Part 1 · Chapters
The Boy Who Could Never Be a Hero
Long before he had strength, he had learned to step forward.
Cheers rolled across the trial arena like a sea of fire. Every voice praised dazzling displays of power. Xiao Jin stood among them, the light in his palm pitifully small. Yet it was everything he had spent two whole years bringing to this place.
The Heroes' Academy's trial arena could hold half the Ash District.
The stands were packed with upper-city residents. Flags and fireballs lit the sky as bright as day. Candidates stepped onto the flame-testing platform in turn. One summoned a firebird; another drew out a whip of fire several paces long. The moment Yan Tuo's blazing fire wolf appeared, the entire arena erupted in cheers.
When Xiao Jin's turn came, laughter spread before his name did.
He pressed his hand against the fire crystal.
“Burn.”
The familiar faint glow rose from his palm. One mark at the very bottom of the crystal lit up, then climbed no farther. The clerk did not even look up, simply recording the lowest rank on the form.
In the attack test, other candidates' fireballs shattered stone walls. Xiao Jin's flame left only a scorch mark on a wooden target. In the speed test, the leg strength he had built pushing coal barely earned him a pass. When they drew lots for combat, the wooden tile he took from the box bore Yan Tuo's name.
The cheers surged, a wall of fire almost swallowing the faint light at the center of the arena.
Yan Tuo entered as though he already knew the result. “Kneel and surrender. At least you'll get to keep that fire poker.”
Xiao Jin gripped the old man's staff. “It took me two years to get here. I didn't come to kneel.”
As the bell rang, the wolf sprang out of the flames.
Xiao Jin had studied its movements. A raised left paw meant a straight lunge; a shortened tail flame meant a turn. He dodged two attacks in succession and struck its foreleg with the staff, but scattered only a layer of sparks. Yan Tuo immediately swung a long sword of flame, cutting off his escape from the side.
Iron met fire. The crack in the staff lengthened at once.
On the third blow, the staff broke.
Yan Tuo used the wolf to knock Xiao Jin down again and again, deliberately refusing to end the match. The instructor did not intervene. The people in the stands even treated each heavy blow as part of the show.
“Is this the Ash District's hero?” Yan Tuo called out.
Xiao Jin lay on the ground with only half a staff in his hand. He noticed that whenever the wolf landed, its right hind leg was a fraction slower than its left. The spot scalded by steam during their last fight in the alley had not fully healed.
He deliberately left an opening.
The wolf roared and charged straight at him. At the last instant, Xiao Jin rolled low beneath its belly and drove the broken staff into a crack between the paving stones. The tip caught the wolf's injured leg. Its huge body lost balance and crashed toward Yan Tuo, who stumbled one step back.
Only one step.
But the entire arena fell silent.
Humiliated and furious, Yan Tuo unleashed all his fire. Xiao Jin could no longer dodge. The wave of flame struck him head-on and sent him sliding out of bounds.
The instructor declared Yan Tuo the winner. He walked up to Xiao Jin's fallen body and spoke as though pronouncing an unchangeable truth.
“Courage is not talent. You lack the strength of flame, the bloodline, and the resources. Someone like you can never become a hero.”
Some people in the stands nodded. Others had already begun discussing the next match.
Xiao Jin found the broken staff. His first attempt to stand failed. On the second, his knees buckled again. On the third, he finally propped himself up on the half-length of iron.
“You can say I'm weak today.” His voice was quiet, but everyone in the front row heard it. “You don't get to decide the rest of my life.”
He dragged his injured leg out of the arena, without a badge and without admission to the academy.
High above, in the shadows, Guard Captain Lie Ang kept watching him go. His deputy asked, “Captain, is there something special about that boy's ability?”
Lie Ang shook his head.
“Then why are you watching him?”
“I'm wondering,” Lie Ang said, “why he knew he would lose, yet never once looked toward the exit.”
The boy left with no badge, only a broken staff and a body covered in wounds. But Lie Ang remembered the sight of him walking away. It was not a victor leaving with his head held high. It was someone who had lost, and still refused to leave his fate behind in the arena.