Tunde's mouth tasted of ash and stale wine when he groaned his way back into consciousness. He lay on a wooden floor, watching clouds drift past through a porthole as he struggled upright, each small movement sending complaints through his ribs.

  He looked down. Bandages wrapped him from chest to waist, white linen over something soft and spongy beneath. He pressed it gently with one finger and decided not to press harder.

  He blinked a few times until his memory caught up with his body.

  "I won," he whispered, and the words didn't quite feel real even as he said them.

  The wooden door opened. A woman carrying folded bandages stepped in, stopped, and immediately bowed so low her forehead nearly touched the doorframe.

  "This humble one greets the dark fist," she said, her voice trembling but audible.

  A clatter of footsteps from beyond the room preceded Elyria, who came through the door with eyes wide, Isolde, Draven, Harun, and Giselle pressing in behind her.

  "You're awake," Elyria said, sounding genuinely astonished.

  Tunde offered a painful smile. They crowded toward him and stopped inches away, and then Draven shoved his way to the front.

  "The man just had his ribs shattered in several places and you all want to rush at him?" he bellowed.

  "Speak for yourself," Elyria said from the door, where she had remained, watching Tunde with what he could only read as something close to admiration.

  "To the new number two disciple of all of Jade Peak!" Harun said, raising a fist.

  A cheer went around the room. Tunde winced.

  The presence he had grown accustomed to crept in through the open door. Every disciple in the room bowed without being asked. Elder Joran appeared in the doorway, arms folded behind his back, a soft smile on his face.

  "Welcome back to the land of the living, Disciple Tunde," the elder said, very formally.

  "This student greets his teacher," Tunde replied, and bowed at the waist despite the flare of pain through his ribcage, which he absorbed without a sound.

  "Shattered ribs, dislocated arm, internal bleeding, concussion, lacerations, Ethra depletion, and minor damage to the Ethra lines throughout your body," Joran recounted, as though reading from a list.

  "And here you are, awake and speaking."

  Elyria and the others exchanged a look of mixed hesitation and disbelief.

  "We knew you were broken," Isolde said, "but to that degree — how are you even conscious?"

  "And on your feet soon enough, can't you, Tunde?" Joran added pleasantly.

  Tunde swallowed and placed both palms on the floor, pushing himself upright. He swayed. His eyes swam. The pain had a heartbeat of its own, steady and loud, and he set one hand against the wall.

  Cracks shot out from the point where his fingers pressed the wood. The disciples stared. Elyria raised an eyebrow.

  "That explains how you shattered a soulbound weapon and adept-rank gauntlets alike," she said.

  Tunde didn't have the breath to clarify that Shadowfang had done the heavier work. His eyes swept the room until he spotted the axe resting quietly in a corner.

  "You should be resting," Giselle said.

  "Better he sees what is happening and where we are going," Joran replied.

  "The chief Rejuvant of the clan ordered no healing elixirs or pills," the elder continued.

  "Your body heals naturally from here. I personally suspect it is a form of revenge for the lumens he lost betting against you, but I approve. Your body must grow accustomed to this level of pain. In time, you will learn to use it."

  Tunde said nothing to that. He took one careful step away from the wall, then another, and made his way to the door without accepting help from anyone.

  By the time he reached it his bandages were soaked through with sweat and chafing uncomfortably. Elder Joran looked him over.

  "How do you feel?" he asked.

  "Pain," Tunde managed.

  Joran chuckled lightly.

  "I expected nothing less, given what you went through. But I meant your victory."

  Tunde took a short breath and thought about it.

  "I won?" he said, the same disbelief in it as the first time.

  "I genuinely don't know how to feel about it."

  "Proud would be appropriate," Joran said.

  "That, and the fact that we are making all haste to our house's new home should tell you something."

  "Why are we on a vessel?" Tunde asked, the motion of the craft only just registering under his feet.

  "Elyria," Joran said.

  "Because every disciple, adept, and cultivator who placed significant sums on Thalas winning now has reason to be unhappy with you," Elyria said from where she stood, leaning against the wall.

  "And if we had stayed, Red Blossom House would have absorbed the full weight of that unhappiness."

  Tunde's chest tightened.

  "Lady Ryka," he said.

  "So long as we are not within Red Blossom, anyone who causes trouble there answers to the clan itself. Even Jashed," Joran said, and the pleasure in his voice was not even slightly concealed.

  "Thalas," Tunde said after a moment.

  "Is he all right?"

  "Alive, more or less. I would not want to be in his position, but he is alive," Joran replied.

  Tunde nodded slowly. Whatever shame he might have faced losing to a Scion of House Verdan, Thalas would now face tenfold.

  He briefly wondered if he had just produced an enemy with access to deep resources, then set the thought aside. He was a peak disciple now, on his way toward adept rank. He would face those problems as they came.

  He made his way to the railing and looked down at the dry landscape scrolling beneath them. A cloud of dust rose in the distance, figures within it moving at speed and trying to catch the vessel.

  He tried to focus his Ethra sight on them, and his head split open like he had been struck with a rock. He dropped to one knee, gripping the wooden railing as his heartbeat filled his skull.

  "Ethra depletion, Tunde," Elder Joran's voice came from somewhere above him.

  "Which part of that is unclear to you?"

  A hand extended into his field of vision holding a bowl of water. He struggled upright and took it, drained it, and wiped his mouth to find Elyria watching him with quiet concern.

  "You might consider stopping the habit of collapsing in front of people," she said.

  "You have initiates looking up to you now." She nodded toward a corner of the deck where a cluster of initiate-ranked rankers immediately became very busy with other things.

  Tunde steadied himself.

  "What is that?" he asked, nodding toward the rising dust.

  Elyria glanced at it and turned away without much interest.

  "Those," Elder Joran said, "are the potential recruits for your house."

  Tunde looked between the two of them and back at the dust.

  "I don't follow," he said, already feeling his tongue growing heavy again.

  "From the moment you won, nearly every unaffiliated disciple in Jade Peak began requesting entry into your house through me, even knowing they would be leaving the city behind," Elyria explained.

  "This is the elder's method of sorting the committed from the merely interested."

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  "It's one thing to leave everything you know behind," Joran said. "It's another thing entirely to survive the wastelands. Let them run."

  Tunde had more questions forming than he had the strength to ask. He turned to Elyria instead.

  "And you?" he managed.

  She took one step forward and caught him under one arm as he went sideways.

  "I go where I choose," she replied.

  Tunde passed out again, cursing himself silently all the way down.

  ******

  Elyria laid him down carefully on his bed, Isolde drawing an animal-skin covering over him, watching him shiver.

  "The Rejuvant said two to three days before he'd wake," Draven said.

  "And yet he not only woke," Harun said quietly, "but walked."

  "That speaks to his willpower," Elder Joran said from the doorway, the disciples all looking at Tunde.

  "Something each of you, as members of House Dark Fist, will now need to carry as well."

  He turned to Elyria.

  "With the exception of you, Lady Elyria."

  Elyria offered a brief bow.

  "I go where Elder Celia directs me," she said.

  "And yet," Joran said, "Celia tells me that this particular assignment was your idea. Something about building certain bonds with a particular companion?"

  Elyria was quiet for a moment before answering.

  "He has come through everything that could be thrown at him, and impressed even me doing it. Watching someone attempt to finish him while he is at his lowest does not sit comfortably with me," she said.

  "You believe we cannot protect him?" Giselle asked, one eyebrow raised.

  "I could move through every person in this room before any of you thought to cycle your Ethra," Elyria replied.

  "With the exception of the elder, of course."

  Joran laughed. The mood of the disciples shifted.

  "Well said," the elder replied.

  "Though you really believe anyone with such intentions could reach him while I am aboard this vessel?"

  Elyria paused, reading the layered meaning in the question, and answered carefully, bowing at the waist first.

  "Your presence would no doubt have been accounted for by anyone serious enough to make an attempt. Elder Celia's reasoning was simply that an additional presence with no visible connection to the house would be an unanticipated variable. That is me," she said.

  "Extra strength is rarely a bad thing," Joran replied, scratching his beard, folding his hands behind his back. Elyria quietly released a breath.

  "Let him rest. There is a great deal of work ahead when we arrive," the elder said, and left.

  Elyria settled against the wall with her eyes closed. She felt the gazes of the other disciples on her and allowed a small smile.

  "Anyone who doubts my earlier claim is welcome to test it," she said.

  No one moved.

  *****

  Thalas Verdan came to on an obsidian-green floor, stone quarried from the far north of the empire at considerable expense, reserved for the chambers of those at the very top. The moment he understood where he was, he turned his head and froze.

  Two lords flanked the entrance to a veiled inner room. Lord Alaric regarded him with cold detachment, the particular variety of dismissal that did not even bother with contempt. Lady Lirien, his grandmother, stared at him with eyes that burned.

  He had lost.

  The memory came back in full, and he trembled, pulling himself forward to press his forehead against the cold stone floor.

  He forced back every feeling of weakness and beat the tears behind his eyes with the blunt instrument of his willpower. He had dragged the Verdan name through the ground. He had been beaten by a wastelander, by a nobody, and he had done it in front of thousands.

  From the veiled room ahead of him came nothing. No presence, no aura, no indication that anything lived behind it. That in itself told him everything.

  He had been before the high lord only once in his life. What sat behind that veil had long since moved beyond the need to announce itself.

  The soft, rhythmic sound of a blade being sharpened came from the darkness.

  "Thalas."

  The voice of Rowan Verdan carried the weight of someone who had not needed to raise it in decades.

  Thalas pressed lower.

  "I have watched from the beginning," the patriarch said.

  "I have followed both you and the wastelander throughout. I had hoped for considerably more from one who carries our name. And yet you have fallen, not to a ranker of renown or established reputation, but to someone who arrived at Jade Peak with nothing."

  A pause. The sharpening continued.

  "You have placed shame on the clan and on my name. Has the line of Verdan grown so thin that a hungry wolf from the wastelands can bring it to its knees?"

  Thalas pressed his teeth together. Rage and shame churned in him in equal measure, and he let neither show on his face or in his breathing.

  "The defeat itself is not what condemns you," Rowan continued.

  "It is what the defeat reveals. You were given every advantage, every resource, every foundation that this clan provides its future pillars, and you could not hold the line against someone who had none of it."

  The silence that followed had its own texture.

  "However," the patriarch said, "you are not yet finished. The beast surge is upon us, and with it comes an opportunity. The Acacia clan stands at the tier four rift with their heiress positioned to breach it. That rift, and what comes from it, was to be ours. If you intend to reclaim any part of what you have lost, that is your arena."

  Thalas raised his eyes. The lords watched him. Lirien's fury had not moved from her face.

  "Should you falter again," Rowan said, and now the voice carried no inflection at all, which was worse than any tone it could have taken, "should the wastelander prove your superior a second time during the surge, you will be stripped of the name Verdan. Of your birthright, your record within the clan's history, and every connection to this bloodline. You will become a warning, nothing more."

  The air in the chamber did not move.

  "Rise from what you have lost, or disappear from it entirely. Those are the two paths available to you now, Thalas. The surge will decide which one you take."

  The sharpening stopped.

  Thalas said nothing. He pressed his forehead back to the cold green floor and held it there until the lords moved and the veiled room fell silent.

  *****

  Tunde woke for the second time to the sounds of the vessel having landed, voices and the noise of active work coming through the hull. He felt measurably better, reached into his void ring, and produced two second-grade healing and endurance elixirs, swallowing both before his better judgment could intervene.

  His sight cleared almost immediately, his body absorbing the Ethra from the vials with what felt like relief.

  He noticed the food and pitchers of revitalization-infused water that had been left beside his bed. He stared at the two empty vials in his hand and felt mildly foolish, then set them aside and ate everything on the tray with systematic efficiency until his stomach complained of fullness.

  He was not at his peak, but he was functional. He unwound the bandages around his ribs, looked at the imprint of a fist pressed into the skin of his chest where Thalas's final blow had distributed its force, and decided not to examine it further.

  He located a clean robe folded at the foot of the bed, dressed, and made his way out to the railings.

  He stopped and stared.

  Three sky vessels, each three times the size of the one that had carried him, sat on the ground nearby. Hundreds of people moved between them and the earth, carrying timber, brick, and equipment in organized streams.

  In the distance, Elyria, Harun, and Giselle were leading a column of exhausted-looking disciples toward a flare of Ethra on the horizon.

  He cycled carefully, pushing just enough Ethra to boost his movement, and went after them. Elyria turned as he approached, about to give an order, and stopped.

  The disciples behind her looked toward him. Despite their visible exhaustion, they bowed.

  "We greet the dark wolf," they said.

  Tunde blinked.

  "My name is Tunde," he said.

  "The dark wolf," a female with her hair in a matted tangle replied, "student of the blind tiger."

  "Blind tiger, eh?" came Elder Joran's voice from behind the group.

  The woman went rigid with terror and dropped immediately into a deep bow, words tumbling out of her.

  "This worthless disciple has offended the venerable elder, I offer my—"

  "You may as well put that offer to use," the elder said.

  "Seeing as a tier two rift has opened directly beside the one you're currently walking toward."

  "That's too many popping up around us," Harun said.

  "I can go," Tunde said.

  "Not yet," the elder replied.

  "Besides, they need to face it on their own terms. That is what they are here to prove." He addressed the group calmly. "If you want to be considered for this house, that rift is your first test."

  The disciples straightened. Elyria glanced at Tunde, something measured in her expression.

  "Heal well," she said.

  "The surge is close, and your house will need you at full capacity." She turned and led the column forward at a steady pace.

  Tunde watched them go until the elder spoke from beside him.

  "Feeling better?" Joran asked.

  "Yes, elder," Tunde said.

  "Good. In less than a week, the clan mobilizes toward the neutral zone held by the mountain sects."

  "The tier four rift," Tunde said.

  "Correct. And as the victors of the duel, we hold first claim to the breach itself when we reach it. Though it appears we will have to fight our way through to get there," Joran replied.

  "I thought the mountain sects were allies," Tunde said.

  "Neutrals is a more accurate term. They served as a buffer between us and the Acacia clan. They have since decided their interests lie with the Acacia clan instead," Joran said.

  "Then why come out this far first?" Tunde asked.

  "The rift is on the other side of the city."

  "To consolidate your advancement. What does your heart feel like right now?" Joran asked.

  "Strong," Tunde said, and the word came without hesitation.

  "And your Ethra?" the elder asked.

  Tunde let a small amount out, collecting it in his palm. A solid, weighty black mass, denser than it had been before the duel.

  "Strong," he said again.

  "You crossed the threshold to peak tier disciple," the elder said.

  "One of the benefits of genuine battle. Come. I want to show you something."

  Tunde started back toward the vessel to retrieve Shadowfang. The elder waved a hand without turning.

  "Leave it. This vessel belongs to us now. Only a fool would attempt a theft in the middle of the wastelands with us standing on it."

  Tunde accepted that and followed.

  They moved toward the cleared area above the old mining shafts. Workers moved in organized groups around them, bowing as they passed.

  Tunde spotted Draven and Isolde near a wide crevice in the earth, examining something while a man gestured and explained.

  "They may not be rankers any longer," Joran said, following his gaze, "but they will have their part to play."

  "As long as they're happy," Tunde murmured.

  The elder stopped.

  "Happiness without strength leads only to death in this world," he said, turning to look at him.

  "Something you know by now. They are mid-tier disciples, capable of protecting themselves, yes. But with your rise will come stronger enemies, and they cannot afford stagnation. That responsibility falls to you as house head," the elder said, and walked on.

  Tunde was quiet for a while after that.

  They entered the underground space he recognized, the room where the rift had once opened, where he had faced the golem and first stepped through into something larger than he understood at the time.

  He looked up and found he could still see the sky through the gap above, still feel traces of rift Ethra drifting in the air. His body began cycling on its own, drawing it in.

  What caught his attention were the crystals jutting from the walls around him. Black-tinged and raw, they pulsed with a Ethra he recognized immediately.

  "Naturally forming Ethra crystals," the elder said.

  "With my Ethra," Tunde said, stepping close to one and touching it.

  The power within it was weak, nascent, barely more than a trace. He could drain every crystal in the room and not register it in his heart.

  "Still underdeveloped," Joran said, "but with an Ethra gathering array installed here, which would be an expensive undertaking, your cultivation rate could advance in significant steps."

  Tunde let the possibilities form in his mind, something sharp and hungry flaring in his chest, and then the ground began to vibrate beneath his feet.

  He looked around sharply.

  "What is that?"

  "The other thing I brought you to see," the elder said.

  Something vast overshadowed them. Tunde turned his gaze upward.

  A structure drifted past the open gap above, enormous in scale, silver and gold and pillar-like in its form, its presence pressing down on the space around it like a physical weight.

  It moved with unhurried purpose, heading in the direction of the clan, and was gone before he had fully grasped the size of it.

  Tunde stared after it for a moment.

  "What was that?" he asked quietly.

  "The mandate of the regents," the elder said.

  "The commission of the artificer's guild made physical." He paused, and something in his expression that had been casually informative became something else entirely.

  "That is an ark," Joran said.