More importantly, two days later the elixir is done.

It will be like he and his sister are each getting nearly two thirds of the fruit, rather than half. 

It feels like he's drank a thunderbolt. He can't tell whether it's heat or cold that he's feeling but he knows it's intense. Tingling prickles spread out from his core along his madra channels, all the way to his fingertips.

When he feels his core, when he sees it in his mind's eye, nothing is different. It's hard to stifle the disappointment.

But perhaps it just needs more time to work?

It doesn't. His core doesn't feel brighter, the next morning, once the tingles have stopped. It doesn't feel deeper. It isn't any larger.

No difference at all, as far as he can tell.

But when he practices the empty palm, he can use it again and again. 

Four times as many times as he could before. 

Four times. 

His madra stores quadrupled overnight, and he didn't even notice.

It's his sister who points out exactly what that means. The fruit's aura was incorporated into both their spirits so smoothly they couldn't even notice. There will be no issues with instability, no time spent ensuring their spirits are not strained by being overglutted with power.

The fruit was exactly what the both of them needed.

He learns to fight, around his attempts to invent an Enforcer technique and perfect his Empty Palm. He doesn't learn well. He's starting years and years late, no matter how talented he is.

But everyone gets lucky occasionally. 

His sister is stronger, when she is using madra. His sister is faster, when she is using madra. His sister is more skilled always.

But she needs her madra to practice on her own time. So she doesn't use a lot of it, when sparring with him. It lets her actually get something out of it, as well. If she's too much faster and stronger than him it's not anything close to a real fight. It's still not very close to one, she's got twice the strength he does, and about as much more speed. He's not spending madra himself, during his fights- he needs to save it for developing his Enforcer technique and practising his Empty Palm. He's still not fast enough with it to use it in a fight with someone who's faster than him and have any chance of landing it.

One day, during a spar, Kelsa nearly trips on a root. She recovers nearly instantly.

Nearly.

Lindon suddenly uses his half-developed Enforcer technique as hard as he can, the madra gushing from his core like water from a spigot. He doesn't have long, using it this intently, but he needs the speed.

He forms an Empty Palm as quick as he can. Not quite quick enough, normally, to land a hit on Kelsa. It would simply be too obvious, his body too slow.

His Empty Palm strikes her core straight on. 

His sister is at the peak of Copper, likely days or weeks away from advancing to Iron. It doesn't matter. Her Enforcer technique gutters out, her limbs suddenly moving in slow motion. Lindon is, for a few moments, the only one with access to madra. When she's using a limited amount of madra and he's using none, she's twice as strong as he is. When she's using none, and he's using more than he ever has in his life, the balance is suddenly drastically in the other direction.

He punches her in the stomach again. Harder.

She falls to the ground in front of him.

He wins.

It's just once. At first.

Then it becomes occasional.

Never common. She has a whole realm on him. She has to trip, or he has to get very lucky somehow. But when you fight enough times, something like that will happen. 

He, a crippled Unsouled, defeats a Copper in a spar. And then he does it again. And again. 

Who cares that she defeats him far, far more often? He can do it at all.

He can do it at all.

A month later the Enforcer technique comes together. His body is sheathed in flowing wisps of blue madra, almost licking over him like flames. It gathers at his fists more than anywhere else, but it flows over his whole body. It's weak. Faint. Barely there at all, really.

With it active, he's stronger. More graceful. His body suddenly moves the way he wants it to, when he wants it to. It's incredible.

More than that, the pure madra racing over his body disrupts foreign madra. When his sister uses her Enforcer technique, her punches still have lingering phantom pain, like fire is burning inside his flesh, but less, and it eases faster.

And she's Copper. What would it be doing if he was Copper? Would her technique summon phantom pain at all? Surely a proper Enforcer's technique would, and most certainly a direct hit by a Striker technique, but- it should protect him somewhat from anything primarily spiritual in nature.

That's what pure madra is best at, after all. The only thing it's good at is disrupting spiritual techniques. It's the perfect counter to his clan's Path. If an Iron of the Kazan clan used a technique to strike him in the head with a mundane stone, he would keel over just as dead as if he didn't have any technique active at all. But a technique of just madra alone would have its effects blunted. It's his madra, after all- if it was distant from him and no longer in his control there would be risk of the technique being empowered by the pure madra, absorbing it and hitting him harder. But with it this close to his body, shaped by his family's Enforcer cycling technique to be something that infiltrates and burns, that subverts and erodes- well, that's a different matter entirely.

He can tell he's doing something wrong. His madra doesn't quite want to flow this way, he's forcing it in some subtle way he can't divine. It behaves more like water than foxfire, and more like mist than either once it's forced into the slightly unnatural shape from following a cycling pattern derived from his family's technique.

Maybe he can get it to flow around his body and hands like water instead?

He can't. He just doesn't have the madra capacity. 

Well. An idea for Copper. Or Iron. Maybe even Jade?

Someday, though.

But- how is mist different from fire? How does that change how he should be cycling this technique?

He's not quite sure. He makes tiny adjustments here and there, trying to feel his way towards something that works better. It doesn't work. Any perturbation from this technique feels worse.

He runs out of madra after another spar.

He doesn't care. 

He has an Enforcer technique.

His sister advances to Iron the next day.

He's happy for her, her really is. Just.

Well.

He didn't even get a chance to beat her! With a proper enforcer technique he's sure he could have won one bout in ten!

Now that she's Iron he can kiss winning any bouts goodbye. He won't even get to spar with her again for weeks. They need to be sure she won't accidentally kill him.

He practices. He practices a lot. 

His Empty Palm becomes faster and faster until he can throw one as quick as he can throw a punch. His Enforcer technique doesn't change particularly, but he learns how to use it more and more. 

His core deepens. Something about it starts to change, a sense of mutability coming over it that he's not used to. He can feel that he could push inward mentally hard enough and his core would split in two. He doesn't want that, so he doesn't, but it's strange to have the option be there at all.

A month before the the festival his Sister says she's pretty sure he could advance to Copper. She explains how to him, in detail.

He pays very close attention, memorizing exactly what he has to do.

He doesn't advance.

He still bows and scrapes. He still does his job at the library, sweeping the porch and tidying the scrolls whenever anyone else doesn't put them away properly.

He kneels and begs for forgiveness after Wei Mon Teris bumps into him in the woods in a training session. It's terrifying. Lindon has his Enforcer technique, he has his Empty Palm, and it doesn't matter. It probably wouldn't matter even if Teris was alone, but he's not. He has two more Copper friends with him. 

He's going to leave. He's going to go far away from here. This isn't everything for him. It isn't. It won't be. 

That meeting with that Jade girl in the forest can't have been for nothing.

He won't die an Unsouled.

He won't let that be his fate.

What should he call his Enforcer technique?

His sister finally accepts one of his proposes ideas after declaring dozens terrible. It will be called the Robe of Pure Mist. Mist Robe for short.

He reluctantly admits that that is, perhaps, a superior name to Purifying Pure Flame Armour Technique.

He prepares. He shouldn't need to cheat, but if he does- well. Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.

He finds a nest of hornet Remnants using a book his mother lends him, a log of Remnants she's encountered and bargained with over the years. He has some of his madra gathered in a vessel specially prepared for such things. The perfect bait for a Remnant.

He's preparing the script circle when Wei Mon Teris and his friends run into the clearing, chasing- something, Lindon isn't sure what. Lindon can barely make it out in the underbrush. They go hunting regularly enough, it's not shocking to see them out here, but so soon after their last encounter it feels like the universe itself has it in for him.

Lindon misses the days when they were friends.

He bows at the waist to Teris. "Cousin Teris. This one is honoured to greet you."

He tries to position his body between them and the script circle he's scratched into the soil.

It doesn't work.

His cousin scratches out the circle. 

Lindon spent half an hour getting that right, copying from his mother's guide rune by painstaking rune. It needed to be perfect.

And now it's ruined.

He does his best to keep his anger off his face.

His eyes flick to the hornet's nest in the tree.

Teris notices. Of course he does. 

Lindon is angry. Mostly he's terrified. Teris could kill him with a punch, bent over kneeling as he is. Even if he wasn't- Kelsa is a better fighter, Lindon is certain of it. And Teris doesn't even know Lindon has any techniques. Alone, Lindon could perhaps defeat him by surprise. With his friends? Attempting to defend himself would just be asking for broken bones. 

They blame him for distracting them from their hunt. A rather impressive stag, apparently, one on the verge of becoming the sacred beast's equivalent of Copper. And now they've lost track of it because he raised his voice and spoke to them.

They berate Lindon, and then leave.

Lindon breathes a sigh of relief.

Some day, some day, he won't have to let people do that to him anymore.

After they leave he re-draws the script circle. He steps into the circle, holding his tiny crystal vial full of madra.

Then he throws a rock at the at the hornet's nest.

The hornets swarm out of the nest, looking as though they're made of swirls of ink and shadow, their buzzing a sound like rushing leaves. They swirl around his circle, pushing against it. It draws on their power to repel them. It won't hold if they push hard. But it doesn't need to actually hold against determination. It's enough just to give them a moment to calm. These Remnants don't hold anger.

Lindon makes them an offer. He makes a request. He bargains. 

They agree.

He leaves the clearing with a ceramic jar full of Remnant hornets.

When he gets home he's summoned to talk to the First Elder.

Teris and his friends complained. 

The First Elder tells Lindon the story Teris told him. It's a true description. Them running into Lindon in a clearing. Lindon calling out a greeting. The three of them losing track of their quarry in the brush as they look to Lindon to respond.

He asks Lindon to corroborate it, and he does.

Then he asks Lindon if he knows what he did wrong.

He spoke before being spoken to. He was in an area known to contain nascent sacred beasts and did not consider that before he greeted them, even though he knew they were hunting.

"You found yourself in the way of three Coppers, Lindon. That was your sin.”

He sounds tired.