Part 3 · Chapters
Turning Back for Strangers
Victory can lift your head—and make you lose sight of those beside you.
Sunset was taking away the last of their time. The clue lay ahead, but cries for help came from behind. Turning back might cost them the answer. Refusing to turn back might make him the very kind of person he never wanted to become.
Feng Ling found the route taken by the black-mist army.
If they crossed Singing Wind Gorge before dark, they could catch the convoy carrying the elemental hearts. The three glided high through the air. The black outline of the ancient ruins was already visible in the distance.
Suddenly, a distress signal of smoke rose from the gorge below.
Wind beasts had trapped a caravan against a cliff. Wagons formed a fragile defense around the elderly, children, and injured. The beasts were tearing through the final wagon panel.
Xiao Jin turned at once.
Shuang Ya seized his wrist. “The trail will disappear after dark.”
“The people down there won't last that long.”
“Neither will both nations if we keep taking detours!”
“Then you two keep following it.”
Xiao Jin pulled free and jumped into the gorge alone.
He landed before the caravan, his blade riding the wind to cut down the first beast. The pack immediately turned on him. Ash Step carried him swiftly around the wagons. He deliberately let every attack brush past, leading the monsters away from the people.
There were too many.
One wind beast tore his calf; another closed from behind. Just as he prepared to endure it with Ember Breathing, a wall of ice descended from the sky and blocked the claws.
“You owe me one lost lead.” Shuang Ya landed on a wagon roof.
A reverse current swept another group of beasts away. Feng Ling leaned down from the air. “And a letter I could have delivered on time.”
For the first time, they divided the work without arguing. Feng Ling forced the beasts lower. Shuang Ya froze moisture in the wind into guiding walls. Xiao Jin guarded the most dangerous gap, but no longer chased deep into the pack alone.
By the time the last beast fell, night had come.
Shuang Ya sat beside a broken wagon and bandaged Xiao Jin.
“Do you know how much I want to freeze you to the spot?”
“I know.”
“Then why do you keep risking your life for people you don't know?”
Xiao Jin looked at one of the rescued children. A girl held a broken toy windmill and waved shyly at him.
“Because I used to wish someone wouldn't pretend not to see me just because they didn't know me.”
Shuang Ya's hands paused. Then she simply wound the bandage one turn tighter.
Before anyone could cheer, a low crack came from the cliff. The storm had loosened the rock. A boulder large enough to crush the entire caravan was falling from the darkness. Xiao Jin, Shuang Ya, and Feng Ling all raised their hands, but each was a heartbeat too slow.
Blue-white lightning slashed down from high above the gorge. The boulder split over the wagons, its halves crashing onto open ground to either side.
A boy holding a folding lightning lance stood at the cliff's edge. He checked the injured before looking at the black-crystal fragments on the ground.
“Lei Ze. Northern border warden of the Lightning Kingdom.”
He did not stay. He only said that he, too, was tracking the same black-crystal pulses. Before leaving, he carved three short lightning marks and one long one into the rock. “Light these if the mist catches up again. I might not arrive in time, but I'll look this way.”
There was still a cost. The night wind had erased the convoy's trail. Feng Ling scouted for miles without finding its direction.
Just when they thought the lead was lost, an old caravan merchant brought out a map.
Several thick earth markings patched its lower-right corner. The merchant said that a few days earlier, a young man of the Earth people carrying a great shield had repaired the torn page. He had left no name, only a warning to avoid the stone bridge to the east.
“A troop in black armor passed this afternoon.” He pointed north. “They asked the way to the Starfall Ruins. I didn't tell them, but that's where they went.”
Shuang Ya looked at the map, then at Xiao Jin.
“Don't give me that ‘I told you so’ face.”
“I didn't say anything.”
“Your eyebrows did.”
They had lost their original path, but the people they saved had given them another.
Xiao Jin put the map away.
This time, Shuang Ya did not accuse him of taking the long way.