Heaven's Bound: The Rise Of The Infernal Sage

Jian Lei's POV

"Another dead root," Elder Fang said, and the whole square laughed before I even lowered my hand.

I stood on the testing platform with my palm still pressed against the cold stone, waiting for the crystal to glow the way it had for every other boy my age. It stayed grey. It stayed dead. Somewhere behind me I heard my aunt mutter that she'd told everyone this would happen, that a boy born on the coldest night of winter was never going to carry heaven's favor.

"Step down, Jian Lei," Elder Fang said, not unkindly, which somehow made it worse. "You're wasting the sun."

I stepped down. My legs felt like someone else's.

Nineteen years old and I had failed the root test six times now. Six years of standing on that platform while younger boys, boys who hadn't even grown into their own height yet, made the crystal burn gold or blue or green. Six years of the same elders shaking their heads like I was a crop that refused to grow no matter how much water they poured on me.

"Maybe next year," said Old Peng, the blacksmith, clapping my shoulder as I passed him. He meant it as comfort. It landed like a stone in my chest instead.

I found a spot at the edge of the crowd and watched the rest of the testing continue without me, the way I always did. Wang Shu's root lit up blue on his first try, and his mother wept with joy loud enough for the whole village to hear. I didn't begrudge him that. I just wondered, quietly, what was wrong with whatever heaven had put inside me instead.

"You're not wasting the sun," a voice said beside me.

I didn't have to turn to know it was Mei Lin'er. I knew her voice the way I knew my own hands.

"Elder Fang seems to think so," I said.

"Elder Fang thinks a lot of things," she said. "Most of them are wrong."

She was standing close enough that our sleeves brushed, and for a second neither of us moved away from that. Mei Lin'er had never once laughed when I failed. Not once in six years. I'd stopped trying to figure out why a long time ago, mostly because I was scared of what I'd feel if I actually let myself hope about the answer.

"You don't have to stand here for this," I said. "You could be up there with the others, celebrating with Wang Shu."

"I'd rather stand here," she said simply, and looked straight ahead like she hadn't said anything that made my chest go tight.

The testing ended an hour later. The elders gathered the successful boys for a small feast, the kind the village threw every year to celebrate whatever hope it still had left for its future. Nobody invited me. Nobody ever did. I walked home instead, Mei Lin'er falling into step beside me without asking, the way she'd done every single year since we were children.

"Elder Sun wants to see you tonight," she said, halfway up the path to my house. "He told me to tell you. Said it was important."

"Elder Sun Hao?" I asked, surprised. The old man rarely spoke to anyone these days, let alone summoned people to his hut after dark. "What does he want with me?"

"He didn't say," Mei Lin'er said. "But he looked serious. More serious than usual."

I found Sun Hao sitting outside his hut that night, a small fire burning low in front of him, his back straight despite his age in a way that always struck me as strange for a man who claimed to have never left this village in his life.

"Sit," he said, before I could even greet him.

I sat.

"You failed again today," he said.

"Everyone already knows that," I said, unable to keep the bitterness fully out of my voice. "Did you call me here to remind me?"

"I called you here," Sun Hao said, "because I don't think you failed at all."

I stared at him. "The crystal didn't light. Everyone saw it."

"The crystal tests for spiritual root," he said. "It doesn't test for everything a person might carry." He leaned forward, his eyes catching the firelight in a way that made him look, for a moment, much younger than his years. "Give me your hand."

I hesitated, then held it out. He pressed two fingers against my wrist, closed his eyes, and went completely still for so long I started to wonder if something was wrong.

Then his eyes snapped open, and I saw real fear in them.

"Impossible," he whispered.

"What is?" I asked. "Elder Sun, what did you feel?"

He didn't answer right away. He pulled his hand back like my skin had burned him, though I hadn't felt anything at all.

"There is something inside you," he said finally, voice low, like he was afraid of who might be listening even out here in the dark. "Something old. Something buried so deep the crystal couldn't have found it if it tried for a hundred years."

"Buried how deep," I said. "What does that mean."

"It means," Sun Hao said, "that everyone in this village, myself included, has been wrong about you since the day you were born."

Before I could ask him anything else, a horn sounded from the direction of the eastern watchtower, three long blasts that every villager knew meant only one thing. Riders. Strangers approaching after dark, when no honest traveler would still be on the mountain road.

Sun Hao's face went pale in the firelight.

"They're early," he said, almost to himself. "I thought we had more time."

"Time for what?" I asked, standing fast enough to knock over the small stool beneath me. "Elder Sun, who is early? Who's coming?"

He looked at me then, and for the first time in my entire life, I saw the old man afraid.

"Get Mei Lin'er," he said. "Get her and hide, now, before they reach the square."

"Not without you," I said.

"Jian Lei," he said, gripping my arm harder than I thought his old hands could manage, "whatever you felt tonight, whatever I told you, none of it matters if you're dead by morning. Run."

The horn sounded again, closer this time, and somewhere down the mountain path I heard the first scream.