A day passed. In a hidden room tucked away from the world, nineteen boys rose from a thick red bath that clung to their skin like paint.
The liquid had felt like flame all day, scalding them under the surface, biting at bone and breath.
They had gritted their teeth until their jaws ached and swallowed every whimper, because their parents had told them this was how you became a cultivator.
Cultivators were powerful. That was what they had been taught until it sat in their heads like a hymn.
And when they had seen Calyx fight that calamity, the memory had burned brighter than the bath itself.
Who would not want to be the one standing tall while monsters fell.
So they endured. Hour after hour, the red thinned. The heat dulled.
By the time the day ended, the bath had turned clear as spring water, as if it had taken something from them and left nothing behind.
