Chapter 1: Ezekiel

“Saint Sky-wind isn't happy today at all it seems,” Ezekiel mused to no one in particular as he gazed out from his seat in the arena. The sky above blushed grey as the rain pattered onto stone tiles, forming large puddles in the streets and falling over the edges of roofs like crawling waterfalls.

"Time." said the judge down below, interrupting his ramblings. The man was stout in appearance, well kept, hair polished. His robe, black in colour, was embroidered with a pale gold insignia at the chest. It tugged at the wet sand as the middle-aged man pulled the two cultivators apart from each other. It was a fine robe, though terribly pompous in the boy's opinion.

The cultivator with the least injuries was clad in a flaming red garment filled with phoenixes, their wings made with wave-like stokes. Her likewise red hair was pulled up into a tight ponytail, making her sharp features seem even more delicate.

Yura, daughter to the Empress of Flames.

The other cultivator was dressed in a cyan-like light blue. He was a boy with brown, curly hair and green eyes. He wore a robe with water dragons, depicting them swimming in the sky like fish do in the water.

Mika. First ranked under fifteen disciple in the water clan.

The two cultivators slumped down on opposite edges, gasping for breath.

After a moment of rest, the third round started and began with Yura making the first move.

She flew forward, leaving a blazing trail that crackled behind her, and punched out.

Mika reacted instantly, his mouth forming a tight line as he saw the air distort from the heat his opponent released. A blue sheen flowed across his arms in a tide-like motion. He swept the punch aside, but more came just as quickly.

A punch. A block. More punches, more blocks.

All attacks were repelled, deflected, and redirected, as was typical for water cultivators,

From nowhere, the fire cultivator pivoted on her left foot and unleashed a powerful kick. Thinking he had her, the water cultivator moved to redirect and use the momentum to his advantage. Too late did he realise it had been a feint.

The kick flung him of his feet and into the air.

The boy seemed dazed when he fell to a heap in the sands, barely having time to get his arms up to defend against the next attack in the form of a monstrous fireball. It was the size of half a horse, a mix of orange and red, with a golden plum at its the centre.

The boy didn't have time to evade. Instead, he flew off the stage, sizzling and burning. The smell of roasted human flesh reached the stands where Ezekiel sat. It made him crinkle his nose at the same time as he felt sorry for the boy.

Three Enjoka, blood-sword, appeared from one of the entrances, bandaged from head to toe in faded white. They moved like rogue devils as they came to the boy's side. One of them picked up the boy of fourteen and hurled him over his shoulder. His eyes swept then over the arena, as if daring anyone to say a word, make a move, or do anything.

Ezekiel felt a chill crawling up his spine as those cold red eyes passed over him.

It seems as if the world held its breath.

Then the enjoka left, and the gears started turning again.

"People of Elemental city and friends from afar," the judge announced, his voice booming and rising as he looked over the crowd of renowned cultivators. A shaky smile touched his lips; his typical confidence returned after not noticing bandages.

"I now declare the seventy-sixth under fourteen lesser sky champion… Yura!"

The crowd roared in approval and the whole stadium rocked in response.

To Yura's right, the empress of flames appeared as if from thin air. Like Yura, her hair was as red as blood and as shiny as polished jade. Unlike Yura, however, her face was torn by time, a set of wrinkles on otherwise fair skin.

The smiling woman took the girl’s hand and raised it victoriously to the world, her red robe bright and dazzling.

The crowd erupted again.

As the daughter and mother stood proud in the centre of the duelling arena, heads held high, eyes burning, Ezekiel watched them with a smile.

He stood up and was about to go over but stopped himself.

His face, which had adorned such a genuine smile moments before, now prodded a thin line for a mouth, and eyes drained of light. He scanned the rest of the crowd. Then the Empress.

Right, he couldn't.

Instead, he decided to leave.

Ezekiel walked out from the arena through the markets. People celebrated the festival and the start of a new year, and so colour and smiles were everywhere.

But he didn't know what to feel himself.

Even the pagodas and private courtyard that he often gazed at with appreciation, with their masterful craftsmanship and design, invoked only conflicting feelings inside him.

He passed the gate of the clan. As usual, no greeting came from the ever-present, never-changing guards with no faces,

As he returned to his own courtyard in the south of clan territory, he went straight to the small river running through the greenery, between small, round pebbles, and along twisted paths. He washed his hands, then his face, and then his hands again for good measure. Once done with that, he entered his house and sat down cross-legged.

The mantra echoed in his mind.

"Feel the fire that grows within you,"

"Hear it crackle, hear it rage,"

"watch it consume, watch it expand,"

"sense it breathe, breathe with it."

He tried to relax his body and mind. The stiffness in his toes, the ache in his legs, the knot in his stomach, the pain in his chest, the uncertainty in his throat, the weariness in his eyes, the fog in his mind. Everything.

"Let go,” he told himself, “Grab the spark.”

And yet, there was nothing.

The blaze. The hunger. The burning. He could imagine it as perfectly as he could see the sun on a clear day. But no matter how many times he told himself, the reality of his situation could not be denied.

Imagination had been his last defence. And even this showed signs of breaking.

Tired by everything that had happened today, he lay down in his room, on his straw bed, and scanned the ceiling, rowing over the furrows and cracks in the timber with his eyes as he tried counting them.

In the end, sleep gave him the mercy he sought.