Book 2, Chapter 14 – Splintered, Afraid, UnAlone (Patreon)

Help me. Please help me. He’s hurting me. He’s wearing my face and he hates me and he’s me but he hates me and I can’t stop him. 

–Final coherent statement of subject 11437 of Clinical Study 154 on the subject of psychological damage on Cultivation

_____________________________________________________________________________

He aches.

He aches and it hurts and it is loud inside.

He doesn’t understand why.

It’s been building for months now, this strange sensation of dissonance that gets worse as he cultivates. There is often pain in cultivation, but it’s that of a bottleneck or a transformation, tied to the techniques and mindset of the one cultivating. Not so with this. Whatever is happening to him, it doesn’t feel right.

And it’s getting worse. 

He has yet to truly understand what’s causing it, but he knows he has to find out soon. It feels dangerous, this wrongness, like his instincts are screaming but the sound is muffled because he doesn’t understand. He knows that his reactions are out of tune. He knows that his techniques feel wild, harder to properly aim. All his life Shin Ren has been praised as a genius, as a prodigy, as one who would inevitably grow stronger faster than others, but now… it’s too much. Too fast. 

He burns.

There’s something about what’s happening that he is very, very afraid of. He is stronger and faster and more powerful than he’s ever been, and something is wrong.

And no one listens. And no one cares.

He tried talking to them about it. His elders. Over and over and over. But with a cold war between sects looming and the Imperial Governor pressuring them and Shin Ren’s failures and the losses they suffered, he was pushed aside. A disappointment, one to be pressured and reheated in the flames rather than listened to, one who is foolish to complain about too much strength. They gave him meditation exercises and new techniques and a closed cavern for cultivation and let him be.

So he’s gone on sabbatical. 

Out in the wilds, away from the rest of the world, away from the sect. He has months and months yet until the Academies re-open for the next cycle, and if he hasn’t solved this problem by then they surely stand as a useful final option, a final contingency that might help him understand and perhaps save himself. Not that weakness is particularly safe to show amidst the great colleges of the Empire.

In the meantime, he’s been wandering.

They used to call the lands south of the first ring the World of the Falling Sun. As it sets, its tendrils grip and writhe and burn against the horizon and scorch the earths at the far end of the reach of the Empire, beyond the Wall.. Unlike in the north, where the sun rises, a great conflagration of dawn that ends as soon as liftoff is achieved, in the far south the world turns gold and orange in flame and smoke as prelude to night, feeding healing ash to the clouds and winds to let more of the world flourish. And, of course, sending any spirit beasts and monsters of the edge scampering in towards the center, long enough for the fires to fade and the things adapted to such impossible heat eventually wander back.

He’s heard that the strongest ones, the ones whose ancestors braved the burned lands and beautiful obsidian forests of the deeper southlands, have adapted to sleep beneath the soil or reflect away the sun’s impossible heat, while many of the monsters of the Edge beyond the Wall outright thrive on it. Here, in the third ring, it is arid and bright but still lush with life and signs of civilization, though they dwindle as he treks out and away from them.

Where better to let out all this impossible, screaming fire in him?

And it is screaming.

It wears a charred face, open teeth lunging for his throat.

There is no scar. The sect’s healers and his uncle made sure of that. But still, he rubs his shoulder on the side where she bit him, forcibly keeping his hand away from his neck. A tick, he can forgive, but worrying at a wound that is not there is where he draws the line.

And fuck, but he has to keep drawing the damn line, over and over. Limits, set and locked and which he has to constantly refuse to change. Every day he wonders why he doesn’t just use his cultivation to burn a path where he might walk, why he allows himself to sleep on rags instead of sculpting stops with his technique, why he doesn’t let out all this rage on someone deserving, or someone convenient, or anyone at all.

The whispers have his face as often as they have hers, and every time they find a new item to tempt him with, to challenge him on, he draws another line.

It can’t last. 

He does not have the will to enforce his every action against his every desire. No one does. The will must be shaped by the wants, and the longer he keeps them so violently separate, the worse things get.

His flames hurt him now. His hand, whenever he leaves it limp or at his side, has begun to blister from the heat he does not notice himself playing with. He wakes up with all the flora around him crisped and unmade. All this, and his cultivation, for all its growing strength, is regressing.

The Purple Flame holds the attention of the sect for a reason. It holds mystery by its very nature, and stands as a near unique treasure worthy of being studied and embodied. Whatever the Purple Flame is, whatever old inheritance or item or technique long inherited by the sect that allowed so many to follow its path, it is not a natural flame, but one that is other in ways that are yet to be anywhere close to fully explored.

Even as he is now, Shin Ren is not arrogant enough to say that the purple flame is alone in this. The Black Snow, the Hidden Thought, the Singing Waves, and an uncountable number of others all exist in this world, all of them their own paths and wonders. Almost all of them categorized and quantified by the Empire or held close by the sects founded around them. 

None have ever called to him. All his life he has been for the Flame.

But he has never felt unsuited to examining the mysteries he was born to before. If anything, it has always been a comfort to him, dancing with all the heat of pure destruction and all the grace and fluidity of a comforting spark, and he has always hoped, above even his annoyances with the sect, to be worthy of it.

And yet now, when he wields his flame, it is at best tinged purple, its outer edges slowly encroaching towards the simpler, purer heat of yellow and red, orange and black.

Something is wrong, and if he does not find out what, he does not know if he will ever be able to fix it. 

He can think of a source. The not-wound at his neck aches. 

Still, despite everything, he is not yet stupid enough to pursue a late Nascent Soul Realm cultivator of a Division of the Empire in the hopes of killing someone he already failed to kill once.

No. He needs to be better. He needs to be more, but first, he needs to be fixed. He needs to be made proper, repaired back to what he once was. To be anything less is to entirely accept defeat, and he is not such a coward. Not yet.

Not even as his phantoms claw at him with his own blistered hands and the scent of charred, crawling flesh.

And then, one day, he finally slips.

His breathing has been fast since he woke. His feet have felt numb, and his body has been cold and feverish all day, as if he’s sick, as if there’s something wrong with him because there is! And he doesn’t know what it is! He can’t know! He doesn’t understand and it’s making him rot!

A pill to calm his heart and clear him of poisons does nothing. An elixir to fortify his mind only grants him more awareness of the wrongness. His cultivation bubbles, and in a moment of panic as he tries to enter meditation, it bubbles free.

Then, he screams. Hyperventilating, his skin glowing with the fire he forces to stay inside even as it adds to the feeling and he feels like he is dying. He has to let it out. Somehow, anyhow, it doesn’t matter, it just needs to go out.

He turns off the road he made a campsite on and in a single step detonates the ground behind him in fire and ruin. He leaves a crater as he flies further, flies out, roaring into the wastes.

This far south, with the speed someone at his realm can move at if they push (and he has been pushing, so fucking hard, away and to revelation and some kind of meaning to it all), he can already begin to see the terrain changing. Hidden sites become distinct, different from the lush lands of the second ring, turning to colorful stones of all kinds where once there was but sandstone and marble, to trees which grow glass from their branches as protection and decoration, to pits of bubbling water that whispers revelations. He is miles from the border to the fourth ring, months and months of travel before the Wall, but he is heading there for now and something in him screams to go faster, faster, faster.

He runs until something stops him. 

He feels their Qi as they land, his perception shifting to allow him to finally notice what’s been following him. Has maybe been following him since he first started running; he is in someone’s territory, after all.

He does not recognize the sect markings at first. That shocks him almost worse than their presence at all; he studied for months memorizing sects from all over the rings, even minor ones, holding to any advantage in the academies, and he spent years there side to side with a thousand other egos and sect darlings, and yet he does not recognize who he sees in front of him.

Then the fog clears, and he realizes he has still been hyperventilating. He lets out a huff, forcing it to slow, slow damnit, and he starts to feel the heat.

“I recognize your robes, stranger,” one of the faceless things in front of him says, “but I’m afraid I don’t recognize your face. Do you know where you are?”

He pants, slowly catching his breath until he can straighten and breathe again. He shakes his head.

The faceless thing frowns, his eyes looking Shin up and down. “You have been traveling through Clear Spring Stream Sect’s territory, stranger. While we do not deny passage to wandering cultivators or our fellow sects beneath the Empire, your trail has been burning through our lands as you run. Disciples even now are working to calm the fires.”

Shen Rin blinks. What is he talking about? He isn’t so far gone he’d be casting fires about randomly as he-

As he runs, as fast as he ever has, using his Qi and his panic.

He looks behind him.

There’s a clear path behind his feet. Where once there were trees, there is now shattered lumber, smoldering slowly. Where before there were grasses and bushes, there is bare earth and glass in the shape of footprints.

He turns back to the faceless- to the cultivators around him. Clear Spring Stream Sect, their robes couldn’t be more damn obvious, he’s a bit embarrassed he didn’t recognize them. Which is lucky, because the embarrassment is easier than the fear that his lapse brings.

He puts fist to palm, bowing, reconfiguring and making sure that he’s here. 

“My apologies, seniors,” he says, voice a bit hoarse from how hard he’s been breathing. “This one is named Shin Ren, travelling now not on Sect business but my own journeys. I apologize for the harm, as it seems in my haste I did not properly consider the steps I took forward on my path.”

The answer is good enough. Normal, something they can all understand and nod to, easy peasy. Technically all true, too, and none of it nearly as concerning as Shin Ren feels right now.

“It is this one’s honor to meet you, Shin Ren,” the cultivator that has been speaking says. He still feels foggy, but Shin Ren can notice his features more clearly now; rich, golden skin, clearly a sign of cultivation or birth, standing tall, hairless and stiff in flowing light-blue and green robes. “This one is Inner Disciple Fei Sark of the Clear Spring Stream Sect. If it pleases the young master of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus Sect, we would be happy to guide you back to the road, or to the nearest Imperial way-house where you might inquire about an escort or local features that might aid your path.”

That’s- he flinches at that, and doesn’t know why.

Is this the way to be fixed? No, surely not. He has to keep going. He is dizzy and afraid and still somehow out of breath, at the tip of Core Formation and out of breath, but he knows that’s not right.

“My thanks,” he says, “but I’m afraid I-”

He pauses.

“Why did you call me the young master of the Purple Flame Burning Lotus Sect?” he asks. “I did not introduce myself as such.”

Fei Sark tilts their head, some of the other disciples around him (one, two, three, four, Shin Ren counts, holding the number in his head for reasons he is not thinking about and does not know) matching the movement. “We are both members of the Academies, are we not? While our interactions are few, we have spoken once before. Did you not tell me yourself that your sect often called you its young master, despite being born to an elder and not the patriarch?”

Shin Ren blinks. That makes perfect sense, it’s easy. It’s- does he remember Fei Sark? Does he remember every face he spoke to and charmed, everyone he met? Certainly not. He flicks his gaze back to the others (one, two, three, four, good to count them).

He nods. It’s a stiff, jerky motion. 

They look at each other. Communicating something. He is breathing hard, even a full fucking minute after stopping. Why is he still breathing so hard?

He is fidgeting. One of his hands is at his side, and he flinches as he notices the heat he has been toying with.

It has been weeks and weeks and now a few months since this began. Since he burnt her, since she screamed like a fucking teakettle more than a human being so ruined was she, since she almost killed him. 

There is something wrong with him. And it’s getting worse.

“Young master,” Fei Sark says, slowly, “perhaps it is best if you took a break. You look as if you have pushed yourself beyond any limits in your pursuit of your path, as any true cultivator should, but none could begrudge you a brief rest. We of the Clear Spring Stream Sect would be honored to demonstrate our hospitality, and allow you to recover before you go on your way.”

The words are spoken reasonably, softly, but he does not recognize his face, does he? No, he doesn’t recognize any of them.

He barely recognizes himself.

Strangers, not just impeding him but actively trying to corral him. Claiming they know him. Trying to take him to a secondary location. Tales of wandering cultivators taken and abused or killed whisper in the very edges of him, of hidden dangers around every corner.

“Thank you, brother Fei Sirk,” he says, with another, shallower bow, “but I am afraid I must be on my way. It is of utmost importance.”

Fei Sirk blinks its eyes. “This honored Fei Sark would love to be informed of what drives such a talented young master to such a brink in its pursuit, Shin Ren.”

It’s taking too long. Something is wrong.

“Let me pass,” Shin Ren says, panting, his eyes darting to (one-two-three-four) others around him. “I have to keep going, and you won’t stop me.”

They are shifting now, wary, hands gripping weapons. They want to stop him. They dare to stand in his way, when he needs to go, to find what is wrong, to find and burn and do whatever he can think of to stop seeing her and his own hands as he stands over the charred and ashen thing he made of her before she took him apart, once, then again.

“I’m afraid we cannot allow you to continue as you have been, honored Shin Ren,” one of the faceless things says. “You need aid, young master. Please. You seem unwell, and we are more than happy to provide hospitality and contact to your sect.”

He feels his lip curl up in a snarl. “No,” he growls. “I have to go. Something is wrong, can’t you see?”

“I can,” the faceless thing says, hand on its sword-pommel. “I can see that, Shin Ren, and if you just-”

“NO!” he yells, his hand in agony, the world crackling, his mind full of whispers- “Something is WRONG!”

And then one of them tries to step closer, and he is all fear and all confusion and all flame, and he makes the world crackle and burn with him.