Power born of loyalty burns longer than power taken by fear.
The day after the Skyreach petition passed, Shen Li found his training grounds empty.
Not entirely—just quieter. Eyes lingered on him a little too long. Conversations died when he approached.
Lan Xueyi walked beside him in silence as he crossed the basalt bridge over the River of Glass. The water below shimmered with embers, reflecting the fractured sky.
"You could strike first," she said. "Call them out. Burn the lies before they take root."
Shen Li shook his head. "That would prove them right."
"Then what will you do?"
He looked up at the distant mountain where the Founder once meditated.
"I'll build a flame they can't snuff out."
He descended into the depths of Emberheart, into the smoke-choked caverns where the ash-forgers worked. Here, heat was not cultivated—it was survived. Flames burned blue, refined for utility, not beauty.
Elder Wei, a stooped woman with fire-hardened hands, looked up as he entered. "What brings the heir to the smoke pits?"
"I'm not here to rule," Shen Li said. "I'm here to understand what holds Emberheart together."
She gestured to the hammers. "That. Flame and discipline."
"Not politics?"
Wei spat. "Politics makes banners, not blades."
Elder Tan, her partner, wiped ash from his brow and gave Shen Li a long look. "You're not like your father."
"No," Shen Li said, eyes steady. "But I carry his fire."
Tan's expression softened.
"You'll have our support," Wei said finally. "Not in speeches. But in steel."
Next came the overlooked disciples—those trapped between ranks. Border-burners, they called themselves. Strong enough to be envied. Not yet strong enough to be feared.
Shen Li trained with them in an old clearing long abandoned by the inner sect. No guards. No lights. Just the sound of fists and breath.
He joined sparring without word or title.
They tested him. Hard. One broke his lip. Another nearly dislocated his shoulder.
He thanked each of them.
That night, they drank quietly. No formal oaths. But their eyes gleamed with respect.
A boy named Tao Ren asked, "Why are you down here?"
Shen Li looked into the fire they'd built.
"Because up there, no one sees what matters."
He approached Elder Mei in the Scroll Vault, where jade tablets recorded every flame art ever passed through Emberheart.
She did not look up when he entered.
"I expected you sooner," she said.
"I expected you to already choose a side."
Mei marked her page, setting the stylus down. "I prefer to watch. Until one side burns too brightly."
"And if both sides burn?"
"Then I protect the archives."
He stepped forward. "This sect is a scroll that's been rewritten too many times. Let me return it to its original flame."
Mei studied him. "Is that ambition speaking?"
"No," Shen Li said. "It's memory. My mother taught me the founding rites in secret."
Silence. Then a sigh.
"Three of your enemies studied under me once," Mei said. "But they never asked to remember. They only wanted to win."
She didn't pledge herself. But she handed him a sealed tablet.
"Use this if they come for your techniques. It's a record of the first Emberblood ritual."
It was a quiet, thunderous gesture.
A week passed. In that time:
Five junior flame-weavers shifted to Shen Li's rotations.
Two outer sect patrols began reporting their incidents directly to him.
A scroll-copier defected from Kaiyuan's camp and began slipping Shen Li names—disciples whose records were being manipulated.
And Lan Xueyi, ever-watchful, remained his shadow.
"You're building a faction," she said. "Carefully. Like weaving dry straw into a nest."
Shen Li turned to her. "Not a faction. A foundation."
"For what?"
He looked past the horizon. "A new way to burn."
He summoned his supporters—openly, for the first time—to the Ashen Garden, where flame-lotus flowers bloomed only under moonlight.
They gathered in silence.
Elders in dusty robes. Disciples with bruised knuckles. Flame-weavers with calloused fingers. Each had been overlooked, doubted, forgotten.
They came not for glory—but because he had looked them in the eye. Because he hadn't flinched when power threatened him.
He stood at the garden's center.
"I have no throne. No guarantees.
But if you believe this sect is more than a pedestal for the powerful...
Then stand with me when they come."
He did not shout. He did not demand.
But they remained.
And they stood.
A flame does not beg to be seen.
It simply waits—until the dark has no choice but to notice.