As the moons rose over the Whispering Woods, the tension of the day finally gave way to a hollow, gnawing hunger. They had found a small hollow beneath a limestone overhang, shielded from the wind.
"I'll handle the food," Vincy volunteered, his stomach growling loud enough to echo. "With this Living Furnace, I shouldn't even need to gather dry wood. I can just heat the pot directly."
"A Prince's flame used for boiling roots?" Piet groaned. "Have you no dignity, boy? You are literally using the Primeval Earth Fire to simmer common tubers."
"I'm hungry, Piet. Dignity doesn't fill the stomach."
Vincy pulled a small iron pot from his storage ring and filled it with spring water and some wild mountain yams Olin had tossed them. He sat cross-legged, placing his palms against the base of the pot. He focused on the "shell" in his dantian, carefully leaking a tiny thread of the ochre flame into his hands.
The water began to boil almost instantly. But the Primeval Fire was not meant for gentle simmering. The moment Vincy's concentration wavered, a pulse of high-density heat surged through the iron.
Clang!
The bottom of the pot didn't just heat up; it liquefied. The water hissed into a cloud of scalding steam, and the mountain yams were instantly carbonized into black, bitter pebbles. The iron pot now had a gaping hole in the center, the edges still glowing white-hot.
"Well," Seraphina said, peering through the steam at the charred remains. "At least we know your fire can melt iron. Though I'm not sure how we're supposed to eat 'molten metal surprise'."
Seraphina sighed, pushing Vincy aside. "Move. Clearly, alchemy talent doesn't translate to a campfire. I've watched the servants prepare travel rations a thousand times. It's a matter of precision and timing—things a martial artist understands better than anyone."
She pulled out a fresh pot and some dried meat strips. She didn't use fire; she tried to use her "Cold Truth" to flash-freeze and then tenderize the meat before setting it over a small, mundane fire she'd started with flint.
She sliced the meat with her rapier, her movements elegant and swift. She added some dried herbs she thought looked "culinary." However, her lack of actual experience was a pure letdown.
The "Cold Truth" had frozen the fibers of the meat so deeply that they became like shards of glass, and the herbs she had chosen turned out to be "Bitter-Gall Leaf"—a plant used in medicine to induce vomiting. The resulting stew was a freezing-cold, neon-grey sludge that smelled like wet dog and old socks.
"It's... nutritious," Seraphina said, her face pale as she took a small sip. She immediately turned away, coughing.
"I think," Vincy said, looking at the two ruined pots, "we should just eat the dry bread and never speak of this again."
Leagues away, far beyond the Whispering Woods and the borders of the Azure Fringe, sat the City of Athanas—the heart of the Alchemist Union.
In a room draped in silk made from spirit-spider thread, surrounded by shelves of Transcendent-grade pills that glowed like stars, an old man sat in a high-backed chair. His eyes were milky with age, but they sharpened as a jade tablet on his desk began to pulse with a soft, silver light.
He felt it—a distant resonance. The Provisional Apprentice Token he had forged centuries ago had finally been activated.
"So," the old man whispered, his voice like dry parchment. "That geezer Olin finally gave out his successor token. After forty years of hiding in the dirt, he's finally found a pair of hands he thinks can carry his torch."
He looked out the window toward the distant horizon where the Azure Fringe lay hidden in the mist.
"I wonder... is this child a spark of hope, or just another soul for the furnace?"