Part 3 · Chapters
The Boy Who Returned from the Dead
Victory can lift your head—and make you lose sight of those beside you.
The refugees at the border did not look like enemies. They simply held feverish children and dragged broken carts, with the same exhaustion in their eyes as the people of the Ash District. When a home is taken away, fire and ice shed tears at the same temperature.
When Xiao Jin reached Flame City's border, the first thing he heard was a child crying.
Guards had driven a group of Frost refugees to the valley floor. Thin frost coated their clothes. The elderly supported the injured, and children huddled behind an overturned cart. At their head stood a girl with short silver-white hair tousled by a hot wind. She spread her hands and raised a wall of ice crystals.
“Frost spies! Drop your weapons!” the guard captain barked.
“Black mist destroyed our village!” the girl shouted back. “If I'd come to attack, you wouldn't still be standing.”
Fireballs hammered the ice wall. The girl was skilled at shaping ice, but dared not let fragments burst toward the crowd. More and more cracks spread across its surface.
Xiao Jin walked down the hillside.
“Stop.”
The guards turned. First they saw his ragged cloak, then the face beneath it.
“Xiao Jin?” A guard dropped his fire lance. “Aren't you dead?”
“Almost.”
Fireballs were still flying. Xiao Jin used Ash Step, slipping between their flames. His Ember Blade ran along the guards' fiery chains. A single slash severed all the bonds holding the refugees, without injuring anyone.
The Frost girl immediately held an ice blade to his neck.
“A trick by the Fire people?”
Xiao Jin stopped his own fire blade beside her waist. “Are you always this polite to people who just saved you?”
“I didn't ask you to.”
“Good thing I didn't wait for you to ask.”
The captain stared at Xiao Jin's blade. Shock quickly gave way to suspicion.
“Standing with the Frost people, are you? Seize him!”
The fire lances fired together.
The girl raised an ice wall with a sweep of her hand. At the same time, Xiao Jin spread his faint fire, diverting the heat passing through the crystals to either side. Fire struck ice, and steam flooded the valley. Guided by Heat Sense, he moved through the white mist and cut the guards' weapons apart one by one.
In the confusion, one guard aimed at a refugee child.
Xiao Jin and the girl turned together.
Fire stopped the lance's tip. Ice sealed its trigger. They exchanged a glance and saw the same anger in each other's eyes.
“Let's get out of here first,” Xiao Jin said.
“That doesn't mean I trust you.”
“I didn't ask.”
They escorted the refugees into the wooded hills. Only when they were safe did the girl introduce herself as Shuang Ya. Her touch was gentle as she bandaged an injured child, though her words remained sharp as ice.
“That wound on your back. Black fire?”
Xiao Jin nodded.
Shuang Ya pulled back her glove. A similar black mark crossed her wrist.
“The very same power appeared in the Frost Kingdom's palace.”
Distrust still separated the two sides of the campfire.
The flame did not melt the ice blade. The frost did not extinguish the tiny fire.
The two lights quietly guarded the children sleeping between them.