His parents stared at the golden pill in Yan Qiu's hand.

  "Where did you get this?" his father asked again, his voice weak from days of lying in bed. "Qiu, who gave this to you?"

  Yan Qiu tried to remember. He reached for the memory of the old man, for his face or his voice or anything at all, and found only fog. The harder he tried, the more it slipped away, like water running through his fingers.

  "I do not know," he said. "I cannot remember his face. I only remember what he told me. He said this pill would heal your leg, and he said I should go to the Barched Wind Sect directly."

  His mother looked at his father, and his father looked back at her. The confusion in their eyes was mixed with something else, something fragile and desperate that Yan Qiu recognized as hope.

  "A pill like this," his mother said slowly, "would cost more than our entire village earns in a year. Why would a stranger give it to you?"

  "I do not know." Yan Qiu knelt beside the bed and pressed the pill into his father's hand. "Please, Father. The doctor said you would never walk again. This can change that."

  His father held the pill up to the light of the oil lamp. It glowed softly, golden and warm, and the light reflected in his tired eyes. He had been lying in this bed for days now, unable to move, unable to work, unable to do anything except watch his wife and son struggle to keep the family alive. The weight of that helplessness had carved new lines into his face.

  "We cannot repay this," he said quietly.

  "He did not want repayment." Yan Qiu's voice cracked. "Father, please. Just take it."

  His mother reached over and placed her hand on her husband's arm. Her eyes were wet, and her fingers were trembling. "Zhuo," she whispered. "Please."

  Yan Zhuo looked at his wife, then at his son, then at the pill in his hand. For a long moment he did not move. Then he closed his eyes, brought the pill to his lips, and swallowed.

  The golden light traveled down his throat and spread through his body. His mother gripped his hand tighter, her eyes fixed on his shattered leg, and Yan Qiu held his breath as he watched.

  Then his father gasped.

  The leg began to shift beneath the blanket, bones grinding and clicking as they moved back into place. His father's face twisted with pain, his jaw clenched tight, and Luo Qin gripped his hand harder. The process lasted only a few moments, and when it was done, Yan Zhuo lay there panting, sweat dripping down his face.

  Yan Zhuo stared at the ceiling for a long moment, his chest rising and falling rapidly. Then, slowly, carefully, as if he was afraid of what he might find, he tried to move his leg.

  It moved.

  He let out a sound that was half laugh and half sob, and he moved it again, bending his knee and straightening it, watching his own leg obey him like it had not done in days. Tears streamed down his face as he sat up in bed for the first time since the accident, and he pulled his wife into his arms so tightly that she gasped.

  "It works," he said into her hair, his voice breaking. "Qin, it works. I can feel my leg again."

  His mother was crying too, her shoulders shaking as she held onto her husband, and Yan Qiu watched them from the edge of the bed with something warm spreading through his chest. All those days of guilt and fear and helplessness, all those nights of watching his father lie motionless in bed while his mother worked herself to exhaustion, all of it was washing away in this single moment.

  He had done this. He had brought the pill home, and his father would walk again.

  That night, for the first time in weeks, the Yan family slept peacefully.

  The next morning, Yan Qiu woke before dawn.

  He slipped out of bed quietly, careful not to wake his parents, and walked to the corner of the hut where the light from the window was weakest. He sat down cross-legged on the cold floor and closed his eyes.

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  Focus on the bright part. When the darkness rises, pretend it does not exist.

  He reached inward, searching for the energy he had felt during the fight with the wolves. It was faint now, barely a whisper, and when he tried to grasp it, something dark rose up to meet him. A wall of shadow that scattered his focus and pushed the energy away.

  Ignore it. Just ignore it.

  He tried again. He reached for the bright current and felt the darkness surge toward him, and this time he did not fight it. He did not acknowledge it. He simply looked past it, through it, as if it were not there at all.

  The bright current flickered.

  He held his breath and kept reaching, kept ignoring the shadow that pressed against his awareness, and slowly, so slowly, the bright current began to move. It trickled through his body like water through cracked earth, thin and weak, and he felt it settle somewhere deep in his chest.

  He opened his eyes.

  The sun had risen. Hours had passed without him noticing.

  His mother was standing in the doorway, watching him with a strange expression on her face.

  "Qiu," she said softly. "What were you doing?"

  "Meditating," he said. "I learned this when I went to gave the trial at Dusthaven. Few of them were doing this."

  That night, Yan Qiu woke up burning.

  The warmth from his meditation had spread through his whole body and turned into a fever. His mother pressed wet cloths to his forehead while his father sat beside the bed, and Yan Qiu drifted in and out of sleep as the hours passed.

  The fever lasted three days. His parents took care of him, fed him when he could eat, and told him he would be fine. He heard their voices from far away, like they were speaking through water.

  On the third night, he dreamed.

  A city stretched before him. It was vast and gleaming, with pagodas that reached toward the sky and streets paved with white stone. A man and a woman walked through the crowds, both wearing robes that shimmered like silk, and between them walked a child.

  The child was laughing.

  They passed through markets filled with treasures, past fountains that sprayed water high into the air, past servants who bowed low as they approached. The man lifted the child onto his shoulders and the woman smiled up at them both, and the three of them moved through the city like they owned every stone of it.

  Then a servant carrying a tray of fruit tripped on an uneven stone and fell near the child's feet. The fruit scattered across the ground, rolling in every direction, and the servant scrambled to pick it up with trembling hands.

  The child stopped laughing.

  "Father." His voice was cold. "That man almost hit me."

  The man looked down at the servant, then back at his son. "He tripped. It was an accident."

  "I don't care." The child's lip curled. "He scared me. I want him punished."

  "Son, he didn't even touch you—"

  "He could have!" The child's voice cracked into a shriek. "He could have hurt me! Make him sorry!"

  The child's face twisted and tears spilled down his cheeks. He began to wail, loud and piercing, and the sound echoed through the street. People stopped to stare, and the woman looked embarrassed. The man's jaw tightened, and something in his expression shifted from patience to resignation.

  He pulled a whip from his belt.

  The servant did not run. He knelt there on the white stone with his head bowed and his body trembling, and he did not say a word as the whip came down. Once. Twice. Three times. The crack of leather against flesh echoed through the street, and the child watched with satisfaction as red welts appeared on the servant's back.

  No one in the crowd moved. No one spoke. They stood with their eyes averted and their faces carefully blank, and the fear in their silence was louder than any scream.

  The child smiled.

  "Again," he said.

  Yan Qiu woke with a gasp.

  The fever was gone. His body felt cool and light, and the burning that had consumed him for three days had vanished completely. He lay there in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, his heart pounding in his chest.

  The dream clung to him like smoke.

  He could still see the child's face, twisted with petty anger over nothing. He could still hear the crack of the whip and the silence of the crowd. He could still feel the satisfaction that had spread through the child's chest as he watched the servant bleed.

  Who was that?

  The thought turned in his mind, and he could not let it go.

  What kind of child wants someone to suffer over something so small?

  He did not understand. The cruelty had been so casual, so natural, as if hurting people was just something the child did when he was bored. He had not hesitated, had not felt guilt, had not even seemed to notice that what he did was wrong. And the parents had simply obeyed, as if their son's tantrums were worth a man's blood.

  The dream was already fading. The details slipped away like water through his fingers, and soon he would not remember the city or the pagodas or the shimmering robes. He would only remember the feeling.

  The feeling of watching someone suffer and wanting more.

  Why did I dream of that?

  Yan Qiu sat up slowly. His parents were asleep on the other side of the room, exhausted from three days of watching over him, and he did not wake them. He sat there in the darkness, alone with his thoughts, and the unease would not leave him.

  It was just a fever dream. People dreamed strange things when they were sick, and it did not have to mean anything.

  He lay back down and pulled the blanket up to his chin. His father was healed and the sect trials were still waiting for him. That was what mattered now.

  He closed his eyes and tried not to think about the child's smile.