"Well, there goes my only edge over you," Rix said to Luna as they were walking back.

"Bold of you to assume you ever had an edge at all." Her expression softened. "Thanks though. I appreciate you sticking up for me. I'm not sure our friendship would have survived if you'd let him kill me."

Rix laughed by reflex, but there was more to what she said than just a joke. Friendship. Was that what they had? The word sat uncomfortably in his mind. There had been people in his past who he'd called 'friends', but that word didn't carry the same meaning where he was from. It was more of a synonym for 'alliance', something of temporary convenience. But Luna's definition was clearly something more traditional.

And looked at in the abstract, the label fit. They fought together, trained together, had saved one another's lives. That made it, by all metrics, the strongest relationship he'd had since his parents died. As much as it unsettled him, there was more between them than simple convenience.

"What can I say?" he replied. "I need someone to watch my back."

It wasn't quite an agreement, but it was something, and the way Luna's smile widened said she understood.

"What do you think about him?" Rix asked quickly, trying to shift the subject. "Breaker, I mean."

Luna hesitated. "I don't know. Pretty sure my elders warned me about mysterious men in realms offering ancient power."

"'The demon's gift is a golden chain,'" Rix said, quoting a famous proverb.

Luna snorted. "You had that one too, hey?"

Rix glanced around, though, in reality, he had no way to tell if Breaker was following them. The man's capabilities were still a mystery to him. "I don't know if I trust him. He's…evasive about some things. But I also don't know if I can turn down what he's offering."

"Me either," she said. There was a certain amount of grit in her voice that made him pay attention. On one hand, every Martial Soul wanted to get stronger. Climbing the Martial Path was the key to so many boons: wealth, power, longevity. Rix couldn't deny the appeal of those things, but at the same time, they were often chased just for the sake of it. For him, the Martial Path had true purpose.

The way Luna spoke, he couldn't help but think the same was true for her.

For several minutes, they walked in contemplative silence.

Eventually, she glanced over at him. "I'm sorry about your parents."

Rix grimaced and had to bite back a sharp retort. That was one topic he never spoke of. He'd had no other family, and the street didn't care for your origin story. Besides, he was hardly unique. The Lantern District bred orphans as readily as it did rats. Most of the people he ran with had some tragedy in their past, but it was the unspoken rule that that was where it stayed.

"I don't— it was a long time ago." Part of him did want to offer her more, but even now he didn't feel capable. All these years later, thinking about it still made his chest constrict and his mind turn turbulent.

Luna gave a heavy nod. She chewed her cheek for a couple of seconds, as if weighing something. "My father disowned me. It's not the same, obviously. At least my parents are alive. But still…it hurts." Her voice was very small, devoid of any of her usual mirth. It was the most vulnerable Rix had ever seen her. He'd imagined sects were close-knit places. He wasn't sure what being disowned in such an environment would look like.

"I'm sorry," he offered. "I don't think mine would have thought very well of me ending up here either." He immediately realised how that sounded. "Sorry, that was thoughtless of me."

"It's okay," she said. "Believe it or not, it wasn't that. He cut me out well before I committed my crimes."

She hit that last word with a certain amount of scorn. Rix couldn't help feeling a little curious, but at the risk of being asked to reveal something more in return, he let the issue lie.

***

In his cell that night, he reflected on the day. It felt like a milestone. Meeting Breaker the first time had reignited those long dormant dreams that his qi really was something that could make a tangible difference to his revenge, and today's encounter had basically confirmed it. In many ways, it was better than he'd imagined. With time and dedication, he could progress his two paths in tandem, with cultivation hopefully making up for what he lacked as a Martial Soul.

The challenge was going to be balancing everything. Physically, he was already taxed. Between training with both his weapon and his fists, diving, and the arena, his body was already stretched to its limits. It would grow easier with time, but for now, he had to be cognisant of that, lest he push himself too hard.

He'd thought that since cultivation seemed like a mostly peaceful pursuit, juggling its demands with his others would be easy enough. But as he sat on his bed, trying to muster the strength to practice the Breath Bridge, the day's exhaustion like lead in his muscles, he ruefully began to reassess. He desperately wanted to sleep, but to abandon his training on his very first night would set a terrible precedent. 'One excuse breeds many,' his father used to say.

So, with his legs folded beneath him, he closed his eyes and turned his attention to his breath. The image of the bridge came just a little more easily this time, like he'd made the memory more real by calling forth all the details. He sat with it for a time, letting everything else fall away until just the bridge hung there in his mind.

But that's where the process faltered. Earlier, in the Fractured Realm, his focus had been absolute. Now, tiredness was his constant enemy. Every time he managed to truly empty his mind, he found himself drifting off. He could always bring himself back with a sharp thought, but each time he felt a flare of frustration that was impossible to ignore. Whatever words Breaker had offered about not judging the process suddenly felt like petty parables rather than real wisdom.

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At one point, he found himself wondering how Luna was progressing. For all her complaining, he doubted she was letting anything so inconsequential as tiredness lead to distraction. The hints she'd dropped about her past spoke of a level of dedication and work ethic that was simply alien to him.

That thought fuelled him. There was definitely something to be said for having someone to push you. Right now, cultivation was the only place he had a definitive edge over her. He very much didn't want to lose that. The taunting would be simply relentless.

Shoving his emotions aside, he redoubled his efforts. It didn't matter how his body felt; it was his mind and spirit that were at work right now. He held the bridge there in a vice-like grip, refusing every judgement or distraction. He explored its worn stone, its mortar, its heavy wooden girders.

When it felt real, he brought it forth into the world, angling it to point inward. What had felt silly just hours ago felt powerful now.

He held the image there for several minutes, maintaining his focus through nothing more than sheer will, until something vibrant and foreign intruded on his mental landscape. Qi flowed into him.

He let out a long breath of relief.

Unlike earlier in the day, his qi reserves were depleted, so he could feel the Breath Bridge actually filling him up. The sensation was novel, a gift instead of a theft.

The success buoyed him, scrubbing away some of his exhaustion. He opened his eyes and let the visualisation dissolve. The purpose here wasn't simply to top up his supply. It was to practise. And that meant doing the hard part over and over again. It was true that he needed to sleep, but there were plenty of hours of the night for that.

Giving himself a determined little nod, he began again.

***

The next day in the arena, something happened that Rix had been dreading. He was paired against an Iron Hand member.

Worse still, it was Han's second, the woman who dual wielded two long Tatsuyan knives. Rix had learned her name was Yuri. Normally, fighting with that sort of range disadvantage was a terrible idea, but Yuri was devastatingly fast; perhaps the fastest Whisper in the prison. Rix had seen her take down multiple dangerous opponents with much longer weapons.

She also had a cruel streak. Her fights were often brutal affairs, and she seemed to revel in the pain she caused more than the victory itself.

"Han sends his regards," the woman said as they stepped into the ring.

The duel was as horrible as Rix had anticipated. Fighting someone faster than him was one of the most frustrating experiences of his life. It neutered the only thing he had that even vaguely felt like an advantage. Everything he did was a beat too slow.

Even Energy Surge didn't tip the tide. Rather than acting as his trump card, it just put them on even footing. By deploying it carefully, he managed to land a couple of cuts with [Wind Blade], but they were shallow things that were mostly absorbed by her mantle.

The second time, he received a knife in the belly for his trouble.

He'd never been properly stabbed before, and it was a new kind of hell. It felt like a punch that never ended, and every movement sent it reverberating through him again.

The fight went downhill quickly after that. Yuri could have ended him in seconds, but she chose to play with her food, slowly debilitating him with cut after cut until his blood ran freely and his limbs were barely responsive.

For their part, the crowd seemed to love the savagery. Even through the haze of his wounds, Rix noticed the response was significantly louder than normal. At some point, he found himself glancing towards the crowd, where Han watched, his expression one of cruel dispassion.

He could have given up. If he simply collapsed, he suspected that the woman would be forced to end it. But it felt important to stand his ground. Traditional victory was out of the question, but he could still send a message. He would not be cowed.

Finally, when Rix could barely stand, Yuri moved in for the kill, slipping behind him and raising a blade to his neck.

"It's a pity this one won't stick," she said. "But Han promises the next one will."

She slit his throat, and the world went blessedly dark.

"That looked rough," said Luna when he returned to his seat.

"It felt rougher, I promise," he groaned. Even now, he had a sort of sense memory of the blade in his stomach. He suppressed a shudder.

***

Over the next week, Rix pushed himself like never before. Between training, diving, practising the Breath Bridge, he barely had a waking second where he wasn't focused in some way on his progress. In some regards, the intensity of it was an asset. He never had time to stop and think about the work he was putting in. But the weight of it built nonetheless. He simply had to hope that he would build a tolerance.

His improvements were slow and steady. Every session with the Breath Bridge reduced the time it took him to summon it by a little. He also started to work on how long he could hold it, and he saw improvement there too.

Progress was harder to come by during training. Despite having a partner to work with, his style upgrade continued to elude him. That week saw Master Zhen missing on corporate business, so all Rix could do was continue his regime as the old master had laid out. He felt his hand-to-hand was slowly improving, but there was little to show for it.

Luna, meanwhile, might have been working even harder. Not only was she pouring time into sensing qi, but Wing also had her dedicating effort to her bloodline capabilities for the first time. Progress on both was slow, which seemed to cause her no end of frustration.

The situation with the Iron Hand continued to simmer. The guards kept close watch over both groups, which meant things were relatively well contained within prison walls. In the Fractured Realm, though, it was a different story. The two gangs shared a border, and unless the prison dramatically changed their approach to monitoring divers, there was simply no way to stop the violence. Han led two more raids into Shadow Runner territory that week, costing several more lives and nabbing a particularly valuable stash of treasures. They didn't even smuggle them out. They just left them burned on the ground. One of the Shadow Runners who fought them off reported later that Han had left a message: "Give us the runt and this stops."

Wing assured Rix that wouldn't happen, but that hardly made Rix feel better. The reality was, he was at the centre of this.

Rix did have one close encounter with two Iron Hand members in one of Spiritlock's warren-like hallways. The men caught him in a rare moment of solitude when he was walking back from dinner. It seemed to have been planned because they managed to trap him with a pincer movement, coming at him from either end almost before he realised what had happened. They were strong, and they outnumbered him, attempting to crowd him in and take him to ground against the wall.

But he had Energy Surge and a lot of recent repetitions fighting unarmed.

Silently thanking Master Zhen, he managed to land a driving punch to one of the men's throats that left him stumbling and wheezing. It gave the other a window to grapple him, but an elbow to the chest and then a surge of qi, and he was able to slip through the gap. He was back in his cell block and the watchful eyes of the guards before they could catch him. He didn't know if they actually would have been able to kill him there unarmed like that, but it had been his closest call yet.

When he was sealed safely behind his door, he sank back into his bed and wondered how he'd so thoroughly lost control. What was supposed to be a carefully orchestrated stealth mission had been flipped on its head.

And then Han made it so much worse.

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