Kelsa ended up as the highest-ranking young Iron in the Wei clan, as Wei Jin Amon was too busy recuperating from his injuries to participate. She ultimately lost to a Kazan girl, but that wasn't enough to tarnish her achievements. The Patriarch himself presented her with a pair of valuable elixirs, announcing that she would “Redeem the shame of the Shi family.”
After receiving her prizes, Kelsa returned to the Shi family compound with Lindon by her side. She spoke about the Festival with great enthusiasm and without interference. He walked in silence.
“…I’ll need one of these elixirs to stabilize my core after reaching Iron, but the second won’t help much. They say it takes twenty of these to get close to Jade, can you imagine? They’re five thousand chips apiece. And that’s with years of cycling in between each one.” She glanced to the side, giving him a wry smile. The box of elixirs was tied in a cloth bag, and that bag dangled carelessly from her hand as she walked.
“I’d share one with you, but I doubt you’ll need it. Heaven’s Glory. You’ll be eating spirit-fruits for every meal and drinking elixirs like water. Instead of sharing with you, I should be asking you to share with me.”
Lindon knew Kelsa. She wasn’t angling for a handout, just making an idle comment. If he actually offered to share any elixirs from Heaven’s Glory with her, she’d refuse unless he tricked her into it.
But the thought gave him a pang of loss and regret. If all went according to plan, he wouldn’t see Kelsa or the rest of his family for more than twenty years. It was an impossible amount of time to him, incomprehensibly vast.
She read his silence and stopped, stretching out an arm in front of his chest. He ran into it as though into a tree branch, her forearm striking his ribs with the strength of a club. He coughed out a breath, and the weight of his pack pushed him forward, straining his neck.
He staggered back, wondering if his chest would bruise. “What was that?”
“You’re too quiet,” she said, folding her arms. The box of elixirs hung down in its blue shadesilk bag. “Something happened.”
He pressed fingers into his sternum, feeling for tenderness. “I’m listening, I’m not meditating on boyhood trauma. Maybe I should do all the talking from now on, and you should take the punches.”
She stared him down. “You can punch me as long as your knuckles hold out, but when you’re done, I need an answer. You’ve won everything you’ve ever wanted. More than I did; there are people who would kill you for a spot as a School disciple. And you’re not proud of it, you haven’t gloated, you haven’t tried to get something extra out of the clan before you leave. You haven’t even redeemed that deal of yours with the First Elder, and he told me he’d expected to see you before sunset on the day of the Foundation tournament. When you didn’t show up, he thought you were dead.”
The deal he’d made with the First Elder, a copy of the White Fox Path in exchange for displaying his abilities in the Seven-Year Festival, felt like it had come from a different life. He’d been dreaming before he met Suriel, and now he was awake.
Not that he could say that to his sister.
“My end of the scales doesn’t balance,” Lindon said. “I was supposed to defeat a Copper from another clan and show them the power of the Wei, but I ended up humiliating our own clan’s best disciple.”
Kelsa placed the elixirs carefully on the ground, then grabbed him by the shoulders. She leaned forward, her face inches away from his, dark eyes heavy with concern. “Are you dead? Because that is nothing my brother would say. My brother would have tried to convince the First Elder that beating Amon was better than beating some Copper from another clan.”
Lindon shrugged, averting his eyes. “I’m going to a School. I won’t need it anymore.”
He wasn’t concerned about keeping Suriel a secret. Spreading rumors about her couldn’t harm her, and receiving a visit from the heavens was a source of pride, not shame. If that had been all, he would have been trying to convince his sister to believe him, not keeping it a secret.
But he’d seen more than just a celestial messenger. He’d seen the end of the world.
There was nothing Kelsa could do to change that, nothing she could do to help him. Even if she completely believed him and was willing to leave Sacred Valley at his side, how could she help? She wasn’t a disciple of Heaven’s Glory, so she couldn’t follow him up the slopes of Samara, and she wasn’t strong enough to survive the terrors outside the valley any more than he was.
If he failed, if he died on the way as he was more than likely to do, he didn’t want her to live helpless under a cloud of doom. She’d be happier if he said nothing.
All that was true, but he still wanted to tell her.
She was still watching him from an inch away, still looking into his eyes with selfless concern. He found himself saying, “Was there….anything you can remember from that day at the Foundation tournament? Anything strange?”
Her eyebrows raised. “I’d say so. You set a swarm of hornets on Wei Jin Amon and beat him with his own spear.”
“Anything else?” Now it was his turn to search her eyes, looking for any sign of recognition, any uneasy recollections. “You didn’t feel like you were somewhere and then somewhere else? You didn’t lose any memories, or forget some time?”
“How would I know if I did?” she asked. Whatever he was looking for in her eyes, he didn’t see it.
He took a step back, and she allowed him to break her grip. “I’m nervous, that’s all it is,” he said. “Heaven’s Glory won’t accept a disciple like me, and they’ll try and force me out as soon as they can.”
Kelsa watched him a moment longer, then plucked her bag of elixirs from the ground. “Likely they will. What does that matter? You’ll take what you can from them, then if it gets too dangerous, you just come back down. Maybe you’ll get an elixir or some treasures from the top of the mountain. This could be exactly what you need to make the clan proud.”
They reached the Shi family complex, a square of tightly packed houses, as night fell. The ring of light around Samara glowed white, illuminating the snowy peak and casting a blanket of light all over the valley.
He took in the sight of his home under Samara’s ring as though for the last time.
In the morning, his mother and father said their goodbyes casually, and they'd all assured him that he would be welcomed back exactly as he was. They didn't understand why he fought back tears as he wished them farewell, because they expected him to return in no more than a week or two.
But in the end, he still had to leave. He'd seen too much to stay home.
The party from Heaven's Glory was led by Elder Whitehall, who was indeed a head shorter than Lindon. He looked no more than eleven or twelve, despite his intricate white-and-gold robes and the Jade arrow badge on his chest.
He waited with two disciples from his school before a carriage pulled by a pair of Remnants. The carriage itself looked finer than anything the Patriarch would ride, inlaid with golden clouds and dancing sacred beasts, and the Remnants were a pair of transparent oxen. They seemed to be made from heat haze, or perhaps incredibly fine glass, and—like most Remnants—they made sounds totally unlike a living creature. When they stomped their hooves, thunder rolled, and their fractious snorts were like the crack of a whip.
“You've made us wait,” Elder Whitehall said, though it was still an hour until dawn. Samara's halo still shone brighter than the moon, crowning and illuminating their destination. “Stow your belongings before you set us further behind.”