vine and tell it all the things he couldn't tell anyone else, all the frustration and the fear and the creeping suspicion that he would amount to nothing, and the vine would rustle its leaves and go on growing, which was more than Tian could say for himself.

  He carefully unwrapped the vine from its wooden support and wound it gently around his left wrist, and the plant seemed to settle against his skin with something that looked very much like contentment, its leaves rustling softly in the still air of the room where no breeze could move them.

  He fashioned a simple clasp from a bit of cord to hold it in place, and it sat against his wrist like a living bracelet, green and warm and unexpectedly natural, as if it had always been meant to be worn rather than potted.

  "At least one of us knows how to grow," he murmured to the vine, and felt foolish for talking to a plant, which was a feeling he'd had roughly a thousand times before without it ever actually stopping him.

  The vine's leaves shimmered in the morning light, and he chose to take that as encouragement.

  The rest of his preparations went quickly because there wasn't much to prepare. His life had never needed many possessions, and the things that mattered to him most could not be rolled in a cloth bundle and slung over his shoulder anyway: the love of his parents, and the quiet stubbornness that had led him to place one foot in front of the other through so many years of disappointments, and the stubborn hope that refused to die from its many deaths, worth more than the price of everything else combined.

  The sun was climbing higher, and the mist was starting to burn off the mountaintops when Tian hugged his parents, hard, his mother’s arms tight around his neck, his father’s hand firm on his shoulder.

  Then he turned away and made his way toward the village square, where the morning air was heavy with the scent of cooking fires rising from the clan compounds, and the ringing cast of martial exercises, shouts and the crack of wooden training weapons, the thump of feet on packed earth—so familiar that he had long since stopped hearing them and was only hearing them now because he was about to lose them.

  Master Jian and Hongyun were waiting beside a simple cart that had been packed with traveling supplies and covered with oiled canvas against the weather. The swordsman looked exactly as dull as he had the day before, practical clothes and all, hands weathered and relaxed at his sides, and that plain sword at his hip that somehow drew the gaze far more than the jade-hilted ornamented ones the clan boys liked to parade about with.

  “Punctual,” Master Jian said, once Tian had gotten close enough. “Good, that shows you respect others’ time.”

  “I wasn’t sure you would come,” Hongyun said, smiling with warmth. “Leaving family is painful.”

  “It is,” Tian said. “But staying felt worse.”

  Master Jian looked at him, and those boring eyes seemed to see far more than they had any right to, but he didn’t say anything for a while, he just helped put Tian’s things into the cart.

  When they were done, Master Jian briefed him on what to expect on the road with them.

  Unlike the other two who would be riding, he would walk alongside.

  Master Jian said it would condition his body and build character.

  As for meals, they would share them.

  Everybody pitched in, whether by helping prepare the food or paying for it.

  And among other duties, Tian would be expected to do camping duties and take care of equipment.

  The deal felt too good to be true.

  "One last thing," Master Jian said as they prepared to leave. "During the time you spend traveling with us, you will represent our group. How you act will reflect on all of us. I expect you to be courteous, honest, and restrained. When you feel overwhelmed by a situation and can’t manage it, don't let your pride get the better of you and make things worse by trying to handle it alone. Ask for help."

  "I will," Tian promised.

  As they walked toward the city gate, he started noticing things they he had previously just passed by. How the morning light played on the angles and grooves that formed dragons in relief on the gate pillars. The sound of the guards examining their papers as they joked and chatted. The press of the Moonhaven City spiritual energies against his mind like a warm blanket he was finally be ready to shake off.

  "Are you afraid?" Hongyun asked quietly as they reached the short queue of merchants and travelers having their documents checked.

  "Terrified," Tian admitted. "But excited. It’s like I’m finally moving toward something instead of just existing."

  "That's a good sign," Hongyun agreed. "Fear is good. It keeps you alive."

  As they walked under the enormous stone arch that marked the boundary line of Moonhaven City and the rest of the world, he felt something shift within him.

  Somewhere out there were the answers to questions he had been carrying since birth.

  Somewhere out there was the person he was meant to be.

  "Okay," Master Jian said as they struck a steady walking rhythm together. "Tell me everything you know about the sword. Not what you have been told, or what you have learned, but what you know instinctively."

  Tian considered this as they walked, coming to the conclusion that whatever he said wouldn’t be good enough for the swordsman. "Well," he finally replied, "I know that everything I think I know is right is wrong, but I’m willing to learn."

  "That’s a fine place to start,” Master Jian replied with a faint smile. “Better than most.”

  Tian’s eyes widened at the praise.

  Maybe the sword master wasn’t as harsh as he thought.

  And as he looked at the path ahead of him, he felt for the first time in years that the future felt like something he was walking toward rather than something that was simply happening to him.

  Timeskip incoming, we will soon get to Tian discovering his identity!

  Then we will switch to the other POV. And then we can get to dream cultivation, which will be veryyy different to the cultivation of the lesser realms.

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