Azahn had been the ninety-third Imperial Foresight to the Dynasty of Silken Flame for only three weeks when he was forcibly retired.

His body had been blessed by the holy waters of the Sky-Vein River, and he had earned the named-blade Stalwart Thy Mind, Strong Thy Arm, even now strapped to his back. He had trained his entire life to wrestle the great lion-headed guardian that lies at the top of the world, Yagadhan, who he grappled with for a day and a night until surrender.

Azahn was having trouble being told that all of his accomplishments had all been for nothing.

Kneeling before the Phoenix-Touched Empress, the deity-upon-earth he had sworn to defend until his dying breath and even undeath, Azahn struggled to listen as she spoke.

“My loyal blade,” she said, voice deep in her middle years, brow aflame and burning as she looked on him, sorrow bright in her molten eyes. “I know you have worked your whole life to serve me. You’d not have eaten of the Tomorrow Root if you did not see a comforting future stretching out before you. I see in your eyes, even now, the holy plant works its magic.”

Azahn looked away, desperate to hide the kelp-green and flower-gold flecks he knew floated across his pupils, a sign of his station, his purpose. To be Foresight was to know what came next, to see the fractal shadows of futures yet to come and act accordingly, all to keep Her Holiness safe from those that would extinguish her flame.

The memory comes back, unbidden. The pride at besting Yagadhan, panting and beaten, watching him with proud, gilded eyes. Azahn’s hands, weak and shaking, as he reached into the earth and plucked free the green and gold root of the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World, which towered above him like a column of silver fire.

He had been crying. Why, he could not say, did not remember.

The root was chewy, rough on his tongue and teeth. Bitter in ways he hadn’t expected; blood flavored the mythic plant as it tore open his gums. For the next week, he felt a piece of the root stuck between two of his back teeth. It was a painful and humbling haunting in the week his body was purified in oils, chanted over, draped in silks.

When he flossed it free, he felt relief and heartbreak twin through him at its loss.

“Your Majesty,” he finally ventured, “have I done something to offend? I know that I’m new, I know your last Foresight was cut down—”

She raised a perfect hand. Azahn shut his mouth. “No, my Foresight,” she said, with just a fraction more kindness, “what happened to your Auntie has nothing to do with you, nor have you done anything to offend. In fact, your reverence for this station, this throne, only makes you glow brighter in my eyes. The fact of the matter is,” she said, eyes turning amber and sad, “that your station is being dissolved. As is the rest of the Dynasty.”

Azahn’s eyes widened. “B-but . . . the Dynasty is eternal. In every future I see, it goes on and on, lives a thousand and more generations, I—”

With deadly kindness, Her Holiness said, “You will learn to see other futures, my Foresight. My Azahn. The future that is coming is not a world of dynasties and crowns and palanquins carried on the bones of the past. No. It is a time for new ways. For people’s voices to be heard. I will remain as one of those voices, but as we move into a world of democracy, my Foresight, I will be afforded no special guard or crown or station. I will be what I’ve always wished to be: simply a person. You have that chance now, too,” she said, infusing such hope into the statement that Azahn felt a deep and profound despair.

Why would he want to be a person when he had trained all his life to be Foresight?

• • • •

Less than a month later, Azahn moved back in with his Uncle Shan. Unlike his wife, Shan hadn’t worked in the Palace of the Smoldering Will and he’d had very little interest in steel that wasn’t used to cut bread or debone fish. So, he had lived apart but still within sight of the Palace.

Azahn arrived at his door in a daze, a pack on his back, the blade Ash’ih at his side, feeling neither stalwart nor strong.

His uncle looked older, but there was a spark of warmth in his eye; Azahn hadn’t seen him since the funeral. At the time, Mira’s loss had hollowed him out. It seemed some joy had grown back in the years that Azahn was away training. “My Azahn,” he said, hands dusty with flour, cupping his nephew’s brown cheek. “It is good to have you home. It’s been so quiet since Mira left us.”

She didn’t leave us, Azahn wanted to say. Assassins were sent from the School of the Jaguar. They trapped her in a valley. Two hundred of their best archers aimed straight for her heart and even she could not see a future out of that. It’s how I wanted to live. It’s how I wanted to die.

Instead, he said, “Uncle, this hasn’t been my home for some years.”

Shan, if he felt sour about it, didn’t show it. Instead, he gestured for Azahn to come inside. “Well, we’ll do our best to make it home again for as long as you’re here then, eh?”

Azahn followed, wilting at the smell of fresh-baked bread and the ghost of perfume his Auntie had worn; the moon-shadow of lavender and plum. It sat on his tongue, melted away like sugar, and he was sadder for it.

It was difficult following his Uncle through the house. Azahn should have had hours of his day dedicated to parsing the fractal vision he now had, learning to determine this future from that. Her Holiness had said he could still train with Master Qin, but that would require going back to the Palace. Azahn was still too heartbroken to even look north.

So, he coped. He walked right behind his Uncle, ignoring the hazy shimmer of potentialities springing in Shan’s wake, eager half-stutters of blue shadows, any of which could become true with the right choice. Master Qin had said that the future was always happening; it took training to find the right one to bring into bloom or cut off before misfortune locked in.

For a desperate moment, Azahn glanced around the room, hoping to find the future in which he had purpose again. When nothing happened, he sighed, and continued into his old room. For all the futures he had to sort through at any time, it was here, looking at the past, that he felt truly overwhelmed.

“I’ve not really touched it, save to keep it free of dust and the occasional lizard,” his uncle was saying, “but I understand if it feels a little youthful for a proven imperial guard. I hope it’s okay.”

But the room was perfect, even as it felt like hot steel under his fingernails, the past creeping into the joints of his present, prying him open bit by bit: The pearl-blue blanket that lay with not a wrinkle on the small bed. A lovingly haphazard pile of comic books and pulp novels, the familiar domino mask of Mattara the Masked Marauder peeking out from beneath other four-color dramas. A worn sketchpad, the first half filled with half-hearted attempts at comic book heroes of his own design.

Azahn smiled as he remembered that the second half was filled with sketches of his Auntie Mira. Laying in the sweeping shade of springtime river willows, Shan feeding her the flesh of new oranges. Wielding Ash’ih in the traditional armor of the Foresight, all cobalt plating and golden filigree, covered in dust and sweat. Asleep under the palace’s jacaranda trees, peaceful in dreaming beneath their lavender crowns. Her grave in the Valley of Future’s End, stone marker wreathed with herbs and ash, alongside her brethren; Azahn didn’t know if he’d be buried there or not anymore.

Azahn drank in the little room, full of clothes he’d outgrown and notebooks from half-remembered classes and plush animals he’d kept for sentiment. He found he didn’t miss the cold, unwieldy sprawl of the massive, marble room that had been his in the palace, even if it did have a balcony that faced the rising sun.

In fact, this room and that room only had the one thing that made them feel like home: both still smelled like Auntie Mira and that was enough for him.

“It’s wonderful, Uncle,” he said, and he meant it, bringing the old man into a tight embrace.

Shan left him to get acquainted, promising dinner soon; an old favorite, lentils and yellow rice and root vegetables plated with fresh rolls and salted butter, both riddled with onions and shallots. After closing the door, Azahn lay down on his old bed and stared at the ceiling, losing himself in the scent of hard-working yeast and minced allium. He traced the constellations of clay cracks above him, muttering half-remembered stories to himself of a star he had named here, or a great war waged there.

As he lay absolutely still, Azahn could not see any blue-shadow futures, not even for himself. It should have scared him.

Instead, relief washed over him, a cold compress to his forehead after weeks of fever.

• • • •

Another month passed before Azahn saw the Phoenix-Touched Empress again.

Shan became frustrated with him, which was fair; Azahn dropped the grocery bag as he fell to his knees, head bowed, right in the middle of the market. His Uncle attempted to talk sense into him, but some things were too baked into muscle memory, the cooked clay unyielding. Azahn stayed that way until a divine hand gently pulled him upright.

His Empress insisted he call her Uyla but this was tantamount to blasphemy, so Azahn said nothing, only standing silent before his former charge.

Her brow no longer burned with the light that had been stolen from the dawn-being. Her eyes no longer glowed with the fires of rebirth, cursed white-gold with eternal knowledge. She was no longer weighed down with raiment after raiment, jewels of ruby and rings of platinum and collars of obsidian, no longer a walking splendor. She was an Empress no more. She no longer had the air of an implacable god on earth; she was simply an older woman in autumn garb, a saffron robe with a belt of black and red leather.

She did seem a lot happier, he had to admit. Standing behind her was a single honor guard yawning in armor that looked scuffed and worn. How many times had this fool bested Yagadhan?

“You’re staying with your uncle, then?” Uyla asked.

Azahn nodded, keeping his eyes downcast, as he’d been trained. “I am. He’s been very patient with me as I . . . adjust.”

Next to him, Shan smiled at her former majesty. “Uyla. It’s good to see you.”

“And you, Shan,” she said, giving him a kiss on each cheek. “I missed you at dinners after Mira returned to the Cosmic Will.”

He couldn’t see his Uncle’s face, but Azahn tasted the melancholy in the air, sweet and tart. “Ah, you have my apologies. I found I could not attend to my grief and my Empress at the same time. I hope you can forgive a widower’s sorrow.”

“Always.” Azahn saw a tear roll down the face of his former Empress. “Don’t forget, she was the flower of my eye as well. Please know I mourned with you, dear Shan.”

Shan took her hand and kissed the back of it with reverence. “Thank you, Uyla. Maybe we can have that dinner sometime soon since we have done our duty to grief. I know Mira would only encourage mourning through celebration. We can catch up like old times. Azahn, would you enjoy that?”

He nodded, eyes wide, trying to find a way to be normal about his old Empress coming for dinner. “I would. Of course. It would be an honor to have . . . Uyla in our home.”

She looked relieved that he’d used her name, and Azahn was proud of himself for doing so. “I fear my life is a lot more boring these days, Shan. No raucous discussions of politics or mythic battlefronts. A lot of paperwork and bureaucracy.”

His uncle shrugged. “I only speak of what I know: yeast, breads, and marmalades. So, you can’t say you haven’t been warned, too!”

The two of them laughed and Azahn wondered if he’d missed something in their exchange.

Around him, those blue shadows stuttered. He focused, watching as something ephemeral snapped into place; a potential future becoming certain, he knew, locking into reality like a puzzle piece. It was only in the warmth and depth of that shared look between Shan and Uyla that Azahn realized what had just become.

This twinge of bittersweet joy, it wasn’t unfamiliar, but it was rare; that moment hope alchemized into something true, the moment a maybe became a yes. Azahn watched the future of two people he loved connect, and his smile was small, secretive, and mostly for himself. They’d understand soon enough.

But he was not so distracted that he didn’t see the arrow coming.

His hand moved to a space in the air that was empty one moment, and the next, was not. His fingers closed around the wooden shaft of an arrow, whose steel head stopped eight inches from Uyla’s skull. Spinning on his heel, he grabbed the knife from his belt with his other hand and threw it into the blue-shadow path that led to the assailant’s stomach.

He did this without sight, without thought, without breath. This was what he had trained for; it didn’t require any of that.

It should have felt right, just. To do what he had been trained for finally, after months of stillness, it should’ve lit his heart up like a winter bonfire.

So why did he feel so empty?

The world, which had slowed, regained its speed. A scream of pain, then shouting as the honor guard and those in the market ran in all directions. Uyla looked around, breathless and confused, as Shan stared at Azahn in awe. Maybe fear.

“Apologies, Uyla,” Azahn said, voice level and numb. “I know you have a man for this, but . . . I thought it might be rude not to grab the arrow.”

She did her best to smile. “You . . . You’ve done as you were trained to do, Azahn. Thank you. Are you well?”

Did she notice his hand trembling? Did she see the empty light in his eyes, waiting for the fulfillment to arrive at a job well done? “I’m . . . I have these gifts and I use them and I don’t feel anything from them. Like everything I do with them is the wrong thing.”

Shan’s knobby, strong hand on his shoulder, an earnest smile on his face, as Uyla looked on with concern. “We’ll figure it out, Azahn. There is a life out there for you. Value for who you are, not what you can do. We’ll do it together. Yes?”

Behind him, the unknown assassin screamed in agony, bleeding out from Azahn’s actions. A life ended, senseless. But wasn’t it what he was made for?

“Yes, Uncle.”

• • • •

Azahn wandered with no destination in mind. He had been aimless for months and it was only as winter swept across the city that he realized how lost he was.

No one quite knew how to help him. Shan encouraged him to help in the kitchen, but Azahn was driving him up a wall; he was jumping at blue-shadow futures of knives dropped or fingers gone, third degree burns, oven mitts catching flame, and more. When in the kitchen, Azahn was paralyzed both by indecision and an unwillingness to let any single destructive future come to pass. But it meant he got in the way and prevented any yeast or slab of butter from doing its delicate work.

Uyla invited him to help her in the Communal Gardens, tasking him with uprooting potatoes and carrots, leeks and onions, those bulbs in the earth whose futures ended on tables, in stews, in bellies. But every vegetable unearthed reminded him of the training he’d worked towards, their severed roots disconcerting, their bodies bleeding dirt and soil. Once his hands started shaking, they hadn’t been able to stop.

Even Master Qin, trainer of Foresights, whose mothers had conversed with the Cosmic Will in the shade of the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World, could not help. He ran test after test, mental and physical and magical; Azahn passed each with top marks.

Finally, Master Qin put a gnarled hand on Azahn’s shoulder and said with grim humor, “Azahn, all I can find is that you have depression. And depression’s message first and foremost, is that we have no future. I can imagine for someone as clairvoyant as yourself, this is causing the majority of your struggles.”

When asked how to fix it, Master Qin hesitated. Then, in as kind a voice as possible, he told Azahn that depression was not an illness with any single antidote. Many who had it, even with aid, wrestled with it daily, much as Azahn had wrestled Yagadhan. “If you could beat such a ferocious opponent, a beast set to task by the Cosmic Will, you can surely tackle this new challenge.”

Something clicked in Azahn’s mind. If anyone knew how to make it to the next day when tasked with a mighty challenge, it was the immortal lion-headed guardian.

And so, making his way back to the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World, Azahn sought out Yagadhan and found that the lion-headed man was not on guard, but packing a bag.

“W-what are you doing, mighty Yagadhan?”

The shaggy, goldfire mane bounced around his leonine face as he turned to Azahn, milky, dandelion eyes looking at him with surprised delight. At his feet, there was a large leather satchel. “Well, well, well, look who it is! To what do I owe the pleasure, Foresight?”

“You . . . you’re leaving?”

Yagadhan had the good sense to blush. He scratched the back of his head, eyes unable to meet Azahn’s. “Ah. Yes . . . about that. I’m going to be setting out for a little while. Word reached me that your world has no use for Foresights anymore and so the Cosmic Will has . . .”

He trailed off, watching Azahn, sensing something shift in the silence. Then, a wince as he raised a massive paw towards Azahn. “Ah. Damnation. My apologies, young one. I didn’t mean for that to come out the way it did.”

The little spark of will inside Azahn went out, snuffed like feeble candlelight. Yagadhan was right, of course. No use, no need for him. He and Yagadhan were alike now: relics of a bygone age.

Too many stories read as a boy, Azahn realized. Warriors with future vision wrestling lion-headed immortals in the shade of a mythic tree at the top of the world? It was childish. Stupid, even. In those stories, heroes won, monsters vanquished, and the story ended there. The hero didn’t suddenly find themselves up for tax evasion, the monster running late for work, real life catching up to them past story’s end.

Yes, Yagadhan was right. They were like those stories now. Useless.

A touch on his shoulder shook him from his spiral, depression’s claws pulling him deeper into the darkness of his own thoughts. This close, even towering above him, Yagadhan was gentle, eyes bright and boring into Azahn’s with concern.

The last time we were this close, my forearm was locked around your throat; you nearly bit my leg off at the hip. You laughed as I choked you out. Did that mean nothing?

“Hey, kid,” he said, crushed velvet voice in his ears. “Would you want to come with me? I’ve been assigned to the Tree here for a few centuries, lots of places even I haven’t seen across the Painted Swath of Worlds. Magwar, the Delver’s Delight? The Writhing Coast? The Bubble Palace of Twynbre? I’ve got a friend out in the Drifting City on the Flatblade Sea, you’d love her. Unless you’re afraid of snakes, then you might not! But I don’t know, guy like you, you’re not scared of much, right?”

Could he see it in Azahn’s eyes? That awful truth. Ever since I learned to see the future, I’ve been nothing but scared, Yagadhan.

The paw flexed on his shoulder, pads digging in just a little bit, the hint of claws beneath them. In a softer voice, the lion-headed man said, “C’mon, it can’t be that bad, right?”

Azahn finally let himself cry, tears rolling down his face as his breath left him; above, the sprawling branches of the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World shone with stars glimmering in their thousands.

“Can you take it from me?” he said, choking on his words, daring now to speak it into existence. “Can you p-please take it from me? I don’t want it anymore. I can’t. Please. I can’t stand to see all these futures, all these paths not taken. I’m sick of them. Please, give me silence.”

Two mighty arms wrapped around him, and Azahn instinctually clung to Yagadhan’s massive, furred frame. He didn’t know how long he wept nor how long the immortal guardian held him. But Azahn heard him say, “I can’t, Azahn,” and knew the true shape of despair. “The root is within you, a part of you. I’d have better luck removing your heart or your spirit.”

Azahn stepped out of the embrace, wiping his face, feeling cold at the top of the world. He could barely look up at the tree for in each starry bough was the future of another galaxy; he was blinded by all the futures above him, and he hated each of them. “So, this is it? I’m to wallow and wither away, cursed forever because the world deemed me obsolete?”

Yagadhan sighed as he slung the satchel over his shoulder. “Azahn, I’m sorry about what happened. But the world cares not for our plans and makes no change in its ever-forward course, despite the wishes of titans and tinkers alike. I empathize, my young friend, I do. Do you think I was always the guardian of the tree?” He gestured to the expanse of snow and stars and roots around them. “When I was created, I was designed to build songs for Ijitorata the Will-Aspect of Sound. And I was good at it. Over a thousand years, I built songs. One time I spent ninety years making sure a leitmotif really worked. But then my sibling here on the mountain decided they were done, and I was given this role. And now, something else might happen. Maybe I’ll come back. Maybe someone else will be assigned here. Maybe I’ll go back to songwriting. Life is never just one thing and if you’re having trouble seeing a future for yourself, then maybe you’re looking in the wrong places.”

“But you’re immortal,” Azahn spat back, leaning into the sudden venom in his voice, the hurt made manifest. “You’ve got all the time in the world! I’m not. I’ve barely a moment compared to the likes of you!”

Yagadhan fixed him with that brilliant pale-gold stare and it was like the judgement of the morning sun had arrived. “Then you’d best get a move on, Azahn. I know you’re fighting your battles, and I know it hasn’t been easy. And it may not be easy again for some time. But you will get there. You will find your future. And if you can’t, then you will have to make one.”

With a solemn nod, Yagadhan turned toward the tree and walked toward a split in the trunk; a golden light had etched itself onto the bark, becoming a doorway. He looked back at Azahn with a faint smile. “And I promise, my invite always stands. Just come to the tree and speak my name. You don’t have to do this alone.”

Azahn nodded and watched as Yagadhan, immortal lion-headed guardian of the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World vanished, leaving his post for stranger shores.

The silence around him was welcome, even as fractal futures shone above him. Azahn found himself sitting in the snow at the base of the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World.

He sat, cold, lost in Yagadhan’s last words, as dawn found the mountaintop and him upon it.

• • • •

In the end, bread saved his life.

It was a month or so after Yagadhan left and it seemed Shan had accepted Azahn’s solemnity; he’d stopped asking him for help around the kitchen or the house, only making gentle remarks about getting fresh air or sunlight if he went too many days being inside.

But it was a busy morning, Shan being pulled in every direction, when he asked Azahn for help. “My boy, please,” he said, running from one room to the next, “I’ll only be out for a handful of minutes, no more than a half hour. Please just keep an eye on those loaves. They mostly run themselves, but still.”

And Azahn, sitting on a stool, did just that. He watched.

The massive clay oven that took up half the humble kitchen had always been his favorite part of the house. He’d sat here and studied with his Auntie, who made time for him even after her long days as Foresight. He’d marvel at Shan’s innate understanding of when to grab the wooden paddle and shift a doughy loaf, always in motion, an understanding between him, the fire, and the yeast.

So he found himself there again, depression yoked around him like an iron collar, when he noticed something. A faint blue-shadow lingering near the flame in the back, which was not as robust as Shan normally made it. He must’ve forgotten a log in his rush this morning, Azahn thought.

One by one, little blue-shadows sprung up around the eight loaves before him. Azahn’s heart stopped. Uncertainty, here? What sort of futures would be upended here, of all places?

For a moment, Azahn despaired seeing these shadows. An urge to close his eyes and turn away filled him. But that urge ran straight into the heavy weight of duty, a task his uncle had asked of him. Bread would best him, truly? And he’d let down his uncle all because he couldn’t handle even this tiny thing?

It’s only bread, he thought, breathing through his nose, looking into the oven. You grew up in this kitchen. You can do this.

A lesson came back to him from Master Qin, the hush and rush of water dripping down stone and leaf in the Burbling Gardens. “To be Foresight is to see the moment before the moment. As a future locks itself into certainty, you will see its myriad paths, the shape it could be, not must be. And in time, you will learn how to nudge them, a hair this way, an inch the other. Such minute distances influence vast outcomes in the Cosmic Will.”

Everything else around Azahn fell away. The potential futures of knives and rolling pins and rusted pans and even the flame at the heart of the oven, he shoved them all out of mind.

And in those eight loaves, he saw their potential future unfold: the heat was too low and the yeast was running thin on air. These loaves, Azahn knew, would flatten, becoming hard, stale before their time. Shan would be lucky to give them away, let alone sell them.

Without thinking, he grabbed the great, worn wooden paddle that was off to the side, and with delicate flicks of his wrist, his green and gold flecked eyes darting this way and that, Azahn maneuvered loaf after loaf into a more ideal spot, nearer to the flame to keep the cooking continuous. Tinkering with the flame was out of the question until the bread was removed.

For the next twenty minutes, Azahn let go of thought, of worry. He danced from one side of the clay oven to the other, adjusting, spritzing water to increase rise, spinning loaves in their heated waltz. As he moved, he focused on one blue-shadow for each loaf; it was like balancing a stack of books on his head, an exercise from his early training.

A little part of him really wondered if this was worth his talent; he had been destined to protect the heart of an empire, a phoenix given form, to continue the mystic tradition of his family, his dynasty.

But that part was drowned out as he removed each loaf at the exact moment their future as a delicious, golden-crusted loaf became certain. He stared at each as though they were children freshly born, precious and new, tended by caring hands.

His hands.

That small voice within went quiet as he realized that this was something he could hold, a result of using his abilities to tend to the life of his uncle and himself, their community even. For this bread would feed families. It would put coin in his uncle’s pocket. And it gave him something to take care of.

In this way, Azahn felt rather than saw his own future lock in, that he could use his hands to create and make; that he could be a person of beginnings, not endings.

It was a lightness in his heart he hadn’t felt in months.

It felt like freedom.

As each loaf steamed on the counter, fresh and warm, the kitchen heavy with the mouth-watering scent of new bread, Azahn turned and saw his uncle standing in the doorway, mouth agape. “Azahn,” he ventured. Was it wonder on his lips? Relief? Azahn realized it didn’t matter.

For the first time in months, he smiled at his Uncle. “These are fresh, Uncle. If you wanted to bring them out to the market, I’d do so now. And I’m happy to start on the next batch. I’ve a feeling they’ll go quick.” Turning to the flame in the oven, he focused, seeing which future lay in the fire. “I’m going to add about three and a half logs, though, Uncle. It’s running cooler than we’d like. Is that okay?”

Shan wiped a thumb under his eye, dabbing at a little water there. Nodding, he said, “Of course, nephew. I trust you. I’ll be back soon. Something tells me the handiwork of the neighborhood Foresight will sell fast.”

Neighborhood Foresight, Azahn thought, chuckling to himself as he went to fetch firewood. I like that.

The oven warmed. Azahn’s hands went into motion as he tucked fresh balls of dough, watching the life of the yeast within stir, eager for heat, for life. With practiced ease, he ran a paring knife down the center of each, slashing just so.

Azahn, delirious with new joy, lost himself to baking.

• • • •

“Yagadhan.”

A moment passed before a golden line of light split the massive trunk of the Tree-At-The-Peak-Of-The-World. Through it, the massive lion-headed warrior emerged. His old armor had been replaced by some sort of loose, patterned shirt and a pair of shorts. He lifted tinted glasses off of his head and smiled down at the scene before him. “Why, my Foresight, what have you crafted here?”

They’d set up the feast before calling him. Uyla, Shan, Master Qin, and a few other close friends of Azahn’s and his Uncle had arrived early, clearing away snow, setting up tables and chairs, and making a rousing campfire to huddle around in the chilly mountain air.

Across each table were mountains of food, much made by Azahn. Masa cakes and slow-roasted fig-glazed pork, light, airy dumplings filled to the brim with vegetables and spicy seafood, thick slabs of brioche surrounded by salted butter and tamarind jam, and more and more.

Already, Yagadhan’s mouth watered. He looked down at Azahn with something like pride. “And what are we celebrating, my Foresight?”

Azahn gestured for Yagadhan to join everyone at the fire. “Today will be the anniversary of when we lost my Auntie. It’s also the day I was chosen to begin my true training. It’s been . . . a hard few years for all of us. But it feels important to celebrate these things today, after everything. And I wanted to do it with friends. Would you join us?”

Yagadhan inclined his head. “It’s my honor, Azahn. Of course.”

Azahn introduced the immortal guardian to his family and walked around, delivering morsel after morsel onto the plates of those gathered, always certain when someone was ready to eat again. He stopped the tea at the height of its steeping, filling wooden mugs as Yagadhan told tales of the Drifting City and the trouble he had gotten up to, Master Qin eager to ask questions, Uyla and Shan holding hands, happy to listen.

Azahn, heart at peace and content here on the mountaintop, noticed today was nearing. He pointed off in the distance. “Look, everyone. The sun is rising.”

Everyone joined him at the edge of the mountain, in the shadow of the tree, which shone above them like a silver fire. In silence, they raised their glasses, saluting the sun and the memory of Mira.

A new day began, golden and brilliant. And for the first time in a year, surrounded by family and friends, Azahn found himself grateful and excited that he didn’t know what it would bring.