The spirit boat slid out of the clouds as quietly as a falling leaf.
From the ground it would have looked like a shadow drifting across the sky. Up close, it was a narrow wooden hull wrapped in faint runes, gliding on nothing, anchored to the air by lines of pale light.
Three elders of the Mountain Sect stood at the rail.
They watched the land roll by beneath them: low hills, patches of hardy trees, thin fields clinging to the flattest ground, a single walled city hunched by a bend in the road. Nothing about it looked like the sort of place that should have woken the Anomaly Stone from its long, patient sleep on the stand in the tower room.
Elder Shan shut his eyes and let his spiritual sense sink outward.
Pressure rolled from him in a slow, invisible wave. It swept across the hills, over the river, through the city streets. Mortals below shivered without knowing why. A few hedge cultivators on worn courtyards straightened in alarm, feeling something vast brush against them and then move on.
Shan tasted thin qi, tired soil, ink and sweat and cooking smoke. A handful of small sparks from scattered practitioners, a couple of charms clinging to roadside shrines, the faint pulse of whatever passed for protective wards on the city walls.
Nothing that felt like a proper well. No dense knot of power. No item or beast with the sort of presence that should not exist in a place like this.
If something strong had passed through here, it was not sitting in the open now.
He drew his sense back and opened his eyes.
"Surface qi is weak and even," he said. "If the Anomaly Stone was pointing at some high grade piece lying on the ground, we are too late. Either it is buried, shielded… or already moving somewhere else."
Beside him, Elder Lin's mouth compressed.
"The Anomaly Stone does not wake for scraps," she said. "Something brushed it hard enough to make it sing. Ripples do not just disappear. They leave marks."
Elder Bo shifted his weight, ink stains on the cuffs of his robe.
"Then we stop guessing from the sky," he said. "We brought twenty disciples. Time to use them."
He lifted a hand.
On the deck behind them, robed figures straightened.
The disciples bowed.
One of them, a tall young man with a calm face and steady eyes, stepped forward without being called.
"Yao," Elder Shan said. "You will take the city."
"Yes, Elder," Yao said.
He vaulted the rail. Wind tore at his robes as he fell, then caught the talisman under his boots. Light flared, invisible from below, and turned the fall into a long, controlled slide toward the road.
By the time his boots hit packed earth, the city walls loomed ahead and the sky had shifted past noon.
The city was really just a big walled town. Stone and timber houses crowded together, narrow lanes worn hard by carts, a thin haze of smoke hanging above everything. People queued at the gate with baskets, sacks and carts. Guards leaned on spears and tried not to look as tired as they felt.
As Yao walked up the road, the air around him tightened.
He did not mean to release his presence, but years of cultivation leaked out anyway. Mortals felt it as a weight in the chest and in the backs of their knees, a sudden urge to get out of his way without quite knowing why.
The line parted for him.
The front rank of guards straightened, hands going to their weapons. One of them opened his mouth to challenge him.
Yao looked at him.
The man's throat closed. His fingers spasmed on the shaft of his spear.
"I am a disciple of the Mountain Sect," Yao said. His voice was not loud, but every man on the gate heard it. "I will speak with your captain. Or your city lord.
The second guard swallowed.
"Captain Jesk is on duty," he said, trying and failing to keep his tone level. "The city lord is in council. If you would wait, honoured—"
"Call them," Yao said.
The man ran.
He did not take long.
A broad man in a captain's cloak came first, stride clipped but steady, eyes already measuring robe, bearing, empty hands. Beside him walked a thinner man in good cloth, movements careful, expression pitched somewhere between welcome and fear.
The thinner man stopped a respectful distance away and bowed.
"Honoured cultivator," he said. "You grace our city. I am Merrow, lord here. How may we serve the Mountain Sect?"
Yao did not bother sitting, or asking to be taken inside.
"Some weeks ago," he said, "the Anomaly Stone in our tower woke. A resonance shook the mountain. We have traced the echo to this region. You keep records. You will tell me of any unusual events in that time. Tears in the sky. Storms that do not match the season. Land that has changed shape. Lights where none should be. Items that should not exist in a place like this."
Merrow's eyes flicked briefly to Jesk, then back.
"We have seen no sundered skies," he said carefully. "No river has moved. Our clerk hall is not as fine as yours, honoured one, but we are not careless. If something that large had happened, I would know."
"Records are written by tired men," Yao said. "Tired men miss things. You will check again. And you will ask those who travel. Merchants, caravan masters, innkeepers. They notice when the world misbehaves."
"Of course," Merrow said at once. "Captain?"
Jesk nodded. "I will send runners to the hall," he said. "And to the markets and inns."
He raised his voice.
"You heard him. Records, road reports, anything about odd weather or lights or beasts. Move."
Guards scattered.
Merrow gestured vaguely towards the shade of the gatehouse.
"If you wish to wait here," he said. "I can have a chair brought, and tea—"
"I am not here to rest," Yao said. "I am here for answers."
Merrow lapsed into silence, hands folded in his sleeves, weighing his next words.
"We have not seen what you describe," he said at last. "No torn sky. No new valley. But there has been something… difficult."
Yao glanced at him.
"Difficult how?"
Merrow's mouth twisted.
"We are not a great city," he said. "We survive on trade and people passing through. The last month, there has been a change on the roads. Caravans hit in the forest. Slavers in particular. Wagons lost. Chains broken. Guards burned. The stories all circle the same figure."
"A bandit leader," Yao said.
"A girl," Merrow said. "They say a collared girl stood up in a slaver wagon and turned the air to fire. Since then, a bandit fort out in the trees has gone from nuisance to problem. Slavers fear the road more than they fear our tax man. Merchants complain in both directions."
Yao's attention sharpened.
He had heard "girl" in the first sketches of reports. "Bloodline" had clung to the edges in a whisper. Hearing those words together in a dust town like this made the hair on his arms want to stand up.
"You have heard the word bloodline," he said. "Do not waste time pretending you have not."
Merrow hesitated.
"We do not use the word lightly," he admitted. "But yes. It has been spoken. In old stories, not so far from here, there was a clan with… unusual strength. The Maraks. Traders from the west say the way this girl moves, the way the heat bends around her, matches tales their grandfathers told."
He swallowed.
"They say she calls herself Marak."
The name landed between them.
Even out here, that word carried weight. Old reports of a hill estate that had burned in a single night when a demon sect decided it was done sharing a horizon. A tidy end on paper. No survivors. No loose ends.
And yet here was a girl wearing the name, breaking caravans and burning chains, in the same rough span of days the Anomaly Stone had woken and lit threads pointing east.
"Describe what she does," Yao said.
Merrow shared what he had: second hand accounts from caravan men, pieces of shaken tales in taverns. Heat that rolled off her like opening a furnace door. Fire that clung to flesh rather than wood. A pressure in the chest when she fixed on you. Always slavers hit first. Always the city's reputation taking the bruise.
Yao listened without interrupting.
While they spoke, runners returned with scrolls and scrawled notes. Jesk dragged a narrow table out into the shade and began sorting them, barking questions and sending men back out when the answers were too vague.
There was no mention of torn skies or changed rivers.
But over and over, the same name appeared in margins and curses.
Fire Starters.
At first a joke, a way for guards to grumble about someone else's problem. Then a warning. Then a curse.
At the centre of those reports: a girl who moved with impossible heat, and a small band around her that fought with more coordination than bandits usually managed. Some witnesses mentioned a companion with unusual tricks. Others swore the air around their group felt wrong in a way they couldn't name.
"Your only anomaly is this girl," Yao said. "And she appeared when our stone woke."
Merrow gave a strained smile.
"We prefer the word 'problem'," he said. "It sounds smaller."
A clerk arrived then, carrying a small wooden box as if it might break his arms if he slipped.
Merrow took it, hesitated, then stepped forward with his head bowed.
"Honoured cultivator," he said. "You have been direct with us. We will be direct with you. This girl is costing us coin and trust. Slavers are not good men, but their money keeps our walls standing. If caravans start to avoid our roads, this place withers. If your sect is willing to remove her, we are willing to pay."
He lifted the lid.
Ten spirit stones sat in two neat rows. Low grade, cloudy cored, edges chipped from too many hands. Still stones. For a town like this, a serious box.
Yao looked from the box to Merrow.
"You offer stones," he said slowly, "to have a sect kill a girl whose main decision so far has been to burn the people who sell other people."
Merrow winced, but did not retract the offer.
"If it were only slavers, perhaps some would look aside," he said. "But other merchants are uneasy. They do not care who the girl hits, only that caravans burn on our stretch of road. If they choose another route, this city starves before she does."
He drew a breath.
"We do not have the strength to tame a bloodline user," he said quietly. "We have to think like people who cannot afford ideals."
Yao let the silence sit.
Then he shut the box and pushed it back into Merrow's hands.
"Keep your stones," he said. "Feed your people. The Mountain Sect does not take payment to look into a matter it has already come to investigate."
Relief and confusion fought across Merrow's face.
"If you want to help," Yao went on, "give me everything you have on this girl. Names. Sightings. Lists of raids. Every complaint. Every bit of tavern gossip that sounds less foolish than usual. And tell me about anything else that felt wrong when she appeared. Strange lights. Odd sounds. Things that might be items rather than people."
Merrow seized on the instruction like a drowning man on a rope. Jesk drove his men harder. More reports appeared. Runners were sent to the closest inns with silver coins and orders to buy drinks for anyone who had seen fire on the road and could talk straight.
They built a clearer picture.
The first caravan incident had been three weeks ago. The same stretch of days, Yao remembered, that the Anomaly Stone had flared so hard it hurt to stand in the tower room.
Since then, the Fire Starters had hit slavers and certain rich caravans with a rough regularity. The girl was always there, chains gone now, flame in hand. Her band struck harder and cleaner than any rabble had a right to.
More quietly, a note surfaced about a hired rogue cultivator. Qi Condensation, no sect badge. Paid by merchants to solve the problem. He had gone out with confidence and not come back.
"Either she is better than she should be," Yao said, "or something in her hands is doing more than it should."
"A bloodline," Merrow said, "or an item?"
"Both are possible," Yao said. "That is why my elders are here."
He bound the reports into a single stack and tucked them under one arm.
"Keep watching your roads," he said. "If anything changes, write it down properly. If the elders wish to speak with you again, they know where your gate is."
Merrow bowed low enough that his sleeves brushed the stone.
"When your honoured sect deals with this girl," he said carefully, "remember that she has hurt our city. If… discipline is needed, we will not object."
"The Mountain Sect will decide what is needed," Yao said.
He turned and walked away, leaving the box of stones in Merrow's shaking hands, and rose back into the sky.
The spirit boat was quieter when he landed on the deck.
Under a canvas awning, the three elders sat at a low table with cups of tea between them. The faint hum from the boat's core crystal sat under everything, a steady note at the edge of hearing.
Elder Bo looked up first.
"You took longer than I hoped," he said, "but less time than I feared. That means you found something and it did not bite your head off."
"Not yet," Yao said.
He bowed, set the bundle of reports on the table and straightened.
Elder Shan gestured.
"Report."
Yao did.
He told them of the bandit raids, of slaver caravans burned, of a collared girl who had turned first on her masters and then on every chain she could reach. He spoke of the way witnesses described her heat and the pressure they felt when she focused on them. He sketched the picture of a bandit fort that had suddenly started fighting with purpose.
He did not leave out the box of ten low grade stones, or Merrow's strained attempt to act as if offering them was nothing.
When he said "Marak," all three elders went still.
"So the demon sects were sloppier than they claimed," Elder Lin murmured.
Elder Shan's gaze went distant for a moment, seeing memory rather than hills.
"The reports on the Marak estate were clear," he said. "Burned hall. Slaughtered clan. Servants taken. Old grudges settled. Nothing left that looked worth picking up."
"Reports," Elder Bo said, "are written by people who want the mess to be over. Demon sects do not always check the last cellar."
He flicked through the top report.
"If she truly carries that blood," he went on, "and she is lighting up slavers on our doorstep, others will hear. Demon sects. Rival sects. Every greedy little group that sniffs around for talent. I would rather she looked up and saw our crest than some devil banner."
Lin tapped one finger on the table.
"Bloodline cultivators start higher," she said. "They move faster through the early stages. Their cores form differently. Their paths bend towards whatever that old blood once touched. Sometimes they burn out or break early. Sometimes they do not. Either way, every major sect that can reach one will try to claim them."
She met Shan's eyes.
"If we leave her alone out here, she either dies small under a demon's knife or ends up in someone else's hall."
"Or," Bo added, "she keeps setting caravans on fire until someone pays a bored elder enough to go and take her head. I am not fond of any of those options."
They let the quiet sit for a heartbeat.
"Is it blood," Shan asked, "or an item?"
"The witnesses cannot tell," Yao said. "Some describe her the way we would speak of a bloodline. Others talk about the feel in the air the way they might talk about a strong artefact. There may be something in her hands as well as in her veins. The Anomaly Stone could have reacted to either."
Bo's eyes narrowed in thought.
"Any high grade piece in this air would be screaming into the void," he said. "If there is an item, I want it off the roadside and somewhere it will not be dropped in a ditch."
Shan nodded.
"We bring her in," he said. "If she is only a stubborn girl with odd talent, we lose little. If she truly carries Marak blood and had anything to do with waking the stone, we cannot ignore her. Any item that shook a tower from this far deserves a closer look."
"And if she refuses to join?" Yao asked quietly.
Shan's jaw tightened.
"Then we weigh the danger of leaving her as she is," he said. "After we have looked her in the eye."
Bo pushed his cup aside.
"Take Lin Huai with you," he said. "Go and find this fort. Speak politely first. If it goes badly, one of you should be able to run back and tell us why."
Yao inclined his head.
"Yes, Elder."
The fort had seen better lifetimes long before Cynthia's bandits moved in, and better days even since. The walls were patched, the sharpened stakes outside reset. Roofs that had once sagged now held new timber. In the yard, people moved with the sort of purpose they had never found when hiding alone in taverns or cages.
Cynthia walked the palisade with her hands behind her back, checking bell frames and watch positions. Below, Garron shouted at a knot of recruits about spear grips. Smoke curled from the cook fire. For a stolen fort, it almost felt like a home.
The air changed.
It hit her as a prickling along the back of her neck, the same uneasy sense she had felt when the spirit boat had passed in the distance nights ago. A breath later, one of the bell frames near the gate jangled, a sharp, clean sound that cut through the yard.
"Gate!" she called.
Garron and Kesh ran for the wall. Others followed, weapons snatched up more out of habit than panic.
Two figures walked up the track through the trees.
They did not hurry. They did not sneak. They walked with the balance of people who had not needed to run from anyone in years.
Plain travelling robes. Swords at their hips. That same quiet pressure in the air that made people's hearts beat too fast.
They stopped a little way back from the gate and looked up.
"Good morning," the taller one called. "We would speak with whoever is in charge."
Cynthia's fingers curled over the top of the palisade.
"You are looking at her," she said. "Say what you came to say."
The taller man – Yao – bowed, just enough to be respectful without putting himself low.
"I am Yao of the Mountain Sect," he said. "This is Lin Huai. Our elders are here because of a disturbance that began in this region. Your name sits in the middle of every report that city has."
Cynthia's mouth twitched.
"I am honoured to be the subject of so much paperwork," she said. "If the city sent you to put me in a cage, you can turn around and tell them to climb in one themselves."
"We did not come at the city's request," Lin Huai said. His tone was mild, his eyes sharp. "We came because the Anomaly Stone woke. The echo led us here. Every sign points through you and this fort."
He let that sit.
"We know what the city calls you," he added. "Bloodline. Trouble. That interests our elders more than any merchant's complaining."
Cynthia looked down at them, then along the wall at her people, then back.
"Open the gate," she said.
Garron hesitated.
"Boss—"
"If they wanted us dead, we would not have heard the bells," she said. "Open it."
The gate creaked. Men heaved the bar aside and dragged it back. The bandits stepped away, weapons in hand but held low.
Yao and Lin Huai walked in, posture relaxed, eyes taking in the yard in a single sweep: patched walls, reinforced towers, the way the bandits held themselves now, less like scattered thieves and more like the beginnings of a unit.
"You are Cynthia Marak," Yao said. It was not a question.
"I am," she said. "Last scion of a house the rest of the world decided to pretend was ash. You walked into my fort. Speak."
"Our elders wish to meet you," Yao said. "You have done things that interest them. A bloodline survivor in this air is rare. A bloodline survivor who starts by burning her own chains and the men holding them is rarer."
Cynthia's eyes narrowed.
"The city forgot to mention that part?" she said.
"They mentioned it quietly," Lin Huai said. "Men who traffic in chains do not enjoy discovering that the stock bites. Mortals trying to collar a cultivator is something we remember."
There was nothing fancy in his voice, but the undercurrent was cold.
"You want me on that floating thing above my head," Cynthia said. "You must know how that sounds to someone whose last hall ended in fire."
"We do," Yao said. "Our elders are not offering charity. If you come, you will be judged. They will see what you are and what you can become. If you join, you will train under our rules. You will fight when we call. But you will also have a chance to live long enough to do something about whoever burned your old home. If you stay here, hitting caravans, you will attract attention you cannot handle."
The yard had gone very quiet.
"You think I cannot handle it now?" she asked.
"I think you have done well in a place with almost no qi and no teachers," Yao said. "But talent and anger only stretch so far before they snap."
Cynthia's jaw flexed.
"That is a polite way to speak," she said. "For someone standing inside my walls."
"I am trying to keep them from being your grave," Yao said.
Garron shifted slightly at her shoulder.
"Boss," he murmured. "If there's a chance at real training—"
"I noticed," she said, not looking away from the two disciples.
She let the silence hang for another heartbeat.
"Anything else?" she asked them. "Or is this all about my blood?"
"The reports suggest there may be something else in play," Lin Huai said. "Witnesses talk about the feel in the air when you fight. Not all of that feels like bloodline alone. If there is an item in your hands that should not be in this region, our elders will want to see it. For your safety as much as anyone's."
Cynthia's mouth thinned.
"I have picked up scraps where I could," she said. "Nothing that belongs to you."
"We did not say it did," Yao said. "We said that anything strong enough to wake the Anomaly Stone should not sit in a bandit fort in the far east where demon sects and scavengers can trip over it."
Her eyes flickered, just for a moment, to one corner of the yard where some of their better gear was stored under watch. Then back.
"You want my blood," she said. "You want anything I might have touched that glows too brightly. You understand how that sounds."
"Yes," Lin Huai said simply.
She was not expecting the honesty, and it showed.
"Garron," she said, still watching them. "You hold the fort while I am gone. No stupid raids. No deals with anyone who smells like a slaver. If someone comes with chains, you burn them before they reach the gate."
Garron swallowed.
"Yes, boss," he said.
Cynthia studied Yao and Lin Huai one last time.
"I will come," she said. "I will listen. I will not promise to bow."
"Our elders prefer honest backs to bent ones that hate them," Lin Huai said. "If you decide to walk away after hearing them, they will still have to decide what to do. Better they decide after meeting you than off a pile of complaints."
"That will have to be enough," Cynthia said.
The spirit boat seemed larger from the rock ledge.
Up close, it was longer than the fort yard, hovering a man's height off the ground. The air around the hull hummed, making teeth and bones feel strange. Pale lines of light ran in carved channels under the planks, holding the boat in place against a sky that had no interest in supporting wood.
Yao stepped lightly up and turned to offer a hand. Cynthia ignored it and jumped, landing on the deck with the easy balance of someone born to polished stone and hardened by years on dirt.
Bandits remained on the ledge below, watching her go. Garron lifted a hand once, then let it fall.
Under the awning, the three elders waited.
They did not look like much at first glance. No crowns. No armour made of lightning. Just three people in worn robes, faces lined by age and weather and too many decisions.
Elder Shan's gaze weighed Cynthia the way a soldier sized up another fighter. Elder Lin's eyes flicked once to the faint mark on her neck where the collar had sat. Elder Bo's attention ran quickly over her stance, her breathing, the way the air seemed to lean in a little when she narrowed her eyes.
"So," Shan said. "The Marak girl who would not stay dead."
Cynthia lifted her chin.
"So," she said. "The mountain elders who took eight years to notice."
For a moment, the deck held steady and tight.
Then Bo barked a short laugh.
"Good," he said. "Sharper than the reports made you sound. Easier to polish a spine than grow one from nothing."
He stepped closer, stopping just out of arm's reach.
"You are too advanced for this air," he said. "Too steady for someone who crawled out of a slaver wagon with no sect at her back. That speaks well of you. It also tells me you are going to draw attention like blood in water."
Cynthia did not flinch.
"I intend to be the one doing the drawing," she said. "Not the bleeding."
"That," Lin said mildly, "is easier with a mountain behind you."
She looked past Cynthia toward the shrinking fort.
"The qi here is poor," she said. "For you to reach this stage without elders or proper stones is inconveniently impressive."
"I did not have much choice," Cynthia said. "When your home burns behind you, you either move forward or lie down in the ashes."
Shan's eyes sharpened.
"If you come with us," he said, "the mountain will stand behind you. You will have halls that do not burn easily, teachers who have walked the path you are just setting foot on, more stones than that city lord will see in his life. In return, you will be ours. You will climb where we tell you. You will fight when we call."
Cynthia held his gaze.
"If I climb high enough," she said, "will I be able to make the people who burned my last hall wish they had never picked up a torch?"
"Yes," Lin said simply.
Cynthia was quiet for a long heartbeat.
"Then I accept," she said. "For now."
Bo clapped his hands once.
"Good," he said. "Decisions are lighter when they are made standing up."
Shan stepped to the control plate. Lines carved into the wood flared under his palm. The spirit boat gave a small jolt as power shifted through it, then began to rise.
The fort dropped away beneath them. Figures moved in the yard. The palisade shrank to a ring of matchsticks. The road wound away like a piece of string.
Cynthia watched until the walls were no higher than her thumb, then turned her back on the rail. The deck hummed softly under her feet.
Far to the west, beyond the furthest line of hills, the sky darkened in a way that had nothing to do with weather.
Another vessel cut through the air there. Smaller than the spirit boat, narrower, its hull carved with sharp, crooked lines that made the eye want to slide away. The qi around it tasted of iron and old blood.
A torn banner snapped at its bow, marked with three jagged characters.
Heavenly Devil Sect.