Chapter 42

  Friday Night, Refinement Night

  The goblin blood hadn’t even cooled when the loose Qi started to settle, prickling and restless inside their channels.

  They were on the clock.

  Jimmy and Chris dropped to the dirt in the center of the fort.

  Jimmy went to his favorite place, his own mind.

  Countless jagged shards spinning and colliding.

  A puzzle of light.

  White-hot needles behind his eyes risked tearing away his sanity.

  Blood welled up around his eyes.

  He refused to blink.

  When the last shard locked together, the beam speared his Seed with a silent crack.

  Ninety-six, maybe ninety-seven percent.

  The rest slipped away in the final instant, lost to trembling focus.

  His hands shook as he wiped the wetness from his face.

  Chris opened the furnace.

  He fed the Qi in a careful ribbon and lit it.

  Too slow and the flame starved.

  Too fast and the heat detonated, scorching everything.

  “Fucking heartburn of death,” he scowled, rubbing at his chest.

  Six failures in ninety seconds, each one gargling lava.

  On the seventh try, it fed, steady, vicious, alive.

  Sweat hissed off his skin.

  When the last strand turned to dense ash, the inferno sputtered out.

  Soaking wet, he shivered.

  Dan sat last among the first wave.

  The power bucked his control.

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  He forbade it from existing anywhere but his center.

  “No”.

  Loose strands jerked, fought, snapped inward.

  His heartbeat skipped.

  Bones and vocal cords groaned, shoulders sagged.

  As darkness crept across his vision, it released.

  Gasp, weight relented, breath returned.

  Kim built a slow, patient current.

  It fought her, desiring freedom.

  She coaxed it, gentle but relentless.

  Once the loop caught, it was over.

  Flowing tighter, smoother, faster, until it folded into her seed like a river sliding home.

  Long after the others finished, she sat, mist drifting in the air.

  They rotated through the night.

  George, palms on knees, felt the new “organ” inside his chest.

  Beat.

  Pull Qi through the pathways.

  Beat.

  Trap it at the center.

  Beat.

  Every pulse added weight, added density.

  Every cycle, roots burrowed, searching.

  Scarred flesh twisted, writhed, burning as it smoothed.

  Belle's lightning-affinity lashed like a live wire.

  It scorched her channels, arcing, making her muscles spasm.

  Her hair stood on end.

  Twitching, clenched jaw biting through her lip.

  A single dense spark struck home, nothing more, but it was progress.

  Jaime spread her Qi outward like fog, let it drift until it filled a wide warm sphere around her.

  Then she inhaled once, sharp.

  The entire cloud collapsed inward with a thunderclap of pressure that left her ears ringing.

  It overloaded, bounced back.

  She vomited as it burst from her pores.

  She wiped her mouth, shaking, as it was lost to the wind.

  Annette worked in silence.

  Each breath laid another brick in the unseen foundation.

  Slow, and deliberate.

  Block by block, she felt firmer.

  Block by block, she knew she couldn't undo it, her future set in stone.

  A single tear ran for futures unseen, stories never told.

  When the sky finally paled, the air inside the fort felt heavier, charged.

  Dan let out a dry cough.

  “We burned every drop we had,” he rasped. “No buffer left. No water. That riverside camp is all that’s left between us and dying of thirst.”

  Jimmy wiped blood and sweat from his glasses.

  He spoke low, looking at everything like it was too loud.

  “We go before they know.”

  Dan’s grin was thin and sharp.

  “Rest for two hours. Then we take the river, and every goblin life between us and tomorrow.”

  He looked west, eyes bright with hunger.

  “Today, we take what's ours.”