Six torches. Moving fast. The men carrying them were cultivators — they moved too smoothly for normal soldiers, leaping roots without looking, closing distance faster than they should.
Wen Dao grabbed Kun and ran. Mei ran beside him.
Through the dark forest. Branches clawed his face. Roots grabbed his feet.
The torches gained.
He had maybe three minutes before they were caught.
'Split,' he told Mei. 'You take Kun. Circle north. Find the stream. Wait at the second bend.'
'What about you?'
'I'll lead them away.'
Before she could argue, he veered right and shouted — a sharp, loud cry that had no words in it. Just noise. Just enough.
The torches shifted. Four of them turned toward him.
He ran.
Ran harder than he had run all day. Every muscle burning. The bruised forearms screaming against the jarring of each footfall.
He didn't look back.
A tree trunk ahead — he hit it with both forearms, shoved off it, changed direction hard.
Pain flared white in his arms.
Then something else.
Heat. A deep, fundamental heat that started in the marrow of his forearms and moved outward. Not burning. Forging. Like iron being hammered.
He recognized it — the scripture had described this moment.
The first gate was opening.
He didn't have time to celebrate. He dove into a depression in the ground — an old animal burrow covered with undergrowth — and pressed flat.
Torchlight passed above him. Voices. Angry. Moving on.
He waited.
The heat continued to move through his body. His forearms, which had been purple with bruising, felt different now. Denser. Harder. He pressed a thumbnail against the skin. It didn't mark as easily as before.
Body Tempering — Level One.
The first gate had opened.
He waited one full hour before moving.
He found Mei and Kun at the second bend of the stream exactly where he had told them to wait. Mei had covered their tracks with scattered leaves. She was more capable than most adults he had ever encountered.
'They're gone,' he said.
'What did you do?' she asked.
'I ran. Then I hid.'
She looked at his arms. In the moonlight, the bruising was visible but different now — the flesh had a faint glow. Faint enough that maybe she didn't see it.
'Your arms look different,' she said.
She saw it.
'They're stronger,' he said simply.
She opened her mouth to ask more. He held up one hand. Somewhere north, a wolf was howling. Then two more answered.
'We keep moving,' he said.
By dawn they were clear of the forest's dark heart and onto the eastern road — a wide dirt track with wheel ruts and horse dung. Civilization. Of a kind.
An hour later, a merchant caravan appeared from the south.
Seventeen wagons. Armed guards on horseback. A banner above the lead wagon: a red circle with three horizontal lines. The sign of the Iron Road Trading Company.
The lead guard looked down at them. Three dirty, bruised children on the side of the road at dawn.
'Where are you headed?' the guard asked.
'Iron Fang Town,' Wen Dao said.
'We're going there.' The guard looked them over. Paused on Wen Dao's strange expression — neither pleading nor fearful. Just direct.
'Can you work?' the guard asked.
'What kind of work?'
The guard almost smiled. 'Every other child I've asked that question just said yes. You asked what kind. Get on the back wagon. You'll find out.'