The warmth of the amulet was a lie.
It pressed against Lin Feng's chest, a flat circle of heat that felt less like comfort and more like an accusation. In the dim, quiet confines of the village infirmary—a small hut smelling of dried herbs, sharp antiseptic poultices, and fear—the memory of its glow was a fever dream. The memory of the golden web in his mind was a hallucination born of agony.
But the blisters on his palms were real. Angry, weeping things that the village healer, Old Man Wen, had smeared with cool, green paste and wrapped in clean linen. The deep, systemic ache in his bones and channels was real. It was a hollowed-out, scraped-clean sensation, as if the chaotic flood of Qi hadn't just flowed through him but had scoured him out, leaving only brittle pottery behind.
And the stares were real.
Through the single, small window, Lin could see the villagers moving in hushed clusters. Their eyes, when they glanced toward the infirmary, held no celebration for Lira's rescue. They held awe, yes, but it was the kind of awe reserved for a lightning strike that just misses your house—thrilling, terrifying, and fundamentally unnatural. He heard the whispered fragments carried on the ash-scented breeze: "...like nothing I've ever felt…" "...not pure Fire, not pure anything…" "...the Broken Boy… what is he?"
He wasn't Lin Feng anymore. He was an event.
The door creaked open, and Borin filled the frame, ducking his head to enter. The forge-smith carried two bowls of steaming broth, but his eyes, usually as steady as his anvil, were turbulent. He set one bowl on the stool beside Lin's cot.
"Eat," he grunted, his voice rougher than usual.
Lin tried to sit up, and the world tilted. The hollow ache throbbed in time with his heartbeat. "The wolves?"
"Gone. For now. Scouts say they retreated deep into the Ashwood. The one you… dealt with…" Borin's gaze flicked to Lin's bandaged hands. "Elder Jinhai is examining it. Says its Qi pathways are… fused. Petrified in some places, melted in others." He looked directly at Lin, the unasked question hanging in the herbal-scented air like smoke. How?
"I don't know, Uncle," Lin whispered, the truth bitter on his tongue. "I just… I pulled. And everything came in. It hurt."
"What came in?"
"Everything. The heat from the wolves, the solidness of the ground… even the fear, I think. It all just… rushed in." He touched the amulet through his tunic. It was cool again. "And then this got warm."
Borin's expression did something complicated. The concern deepened, but beneath it, Lin saw a flicker of something else—recognition? Dread? The big man reached into his own tunic and pulled out a small, oilcloth-wrapped package. He unwrapped it with surprisingly gentle fingers, revealing a object that made Lin's breath catch.
It was a twin to his amulet. Same smoky grey-black stone, same size. But where Lin's amulet bore a fractured circle, this one was carved with a different symbol: a single, unbroken line that curved into a hook, like a question mark or a humble tool.
"Your father gave this to me," Borin said, his voice low. "The day before he and your mother left for the border. He said… he said if anything ever happened to them, and if your amulet ever awakened, I was to give this to you. And I was to tell you to go to Pyrethia. To find a man named Kael Ignis at the Ascendant Flame Tower."
Lin's mind reeled. "You never told me."
"I hoped I'd never have to," Borin said bluntly. "I hoped you'd live a good, quiet life. That the 'awakening' was just a turn of phrase. I don't understand these mysteries, Lin. I understand fire that melts ore, a hammer that shapes metal. This?" He gestured at the amulets. "This is your father's world. A world that got him killed."
He placed the second amulet in Lin's uninjured hand. It was cool. "He said the two belong together. That the 'Question' might guide you when the 'Fracture' awakens."
The Fracture. Lin looked down at his own amulet, at the cracked circle. A symbol of his broken channels? Or of something else?
"Who was my father, Uncle? Truly?"
Borin sighed, a sound like a bellows emptying. "A good man. A brave one. He came to Ember Village not as a refugee, but as a man seeking quiet. He had… knowledge. He helped us strengthen the palisade with techniques I didn't understand. He could calm a spooked Stone-Tusker with a touch. He never spoke of his past, but he carried a weight. Your mother lightened it." A faint, sad smile touched Borin's lips. "They were both more than they seemed. They left for the border not as simple militia, lad. They went because they sensed a disturbance. An imbalance. They never came back."
The pieces swirled in Lin's mind, forming no clear picture, only a deeper mystery. His parents weren't just villagers. They were involved with things—with Qi, with imbalances, with symbols carved in strange stone.
Old Man Wen shuffled in, his face grave. "Elder Jinhai wishes to speak with the boy. And… we have a visitor."
Behind him, a man entered the infirmary, and the space seemed to shrink. He was not tall, but he carried a density of presence that made the air feel thinner. He appeared to be in his late forties, with hair the color of iron and ash swept back from a sharp, intelligent face. His eyes were the most striking feature—a light grey that held the persistent, penetrating glow of embers seen through a layer of ash. He wore robes of deep charcoal, simple but of obviously fine make, with subtle crimson threading at the hem that resembled dancing flames.
His gaze swept the room, pausing on Borin's protective stance, on Old Man Wen's nervousness, and finally settling on Lin. It was a assessing look, clinical and intense, taking in the bandaged hands, the pallor of exhaustion, the way Lin's fingers curled around the amulets.
"Lin Feng," the man said. His voice was dry and precise, like pages turning in an ancient book. "My name is Kael Ignis. I am a professor of Qi Formations at the Ascendant Flame Tower in Pyrethia."
Borin stiffened. Lin's heart hammered against his ribs. Kael Ignis. The name from his father's message.
"You are a long way from the Tower, Professor," Borin said, his voice guarded.
"I was conducting field research on the unstable Qi emanations from the Smoldering Peaks when I felt a… discordant pulse," Professor Ignis said, his eyes never leaving Lin. "A surge of energy that defied elemental harmonization. It was brief, brutish, and fascinating. It led me here." He took a step closer. "May I?"
Before Lin could answer, the professor's hand moved. It wasn't a grab, but a swift, graceful motion. Two fingers, glowing with a controlled, cherry-red aura of pure Fire Qi, pressed gently against Lin's forehead.
Lin gasped. It wasn't painful. It was invasive. He felt a thread of precise, hot energy slip past his skin, not through his broken channels, but alongside them, probing, mapping. The professor's grey eyes lost focus, looking inward.
"Hmm," Professor Ignis murmured, a sound of professional interest. "The rumors of your 'Broken Channels' are not inaccurate, but they are insufficient. They are not merely blocked or atrophied. They are… shattered. A web of fractures from the core outward. A vessel designed to hold nothing." He moved his fingers to Lin's wrist. "And yet… residue. Faint echoes of Fire, Earth, even a trace of raw, unaspected Force Qi. And beneath that… a curious vacuum. As if you were drained by a whirlpool rather than a leak."
He released Lin's wrist, and the invasive heat vanished. Lin felt exposed, like a specimen pinned to a board.
"What happened when the wolves attacked?" Professor Ignis asked.
Haltingly, Lin explained again—the desperation, the violent pull, the chaotic flood, the eruption.
The professor listened, his expression unreadable. When Lin finished, he nodded slowly. "A 'Void Channel' manifestation. A theoretical construct. I've read treatises, but never encountered a live specimen. Your body doesn't draw in Qi. Under extreme duress, it creates a vacuum that wrenches it in, indiscriminately, from every available source. You are not cultivating. You are looting. And your shattered pathways cannot filter or refine the haul. The result is a toxic, chaotic blast." He glanced at Lin's hands. "The backlash would have killed most. That you survived suggests either remarkable constitution, or…"
His eyes dropped to Lin's fist, still clenched around the amulets. "What are you holding, boy?"
Slowly, Lin opened his hand. The two stone discs lay on his palm—the Fracture and the Question.
Professor Ignis's breath hissed between his teeth. All his clinical detachment vanished, replaced by stark, undisguised shock. He reached out, then stopped himself, as if the stones were white-hot. "By the Eternal Flame… Where did you get these?"
"They were my father's," Lin whispered.
"Your father…" Professor Ignis's gaze snapped to Borin, then back to Lin, reassessing everything. "Your surname is Feng?"
Lin nodded.
A profound silence filled the hut. The professor looked at Lin not as a curious specimen anymore, but as something else entirely. A ghost. A puzzle box. A potential catastrophe.
"Elder Jinhai will tell you the village owes you a debt for saving the child," Professor Ignis said finally, his voice tight. "But they also fear you. What you did was unstable. Uncontrollable. The next time that vacuum activates, you might draw the Qi from the crops, from the forge-fire, or from the person standing next to you. You are a danger to them, and you are in danger from every Qi-sensitive beast or man who felt that pulse."
His words were brutal, factual. They carved the truth deeper than any wound.
"What should I do?" The question left Lin's lips, small and lost.
Professor Ignis straightened, the mask of authority returning. "You will come with me to the Ascendant Flame Tower. Your… condition requires study. Your amulets require answers I cannot give here. And your father…" He paused. "Your father was once my colleague. A brilliant theorist on Qi resonance and balance. His disappearance was a great loss. If these," he pointed at the stones, "have awakened, then the questions he was asking are still alive. And they are now your inheritance."
Borin looked as if he'd been struck. "You'll take him now? He's injured!"
"The journey will take days. He will heal on the way. Staying here is no longer an option." Professor Ignis's tone brooked no argument. It was the voice of a man accustomed to command, to the harsh realities of a world beyond village palisades.
Lin looked from his uncle's anguished face to the professor's implacable one. The infirmary walls, which had always seemed so solid, now felt like a cage he'd already outgrown. The quiet life of the forge was ash. The path ahead led into smoke and fire.
He looked down at the amulets in his hand. The Fracture and the Question. One mirrored his broken self. The other promised only uncertainty.
He closed his fingers around them. The cool stone of the Question, the familiar surface of the Fracture.
"When do we leave?" Lin Feng asked, and his voice, for the first time, did not sound like that of a boy.