*Chapter 51: Ashes of the Hearth**
The wind carried the scent of burning pine and rusted iron as Li Tian crested the hill overlooking his village. Three years had sculpted the landscape—the once-lush fields now patchy and choked with weeds, the river reduced to a muddy trickle. But it was the pall of smoke rising from the northern granary that tightened his grip on the spatial staff, the Aeternum Core's scar pulsing faintly beneath his robes. Home.
Memories flickered, unbidden:
*—Xiaoling chasing fireflies through the barley, her laughter brighter than the moon.
—Mother scolding him for tracking mud into their hut, her hands calloused from the loom.
—The Shadowspawn's first raid, their claws tearing through thatch and flesh alike.—*
The Core's whisper slithered through his mind, Xiaoling's voice tinged with static. *"Gege… it's not as you left it."*
He knew. Villages didn't survive this long without scars.
---
**The Return**
The gate—a splintered husk of what he'd helped build as a boy—hung askew. Old Man Wen, once the village blacksmith, hobbled forward, his left leg replaced by a knotted branch. "Tian? By the Emperor's grace—is that you?"
Li Tian's throat tightened. Wen's forge had been his sanctuary after Xiaoling's abduction, the rhythmic clang of hammer on steel a counterpoint to his grief. Now, the forge's chimney lay toppled, its bricks scavenged for barricades.
"Bandits," Wen spat, following his gaze. "They come every full moon. Take grain, tools, *children*. Said they'd burn us last time if we didn't…" He trailed off, eyeing the militia forming behind him—a dozen gaunt faces clutching rusted scythes and fishing spears.
A woman stepped forward, her face weathered but familiar. *Meiying.* His childhood rival in archery, her arm now ending at the wrist. "You picked a fine time to return. They'll be here by nightfall."
Li Tian's staff tapped the earth, spatial energy rippling outward. The village's qi was threadbare, leeched by fear. "How many?"
"Thirty. Maybe forty." Meiying's remaining hand flexed around her bow. "Their leader—he's not human. Controls fire like it's his breath."
The Aeternum Core flared in response, its shadow-veined light casting the villagers in monochrome. *"A cultivator,"* Xiaoling murmured. *"Fallen far from the sects."*
---
**The Bandit's Mark**
They came at dusk, torches cutting through the twilight like bleeding stars. Li Tian waited atop the granary roof, the villagers hidden in root cellars and false-bottomed carts. The bandits rode spirit-wolves—mangy, starved things with eyes glowing poison-green. At their helm, a man in scorched robes astride a lupine the size of a ox, its fur crackling with embers.
The rogue cultivator.
"*Tribute!*" the leader bellowed, his voice a chorus of ash and broken glass. A fireball coalesced above his palm, casting his face in jagged relief—a lattice of burns, one eye replaced by a molten stone. "Or this time, we take *everything*."
Li Tian dropped from the roof, spatial energy cushioning his fall. "You'll take nothing."
The bandit leader's intact eye narrowed. "Cultivator. You're not from the Flameblades."
"No." Li Tian's staff twirled, carving sigils into the air. "I'm from here."
---
**The Dance of Embers**
The leader dismounted, his wolf snarling. "Then you'll die here."
Fire erupted—not the clean arcs of Verdant Lotus pyromancers, but a sickly orange cascade that *clung*, eating stone and flesh. Li Tian warped space, redirecting the flames into the sky. The villagers' screams echoed as stray embers ignited thatch.
*"Gege, the well!"* Xiaoling warned.
Li Tian pivoted, staff slamming the earth. A spatial rift swallowed the next fireball, spitting it into the bandits' ranks. Wolves howled, their riders beating at smoldering cloaks.
The leader laughed, molten eye pulsating. "Clever. But fire always finds fuel."
He snapped his fingers. The granary's remaining walls burst into flame, trapping villagers inside. A child's wail pierced the chaos—a boy, no older than six, clutching a scorched doll.
Li Tian moved.
Space folded, depositing him between the boy and the inferno. The Core screamed as he channeled its energy, not to attack, but to *preserve*. A barrier of compressed air smothered the flames, buying seconds.
"Meiying! The well!"
Her arrow struck the bucket chain, dousing the granary in water. Steam billowed, obscuring the bandit leader's snarl.
"Enough games." The molten eye blazed, his body dissolving into a wildfire avatar. "Burn with them!"
---
**The Core's Toll**
Li Tian met the inferno head-on, staff and Core flaring in tandem. Each clash scarred the earth, the air reeking of ozone and charred flesh. The avatar's flames seeped into the Core's fissures, Xiaoling's voice distorting: *"Too much… can't hold…"*
*I know.*
He stabbed the staff into the avatar's chest, spatial energy tearing through its core. The fire imploded, revealing the leader's smoldering body.
"Why?" Li Tian pressed the staff to his throat. "You're a cultivator. Why prey on crumbs?"
The leader's laugh bubbled blood. "The Flame Emperor… promised us scraps. But the sects… they *burn* you…" His molten eye dimmed. "Better… to be the spark."
The wolves fled, their riders scattering. The village still burned.
---
**Aftermath**
Dawn revealed the cost: five homes reduced to ash, the granary a skeleton of blackened beams. Wen's grandson lay swaddled in bandages, the doll clutched in his blistered hands.
Meiying found Li Tian at the river, scrubbing soot from the Core. "They'll be back."
"I know."
"Stay."
He met her gaze, the Core's shadowed light reflecting in her eyes. "I can't."
But as the villagers gathered the dead—their faces a mosaic of grief and hope—Li Tian felt the weight of Xiaoling's silence. The Core's fissures had deepened during the fight, its light uneven.
*"You could,"* Xiaoling whispered. *"Protect them. Atone."*
In the smoldering remains of the granary, Li Tian knelt. His spatial staff carved sigils into the earth, weaving a ward even as the Core protested.
"I'll stay," he murmured, "until they're ready."
The first step in a vow he couldn't yet name.
---