Location:Obsidian Academy — Qin's study
Date/Time:2 Ashwhisper, 9942 AZI — Continuous
Realm:Lower Realm
"Explain that."
The light had moved while they talked. It sat on the desk now in a long gray bar that did not warm anything it crossed, and Heizan's bare feet had not shifted on the stone in two hours.
"Twenty thousand sit the winnowing every fifty years, two and a half thousand go down, and a third of those never come back up." She kept her voice level. "And what the provinces actually know about it would fit on a recruiting board. A secret realm. Monsters in it. A training exercise with a mortality rate everybody accepts, merit for what you kill, and merit buys artifacts — and one artifact out of that mountain has turned a household of eight into a minor clan inside two generations. Every village on this continent can name a house that came up out of the Harrowing. That is why they queue."
"That is what it is advertised as."
