Blake hurried back to the pavilion when the morning bells began ringing. He still had time—bells were the wake-up signal for the sect on important days.

  He hurried to the showers and cleaned himself up (he had to be presentable for the Trade) then gathered his backpack and his best attire, which included his armour.

  Then, about ten minutes later, he regrouped with the party heading out to Mergewatch. There were about fifty hunters in the party, and most of them were anywhere from Body Tempering one to five. There were a few older sect members who wore Foundation stage badges, but they were few and far between.

  As the locals of Earth (or Shell) went, Body Tempering seemed to be the average. You could get to Foundation with the help of concentration rooms, like the sect possessed, but you had to find somewhere higher in mana concentration or get really lucky to advance higher.

  Blake grouped up with Froskur, Iver, and Konuth, who would also be attending—as a display of the sect’s youth’s capabilities. They wore their best tunics, which were pale red, and wore light leather pauldrons and vambraces overtop. It was good travelling attire. Quickly, Blake pulled off his own metal vambraces and stuffed them in his backpack. He was going to get tired if it was a long journey, and it was easier to carry them on his back than wear them.

  Some of the higher-level hunters wore metal armour, but only those who were higher than Tempering three. Surely, their bodies had advanced to a point where they could handle it.

  Elder Ulfreld stood at the front of the pack, arms crossed. He carried a tall banner with a red streamer at its tip and a few black runes emblazoned on it. “All accounted for?” he called.

  “All accounted for,” a different hunter called. She held a sheet of parchment and a quill, and Blake couldn’t help but notice a tattooed eye in the center of her forehead. Still, she was only Tempering five.

  “That is Sclera,” Konuth whispered. “She’s the sect’s Scryer. The one with the best senses of us all—even at Tempering. It’s a lucky gift to have senses that good without making it to Foundation.”

  Blake’s heart quickened. “How much can she sense about someone?”

  “She specializes in range and picking up on a crowd’s numbers,” Iver said. “It is the Scryer tradition: to not focus deeply on one, but to see the whole. But most of them can identify names of those within their sect.”

  Blake relaxed slightly. She likely wouldn’t notice that his presence was coming from an elixir instead of him, no matter how impressive her senses were. But he had to be careful around her.

  “They say Scryers are excellent at picking up on when someone’s watching them,” Konuth added. “So stop staring at her, Junior Brother.”

  “Or, you know, if you’re into older women…” Froskur joked.

  Blake rolled his eyes. “Considering how she actually looks like she’s in her fifties, she must be like…twice that.”

  “Likely, Junior Brother,” Iver said. “It is said that cultivators lose their drive to procreate the higher they advance, so if you are interested, you should aim for someone of a lesser tier.”

  “Oh, come on,” Konuth whispered. “You know that’s not necessarily true. They just get more jaded and cautious.”

  “She can probably hear you,” Iver replied. “No matter how far away she is.”

  “I’ve said worse…” Froskur muttered.

  “Guys,” Blake warned. “The crowd’s moving. We should keep up.”

  The hunters began walking out the gate. There was no order, and it wasn’t a military march like Blake had seen some of the Green Bears practicing now and again.

  And then they walked. For hours, crossing through the forest, and passing by little hamlets like Clearflow. They aimed toward the mountains. The air hardly warmed up throughout the day, and Blake thought he was going to be colder. But with the effort of the uphill hike and with him having advanced to Tempering one, it didn’t affect him as much as he thought it would.

  But that meant winter was almost here. Some of the red-leaved trees had shed all their leaves, and fruit bushes dropped rotten, hard berries all over the path.

  By noon, they stopped for a short rest at a stream. To the right, the merge-mists billowed over the treetops, and ahead, the mountains loomed. The hunters seemed to be aiming for a pass along the mountains’ bases, where the merge-mists ended and divided this range from the slice of the old Earth that Blake was from.

  That meant the mountains abruptly ended. They wouldn’t have, back on their original world, but here, the massive, windswept claws of the alien peaks just stopped. A few hung over the mists, casting bars of shade across the billowing clouds.

  As they rested, a pair of unaffiliated wandering cultivators approached, eyes glowing turquoise from extensive mana use. They were both at Body Tempering Three, and they bowed to Ulfreld before saying, “To your health, honoured Elder. We bear a warning: a massive monster has been spotted in the mists near here, and it devastated a Green Bear tracking team.”

  A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

  “Thank you for the warning,” Ulfreld told them. “We do not plan on entering the mists.”

  “Apologies elder, but we believe it may be evolving into a fiend,” one of them said. Both of the wandering cultivators looked like young women, though likely, they were years older than Blake. Still, if he understood the gossip right, Body Tempering began emphasizing your physical features. Most cultivators began looking more attractive, but it could easily go the other way.

  Froskur began, “Now that’s who I mean when I say—”

  Iver slapped the back of his head, and the frog Blended’s tongue lolled out of his mouth slightly. “That is no way to speak about a lady, Brother.”

  “I didn’t even say anything!” Froskur complained, rubbing the back of his head.

  “We all know what you were going to say,” Konuth muttered.

  “I, for one, did not know what he was going to say,” Blake interjected.

  Froskur spread his arms. “See, our Junior Brother needs an education! Besides, he probably has the best chances with the ladies, considering he’s going to be more advanced than any of us in no time.”

  Konuth sighed. “Or he’s stirring the pot.”

  Blake cast them a mischievous grin. Then, his expression darkened. “That’s if they can get past the fiend-i-ness.” His grin turned to a grimace, and he looked away.

  “No more melodrama,” Konuth insisted. “I’m sure you’ll find someone eventually.”

  “Besides, you’ve got horns,” Froskur said. “Handlebars are a bonus—”

  Iver slapped him again, and this time, Froskur bit his tongue. He grumbled something, but Blake couldn’t make out anything Froskur said for the rest of the day with how much his tongue had swollen.

  By the time Blake returned his focus to the rest of the party, they were already moving, and he and the three other boys rushed to catch up with the hunters.

  When they stopped to rest again, the sun was setting. They’d entered the thin mountain pass between the merge-mists and the first peak, and ended up on a crumbling ledge. The Integration had shaken it up, causing it to lose some integrity, and the rock at the very edge was falling away, but if they stayed close to the inside of the slope, they would be fine.

  They stopped on a stable ledge, where they planned to camp for the night. Above, the leaning mountains extended claws overhead, blotting out some of the early-appearing stars and moons. From this vantage, Blake could see back over the mists, looking back at the slice of Earth and the manaship.

  “That’s your home, right Junior Brother?” Konuth asked. “That’s where you come from?”

  “Yeah,” Blake replied. “Well, I was born in the suburbs. On the merge border.”

  “Right…” Konuth replied softly. “Apologies. I didn’t mean to remind you.” After a short pause, he asked, “Do you think the Green Bears are going to win?”

  “No clue,” Blake replied. “I don’t know the politics of this place, like, at all.”

  “But you can trust your gut, right?”

  “Maybe. I don’t know if my gut’s ever been right before.”

  “That’s what people who don’t listen to their gut say.”

  Blake chuckled. “Well, I want the Green Bears to lose. Fuck ‘em. They hover over my city like that, always pushing us around.”

  “Exactly. I…I really wanted to be part of something bigger. To have a purpose in life, to be remembered.” Konuth gave a long exhale. “But the Hunters just aren’t that sect anymore, and I’d bet it’s not me. You, on the other hand…well, you might go somewhere.”

  “It would be nice if we could all be free,” Blake replied. “If I could go back and free my home.”

  Everything had changed so much…but if he could just bring back whispers of the old world, that would be enough. What if he could free their city, rise up against the cultivators, and break loose? What if he could put things back to the way they were?

  For a second, he allowed himself to remember sitting in the living room of his old home, playing video games with his sisters while Mom baked a store-bought lasagna and poured out glasses of milk…

  He blinked, and it was gone.

  “You should sleep, Brothers,” Iver said, strolling over. “We have a long day of walking tomorrow, and then we will arrive.”

  Iver was right. Blake fell asleep almost instantly—he had practice from his time in the merge-mists, and he was exhausted from all the walking. In the morning, they set off immediately, and the routine was much the same, except they delved slightly deeper into the mountains.

  Mid-afternoon, they took a steep branch of the path, winding up the side of the mountain, until they reached a long, sharp overhang over the mists—like it was some giant goat’s horn extending out from the land. From a distance, the peak looked like it was a needle’s point, but the closer they got, the bigger it got.

  The tip of the mountain was still tiny in comparison to its surroundings, but it was large enough to host a city atop it.

  As they approached, Blake hung to the back of the column. River emerged from behind a shrub after a few minutes, and Blake glanced at her out the corner of his eye. He hissed, “River. You can’t follow me into the city. Stay out here, okay?”

  “I…stay?” she whispered back.

  “You have to, okay?”

  “I stay. Okay.”

  Blake wasn’t sure if she understood, but she stopped following the Hunters, so he called it a win.

  The city was a mangled combination of everything. A wooden palisade wall surrounded its edges, with oversized watchtowers at even intervals. They all boasted Green Bear cultivator guards, who watched over the mists below. Inside the wall, there were a few longhouses, a pagoda, and a few houses and a short office tower that looked like they’d been transplanted directly from Earth. (It was entirely possible that they had been.)

  “Mergewatch,” Iver said as they made their final approach along the flat of the horn-mountain.

  “I suppose it’s called that for a reason?” Blake asked.

  “Because it watches the Merge,” Konuth said matter-of-factly.

  “Yep…” Blake muttered, hanging his head. “Of course. Yeah.”

  “The Green Bears ensure that nothing nasty leaves the Merge and causes chaos in the mountain pass,” Iver explained. “But its central position is ideal for a trading post, and there should be plenty of goods and hacksilver swirling around.”

  Blake nodded as they approached the gate. “Then let’s hope we can get something good out of this…”