The market held its breath the way prey does when a hawk glides over.
Stalls froze. Knives paused mid-chop. Coins stopped clinking.
The Open Sky Sect boy stood five paces away, robe neat, token bright, smile sharpened for cutting.
"Crawl," he said.
Rat felt forty pairs of mortal eyes slide off him and onto the ground.
Not one would meet his gaze while a sect disciple was near. That was wisdom here. The Basin had taught it for a hundred and fifty years.
"Hard to crawl with pride swollen this big," Rat said, patting his chest as if checking for bruises he had already collected. "Can we haggle? I can give you a discount on groveling."
A few strangled snickers leaked and died.
The boy's eyes narrowed.
"You think because my junior sister tossed you a charity coin that you are noticed by heaven. Here is your notice."
He flicked his fingers. Qi stirred the air with a hush like a blade being drawn. "Kneel, mortal."
The weight hit Rat like a bad dream.
His knees softened. Bones wanted to fold.
The pressure was not a shout. It was a neat hand pressing his shoulders down the way a teacher corrects a posture.
Open Sky. Horizon and wind. Rat's breath caught, then remembered itself.
Horizon in. Horizon out.
He let the tide fill his belly and spread along the inside of his skin like calm water meeting a stone. The kneeling urge slowed. His legs shook, but he did not go down.
The boy's smile thinned. "You will learn."
He snapped his token. A gust burst across the market, catching cloth and hats.
Rat felt it first as cool fingers on his cheeks, then as a slap that wanted him flat.
His feet skidded in grit. Rat's Scramble fired. His body twisted sideways without asking permission. The gust chased and still clipped him, spinning him into a stack of cheap clay bowls. He went down in a rain of pottery and dignity.
Laughter broke in the crowd, bright and mean. People loved a fall when it was not theirs.
Rat spit dust, stood, and bowed to his audience like a street clown.
The boy disciple lifted his hand. "You dare attend our trials, and you cannot even keep your feet."
The Codex's threads laced the air. Silver letters stitched a merciless choice.
[Fate entangles. Choose.]
[Path One: Kneel. Avoid greater harm. Lose face. Live small.]
[Path Two: Stand. Take the wind's burden. Lose safety. Live louder.]
Rat tasted blood and cracked clay. His shoulders ached. The safe choice blinked at him.
He considered it. He did not hate living small. Living small had gotten him this far.
But the market had already named him Fate Rat, and names had teeth.
"Fine," he told the woven page. "Let's make a scene."
He set his feet. He breathed until the inner horizon ran right behind his ribs.
The boy flicked his fingers. Wind pressed again, twice as heavy. Rat's knees quivered and locked. The pressure dropped into bone like a smith's hammer.
He did not kneel. He did not stand straight either. He stood like a crooked reed that still refused to lay down.
The boy's lip curled. "Stubborn gutter thing."
He walked forward with a lazy leisure that dared anyone to stop him.
No one did. Mortals flinched aside.
The girl disciple had arrived behind him and stood with hands folded, watching Rat as if taking notes on a strange insect.
Her gaze made the threads around him hum. Rat pretended not to notice and failed.
The boy reached for Rat's hair. Proper lesson delivered by a public dragging.
Rat's Scramble tried to fire, but the wind pinned his ankles with the invisible weight of a teacher's foot.
Pain prickled along his scalp as fingers closed.
"Lesson one," the boy said. "Know your sky."
Rat's hand darted to his sash. The copper coin the girl had given him flashed between his knuckles. He flicked it up on impulse.
It spun into the boy's eyes for a stupid half-heartbeat.
The hand in Rat's hair flinched. Rat dropped, not from submission, but from choice, and the grip tore a knot of hair free rather than all of it.
Pain sang. Rat hissed and rolled. The market gasped. Someone dropped a basket of eels.
Silver bodies slapped and writhed, and the boy's boot skidded. He kept his balance with elegant irritation. He also lost the rhythm of the wind.
Rat came up fast and stupid. He jabbed with a punch that would not dent a melon.
The boy caught his wrist and twisted. Pain flooded Rat's shoulder like hot water. He saw the world go white and fought the urge to bite again, because once was a legend and twice was a habit that would end with his teeth in someone else's pocket.
"Lesson two," the boy murmured. "Know your betters."
The pressure spiked. The market noise narrowed to a tight ringing.
The Codex stirred again, and this time the letters were small and ugly.
[Pattern detected: Humiliation and endurance.]
[Skill Imprinting Opportunity.]
[Onion Skin Endurance: Each layer of pain teaches the next to sting less. Power minor. Cost continual.]
Rat grinned through his teeth. "That is the most insulting name I have ever loved."
He breathed into the pain. He did not fight the twist. He rode it, letting his bones learn the angle of it, letting his breath outline the hurt and polish it with every exhale. The shock did not vanish. It changed flavors.
What had been panic went to sharp. Sharp went to steady. His wrist still screamed, but part of him had space to think.
He used that space the way only a rat would. He stomped on the nearest eel.
The eel shot like a wet arrow under the boy's other foot. The elegant balance cracked.
The boy's eyes widened. He let go to correct his posture rather than be the sect disciple who fell on fish in the gutter.
Rat tumbled back, clutching his arm, laughing even while he winced.
A fishmonger shrieked at both of them. "Who pays me for this feast running away, you goat-faced sky peacock?"
The boy's cheeks blazed. Anger warped the neat mask. He slashed his token through the air. Another gust swatted Rat. He hit a pillar and slid. Stars popped behind his eyes. Blood dripped from his scalp. The Fang of Reversal woke like a tooth in his gut, hot for an instant and then quiet again, as if saying not yet.
The girl disciple's voice finally cut the air. "Senior brother."
The boy's hand paused. The wind stilled. The girl did not look at him. She looked at Rat, who was smiling because smiling in pain was the one thing that belonged to him.
"Enough," she said. "The trials are not to thin our markets. If he dies, let the sky do it."
Fear cracked through the crowd and settled into relief. Mortals liked rules when rules protected them from being used to decorate the road.
Rat levered himself up on a crate with the dignity of a wet cat and bowed to her, because gratitude kept teeth in your mouth.
"Gracious," he said. "Does the sky accept bribes? I have half a pear and a famous personality."
Her mouth almost smiled. It did not smile. "Attend, street rat. Or do not. The mountain has a way of sorting what belongs at the top."
The boy disciple sheathed his wind with a flick. He leaned close enough that Rat could smell incense cut with arrogance.
"You will not survive the first platform. The wind eats lungs that spent their lives breathing gutter smoke."
"Lucky for me," Rat whispered, "I upgraded to horizon."
The boy's eyes cooled. "We will see."
They departed in a wash of silk and hush. The market sighed as if a storm had passed over without dropping rain.
Noise returned in nervous fragments. Gossip grew legs and ran.
"Did you see the eel?"
"Fate Rat laughed."
"He will die on the mountain."
"He will die before that, if the Rooted Stone boys hear he answered a sect disciple back."
Rat touched his scalp and winced. His fingers came away red. He examined the color with interest, as if it were rare ink.
He rocked on his heels to make sure all his parts still knew they were invited. Most did. His wrist throbbed. His lungs felt scraped. His heart was a drum playing in a courtyard where everyone had gone silent to listen.
The Codex drifted down, threads whispering.
A page shaped itself, letters neat as account tallies.
[Codex of Strands of Fate – Status Update]
Vitality: 3
Qi Sense: 3
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 9
Realm: Foundation Establishment
New Skill: Onion Skin Endurance (Minor)
Pain layered becomes pain learned. Each humiliation teaches the body to carry the next with fewer leaks. Increases resilience when jeered, beaten, or publicly shamed. Synergizes with Horizon Breath.
New Passive Pattern: Thread Dodge (Nascent)
When fate threads tighten suddenly, feet find unlikely paths. Unreliable. Improves under pressure and ridicule.
Recipe Reminder: Dust Soup. Recommended after public instruction by those who believe themselves sky.
Rat snorted. "You see me."
The Codex did not answer. It rarely did. But its pages felt warm, the way a stone feels warm at dusk.
He rolled his wrist, hissed, and pressed fingers along the tendon until the pain mapped itself in a way he could accept.
Eels still flopped under a stool. Rat rescued one and tossed it back into a bucket with the solemnity of a priest returning a god to a shrine.
The fishmonger glared and then shoved a heel of bread into his hand without a word. Basin charity. Always tied to insult, always real.
He ate. The bread tasted like flour and victory, which were the same thing if you squinted.
He looked toward the road that climbed to the Cloud-Piercing Mountains. The far ridgeline cut the sky in a long, patient line. Wind stroked the rooftops. For a moment the whole city felt like a chest rising between inhale and exhale.
In the alley behind him, two boys whispered.
"They say the first platform is called the Breath Ledge. You stand where wind peels skin. If you choke, you fall."
"They say the second is Sky Steps above a broken gully. If fear takes your knees, you do not come back."
"They say fewer come down than go up."
Rat chewed and swallowed and let the words hang. Fewer come down than go up was also a truth about life. It was almost comforting to see the mountain agree.
He needed herbs. He needed a pot that did not leak more than it boiled. He needed a corner where he could breathe without people trying to help him stop breathing.
He needed to look at the old temple with new eyes and find places to plant the future.
The crowd parted. The girl disciple had come back alone.
She stopped a few paces off and considered him as if he were a puzzle with one piece missing that amused her to search for.
"You bite Beasts," she said quietly. "And you laugh while bleeding."
Her gaze flicked to the copper coin at his sash and then to his wrist. "If you insist on attending, do not come without lungs. Dust Soup is not a joke."
Rat saluted with his bread like a noble with a fan. "Yes, wise sky."
She did not smile again. She looked at the line of the mountains and then back at him with something like caution, as if peering into a well and seeing a shadow move.
"Tomorrow," she said. "Dawn. North gate. The mountain does not wait for jokes."
She left. So did the market's attention.
Life resumed, which was the same as saying danger had put on a hat and promised to return at a more theatrical hour.
Rat stood for a long time until his legs began to complain that they were legs and not pillars.
He slipped through side streets toward the old temple, turning corners with Thread Dodge's useless little miracle and breathing with Horizon Breath until the hum under his ribs found order again.
As he reached the broken wall, a shadow moved on the steps. Not a beggar. Not a priest.
A dog, ribs like slats, fur the color of ditch water, eyes a nervous amber. It did not growl. It watched him and then looked at the courtyard like a host waiting to see if a guest would wipe his feet before entering.
Rat looked back at the city. He looked at the dog. He laughed once, soft. "If you stay, you pay rent in barks," he told it, and stepped inside.
The temple air tasted like dust and promise.
He set a cracked pot on a scorched stone and began to gather what passed for ingredients. Barley, ash, a pinch of bitter weed from between flagstones.
Not glory. Not even lunch. Survival in a bowl.
Under his skin, the Fang of Reversal pulsed once, not a power, just a reminder. Be ready to flip what wants to crush you.
From the road beyond the wall, a bell clanged, flat and cold. It carried well.
The north gate bell. Trials summoned at dawn.
Rat stirred his soup and felt the horizon behind his ribs align with the line of the mountains.
He had one night to turn laughter and bruises into lungs.
The dog crept closer and sat as if guarding a treasure. Its tail thumped once. The temple stones hummed the way old places hum when a thread finds where it belongs.
Outside, wind ran its fingers over the roofs and then paused, as if listening for a joke worth repeating.
Tomorrow, the mountain would answer.
[Codex of Strands of Fate – Status Update]
Vitality: 3
Qi Sense: 3
Comprehension: 3
Fate Entanglement: 9
Realm: Foundation Establishment
New Skill: Onion Skin Endurance (Minor)
New Passive: Thread Dodge (Nascent)
Recipe Reminder: Dust Soup