Asher charged across the desert, his great-axe, Heartrend, clasped firmly in both hands. The ambient aura of the Wandering Phoenix Tribe flowed around him, a sea of radiant heat and deadly promise, seeping into his channels and stimulating the magmatic flow of qi throughout his body. Rubies from his great-axe projected their own field of strength and vitality, empowering the squad of ten loyal veterans trailing in his wake.

One of the scouts had sent up a white flare. It had been years since a true threat had dared to venture deep enough in their territory to deserve such an alarm. Those powerful enough to warrant the response already understood not to impose upon the tribe without an invitation. Yet two figures opposed him, their spirits hidden away from even his perception. To accomplish such a feat, they must have been in the Nascent Soul Stage like himself. A slight concern occurred to Asher, though his charge across the sand didn’t falter:

Perhaps they're even stronger. A small smile crept across his face.

Over the course of his long life, he hadn’t encountered many people who could boast of such. With his squad at his back, there were even fewer that he had viewed as a serious concern. But times were different now. The transition to a new age was occurring before his eyes, and old monsters roamed the earth.

He had expected some elders from the Sect of Sacred Tears finally breaking the peace, perhaps some desperate Runewardens or lesser tribe testing their fates. These two were different. The very sands of the desert seemed to swirl about them, as if the world itself was attempting to shield them from their enemies.

A steady hum tingled in the back of Asher’s mind. Strange vibrations resonated within his ears. The closer he came to the figures, the more intense the sensation grew, until his vision spun and his footing slipped. He caught himself before he stumbled and continued on through the haze of disorientation. Those behind him were not so steady, and he sensed his squad falling out of formation, some of them stumbling into one another.

Asher had heard rumors of the figure on the left. No one agreed whether the metallic man was an individual or a group of near-identical cultivators. He had heard descriptions of people describing a full spectrum between it having a white and a black exterior. This one was split down the middle, like a half-moon.

In the past decade, sightings of this figure agreed with one assessment: avoid at all costs.

At its side was a towering golem carved from smooth, pale stone. In one hand it clenched a spear that looked ridiculously small in its grasp. Strange material--it looked like it had been looted from an ancient battlefield, simple and unadorned. Even though it bore no obvious enchantments, the sheer density of power crammed into the basic weapon piqued Asher's interest.

The golem may have been a familiar or summon, but Asher had developed an eye for these matters over the course of his long life. As the head enforcer for the Wandering Phoenix Tribe, he had experienced many of the mysteries the desert had to offer. And if he had to guess, he was looking at another cultivator, not an animated entity.

No matter what they intended, they wouldn’t get past Asher. He was the bulwark that protected thousands of their people, all of them family by blood or wine. His hands shook, but not in fear. Excitement. Challenge. This was how a cultivator ascended to the heavens.

A spark of flame ignited within Asher’s chest, spreading spiritual warmth throughout his body. Crimson qi leaked from the storage rubies along Heartrend’s handle, seeping into the double-crescent blades and making them blush with the promise of sunset.

Deep in his chest, a roar began to build up, half in defiance of the rogue pair of cultivators, half in defiance of the vibrations wracking his body. The ringing had spread from his inner ears to the rest of him. The spark of fire in Asher's chest ignited, resonating with the ambient flame aura; the foreign energy was burned from his body as he began to circulate a devastating technique.

Then, the golem began to dissolve into a flurry of brown qi, tinged with lively green. From it emerged…a familiar face, a familiar figure, rushing forward to meet him. A familiar voice, shouting..

“Uncle!”

The familiar cultivator tossed aside his spear. Bronze armor sprouted along his body, obscuring his nudity before the mist of drifting qi exposed him. The metal glowed with such dense spirituality that it stood out against the ambient aura like a flame in the night. Thus clad, the young man charged forward once more.

Asher came to a stop, the battlelust vanishing from his body in one breathless rush. The rest of the squad managed to stop before crashing into their leader. Hesitant steps carried him forward, slowly at first, then he picked up the pace as he rushed to meet the boy--no, the young man. He sensed the confusion from his squad, but they had been together long enough for them to sense Asher’s swinging mood; they lingered back, sharing looks with one another.

Asher rushed up to the young cultivator. He didn’t even want to think of the name, to break the uncertainty of the moment. If this wasn’t him, then Asher didn’t know if he could handle the pain again, no matter how strongly the Wandering Phoenix tribe cultivated their hearts.

In the first few years of his nephew’s disappearance, a few foolish impersonators had tried to infiltrate the tribe, either out of desperation or to get close enough to the inner family as part of some insidious plot. None of them, even the last assassin, had managed to capture his nephew’s demeanor properly. It looked as if he had advanced at least a couple realms. His shoulders were broader, and he had grown several inches, granting him a physical robustness that the slender bookworm had always been lacking. Spiritual refinement had smoothed out his face and made his facial features slightly more prominent. Though he still towered over the young man, Asher had the strange sense that he was gazing upon an ancient mountain.

But there was no denying the soft eyes. The slightly-agape mouth. The confident set of his shoulders.

Asher had watched the boy grow up, ever since the moment he had laid eyes on the calm, happy baby swaddled in his proud mother’s arms. At first, Asher had been hesitant, looking at that pudgy face with its flushed cheeks, staring back at him with impossibly wide and impossibly innocent eyes. Then a tiny smile had broken across the baby’s face, and his Nascent Heart had immediately melted. He’d barely been able to stop looking at the boy since, marveling at his every minor development.

Only a true devil could have mimicked Asher’s nephew so well. He looked like he had just left a year of secluded meditation after a breakthrough, opposed to the unbearable truth that the boy had been presumed dead for over a decade now.

Asher came to a stop in front of the young man. They stared at one another.

“Cyril…” he whispered.

Strong arms wrapped around Asher’s waist. “I made it back, Uncle.”

* * *

Uncle Asher hadn’t changed at all. Well, that wasn’t quite true. Cyril could see a few gray hairs along the temple of the man’s dark hair and luxurious beard. The faintest hint of crow’s feet around his eyes. Besides that, he was the same colossus of a man. At first glance, the very image of a stern warrior.

When he hugged Asher, the legendary great-axe Heartrend fell out of the man's hands and thumped into the sand. A huge paw crushed into Cyril’s back, forcing his face into Asher's chest, and he found that he didn’t mind at all. The strength of his uncle’s pounding heart reverberated in his ears.

After they broke apart, Cyril found it difficult to look at Asher’s face. Tears brimmed in his uncle’s eyes. He had always exemplified the fiery nature of their tribe, his emotions surging like a bonfire, whether it was rage or love or something in-between. Anyone under the delusion that it was a weakness soon learned the man’s true strength.

“It’s you, isn’t it?” said Asher.

“It’s me.” Cyril nodded in agreement. “You look like you’ve been doing well. I’ve heard the entire tribe is prospering.”

An uncertain look flashed across Asher’s face at that. “There are certain things I can’t reveal to you yet, until we’ve completely confirmed your identity. Secrets of the whole family that aren’t mine to hand out without their agreement.”

“Let’s go see the others, then.”

Asher picked his great-axe up from the ground and stared at the weapon. “We searched for you, you know.”

“I know.”

“We really did.” Asher’s hands trembled, and he refused to glance up from his weapon. “The entire tribe scoured the desert. After what happened, and some other lucky discoveries, we held out hope. But there was no trace of you anywhere. Years went by, and other concerns demanded our attention, but some of us never stopped believing in you. Ask your auntie.”

Cyril wiped at his face, half-surprised when his hand came away wet with tears.

Sand crunched beneath Loras’ sabatons as it walked up to the pair of reunited family members. The cultivator held Cyril's spear, evidently having picked it up after Cyril has hastily tossed it aside, but had the good sense to keep the rusted iron blade pointed at the ground. “Greetings, Lord Galen Asher of the Wandering Phoenix Tribe.”

Asher’s hands stopped trembling and clenched Heartrend tight. “You know me?”

“Yes,” said Loras. “And I expect you know me as well."

“Have you been protecting Prince Cyril this whole time, then?” Heat began to rise in Asher’s voice, though Cyril wasn’t sure if it was anger or gratitude.

Loras dipped its head. “No. We met for the first time around an hour ago. I was unaware of his existence until recent matters brought him to my attention.”

Asher’s men arrived, lingering behind their leader. Most of them looked confused, still holding onto weapons or maintaining augmentation techniques, even after watching Asher hug him. Then one of them, a somewhat-familiar face, took a step forward and pointed at him.

“That’s--”

Asher held up a hand. “Silence. Do not speak of this to matter to anyone else. I will accompany these two deeper into our territory.”

After a moment, Cyril recognized the man who had spoken up. Reza had occasionally accompanied Asher on official business, serving as the enforcers' second-in-command. He had a distinctive red beard, oiled and braided as if it didn’t stand out enough against the rest of his dark features. Another cultivator on the cusp of the Nascent Soul Stage, and likely a future elder of the tribe if he wasn’t already.

“Yes, Lord Asher,” said Reza. “What should we do, then?”

“Isn’t that obvious?” Asher roared, his face flushed with excitement. “Bring out the wine! All of it! That white antelope from the other day--we still have some, yes? Tonight, we shall have a feast for the ages!”

Reza glanced side-eye at Cyril and coughed into his hand. “If we are meant to keep this young master a secret, what are we supposed to tell everyone as the cause for the celebration?”

“Oh.” Asher touched a finger to his boulder of a jaw. “A valid point. But have we ever needed a reason to feast? Tonight, we celebrate life!”

After that, Asher, Loras, and Cyril rushed ahead, leaving the rest of the squadron glancing at one another and storing their weapons sheepishly. Even without his golem form, Cyril managed to keep pace with them.

The farther they went, the more sweltering the heat became. Soon, it felt as if Cyril was standing in the center of some blacksmith compound, surrounded by blazing spiritual furnaces. The environmental affinity was so profound that occasional motes of Fire qi winked in and out of existence, like a swarm of glowworms.

Some distant warning in the back of his mind prompted Cyril to glance at his soul and pause in alarm. The other two stopped and looked back at him. Asher’s hot emotions and Loras’ cold indifference couldn’t have looked more different.

Cyril cursed at himself and his poor understanding of what he had been heading into. The ambient aura around his tribe had always been profound, but not enough to passively improve his cultivation. He shook his head and settled down into the lotus position.

“I’m about to break through into the Third Sphere of the Sun,” was all he said before closing his eyes.