Forge of Destiny

Forge of Destiny - Threads Chapter 553-Emerald 3

Fri, 23 Oct 2026 12:02:17 GMT

"The Truth of art is Communication. There is one Way. There are countless Ways. Both are true, and the Master of Communication is the bridge who shows the parallel truth."

The words flowed off of her tongue as she felt her way around the contours of the truth she had been cultivating, mote by mote, within her dantian. The Patriarch Jia had told her that all Ways were truths, and she did not think him wrong. That did not mean that everyone was right.

In the end, the world they had was one of conflict. Many Ways were in contradiction to one other, and this was not something that could merely be ignored nor was that something that one ascension, or even a dozen ascensions, could change.

"Sovereigns are absolute in their Law, and an Ascended is even more so, but their reach is not infinite. Past that limit, they have only the ripples of their influence and the interaction with others' Laws. The world is greater than even them. There, Emerald Mourner, do I stake my understanding of Law and Sovereigns upon. That space, where Law meets Law, is the realm of Communication."

More still ran in parallel. Many truths might never be understood clearly by the ones who walked other paths, but they did not interfere with each other. Many truths could be reflections of a truth. An ideal, or something similar.

It was all a terrible tangle. Some principles were irreconcilable, but so many were not. She wanted to bridge the distance between those who were not so as to channel conflict into cooperation. She would (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads Chapter 552 Emerald Dreams 2

Tue, 20 Oct 2026 03:48:04 GMT

A step, and the Emerald Dancer lifted off gently from the Emerald Mourner's back, suspended from her slowly strobing parasol in the ashy grey sky.

The mountain rock did not move under her feet nor did the wind blow, but Ling Qi still felt a sense of motion. The liminal world flowed around her, out of the control of her novice steps. She squeezed Sixiang's hand and pushed away the spike of anxiety that came from being utterly without control.

"The summit I championed is proof of what can be accomplished without tyranny or domination," Ling Qi stated. "My voice and Jaromila's voice explained it. Cai Renxiang and the White Sky's interests backed it. The General Xia and the Weeping Sentinel’s presence disallowed the immediate threat of violence. It was not a sovereign law that enforced a change which would ripple across the south of the Emerald Seas, of the Wall, and the frozen foothills beyond."

The sickeningly slick sound of the Nightmare King's flesh dragging across the rocks sent a shiver of disgust up her spine. The spirit circled her and Sixiang, the gap widening to grant her a view of what lay outside their clearing.

High mountain pastures were empty of their herds. Bones and blood coated the fields.

An imperial lord in long, outdated armor proudly held forth a document of treaty. He flickered, and his triumphant smile was now the grimace of a corpse; arrows punched through his armor. The hoof-trampled bodies of his children lay at his feet.

She saw a grim-faced khan, battle-scarred (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads Chapter 551- Emerald Dreams 1

Fri, 16 Oct 2026 01:55:15 GMT

Ling Qi continued to cycle and breath, taking in the trickle of lunar qi which shimmered down from the liminal reflection of the heavens. Carefully, meticulously, she ran her qi through the usual breathing exercises. The remnants of the restraints that had kept her qi contained to the fifth stage were subsumed into the pool of cool yin qi that made up her dantian.

All around her, the forest changed slowly. The space between trees crept apart by inches, the branches growing longer, thinner, and more skeletal. The moon loomed, its scarred and pockmarked surface somehow grim in its silence. It felt as if it would fall and crush her, obliterating all that lay beneath its visage. And lastly, soft snowflakes began to fall on the dead grasses and leaf litter of the frozen forest floor where she made her seat.

She grasped Sixiang's hand, gave it a squeeze, and together with her spirit, she stood and faced the darkness closing in around them. It shrank the circle of their visibility in a curtain that swallowed up the forest until there was only a single ring of trees left around their clearing.

The creak of hanging ropes echoed in the dark, and the bleached white of bone gleamed.

Sixiang swallowed, their hair writhing in an unseen wind. Strands of white and black flickered through the many colors. They bowed their head, never letting go of her hand.

"Heya, Gramps. It's been a while."

The icy ground snapped under skittering hooves, and the Nightmare of the Emerald Seas emerged into view. A deer’s (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 550-Fantasia 13

Tue, 13 Oct 2026 02:49:39 GMT

"Wait, wait, wait! What's this about?" Jinli asked, holding up her hands as if to hold back the tide of the conversation.

"We came here seeking out your grandmother for a boon. We sought to bind a spirit of autumn to join Miss Ling's spirit of winter in performing rites in the southern Emerald Seas."

"Concerts,” Ling Qi clarified, “but they function as rites of seasonal stability and propitiation of land spirits. My junior sister is a singer, and that is enough, but a more complete performance would enhance the rituals."

"Geh. So, that was it. I was wondering what kind of boon Grandmother offered you to take on this quest." Lanchi’s ears flicked irritably. "I was really just bait the whole time, huh?"

"Implying I made you do anything, little one," Madam Autumn chided, setting Hongpao down. "Your hunger and sweet tooth are both your own."

Hongpao smoothed her dress with a huff. "It makes sense! As if winter could do anything on their own. I guess I could assist your junior since she must not be completely useless as a singer with your teaching."

"Yeah, good luck, Hongpao. I'll definitely come by and watch a show," Jinli said dryly.

"Naturally!"

Ling Qi shared a look with Bao Qian. He frowned, looking down from the stage onto the orchestra pit and seats stretching (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 549-Fantasia 12

Fri, 02 Oct 2026 12:16:09 GMT

Ling Qi hummed to herself before the gathered crowd. It was a boon that the denizens of the liminal, or at least this pocket of it, never got tired or worn out. Ling Qi thought she might start to feel ragged about an endless autumn festival over time.

Although the trickle back of the audience was curious this time, rather than the fervent excitement of before, the many-legged villagers ambled out in twos and threes with their cider and snacks best not looked at too closely. The squirming bundles were held up to lazily wriggling fangs the way humans might hold a drink with a straw.

Ling Qi held the glittering facsimile of a flute to her lips with half-closed eyes. She reflected on the hollowness of it. She had gotten used to having no instrument talisman to boost her performance. For simple sounds, her skill made it moot, mostly, but she couldn't stay this way. She could have gotten a new instrument at any time. After all, with the backing of the heiress, the stones were now flowing into her accounts.

There was no reason at all not to get one, except that she didn't want to. There weren't even splinters to build off of this time. There was no way to pretend at continuity with her original flute.

The slick ice in her hands was familiar in its shape. It mimicked the contours of the flute she'd taken from her mother’s home, all those years ago.

Last time, she'd played into the mood Hongpao had set. She had a different idea for her composition this time.

She heard Bao Qian's voice rising (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 548-Fantasia 11

Tue, 29 Sep 2026 02:28:03 GMT

"So, how're you planning to catch Hongpao anyway?" Jinli asked, hands behind her head. "You're not gonna be able to just talk her into it, Probably."

"She already pissed Hongpao off,” Lanchi revealed. “Those two just totally showed her up at her concert and then jumped to me, leaving her looking like a jerk to all the villagers. She's probably gonna explode when she sees you again."

Ling Qi smiled. "Oh, is she so much of a sore loser? I was certain she would at least want to challenge me again, instead of throwing a tantrum."

"She's totally that much of a sore loser," Jinli confirmed flatly.

"Perhaps you should offer her a choice in a challenge then? A competition that she feels sure she will win in exchange for compliance after," Bao Qian suggested, peering at the village in the distance.

It was, at least, not on any kind of fire, so Ling Qi didn't feel too bad. She could still sense Hongpao across the distance, but the bonfire had burned low, and there wasn't any kind of music that she could sense.

"Nah. You should just catch her by the ankles. Even if she agrees to a deal like that, she'll definitely try to wiggle out of it," Jinli advised.

Bao Qian looked at Lanchi, who hunched her shoulders. She had gotten a rice cookie from somewhere and mumbled into it before responding.

"She's not that bad, if you can calm her down enough. You don't just (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 547-Fantasia 10

Fri, 25 Sep 2026 01:25:37 GMT

Bao Qian winced at the sound of tearing cloth. He hadn't worn a robe rated for battle to this trip, figuring he could armor himself well enough in any scuffles, but he was trying to keep his qi at a low level. He wanted the dog to think of him as a target of play and not a threat, after all.

He finally let himself be thrown off, keeping hold of a patch of mossy fur on the hound's cheek as he was tossed through the air. He pulled on the qi he had left embedded in the black soil of the field and came down with a crash, feet sinking into the ground almost up to his ankles. He grinned fiercely up at the spirit, whose head he had pulled with him.

The dog growled at Bao Qian, shoulders and head down, rear legs raised. His tail, a broomlike brush of greenery, wagged furiously, raining glistening droplets of vital wood qi down beneath it. This time, when paws drove into the ground and propelled his opponent forward, he allowed himself to be shoved backwards, boot heels kicking up dust and grit.

“I hardly need to give any instructions at all. Still, isn't this more play than distraction?”

"It can be both," he replied through gritted teeth as he put a stop to the charge. Wrapping an arm around the hound's muzzle, he ground the hound’s motion to a halt, playfully shaking the hound's head to and fro and bringing out a rumbling yip.

She laughed, without a sound from wherever she was. He couldn't perceive her beyond the voice that rang like bells in his ears. "Our little friend's plan was just to tire this spirit out (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 546-Fantasia 9

Tue, 22 Sep 2026 00:44:14 GMT

A void, desperate and primal. It was not greed. It was not the gold lust. It was colder, older than that. Cracked fingernails, bleeding from the beds, clung to the edge of a barren cliff, trapped and alone where no one could reach.

A flower of ice doggedly grew up from between the stones, reaching for the sky, bloody-minded, single-minded in its climb for ascension.

Grasping roots clung so tight but so carefully, fearful of strangling what lay in their grasp, refusing loss but so, too, refusing to bind.

Fear. Such fear of sliding back into the emptiness that came before.

Bao Qian thought he might sell away every asset he had, if it could keep her from living in that void he himself had tasted up on the glacial peak. It was a shame then that he did not think his valuations could cover it. Others had the more in-demand goods.

Those thoughts, he would organize later. Under the heel of his boot, he extended qi into the earth of the fields. They were brimming far more richly than he was used to, but so, too, was the earth in Fantasia subtly wrong in a way that scratched at the back of his mind. It was too fluid. The stone felt like wet sand. Soil felt like grasping a dust cloud. The earth was unreal, in the way a stage play’s projections were unreal, but it still reacted to the pull of his will as if it was.

That was good enough for now. He'd gotten used to keeping his (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 545-Fantasia 8

Fri, 11 Sep 2026 15:58:44 GMT

"You can keep eating, but I'd like you to stay here by us, and provide some qi," Ling Qi said.

"Why?" Lanchi asked suspiciously, swallowing her food with an unladylike gulp. "You have lots, and the lake is right here!"

"Because you do have a regret. You thought about going with your sister Jinli. And that is a direct path to seeing where she may have gone."

"Did you get such an impression? Sharp eyes. I would not have guessed it," Bao Qian wondered.

"I don't wanna," Lanchi denied flatly. "And I don't care what you bribe me with. I don't wanna."

Ling Qi stared at her, and Lanchi met her eyes without flinching. Lanchi was not lying. Ling Qi did not think a simple offer of sweets, no matter how savory, was going to budge her, and Lanchi obviously knew they weren't really going to threaten her in any real way. That was the cost of revealing that they were acting agents for her grandmother.

"We are looking for a spirit to take with us," Ling Qi revealed. "It doesn't have to be an ending, if she's found. Your grandmother just wants to see if we can handle troublesome children. You don't think she's going to find the ginseng, do you? What is it even supposed to do, give her a material body? You need more than raw reagents for that."

Lanchi glanced away.

"Help us out. If this game ends and we don't find her, do you really think your grandmother is going (...)

Forge of Destiny - Threads 544-Fantasia 7

Tue, 08 Sep 2026 03:40:25 GMT

Ling Qi heard the cry of outrage from the crowd of spider villagers and saw the fire spirit stiffen, mouth open and eyes wide, just before she lost touch with their old location. That would keep Hongpao busy for a while, as they collected her sister spirit.

She reached out a hand among the eye-watering flashes and lights that came with diving through a twisting channel of the deeper liminal and caught Bao Qian's. He was heavy, like a stone trying to sink in a river, but it was no trouble for her to support him.

The sensation of motion rushed over and around them. Glittering stars flashed by at impossible speeds. There was the shadow of a reedy marsh and still lake water in the corners of her vision, the edges of the labyrinth they were bypassing.

Then, her feet were on solid ground once more. She stood on polished wooden boards, deformed enough by age and moisture to creak under Bao Qian's feet as he stumbled a half-step and swayed, disoriented by the sudden jaunt she had taken them on.

They found themselves in a dim room, once the inner shrine of a temple, by the incense burning altar and tarnished silver idol which stood over it. The idol was a sculpture depicting the phases of the moon, supported by clouds that wove through the delicate object. There was little else save for soot stains and empty braziers.

A thick, knobbly woolen blanket was stretched across the floorboards, and on it lay a young girl. Her hair was deep blue, and her face was pale with bright yellow, catlike eyes and twitching fuzzy ears akin to Su Ling's. She lay on her belly, bare (...)