The mine at Red Sand Ridge had swallowed fathers and sons for three generations, and it was hungry tonight. Pickaxes bit a seam of cinnabar that hissed like a live snake. Torches guttered. Miners muttered prayers to small gods whose names had no weight.
Su Xuan was nineteen, bones showing under skin like the ribs of a fish. He was a branch member of the Su Clan, which meant he ate when they remembered him and worked when they didn't. The brassy taste of dust was in his teeth when the earth groaned.
"Run!" someone shouted. The tunnel shook. Stalactites came down like fangs.
Su Xuan didn't run. He felt the groan as a deep note in his chest, resonant and familiar. The world's quake was a drumbeat, and tacked to that rhythm was a wheel of light, spinning not on the ground, but within him.
A crack opened, swallowed him, and set him in darkness so complete it closed over his head like water.
He should have died. Instead his breath slowed, then stopped, then remembered.
Somewhere in the dark, a scale rang like a bell.
The Ten Thousand Path Wheel unfurled inside him with a golden hiss. Ten thousand spokes caught and flung light. Laws woke up like snakes opening their eyes. Heat. Cold. Metal. Wood. Water. Lightning. Wind. Space. Time. Cause. Effect. And deep under those, something older: a long, sleeping rumble like thunder turned in upon itself.
On his back in a tomb of earth, Su Xuan remembered being a god.
It came back like a storm breaking over a drought. Names slammed home—the names of the alchemical fires, the taste of thunder, how to cut a river and make it bleed pearls. The scream of Heaven's Will in the last moment. And her. Qinglian, kneeling in a corridor of plum-shadow, unbraiding her hair and asking, Is there anything in the world you fear?
"No," he whispered, and his voice filled the crack like a wind.
He did not fear death. But betrayal, that was another path entirely. He bared his teeth. The dragon-rumble intensified.
He reached with the Wheel. Ten thousand spokes turned. He picked the Earth Path and told it a truth: I am heavier than stone. The ground obliged; earth squeezed, then softened around him like mud around a fish. He wriggled as the Water Path became silk around his limbs. He coaxed a whisper of Wind and pulled himself through like a man wriggles out of a narrow shirt.
He emerged into a cavern that had not seen a torch since the world was young. It was not natural. The walls were smooth, spiraled. In the center, bones rose like a throne—a spine as long as a city street, vertebrae interlocked like stacked jade bracelets, each the size of a table. Around it, formation lines glowed a dull blue, asleep.
The cavern stank like the sea. It smelled like storms.
"Azure Dragon," he said, and his voice echoed back with a roar. The dragon before him was long dead, but its marrow had not forgotten its name.
He came forward and laid his palm against the largest vertebra. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel spun. In its heart, a missing spoke clicked into place with a small, thin chime like a teacup touched with a spoon. The Dragon Path woke.
It did not come like other Paths did—no whisper, no gentle illumination. The Dragon Path was a spine straightening. It was a stylus drawing a line, and the world respecting the line. It wrote breath into him. It wrote a roar into his bones.
The cavern tilted. Thunder bled out of the stone. The vertebra shuddered and cracked. Inside, nested in marrow, a shard of azure bone slid out like a blade from a sheath. It was crescent-shaped, cool, and heavy.
"Ancestral Dragon marrow-bone," he murmured, past and present voices blending. "I did not fall by accident."
He pressed the shard against his chest. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel turned. The bone sank into him like water. Cold, then heat. His back arched. Scales rippled and were gone beneath skin. He told the earth another truth: I am not prey.
Somewhere above, men shouted. The mine had collapsed. Su Xuan looked up at the ceiling as if it were made of paper. He called on the Metal Path and cut. He called on the Wind and slipped. He called on Dragon and roared. The stone shivered, parted, and let him through.
He crawled out into the night like a snake coming up from winter. The world smelled like rain. Clouds like black anvils stacked over Red Sand Ridge. In the distance, torches bobbed and the Su clan's steward screamed orders, which made him smile, which made him feel guilty for smiling, which made him remember he wasn't the boy they thought he was anymore.
He stood up. He looked at his hands. He flexed. Ten thousand threads ran through his flesh. The Ten Thousand Path Wheel turned once, then stilled, waiting.
His heart, in the quiet that followed the roar, spoke softly: Find her.
"Qinglian," Su Xuan whispered to the night. "I'm coming."