He's taller than the other children his age, they don't even come up to his shoulders. He learns how to talk just like the adults before they do, too. That just means that when they play in the forest he gets to be the Wei Patriarch. Today Wei Mon Teris is in charge of the children pretending to be fighters from the Kazan clan. They're the bad guys. Everyone knows the Kazan clan are dumb and fall for all of the Wei clan's tricks. They're the best clan to pretend to fight- their Forgers make rocks out of Madra to throw in battle, and while none of the children can use any madra techniques yet they can find pebbles to throw easily enough. When one of the thrown pebbles hits him and he says it doesn't count because that was just his illusion, the other children nod sagely instead of disputing it. Everyone knows the Patriarch can make perfect copies of himself. He finally "loses" when a group of three other children, led by Teris, manage to work together to force him to the ground under their weight. That time he doesn't say it was an illusion, it would be dishonourable. They beat him fair and square. And besides, he can't always be an illusion or it's no fun.

He does gloat from underneath them all that while they may think they've defeated the Wei clan this day, he was actually just a distraction! The rest of the clan snuck into their lands and stole all their natural treasures! That's how it's supposed to end, though. The Wei clan is always victorious in the end, even if it's by a trick. They teach their clan words young in the Wei clan, and Lindon and his friends have learned them well.

Honour by any means.

Lindon drinks up everything his mother teaches him like a sponge. His father too, but his father has more to tell him about his own past. He tells him stories more than he tells him facts. That's just fine as far as Lindon is concerned. His father's participation in the tournament in the last Seven Year Festival left him with a limp and a scar on his lip, but Lindon wasn't more than a year old- he can't remember when it happened. His father has just always looked like this, as far as he's concerned. When his father tells him that he, Wei Shi Jaran, was the most promising young Iron in the valley, that if his leg still worked right he would surely win the Iron division tournament in the next festival, Lindon believes him wholeheartedly and brags to the other children about it. Why shouldn't he?

His mother teaches him more, though. Aura, a substance that's everywhere like air, but sometimes there's more of it in an area- sometimes it's denser. And around things, it changes to be like that thing. Aura around fire it becomes fire aura, like how air around fire becomes hotter. And then she explains madra, a bit like aura but something a person keeps inside themselves in their core. She pokes him in his belly, just above his bellybutton, and while he giggles tells him that she just poked his core. That's why his tummy is ticklish, you see. Lindon wonders if that means he also has extra cores in his armpits and on the bottoms of his feet. Maybe he has lots and lots of cores, and so he's going to be the best sacred artist ever!

Unfortunately, it turns out it's only the tummy that's ticklish because you have your core there.

Turning the aura of the world around you into madra to store inside your body is something he'll be taught after his test, apparently. Lindon asks if he has madra and his mother says yes. He asks how, if he doesn't know how to take it in from the air yet. She smiles proudly at him, and then explains that humans make their own madra too, out of the aura inside them. He asks what type of madra it is, and she says pure. That makes it sound special to young Lindon, but the reality is less impressive- you can't really do anything with it. No illusions, no beams of fire, no armour wrapped around you.

Well, there go his dreams of being the most powerful five year old in history due to his mastery of pure madra. He guesses he will have to wait until after the test.

His mother has one thing she can teach him, though, even if it is a bit early. And so Lindon learns how to cycle his madra, swirling it around in his core, making it flow out, through his torso and limbs, and then back in. It doesn't actually do much of anything, as far as he can tell. Apparently it will prepare him for eventually taking in aura from around him later, years from now. And it should slowly strengthen his spirit. Like how he got better at running from chasing the other children around in the forest. 

Feeling power flow through his core and out into his body is the coolest thing he's ever felt.

It turns out that if he cycles his madra while he's playing it takes him way longer to get tired. The games with the other children start to get lopsided enough that half the time he's the only one on his team. The big bad villain the warriors of the Wei clan team up against to defeat.

When his father tells him stories about his fights in old tournaments and daring raids he went on back when his leg worked right, Lindon asks questions. 

Copper. Iron. Jade. Gold. Words he's heard but doesn't understand all that well. He knows Irons are strong. He knows Gold is the best. But not the whole shape of it. His father explains it better, his deep voice rumbling through their house. It's a ladder you climb up. First, before you're even Copper, you're in the Foundation stage. His father ruffles his hair and says that's where Lindon is. Then Copper, and that's when you can learn how to take in vital aura and turn it to madra. When hit Copper you can see aura and madra, and your spirit opens to the vital aura of the world. His father isn't a man inclined to poetry, but when he describes his ascension to Copper, what it felt like to look out at the world and see streams of blue in the sky, an aura of red around flame, the whole world lit up in a hundred new colours, Lindon feels like he can see it himself.

Then, Iron reforges your body, makes it into something better. Something more. You're not a real sacred artist until you're Iron. Lindon's father raps his cane against his own knuckles hard enough that Lindon is pretty sure he just heard their neighbour startle and say one of those words he's forbidden from repeating. That he's an Iron is why he can do that without hurting himself.

Lindon thought that was just because he was an adult. Apparently no, not all adults are invincible. Just the ones like his dad. And his mom.

He knew his parents were the coolest.

Then, above Iron, Jade. When you hit Jade, you can feel aura and madra, not just see it. Feel it through stone and rock, feel it on the other side of a hill if there's enough of it. Like, say, if a war party from the Li clan is marching their way. If someone is trying to get the drop on you around a corner, you can get the drop on them instead. Your body is reforged again at Jade, and your spirit is strong enough you can do all sorts of incredible things. The stories Lindon's heard about the Patriarch's perfect clones? That's because he's a Jade. The flashes of light he saw last year? The ones on the side of Mount Samara that he could see from here? Jades from the Heaven's Glory school engaged in battle.

Foundation. Copper. Iron. Jade. Then Gold, theoretically, not that anyone has managed that in a thousand years.

Lindon decides right then and there. He's going to be the next Gold. His father ruffles his hair and grins at him and says, "That's the spirit!"

Lindon knows what his future is going to be shaped like. Oh, not perfectly. He might not actually end up a Forger like his mom. He might not be able to be a Soulsmith like he wants. But he learns everything so quickly. His parents tell him so. He's bigger and stronger than the other kids. If he's an Enforcer, a sacred artist whose soul is naturally inclined to reinforcing his own body, he'll be the very best of them, and if he isn't his natural strength should be enough to make it so he can almost keep up with one. Even if he can't be a Soulsmith, anyone can do scripting. 

His father was a great warrior. His mother is the clan's best Soulsmith. He hears what they say at night, when they think he's asleep. Prodigy. The First Elder asks about him, they say. Apparently teaching him that cycling technique wasn't normal, apparently some people say it's bad luck, but the First Elder isn't mad because he knows Lindon is special. 

Lindon knows what his future will be shaped like. He's the biggest, smartest child his age. He's strong and clever. He has a head start. He's going to be just like his dad and hit Iron by the time he's sixteen. He's going to be just like his mom and contribute to the clan outside of battle too. If it isn't Soulsmithing it will be be through scripting.

He asks his mother to tell him about the Spiritual Origin Test again. Maybe if he knows exactly how it's going to go, he'll stop being so nervous?

A few weeks later, as he waits in line, he discovers it has helped.

This isn't a test he can fail. It isn't. 

There's a bowl of something that looks like water up ahead. It's actually pure madra. Enough of it to fill a bowl. He's pretty sure he doesn't have enough in his core for a thimble. 

One by one, the children here will step forward and dip their hands into the madra. Then, it will do one of exactly four things. Freeze for Forgers, who form constructs out of their madra and can use their abilities to make weapons and armour for the clan. Move away from their hands for Strikers, who launch their madra at their enemies for a distance, flinging balls of foxfire or beams of light. Cling to their hands for Enforcers, who will wrap themselves in their madra, reinforcing their bodies. Rise up out of the bowl for Rulers, who use their madra to affect the aura around them, the slowest but most powerful of techniques.

His older sister Kelsa is a Ruler. It wouldn't be so bad to be a Ruler too.

But he wants to be a Forger. He wants to make illusions like his mother can. He wants to be a Soulsmith.

He prays to the heavens again and again as he waits in line. As he watches child after child place their hands in the bowl and get a badge to wear around their neck. Each is made of wood, for the Foundation stage. Into each is inscribed a symbol. Scepters for Rulers. Arrows for Strikers. Shields for Enforcers. And for Forgers? A hammer. 

He wants that hammer. 

Finally, it's his turn. Freeze. Freeze. Please.

In go his hands. The madra is cold. It must already be freezing!

He waits for it to finish freezing.

Then waits longer.

Longer.

Longer.

Nothing happens.

Nothing.

This isn't supposed to be one of the options.

The First Elder, standing beside the bowl, grabs Lindon's hands roughly. He dips Lindon's hands in the madra within again and again.

No matter how may times he tries, nothing changes.

Nothing happens. 

Again and again, his hands are pulled from the madra, so similar to water but not quite. It doesn't cling to his skin as water would.

It's strange what he notices. He doesn't remember the look on the First Elder's face, when he first noticed something was strange. He barely notices the other children behind him start to whisper. But somehow he notices the way his hand is dry when it's pulled from the bowl.

He feels numb.

He pulls himself out of it, as best he can. He's six now, he should be better at- whatever this is.

Maybe he has to do something?

He looks up and around and notices his mother whispering to an elder off to the side, a tense, frightened look on her face.

Oh. That's probably not good.

Okay, he doesn't know what this means, but he knows the First Elder likes him. Maybe if he just acts like everything is normal, things will just- move forward anyway?

"Which badge do I get, Honoured Elder?" he asks, using all the politeness he failed to use years ago, his gaze conspicuously pointed at the hammer badges. Maybe, if what's going on is strange, they can all just- go with the one that's the obvious right answer? His mother is a Forger, he wants to be a Forger, the bowl usually tells you what a person should do and this time it hasn't, so going with the obvious correct answer is what they should do instead, right?

"There is no affinity to your spirit. You are empty. Unsouled. You do not deserve these badges, Shi Lindon."

Oh. No clan name. That's how the Elders talk to you when they're very angry. Being Unsouled sounds. It sounds. Very bad. The First Elder sounds angry. He's misstepped, somehow. He supposes the other children didn't talk. That must be it. But- no, he can't leave without a badge. He can't make anything worse. That's already the worst thing that could happen. 

Sometimes, when adults are angry, it's not really at you. He doesn't think this is going to be one of those times when ignoring an adult's anger makes it go away. So he lets himself look as sad as he feels and asks, "Is it something I did?"

"No. It is something you are," the First Elder says, a hint of pity arriving on his face. Oh, okay, that means- he's not angry at him, then? If it's not his fault he can't be. He's the First Elder, the wise old almost-grandpa who said he was going to contribute lots to the clan. He's not going to be angry if Lindon didn't even do it. It's going to be okay, then.

Hopefully.

"Do I just- pick one, then?" He asks it like a question. It's obvious that's what they should do, now. If he's- equally strong at all things, somehow, if his soul doesn't lean any direction, then he should just pick. But if you tell adults something they're struggling with is obvious they get very angry, so it has to be a question.

"We will have a badge made for you. To show the world what you are," the First Elder says with a tight expression as he waves a hand at one of his assistants.

What. Not who. Oh. Oh, the First Elder is blaming him. It's not fair.

"Wei Shi Seisha, I suggest you take your son to the next testing. Perhaps the heavens will choose to have mercy on him then.” Seisha, his mother, draws him close and rests a hand protectively on his shoulder, but she nods at the First Elder regardless.

She isn't stopping this and making sure he gets a badge.

“Until such time as they do, he will be Unsouled,” the First Elder continues.

Once they're outside of the hall, Lindon asks his mother a question. "What does being an Unsouled mean?"

"It means the heavens wish to shame us," his mother says grimly.

And so Lindon learns that he is something shameful.

Or he will be until he gets a badge. But if he gets one- well. Then things change, right?

The other children stop playing with him. Wei Mon Teris apologizes and says his dad told him to, when Lindon asks why.

He needs a badge. If he has one, then everything will go back to normal.

His mother agrees. Before his next test, six months after the first, she smears some of her blood onto his palm. Some of the madra freezes just the tiniest bit, but then goes back to normal.

The First Elder flips over his hand and sees the blood.

He sends Lindon away. With a badge. A badge without any picture in it. No scepter. No arrow. No shield. No hammer.

Instead, in the centre of the hexagonal wooden badge is a single character. Empty.

Empty like Lindon is inside, the First Elder says.

Getting this badge does not make anything better.

Lindon gets into a fight with Teris. Teris starts it. He wins. Barely. Teris still only comes up to his shoulder. But he's almost as strong as Lindon, now.

A few minutes later, Teris' father, Wei Mon Keth, stomps over and backhands Lindon in the face. Then he carries him to his home. Lindon's father apologizes to him.

He is not allowed to defend himself. He needs to not get into fights at all. Even if he can still win them. And he won't be able to for long. He's Unsouled. The rest of the children are being taught better cycling methods, ones designed as the basis for specific techniques. Ones that are better than the one he knows. Soon they'll be taught techniques. If he is struck, he is to fall to his knees and apologize for annoying his betters.

He will never hit Copper. He will never have enough madra to do- anything, really. He will not be allowed to learn his clan's Path, the Path of the White Fox.

That is what it means to be Unsouled.

It doesn't make sense. It's stupid. So what if he'll never be as strong as the others? Why should that mean he can't learn anything at all? That's worse for the clan. Better to have a Foundation stage Lindon who can do- something. Even if it's not a lot, something is better than nothing. It doesn't cost anyone anything to let him read a Path manual.

His father tells him that he doesn't understand. It is simply the way things are done. And tells him to never say that outside of the walls of their house. He looks concerned. Almost frightened.

His mother has a different look on her face. Pity. But she doesn't offer to help him at the next test. Or to sneak him a Path manual. 

He is not tested a third time until he is eight. This time, he is more prepared.

He sneaks in the night before to carve a script into the underside of the table the bowl rests on. The entire thing should shake enough to make the madra in the bowl wobble. He doesn't really know what he's doing, scripting is complicated, but this script is about as simple as it gets and his mom lets him read her scripting books. They're not techniques, you see. He's not forbidden from that. 

He's tested it on the kitchen table at home. It will work. It will barely look like the madra is moving, but he can send madra from his hand through the table and into the script the entire time it's in the bowl and then stop when he takes his hand out. It will look just like he's the weakest, most pathetic Ruler ever to live, but it will make him look like a Ruler. Anything is better than being an Unsouled.

Anything at all.

The table is smaller. That's what ruins him, in the end. The script outputs the same amount of force, and the table is smaller. It shakes more. A lot more. Enough to be visibly moving, along with the bowl. The First Elder finds the script he's carved into the underside of the table.

Lindon apologizes on his hands and knees, and manages to grovel well enough to avoid being struck. 

What can he do, if he's stuck like this? Is there any place for him? Anything at all he can do that matters?

There are some things, it turns out. He can learn to script just as well as anyone else. He'll never be able to activate any powerful scripts, but he can inscribe ones better sacred artists use. He can do some of the grunt work for the real Soulsmiths like his mother.

He will never be able to fight. He will never matter.

What if he could reach Copper anyway, though? Cycling strengthens your spirit, and when your spirit is strong enough you ascend to Copper. What if he just does more of it? More than anyone else? If he's using it to do anything he'll run out, but just cycling alone is supposed to do something. The slow motion of madra out of his core, through his body, and back to his core should, over time, strengthen him, even if he is Unsouled. They say if he's lucky the by old age the natural strength of his spirit will eventually grow to the point where he will advance to Copper. A normal child is considered slow if it takes them until fourteen. But that just means it is possible.

But all he has is the most basic of basic cycling methods. The one they teach Foundation stage children to prepare themselves for the more specialized, more powerful cycling techniques they learn after they know their affinity. It's better than nothing. But not by much. 

He begs his mother to teach him. His father. His older sister. All of them say no. If it was learned, they would be punished. His father's leg could heal if he advances to Jade, his mother could do so much more with her Soulsmithing, and most importantly the future of his sister, Kelsa, will be determined by how well she grows over the next ten years. If she does well in the Seven Year Festival she will get the resources she needs to be Iron in time for the next Festival, and if she does well or even wins at that, she could reach Jade. She's so talented. And she won't get any of that if the family is punished for teaching an Unsouled things he should not know. If they're snubbed when it comes time to decide which of the youngest generation get bits of spirit fruit in order to fuel their advancement to Copper. Or when it comes time to decide whether Seisha or another Soulsmith is given some well-paying task that would allow them to purchase a spirit fruit themselves, or instead the job is given to a rival.

He could keep it secret? Nobody would have to know until after he'd advanced to Copper and proved he deserved to learn it. He's sure if they teach him he can do just as well as the other children- he might need to work harder than them but he will. He'll cycle in his room for six hours a day. He'll get good enough at not expending his madra on refreshing his muscles to it all day.

But no. They don't believe him. Sure, they know he'd try. It wouldn't matter, though. He's Unsouled. Everyone knows what that means. It's just not possible.

He tries to invent his own better technique exactly once. It seems to work for nearly an hour, and then suddenly he's waking up and apparently two days have passed.

His mother says he's lucky to be alive with the way he strained his spirit.

He's noticeably weaker after that, for a while. He makes up what he lost in a few weeks, but- no, he can't afford to move backwards. Everyone else is moving on. Going so much faster.

Every six months he goes to the test after all the other students, the bowl left out for him out of the hope that the heavens will have mercy on him. Every six months the madra fails to move.

The first other child advances to Copper at nine.

He starts helping in the clan archives when he's eleven. When his mother doesn't have an errand for him to run he spends some time between noon and the evening meal returning books and scrolls to their place on shelves, or sweeping the front step of the building. The building is small, nondescript. You'd have no idea it was the archive just looking at it, but that's how the Wei clan does things. Better if any invading group from the Li or Kazan clans can't identify the archives so easily. It's different for the home of the Patriarch, or of an Elder, but nobody lives here.

He waits a month, and then copies a cycling technique from the Path of the White Fox out of a Path manual and onto a scrap of paper. He folds the bit of paper and places it within his pocket.

And then- pain. He finds himself on the ground, completely unaware of how he got there, the side of his head throbbing. 

The Eighth Elder is standing above him. The Eighth Elder has been in the room the entire time, completely invisible to Lindon's gaze, hidden behind the Fox Mirror technique.

The Eighth Elder is kind. He waited to see if Lindon would realize what he was doing was wrong and throw away the scrap of paper. He hasn't, and so now he must be punished.

Luckily, as far as the Eighth Elder is concerned, a strike to the side of his head from a Jade is punishment enough for a child.

Lindon is grateful, and manages to bow and thank the Eighth Elder even if the room is spinning.

The Eight Elder can't always be watching. But he does make Lindon turn out his pockets at the end of the day. Last time had to be bad luck. Sometimes when he leaves he finds the Eighth Elder unconscious on the roof, snoring in the afternoon sun.

What if he just memorizes the instructions?

The answer, it turns out, is that the elder was, once again, inside the room.

He is not as merciful, this time. He is left well enough to work, however, even if it hurts.

He's lucky they let him keep working in the archives, frankly. He should probably stop trying to peek at the Path manuals. For a while, anyway. A few months.

His father congratulates him on his work ethic. Most of the children his age haven't found a way to contribute, yet, beyond chores at their family's compound. It's good that he's trying to make up for his nature.

He's not allowed to look at the Path manuals. That really does leave a lot of the library free for him to look at. Memoirs. Legends. He won't ever be a great hero himself, but he can read about them. He finds the first thing that he thinks might save him that way. A letter, written by an explorer who had travelled to each of the four great peaks that surrounded Sacred Valley, his home. It's in her description of the pool at the top of Greatfather that he thinks he sees salvation.

One handful of water restored my aching body and flagging spirit. Two sent me into a cycling trance from which I would not emerge for three nights and days, having imparted to my spirit a density and potency that I had never before known. As I had not bathed in all that time, I dipped myself briefly into the spring, only to find the water anything but gentle. It scoured my arm like a frozen blade, and when I removed my hand, I found my skin more youthful and supple than ever before, in great contrast to the rest of my body. I advise any artist of the Jade to visit Greatfather’s peak as soon as they are able, provided they can withstand the storms and the pain of the pool itself.

He goes home and excitedly tells his parents. Surely, if anything could cure him, that would be it.

But no,  he is told, the Holy Wind School makes the Greatfather their home. And each of the four schools of Sacred Valley is as powerful as any two of the three clans put together. They would perhaps allow the Patriarch of the Wei Clan the right to use the pool at the top of the mountain that they make their home upon, for sufficiently generous gifts. Perhaps if he were a clan elder, even. But not a Foundation stage child. Not an Unsouled.

He finds many more things like that during his time in the archives. But it all ends the same way. The City of Anvils is lost. A parasite ring would make his cycling twice as hard and ensure he grew twice as fast, but he could save his clan stipend for a decade and fail to afford one. And if he could, anyone in his clan would likely refuse to sell it to him- he'd waste it, compared to giving it to some young prodigy with a future. A Bloodmaker pill would need one of the clan's best refiners to agree to make it for him and likewise herbs that would cost a decade of saving. The Torchyard would simply kill him, without the ability to harvest the flame aura there.

To his eternal shame, it takes him two years to think of looking at the technique manuals. They're probably useless, certainly. They will all be for specific techniques not practised by the Wei Clan, usually because they don't utilize the aspects the Wei Clan does for their sacred arts. To an artist who uses madra of dream and light, a weaver of illusions, a technique to spit fire may have sounded wonderful, but it would have relied on flame madra incompatible with their core. Similarly, with his madra still pure he won't be able to use any of them, probably.

Probably.

Why did it take him two years to decide to check anyway?

The day he decides to check, he goes through them, one after another, hope dwindling with each one. They're organized into sections, each labelled with the requirements. Dream and light madra make up most of it. There are others requiring fire aspect, others which require cloud, or lightning. He won't be able to use any of them. He's allowed to look at them, after all. If people expected an Unsouled to manage to pick up anything that let them be a real sacred artist out of a technique manual he wouldn't be allowed to read them.

At the end, there is one short book alone. 

The technique's name? Heart of Twin Stars. The requirements? None.

It turns out to be more useless than he'd hoped. Enough it almost makes him laugh. It's a technique to split your core. Leaving you with, in the end, two cores that add up to something weaker than the one you started with. It's a fabulous tool by which Lindon can cripple himself even farther.

Wait. No, it can't be. A cycling technique. Of course you'd need a cycling technique to prepare to split your core!

He's saved. He's saved. Sure, it won't be that much better than what he has now, but it will still be better. A proper cycling technique. Sure, it will leave him with a core he can split in half in the end, but he can just skip that step. The actual technique is designed to stabilize the spirit in preparation for splitting. Not anything outstanding, but it's anything at all. 

Something catches in his thoughts. The technique was developed to gain immunity to a particular kind of destabilizing short-range striker technique that could be used to temporarily stop someone from using their madra. But the terminology is odd.

But some scrap of talent must have remained in him, for he developed an underhanded technique that he christened the “Empty Palm.” I will not lower myself to attempt the technique on my own, but as I understand the theory, he focuses neutral madra into a simple palm thrust. How he cancels out the aspects of his spirit, I have not yet deduced, but the result is undeniable.

When his Empty Palm makes contact with my core, his madra disrupts my own. For a few seconds, I am as powerless as a wretched Unsouled. Even more so, perhaps, as I can hardly muster the energy to control my own limbs.

Neutral madra. That sounds like...

Off he goes. Back to the first thing that inspired him, the first time he thought he had a way out, the old, old description of the pool at the top of Greatfather. Sure enough, in a later passage she speaks of neutral madra offhandedly. And then uses another term for it. Pure madra.

A technique that uses pure madra! Something he can use! It's not described in the manual, but surely he can figure it out himself. The man certainly sounds disdainful of it. Like it's trivial but for however he manages to turn his aspected madra pure again.

He switches to the new cycling technique. In the evenings, he tries to practice the Empty Palm.

He doesn't get anywhere. It's no time at all before his core is empty, and he isn't even sure exactly what he should be trying for, or how to tell if it's working. It's not like he could use the Empty Palm on himself. It's his madra. His core would just absorb it like nothing happened. It would just be a very strange and terrible cycling technique that didn't do anything.

Should he be wreathing his palm in madra? Should he be trying to launch it out? Should he be- trying both at once, somehow? He has no idea.

The frustration doesn't get to him too much, though. 

He's a real sacred artist. He's trying to reinvent an ancient technique from an old scroll he found forgotten in the clan archives. 

It's like something out of one of the bedtime stories his father told him as a child.

He turns fourteen. He's the last person of his age cohort still in the Foundation stage. The only person as old as he is in the Foundation stage in the whole clan. There are probably others in the valley. There are nearly a million people in Sacred Valley, and the Wei Clan is only a tenth of them. And they're a clan. They may be below the schools, but they're above everyone else. There are probably other people in the foundation stage.

He's the only Unsouled in the clan, at the moment. Maybe the only one in any clan. 

He bows and scrapes to anyone who seems to be annoyed at him. All of the children he used to lead around in the forest have outgrown him in power if not in height. That almost makes it worse. He's taller than them. As tall as the average adult now, actually. And nearly as broad, despite his age. Something in his height and his build and his face makes it seem hollow when he bows and scrapes to the adults or the other children. It gets harder and harder to convince them he really does see himself as less than them.

He picks up the habit of referring to himself as "this one." 

"This one apologizes for getting in your way."

"This one is running an errand for his honoured mother, Copper cousin."

The shame burns. 

It doesn't make sense. It doesn't. There's no reason at all for this. Sure, he's weak. Sure, with an unaspected soul he'll never reach Jade, and if by some miracle he did he'd be the weakest Jade in the valley forever, with the possible exception of some sacred artist stupid enough to try to be something they're not. He'll have all the problems any sacred artist has if they focus too hard on abilities outside their affinity because he doesn't have one. He's innately and fundamentally crippled. But that's reason to not spend resources on him, not reason to make sure he's useless. 

The other families in the Wei clan even seem smug about it all. Like it's good, somehow. Like he deserves it. Like his family deserves it. Why? 

He can't ask. It's not his place.

He tests his attempts at the empty palm against a simple script circle he's empowered, a tiny little thing that pushes back against anything that attempts to enter it with barely as much force as a strong gust of wind. He needs to see if he's even made enough progress to disrupt that. Honestly, he should have thought of this sooner. It will be far easier than doing anything to a sacred artist's core would be, there a person has some degree of innate authority and rather a lot more madra than he can afford to spend empowering a script circle.

The issue, it turns out, is that disrupting a script circle is too easy. A burst of pure madra does it. So does a long, slow, highly diffuse gust. Disrupting the purely spiritual is the only thing pure madra can do, and it does that well. But he knows that gust couldn't be effective in battle because it's simply too easy. The Empty Palm would be taught to every Wei Clan child and a third of the clan would follow a Path focused entirely around shooting blasts of pure madra if it was that simple to disable another sacred artist. Lindon is Unsouled and he still has enough madra to send out a gust from his palm strong enough to disable a script circle. A diffuse blast that widens out to eight inches on a side and reaches perhaps twice that far by the time it destabilizes. If he can do that, a Jade with pure madra could send out a gust that was a dozen feet across and two dozen long. A technique with that broad an area that disabled any sacred artist struck would be a treasure beyond imagining. It's so easy, is the thing. It's simple enough a sacred artist of any affinity could learn it alongside their traditional techniques without destabilizing their spirit. They'd need to be on a path of pure madra, which would impair them in a number of ways, but a technique that could disable any sacred artist within two dozen feet, too broad to dodge- that would very much be worth the cost.

He realizes all of that after an hour of excitedly crowing to himself in the privacy of his own mind about how he's discovered a way for the Wei clan to completely conquer the valley. He has a technique to split cores- what if every Wei clan child learned that first, and kept one of their new cores pure and used the other for the traditional clan sacred arts? What if every member of the Wei clan had a technique that allowed them to disable any sacred artist within multiple paces of them? It would change the world.

But no, if it was that easy some sacred artist not of one of the great clans would have stumbled into the idea at some point in the last thousand years and would now be a legend every child heard of growing up. Not the core splitting, but the use of pure madra. A diffuse gust of pure madra is the simplest, least complicated striker technique imaginable. You can almost do it by accident.

But what if he's wrong? What if it does work like that? What if he dismisses the idea and passes up on the greatest technique in the history of the valley? 

He can't risk that.

He goes and talks to his sister, Kelsa. He starts by saying he's had an idea for a technique even he can use.

She does not, actually, believe that it could even possibly be useful. 

That stings.

He explains that he found a description of it in a technique manual. That she believes, at least. And once he shows her the manual, she's willing to believe it's something that could make him- well. Not not Unsouled. But not completely defenceless. It's one year to the next Seven Year festival. He'll be competing against the other Foundation stage children in the tournament. He'll be two years older that the very oldest of them, and five years older than most of them. He can't afford to lose. He can't afford to do anything but win it outright. He can't bear the thought of shaming the Wei clan, shaming himself, like that. He can't.

And he can't do that without something. This is something.

Will she help him? Please?

She agrees.

He asks her to try first with the broad, wider-ranging gust, rather than the focused jab. He says it's because it means his aim wouldn't need to be as good, keeping his dreams of Jades using blasts of pure madra to disable their enemies at range to himself. And it is true that it would be better if he could disable someone with a palm-strike to their stomach even if he missed their core by a few inches.

Her madra will not be pure madra. It will not particularly disrupt his spirit. It will not be anywhere near as good at actually piercing his core. But she is a Copper, and he is Unsouled. That difference should be large enough to make up for that.

She tries for the first time.

He blinks. Nothing? Nothing.

Too diffuse. Kelsa says she felt her madra brush against his core and simply rebound off it.

Well. His good sense that it couldn't be that is easy is probably validated, then. It's possible that the difference between pure madra and White Fox madra is larger than the difference between a Copper and an Unsouled, but he doubts it. 

She tries again.

The dirt smells like annoyance. The leaves fifteen feet above him taste odd. He's glad he has a dirtbed out here with him in the woods. It's very impressive Kelsa figured out some method to become fifteen feet tall. 

If only the grass didn't hate him.

He shakes his head clear after a few more moments of confused daze. His sister is saying- something?

"...more focused. Yes, that should help."

"Wait, Kelsa, what are you-"

"Sit up, I need to test something."

"Test what-"

She grabs his wrist and pulls him upright. Then she palm strikes his stomach again.

The world melts. One strange hallucination after another assails him. The leaves on the trees above him grow claws. The grass beneath him sharpens and nearly pierces his skin. The dirt behind his heels softens and wraps his feet up in warm coziness. The clawed leaves take flight, swirling through the air and around him.

It takes him much longer to come up from the confusion this time.

"No, no, that's not fast enough. The motion itself needs to carry the madra, transmission through contact doesn't work correctly. Up again. I need to try again."

Lindon sat up slowly. "Wait a moment. I think it's worse for me, since I'm so-"

It takes even longer this time for the world to return to normal. It seems like Kelsa's making progress.

That's not a good thing.

"I'm not doing that again."

"Then you'll be worthless for the rest of your life. You don’t want to shame the family? Sit back up. Stand up, actually, I think I'll figure this out faster that way." It's said so casually. Completely absent ridicule. It's just the way things are. It still hurts to hear. Because she's right. He is useless. If he doesn't learn this and use it to win the Foundation stage tournament at the next Seven Year Festival and prove it's worth letting him learn a Path he'll always be useless.

Kelsa stares off into the distance and thinks, not even bothering to look at him. "I've almost worked it out. It has to transmit all at once in a focused blast. Not a slow stream," she says.

There's something else, though. Something he can read in just how matter of fact she's being, in the way she's trying to puzzle out the Empty Palm even now rather than continuing to try to convince him to stand up. She doesn't doubt he'll get up, not really. She knows him.

He stands. 

"Catch me when I fall. If I land wrong I could break something."

She nods.

It takes twelve more repetitions. Twelve times he falls, twelve times Kelsa catches him, twelve times he stands again. After the fourth he turns his head to the side and vomits. After the eighth his legs won't stop shaking. It's not important.

He stands. He stands.

He stands.

And then, finally, it's over. He thinks. It's kind of hard to be sure what's a hallucination and what isn't, right now.

He stumbles as he stands up and Kelsa holds him steady. He takes a few long, slow breaths, cycling his madra as Kelsa stops him from falling. Slow, steady breaths despite the way the world hasn't quite gone back to behaving himself. Cycling his madra will help him shake it off faster, and he needs to breathe evenly to cycle.

"I think I heard you say you've got it? Or was that a hallucination?"

It was not, it turns out, a hallucination.

“Step forward and shove in one motion, focusing madra in your palm. Specifically your palm, not your entire hand. Release it in one breath, being sure to exhale and cycle to the rest of your body for stability. Understood?”

He's still swaying. He's not sure whether the things he's seeing are real. Are the leaves actually trembling like that? Is that something they do? Or is this yet another instance of hallucinating a memory?

“Please, I need... I need a moment.”