The first thing Yao Jun learned about the Void Flame was that it did not care whether he wanted it.
The second was that it did not care whether he survived it.
He stood upon the ancient stones of the Valley of Returning Winds, unable to feel his fingers, while the black fire coiled around his body. Beyond its shifting edges, the funeral pyre burned white-gold, consuming what remained of Master Wu Tian. Between the two flames, the air trembled with a tension that made his teeth ache.
The hooded figures had formed a circle around him.
None approached.
One of them held a hand extended towards the darkness, fingers arranged in a gesture that seemed almost delicate.
The luminous symbols suspended in the air around Yao Jun shifted with each movement of that hand. They formed a cage, though not one made of bars. The black flames pressed against its invisible walls, and the symbols brightened wherever the two forces met.
Yao Jun tried to speak.
Nothing came out.
His throat worked. His lungs moved. Yet the words died somewhere between intention and breath.
Help me.
He wasn't certain whom he was asking.
The hooded figures? The dead man on the pyre? The thing burning inside his chest?
The black fire answered with a pulse.
For an instant, every symbol around him dimmed.
The tallest figure immediately closed its outstretched hand.
Golden light flashed through the air.
The symbols contracted.
Pain struck Yao Jun's chest so violently that his knees buckled. He fell forward, catching himself on his hands. The black fire rushed inward, pouring beneath his skin in thin, twisting streams. He felt it travel through him, not like heat through blood but like a needle being drawn through a map, tracing routes his body had never possessed.
Something inside him resisted.
Something else yielded.
Then the darkness vanished.
Yao Jun collapsed onto the stones.
For several breaths, he could do nothing but lie there, his cheek pressed against the cold ground. The world had become a collection of distant sensations: the whisper of wind, the smell of burning sandalwood, the frantic beating of his heart.
His heart.
He focused on it.
One beat.
Another.
A third.
He was alive.
He had never been so relieved by such an ordinary fact.
A shadow fell across him.
Yao Jun forced his eyes open.
The tallest hooded figure stood nearby. Its sleeves hung motionless despite the wind, and a faint golden light lingered around its fingertips.
"Can you hear me?"
The voice was that of an older man, low and roughened by age.
Yao Jun swallowed. His throat felt scraped raw.
"hmm….Yes." he answered his voice raw
"Can you stand?"
"I.." Yao Jun tried to stand, his body not responding "I don't know."
"An honest answer." The figure crouched beside him.
Yao Jun tried to retreat, but his arms trembled beneath him. He hated the helplessness of it. He hated that he couldn't even determine whether the body beneath him was injured or merely exhausted.
The hooded man studied his face.
"Look at me."
Yao Jun did.
"What is your name?"
The question should have been easy.
Instead, he felt the familiar emptiness open inside him.
He could remember the world he had left. He could remember concrete, glass, traffic, hospital corridors, the sterile white of fluorescent lights. He could remember the shape of a hand resting against his own and the terrible conviction that there had been something important he had meant to say.
But his name remained beyond reach.
"Yao Jun," he answered.
The name came out quietly.
The hooded man did not react, but something in the air seemed to settle.
"Master Wu Tian's disciple?"
Yao Jun's fingers curled against the stone.
"Yes."
It was a lie, and it wasn't.
He possessed the man's face, his body, his name. He carried his memories like fragments of broken pottery lodged beneath his skin. He had mourned Wu Tian with a grief that did not belong to him and watched the old man's body burn as though he had loved him all his life.
Yet he had never sat across from Wu Tian.
Never heard him laugh.
Never received the jade pendant from his hands.
He was a stranger standing in the ruins of another man's life.
The hooded man watched him for a long moment.
Then he rose.
"Take him to the eastern shelter. The rite is concluded."
One of the other figures turned towards him.
"And the fire?"
The tallest man looked at the place where the black flames had disappeared.
"Contained, for now."
"For now?" he asked, trepidation in his voice
"Would you prefer that I lie?"
The other figure fell silent.
Yao Jun caught the exchange despite his exhaustion.
Contained.
Not extinguished. Not defeated.
Contained.
The distinction settled heavily in his mind.
Two figures approached with a stretcher or what he assumed was one, wood parallel to each other tightly bound with a cloth. They placed him gently or as gently as they could neither seemed eager to touch him for longer than necessary.
As they carried him away, he looked up at the sky, still covered in heavy mist. Mist…. There was something in the air here, he couldn't tell what it was. Science on earth wouldn't work here after what he witnessed, he was convinced. Magic…. Sorcery….. witchcraft, he couldn't tell what it was but this place wasn't for normal people like him. Could he even be considered normal with that awful black thing that came out of him.
A soft sigh escaped his lips, he was meant to be terrified of this new development, this new life, but the only thing he felt was a blinding headache and a sour throat.
As they passed by the pyre, he glanced at it. It had collapsed inward. White-gold embers glowed among the blackened wood, and a thin stream of smoke twisted into the mist above it.
Wu Tian was gone.
The thought brought another wave of grief, quieter than the first but no less suffocating.
Yao Jun lowered his eyes.
He had inherited a dead man's body, a dead man's sorrow, and a fire that frightened people who could conjure light from their fingertips.
He had no idea what he was supposed to do with any of it.
For the moment, he settled on the only task he could manage.
He would stay alive long enough to find out.
And slowly his consciousness drifted
*************************************************************************************
The eastern shelter was little more than a stone building wedged against the mountain's lower slope.
Its roof was tiled, its walls old, and its windows covered with oiled paper that rattled whenever the wind rose. A charcoal brazier sat in one corner. Beside it stood a narrow bed, a wooden table, and a cabinet containing folded garments and several chipped bowls.
It was, by the standards of the valley, almost luxurious.
Yao Jun sat on the edge of the bed while an elderly attendant examined his hands.
The attendant wore the same undyed hemp robes as the others, though his sleeves were rolled up to reveal thin, sinewy forearms. His face was deeply lined, and his left eyebrow bore a pale scar.
"Hold still." He said
"I'm holding still."
"Then stop trembling."
"I'm not doing it deliberately."
The old man grunted.
"People rarely do."
He turned Yao Jun's right hand over, inspecting the greyish skin around his knuckles. Most of the strange discoloration had faded, leaving only faint, dark lines beneath the surface.
The attendant pressed two fingers against his wrist.
Yao Jun felt a strange sensation pass through him, like a breeze moving through an empty house.
The old man frowned.
"Again," he muttered.
He pressed harder.
"What is it?" Yao Jun asked.
"Your pulse is normal." The old man answered, scratching his hair.
"That sounds good." Yao Jun couldn't be more happy to hear that.
"It would be, if I were examining an ordinary person."
The attendant released his wrist.
Yao Jun looked at him.
"Am I not ordinary?" Yao Jun asked with a puzzled look.
The old man gave him a flat stare.
"Your master's funeral erupted into a contest between sacred fire and a darkness that made the ground forget itself. Half the people present have spent their lives studying spiritual phenomena, and not one of them can agree on what they witnessed. You nearly died standing in the middle of it."
He leaned back.
"What do you think?"
Yao Jun had no answer.
The attendant rose and crossed to the brazier. He adjusted the charcoal with an iron rod, coaxing a little more warmth from the embers.
"Your spiritual pathways are in poor condition," he said. "Some of them are old injuries. Others..."
He stopped.
"Others what?"
"Others do not feel as they should."
Yao Jun glanced down at his chest.
"Can you fix them?"
"No."
The answer came without hesitation.
"Can anyone?"
The old man looked at him.
"Perhaps. But if you want comforting lies, you have come to the wrong shelter."
Despite everything, Yao Jun almost smiled.
There was something reassuring about the man's bluntness. It was the first ordinary thing he had encountered since waking in this world. No ancient flames, no impossible grief, no ominous figures speaking in riddles.
Just an old man who didn't know how to fix him.
"Then tell me something useful," Yao Jun said. "What happens… now?"
"The funeral is finished. Your master has been returned to the mountain."
"And me?"
"That depends."
"On what?"
"On whether you intend to remain here until you die of exposure or descend the mountain like a sensible person."
Yao Jun stared at him.
The attendant seemed satisfied with this response.
"Good. You are capable of understanding sarcasm. That is encouraging."
He went to the cabinet and removed a bundle of clothes. They were plain travelling garments: dark trousers, a grey tunic, a heavier outer robe, and a pair of boots that looked considerably more durable than the ones Yao Jun wore.
"Change. Your old clothes smell of smoke."
Yao Jun accepted the bundle.
As the attendant turned away, a question rose to his lips.
"Did my master suffer?"
The old man's movements stopped.
For a moment, the room held only the soft crackle of charcoal.
"No," he said at last. "Not at the end."
Yao Jun looked down at the clothes in his hands.
"How do you know?"
"Because I was there."
The attendant returned to the brazier.
"And because I knew Wu Tian."
There was a finality in his voice that discouraged further questions.
Yao Jun changed in silence.
The garments fit reasonably well. The tunic was slightly loose at the shoulders, but the boots held his feet securely, and the outer robe was warm enough to blunt the mountain chill.
When he finished, the attendant placed a bowl of thin rice porridge on the table.
"Eat."
Yao Jun sat down.
The first mouthful was bland, watery, and astonishingly wonderful.
His stomach cramped around the food as though it had forgotten what nourishment was. He forced himself to eat slowly, though his hunger urged him to swallow everything at once.
The attendant watched him with an expression that might have been amusement.
"You look surprised."
"I haven't eaten in a while."
"That is generally what happens when people lie unconscious."
Yao Jun paused with his spoon halfway to his mouth.
"How long was I unconscious?"
"Long enough for us to finish the rite and carry you here."
"Hours?"
"Less than a day."
Yao Jun let out a breath he hadn't realised he was holding.
Somewhere in his mind, he had feared the answer might have been weeks. Months. Years.
The old man set a cup of water beside the bowl.
"Finish your meal. Then rest. You will need to leave before the weather closes the lower paths."
"Leave for where?"
The attendant regarded him as if he had asked where the sky went at night.
"That, I imagine, is what your master's letter is for."
Yao Jun's spoon slipped from his fingers.
"My master's what?"
For the first time since they had met, the old man looked genuinely surprised.
"His letter."
He crossed to the cabinet again and opened a narrow drawer.
Inside lay a folded sheet of yellowed paper, sealed with dark red wax. A small impression had been pressed into the wax: a mountain rising above three horizontal lines.
Wu Tian's seal.
Beside it rested a narrow wooden case.
The attendant brought both objects to the table.
"These were left in your master's chamber before the funeral. I was instructed to give them to you once you were able to understand what was being said to you."
Yao Jun stared at the letter.
He could barely breathe.
The handwriting visible through the thin paper was not familiar to him, yet his borrowed memories stirred at the sight of it. His fingers tingled. A sudden, aching warmth spread through his chest.
He knew that handwriting.
Or rather, the body knew it.
He reached for the letter, then stopped just before touching it.
"What if it isn't meant for me?"
The attendant's expression hardened.
"Your name is written on it."
"That doesn't mean—"
"Boy."
Yao Jun fell silent.
"Whatever you believe about yourself, whatever happened at the funeral, whatever that fire is, this letter was left for Wu Tian's disciple. That is the only fact I can give you."
The old man placed the letter in front of him.
"What you do with it is your own concern."
Yao Jun looked at the seal.
He had spent the last several hours trying to understand the life that had been thrust upon him. He had searched his memories for answers, only to find scattered images and emotions that belonged to a boy he had never met.
Now, at last, he had something tangible.
A message from the man whose death had left such a terrible emptiness inside him.
He broke the seal.
The wax cracked with a small, decisive sound.
Inside was a single sheet of paper, folded twice. The handwriting was firm and measured, with no unnecessary flourishes.
Yao Jun unfolded it.
To my disciple, Yao Jun.
If you are reading this, then I have either departed this world or have been prevented from returning to you.
I would prefer the former. It is cleaner.
Do not waste time mourning the difference.
Yao Jun stopped.
A laugh escaped him.
It was small and disbelieving, scarcely more than a breath. But it was a laugh, and for an instant it seemed to belong to him rather than the boy whose face he wore.
The old attendant glanced over.
"Something amusing?"
Yao Jun shook his head.
"No."
He looked down at the page again.
You have always believed that a person becomes worthy of a path by proving himself strong enough to walk it. This is a mistake I have failed to correct in you.
Strength is useful. Discipline is necessary. Neither is a substitute for judgement.
The world will offer you many opportunities to demonstrate how much force you can command. Most of them will be traps.
When the moment comes, ask yourself what your strength is protecting. If the answer is your pride, put your hands down.
If the answer is a life that cannot protect itself, then act without hesitation.
You will make mistakes. You will lose things. You will discover that good intentions do not spare anyone the consequences of a poor decision.
Learn from them. Do not make a virtue of your suffering.
Yao Jun read the last sentence twice.
Something tightened in his throat.
The words were not grand. They did not speak of destiny, greatness, or the burden of inheriting a master's power. They sounded like the advice of an old man who had spent years watching a younger person stumble through life and had never quite learned how to stop worrying about him.
He found himself wishing, with an intensity that frightened him, that he had known Wu Tian.
He turned the page.
There is another matter.
You are to travel to Azure Summit Academy.
Present this letter and the jade pendant to the headmaster. Do not surrender the pendant to anyone else, regardless of their rank or the authority they claim.
You will meet people there who can teach you things I cannot. You will also meet people who will attempt to decide what you are before you have had the chance to decide for yourself.
Do not mistake every caution for hostility. Do not mistake every kindness for loyalty.
And do not assume that my name will protect you.
Yao Jun's gaze drifted to the pendant beneath his tunic.
He drew it out and placed it on the table.
The pale green jade looked unchanged. Smooth, unmarked, ordinary.
Yet he could still remember the grief that had flooded him when he first touched it. He could still see the blurred image of a kind, weathered face.
He returned to the letter.
The final paragraph was shorter.
If the person reading this is not the boy I raised, do not mistake my trust for ignorance.
Go to the academy.
There are people there who can tell you what the fire is—and people who must never be allowed to claim you.
Whatever you have become, the choice of what you do next remains yours.
—Wu Tian
Yao Jun lowered the letter.
The room seemed to have grown smaller.
He read the final lines again, searching for some hidden meaning, some indication that Wu Tian had known what would happen.
If the person reading this is not the boy I raised.
The old master had anticipated the possibility.
Not necessarily the truth. Not necessarily a stranger from another world waking inside his disciple's body.
But something.
Something wrong.
Yao Jun gripped the edge of the table.
"Did he know?"
The attendant remained by the brazier.
"Know what?"
"That something was going to happen to me."
The old man was silent for a while.
"Your master knew that something was wrong with your condition. He spent the final months of his life trying to understand it."
"What was wrong with me?"
"I don't know."