Part 1 · Chapters
Ashes Will Not Bow
Long before he had strength, he had learned to step forward.
Yan Tuo thought he needed only to bring the fire wolf back to the Ash District to repeat yesterday's humiliation. But once people have seen someone stand in front of them, some can never bow their heads in silence quite as they did before.
Yan Tuo's punishment was only three days of confinement.
Late on the fourth night, he returned to the Ash District with his wolf and demanded a public apology from Xiao Jin. He wanted to prove that the step he had taken back in the arena was an accident. More than that, he wanted to stamp those words about standing in front of others out of everyone's memory.
But the fire wolf was not yet fully tamed.
Coal smoke dulled its sense of smell, and heat rising from underground made it restless. Yan Tuo had just loosened the fire chain when a distant furnace released pressure. The thunderous noise startled the wolf, and it broke free of his control.
It did not lunge at Xiao Jin. It charged into the homes instead.
Wooden sheds ignited at its touch. The narrow lanes became channels of fire in moments. Yan Tuo tried to command it again, but the wolf snapped back and hurled him against a wall.
“Everyone, get to the old cooling pit!” Xiao Jin climbed onto a roof and shouted. “Don't run toward the upper city! The wind will carry the fire after you!”
No one asked what right he had to give orders. The workers he had saved before lifted the injured. Xiao Hui led the children into a maintenance passage. Others began throwing cooling water by the bucketful.
Xiao Jin had neither an intact weapon nor the strength to injure the wolf. He soaked a gray cloth and wrapped it around his arm, deliberately lit his faint flame before the creature, then jumped into the narrowest coal alley.
The wolf smashed through the corner of a wall and pursued him.
“Pipe Two!” he shouted.
A worker broke the old steam pipe. White vapor sprayed the wolf's flank, briefly dimming its flames. Xiao Jin seized the chance to run through the coal yard and kick over sacks of coal powder. Black dust blinded the monster and blocked its view of the heat it was tracking.
But that was not enough.
Xiao Hui lay beneath an abandoned control panel, both hands buried among the gears. “Give me ten more breaths!”
The wolf burst from the coal cloud, its claws raking Xiao Jin's back. He rolled to soften the impact, but the wound still felt as if a branding iron had cut across him. From a safe distance, Yan Tuo shouted, “Don't hurt it! That's my family's summoned beast!”
“Then come and tell it that!”
Xiao Jin led the wolf away again. Counting his steps, he ran past the furnace, turned into a dead-end alley, and stopped before an abandoned coal press.
The wolf blocked the only exit. A blinding fireball gathered in its mouth.
“Now!” Xiao Hui screamed hoarsely.
The press's enormous iron arm crashed down, but caught only one of the wolf's hind legs. The creature thrashed in fury. The whole machine began to tilt.
Xiao Jin realized that gas leaking from a broken pipe filled the air. Ordinary people could not see it, but he had worked in furnaces since he was small. He knew what that sickly-sweet smell meant.
He raised his palm.
The tiny flame everyone had mocked dropped into the gas.
BOOM—
The blast tore through the narrow alley. At the last instant, Xiao Jin leaped into a drainage ditch. The shock wave knocked the wolf unconscious, and its flames gradually shrank back to the size of a cub.
Yan Tuo stumbled over. The first words out of his mouth were, “He broke my fire wolf!”
This time, the street did not immediately fall into its familiar silence.
“I saw your wolf lose control first,” one worker said.
“Xiao Jin saved my daughter.” Someone else stepped forward.
“And my home.”
One voice followed another. Yan Tuo stared at the people who once dared only lower their heads. For the first time, he found that his family name did not silence them at once.
Lie Ang arrived with the guards. After inspecting the wolf and its damaged control ring, he walked up to Xiao Jin.
“What is your name?”
Blackened from head to foot, Xiao Jin leaned against a wall to keep from falling.
“Xiao Jin.”
Lie Ang repeated it, as if he meant to remember the name properly this time.
“Today you had something besides courage.”
“What?”
“A plan.”
The residents' voices were not loud. Some still trembled as they spoke.
But after the first person finished, a second stepped forward.
Then a third.