Part 1 · Chapters
A Dream Hidden in the Ruins
Long before he had strength, he had learned to step forward.
Dreams in the Ash District were usually buried deep. They hid in cracks between bricks, in worn-out shoes, and in meals they went without. Once spoken aloud, they could too easily become someone else's joke.
Xiao Jin kept the money for his trial entry fee beneath the abandoned furnace's third chimney.
Inside a rusty tin were copper coins saved from every wage he had earned over the past two years. A skipped meal, a pair of shoes he did not buy, an injury left without medicine: all of it had finally filled half the tin.
When Xiao Hui discovered the secret, Xiao Jin was nailing a torn poster back onto the wall.
Only half the hero's face remained, but the long sword of flame was still whole. Xiao Jin copied the sword pose with his iron bar. A flame crept less than a finger's length along the metal before dying. Refusing to give up, he tried again, but his grip was wrong, and the heat blistered his palm.
“You come here every night?” Xiao Hui poked his head out from behind a heap of gears.
Startled, Xiao Jin nearly flung the bar away. “Why don't you make any noise when you walk?”
“You're the noisy one. You shout the name of a move every time you swing.”
“That's what real heroes do.”
“You just shouted ‘Sky-Splitting Inferno Slash,’ and all you did was burn one mosquito.”
Xiao Jin glared at him. Xiao Hui could not help laughing. He had barely begun when the sound of falling rubble came from deep inside the furnace.
Their joking stopped. They followed the sound underground. In the ruins, an elderly scavenger's leg was pinned beneath a fallen iron frame. Slag beetles crawled from gaps in the scrap metal around him. Their shiny black shells looked like moving chunks of charcoal, drawn by the warmth of his body.
Xiao Jin lit his flame to drive them away, but its faint glow pushed back only the nearest two. More beetles poured out of the darkness.
“There's an old conveyor on the left.” Xiao Hui pressed close to the wall, listening carefully to the gears. “The main shaft can still turn, but it's jammed.”
“Can you fix it?”
“Maybe.”
“Then keep trying until you can.”
Xiao Jin grabbed an iron plate and held it in front of the old man. The beetles battered it, making it shake. Acid splashed through the gaps onto his arms. He had too little fire to keep it burning, so he lit it for an instant at a time, driving back the beetles about to get around the plate.
Behind him came the sound of Xiao Hui's frantic hammering.
“Hurry!”
“I can't hear properly with you shouting at me!”
Xiao Jin clenched his teeth and fell silent. A few breaths later, a gear clicked sharply into place. The abandoned conveyor shuddered to life, lifting a row of rusty iron baskets. Xiao Hui pulled the lever. The baskets tipped down from above and landed neatly over the swarm.
Together, the boys pried up the beam and dragged the old man out of the ruins.
When the old man came around, he did not look at his leg first. Instead, he stared at the iron bar in Xiao Jin's hand. “Is that your sword?”
“Not yet.”
“When will it be?”
“When I've trained enough to make it one.”
The old man laughed, shaking ash from his beard. He had once been a craftsman at the Heroes' Academy, but had been driven into the Ash District after refusing to make weapons for nobles who wanted only to show off in duels. He rummaged through the scrap and pulled out an old black iron staff with a long, hairline crack in it.
“It's no famous sword. It isn't even good iron.” He handed the staff to Xiao Jin. “But a weapon doesn't choose its master. The master decides whether something can become a weapon.”
Xiao Jin took the staff. His arm dipped slightly under its weight.
On the way back, Xiao Hui kept turning the little gear he had repaired in his fingers.
“I can't even make a flame,” he said suddenly. “Can I really be any help?”
Xiao Jin rested the old staff on his shoulder. “Without you, those beetles would have picked my bones clean by now.”
“But heroes can all use fire.”
“Who says?”
Xiao Hui had no answer.
Xiao Jin looked at the tiny flame ahead of them, too weak to light the whole passage. “Not having fire doesn't mean you can't do anything.”
His words echoed through the empty ruins.
Xiao Hui looked down at the repaired gear in his palm. Xiao Jin tightened his grip on the cracked old iron staff.
It was not a sword yet.
But he had already decided never to treat it as scrap again.