The thirteenth night was different.
Something beneath Frostveil's skin had begun to itch—not on the surface, but in the threads between her spirit and the space inside her.
After the day's brutal training had ended and Jian Wuxin retreated to silence, she knelt by a frozen pool on the mountain's eastern flank. The wind was sharper here. The air thin enough to cause mortals to bleed from their lungs.
But it felt familiar.
Welcoming, even.
She inhaled.
And sank inward.
---
She did not sit in lotus posture.
She did not chant.
She simply closed her eyes, and began to listen—not to the world, but to what echoed inside her bones.
For a long moment, there was nothing.
Then she heard it:
A cracking.
Not of wood. Not of ice.
But of something old fracturing inside her chest.
It was her core. Her nascent soul-seed, no longer wild. Now blooming.
The ice around it chipped away—not destroyed, but falling aside, as if politely stepping out of the way.
And there it was.
Her first Inner World.
---
It resembled a glacial sea.
Frozen waves stretched across the horizon, mid-crash, never touching. Suspended in time. High above, aurora-lit skies shimmered without warmth. The air shimmered like breath on glass.
This place wasn't just made of ice.
It was made of poise.
Every frozen moment a memory of pain held in place.
She stood there, barefoot, the chill embracing her like kin. She raised one hand and the ice did not react with hostility. It bowed. Her presence no longer disturbed the flow.
The cold was no longer a storm inside her.
It was her breath.
She walked the world's edge, and with every step, she remembered the agony of training, the burns on her palms, the twisted sinew in her calves—and how all of it refused to end her.
She was elegance not in spite of suffering.
She was suffering, given form.
And now the ice obeyed her.
---
But then—something shifted.
Just beyond the frozen horizon, something cracked again.
Louder. Deeper. Not ice. Not bone.
Soul.
She turned toward it.
The frozen waves rippled, and space tore open.
A second Inner World pulled her in.
No transition.
Just silence.
Then—
Flames.
---
Not the kind that burned skin.
These were soul-fires—blue and violet, whispering names she had never spoken, and truths she had never dared to know.
The ground was ash, but the sky was made of voices.
She stood at the center of a circular field surrounded by floating shards of mirrors—each shard reflecting a version of her face she'd never worn.
Some were crying.
Some were smiling.
One was screaming, blood pouring from her eyes.
This world wasn't beautiful.
It was haunted.
And yet, she could feel it:
It was hers.
She reached toward one of the flames, expecting pain.
But when her fingers touched it, she saw something else—
A memory.
A glimpse of her first moment of awareness: the day the trees whispered a name she hadn't had yet. The moment she envied humans. The ache she felt watching sect girls fly overhead, never noticing her hiding in root and mud.
And now—she saw the same spirit inside her body, her form reforged, her presence divine.
Tears came again.
But these were not weak.
This world—this second world—was not built from pain like her first.
It was built from longing.
From all the soul-aches she had swallowed.
The fragments that made her desire humanity.
The fire was not rage.
It was grief that never had a name.
---
Then came the echo.
A voice—not spoken, not heard—but felt in the ribs of her existence.
> "To master the frost, one must forget what burned.
To master the soul, one must remember what died."
Frostveil fell to her knees.
Not in weakness.
But in reverence.
She did not know whose words those were.
She only knew they were true.
---
When she awoke, it was still dark.
Jian Wuxin sat nearby, back against a stone. He had been watching her.
Her eyes opened slowly.
And without speaking, he asked.
She nodded.
His brow twitched—barely.
"Two?" he asked at last.
She gave a faint smile.
And whispered:
> "One is a lake that froze to protect me.
The other is a fire that waited to be loved."
He studied her in silence for a long time.
Then simply said, "Train them both."
And returned to meditation.
She exhaled.
For the first time—not to survive.
But to create.