I healed his shoulder.

  The process was routine — qi applied to damaged tissue, encouraging what the body would do anyway: knit, seal, rebuild. My qi was old and efficient and his body was young and responsive. The healing was fast, clean and left a scar because scars were the honest record of what had happened and honesty was not something I was willing to suppress.

  He sat on a rock, patient, adrenaline receding as exhaustion replaced the triumph.

  The wound closed. The scar formed — a diagonal line from the top of his left shoulder to the crease of his elbow. Pale and thin.

  He touched it. Ran his finger along the line.

  "Scars are cool," he said.

  "They're tissue damage."

  "Cool tissue damage."

  I finished and stepped back. His shoulder was healed, his core humming with the post-combat resonance of qi that had been deployed at maximum and was now resettling — higher than before, the clock ticking.

  His grin was still there, dimmer — muted by exhaustion — but persistent.

  Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.

  I watched him standing in the clearing — fourteen, blood-smeared, scarred, victorious, grinning.

  And I saw another face. Before. A long time before.

  A fighter, young and strong. Different name, different face, different era, different everything except the post-victory moment, the blood, the grin.

  He won. Not against a qi-beast — against another cultivator. Higher level, more experienced. He shouldn't have won. He stood in the aftermath with the same expression Wei was wearing now — undefeatable certainty. His core had done the same thing — the post-combat surge, the brightness, the warmth he'd dismissed as exertion.

  Three weeks. That's how long it took. From first victory to second fight. Three weeks of training harder, pushing further, riding the high.

  He'd won the second fight too. Technically. The other fighter fell first. But the cost was his core. Running hot since the first victory, running beyond containment, until the cascade produced failure.

  He also won. Then—

  I stopped. The memory. Mid-image.

  Wei stretched. Flexed his healed shoulder. Grinned at me.

  "Ready to go?" he asked.

  I looked at him. Not through him — at him this time, maintaining the focus with effort. The discipline of present-tense looking. At Wei, who was here instead of the boy who was not.

  "Ready?" I asked.

  He nodded. "Let's go home."

  We walked through the forest, past the stream, toward the settlement — him ahead by three steps, four steps, the distance growing as his energy returned and the victory solidified from experience into narrative.

  Behind him was me, carrying someone else's grin and someone else's three weeks.

  He will survive. He is different. He is stubborn.

  He has to be different.