An Old Contract Renewed
Fate grinned. He hadn’t been sure it would work, but it had.
Dust still hung in the air from the broken seal.
“I didn’t force anything. I just renewed an old contract.” He smirked. “And stop swearing like that, Pan—it doesn’t suit you. Never did.”
Pan blinked. Something about the exchange clearly struck a chord.
He stared for a few seconds, eyes narrowing. Then they went wide.
“Rex? Is that you?”
“Right now, my name is Fate. Be nice, and call me by it.”
Pan burst out laughing and pulled him into a crushing hug, armor plates clanking together. When he finally let go, he held Fate at arm’s length, studying his face like he was checking for a scar that should’ve been there.
“What happened to you? I thought you were dead.” His grin faltered. “One day I’ve got an army at my back, and the next, the contract just—ends, and I’m dragged back to my world.”
His jaw tightened.
“Two hundred years I was so pissed. Spent the whole time thinking someone had assassinated you, and I couldn’t even get revenge.”
Fate’s smile turned thin, brittle at the edges.
“I don’t think I was assassinated. Last thing I remember, I’d finally finished the second half of the spell and sealed myself under the mountain—meant to sleep for ten years before waking.” He exhaled slowly. “Something must have gone wrong. I think I died, and my soul reincarnated into this new body.”
Pan frowned, arms crossing over his chest.
“If you reincarnated, how do your memories survive? A mortal’s memories don’t carry over. They dissolve on the way to the other side.”
Fate smiled wryly.
“My best guess is the memory-duplication spell I cast before sealing myself. I was worried about brain damage from the freeze—figured my life force would repair it eventually, but that some memory might get scrubbed in the process. So I made a copy, stored in a matrix, tethered to my soul.”
He shrugged.
“No idea why it activated only now—it only came back to me a month ago.”
Pan smacked his own forehead, the sound sharp in the quiet.
“That explains why you’re still so weak! You and your matrixes, always chasing the impossible.” He laughed, shaking his head, dark hair falling loose across his brow. “Damn it, I can’t wait to tell my father a human found a way to reincarnate with his memories intact—it’ll drive him mad.”
He tilted his head, studying Fate’s thin frame, his patched sleeves.
“You still thirty-six in the succession line?”
Pan grinned, teeth flashing white.
“Eighteen now, mostly thanks to the time I spent with you. If you hadn’t died, I’d probably be in the top nine.”
Fate nodded, then sighed, the weight of it settling into his shoulders.
“Sorry, Pan—I can’t share life force with you right now. What I’ve got would barely register for you. It’d slow my own training too much to spare it.”
Pan looked at him, a little speechless, then started laughing outright.
“You still don’t get how insane your matrix is.” He punched Fate playfully in the arm, hard enough to rock him back a step. “Don’t worry—what you left me with last time is still good for another three hundred years. By the old law, I owe you that much service before I can ask for anything in return.”
His eyes glinted, sharp and amused.
“If anything, you should be absorbing life force from me. A single year of mine would carry you for centuries at your current level.”
“Funny,” Fate said. “Honestly, I’d love to. But your life force is too complex—if I tried to run it through my matrix, the whole thing would collapse before I could absorb a drop…”
Fate went quiet, thoughtful, for a long moment. His eyes lost focus, fixed on nothing.
“So what’s the problem?” Pan asked. “Why the face?”
“Just something I’m working on.” Fate met his eyes, something calculating flickering behind his own. “Pan—would you mind if I put a bit of life force into you? Directly, into your body?”
Pan gave him an odd look, one eyebrow raised.
“You just told me you don’t have enough for yourself.”
“True. But I want to test something. You could help me develop a new matrix.”
Pan held out his left hand without hesitation, palm up, steady.
“Another one of your groundbreaking experiments?”
Fate grinned, a spark of old recklessness in it.
“Let’s hope this one doesn’t kill me.”
He took Pan’s hand and pushed a small measure of gathered life force into him. It vanished into Pan’s body before Fate could trace where it went—gone, like water into dry sand.
He sighed and pushed in half his remaining reserve. This time he followed the energy as it moved.
Deep inside what was called the dantian, a small black flame flickered, casting no light Fate could see with his eyes, only something felt. The instant the life force touched it, the flame refined it into something finer, more chaotic.
The amount was a fraction of what Fate had sent. But he could tell—fundamentally, it was the same kind of thing.
“That flame,” Fate said, after studying it for a long moment. “Could I take a small piece of it?”
Pan’s expression turned strange, guarded in a way Fate hadn’t seen on him before.
“It’s not that I wouldn’t want to. But for my people, sharing a heart-flame is the same as declaring eternal love. It’s the most binding kind of marriage there is.” He grimaced, mock horror crossing his face. “As much as I like you, Fate, I don’t like you that way.”
Fate stared at him. Then he burst out laughing—the first laugh that had come from somewhere real, in this life.
“Same here! Don’t worry, I’ll find another way.”
Once Pan stopped laughing along with him, he thought for a moment, scratching at his jaw.
“Father once told me humans can build something similar—using a fragment of soul, ki, and life force. They call it an immortal flame. Not as fundamentally tied to their existence as ours, but close.”
Ki, Fate thought. So even in Ashura, they know the concept.
That meant this whole framework of power hadn’t originated here—it had been carried in from another world entirely, by someone.
Fate studied Pan’s heart-flame for hours before slipping into meditation. Pan shifted back into the shape of the black horse and melted into the nearest shadow, silent as smoke. Fate didn’t even register that he’d left—his focus was somewhere else entirely, deep and far away.
Seven hours later, Pan shook him out of his trance.
“Here. Try this.”
He held out a small, black stone. It sat heavy in his palm, dark as a coal ember gone cold.
“What is it?” Fate asked.
“A fire treasure. Found it underground, a few hundred miles from here, back in my world. When one of us forges a heart-flame, we usually start with something low-grade like this. You absorb a small piece of the flame into your dantian, refine it with ki and life force, and hold it steady with your soul. Once it settles, you split off a small fragment of your own soul to anchor it there, permanently.”
Fate examined the stone, turning it in the firelight. It resembled the fire-stones he already knew, but something about it felt alive—the first he’d encountered like that.
A faint pulse. Almost a heartbeat.
It could probably be used to craft an artifact, though he’d never heard of anyone actually daring to try.
Still, he trusted Pan with his life.
He studied it for an hour, first attempting to draw something out with mana, then with ki, then with both—nothing worked. When he tried to force it with sheer will, it nearly burned him, heat lancing up through his fingers.
Finally, he thought it through, then tried combining mana and ki while using his soul to ease it past the stone’s protective barrier.
The stone let out a sound—low, keening, almost pained.
Something alien surged into his dantian, like an angry child, furious and confused.
It felt like something was tearing him open from the inside.
Fate tried to arrest the flame, but it wouldn’t be stopped. It was hungry, and it was eating him alive from within.
He threw mana at it. The flame consumed ki and mana both, greedy, insatiable. Now it wasn’t just his stomach on fire—his whole body was burning, sweat beading cold despite the heat.
Desperate, he poured life force into it. That didn’t stop the feeding either, but at least it didn’t hurt as much.
Not wanting to die, Fate shoved every last drop of spare life force he had into the flame.
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