Xīng Hé was in her training room when Yao Xian arrived.
The mirror floated dormant before her, its surface dark and unresponsive. She'd exhausted its daily limit hours ago—spent the morning testing her concepts against simulated injuries, failing more often than succeeding, pushing until the artefact simply refused to function.
The door opened without warning.
Yao walked in as if she owned the space—which, in practical terms, she did. She'd claimed residence in this manor months ago and showed no signs of leaving. Her presence had become a constant: distant, uninvolved, occasionally offering observations that seemed designed to unsettle rather than help.
"The two groups have merged," Yao said without preamble. "Real training begins now."
Xīng Hé turned from the mirror. "What kind of training?"
"The kind that breaks people." Yao's tone carried no particular weight—just stating facts. "Physical conditioning. Combat drills. Psychological preparation for what awaits them."
What awaits us, Xīng Hé thought. She says 'them' as if I'm not part of it.
"Since Group Two members haven't received proper training yet—they were too focused on guidance, on evolving—they'll need to catch up quickly. The physical concept wielders from Group One have a significant head start." Yao paused, something flickering behind her eyes. "Naturally, we have high expectations of you."
The words landed with weight they probably weren't meant to carry.
Xīng Hé kept her expression neutral. "Expectations for what?"
"For whatever you're hiding."
Silence.
Yao's gaze held hers—unblinking, unreadable. The moment stretched, tension building like pressure before a storm.
"I know you know about the war. How much exactly, I can't say. But you have intelligence you shouldn't have. Sources you shouldn't have access to."
Xīng Hé's heart hammered against her ribs. She opened her mouth to respond—to deny, to deflect—
"And I know your concept isn't Time."
The words cut through whatever defense she'd been constructing.
Yao smiled—a thin, knowing expression that carried no warmth.
"So I can't guide you. I can't train someone when I don't know what I'm training them to do. Your concept—your real concept—is a mystery you've chosen to keep. That's your right. But it means you're on your own."
Xīng Hé found her voice. "If you know I'm hiding something, why not—"
"Report you?" Yao's smile widened slightly. "I could. It would probably earn me favor. Might even be the smart thing to do."
She didn't continue.
"But you won't," Xīng Hé said slowly.
"I won't. I won't train you. I won't guide you. I won't ask what your true concept is. And I won't tell anyone what I suspect."
"Why?"
The question escaped before Xīng Hé could stop it.
Yao's expression shifted—something passing behind her eyes too quickly to identify. For just a moment, she looked almost tired. Almost human.
"Because I don't care enough to bother. Your secrets are your own. Keep them or don't. It makes no difference to me."
She turned toward the door, then paused.
"But you should know something."
Xīng Hé waited.
"Knowledge can be extracted directly from your mind." Yao's voice had gone flat. Matter-of-fact. "There are methods. Techniques. Ways of reaching into a person's consciousness and pulling out whatever they're trying to hide. It's not pleasant. It's not clean. But it's effective."
A chill ran down Xīng Hé's spine.
"Don't give them a reason to use it on you."
The warning hung in the air between them.
Yao reached the door, her hand resting on the frame. She didn't look back.
"One more thing."
Her voice had changed again—softer now, carrying an edge that might have been concern or might have been something else entirely.
"Cut every tie you have. Leave no loose ends."
The words made no sense. Or rather, they made too much sense—implications branching outward in directions Xīng Hé couldn't fully trace.
"So there's no weakness to exploit," Yao finished.
Then she was gone.
The door closed behind her, leaving Xīng Hé alone with questions she couldn't answer and warnings she didn't fully understand.
---
✦
Xīng Hé sat on the edge of her bed, staring at nothing.
Cut every tie. Leave no loose ends.
What did that mean?
Her mind turned the words over, examining them from every angle. Ties. Connections. Relationships that could be used against her. Weaknesses that others might exploit.
Hongyu.
Her friend's face surfaced in her memory—red hair catching the light, sharp tongue softened by genuine affection, the promise she'd made in this very room. We're going home soon. I'm going to take us home.
A promise she still didn't know how to keep.
Was Hongyu a loose end? Was their friendship a weakness that could be exploited? If someone wanted to hurt Xīng Hé—wanted to force her to reveal her secrets, to cooperate, to comply—would they use Hongyu to do it?
The thought was nauseating.
But it wasn't the only concern pressing against her consciousness.
While they're being trained for the war, Yao had said. Xīng Hé knew what that meant now. Knew, at least in abstract, what the children were being prepared for. The missions. The conflicts. The violence that would eventually be demanded of them.
Could she do it?
When the moment came—when survival required taking a life, when the mission demanded she end another existence—could she actually follow through?
Could any of them?
They were children. Some barely past their seventh year when the drafting occurred, now older in body but still carrying minds shaped by lives that hadn't prepared them for this. Lives of comfort and safety and the naive assumption that someone else would always handle the difficult things.
Now they were the difficult things.
The weight of it pressed down on her—the enormity of what was being asked, the impossibility of what she was trying to accomplish, the gap between who she was and who she needed to become.
I'm still too weak. Too weak to stop anything. Too weak to protect anyone. Too weak to do anything but hide and hope.
Hope felt increasingly insufficient.
And there was another concern—one she'd been trying not to think about too directly.
Yao had claimed responsibility for her training. Had told the other mentors and elders that she would handle Xīng Hé's development personally. But she wasn't training her. Wasn't guiding her. Wasn't doing anything except occasionally appearing to deliver cryptic warnings and veiled threats.
Which meant the others believed Xīng Hé was receiving private instruction when she was actually receiving nothing at all.
A cover story.
But for whose benefit?
Was Yao protecting her? Giving her space to develop her concepts without interference, without the scrutiny that official training would bring? Or was she simply avoiding responsibility, using Xīng Hé's situation as an excuse to do nothing while appearing to do something?
Xīng Hé couldn't tell.
She couldn't tell anything anymore.
The mirror floated in its corner, dark and patient, waiting for tomorrow's session. The manor stretched around her, vast and empty and carefully designed to isolate. The world continued to turn outside these crystalline walls, indifferent to her struggles, indifferent to her plans, indifferent to the future she was trying to build from nothing.
Just hope everyone's holding out well. It'll end soon.
The hope felt hollow even as she formed it.
But it was all she had.
---
✦
And so three years passed.
Not in the blink of an eye—nothing so simple, so clean. Three years of mornings that bled into afternoons that bled into nights. Three years of training and failure and incremental progress that never felt like enough. Three years of isolation punctuated by brief visits, of warnings left unheeded and questions left unanswered.
Three years of becoming something other than what they had been.
The children who had cheered in that open field grew harder. Sharper. Their bodies refined by evolution and training alike, their minds shaped by experiences that left marks no healer could erase. They learned to fight. They learned to endure. They learned the thousand small cruelties that survival demanded of those who wished to continue surviving.
Some broke along the way.
Some didn't.
And somewhere in the crystalline corridors of a manor she hadn't chosen, a girl with snow-white hair continued to train alone—pushing against limits that refused to yield, carrying secrets that grew heavier with each passing day, waiting for a moment she couldn't quite see but knew was coming.
The war waited for all of them.
It had been waiting for five hundred years.
It could wait a little longer.
---
End of Chapter 38