The Kuoh manor's tiles were still warm from the day.
Above, the sky arched clear and dark, city lights smearing the stars at the horizon—but overhead they shone clean and sharp, like someone had polished them by hand.
And just beyond them, if you knew how to look, the skin of the world thinned.
The Dimensional Gap pressed close—colorless, silent, infinite. A borderless void brushing against a sleepy Japanese town.
Ophis sat at the edge of the roof, small boots dangling over the drop. Her black hair spilled around her like a pool of shadow. A tiny snake made of darkness coiled around her wrist, its eyes two pale stars in miniature.
She didn't look back when Ren stepped out of the stairwell shadow.
"You're back," she said.
Not a question. Just a fact.
Ren crossed the distance at an unhurried pace, the night breeze teasing at his cloak. He stopped beside her, hands in his pockets, taking in the view: Kuoh's lights flickering below, the hint of the Gap above, and the girl who was also a dragon, who was also a concept, seated between the two.
"Miss me?" he asked, voice light.
Ophis tilted her head slightly, eyes still on the sky.
"It was… quieter," she said.
There was a small pause.
"Less warm," she added, after a heartbeat.
Ren chuckled, the sound low in his chest. "You know," he said, "for someone who likes silence so much, you're not bad at sneaking in little lines like that."
Ophis finally turned to look at him.
Her eyes were flat obsidian, but there was a faint, familiar weight in them now when they rested on him—something that hadn't been there when they first met.
Trust. A thin, clean line of it, but real.
He let the quiet sit with them. Night wind slipped over the roof, carrying faint scents of asphalt, distant ramen, and the cool breath of the Gap.
Then he shifted, turning so his back was to the drop, leaning one hip against the low parapet. He looked down at her properly, eyes soft but intent.
"Ophis," he said.
Her attention snapped to him instantly. For all her aimless drifting, when he called her name like that, she focused.
"I want to borrow something," he said.
She blinked once. "My snakes?" she asked.
He shook his head. "No."
He lifted a hand between them, palm up, fingers loose.
"Your blood."
A normal girl might have flinched. Even a normal dragon might have narrowed their eyes, asked what he was plotting, weighed the schemes and hidden dangers.
Ophis just blinked again.
"…Why?" she asked.
"Because I picked up a very interesting piece of dragon blood," Ren said, his tone conversational—like he was talking about the weather instead of messing with the foundation of bloodlines. "Old thing. Coiled tight like a spring, full of laws about endlessness and rebirth. The kind of blood that lets someone's True Essence keep flowing when anyone else would be dry, and their body keep standing when anyone else would be bones."
He smiled faintly.
"I want to make it better," he went on. "Less fragile. More… yours. A seed that can grow further up the ladder without breaking… and that I can safely share with people I don't want to see die."
Ophis listened without interrupting. The little shadow snake on her wrist raised its head as if it understood the word blood.
"Infinity," Ren said quietly, his gaze steady on hers. "Your power doesn't run out. It just is. I want to braid a tiny piece of that concept into this dragon blood. Not enough to disturb you. Just enough that the seed doesn't dilute or crumble as it's passed on. So the road it opens doesn't hit a wall just because the realm changes."
He paused, then shrugged lightly.
"That's the long answer," he admitted. "The short one is: I want to let a couple of my people in another world breathe easier as they climb. And your blood is the best brush I know to write that into reality."
Ophis watched him in silence.
"You will not make more… snakes for others?" she asked at last.
Ren huffed a soft laugh. "Why would I need to do that?" he said. "The vastness of cultivation doesn't need shortcuts like that. I'm just giving a better foundation to people who need it."
He tilted his head.
"And even if I did ever think about making too much noise," he added, eyes crinkling, "you'd kick me."
Ophis considered that for exactly one second.
"Mm," she agreed. "I would."
His smile widened. "And I'd be looking forward to that."
He held his hand out again, palm up.
"Ophis," he said, voice gentling. "Lend me a few drops. I'll bring them back to you, in a way. You'll see."
Her gaze lowered to his hand.
For a being who had once thrown her power around like candy, the idea of "lending" was almost new. But this was Ren—the one who had sat with her in the Gap and simply shared silence, who had woven her Infinity into his roads without trying to bind her with them.
She lifted her wrist.
The little snake unwound itself and slithered down her hand, its body turning liquid shadow. At her fingertip, darkness condensed to a pinprick.
A bead of black blood swelled. It shone faintly, like a piece of night plucked from the sky.
She let it fall.
Ren's hand closed gently around it, fingers folding like a seal. Infinity brushed his skin—a sensation like standing on the edge of an endless cliff, windless and still, with no bottom and no top.
His Dao stirred in response, Heaven within him acknowledging another vastness. The Perfect Ancient Ming Bloodline in his cells flexed, hungry and curious, but he held it back with an idle thought. This wasn't meat to devour—it was paint to write with.
"Thank you," he said simply.
Ophis stared at his hand, then back at his face.
"You will hug me now," she said.
Ren blinked.
Then he laughed, low and warm. "You're getting demanding," he said.
He pushed off the parapet and stepped closer. One arm slipped around her shoulders; his other hand stayed curled carefully around that drop of blood as if it were the most delicate treasure in his Heaven.
Ophis was small against him, light and cool. For a heartbeat she sat stiffly, then she leaned into his chest with the unselfconsciousness of a child claiming something that was already hers.
"…Warm," she murmured into his shirt.
"Good," he said softly, resting his chin lightly against her hair. "I'll bring that warmth back with interest."
"Do not… forget," she said, voice muffled.
"I don't forget my promises," Ren replied. "Ask anyone who's still alive because of them."
He let the hug linger—long enough that the cold weight of Infinity in his hand and the soft weight of the girl in his arms found a quiet balance.
Then he stepped back, smile easy again.
"Alright," he said. "I'll be borrowing your backyard."
Ophis nodded once. "Come back," she said.
"Always," he replied.
He turned.
Space rippled.
The shadow behind him folded—and he and the bead of blood slipped through the skin of the world, into the Gap.
...
Dimensional Gap.
Silence. Not the tense silence of a held breath, but the total absence of sound.
Ren stood on nothing.
His feet rested on the invisible scaffolding of his own Dao—roads of neutral chaos.
In his palm, Ophis's blood shone. It didn't drip, didn't evaporate. It simply was, holding its shape because its concept said it should.
"Let's get to work," Ren murmured.
He opened his other hand.
The red quartz floated above his palm—fist-sized, crystal clear, with a single filament of blood-red coiled at its heart. The thread glowed softly, each loop etched with microscopic law patterns, the compressed will of an ancient dragon that had once shouldered a Divine Kingdom.
Even here, in Ophis's home, the Azure True Dragon blood carried weight. It spoke of endless vitality, of True Essence that rose again and again like tides, of scales and bones that refused to yield.
"Dragon of swamp kingdoms," Ren said quietly, watching the filament turn. "Dragon of Infinity. Let's see how you talk to each other."
Within his spine, the Immortal Soul Bone flared like a line of cold starlight. Complexity fell away from his perception, layers of laws peeling back like an opened scroll. What would have driven most beings mad reduced itself to simple, clean lines in his sight—cause, effect, possibility.
He sent his soul sense into the quartz.
The red filament unfolded.
It was a spiral of concepts: flow that never truly stops, body that remembers its peak and returns to it, blood that refuses to thin. Each loop encoded regeneration—of True Essence, of flesh, of bones. Each node bound that regeneration to the framework of this world's realms: from Houtian to Xiantian, from Revolving Core to Divine Sea and beyond.
The seed wanted to grow with its host, but it had limits. The further a cultivator climbed, the more the original pattern strained. At too high a realm, the dragon blood would either be consumed as fuel or remain as a useless relic, its authority drowned by higher laws.
Ren's gaze turned to the bead of Ophis's blood.
He touched it with his soul sense.
Infinity was… simple.
It did not move. It did not change. It was a flat line stretching without end in both directions. It did not care about realms or frameworks. It was, in a sense, the refusal of limitation written into the bones of existence.
He smiled. "Endless reservoir," he murmured. "You two get along better than you know."
Threads of his Dao essence spread outward, a faint gray halo surrounding both bloods. His Dao slid in between "endless" and "regenerate," giving them a structure that could exist in actual bodies without ripping them apart.
In his Heaven, the Martial World star brightened. The Emperor's Domination Heaven thrummed. Neutral chaos flowed, connecting them, his Grand Dao art calmly bridging universes.
Ren extended a finger.
He reached into the red quartz and pinched off the tiniest possible bit of that dragon filament—a spark no thicker than a hair. The quartz shuddered, but his Ancient Ming Bloodline snapped around it like a predator, devouring the instability, smoothing it out before it could howl.
The spark hovered between his fingers.
Then he touched Ophis's blood.
Infinity did not react dramatically. It did not explode or sing. It simply accepted the new pattern into itself and refused to let it end.
The dragon filament's regeneration loops, once tied to specific "floors" of cultivation, stretched. Their endpoints dissolved. Instead of "regenerate until a limit," the law became "regenerate along with the bearer's realm." Instead of "pool size doubled," the lines shifted to "True Essence quantity grows massively with each increasing realm, with no hard cap."
Left unchecked, that would be disaster. A mortal body with a truly infinite True Essence reservoir would burn out in seconds.
Ren's smile thinned.
"Not today," he murmured.
He wove in the "inner governor" he'd built into his Modified Heretical God Force—stress monitoring, feedback loops, safety limits. The azure dragon blood's regeneration and pool expansion were forced to always lag half a step behind the host's body and Dao Heart. It would push them forward, but never so far that they couldn't stand the strain.
He watched the new pattern settle.
In the visual language of his Immortal Soul Bone, it became a sigil: a tight red-gold knot shaped like a dragon coiled around a wheel. The dragon's body was Azure True Dragon heritage—endless vitality, elasticity, True Essence-born resilience. The wheel at its core was Infinity—spinning without friction, never losing speed, never wearing down.
Around it, Myriad Origin Scripture curled like a support frame, ensuring no energy leaked and nothing toxic accumulated. The Sigil drank the idea of wasted energy and refused to spit it back out until it had been refined.
"Azure True Dragon Infinity Seed," Ren named it, the words tasting right.
He cupped the seed in his hands and breathed.
Chaos energy flowed in from the Gap, colorless and wild. It washed over the seed, testing. The pattern flexed, adapting. It did not break when exposed to higher-grade energies. Instead, it traced them, learned their rhythm; its rules adjusted themselves upward, ready to keep pace even if the host stepped into realms where Heavenly Dao lightning and Divine Lord laws screamed.
"That's one," Ren said softly.
Then he reached again.
Infinity did not weaken when divided. Ophis's concept simply… extended. Using Myriad Origin's loop, Ren built a small production line in his Heaven: a formation that used a single drop of Infinity-blood as a template, weaving neutral chaos and a sliver of the original Azure Dragon seed into new, identical blossoms.
Each "flower" became a droplet of blood—red-gold, faintly luminous, holding the Infinity Seed at its heart.
He stopped when ten hovered before him, orbiting his fingers like a small, obedient constellation.
"These are enough for now," he murmured. "Tools, not crutches. Gifts, not shackles."
The rest of the red quartz he left intact. Even drained by age and his sampling, it was still an ancient treasure worth studying later.
He flicked his wrist.
Nine droplets sank into his Inner Heaven, stored in a sealed "drawer" for future use.
One remained, floating between his fingers.
"For my swamp witches," he said, amused. "First taste."
He closed his hand.
The Dimensional Gap's gray peeled away as he stepped onto a road only he could see.
...
Fog Valley's morning unfolded in its place.
Gray mist clung to the stone walls and crooked houses of the valley. The sky was a dull, clouded white. A rooster crowed somewhere; thin cooking smoke drifted up, carrying the smell of bitter herbs and coarse grain.
Inside the simple second-floor room of Fog Mansion Inn, two women slept.
Na Shui sprawled on the nearer bed, one arm flung over her eyes, hair a dark spill around her head. Na Yi slept more quietly on a thin pallet by the wall, breathing slow and even, hands folded over the jade slip at her waist as if afraid someone might steal it in her sleep.
Ren stepped out of the shadow by the window as if he'd only gone to get water.
He shut the window behind him and leaned on the frame for a moment, letting his Dao presence soften, his aura folding down until—on the surface—he was just a relaxed young man with a lazy posture and eyes that had seen far too much.
He turned.
Two messy heads. Two faces bare of witch paint, without the hard lines battle drew around eyes and mouth.
He smiled.
"Morning," he said lightly. "Or… almost."
Na Yi's lashes fluttered first.
She opened her eyes on instinct—soul force brushing the room, testing for threats. When she found only Ren leaning against the window and Na Shui snoring softly, her shoulders loosened a fraction.
"…Ren," she said, voice still rough with sleep.
"Morning, witch," he said. "Interesting look you've got."
She blinked.
"…Look?" she repeated.
He pushed off the frame and crossed the room in a few unhurried steps, stopping just outside her personal space. His gaze was open, unhurried, taking her in.
Hair loose, not braided. Eyes softer without the usual wariness. The faint mark from where he'd flicked her forehead still pink.
"Yesterday you were all fire and steel," he mused. "Today you wake up like this, and it's… another shade of beauty."
Na Yi froze.
For a witch of the Southern Wilderness, who'd spent her life in smoke and blood and fear, "beauty" was never a word meant for herself. To the Sorcerer's frescoes? Yes. To the noble women whispered about in distant kingdoms? Maybe.
To Na Yi of the half-drowned Na Tribe?
Never.
Color climbed her cheeks from throat to ears.
"…Ren," she managed, aiming for stern and landing somewhere shy. "You…"
"Should be more serious?" he suggested. "We did just walk out of a Divine Kingdom's stove."
She opened her mouth.
Closed it.
"…You are impossible," she muttered.
On the other bed, Na Shui made a muffled sound and rolled over, blanket slipping. She cracked one eye open blearily.
"Ren…?" she mumbled.
He turned his head.
"Morning, Shui," he said. "Looks like the pagoda did good work. Even half-awake, you still manage to look dangerous and cute at the same time."
Her brain processed dangerous and cute in that order, got tangled, and stalled.
"C-cute?!" She sat bolt upright, blanket falling to her lap, braid a mess, face going red so fast it was almost a cultivation phenomenon. "I—I'm not—"
Na Yi coughed lightly.
"Shui," she said. "Compose yourself."
Na Shui made a strangled noise and yanked the blanket back up, burying her lower face in it.
Ren chuckled.
On other roads, other worlds, he could have played aloof emperor, distant immortal. Here, with these two—who had leaned on him in the swamp and bared their scars in samsara—he preferred this: teasing that warmed instead of cutting, that gently reordered the things they believed about themselves.
He sobered a heartbeat later.
"Alright," he said. "As fun as it is watching you two discover new shades of red, we've got business."
Na Yi straightened.
Na Shui peeked out from her blanket.
"Business?" they echoed.
He lifted his hand.
Two small glass vials appeared between his fingers, the contents glowing faintly red-gold. The light inside them didn't just shine—it pulsed, a slow, steady throb like a hidden heartbeat.
Na Yi's breath hitched.
"Is that…" she began.
"Dragon blood," Ren said, tone casual, as if he were talking about medicine and not a treasure sects would kill for. "A very particular kind. Something I took from a broken tower in your swamp… and improved."
Na Shui's head popped fully out from under the blanket despite herself. "Improved… dragon blood?" she echoed.
Ren stepped closer and handed a vial to each of them.
Up close, the liquid inside was mesmerizing. Tiny dragon shadows swam through it, coiling around a glowing core. The aura that spilled out when their fingers brushed the glass was heavy and ancient, yet strangely gentle toward them—as if recognizing something familiar in their bones.
"This is a seed," Ren said. "Originally, it was a drop of Azure True Dragon blood—meant to give a single person a burst of power, some regeneration, then fade as their realm outgrew it."
"Azure… True Dragon…" Na Yi whispered, the weight of the term sinking in. Even their tribe's oldest stories barely touched such things.
"I adjusted its attitude," Ren said, lips quirking. "Taught it to grow with its host instead of sulking when the world changed. Braided in some ideas about endlessness and proper recycling. Now, when you absorb it, it'll form a little array in your meridians."
He tapped his own chest lightly.
"Your True Essence will regenerate much faster than it has any right to," he continued. "Even if you fight above your current level, your reservoir will refill at a speed that feels almost like breathing. At the same time, your pool itself will deepen over time instead of hitting a hard ceiling. Think of it as… a dragon living in your dantian, constantly teaching your True Essence how to flow better."
Na Shui stared at her vial like it might start speaking.
"And our bodies?" Na Yi asked, voice level, though she couldn't hide the anticipation beneath.
"Harder to kill," Ren said simply. "Bones tougher, flesh more elastic. Blows that would've cracked your ribs before will still hurt, but they'll knit faster. Poisons and curses will have to work harder to stick. You've already tempered your bodies and souls through the pagoda; this will lay another foundation layer on top of that."
He tilted his head, the easy curve of his mouth easing, letting seriousness show through.
"But it will hurt," he added. "Dragon blood doesn't like being told what to do. It'll fight you as it settles in. Your meridians will feel like they're being chewed. Your bones will feel like they're growing again. Your souls will be dragged along whether they like it or not."
Na Shui swallowed. Her grip on the vial tightened.
Ren's voice gentled.
"You've walked through hell, ghosts, and samsara with me," he said. "You've had your Dao Hearts crushed and quenched. Compared to that, this is just… another forge."
Na Yi exhaled slowly. "What do we need to do?" she asked.
He glanced at the jade slip at her waist and the dull-black cauldron Na Shui had carefully placed by the bed last night.
"Sit," he said. "Breathe. Trust me. And don't fight the dragon too stupidly."
...
Fog Mansion Inn's cheap wood never expected to host a dragon-forging.
Ren sat cross-legged between the two beds, back to the room's center. Na Yi and Na Shui sat facing him, each with a vial cradled in their hands, legs folded, spines straight.
The dull-black cauldron floated a foot off the ground between them, witch runes along its surface waking one by one as Ren fed it a trickle of True Essence. It thrummed quietly, like a small, patient heart.
"On my count," he said. "Swallow."
Na Yi met his eyes and nodded.
Na Shui licked her lips, shot him a quick, fierce look that said more than any words, and nodded too.
"One," Ren said. "Two. Three."
All three moved at once.
Na Yi and Na Shui tipped back their vials. The dragon blood slid out like molten metal—hot, heavy, unnaturally smooth. It burned their throats, leaving behind a trail that felt like scales being etched into flesh.
Ren extended his hands toward the cauldron.
Fire Martial Intent bloomed behind him.
It did not explode into savage flames. It manifested as a red-gold rune-wheel, turning slowly, its spokes formed from compressed laws of heat and transformation. Within its field, every trace of fire element in the room—True Essence, blood vitality, even the faint warmth of their breath—was drawn in, refined, and spun into a controlled, higher-order flame.
That flame poured into the cauldron.
The witch artifact drank it greedily. Its runes lit from within, forming a net that reached out—not into a physical liquid, but into the dragon blood that had just entered the sisters' bodies.
Na Yi's eyes flew wide.
The moment the blood hit her stomach, it burst into streams of red-gold light. They shot into her meridians, racing along the paths Ren had carved with Modified Chaotic Virtues and Heretical God Force, testing every joint, every bend.
Heat. Pressure. An instinctive urge to claw at her own skin as her veins felt too small.
She bit down on a cry and threw her consciousness into the flow.
Beside her, Na Shui wasn't as composed.
"A–aa—" she gasped, face twisting as dragon fire tore through her limbs. Her fists clenched until her knuckles cracked.
The cauldron's runes flared brighter.
Ren's will moved.
Within their bodies, the dragon blood's rampage met structured resistance. Heretical God Force's inner governor caught each surge, turning it from a wild tide into a spiral grind. Chaotic Virtues' remapped meridians channeled the force in loops instead of straight lines, giving their bones time to drink each shock.
Beneath it all, the Sorcerer's witch method they'd just obtained stirred—lines from the jade slip lighting up in their souls, harmonizing the dragon's foreign laws with their own witch blood instead of letting it overwrite them.
Ren watched all of it.
In his Inner Heaven, two small points lit up on the Martial World star: Na Yi and Na Shui. Threads of chaos connected them to the Azure True Dragon Infinity Seeds he'd just planted. He could see those seeds taking root in their dantians—coiling into compact, red-gold sigils shaped like dragons curled around wheels.
Na Yi's seed sank claws into her True Essence pool, biting, tearing, stretching. For a terrifying instant, it felt like her dantian would rip open.
Then the wheel turned.
Her True Essence surged—not randomly, but in a smooth wave, filling the new space the dragon had forced open. Every cycle it completed, a little of that energy hardened into a denser "floor" under her foundation.
Na Yi exhaled shakily through her nose. Sweat beaded at her temples and ran down her spine like thin streams of fire.
"Good," Ren's voice came, steady and close. "Ride it. Don't cling to your old sense of 'enough.' Let it deepen. You wanted a wider sky—this is the price."
Na Shui's seed behaved differently.
Her body, already naturally sturdy from her obsession with physical training even under poor methods, gave the dragon more to work with. The blood raced to her bones, coiling around them like translucent scales. Her ribs hummed; her spine rang like a tempered blade.
Pain—sharp, relentless. Underneath, a fierce exhilaration.
She arched her back involuntarily, a low sound leaking from her throat.
"Don't treat it like an enemy," Ren said, eyes half-lidded in concentration. "It's a beast you're taming, not a demon you're burning. Meet it halfway."
Na Shui bared her teeth.
She dragged her consciousness to meet the dragon seed. In her mind's eye, she saw a red-gold serpentine silhouette snarling at her, pressing against the limits of her meridians.
"I'm not… meat anymore," she snarled back, even if the words only existed in her heart. "If you want to stay, you listen."
The dragon's eyes flared.
Then, slowly, it lowered its head.
Outside, the room seemed to breathe. The wooden beams creaked. The air hummed with heat. Beyond the thin walls, the sounds of Fog Valley morning—shouting Fire Worm warriors, clatter of buckets, children's thin laughter—fell away.
Time blurred.
Pain spiked and ebbed, spiked and ebbed. Each wave was a hammer. Each breath a stroke of the bellows.
When the final circuit completed, when the last surge of fire sank into bone and blood and dantian, Ren slowly let the Fire Martial Intent dim. The cauldron's runes faded to a soft, satisfied glow.
Na Yi opened her eyes.
The world was… clearer.
She could feel every inch of her body—the flex of muscle, the strength of bone, the flow of True Essence. Her dantian, once a modest pool, was now a small lake. True Essence ran around its edges in smooth, powerful currents. Each breath drew heaven and earth into that lake and back out again, refined just a little more.
If she deliberately pushed, she could feel True Essence surge and rebalance almost instantly, like water rushing to fill a cup the moment it was emptied.
Na Shui sat very still, shoulders rising and falling, sweat plastering hair to her forehead. Her skin was flushed, but the exhaustion in her eyes was overlaid with bright, feral joy.
She flexed her fingers.
Red-gold light flickered once beneath her skin, tracing the line of tendons and bone before sinking back in.
"…Hah," she exhaled, voice hoarse. "That… was worse than being hit by that Envoy… but also… better."
Ren chuckled.
"Congratulations," he said. "From now on, if someone wants to wear you down, they'll have to work a lot harder."
He let his gaze sweep over them, taking in the subtle shifts—more settled auras, deeper True Essence, a faint dragon shadow coiled behind each of their eyes.
"In terms of raw strength," he said, tone assessing, "with your arts fully activated, your combat power's sitting solidly around middle Houtian now, even if your 'official' realm is just Altering Muscles. For those cannibal bastards out there, it's already overkill."
Na Shui's lips curled.
"Good," she said.
Na Yi rolled her shoulders slowly, feeling the way the dragon seed and witch method harmonized in her blood. "This is…" she murmured, searching. "It feels as if my body and True Essence… are finally… walking at the same speed."
Ren's smile held quiet satisfaction.
"That was the goal," he said. "No point giving you new roads if your legs can't keep up."
He rose, joints barely making a sound despite the work he'd just done in the Gap.
"One more thing, before we go say hi to our… neighbors," he added.
He reached into his Inner Heaven.
Two swords appeared in his hands.
By his standards they were simple—low-grade human-step treasures stripped from Fire Worm corpses. Dark, slightly mottled steel, edges faintly gleaming. The hilts were wrapped in cheap leather; there was no fancy name, no grand history. But the core material was solid. True Essence ran through them without much loss, and the new dragon seeds could happily coil through their length.
"Ugly," Na Shui blurted before she could stop herself.
Ren laughed. "Their previous owners didn't have taste," he agreed. "Fortunately, swords listen to the hands that hold them more than to the idiots who named them."
He flipped one, offering it hilt-first to Na Shui.
"You like getting close," he said. "This edge is a little heavier. Good for hacking through armor and bone. With that dragon burning in you now, you'll make a mess of anyone who lets you in reach."
She took it.
The weight settled into her palm almost eagerly. When she poured a thread of True Essence into it, the blade hummed, red-gold light running up its length. For a moment, she could swear she saw a dragon-scale pattern ripple across the steel.
"It… listens," she murmured.
"Of course it does," Ren said. "No one in the Fire Worm tribe ever talked to it properly."
He turned to Na Yi, offering the other sword.
Hers was slightly narrower, with a faint curve and a sharper point.
"You like precision," he said. "Thrusts, cuts that matter. This one wants to pierce joints and hearts. Let it."
Na Yi accepted it with both hands.
She tested the balance, letting it swing once in a small arc. The blade moved with clean obedience, following the subtle shifts of her wrist and shoulder. When she infused True Essence, the edge grew almost invisible, as if it could slip between reality's seams.
"…Good," she said quietly.
"Then," Ren said.
He turned toward the shuttered window, where Fog Valley's mist pressed against the glass, heavy and expectant. Beneath the inn, under the valley's broken stones, the corpse of a Divine Kingdom twitched in its sleep, and the Fire Worm tribe sharpened knives, unaware that two witches and a stranger had just stepped past another line.
"Let's start our day," Ren finished, a small, sharp smile touching his lips.
"With a little chore."