Chang-li turned on the others. "You heard that, didn't you? He’s the tower guardian, now.”

  "I did," Joshi agreed grimly.

  "Nai Hong and Eri came inside the tower. I think Nai Hong was trying to get away. Did he know his death would have this effect? His will has reshaped everything in here. That's why there's so much violet lux." He remembered how incredibly full of violet lux Nai Hong’s core had been. "What was in the prism's core must have spilled out into the tower.."

  Li Jiya shook her head. "I've never heard of anything like this happening," she said. "How can you be sure it was his death that did this?"

  Impatiently, Chang-li shook his head. " It fits, doesn't it? And how often does a prism die? Of course we haven’t heard of anything like this. Come on, you heard what he said. We need to find him again."

  Joshi sent Magen on ahead. As Chang-li started off, Li Jiya caught his shoulder. "Wait.”

  "We don't have time."

  "I know. And I don't disagree with your deduction. But you've just shown you have a good head on your shoulders. Don’t you feel it?"

  He frowned at her, not understanding what she meant.

  "The lux here is flowing." Her eyes were unfocused as she spoke. "We don't just rush off in random directions. We need to follow what the lux tells us. I have to find the pattern."

  She seated herself on the ground, now a featureless gray slab once more, extending her arms, closing her eyes, clearly cycling.

  Chang-li stared down at her, surprised. Joshi had taken a comfortable, wide-legged stance and closed his own eyes.

  Frustrated, Chang-li cycled. He hadn’t noticed the lux’s movement, he’d so focused on figuring out what had happened with logic and reason instead of following the lux. He was still thinking like a scribe and not a cultivator.

  He drew in lux and cycled it. It was thick, incredibly dense, but it answered easily. There was so much violet. Chang-li had to vent it twice just to get enough other colors into him to work with. He circulated the lux through his channels, separating out the physical and the spiritual, and sending them up his dual network of lux channels. Nothing struck him as interesting.

  Then, as he stared at Li Jiya's unheeding face, he had a thought. He inhaled again. This time, he held onto the violet and vented the rest. He packed his core tight before switching to the Way of Swirling Mists. Violet lux spilled out of him. And as it did so, he could feel something like an echo.

  As the violet lux flowed out of his core, Chang-li focused on the swirling bands of lux all around him, moving it into his body, then out, he began to hear the tones of the lux more clearly than he had before. The sixth-floor guardian's boon was making itself known. While he had previously, if he tried, been able to distinguish between the high-pitched tone of blue-lux from the deeper note of red, now those differences were clearer than ever.

  Something seemed off about the lux here in this tower. He concentrated on the yellow lux, which was most comfortable to him, pulling it into his core and venting the last of the violet, cycling and concentrating on it. Yes, the yellow lux note sounded off. It should be half a tone higher.

  As if answering his thoughts, the lux in his core shifted. Now it rang with the pure tone, contrasting with the lux all outside him. It flowed differently too, much more like the lux he'd encountered on other floors of this tower. What Wulan's shade had referred to as bland lux, the sort produced by a standard cultivating tower in good order. Chang-li wished he'd had this ability to hear the precise tones back at Golden Moon Tower. He wondered what the tones there would sound like now.

  As he opened his ears, he could feel the lux around him, and he began to hear its song. There was so much violet here, corresponding with a high, clear, bell-like tone—the only one of the lux notes that sounded the way it ought. He was assuming the violet lux had come from Nai Hong's own core. He paid attention now to red, listening to the difference between its tone and what it should be. Again, half a step up.

  "Prisms are called that because they break lumos into lux," he said aloud.

  Joshi, whose eyes were closed, grunted. "Yes. Towers break lumos into lux as well."

  "That's basic cultivation theory," Li Jiya said from her seated position.

  "What happens when the lux from a prism's core, created from pure lumos, mixes with the lux from a tower?"

  "What are you talking about?" Li Jiya asked. "Lux is lux."

  "It's not, though. Listen." Chang-li hummed the two notes of red—the proper tone and the one he was hearing now.

  "I don't understand what you're getting at," Li Jiya snapped. "Yes, lux has tones. That's a basic training mnemonic, but it's one we abandon once we've learned proper cycling techniques."

  Chang-li filed that information away. He had been thinking of a dozen different ways that hearing lux could be valuable, ever since he learned of the tones. If most cultivators ignored them, so much the better. "What I think has happened here," Chang-li said, "is the lux from the prism and the lux from the tower were purified to different notes. Now, they're combining, and the result is discordance."

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  Li Jiya frowned. "I suppose that's possible," she agreed. "What of it?"

  "I don't know yet," Chang-li said, still pondering.

  "We are looking for the prism. How can this help us?" Joshi asked.

  And that, at least, came to Chang-li in an inspired moment. "We follow the notes," he said. "The violet lux will lead us. It sounds pure because it's all from the prism. It's not mixed. We follow the violet lux, and we'll find the prism."

  "That makes sense," Li Jiya said aloud. "What we saw before when we found the prism was clearly one of his memories. Violet lux may play a role in preserving those." She glanced at them, as though worried she’d said too much. Neither Chang-li nor Joshi said anything. Li Jiya stood up. "Very well. Since you hear these tones, you lead on."

  Chang-li focused on the crisp, pure tones of the violet lux. They were louder off to his left. They set off together through the mist. The tones grew louder. Chang-li cycled, feeling the density of the violet lux increasing. They passed through different bands where one color of lux dominated, then another.

  Chang-li was picturing what had happened here. The prism had entered the tower and died. His lux had poured forth from his core, causing a reaction with the lux already in the tower. Now, the lux was swirling madly, like a storm at sea, circling about in clumps of different colors.

  As he went, he filled his core with purified orange and yellow lux, as well as enough red to protect him. He assumed his allies were doing the same. The violet grew deeper. Chang-li siphoned some of it off into his training chamber, glad that the prism had given his authorization. If he could fill the chamber again and use the technique, he might make another step toward the Peak of Spiritual Refinement. That alone had been a worthwhile prize.

  Right now, he had to focus on their task: reach the top of this tower and deal with the guardian to summon the emperor before the reaction had gone too far and destroyed the tower and the region around it.

  The mist solidified around them, shapes dimly appearing, then growing stronger and stronger. They stood in a ghostly encampment, colorless pavilions with their bunting waving in the breeze. Ghosts strode past, soldiers and cultivators both.

  "What is this?" Li Jiya wondered. "It's not a tower cull. Those have permanent encampments built around them, even the ones not harvested more than every few years."

  "It's a war camp," Joshi said grimly.

  They strode through, called by the lux, until they reached a group of large, palatial tents near the center of the camp. These blossomed with color, faint pastels leaching through the mist.

  There, in the center of the camp, in the largest pavilion of all, were assembled over a dozen cultivators of different sexes, their embellishments showing they were grandmasters and beyond. They leaned over a strategy table on which was a raised relief map showing a landscape Chang-li didn't recognize, dotted with towers. Four of the towers had a small black cloud drifting over them, indicating what, Chang-li didn't know.

  And there, presiding over the head of the table, was the Prism, Nai Hong. He looked older than he had when he had in the previous vision, but it was impossible to tell how old or how long might have passed since then.

  "Your Radiance," one of the sect leaders said, "the rebels are on the move. They are making a threat against Dreymon Tower. Already, all of Mapura and Grey Rock provinces are theirs."

  "We must sue for peace," another man said. He was not a cultivator, wearing the robes of a government official. The cultivators all turned on him, and he trembled. "It's nearly harvest time. The crops failed last year and the year before with the fighting. If we do not bring in a harvest, thousands will starve,” he managed, his eyes downcast.

  A woman sect leader folded her arms, sneering at him. "What do the matters of mortals have to do with us? You believe thousands may starve. Well, millions will die if the rebels get their way. Any price will be paid to secure our lands."

  "Of course, Mistress," the official said, bowing. His robe of office was like the one Min's brother had worn, marking him as a provincial governor. He bowed and trembled before the cultivators like wheat before a wind.

  The Prism held up his hand, and the cultivators turned toward him. "Your Radiance?"

  "You speak truly, Grandmaster Do Yan,” Nai Hong declared. "We cannot allow the rebel Prisms to win, but you are not thinking strategically enough. You say they make an attempt on Dreymon Tower?”

  The cultivators nodded. "Yes, my lord. If we receive reinforcements and throw all of our Peak of Spiritual Refinement and Lux Embodiment cultivators at them, we may slow them down enough. But unless you and the other Prisms are willing to expose yourselves, we cannot take them on."

  "No," the Prism declared. "We will not be drawn out into open combat. If you think this is bad, you have not seen what happens when Prisms fight. However," he pointed on the map to what was presumably the tower in question, "the rebels are seizing the towers for their own ends. They will undoubtedly try to seize Dreymon. We will let them. When they do, it will be their undoing. We will blight the tower, and they will perish with it."

  The cultivators blanched, but it was nothing compared to the governor, who threw himself on the ground, abasing himself before the Prism. "Your Radiance, please. You can't mean it. A blighted tower there in our heartland? Crop failure would be the least of it. My people will suffer and die."

  "As they will suffer and die if I do nothing," the Prism said implacably. "This must be done for the good of the many. The rebels will learn what it means to thwart the will of the Emperor.”

  And as before, the other people in the scene dimmed and faded into mist, dissolving into the lux that swirled around until only the Prism remained. Chang-li advanced on him as the Prism turned.

  "You are persistent," the Prism told him sadly. "You were chasing me through my darkest times, though this is nothing to what comes next. Come."

  Li Jiya cried out as the lux around them swirled up and over, overwhelming their senses. A moment later, it cleared, and they stood on a field of carrion. Bodies were strewn everywhere—cultivators, soldiers, and what looked to Chang-li like humble peasants. Most of the peasants had bags and bundles scattered around them as though they had been fleeing. He looked more closely at the bodies. There were no wounds he could see on them.

  Li Jiya gasped and pointed. "Look."

  Through the gathering mist rose the dark outlines of a tower, like the one at Varden City, a great prominence rising from the land, its top was broken and in flames, and smoke drifted. Chang-li could hear the echoes of discordant lux. The Prism was not far off. He smiled sadly. "You see?"

  "You brought us here?" Chang-li asked.

  "You are following me. And it seems that Eri has condemned me to relive some of my darkest days. I wonder which will be next—the cleansing of Amarian, the destruction of Still Waters. That was my first sect cleansing. I have destroyed so many more; their names fade together in my memory, but my first I will always recall."

  Li Jiya marched past Chang-li right up to the Prism. "You have to let us pass. We need to summon the Emperor," she said. "What must we do to prove ourselves to you?"

  "You must find the —,” the Prism broke off as though hearing something. His eyes widened. "They come." He vanished in a puff of lightly tinged mist.