The village didn't appear on any proper map. For most people, it simply didn't exist.
Dustgrave was a place of cracked walls and tired eyes, a smear of mud and stone at the edge of a dry valley. The houses were low and crooked, more dust than wood, their roofs patched with whatever scraps people could find. On most days, the wind moved more than the villagers did.
From the hill just outside the village, Dustgrave looked almost peaceful.
Almost.
Kael Vardar sat on a flat, sun-bleached rock, elbows resting on his knees, grey eyes fixed on the distant line where the valley ended and the mountains rose like broken teeth. Morning light crawled lazily over the peaks, but the warmth never seemed to reach this place.
It never seemed to reach him.
He watched as thin trails of smoke rose from the village chimneys. People were waking up, dragging themselves into another day of the same work, the same hunger, the same quiet fear.
Another day of nothing, he thought.
The wind brushed against his face, dry and rough, carrying with it the faint smell of stale grain and old smoke. It didn't sting his eyes. Very little did.
Behind him, heavy footsteps crunched on the sparse grass.
"You're up here again, boy," a rough voice said. "Sun's barely up and you're already staring at things you can't reach."
Kael didn't turn around.
"Up here, it's quieter," he replied. "Down there, it smells like people trying to pretend they're not afraid."
The man behind him snorted.
"That's just life. Fear keeps people breathing."
Kael glanced over his shoulder.
Tomer was a big man once; now age had hollowed his shoulders and carved lines into his face. His hands were still thick, knuckles scarred from years spent lifting crates and sacks for merchants who never bothered to remember his name. In Dustgrave, that was enough to call him "strong."
To Kael, it was enough to call him "useful."
Tomer walked past and sat on a smaller rock nearby, grunting as his joints protested.
"I suppose it's better than lying in bed hoping someone else will bring you food," he said. "You don't hope for much, do you, Kael?"
"Hope is for people who think the world cares," Kael said. "I don't."
Tomer gave him a sideways look, one eyebrow raised.
"You talk like a man twice your age. How old are you now? Twelve?"
"Thirteen," Kael answered. "Yesterday."
The man blinked.
"No feast. No candles. No one shouting about your birthday." He forced a crooked smile. "You didn't tell anyone?"
Kael shrugged.
"There's nothing to celebrate," he said. "I survived another year being useless. That's all."
The words were flat, calm, not bitter. He wasn't trying to get sympathy. He was stating a fact.
Tomer sighed and rubbed his beard.
"You're not useless," he said, the lie passing almost smoothly off his tongue. "The storehouse would be slower without you. You work harder than half the brats down there."
"They can join a sect," Kael replied. "If they get noticed. I can't."
The old man's eyes softened, just a little.
"Still thinking about that?" he asked quietly.
Kael didn't answer. He didn't need to. They both knew what he meant.
Every child in Dustgrave had heard stories of cultivators: people who strengthened their bodies, tempered their minds, and filled their dantian with spiritual energy until they could leap across rooftops, crush stones with bare hands, or fly through the sky. To leave Dustgrave and enter a sect was to leave behind mud, fear, and smallness.
Most children dreamed about it.
Kael never dreamed. He remembered.
"His dantian… This is wrong."
The memory came back in fragments, like pieces of a cracked mirror.
A stranger in worn robes, an old woman who had passed through the village six years ago. The villagers had begged her to examine their children, just in case one of them had a spark of talent. Just in case some tiny fragment of Dustgrave could climb into the heavens and drag the village's name behind it.
She had placed her palm against the lower abdomen of each child, eyes closed, breathing slow. She had smiled at some, frowned at others, shaken her head at most.
Then she had reached Kael.
Her brow had furrowed almost immediately. Her hand had trembled.
"This… this is not broken," she had whispered.
The adults had leaned closer.
"Is he talented?" one had asked. "Is he—"
"It's empty," the healer had said. "But not like the others. It's… open. There are no walls. No boundaries. It's like staring into a well with no bottom."
She had pulled her hand away as if burned.
"A normal dantian can be filled, tempered, cracked, healed. His can't be filled. It will swallow everything or nothing at all. I don't know what this is, but it's not a path any sane cultivator would take."
After that, no one had asked her more questions about Kael.
They had whispered instead.
Empty.Strange.Wrong.
"Broken dantian," some said.
"No dantian at all," others muttered.
The words changed, but the result was the same: no sect would take him. No elder would waste time teaching a boy whose very core didn't work the way it should.
He was thirteen now, and nothing had changed.
He was still empty.
Except… he wasn't.
Not completely.
Sometimes, late at night, when the village was silent and the only sound was the creak of old wood and the distant howl of wind, Kael felt something in the center of his body.
Not warmth. Not energy. Something else.
Movement. Breathing.
As if the emptiness itself were a living thing.
He kept that thought to himself.
Tomer slapped his knees and stood up.
"Come on," he said. "The grain doesn't carry itself. Unless it decides to cultivate and grow legs."
Kael rose from the rock. Dust clung to the back of his trousers.
As he turned, he cast one last look toward the distant mountains. They were too far to make out any details—no sect gates, no towering walls, no flying swords cutting across the sky—but he knew they were there.
Somewhere beyond the horizon, people were fighting to climb higher, to reach realms with names Dustgrave would never hear.
They climb, he thought, because they have something to stand on.
He touched his lower abdomen again, fingers pressing lightly against the fabric of his shirt.
I have a hole.
He followed Tomer down the hill.
As he walked, the morning light stretched his shadow across the ground. It moved with his steps, thin and dark against the pale grass.
Then, for the briefest moment, it lagged behind.
His foot came down; his shadow's foot followed half a heartbeat later, like someone copying him with a slight delay.
Kael stopped.
His shadow caught up, settling into place as if nothing had happened.
Tomer took a few steps before noticing the boy had halted.
"What is it?" the older man asked, squinting back at him.
Kael looked down at the ground again. His shadow lay still, perfectly normal.
"Nothing," he said.
He started walking again.
Maybe I imagined it, he thought. Or maybe the emptiness wants to see what it owns.
The idea didn't frighten him.
It made him curious.
The storehouse was the only building in Dustgrave that didn't look ready to collapse at any moment. Its walls were made of rough stone instead of packed clay, and the roof was thick, reinforced with beams scavenged from caravans or fallen trees.
Grain was the village's lifeline. Losing it meant starving. So they protected it with stone and locks.
And with a man like Grent.
Grent was wide, with the kind of body that made doors seem narrow. His bald head glistened with sweat even when he wasn't working, and his beard was a tangled mess of crumbs and streaks of ale. He was not a cultivator, not even close, but in Dustgrave, strength was relative.
Compared to the villagers, he was strong.
Compared to the world outside, he was nothing.
"About time," Grent grumbled as Tomer and Kael approached. "Wheat doesn't move itself."
"You already said that," Kael murmured.
Grent's head snapped toward him.
"What was that?"
Kael met his gaze for a second, then lowered his eyes just enough to make it look like respect but not fear.
"I said we're here," he answered.
Grent snorted and waved them inside.
The air in the storehouse was heavy with the smell of grain—dry and dusty, but at least it was the smell of food. Stacked sacks formed uneven walls, leaving narrow paths between them.
"Same as always," Grent said. "Move these from the back to the front. Merchants are coming in three days. They want to see full stacks near the entrance. Makes them feel they're dealing with a proper village."
Tomer nodded and got to work.
Kael stepped up to the nearest sack, slipped his arms around it, and hoisted it up onto his shoulder. The weight pressed down on his bones, threatening to crush him into the dirt.
His knees bent slightly. His back tensed.
Then he straightened and walked.
Every step was measured, controlled. He didn't rush, but he didn't lag either. Weakness was allowed in Dustgrave. But visible weakness? That invited kicks.
"Faster," Grent barked. "You're not a sick old man. Move like it."
Kael didn't answer.
He thinks shouting makes him bigger, Kael thought. If he had real power, he wouldn't waste it here.
He imagined Grent standing in front of a cultivator—somebody wrapped in visible spiritual light, someone whose casual gesture could break stone.
The picture in his mind made his lips twitch.
He'd bow until his spine snapped.
He moved sack after sack, the strain settling into his shoulders and arms like a dull fire. Tomer breathed heavily, but kept working beside him.
By midday, Kael's shirt was damp with sweat. Dust clung to his skin. His muscles trembled when he set the last sack down.
"Not bad," Tomer said between breaths. "You'll be stronger than me if you keep this up."
Kael rolled his shoulder, testing the ache.
"Muscles won't change my dantian," he said.
Grent walked over, wiping his hands on his stained trousers.
"You should be grateful you can work at all," he said. "No sect will look at a broken brat like you. The village feeds you, gives you work, lets you breathe. That's more than you deserve."
Kael looked at him.
He saw the sweat, the crumbs in the man's beard, the way his eyes gleamed when he talked about what he gave others.
He thinks this is generosity, Kael thought. But it's just control.
"I know my place," Kael said aloud.
Grent smirked.
"Good. As long as you remember that, we won't have problems."
He walked away, shouting at another worker for stacking sacks crooked.
Tomer leaned closer.
"You shouldn't talk back to him so much," the old man murmured. "One day he'll decide you're more trouble than you're worth."
Kael's gaze stayed on Grent's back.
"If that day comes," he said softly, "he'll regret it more than I will."
Tomer frowned.
There was no anger in Kael's voice.
Only certainty.
When the work was done, the sun had climbed high, turning the light harsh and thin. Kael left the storehouse and headed toward the well at the center of the village.
Children ran past him, chasing each other with sticks and laughing. Their laughter always sounded brittle to him, like dry twigs snapping.
He caught fragments of their conversation.
"…when the caravan came last year, they said one boy from Rockbend got taken to a sect—"
"—my mother says if my dantian is good enough, I can go too—"
"—I'll learn sword arts and come back flying through the sky—"
Kael kept walking.
They don't understand, he thought. Even if a sect took them, most of them would stay at the bottom. They think crossing a small ditch means they've climbed a mountain.
He reached the well. The stone rim was worn smooth by countless hands. He cupped water in his palms and splashed it onto his face, washing away the sweat and dust.
When he leaned over the surface, his reflection stared back at him.
Black hair, cut short with a knife. Sharp cheekbones. Grey eyes that didn't shine the way a child's eyes should.
People sometimes said he looked like he was already tired of living.
He thought they were wrong.
He wasn't tired of living.
He was tired of living like this.
Something rippled across the water.
For a moment, his reflection lagged behind his movement. He blinked, and the image blinked a fraction of a second later.
His hand moved to the side.
The reflection followed. Late.
Kael stilled.
The water calmed, and the delay vanished.
He watched himself for a few more seconds, then straightened.
The emptiness is moving more, he thought. It's getting restless.
A faint whisper brushed the edge of his awareness, so quiet he almost missed it.
…hungry…
He froze.
The sound didn't come from outside. It came from a place inside his chest his hands could never reach.
He waited, but the voice didn't come again.
I'm imagining things, he told himself.
But the idea didn't convince him.
That evening, as the sun slid down behind the mountains and the sky turned the color of old embers, the village square filled slowly. People gathered in small clusters, talking in low voices, faces lined with exhaustion.
Kael sat alone near a crumbling wall, a piece of stale bread in his hand. He took small bites, more out of habit than hunger. His body needed food. The thing in his center… he didn't know what it needed.
Tomer approached, dropping himself down beside him with a groan.
"Whole village's buzzing," the old man said. "Feels like a festival, but nobody's smiling right."
Kael chewed and swallowed.
"Why?" he asked.
"You didn't hear?" Tomer raised both brows. "A merchant caravan passed by the east road an hour ago. They said a group of cultivators is coming through the valley tomorrow. Might stay here for a night."
Around them, the murmurs grew louder. Kael didn't need to strain to catch pieces.
"—a clan group, they said—"
"—if they see our children, they might take someone—"
"—we should clean the square, make a good impression—"
Hope glittered on some faces. On others, fear.
"Cultivators," Kael said.
The word tasted strange in his mouth. Heavy. Sharp.
He had seen a few from afar before—passing riders whose presence made the air feel thicker, caravans guarded by people whose footsteps didn't quite match their weight. Once, a man had leapt from the ground to the top of the storehouse in a single bound, just to check the roof beams.
The memory had branded itself into Kael's mind.
"I thought they avoided this route," he said.
Tomer shrugged.
"Maybe something changed. Maybe they found a new vein of ore in the mountains, or another village started paying them tribute." He scratched his chin. "Maybe they're just bored."
He glanced at Kael.
"You shouldn't draw attention to yourself when they come," he said quietly. "If they sense something strange in your dantian, they might not like it."
Kael's fingers tightened slightly around the bread.
They already don't like me, he thought. At least here, I'm just useless. Somewhere else, I might be something worse.
"What if they do like it?" he asked.
Tomer shook his head.
"Powerful people don't like things they don't understand. They destroy them or lock them away."
He spoke with the tired certainty of someone who had seen enough of the world to know his place in it—and had accepted it.
Kael hadn't accepted anything.
He looked at the darkening sky.
"Even if they ignore me," he said, "I want to see them."
Tomer wasn't surprised.
"Of course you do," the old man muttered. "You're always staring past this place, as if the horizon owes you an answer."
Kael didn't deny it.
The world doesn't owe me anything, he thought. But that doesn't mean I won't take something from it.
The voice inside him stirred again, a faint brush like cold fingers tracing a circle in his chest.
…more…
It was quieter this time, but clearer.
Kael swallowed the last of his bread.
He realized, with a strange sort of calm, that he believed two things:
The first was that the cultivators coming through Dustgrave would change nothing for the village.
The second was that they might change everything for him.
Not because they would help him.
But because power, once close enough to touch, was no longer just a story.
He leaned back against the wall, closing his eyes for a moment.
If the heavens won't give me a path, he thought, then I'll walk where I'm not supposed to. Even if that means stepping on people to do it.
The idea didn't feel wrong.
It felt… honest.
When he opened his eyes again, he noticed something on the far side of the valley.
A thin, rising cloud of dust.
Too steady to be a storm.
Too focused to be an accident.
Wheels. Hooves. Boots.
The people around the square hadn't seen it yet. They were looking at each other, at their homes, at the ground.
Kael looked past all of that.
The caravan was still distant, but even from here, he thought he saw a faint glimmer in the fading light. Not torchlight. Something cleaner. Sharper.
Spiritual light.
He couldn't feel their qi from this far. He had no cultivation, no sense honed by training.
But his dantian—that open, bottomless space—tightened ever so slightly, as if reacting to something approaching.
Not like a heart.
More like a mouth.
…hungry…
This time, the whisper didn't fade as quickly.
And for the first time, Kael didn't try to ignore it.
He watched the dust cloud draw slowly closer, and a simple thought settled into his mind like a stone falling into deep water.
Come closer, then.
Let me see what the world has been feeding instead of me.
He didn't know yet that this was the beginning.
He only knew that the void inside him had finally stopped sleeping.