Kai Xander struck the post until the world narrowed to breath and wood.
One goal lived in him so simply it needed no words: leave the mountain.
One question would not leave him alone: Am I enough once I do?
Cold thickened the air above Bodhira. The yard held still between strikes. With each impact, the post hummed in his bones, a small, honest answer.
He struck again.
Incense drifted from the halls. Horns echoed along the ridges. Monks turned the wheel of morning, but Kai kept his eyes on the gate. He couldn't remember when he'd first wanted the road more than the chant. It felt older than his body.
Hoofbeats broke the rhythm.
A lathered horse stumbled through the mist. A courier slid down with a sound like a prayer breaking apart. Kai didn't move, but he watched—the way a flame watches its own smoke.
At the steps, a seal cracked. The abbot raised a sheet for all to see.
A poster.
Seeker competition. Rajir Town. Test your strength. Claim your rank.
Talk rose like the wind in the courtyards. Caution. Scorn. Habit.
Kai went back to the post.
He counted without counting. When the skin split, he adjusted his knuckles and kept the line true. When his shoulders burned, he set his feet more quietly. He listened for the place where effort stopped being noise.
Five hundred. Six hundred. The yard breathed with him. The monks would call this discipline resonance; elsewhere, it had another name—Muti—but to Kai, it felt like telling the body the truth until it believed him.
Nine hundred. Nine hundred ninety.
A thousand.
The post cracked. The sound ran underfoot like a small earthquake and then disappeared. He let the ache arrive. He didn't send it away.
An elder stood at the edge of the yard, half mist and half stone.
"You strike as if the earth wronged you," the elder said.
"If the world waits below," Kai answered, "I won't be trapped here forever."
"Desire leads to suffering."
Kai looked at the gate. "So does refusing it."
The elder's beads clicked once. "Why stain your path with fire?"
"Because I don't want the wheel to turn without me."
The elder's face did not move, but something in his eyes did. He left Kai to the quiet.
Above the lintel, the poster thrashed in a gust and fell flat again, as if it had made up its mind.
Kai already had.
He did not sleep.
Dawn lit the snow and turned the roofs to flame. This morning, he was eighteen, and Bodhira allowed a choice. Stay and keep the vows—or step through the gate and let the road answer back.
Footsteps came, steady and known.
Elder Li stopped in front of him. He was not Kai's father by blood, but everything else about him was father enough. His robe was worn at the sleeve where his hand always found the same fold.
"You never sleep the night before your birthday," he said.
"Not this one," Kai answered.
The elder held out a small pouch. The weight in Kai's palm felt like a promise. Tola. Enough to travel. Not enough to hide.
"For your journey," the elder said. "The world respects coin even when it doesn't respect prayer."
"You knew I would go."
"I knew the first time you looked at the sky and forgot the chant." His hand settled on Kai's shoulder, warm and steady. "You accept us by stepping through a door. You honor what we taught by walking with it."
Kai's throat tightened. "The truth feels close here. But the answer... it isn't here."
"Then go find it," the elder said. "And remember, when you return, the mountains will still be mountains."
Kai bowed, deeper than form, and rose lighter than he had been the night before.
He turned from the horns and toward the light.
The poster's words no longer felt like a dare. They felt like a welcome.
Rajir roared.
Stone houses climbed over each other for space. New scaffolds wrapped half-built warehouses. Oil and iron shared the air. Carts rattled. Children laughed as if breath were free.
The street moved on, tola. Every corner proved it.
"Five loaves for one," a seller shouted.
"Then eat the old ones," a buyer shot back.
Two men argued over a bridge. Finish it, and caravans would triple in size. Finish it, and the Guild would tax them dry. Kai let the noise wash over him without drowning.
A tailor eyed his robe. "That won't last here."
Kai listened. He left the stall with dark trousers, a short jacket edged in quiet gold, and a sash the color of home. The fabric felt wrong for an hour, and then it felt like a deliberate choice.
"Twenty-five," the tailor said.
Kai placed the coins carefully. The click in his ear sounded like a door.
The inn charged three dollars a night, five dollars with meals. He paid five. He found a window and pushed it open.
Far across the plain, lights pooled against the horizon—too many to be stars. The old monks had never told him a city could look like that. He learned its name from a man on the stairs. Relhi. He said it softly, as if sharing a secret.
Kai held the rail and let wonder take the first watch.
Stillness gave way to movement again.
On the third morning, a hand skated his sash and lifted his purse. The boy ran. Kai's body moved before his mind chose. One step and a small palm to the shoulder, placed where the muscle would listen. The boy fell to the street, unharmed but surprised. The pouch bounced once and came to rest at Kai's feet.
A thin thread of Muti shimmered along Kai's forearm and was gone. He kept his voice soft.
"Don't take what hunger can ask for," he said.
The boy met his eyes, nodded hard, and ran without looking back.
The crowd stared and then remembered other business. Kai tied the pouch again, a knot that would open easily if asked.
By evening, posters were plastered on every wall.
Seeker competition. Beginnings tomorrow.
The taverns turned to wagers. Children swung sticks. A miner bragged about twelve tola in a day and hid the pride in a cough. The inn smelled of spiced rice, smoke, and something he did not yet know.
Kai sat by his window and watched Relhi shine like a second dawn. His knuckles still wore the mountain. His lungs had learned the city.
He closed his hand around the pouch the elder had given him.
He did not ask the question again. He answered it.
Tomorrow, the gates would open. Tomorrow, he would step through. Resolve filled the room.