For half a minute, Rix simply stared at the letter. It made no sense. If they’d said, ‘We know why you’re here,’ maybe he’d have understood. He had a mission, after all. But the choice of language was strange.

  ‘We know what you are.’

  Beyond a street kid turned Martial Soul, Rix would have been hard-pressed to define what he was. The only unique thing about him was his qi.

  His mind was drawn back to the fight with Yutaro. Had that simple display given himself away? He’d used his little scrap of power countless times on the street and nobody had ever noticed. It was second nature to him at this point. But perhaps the eyes in here were simply sharper.

  That thought sent a thrill through him. He knew the smart thing was to be cautious. Anyone with knowledge of his secret had leverage over him. But the language of the letter wasn’t threatening. It sounded more like they might have something to offer. And an offer from people who knew anything about qi was one worth paying attention to.

  But, of course, he was getting ahead of himself.

  ‘Grow stronger.’

  That, at least, he understood, though whether they wanted him to improve his qi or his Path, Rix didn’t know. In any case, his plan already hinged on getting stronger.

  Casting a final eye over the letter, he stashed it under his pillow and tried to push it from his mind. He had many more immediate issues to focus on.

  With his cell door still closed, this was the perfect opportunity to finish what he’d been doing when the Iron Hand interrupted him. He closed his eyes and turned his attention inward. Freshly rested and having had a little time for his body to adjust to the System, he could now feel his mana more clearly. It was like a chill glow at the centre of his body inside his dantian.

  [Mana: 200/200]

  Overnight his body had filled his mana capacity to the brim. That was truly amazing to him. Unfortunately, his qi didn’t work the same way. He’d exhausted his tiny supply in the fight the previous day, which meant he’d have to manually replenish it. He sat cross-legged on the bed and closed his eyes. Though his ability to sense qi was not nearly as attuned as what the System had given him for mana with his spiritual eye, during his initial training he’d come to understand he could sense it. It was just subtle. The barest hint of a vibration in the air. After spending a few seconds focusing on that sensation, he flexed his dantian. The book he’d studied had taught him that the dantian was like a spiritual muscle. It could be clenched, pulling qi from the air around and balling it up like sand in a fist. When he’d first started, his control was clumsy and he lost everything that he grabbed, but with persistence he’d improved to a place where he could at least snatch a few wisps at a time.

  It took him about an hour to reach maximum capacity. Thankfully, it was early enough that he wasn’t disturbed.

  In years past, the process had always filled him with awe, but when he was done and that tiny speck of qi was contrasted with his giant pool of mana, he couldn’t help but feel a little cheated by the effort required. The difference was startling. There was perhaps a tenth as much qi as mana.

  He breathed a sigh of relief to find that at least they seemed to coexist in harmony. He experimented, pushing them both out through his meridians. As he suspected, each resource instinctively went to different channels, but he could feel them both orbiting his body in strange synchronicity. Where the qi was a thrumming trickle that seemed wild in its movements, the mana was a torrent, cold and unyielding. He had no idea what he’d do with so much power. He needed to get his techniques from the Quartermaster to start understanding. Beyond that, today he had one other order of business.

  He wanted to get a look at his target.

  About ten minutes later, a light shot down a vein of crystal that ran the length of the corridor, and Rix’s cell door opened. Cautiously, he stepped out. All around him, other prisoners were doing the same, and most of their eyes landed on him. He stood straight and met their gazes, not offering any challenge but not looking meek either. The quicker they saw him as someone not worth the time, the better.

  A guard stood at the far end of the corridor and began moving down the line, taking a count of prisoners. Rix took the opportunity to study them. In some ways, the other Farm inmates had a certain homogeneity about them. Lean bodies, pallid skin, sour expressions. There were men and women both here, and everyone seemed to have their own cell.

  He was pleased to see Yutaro and Kenzo didn’t appear to share his cell block. Though he didn’t anticipate another immediate confrontation, Tolson confirmed that it was coming, and he suspected he wouldn’t get away with the same trick again. Next time, they’d be ready for his speed.

  If the guard cared that Rix was a new prisoner, she gave no sign. Once the count was finished, she opened the gate that led out to the prison proper, and Rix followed the other inmates out.

  It turned out the first stop of the day was the mess hall, which was perfect because Rix was starving. At higher levels of advancement, Martial Souls were rumoured to not need food for days, but if Rix’s stomach was any indication, that time was a long way off for him.

  The hall itself was a large room simply appointed with rows of wooden tables and a serving area up one end. Behind it stood a kitchen apparently staffed with inmates, and they’d begun their day before everybody else as they were already hard at work. He spotted Tolson directing the action at the centre of a buzz of prisoners. That explained a little of the regard he was held in. Nobody wanted to mess with the person responsible for their food, though that wouldn’t mean much to the guards. Rix caught the man’s eye and received a small nod for his trouble.

  Breakfast was simple fare: rice, vegetables, and some kind of grey soup with chunks of fish in it. There was little seasoning, and the vegetables were getting old in the tooth, but Rix wasn’t complaining. He found a quiet corner where he could watch the room, and nobody seemed inclined to bother him. Yutaro and Kenzo weren’t there, as far as he could see. Perhaps they’d come out worse from their exchange than he expected.

  Similarly, the man he’d come here hunting was nowhere in sight. That was frustrating. He’d been told on good authority a few weeks before his arrest that the man was still a Whisper, so he should be in the Farm somewhere, but perhaps that information was outdated. Perhaps the man had tiered up to Spark and moved to the other half of the prison.

  At one point, Rix’s gaze landed on a young woman who was staring directly at him from a table across the room, her head cocked to one side. There was open curiosity on her face, rather than something more calculating. She had large, expressive eyes, like an owl, and her long black hair was significantly better kept than everybody else’s, though one side of her head was shaved.

  After a few seconds, she suddenly seemed to realise he’d noticed her, and her eyes darted away. He shrugged her attention off. Everybody had an agenda. Best not to engage.

  As he ate, he considered his next move. There was so much he didn’t know. On one hand, he wasn’t here to make friends. It was bitter and cynical, but in his experience, friends were more trouble than they were worth. He’d had plenty of ‘friendships’ on the street, whether it was the mob of urchins he ran with as a child that played at the hard stuff, or the real gang that wasn’t playing that he’d joined in his teens. In the end, the result was the same; when the chips were down, those relationships always revealed themselves as disposable. Eventually, he’d learned to rely on himself and only himself. He wasn’t looking to join a faction, whatever Tolson said.

  However, that didn’t mean he couldn’t ask for help. He had to acknowledge that this was a new world that followed its own rhythms and rules. He’d known he’d be targeted in here eventually, but the speed of it shocked him. That lack of knowledge was dangerous. He didn’t even have a proper understanding of how strong people here were. To the average mortal, Martial Souls were these untouchable beings whose capabilities knew no bounds. They understood there were differences in strength between ranks, but the details were deeply unclear. Next time he tangled with the wrong person, he could easily wind up dead. The risk of continuing blind was too great.

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  As breakfast was wrapping up and inmates began to file out, Rix approached Tolson.

  “Not half bad,” Rix said, nodding to his empty tray.

  Tolson snorted. “Not half good either. But we do what we can.”

  Rix shrugged. “Food’s food. Plenty of days I’ve eaten smaller amounts of worse stuff than that.”

  “Lantern District?”

  Rix grinned. “Did my sunny disposition give me away? Anyway, you said if I had any questions, we could talk.”

  “Sure. Give me fifteen. I’ll meet you in the yard.” A ghost of a smile appeared on the man’s face. “Try not to piss off any more gangs until I get there, yeah?”

  “What if they piss me off?”

  Tolson chuckled. “Then I guess maybe we’ll be getting another show.”

  Despite the joke, outside, Rix was on edge. Thankfully, this early, the yard was fairly empty. Occasionally, inmates would detour through on their way to whatever it was that filled their days, but it didn’t seem like the time to relax. At one point, he locked eyes with Scarface, who was patrolling up on the walkway that overhung the yard. The man made an ‘I’m watching you’ gesture, but otherwise left him alone.

  Rix couldn’t help but smile at the way his body reacted to the weather. Though he could tell it was cold, he didn’t feel it the way he normally would. It was like his body was just less susceptible to the outside world now. He wondered how that would progress. Would a Nova or Omen be able to walk through fire? Or climb mountain peaks without fur or flame? Despite being in prison, the world had never seemed so large to Rix as in that moment.

  Soon, Tolson joined him. “So, what do you want to know?”

  Rix raised his eyebrows. “All business, huh?”

  The man shrugged. “You seem like the business type.”

  “Fair enough.” Rix spent a second ordering his thoughts. “I want to be a diver.”

  Tolson nodded slowly. “I figured that might be the case after yesterday’s performance.” He chewed his cheek for a moment. “You know what you’re signing up for?”

  Rix hesitated. “I mean, yesterday I would’ve said yes, but the Steward made it sound like a death sentence.”

  Tolson gave a sad little laugh. “What do you know about the Fractured Realms?”

  Rix shrugged. “What they say in the Chronicles, I guess? Planets taken by entropy, carved out of the fabric of the universe. Home to the fadeborn; monsters that Martial Souls kill to get stronger.”

  The Chronicles were the grand tales of Martial Souls known as Ascendants. These Edicts were said to have progressed their Path to the peak of what the heavens could offer, committing unparalleled acts of heroism and strength in the process. Their stories filtered in from the thousands of System planets across the known universe and were transcribed into books.

  There were all sorts of sub-genres, but the most popular was the battle against entropy itself. When entropy came for a city or planet, fadeborn spilled out of the void and into the normal world. If they weren’t pushed back, their entropic aura eventually claimed that place, turning it into a Fractured Realm. The Ascendants were some of the key pillars that stood between humanity and that fate, and their stories were legend.

  The Chronicles were one of the few constants in Cloudpiercer Citadel; everybody, from the most powerful Martial Soul to the weakest mortal, knew those stories. Prior to being arrested, some of Rix’s only possessions were copies of his favourite Chronicles, dog-eared tomes that he’d read more times than he could count.

  Tolson nodded again. “That’s all true, but did you know the realms age?”

  Rix shook his head.

  “When you think of a realm, you’re thinking of a fresh, healthy one,” Tolson said. “They’re the ones you read about in the Chronicles, and the ones most Martial Corporations use. Not safe, because nothing to do with fadeborn ever is, but they’re relatively predictable, and that makes them hideously expensive. For most corps, their Fractured Realm access gems are the most valuable assets on their books.”

  Tolson paused dramatically. “But they don’t stay fresh forever. Entropy is constantly at work on the realms, slowly breaking them down. Over time, they become unstable. The more ancient the realm, the more extreme the consequences, and from what I understand, Spiritlock’s realm is a textbook example.” He gestured around the yard. “I’ve heard stories from people over the years, entropy storms that come out of nowhere and scour entire areas of life, landscapes that shift under your feet, fadeborn that are suddenly twice as strong as they should be.” He drew a long breath. “I don’t dive myself, but I’ve seen an awful lot of divers come and go. That place eats Martial Souls alive.”

  Rix’s mind went back to his conversation with the Steward the previous day. The language he’d used made more sense now. He kept talking about how the prison’s realm was special. The bad kind of special.

  “Why own a realm like that at all then?” he asked. “Why not buy a proper one like the corps do?”

  Tolson’s expression became one of grim amusement. “Why does anyone do anything in Cloudpiercer? It’s profitable. The more decayed a realm is, the faster its treasures grow. And treasures are the real money maker. They’re the only reason they bother to let us dive at all.

  “Beyond that, you can get an access gem for a near-expiration Fractured Realm at a fraction of the price of a proper one. Nobody who cares about the strength of their organisation wants to take on that extra risk. Their people are valuable to them. But us? We’re just here to be bled.”

  That made a certain cold sense. Rix wasn’t even really surprised. He was in prison. His life was effectively no longer his own.

  “So your advice would be to not dive at all?” Rix asked.

  “I didn’t say that, although odds are you’ll last longer that way. I could probably get you work in the kitchen if you want to serve your sentence the old-fashioned way, but that life has its own problems.”

  “Such as?”

  Tolson grimaced. “Remember what I said yesterday about the heartstones? That technique isn’t designed for us. It’s meant for people with a few ranks of progression on the Martial Path. Most people find getting to High Whisper or Peak Whisper is enough to mitigate its effects. But Spiritlock makes us all do it regardless. Most of us last at least five years, but nobody pays off their sentence in less than ten using heartstones alone, so…”

  Rix did a double take. “Wait, it literally kills you?”

  “For people who make no progress? Yeah. Most of the time anyway. I’ve been here twenty years and I’m still kicking, but I don’t know of anyone else that’s lasted that long. A few people manage to pay off their sentences and get out, but they’re in bad shape by the time they do, and I’m not sure what it’s like for them after. I doubt they’re doing much to progress their Path.”

  At one point, Rix had a plan to come to Spiritlock, get his System Seed, then just wait out his sentence, but apparently that wouldn’t have worked.

  “How have you lasted so long?” Rix asked.

  The grim smile returned. “Just lucky, I guess.”

  That was a lot to take in. “So it’s stay safe and slowly wither away, or dive and almost certainly end up in a fade’s jaws?”

  Tolson spread his hands. “Such are our glorious choices.”

  It really put into perspective what the Steward had said about finding a way to make Rix profitable regardless of what he did. The prison appeared to have all its bases covered. He’d known diving would be dangerous, but the draining effect of paying off his sentence was new information. It felt like something that should have been illegal, but because it disproportionately affected mortals — and criminal mortals at that — it wasn’t really shocking that it was allowed.

  “I’ll take my chances with the realm,” Rix said.

  Tolson gave a resigned nod. “Then I wish you luck. Just know, you won’t be diving every day. Today, for example, you’ll get to feel the heartstone technique for yourself. They dedicate the whole afternoon to the process. There’s also arena day later in the week. The others are open season, though.”

  The arena was something else Rix had heard about. Cloudpiercer Citadel was full of corporate tournaments and fighting leagues and underground duelling dens. After all, it was a city where martial prowess was everything, so it made sense the prison had one. Though he didn’t know how much it would contribute to him growing stronger, he intended to investigate it when he could.

  Tolson seemed to choose his next words carefully. “You should know, those two who came at you yesterday, they’re divers too. In here, they might rough you up, but out there there’s potential for much worse. In the realm, they’ll be armed and their techniques work just fine. The guards aren’t babysitting you like they are in here either. It’s a free-for-all. Most of the time, when people go missing out there, they die to a fade like you’d expect, but if you want to disappear someone…”

  Rix grimaced. That made things even more complicated. “Do you know exactly how strong they are?” he asked.

  Tolson shrugged. “Yutaro is a High Whisper, I think, but that’s mostly from inference. My spirit eye isn’t exactly well-developed. Kenzo might be weaker, maybe Mid Whisper. They’re both more dangerous than average for their rank though, because unlike most of us, they weren’t mortals when they arrived.”

  “They were corpos?” asked Rix. To him, they’d seemed like sad stereotypes of every corner thug he’d ever met.

  “Yep. And they carry a real attitude about it. As they see it, they’re locked here in the Farm with a bunch of dregs while they’re proper Martial Souls.”

  Rix scoffed. “Guess that explains their little shakedown routine.”

  Tolson nodded. “Just because they’re assholes doesn’t mean they can’t back it up, though. I haven’t seen Yutaro fight, but I know he’s sporting at least one corporate technique.”

  That made things tricky, but it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. At least they weren’t Peak Whisper. Yutaro being a High Whisper told Rix a little something. He’d felt the man’s speed and strength himself, and while it was too much for Rix to handle, Yutaro had also been surprised by Rix’s counterattack. That indicated his hidden technique might let him match it with someone several ranks above, at least for a second or two. But if they could stretch the fight out longer, well, Rix would lose quickly and decisively in his current condition.

  He had to get stronger.

  “I’ll be extra careful,” he said.

  Tolson hesitated for a moment. “Some of the other factions have divers. There’s safety in numbers.”

  Rix shook his head. The other man didn’t look happy, but he didn’t push. For Rix, it wasn’t just about a lack of trust. Things had gotten complicated very quickly for him. To join a faction would mean obligations and borrowed loyalties and all sorts of expectations. Rix didn’t want the distraction. He needed to train, grow stronger, and do what he came here to do. He’d find a way to deal with his problem.

  Thinking about his mission reminded him he had one other question, though he wasn’t certain about asking it. To dig for info on the man he was here to kill was to reveal an interest in him. If that got back to him, it might reveal Rix’s hand before he was ready.

  But he needed to know where his target was. Tolson appeared trustworthy. At the very least, he seemed to want Rix to survive. Rix got the feeling the man was genuine.

  “One more thing. Is there a man in here called Xu Han?”

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