It’s a bright summer day at the academy, and Jia knows she is dreaming. Nothing is quite the way it should be—Eui is there with her, but Jia doesn’t feel the connection between them, it should be winter still, and the academy buildings are unfamiliar to her. Is it her soulscape? No—if anything that would be more familiar, and she doesn’t notice the presence of Heian or her spirit half. Eui speaks to her, and Jia understands the meaning without hearing the words—they are on a date. They begin to walk, and after an indeterminate amount of time, they arrive at the location of their date, a picnic at the edge of a nearby lake. Is there a place like that? Jia can’t remember, but it doesn’t really matter.

Jia and Eui enjoy fresh fruits and chat aimlessly, though Jia can’t remember what they talk about. They snuggle into each other’s embrace and watch the sunset over the lake. As the sun gets low over the horizon, they kiss and Eui’s lips taste like sweet berries. Jia’s never had a dream like this before, but it’s kind of nice—if a little embarrassing.

Suddenly, the sky brightens once again, and Jia finds herself standing with Eui’s hand gripped tightly in hers. A second sun appears in the sky and descends upon the world, crashing into the distant academy—her home. Jia tries to wake up, but she can’t. She can’t even look away as her home is consumed by the fire. Her tears run in rivulets down her face—everything she’s known, all the friends she’s made, the only place she’s ever belonged, gone in an instant. Jia turns to the comfort of Eui’s embrace. They are alone now, and there’s no place for them. They kiss one last time as the wave of fire envelops them...

---

Jia woke with a start, drenched in sweat and gasping for breath. As she tried to sit up, her body was wracked with pain and she gave up. Jia recognized the medical pavilion, a place she’d found herself waking up in more often that she would have liked. Extending her domain, she saw that Hayakawa was in another room, being attended to by Fujikawa’s healing. Jia had no healers present, but her most dire wounds had been seen to, and she wasn’t alone. Unexpectedly, it was Master Ienaga Yumi who was present with her. The stoic martial arts instructor noticed Jia’s stirring.

“Good, you’re awake. How are you feeling?”

Jia struggled to speak, her voice coming out raspy and sending twinges of pain throughout her body with each word.

“Like—like I’ve just slammed myself into a mountain at full force.”

Ienaga chuckled.

“You’re going to need to get better at handling the Lightning God Transformation if you’re going to rely on it so heavily in your fights. Even if you had struck a mountain, that kind of backlash is unacceptably sloppy.”

She cleared her throat.

“Ahem—-that’s not why I am here, though. I wanted to be the one to inform you of the results of your match.”

Jia grunted affirmatively, and Master Ienaga took that as a signal to proceed.

“In the strictest sense, the result of your duel was a draw. Neither of you submitted to the other, and you were both unconscious by the time a result could be determined. There was some debate over how the match should be decided, but in the end it was taken to a vote. The deans voted two to one in favor of Hayakawa.”

Jia grimaced. So she had lost after all. It hurt more than she thought it would.

“Who—voted for me?”

Ienaga pursed her lips as Jia struggled to get the words out, then averted her eyes as she responded.

“I shouldn't tell you that. The main argument in your favor was that you had fought Hayakawa to a standstill with far less experience, with the counterpoint being that previous experience was irrelevant and that Hayakawa had performed better throughout the fight. None of us made our decision lightly, and we have all agreed to abide by the result.”

That wasn’t really an answer, but Jia decided not to push her. Bitterly, she wondered how much of the decision was political. Hayakawa was the heir to her entire country—probably the most important person in the entire academy including the teachers—and Jia was nobody. The thought reminded Jia of the news that the Ienaga shogunate had ended. She didn’t know much about Yamato politics—or any politics, for that matter—but it didn’t seem like the transfer of power was likely to have occurred peacefully.

“What happened to the shogun?”

Master Ienaga smiled down at her.

“I appreciate your concern, but my family is just fine. As savage as the Empire makes us out to be, we’re not a bloodthirsty culture. The forces of Hayakawa and Ienaga clashed a month ago, led by the heads of each family. My father’s army was routed with minimal losses on either side—mostly a formality, really—and my father has stepped down as head of the Ienaga clan. There might be a few more challenges to Hayakawa’s rule over the next year or so, but I doubt there will be much bloodshed over it. Lord—rather, Shogun Hayakawa is quite popular.”

Jia wondered who the new head of the clan would be, which caused her thoughts to drift to Murayoshi—Ienaga Yumi’s uncle, apparently—and what he had said about giving up his name. She had been too nervous to ask before, but curiosity got the better of her.

“Why did Grandmaster Murayoshi leave the clan?”

Master Ienaga’s eyes sharpened, and her hand moved to the sword at her hip.

“What did he tell you?”

Jia’s blood went cold—she had known it was something personal, but hadn’t expected such a severe reaction. She rushed to answer, despite the pain that speaking caused.

“N-nothing! He just said that he gave up the Ienaga name, and that it had something to do with your breakthrough to xiantian.”

Master Ienaga’s face fell, and the hand on her sword went to her face as she groaned.

“That old bastard! It’s—a long story, but I should probably give you some explanation. At least about breaking through, now that you're in the third stage. Not now, though—An and Hayakawa should hear it as well. There will be a few days of rest before the doubles tournament starts—once you've both recovered, I’ll arrange a meeting.”

Before Jia could respond, Ienaga departed with a curt bow, leaving Jia alone with her thoughts. Her mind drifted back to the nightmare she’d had before waking. Already the details seemed to fade from her mind, but it filled her with a profound sense of loss. Soon, she felt the comforting presence of Eui at the edge of her domain, and their minds came together just long enough for Yoshika to decide that Jia’s injuries were too severe for remote healing.

Eui burst into the room and immediately swept Jia into a painful embrace.

“Jia! Thank the ancestors you’re okay!”

“Ow! Ow! Ow! I’m glad to see you too, but ow!”

Eui blushed and set Jia down.

“S-sorry, I just got a little overexcited. Did you hear about how they decided your match? What a pile of shit!”

JIa sighed, immediately regretting it as her body seized up painfully.

“Yeah—could we maybe talk about it after, though?”

“Right! Yes, let me just...”

Eui took Jia’s hand in hers and closed her eyes. Yoshika carefully inspected her injuries, using the wood-element qi to quickly patch up any superficial problems and probe the more severe ones for complications. The bones in Jia’s right leg were destroyed to the point that it actually made healing them less complicated, albeit more difficult. They essentially had to be regenerated entirely. She had more minor fractures throughout her body, and a gruesome compound fracture in one of her arms that had to be set carefully before proper healing could be done. There was no question that if Jia had been mortal, the injuries would have been permanently crippling, if not deadly. Even among cultivators, such injuries could be life changing without the sort of healing that Yoshika was capable of.

As much as it irked her, it made a certain amount of sense that Hayakawa had been declared victorious. Both her and Jia had been severely injured, but Hayakawa’s were easier to treat, for all that they were also more immediately life threatening. Yoshika doubted that even Xin Wei and Fujikawa Ayumi together would be able to fully heal Jia’s injuries—in fact, if they had been on another person, Yoshika wouldn’t be able to do it either. She needed the intimate awareness of every part of her own body to facilitate the kind of healing required to keep Jia from being permanently crippled. The thought only served to emphasize how terrible the treatment of qi healers in Qin had been, and how shortsighted it had been to completely outlaw dual-cultivation.

Then again, the darker side of her mind wondered, perhaps that had been the point. Healers capable of restoring nearly any injury would have a lot of power and influence. Maybe the fall of qi healers in the Qin Empire hadn’t been an unfortunate consequence of outlawing dual-cultivation, but the entire point. Preventing unscrupulous cultivators from using it to steal the power of their partners could just have been a convenient excuse to crush a power that threatened to rival the influence of the great sects or the imperial family. Yoshika didn’t really know enough about imperial politics to guess, but for now she was just glad that she had such a convenient power for herself—especially given her apparent penchant for getting maimed.

It ended up taking the better part of a day and a half straight to finish Jia’s healing, and another day for the exhausted girls to sleep off the many trials of the tournament. Yue met them with an exasperated look when they finally emerged groggily from their bedroom.

“It’s about time! I was starting to think you planned to sleep through the entire doubles tournament. You’re just in time to miss the award ceremony for the singles. Hayakawa was given a low xiantian grade gravity core—quite impressive. There doesn’t appear to be anything for the runner up, but that could just be because you’re not there.”

Jia chuckled wryly as she accepted a bowl of plain rice for breakfast—Yue wasn’t much of a cook.

“Sorry, it turns out regenerating new bones from nothing is pretty exhausting, not to mention fighting Hayakawa to a standstill.”

Yue grimaced, shaking her head.

“Perhaps you might consider just one time fighting without nearly killing yourself. You’re far too reliant on Eui’s healing. No matter how remarkable it is, you can’t just assume that she’ll be able to fix any injuries.”

Jia scratched her cheek, averting her eyes in shame. Yue was right—she was starting to develop a bad habit of ignoring the damage to her own body. Eui shrugged carelessly, scowling briefly at the bland breakfast.

“It’s fine. If Jia’s injured badly enough that I can’t heal it, we’re probably both dead anyway. Though getting hurt that badly outside of a fight to the death is probably overkill. The real problem is that she did most of the damage to herself.”

Jia blushed fiercely as she tried to defend herself.

“Her technique is supposed to make her weightless! I didn’t think she’d be able to reverse it so fast.”

Yue nodded.

“I’m guessing that she predicted your move and baited you into breaking yourself on her impenetrable defense.”

Eui cackled.

“Obviously not that impenetrable, since she got fucked up as badly as Jia did, hehehe!”

Yue gave her a flat look.

“Yes, well, I don’t think anybody expected Jia to put that much into it—what were you thinking, anyway? That was clearly a lethal blow.”

Jia shrugged.

“I was pretty sure she could take it. Besides, she’s the one who told me I needed to stop holding back.”

“Fair enough, I suppose. Oh, by the way—you’ve got a letter from Master Ienaga. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think it was a letter of challenge.”

Jia frowned.

“You read it?”

Yue chuckled ruefully and produced the letter in question. It was a simple slip of paper with a time and place written on it.

“‘West gate—sunset.’—not exactly a private missive. I assure you that I meant no invasion of privacy.”

Jia deflated a bit. It was pretty much impossible to see the letter without grasping it’s brief contents. She felt a bit bad for assuming that Yue had been snooping, but though Yue had managed to earn her friendship, trust was still a bit slow to rebuild.

“Sorry...”

Yue shrugged, though Jia could see that she was a little bit hurt at the implicit accusation.

“I don’t blame you. I’ve given you every reason to be wary of my intentions. I can only assume there’s some greater context behind the message that I am missing?”

Jia nodded.

“Master Ienaga has something that she wanted to tell those of us who’d broken through to the third stage of body cultivation. Apparently it’s important for the xiantian breakthrough.”

“Hmm, that’s good. Heaven knows what we can expect with unified cultivation. Your third stage breakthrough has the rest of us who’ve adopted the method more than a little nervous about our own futures.”

Eui shrugged.

“It wouldn’t have been that bad if we’d known what was coming. Besides, we still survived it even though it blindsided us—I’m sure you guys will be fine.”

“Not all of us have superlative qi healing, nor the combined power of two cultivators.”

Jia cocked her head curiously.

“I wonder if the tribulation was more powerful because we were breaking through together.”

Yue shook her head.

“It’s entirely possible, but if we perfectly understood the will of the heavens we’d have already ascended by now. Tribulations are terribly unpredictable, and I don’t intend to take my chances.”

Jia nodded. Gathering as much information as possible to know what to expect did seem prudent. That only went to show just how difficult a path she and Eui had chosen for themselves—they had no historical record to go by except what they could extrapolate from the other disciplines.

“We’ll be sure to let you know if she tells us anything that might help.”

“Please do. Though I suspect that I won’t be breaking through to the third stage again for some time. A year or two at least.”

Jia’s brows rose.

“That long? You seemed so eager to break through to xiantian before...”

Yue sighed miserably.

“Obviously, that plan has been completely upended. Only death awaits me back in the Empire, so my priorities have changed to best suit the circumstances I find myself in.”

She was so frank about it, that it almost came across as a normal thing to say. Yan Yue’s problems were her own, however, and though Jia now considered her a friend, she wasn’t about to involve herself unless asked. She still held a tiny bit of a grudge over Yue’s past behavior, after all.

“Still, that seems like a long time.”

Yue pursed her lips.

“It took me the better part of a decade the first time, and I am considered to be among the most talented. You two can be infuriating to discuss cultivation with sometimes, you know. You have no appreciation for just how fortunate you are.”

Jia really didn’t know what to say to that, but it was Eui who responded with a flippant shrug.

“Not our fault we’re so awesome. Maybe everyone else just needs to try harder. In fact—Jia, why don’t we spend the rest of the day meditating on our lessons from the tournament? There’s still two more divisions after this, and I don’t plan on losing twice.”

Jia giggled at the distinctly unamused look that Yue gave them as Eui led her by the arm to resume their training.

---

The rest of the day was mostly uneventful. There were no visits from Eunae or Rika, as their friends took advantage of the rest period to begrudgingly spend time with their visiting families. Begrudgingly. It was perhaps a bit unfair, but Jia was a bit resentful at that attitude. She didn’t even have a family, aside from the adopted sisters whom she had abandoned to their fates. Eui did, and she missed them terribly. Eunae’s sister might be a bitch, and Rika’s grandfather embarrassing—or whatever problem she had with him—but at least they had families. It seemed a bit ungrateful to not appreciate them.

It was a sentiment that Eui shared as they leaned against each other in the garden. They hadn’t actually gone to meditate—Jia had only barely recovered from her injuries—but it was a good excuse to spend some time alone together. Eui was feeling particularly melancholic, and Jia could feel her loneliness as they gazed at the clouds together. Eui rested her head on Jia’s shoulder and sighed, wrapping her prehensile tail gently around Jia’s.

“I wonder what they are up to? I imagine having one’s daughter exiled for murder is probably not very good for business.”

Eui tried to chuckle drily, but it sounded more like she was clearing her throat as she choked back tears. Jia squeezed her tight against her side.

“I’m sure they’re fine. Your parents are smart, right?”

Eui nodded.

“Dad was really good with money. He already had his own carpentry business that sold mainly to mage clientele when he met my mom. She was a seamstress, and with dad’s skills as a salesman, and his connections with mages—well, her dresses kinda got really popular among some really wealthy people. I was going to be a first-generation mage—er, am one, I guess.”

Jia listened intently, giving Eui another comforting squeeze.

“You’ll see them again, I promise. I know they’re going to be proud of you!”

“I envy your optimism, Jia. I’m still exiled, you know.”

“So what? I’m going back to see my sisters, and you’re going to see your family again. We’re going to go together even if we have to tear down the shield formations ourselves.”

Eui giggled.

“You are insane, Jia! Also that sounds like the kind of thing I would say. I think I’m getting to be a bad influence on you.”

Jia smirked playfully.

“Maybe you are! I—I um, h-had a dream, you know...”

Eui sat up straight and raised an eyebrow curiously at Jia. She blushed furiously, wishing she hadn’t said anything—it had been a nightmare when she woke up, but she still vaguely recalled some of the nicer parts, and it was turning her face into a tomato.

“...were you going to elaborate, or do we have to turn into Yoshika and go digging?”

Jia’s eyes were swimming as she tried to look anywhere that wasn’t Eui’s teasing expression. Eui could feel her emotions, so Jia knew that she must have at least some idea what kind of dream it was.

“W-well...I don’t remember the details but—we went on a date.”

Eui pouted, feigning disappointment.

“Just a date? I know we’ve been stuck in this house, Jia, but really?”

“No, it was different, w-we...um—”

“What? Held hands? Gazed into the sunset? You’ve gotta do better than—mmn!”

Eui let out a muffled cry as Jia sealed her lips with a kiss. The surprise quickly faded as Eui melted into Jia’s embrace and returned the kiss with interest. The kiss only lasted a moment, but it felt like an eternity—Jia wanted to use Absolute Awareness just to make the moment last longer, but refrained. A feeling of warmth spread throughout both of their bodies, drowning out the butterflies in their stomachs. For just the barest instant, Jia lost herself in the feeling, as though she had become Yoshika for a moment.

Then, as quickly as it had begun, it was over. Jia and Eui separated, and Jia fought the urge to look away as she locked eyes with Eui, a giddy expression on her face.

“Th-that. That’s what the dream was about.”

Eui’s breath caught as she responded, and Jia could feel both their hearts racing.

“That’s—that’s a nice dream. Was there...anything else?”

Before Jia could respond, they both jumped as they heard the door slam open. Yue’s shrill tone was as unwelcome as it had ever been.

“If you two are finished blatantly making out in broad daylight, you’re going to be late for your meeting with Ienaga.”

She didn’t wait for a response, whirling around and storming off back into the house, leaving the two embarrassed girls alone without so much as shutting the door behind her. After a moment, Eui broke the awkward silence.

“We’re sure that we don’t want to kill her anymore?”