The second chamber was well-lit, holes bored through every section of the walls at varying heights. Tunde's Ethra sight picked up the surroundings as he stepped inside, a faint mixture of countless affinities drifting weakly through the air.

  The door ground shut behind him. His footsteps were the only sound in the silence as he walked to the center of the room and stopped.

  Directly in front of him stood a statue of a cultivator, the body sculpted into a posture unlike any fighting stance he had encountered. Something shimmered into existence before he had a chance to study it further, a human figure swathed in a large robe, all features hidden within the hood.

  Only the thin fingers wrapped firmly around a staff of twisted wood were visible. His Ethra sight read the figure as nothing but silvery strands of Ethra shaped into form. The room had made it.

  He gripped Shadowfang and began cycling his Ethra.

  "Welcome, young disciple," a female voice said from within the hood.

  "I am a mage of the third sphere of advancement, what you rankers of the empire refer to as adept rank," she said.

  Tunde turned the thought over absently. There was no unified system anywhere. Tiers for beasts and resources. Grades for fruits and meat. Rankings for cultivators. And now spheres for mages. He filed the question of whether mages were cultivators away for later.

  "Each Ethra technique branch is unique to a school of cultivation," the mage continued.

  "Rankers, those who use the fighting arts, favor imbuement techniques to augment their combat styles and weapons. Mages favor projection techniques out of the need to conjure and sustain spells. And dominion techniques are favored by those following the mixed art of soul and mind cultivation, most prominent within the Crystalreach and Ironthorn continents," she finished.

  The name of his continent sharpened his attention. Were these the weavers Thorne had mentioned once in passing?

  "This is not to say cultivators neglect the other branches," the mage continued.

  "But as they advance in rank, most choose to deepen their practice in one over the others. Your teachers will have explained as much."

  No one had told him that. He kept his face neutral as the mage tapped her staff against the ground. The holes in the walls began to thrum.

  "In this stage, I will help you develop your projection technique for use in battle. Should you surpass my expectations, you may proceed to the domain of souls and dreams," she said.

  "There are ten holes in these walls. Water, earth, fire, and air make up the first ten at the uppermost sections," she said, indicating the top of the chamber where those affinities were already beginning to accumulate.

  "Ice, lightning, and lava make up the lower five in varying amounts, to ensure the exercise remains unpredictable."

  She gestured to a second conjured figure standing beside her, an outline of a man with no distinct features, white lines tracing the paths of his Ethra through his body.

  "Projection technique is the art of channeling Ethra, gathering it outside the body, giving it shape, and directing it," she explained.

  The figure's Ethra lines burned red, fire gathering in his palm into the shape of a spear before it was hurled across the image and dissolved.

  "Projection can be offensive or defensive. The more complex applications belong to arcanists, who layer in talismans and advanced rune language. For your stage, you concern yourself with gathering and projection only. Nothing else."

  Tunde nodded at that. Getting the foundation right mattered more than reaching for complexity.

  "Your objective is to project your Ethra to defend against the attacks from those holes, which will fire at you in random sequence. Speed, reaction, timing, and the quality of your cycling will all be measured. Should you fail to block ten out of ten shots, you remain in this chamber until your provisions run out," she said plainly. "Good luck, disciple. May the hegemons guide you."

  The image vanished.

  The first ten holes fired simultaneously. Fire, water, air, and earth launched toward him in tight, fast balls all at once. Tunde's sight tracked them in a split second.

  He pushed Ethra out from his body, attempting to project it a few meters ahead of himself the way he projected resonance, except this time without letting it build, letting it flow outward as smoothly as it moved inside him.

  What he produced was barely a technique. The balls hit him in a cluster and he managed to deflect only the earth attack.

  He hit the ground hard, breath knocked out, and held his cycling steady, aware of the collar.

  The mage reappeared, her conjured man beside her.

  "You cannot be everywhere at once," she said.

  "That is what brings us to what we call the sphere of influence. This is the application of aura in projection technique. It requires you to saturate the immediate space around yourself with your aura, allowing you to convert that aura to Ethra in the space of a single breath and project it."

  The man released his aura, a sphere of spiraling blue Ethra rotating slowly around him. Attacks came from three directions in the image. He responded in the span of a single breath, the aura at each approach point converting to Ethra with a small addition of his own.

  The effect was like a flame dropped into a fat-soaked room, the Ethra shaping and launching outward in the same instant, meeting all three attacks and blowing them from the air.

  "As with all things, you will develop this on the go," the mage said.

  "Push your reaction speed to match the moment your opponent releases their attack. Again, good luck."

  She vanished again.

  Tunde set Shadowfang to one side and let out a breath. He released his aura, the inky darkness spreading slowly around him as he cycled his Ethra. The power began to gather in the air around him as the holes fired another round, tearing through the air before he was ready.

  He gathered his Ethra in a burst and managed to blow out the flame attack, a second half-formed projection caught the water, and then earth and air crashed through what remained of his projection and knocked him to his knees.

  He got up silently.

  The attacks continued. He kept at it. His aura stayed undisturbed around him, a layer distinct from the Ethra his body was managing. That distinction was the thing; his aura was directed by willpower while his Ethra responded to his body.

  A disruption to one did not affect the other. He stripped out resonance entirely and stayed at it, the holes reacting to the faintest trace of released Ethra and firing almost immediately.

  After an hour of it, he stopped and sat against the wall with his water skin.

  He hated to admit how stuck he was. Tunde didn't think it was genuinely possible to intercept more than two attacks simultaneously, and yet the conjured cultivator had taken three with effortless ease. He turned the problem over, sipping slowly.

  The speed of the man's response in the image. How fast the Ethra had formed and moved. It hadn't looked like reaction at all. It had looked like anticipation. He went still, cocking his head.

  "I wonder," he murmured.

  He got to his feet and let his Ethra sight open fully, watching the remnants of the affinities drifting through the chamber air.

  The holes were beginning to power up again as he walked back to the center of the room. He closed his eyes, took a breath, released his aura to cycle around him, and then opened his eyes and tested the theory.

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  The moment his Ethra bled outward, the holes fired. He strained to push his Ethra into three distinct points at once.

  One caught the fire attacks, tearing them from the air cleanly while the second deflected a partial hit, the next projection took the air attack, the third took the earth. He sidestepped the water and felt a grin break across his face.

  The answer had been in front of him from the first shot. The moment an attack launched, the remnant affinities drifting through the chamber air shivered, a faint ripple running through them that his Ethra sight read as an approximate origin point a full breath before the attack arrived.

  He hadn't been reacting. He had been anticipating, and barely noticing the difference.

  He settled back into position and let his Ethra pool within him, not the heavy concentrated build of resonance but a gentle and continuous outward flow seeping steadily into his aura. The holes fired.

  His projections formed, five midnight-starry spheres leaving him nearly light-headed as they launched simultaneously and met all five attacks at once, the air erupting around him as they collapsed.

  The mage reappeared, alone this time.

  "You have mastered the sphere of influence," she said.

  "But in a true fight, no cultivator worth their rank would stand back and allow you to bleed aura into the space around you undisturbed. What you have done could easily be read as the opening of a dominion technique, which would draw an immediate response."

  She paused.

  "You will now repeat the same process without the use of your aura," she said, and vanished.

  Tunde cracked his neck, took his stance, and began again.

  *****

  Elyria stood in the jade hall before three elders and two lords, the assembled power of the clan pressing against her like a held charge waiting for something to ignite it.

  She hoped the presence of the lords would keep the adepts from turning on each other, but she wasn't prepared to bet anything valuable on it.

  They were waiting for the lesser adepts to arrive, those who ranked just below the three great adepts. Her return to the city was no longer news.

  She had delivered her report to the lords directly and been asked to attend here, the jade hall, a building of white marble and silver columns holding up a circular ceiling, braziers burning along the walls. The room was reserved for adepts and above. Important decisions were made within it.

  She hadn't expected Elder Joran to be present. His being here raised the question of how far Tunde had reached in the time she had been gone. Mid-tier at a minimum, she hoped.

  Anything less and she doubted he could make a showing against Thalas, whose reputation she had spent enough time studying to know was built on efficient brutality. She crossed her arms behind her back and waited, aware of Rhyn standing in the far corner in silence, his eyes no doubt on her.

  She could feel her own foundation clearly now, peak disciple, every bit of the rank fully developed. She could push to adept the moment the surge began if she chose to, and Elder Celia would welcome the advancement. But Elyria had other intentions.

  Rhyn wanted her in his orbit, and she understood why. The man had a sharp eye for valuable company. But she was not interested in spending her advancement playing second place to a backwater empire clan's Scion.

  Lady Lirien's gaze had not left her since she entered the room, a quiet, persistent appraisal that never quite settled into neutrality.

  Where Lord Alaric was measured and calculating, Lirien's presence carried something else entirely, a barely restrained pressure that felt less like power being held in check and more like bloodshed being politely deferred.

  Elyria had seen what the lord had done to the mountain sects and she had no illusions about the woman standing across the room from her.

  She had seen what remained of the former strongholds of the Stoneheart, Cloudsoar, and Emberpeak sects.

  Three sects occupying a stretch of land that had served for generations as neutral territory between the Verdan and Acacia clans, kept as a buffer to prevent two of the empire's most resource-vital powers from turning their full force on each other.

  The sects had decided that arrangement was less valuable than what the Acacia clan was offering.

  Clan Verdan had sent Lady Lirien on what was nominally described as a peacekeeping mission. A reminder. Elyria had found herself wondering, on the way back, whose idea it had been to send the most bloodthirsty lord in the clan to conduct a diplomatic conversation.

  The adepts couldn't go themselves, not because they lacked the strength, but because the sects each maintained one lord as their supposed hidden power, and sending adepts would have read as an insult. So they sent a lord to meet lords.

  Lady Lirien had killed all three.

  Elyria hadn't believed the reports when she'd first heard them, but she had seen the aftermath with her own eyes. Rubble where strongholds had stood.

  Peaks that had outlasted generations of cultivation wars reduced to scattered chunks of rock, the debris still smoldering when she and Thorne had slipped past the border. It had the effect of a warning written large enough to be read from any distance. A reminder that Verdan was not a thing to test.

  The sects could theoretically appeal to the empire, but with the beast surge coming and a possible investigation into their own dealings with the Acacia clan already a threat, neither sect would want to be found wanting by imperial review.

  Both Verdan lords held captain-rank authority within the imperial structure, more than enough to bury the sects in false charges if they chose to pursue it. The sects knew this.

  Which made the mission Elyria and Thorne had been assigned more pointed.

  Infiltrate the sects' new positions, assess how far the Acacia clan had dug in, map the level of defense they were willing to provide as the parties prepared to hold what Elyria now understood to be a rift nexus, a natural convergence point where the surge was likely to break through, and also the site of a tier four rift that had been accumulating energy steadily enough to make it one of the most valuable unclaimed prizes on the continent.

  It was also the target the Verdan clan had been quietly developing plans for, right up until the Acacia heir arrived and the sects dropped their existing arrangement without notice. Three Verdan disciples monitoring the situation from the border had not been heard from since.

  Lord Alaric's single clap drew all sound from the room. The hall went silent.

  "We are gathered to finalize our preparations for the surge," he began.

  "You can already feel the shift in the air. Ethra levels rising across every district, rifts opening faster than our disciples and initiates can clear them. We are seeing a sharp climb in advancements, initiates reaching disciple rank in numbers the city hasn't seen in years. But Adamath does not offer without collecting in return."

  The adepts nodded. It was understood. Times of great advancement produced great bloodshed in equal proportion.

  Cultivators would tear through each other for positioning and resources, and those who survived the surge in strength would emerge as powers in their own right. Alaric continued.

  "An opportunity that was extended to us, one the mountain sects had agreed to honor, has been betrayed," he said.

  "A tier four rift, adept rank, formed at the border of the territory shared between the sects and our clan. It has been handed to the Acacia clan. You are all aware of this." He paused, letting his gaze move across the room.

  "My sister went to remind the sects of what it means to betray the Verdan clan," he said.

  That clarified the earlier uncertainty in Elyria's mind. It had never been a diplomatic mission. Lirien had been exactly the right choice. Alaric continued without expression.

  "Having lost three of their lords and their power significantly reduced, our former neighbors appear not to have fully absorbed the lesson," he finished. He turned to Elyria.

  "Several days ago, this clan sent Disciple Elyria to assess the threat level from Clan Acacia and determine how far they have committed to holding the rift with the support of the remaining sects. She brings that report now."

  Elyria bowed to the elders and then to the lords before she began.

  "As directed, we reached the border not through the main approach, where the rift lies, but through a longer and more indirect route," she said.

  "We?" a voice came from the assembled elders. Elder Joran had steepled his fingers together, his expression carrying a distinct frown.

  "Her and another," Lady Lirien said, her voice easy and unhurried.

  "I believe you are all aware of our current guest."

  "Continue," Alaric said.

  Elyria nodded.

  "To summarize the situation, the Acacia clan arrived prepared. Three adepts and one lord, supported by a full force of disciples and servant initiates," she said.

  Murmurs broke from the group immediately.

  "We also identified the clan's heiress herself. Preparations are in place to breach the rift within the week."

  "Describe the defensive arrangements," Alaric said.

  "A full stronghold constructed from ice and rock Ethra, Ethra cannons, runic defensive scrolls, and considerable additional equipment. That is not the whole of it." She paused.

  "We counted ten war-class sky vessels."

  The temperature in the room changed.

  War-class sky vessels were not deployed for minor territorial claims. They were instruments of total destruction, and the Acacia clan fielding ten of them around a single rift, spoke to a level of commitment that went far beyond opportunity.

  Clan Verdan maintained war vessels of their own, but they were reserved for genuine war, not disputed territory.

  "We were able to infiltrate the position and destroy one of those vessels while heavily damaging a second before our presence was detected," Elyria continued.

  It had been no small operation. The stolen explosives they had used had left a crater where the destroyed vessel had stood.

  "How was the incident attributed?" Lady Lirien asked.

  "A revenant attack, consistent with the presence of Adept Thorne. No connection traced to Clan Verdan," Elyria reported.

  "Clan Verdan thanks you for your service," Alaric said.

  "The weight of it will be returned in resources."

  Elyria bowed.

  "The lord is generous," she said, stepping back to take her place beside Rhyn.

  The disciple acknowledged her with a brief nod, both of them watching the room.

  Lady Lirien rose. Her jade-headed spear was in hand, its surface catching the light of the braziers.

  "That stretch of land was established as neutral territory between two great clans," she said.

  "And the mountain sects decided to spit on the arrangement, gambling that we would not move against them for fear of imperial scrutiny."

  A smile crossed her face, and Elyria felt something cold move through her despite herself, part revulsion and part pure instinctive fear.

  "That was their mistake. One we will now communicate to Clan Acacia as well."

  She spread her arms wide.

  "Sharpen your techniques and clear your Ethra lines. The surge is here, and the sky sings with war," she said.

  "Too long have the mountain sects existed as an unnecessary obstacle. Too long have we stood back and watched the Acacia clan test our patience. Clan Verdan takes no more."

  Her aura expanded through the room in a wave, and Elyria's stomach turned over. There was so much death in it. Not the controlled pressure of a lord commanding respect, but the genuine pleasure of someone who had been looking forward to this.

  This was not a lord who went to war because it was required. This was a lord who found war enjoyable. Elder Joran's frown had deepened. Elyria found herself in rare agreement with the man.

  "Four days from now," Lirien said, "we go to war."

  The adepts rose as one. Their silence was a collective answer, and the unified weight of it sent a slow concern moving down Elyria's spine that she could not entirely shake.