Part 4 · Chapters
I Stand Here for You
True protection gives everyone the chance to stand side by side.
Inside the dark core, there was no battlefield.
Only memories.
Xiao Jin saw a Fire child lose their family to an icy gale, and a Frost child's village burn. He saw Wind people mock the Earth people as clumsy, and Earth people hate the Lightning people for taking their mineral veins. He saw fear turned into hatred, again and again, and every hatred taught to the next generation.
Countless voices blamed one another in the dark.
Hui Ying's true form was not a giant. It was a shadow woven from those voices.
“You cannot kill me without destroying the Hearts of Fire and Ice,” it said. “But if those hearts are destroyed, the Fire and Frost peoples will lose the source of their elements. Countless lives will end.”
The Flame of a Thousand Hearts in Xiao Jin's hand could burn through the entire core.
One strike would end the battle.
His former self might have chosen to shoulder it all, then hide the cost inside his own wounds.
This time, he sent his thought outward along the threads of heartflame.
“Destroying the core will destroy the Hearts of Fire and Ice too.”
Shuang Ya's voice answered first.
“Then we can't destroy it.”
Xiao Hui followed at once:
“We'll find another way.”
Yan Pan's voice was low and steady.
“Leave the outside to us.”
Feng Ling shouted through the wind:
“Just focus on seeing the path!”
Only after hearing every breath did Xiao Jin slowly lower his blade.
“I can't save two peoples by destroying the source of their lives.”
Hui Ying froze.
Deep in the memories, Xiao Jin saw again the boots that had pinned him down.
Coal dust pressed against his face. Yan Tuo's voice came from far away:
“Admit you were born inferior.”
Hui Ying pushed that memory before him.
“You hate him too.”
Black mist grew outward from the boot's sole.
“Keep this memory, and I can remember it for you forever.”
Xiao Jin did not deny it.
“I have hated him.”
The small light reached the other end of the memory.
There was more than Yan Tuo's boot holding him down. There was also the half-step he later took aside in the alley, the weapons lowered before the gate, and Yan Tuo standing guard at the entrance to the Ash District with his fire wolf.
“But the wrong he did shouldn't decide who he has to be forever.”
Xiao Jin extended his hand.
He did not erase the boots. He did not wipe away his wounds.
That kick had happened.
Yan Tuo's later choices did not excuse the past. Xiao Jin owed him no forgiveness.
But he would not let that wound decide who he himself would become.
He simply let the whole memory come together again.
Xiao Jin separated the Flame of a Thousand Hearts into countless small lights, sending them into the memories one by one. The fire burned no one. It illuminated the other half that hatred had cut away:
When icy winds struck the Fire village, a Frost physician risked their life to save its children. When the Frost village burned, a Fire craftsman used their body to hold back a falling beam. In every story used to prove the enemy hateful, someone had refused hatred. Their names had simply been forgotten.
There was a Wind messenger who turned into the headwind to carry out a trapped Earth child. There were Lightning guards who pulled up boundary stakes and returned the mine entrance to the Earth people.
“No!” Hui Ying screamed. “They need an enemy!”
“They need someone willing to put down a weapon first, even when they're afraid.”
The black mist peeled away layer by layer.
The Hearts of Fire and Ice separated in the gentle light. Both were still cracked, but no longer devoured each other. Without hatred to sustain it, Hui Ying shrank to a final wisp of black smoke.
“I will return,” it said. “People will always be afraid.”
“And someone will always light a fire.”
Xiao Jin closed his hands.
The light passed through. Hui Ying dissolved.
The sky opened again.
The Heart of Fire flew back to Flame City's tower. The Heart of Ice crossed the snowfields to the Frost Kingdom. Snow began to melt in Flame City. Every extinguished furnace in the Ash District lit again. In the Frost Kingdom, the glaciers stopped breaking apart.
Outside Flame City and along the northern front, the two armies saw their elemental hearts pass overhead almost simultaneously.
Lie Ang sent the images preserved in the black core through the military communication crystals. At the border, Frost scouts also recognized the stolen Heart of Ice.
The first ceasefire horn sounded outside Flame City. Its signal traveled through the crystals to the border. Moments later, the Frost army lowered its weapons too.
The war did not stop because everyone suddenly trusted one another. Both sides had finally agreed, for now, not to strike the next blow.
After the war, the council offered Xiao Jin the highest hero's badge and prepared the largest mansion in the upper city for him.
Xiao Jin did not reach for it.
“I have three conditions.”
First: abolish every class restriction based on birth, home district, bloodline, or the strength of one's element.
Second: allow every child, regardless of bloodline or ability, to receive hero training.
Third: never allow elemental power to become a tool for the strong to oppress the weak. The council would be no exception.
Some angrily accused him of threatening the city. Others demanded that reform wait until postwar reconstruction was complete.
Lie Ang laid his long blade on the table.
“He isn't a threat,” he said. “He has only brought back the truth you least want to hear.”
Ash District workers, Frost refugees, Wind merchants, and Earth villagers entered the chamber in turn. They had no hero's badges. They brought wounds, broken tools, and the names of those they had lost in the war.
Yan Tuo's family objected most fiercely.
But Yan Tuo stood at the end of the table. For the first time, he did not check his father's expression first.
“I support it.”
Arguments in the chamber lasted deep into the night.
But from that day on, the council could no longer pretend no one had raised the demands.
Not all three reforms passed.
But the council was forced to publish the black-crystal evidence. Lie Ang also handed over his returned report, the ballista command records, and wartime communications. Implicated councilors were suspended and placed under public investigation.
The identity restrictions preventing Ash District residents from entering the upper city were lifted first.
“Basic hero training for every child” passed as a pilot program. Its first branch was established in the Ash District.
It was only the first door taken down.
But for the first time, the Ash District could enter the place where its fate was decided without waiting for someone else's permission.
Several months later, the pilot training center officially became the Heroes' Academy's first Ash District branch.
Xiao Hui became the youngest apprentice teaching assistant in mechanics. Qualified teachers gave the lessons. He specialized in finding gear problems even they had missed.
Shuang Ya helped establish the first liaison station between Flame City and the Frost Kingdom. She had no formal title as an envoy yet, but both sides were willing to hear her out.
Feng Ling delivered letters to the wrong window every day, then insisted it was the wind's fault.
Yan Pan built the new academy a training wall sturdy enough to survive students crashing into it.
Xiao Jin did not move to the upper city.
He returned to the abandoned furnace where it all began and reframed the torn poster. The hero on the wall still had only half a face. Beneath him, though, stood a row of children, practicing their first moves regardless of how strong their fire was.
Sitting on the chimney, Xiao Hui asked, “Are you the strongest hero now?”
Xiao Jin thought for a moment.
“I don't know.”
“You should at least know whether you're a hero.”
Thunder suddenly rolled in the distance. A silver messenger bird flew through the window and dropped a plea for help bearing the Lightning Kingdom's seal.
At the end were two lines in different handwriting.
Lei Ze wrote that the same black mist was consuming the Lightning Kingdom's Sky Tower. Ye Sha left only an ink crescent and one sentence:
“Go ahead. I'll read the path from the shadows.”
Pinned to the back of the letter was a Frost scout's clasp with a chipped corner.
Shuang Ya recognized it at once. It was the clasp Shuang He had worn when he left the royal city.
Lei Ze still held the Lightning Kingdom's storm front. Ye Sha had already stepped ahead into the moon's shadow.
They were not among the final five figures at the city gate, but they had long since ceased to be strangers met by chance on the road.
As for Shuang He's scout clasp, it placed another unfinished path in Shuang Ya's hands.
Xiao Jin put on the ragged cloak he had brought from the abyss. It had been patched many times, yet still bore holes burned through by black flame.
At the doorway, he looked back toward the Ash District.
It was still imperfect. Furnaces still broke down. Prejudice would not vanish after one victory. But when someone fell, silence was no longer the street's only answer.
Xiao Hui, Shuang Ya, Feng Ling, and Yan Pan came to stand beside him.
“You don't have to come every time,” Xiao Jin said.
Shuang Ya raised an eyebrow. “Deciding for us again?”
Xiao Jin smiled.
He turned toward the distant thunderclouds. The familiar little light rose in his palm. It was not vast like the sun, but no darkness could ever make it bow again.
“I climbed up from the very bottom, not to stand above everyone else.”
His companions listened quietly.
“But so that one day, when the enemy comes, I'll have enough strength to stand in front of you.”
Xiao Hui stepped to his right.
“Not in front,” he said. “Together.”
Xiao Jin looked at them all and nodded.
Five figures left Flame City, walking toward a new horizon.
Behind the gate, the first hero's lamp lit by an Ash District child's own hand burned quietly into the wind and snow.