The situation would be funny if it weren't so horrifying.He tried to sit up. Pain lanced through his torso, broken ribs from the beating, still healing. Or trying to heal, though without proper nutrition or medical care, the healing was going poorly.Movement at the alley's entrance made Kaelen freeze.A figure shuffled into view. Ancient, bent nearly double, leaning on a gnarled walking stick. A woman, though age, had eroded her gender into something more elemental. She wore rags that might once have been robes, layers of filthy cloth that could have been any color originally.But it was her eyes that caught Kaelen's attention.Completely white. Blind.Yet somehow, impossibly, she turned her sightless gaze directly toward him with the precision of someone with perfect vision.She smiled."Kaelen Ashwright," the old woman said, her voice surprisingly clear despite her appearance. "The Nine Heavens thought you dead. They were wrong…completely wrong.”“Your dad, Soren Ashwright and

Old Moth's walking stick paused for half a second, then resumed. "Yes. He did. Most people in the Mortal Coil deserve better.”“That is rather the point of everything you're about to do." She turned down a side street. "Now. The tournament."Kaelen straightened slightly despite himself. "Tell me everything.""The Tournament of Shadows," Old Moth began, her voice taking on a cadence that suggested she'd explained this before, to other students, in other times."It is held in the City of Ten Thousand Sins, which is approximately three days' travel from here by conventional means, two days if you push, and one day if you're extraordinarily motivated and don't particularly value what remains of this body's structural integrity.""When does it begin?""In eleven days. Which means you have eight days of preparation before you need to travel."She immediately paused to let a cart rumble past, then continued."The tournament is organized by Feng Crimson-Hand, formerly Elder Feng of the Blaz

"A stabilizing compound. Your soul is still partially fragmented from the consumption process.”“The fragments that made it into this body are integrating, but they're doing so in a chaotic pattern.”“Without assistance, the integration could take months and cause considerable internal damage." She folded her hands. "With the compound, the process will be uncomfortable for approximately two hours and then largely complete.""And if I choose not to drink it?""Then you spend the next several months feeling like your soul is trying to exit your body through your eye sockets while simultaneously hosting the memories, emotional residue, and muscle memory of a dead street rat whose cultivation was destroyed through his own impatience." Old Moth's expression was tranquil. "I recommend the compound."Kaelen drank it almost immediately.It tasted like regret and metal and something that had no business being a flavor.He managed not to make a sound, because some dignities survived death and

Three days passed in a rhythm that Kaelen would not have recognized as preparation if he hadn't been on the receiving end of it.Dawn brought Old Moth already seated at the table, the archaic scrolls open and the lantern lit, as if she'd been awake for hours or possibly hadn't slept at all.She would speak for an hour, dense and technical, covering aspects of the Essence Devouring technique that the manual's abbreviated text hadn't captured, the precise moment of contact at which absorption initiated, the way the practitioner's soul had to relax rather than grasp, the counterintuitive truth that fighting for the essence reduced efficiency while receiving it created better results."You're not taking it," she'd said on the first morning, when Kaelen had visualized the technique as a kind of aggressive reaching."You're making yourself available to it. The distinction matters more than you can currently imagine."Then came the physical work. Old Moth would have him practice the Soul Anc

Dax smiled arrogantly into Blind old Moth's face as he continued.“There's no version of this that ends with you winning.""Mmm," Old Moth said. Then: "You've been managing things in this district for, how long? Twelve years?"The question threw Dax slightly off his rhythm. "Thirteen.""Thirteen years. And in thirteen years, you've come to my door four times.""We've had occasion…”"The first time was nine years ago, when you wanted information about a demon-blooded child who'd been seen near my end of the street. I told you I hadn't seen her. You chose not to press the matter."A very slight tension in Dax's expression. "I didn't press because there was nothing to press.""The second time was six years ago. You wanted me to vacate this space because someone with more money than me wanted it for a storage facility. I declined.”“You and four men attempted to convince me otherwise." Old Moth's voice was still pleasantly conversational."You left having convinced no one. You also left