It was strange to think that back home, the worst thing he had ever "stolen" was someone's parking spot.
Now he was lying in the scrub with a knife on his belt, part of a bandit group, watching a caravan he meant to rob.
Life was strange.
Rae lay on his stomach, chin over a flat rock, watching the road below and trying to work out when exactly everything had gone sideways.
Three weeks.
Three weeks since he and Cynthia had stumbled into the old fort and claimed it as shelter. Three weeks since she had taken a ragged collection of thieves and outcasts and hammered them into something that almost looked like a force. In that short time they had cracked open slaver wagons, freed people who had stopped hoping, and sent enough interrupted commerce back toward the city that the guards now spoke of them with clenched teeth.
They had hit slavers, freed the slaves, handed out food and coin, and got rid of the slavers cleanly.
The name had started as guard gossip, a joke that stuck – a girl whose hands ran hot and wagons that sometimes smoked behind them. Guards muttered about "those fire starters" when scorched wheels limped past the gate. The joke had stuck, and now the city used it with dread.
When people said "Fire Starters" with fear or anger, they meant Cynthia.
Rae watched the road and counted.
"Six guards," he said quietly. "Two with bows, four with spears. Drivers might grab something if it goes bad. Slaves at the back, rope on wrists, rope on necks. Ground drops on their left, rises on their right. If they bolt downhill, they will trip."
"Good," Cynthia murmured beside him.
She lay next to him, elbows in the dirt, eyes on the road. Her voice was calm, like they were checking a list, not planning a robbery.
"Same plan," she said. "We drop the riders first. You go straight to the slaves. Cut ropes, shove them to the trees, shout until they move. No one touches them for 'bonus pay'. If someone tries, you tell me."
She did not raise her voice on that last part.
"Got it," Rae said. "Cut, shove, yell, complain to management."
The corner of her mouth twitched.
"Almost a respectable outfit," she said.
"Let us not go that far," he muttered.
Behind them, the others shifted in the scrub. Garron with his broken nose and heavy club. Kesh with his bow drawn to his cheek. Mal rolling his shoulders around the hammer he refused to put down even on raids. A few newer faces too, people who had chosen this over collars.
The caravan rolled closer. Two wagons. Decent wheels. Steady beasts. A low cloud of dust behind them.
Rae's stomach tightened when he saw the rope on the slaves at the back.
He kept his eyes on angles and distance instead.
Cynthia raised one hand.
"Bows ready," she murmured.
Strings tightened. Breath held.
The wagons reached the mark they had scratched into a roadside stone days ago.
Cynthia's hand dropped.
"Shoot," she said.
Arrows hissed out of the scrub.
The first volley took two guards out of their saddles. One dropped like a cut rope. The other screamed and grabbed for the shaft in his shoulder. The beasts reared, harness bells clanging, slaves stumbling as the line jerked.
"Bandits!" someone shouted.
Rae slid down the slope with the others, boots skidding, dust in his teeth. Garron went past him like a falling tree, club already swinging. Mal followed, hammer up.
From there, it was fast and ugly.
Cynthia hit the nearest spearman like a thrown stone. She caught the shaft in both hands, the wood darkening under her grip, and drove her knee into his ribs. He folded. Kesh's arrows kept the bowmen too busy to aim. Rae reached the slave line, knife in hand.
"Down!" he shouted. "Down, stay down!"
The words came easily now. Three weeks of hard practice.
Some of the slaves flinched away from his voice, expecting another blow. He grabbed the nearest collar, fingers finding the weak point, and pulled it tight so his knife could bite. The lock snapped. The iron ring fell away.
A woman stared at the metal on the ground, hand flying to her throat.
"Run to the trees," Rae said. He pointed at the scrub. "There. Go. If you stay, you fight. If you run, no one follows."
She ran.
Others followed her. Some stayed and grabbed dropped spears with shaking hands. Rae moved along the line, cutting where he could, yelling at people to move, shoving them clear of hooves and blades.
It did not take long.
It never did. When steel and fear met, things ended quicker than his brain thought they should.
When it was done, there were bodies on the road, groaning guards, scattered cargo, slaves breathing in short, sharp gasps under the trees. Garron had a cut on his cheek. One of the newer bandits held his arm like something was wrong with the bone.
Cynthia stood in the middle of it all, fists streaked with other people's blood, chest rising and falling. The air around her still felt a little warm.
"How many?" she called.
"Couple cut, no one dead," Garron said. "Four guards not getting up. Two ran."
"Good enough," Cynthia said. "Take food, tools and coin. Leave them a wagon to limp home with. Anyone who wants to come with us, they come. Anyone who wants to run, they run."
That was how it went for three weeks.
Small caravans. Short fights. Slaves freed. The group picked up new people one or two at a time. They ate better. They slept in the fort instead of the open.
And in the city, the stories grew.
⸻
Captain Merrow's office smelled of ink and dust.
Reports lay in stacks on his desk, held down with stones and a chipped mug. He rubbed at the side of his nose and stared at the latest sheet.
"Another hit," he said. "The outer road this time. Slaves freed. Wagons damaged. Some guards are lucky to be alive."
Bren stood stiff by the door, helm under one arm.
"The men went out as soon as we heard," Bren said. "Tracks vanish into the woods again. Same as before."
Merrow knew. He had read the same line too many times now.
"They are getting bolder," he said. "Three weeks ago they took one wagon by chance. Now they are choosing their roads."
"They are choosing the weak roads," Bren said.
"Yes," Merrow said. "Because we have left them weak."
He would have liked to stop there, but he was not alone in the room.
Lord Halven sat in a chair by the window, dressed in dark cloth with neat trim, a red stone on his finger. He looked like a man who had never been short of food or sleep in his life. His expression was tight.
"My caravans are not weak," Halven said. "Your roads are weak. Your patrols are weak. And now we have a pack of slaves who think they are heroes, cutting my chains and taking my stock."
Merrow held back a sigh.
"We have doubled patrols," he said. "Men in the towers watch day and night. I have given out better steel. I am doing what I can with the coin your council provides."
Halven leaned forward.
"And still they rob us," he said. "Still they make us look foolish. The lower streets talk. Traders mutter that this city cannot protect its own trade. Food runs thinner. People start asking why they should pay taxes if bandits get a share anyway."
He tapped the ring against the arm of his chair.
"There is talk of a girl," he added. "Hands like fire."
Merrow had heard that part too.
The back of his neck prickled. He kept his face still.
"Bloodline," Halven said softly. "People whisper it now. A clan child in the woods. Or something worse."
"There are no registered bloodline families near this city," Merrow said.
"Registered," Halven said. "Of course. Because everyone writes down their secrets for us."
He looked back at the report.
"I do not care where she is from," he said. "I care that she is costing me coin. You will stop them. I do not care how. Hire worse men if you must."
"Worse men," Merrow repeated.
"Rogue cultivators," Halven said. "You know the word. I know you are not a complete fool."
Merrow's jaw tightened.
Rogue cultivators meant trouble. Unchecked power. Men and women who had grabbed whatever training techniques they could get and forgo the sect rules.
They also meant a chance against a bloodline user.
"I will see who is in the city," he said.
"Good," Halven said. "Do it before people start saying 'Fire Starters' instead of Lowmarch City."
"Fire Starters?" Bren asked.
Halven's mouth twisted.
"That is what some of the guards call them," he said. "Caravans that come back talk about wagons burning and a girl whose hands glow. It has spread."
Merrow added that to the list of problems in his head.
Fire Starters. The name would stick if they did not end this soon.
A few hours later, the rogue cultivator sat alone at a small table in a low tavern.
He did not look like much. Lean, dark hair tied back, clothes clean but patched, old boots. His hands were rough. His eyes were steady in a way Merrow had learned to distrust.
"Your men say you can throw fire," Merrow said, sitting down opposite him.
The man's mouth twitched.
"They say I can juggle suns, climb clouds and drink a river too," he said. "They talk too much. I can manage a little fire."
"Name?" Merrow asked.
"Jao," the man said. "Or 'you'. I do not mind. Silver is what matters."
Merrow studied him.
"You are at Qi condensation?" he asked.
Jao's gaze sharpened a fraction.
"You know the term," he said.
"I know just enough to be careful," Merrow replied. "I need someone who can stand against a bloodline girl in the woods."
Jao snorted.
"Then you want a sect," he said. "A proper clan. They will send you a young master with a banner and three deciples"
"This is a small city at the end of the road," Merrow said. "The big sects do not care about us. I have you. Can you do it or not?"
Jao was quiet for a moment.
"I can slow her," he said. "If she is young and her blood is not too thick. If I have spirit stones to feed on."
He patted the small bundle at his side.
"They are low grade," he added. "This land is thin and qi is poor, so I work with whatever I can dig up or buy."
"It will have to be enough," Merrow said. "I will set up bait. A caravan with good goods and rumours of slaves. You ride with them and keep your head down. When they come, you break them."
"And if they do not?" Jao asked.
"Then we try again," Merrow said. "Until they do. Or until my head is on Lord Halven's wall."
Jao's mouth twitched again.
"He is that serious," he said.
"Yes," Merrow replied.
"Double what your runners offered," Jao said. "Half now, half when she is dead or chained. If I die, you keep the rest."
Merrow held out his hand.
"Done," he said.
Jao's grip was dry and firm. For a second Merrow felt a faint hum under his skin, like standing near a strange engine. Then it was gone.
⸻
From the hill, the bait caravan looked almost normal.
Rae lay in the scrub, same flat rock under his chin, same road, different week. Two wagons again. Good beasts. A neat row of guards.
His neck prickled.
"This one feels wrong," he said quietly.
Cynthia watched the wagons roll closer. Brass on the harness caught the light. The guards sat straight in their saddles. Their armour looked like someone had actually oiled it this morning.
"New gear," she said. "Plenty of coin."
"Too much coin for this road," Rae said. "And they are watching the hills like they expect us, not like they are scared of shadows."
"Maybe both," she said. "Maybe we are scary shadows now."
Behind them, Garron shifted.
"We can let this one pass," he muttered. "There are other roads. Other wagons."
Cynthia did not answer straight away.
Rae could almost see the pull in her face. Food, tools, coin. Pride. Three weeks of getting away with things.
"They will keep sending better caravans," she said at last. "If we run every time they polish their armour, we will end up living in a hole. If we hit this once, hard, they may think twice."
"Or they send more," Rae said.
She glanced sideways at him.
"We built this by walking into bad odds," she said quietly. "Are you telling me to hide now?"
He swallowed.
"No," he said. "I am saying be ready when it bites."
She smiled, quick and sharp.
"Good," she said. "Same plan. Full push. If anything feels worse than usual, you shout and we pull back."
She raised her hand.
Around them, their people shifted into position. The name Fire Starters had started as guard talk, but some of the bandits had liked the sound and kept it. Rae was still not sure how he felt about it.
Cynthia's hand dropped.
"Loose," she said.
Arrows hissed out.
The first volley left the scrub as always.
This time, things changed on the third heartbeat.
A man stepped down from the front wagon.
He moved wrong for a driver. Too balanced. Too sure.
He straightened, pushed his cloak back, and drew in a slow breath. Dust rose in a faint ring around his boots. The air pushed against Rae's teeth.
"Down!" Rae shouted without knowing why.
Fire rushed out from the man's hand.
It rolled low over the ground like a sheet of bright orange water, heading straight for the scrub where Garron and three others hid. Garron swore and threw himself sideways, dragging one bandit with him. The fire washed over the bushes they had just left and turned green leaves black in a blink.
The man lowered his hand. His palm smoked faintly.
He looked up at the hillside.
"Bandits," he called. His voice carried across the road with no effort. "You chose the wrong caravan."
Cynthia's breath went still beside Rae.
"Cultivator," she said.
Rae had heard the word. Tavern stories. Caravan gossip. A man who carried qi inside his body and made the world move.
Seeing it was different.
The man moved his other hand.
The road in front of the second wagon shuddered. Earth and rock pushed up into a rough wall, waist high, blocking the usual path the Fire Starters used to charge.
The wall was ugly and uneven. Gravel rolled off it. It was still a wall.
"That is not sect work," Cynthia muttered. "Too rough. Too wasteful. He is burning qi like kindling."
"Qi," Rae echoed under his breath. The word sat strange on his tongue.
"Later," she said. "We take him first."
She pushed herself up and ran down the slope.
Heat wrapped her like a second skin.
Rae swore and followed.
⸻
The fight blurred into flashes.
Cynthia dropping through arrows like she knew where they would be. Fire blooming from the man's hands in heavy bursts – balls of flame hitting the ground and throwing heat and smoke everywhere. A stone wall cracking under her punch. Guards caught between being afraid of bandits and afraid of the man they had hired.
Rae did his job. Slaves, ropes, trees, shouting.
When he looked back, Cynthia and the cultivator were facing each other near the front wagon.
Jao, was breathing hard. Sweat ran down his face. His eyes were sharp and angry. Cynthia's sleeve was burned, skin red along her forearm, but she did not look tired yet.
He dragged in another breath and flung his hand out. A ball of fire shot towards her.
She met it with her palm.
The air cracked. Fire wrapped her hand and spilled around her, leaving dark streaks on the road. She shook her arm once, skin flushed but whole.
"Low grade," she said.
Jao stared.
"What?"
"Your qi," she said. "Thin and dirty. You burn stones without cleaning your routes."
Something bitter twisted in his face.
"Easy to say from a clan seat," he snapped. "Try learning in ditches."
"I did," she said, and stepped in.
Heat thickened around her fists. She punched. He dragged up another wall of dirt and stone. Her fist hit it and cracks spidered out from the point of impact. She drove her shoulder into the same spot. The wall shattered.
Her knee caught his ribs. Something gave with a wet crack. He dropped to one knee, fighting for breath, reaching for the pouch at his belt.
"Enough," she said quietly.
Her hand closed on the pouch. Heat pulsed. Rae heard a soft cracking sound, like thin ice breaking – the spirit stones inside giving way. Jao's eyes went wide.
She brought her knee up again.
He went limp.
The shout went up from the Fire Starters. Some guards broke and ran. Others dropped their weapons and tried to surrender. Cynthia ignored them.
"Pull back!" she called. "Take what you can carry. We do not stay for more guards."
Rae looked down at Jao.
Up close, he looked younger than he had from the hill. Just a tired man who had pushed himself too far. His chest moved in short, sharp breaths.
"He is not dead," Rae said.
"He will not live the night without help," Cynthia said. "If we leave him, the city will use him again. Men like this do not retire."
Rae did not have an answer for that.
Cynthia rested two fingers on Jao's forehead for a moment, as if in respect, then moved them to his throat. A faint warmth pulsed under her hand. His chest stopped moving. She closed his eyes.
"Take his pouch," she said softly. "He had stones. No one throws that much fire out here without them."
Rae's stomach turned. He crouched anyway and unfastened the cracked pouch.
Inside were small, pale stones, no bigger than the tip of his thumb. Their centres were cloudy, but a faint light moved in them, slow and
"What are they?" he whispered.
Cynthia glanced over.
"Low grade spirit stones," she said. "Barely decent – enough to run cheap tools or feed a hungry rogue, but not worth much for proper training."
"Spirit stones," Rae repeated.
"Yes," she said. "Qi gathers in the world. It soaks into stone in certain places. You dig it out, cut it, use it."
He looked up at her.
"Qi is… everywhere?" he asked. "In the air?"
"Yes," she said. "You really did not feel it?"
He thought back. The heavy weight in the air the night he had woken on the riverbank. Each breath had felt too thick, like he was drinking instead of breathing. Since then there had been other moments – the strange pressure on his skin on still nights, the way the air sometimes seemed to lean on him for no reason at all.
"I felt something," he said slowly. "I did not know the name."
"Well, now you do," Cynthia said. "Qi. It is the strength in the air. First you teach your body to notice it – that is qi sense. At the start it just feels like pressure, or heat on your skin when there is no fire. If you keep training, something inside you changes. A small place opens that can hold a little of it. After that you breathe qi in and move it through the paths in your body" – she tapped her chest – "again and again until it listens when you tell it to move. That is qi forming. Qi condensation. Different names, same first step."
She jerked her chin at the stones.
"Keep them," she said. "They are too dirty for me. They will clog my routes. Maybe you will find a use for them."
Rae closed his hand around the stones.
They felt cool and heavy. The faint light still glowed between his fingers.
Kesh called from the edge of the road. "Dust on the ridge! Patrol, maybe!"
Cynthia nodded.
"Strip what you can," she told the others. "Leave the rest. Back to the fort."
They left one wagon burning behind them, guards alive enough to crawl away. The stories would spread again. Fire, bandits, a girl with hot hands.
Fire Starters.
That night, under the broken roof of the fort's main hall, Rae sat with his back against a wall and the suit across his lap.
It looked tired. Scratches. Dents. Plates Mal had patched with whatever metal he could scrounge. The fine mesh inside had been dead weight for weeks now. Circuits that should have glowed just spat a dull flicker and went dark.
He turned one of the spirit stones in his fingers.
Up close, the cloudy centre seemed to move, like slow breath. If he focused, he could feel a faint push against his skin.
"This is stupid," he told himself quietly. "You do not know what this will do."
He also knew he was going to do it anyway.
He peeled back a panel on the inside of the chest piece, exposing a small hollow where an emergency cell was meant to go. The original cell had burned out long ago.
He took a breath and set the stone into the empty space.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened.
Then the glow brightened.
A tingle ran up his fingers. The metal around the hollow seemed to shiver. Somewhere in the weave of the suit, lines reached out to touch the new source.
"Come on," he whispered. "Play nice."
A soft chime sounded in his ears.
Not in the hall. Inside his head.
AUXILIARY POWER SOURCE DETECTED.
CALIBRATING…
Clean white text rolled across the edge of his vision. His chest clenched. He let out a shaky breath he had not realised he was holding.
The inner mesh warmed under his hands.
For a moment he felt the two systems brush against each other – Time Ring tech and this world's qi, suit lattice and spirit stone. It was thin and strange and should not have worked.
It worked anyway.
CALIBRATION COMPLETE.
WARNING: SOURCE UNIDENTIFIED. OUTPUT IRREGULAR.
RECOMMENDED: LIMITED USE ONLY.
Rae laughed.
The sound bounced off the broken walls. Garron, dozing nearby, jerked awake.
"What?" Garron grunted. "We under attack?"
"No," Rae said, still grinning. "For once, something went right."
He set his palm flat on the suit's chest.
Panels opened in his vision. Readings flickered to life. Numbers he thought he would never see again started to move.
Home was still impossibly far. The Time Ring was a rumour in the sky. His team were on the other side of a closed door.
But in a ruined fort, in thin qi land, with stolen stones in his belt and blood under his nails, Rae Aylin had power again.
Not much.
Enough to start.
He looked at the pouch with the remaining stones, then back at the suit's faintly glowing lines.
"Right," he said softly. "Let us see what we can do."
The Fire Starters slept around him, breathing slow in the dark.
Rae stayed awake a little longer, planning.