The halls beneath the central mountain were always cold after midnight.Even the torches along the carved stone walls burned with a muted blue flame — a sign of the Nightflow Formation, a network of runes designed to stabilize qi channels when the sect slept.
Few ever came this deep.Fewer still lingered here by choice.
Elder Varin stood before the wide lattice window of his private chamber, watching the veins of spirit light pulse faintly through the cavern walls. Each pulse was steady, regulated — the sign of a system that had run unchallenged for centuries.
Unchanging. Predictable. Safe.
He poured himself a cup of cloud tea and let the silence breathe.Outside, the sect sprawled across the mountainside — tiered platforms, cascading towers, and glowing bridges suspended by arrays of flowing qi. From above, it might have looked eternal. From within, he knew it was fraying.
A soft chime echoed from the far corner.He turned slightly as a thin thread of light formed the outline of an elder's seal.
"Elder Solen," Varin said quietly. "You couldn't sleep either."
Solen's voice came through the projection, smooth and low. "Sleep? No. I find the night more honest than daylight."
"You saw the boy."
A pause. "I did. You were right — he's not ordinary."
Varin smiled faintly, not out of pride but confirmation. "Few are. But fewer hide it so well."
Solen stepped closer to his projection, his expression flickering in the spirit light. "He's holding something back. Not rebellion — more like… adaptation. As though he's shaping himself against something only he can feel."
Varin nodded once, silently.
The elder's hand brushed across a jade tablet resting on his desk. On it were names, ages, and ranks — a record of every disciple within the sect. Near the top of the lower section, the name Kaelen shimmered faintly, annotated with a sigil Solen had attached earlier that day.
"You tracked him," Varin said softly.
Solen inclined his head. "Standard procedure. You know the Council will demand it."
"Yes," Varin said. "But you didn't report the meeting."
Solen's lips curved faintly. "Not yet."
"Why?"
Solen looked up. "Because I want to see which of us he mirrors more — you, with your belief in growth through chaos… or me, who believes some fires must never be lit."
Varin's gaze returned to the window. "And if he's something else entirely?"
"Then we pray the sect doesn't crush him before he becomes what it needs."
Silence filled the chamber again. The sound of flowing energy beyond the mountain hummed like a distant heartbeat.
Varin finally spoke. "Do you remember the year the Twin Peaks War ended?"
Solen's expression darkened slightly. "You know I do."
"Then you remember what happened to those who questioned the Council's laws. They called them visionaries once — until they became heretics."
Solen's voice hardened. "Don't romanticize it. They broke balance and unleashed ruin. You saw the aftermath."
"I saw what fear made of the survivors," Varin murmured. "A sect that worships discipline but fears innovation."
He turned, facing Solen fully. "We've forgotten the old principle: the spirit grows sharper when tested. Kaelen… may be the test we've refused for too long."
Solen said nothing for a moment. Then, quietly:"You'd risk the sect's order on one boy?"
Varin's tone was calm. "Order is not the same as life."
Solen studied him for a long while before the projection dimmed, the seal fading into silence.
Varin stood alone again.
He returned to his desk, the light of his lantern glinting off carved glyphs etched into the walls — relics from the sect's founding, when the art of Devouring Flames was not forbidden but revered.
His fingers brushed the ancient sigil, feeling the faint warmth beneath the stone.
He whispered, "Balance, Solen… is not the same as stagnation."
A sudden breeze passed through the chamber — faint but distinct, carrying a wisp of spiritual residue.A shadow rippled briefly in the reflection of the glass window — a flare of energy far in the outer disciple region.
Varin's eyes narrowed.He didn't move to stop it.
Instead, he watched.
And in the distant dark of the mountain's lower rings, Kaelen sat cross-legged — his breath even, his hands still. The faint sigil Solen had placed on him shimmered once, then flickered.
It pulsed once with alien rhythm — his rhythm — and then went silent, absorbed into the deeper currents of his aura.
Varin smiled faintly, tea cooling by his side.
"Let's see how far you can walk before they notice," he murmured.