The first thing he felt was pain.
Pain like the whole structure of his skull had been pounded with a hammer, then left to ferment in a barrel of rotgut for six months.
Tobi tried to open his eyes and the pain redoubled, as if light itself had become a weapon.
He took a break, and got them open anyway. He always did. There was no such thing as a hangover that lasted forever; eventually, it passed or you did.
What he saw made his head spin. The ceiling was lacquered wood, the beams painted with clouds and cranes so perfectly rendered that he almost expected them to start flapping. Silk banners hung from every corner, printed with characters he didn't recognize but whose intent was immediately clear: money, power, dynasty. The air had a slow, syrupy taste, perfumed with something floral and medicinal.
He tried to sit up.
The blanket weighed as much as a corpse. He pushed it off with fingers that felt too long, too thin. The bed was an old-world canopy, carved from redwood and polished until it shone. He pressed his hands to his face and found a cheekbone higher than he remembered, a jaw sharp enough to cut wire. His own hands, but not. The nails were clean, the skin too pale, the knuckles marked with new scars.
He caught his reflection in the polished surface of a nearby armoire. The man who stared back looked nothing like Tobi Miller. This one had the build of a chess grandmaster, not a street thief. He was lean, slight, with black hair bound in a short tail and a birthmark above the left eyebrow like a smear of ash. His eyes had a watchfulness he recognized, though. That was still him, behind the haze.
He touched his temple. The headache held on.
"Not dead," he whispered.
It came out in a different voice. Higher, more precise. The English was crisp but layered under something tonal, as if his tongue remembered other languages and was annoyed at being made to work in this one. His voice did not sound like a man who had ever eaten food out of a vending machine, or gotten beat up behind a liquor store.
He looked down. He wore a hanfu, like the ones they sold in Chinatown for tourists but this was the real deal. The fabric shimmered between midnight blue and gunmetal, and was stitched at the sleeves with a pattern of seven tiny flames. On the breast: a white mountain on black, crowned with a ring of seven stars. A sigil. Not his, but important.
He flexed his fingers. A ring of green stone clung to the third knuckle of his left hand. It was heavy, and cold, the surface carved in flowing script that danced if he looked too long. On a cord around his neck was a jade pendant shaped like a teardrop, so finely polished he could see the nerves in his own fingers when he held it up to the light.
A door slid open somewhere behind him. He jerked to around to see the visitor.
The man who entered wore robes even richer than his, pale blue embroidered with cranes that nearly took flight when he moved. He was maybe sixty, with hair silvered at the temples and a face that looked like it had been constructed for giving orders and having them obeyed.
"You're awake," the man said. His voice was soft, but there was an iron bar behind it. "That's… unexpected."
Tobi froze. The language was Mandarin, but he understood it without translation, as if it had been inserted straight into his cerebral cortex. He tried to remember the last three hours, or the last three lifetimes, but everything behind the pain was a blur.
He cleared his throat. "Where am I?"
The old man's eyes flickered with surprise. "Your rooms, of course. Unless your injuries were worse than I thought." His gaze sharpened. "Do you know who you are, young master?"
Tobi opened his mouth to say Tobi Miller. However he words caught in his throat. Something deeper overrode it, like a hand clamping down over his tongue.
"I'm… I'm Wei Xuanji." The syllables tumbled out unbidden.
The old man smiled thinly.
"Good. You remember your own name, at least."
He inclined his head and turned to go, but not before Tobi caught the tiny movement; a gesture of disgust, or maybe fear, flickering across the old man's face before he could hide it.
The door slid shut again.
Tobi's breath came faster now. He gripped the edge of the bed and tried to sort the facts:
- He had died. Definitely died. The memory was sharp as a razor: the guards, the pain, the flickering security light, and then nothing.
- He was now somewhere else, in a body that was not quite his own, surrounded by décor that screamed "warlord chic."
- He had just claimed to be Wei Xuanji in perfect Mandarin despite having no idea who that was, but the name felt like it had been tattooed on the inside of his eyelids.
He stood, legs shaking. The silk robe did nothing to hide the fact that he was underweight, ribby, with muscles barely worth a mention. Every step on the lacquered floor sent a new spike of pain up his left leg. That was familiar, at least. The ache of old injuries.
He shuffled to the armoire and tugged open the doors. Inside were more robes folded with geometric precision, some in white, others in obsidian or sapphire. Shoes with pointed toes. A set of scrolls in a lacquered box, sealed with wax stamped in the same seven-flame sigil.
He reached for the nearest robe and his fingers trembled. As he gripped the fabric, a rush of sensation hit him. Bitter disappointment, shame, anger, and bubbling above it all, a ferocious hunger for Legacy. Validation.
He dropped the robe.
He blinked. The feeling had vanished, but the aftertaste clung to his tongue.
He plopped down on a padded bench at the end of the bed.
The headache still pounded behind his eyes, but a new headache was forming underneath: memory, or something like it.
The flashes came quick:
- Standing in a circle of robed teenagers, each holding a burning stick. His stick was unlit. He was surrounded by six others, each with theirs aflame, and above them the master's voice boomed: "Seven flames for seven generations."
- The stick remained cold in his hand. His face burned anyway. They called him "dark flame" for the rest of the season.
- A boy his age, face moon-pale, smirking as he "accidentally" bruised Tobi's arm during a sparring match, then announced, loud enough for all, that his opponent was weaker than boiled cabbage.
- Years of dinners at a long, lacquered table, the rest of the family pointedly not looking his way as he choked down his food in silence.
- Blood on his hands, his own, dripping from a shallow cut across the palm, a ritual gone wrong. The circle of observers laughed.
- A final, vivid image: standing over a girl, merchant-caste by the cut of her jacket, her back against a wall as Xuanji leaned in, his voice slurred with copious amounts of rice wine. She shoved him and he staggered back, vomit rising in his throat, the taste of failure burning worse than the liquor. He remembered the look on her face; pure disgust.
He snapped back to the present, doubled over and dry-heaving. Nothing came up. The urge remained.
He wiped his mouth. Cold sweat. The silk robe stuck to his back.
This was real, he was really in a different world. It wasn't a dream. It wasn't even a second chance. If anything, it was a downgrade.
He stared at his reflection again. For a moment, the man in the mirror smiled.
He looked like someone who had survived out of spite.
==========
Xuanji's first instinct was to find a window and climb out, but the room was built for containment. The only opening faced north, framed in jade and barred with lattice so fine it could cut flesh. He tried the pane anyway. It didn't budge.
He let himself slide down to the floor, back pressed to the cool wood. The headache had retreated to a persistent throb behind his left ear. He didn't want to move, but he had to force himself up and get his bearings
He was about to when the door slid open.
The woman who entered wore pale blue robes and moved like she had been trained to walk on glass. She was younger than he expected, mid-twenties at most, hair bound in a severe knot. Her skin had the translucence of people who never saw the sun. She carried a shallow tray stacked with porcelain jars and a folded cloth. Her face was a study in perfect neutrality, but her eyes gave her away: when they met his, they skipped past, like she didn't want to see him for more than a second.
"Physician Qiao, reporting as ordered," she said. The accent was as clean as a scalpel. Her gaze flicked to his left hand, then to the pendant, then to his face again.
She set the tray on a low table. The porcelain chimed delicately. She dipped a cloth in one of the jars and wrung it out with practiced fingers, then knelt beside him, close enough that he could smell the bitter root in her breath.
"Hold still, Young Master Wei."
It was a command, not a request.
She pressed the damp cloth to his forehead, fingers steady and cool. It stung, then soothed. Xuanji forced himself not to flinch. The cloth moved to his temple, to the bridge of his nose, to the spot just above the eyebrow where the headache lived.
He watched her hands. They were a surgeon's hands, slender and deliberate, with calluses in all the right places. She wore no jewelry except a wooden bead bracelet, each bead the color of dried blood. He wondered how many other patients those fingers had touched.
She checked his pulse next, two fingers against his wrist. He felt the pressure, light as a lover's caress, then the faintest flick of qi beneath his skin. It moved through him in a wave, scanning, searching, mapping the damage.
"You're lucky to be alive," she said. Her tone was so clinical that it almost circled around to tender. "You lost consciousness after… the incident in the garden. Alcohol poisoning, possibly worsened by—" she glanced at the ring, "—excessive expenditure of spiritual energy."
He said nothing. The words barely made sense, but he let them settle.
She let go of his wrist, wiped his arm with another cloth, and set about preparing a cup of tea. She poured a viscous brown liquid into a ceramic bowl and passed it to him with both hands.
"Drink."
He brought it to his lips. It smelled like burnt licorice and regret. He took a sip. It tasted worse.
She watched him, assessing. "You'll want to avoid heavy cultivation for a few days. The meridian is… unstable."
He met her gaze. "Which one?"
Her lips pressed together, tight. "Heart Meridian. The old injury."
It meant nothing to Tobi, but Xuanji's body recoiled at the words.
She packed away her tools, working in silence. Only when she was finished did she speak again. "The clan expects your presence at dinner. Don't be late." She bowed, just enough to be technically correct.
As she stood, her elbow brushed his bare forearm. The contact lasted less than a heartbeat, a whisper of silk.
But in that fraction of a second, something happened.
A jolt ran up his arm, ice-cold but electric. It was like data, millions of bits, streaming through nerves and synapses that had never held them before. A flood of images: Qiao's hand positions, her precise breathing rhythm, the pattern of qi she used to diagnose and treat. He understood it all, instantly, perfectly, as if he had been practicing for years.
Qiao paused mid-step, brow furrowing. She glanced at him, lips parting as if she meant to say something, but the words didn't come. Her eyes narrowed, just for a moment, then she left, closing the door behind her.
The silence buzzed.
Xuanji sat, stunned. He flexed his fingers, then pressed them to his own pulse. He mirrored Qiao's motion exactly. He didn't know how he knew what to do, but he knew. He could feel his blood, his qi, the places where it pooled and leaked.
He shifted his hand to the spot above his eyebrow and pressed gently. Something inside aligned, a click like a magnet snapping into place. The headache faded, not gone, but retreating.
He pulled his hand away. Stared at it like it was a live snake.
He tried again, running through the gestures Qiao had made: the way her thumb pressed the index, the way she inhaled before each touch. Each time, it worked better.
He laughed, once, sharp and raw. Then slapped a hand over his mouth.
What the fuck. What the actual fuck.
He had stolen her technique. Or copied it. Or something. The effect was instant and total. It was the kind of cheat code he would have killed for on the street, back when life was a daily race between hunger and handcuffs.
He looked at the jade ring. He looked at the pendant.
He looked at the locked window, and the door that was definitely guarded on the other side.
He smiled.
The next time someone touched him, he'd be ready.