He's honest. That's all it was. There wasn't anything real. It doesn't matter. There doesn't need to be something real.

Lindon objects, like a foolish child, that that isn't fair, that he couldn't have known that acting according to the decorum he has been instructed never to break from would be wrong this time.

The First Elder's face is angry, now. The anger of a man who is trying to convince a child not to put his hand into a hot flame, but angry nonetheless.

"You could not have known? It does not matter. If he had killed you there in his anger, the most I could do would be to give him a trivial punishment for the dishonour of picking on the weak. He could not be executed, or maimed, or even fined, because in taking your life he cost the clan nothing. He would not even remember his punishment a week later, and you would be dead."

Lindon bows and squeezes his eyes shut, trying to hide the tears that are trying to form in his eyes.

"You should not have left the clan grounds today, Lindon", the First Elder says, his voice softening. "I do not say this to wound you further, Lindon. The heavens can show great cruelty in a man’s birth. But the foundation of any Path is learning to accept the world as it is, not as you wish or even observe it to be. You have a place in the clan archives. Let that be your turtle’s shell. Help your mother with her work, or stay in the archives, and fade into the background. Humility and anonymity are your protection."

The First Elder slumps in his seat.

"They are the only armour I can give you."

Lindon is being punished. To ensure Teris and the Mon family don't hold a grudge.

He's going to- be the one who feeds Elder Whisper tonight?

Oh.

Other people would consider that a real punishment, wouldn't they?

"Maybe he can give you the help that I cannot."

The spire stretches into the air from the center of the clan's compound. Up and up and up.

Even with his deeper core Lindon is slightly short of breath by the time he reaches the top. It's an hour of climbing stair after stair.

A Copper wouldn't even notice the strain.

Still, here he is, at the top, barely even short of breath.

He pauses for a long moment and catches his breath.

Elder Whisper had joined with the other founders of the clan centuries ago. He invented the Path of the White Fox. It's named for him. The most common Path in the clan, the primary Wei clan path, and Elder Whisper invented it himself. He worked with the founders to clear the clan grounds of the Remnants that had inhabited the area, carving a bloody swath through all who opposed them, incorporating a dozen smaller clans into the Wei. Not even the Wei Patriarch is as honoured as Elder Whisper. He can't appear before Elder Whisper breathing hard, even if it's not much.

He braces himself and schools his expression into careful neutrality.

Then he opens the locks on the outside of Elder Whisper's door. The lock and the key are each heavy bronze, the size of his head.

Then he opens the door. The script circle keeping Elder Whisper trapped inside the room is temporarily broken as the mirror on the back of the door is moved out of position. It's one part of a spirit trap, a kind of script circle designed to use the madra of a trapped Remnant or sacred beast to keep them trapped, siphoning their power to imprison them.

There is another at the base of the tower, however. Even if he tried, Elder Whisper couldn't escape. Not that he's ever tried.

Lindon doesn't know why he's imprisoned. As far as he knows nobody but the current elders do.

It's not an acceptable topic of discussion.

Elder Whisper sits on his haunches, staring out at the world through an open floor-to-ceiling archway. There's nothing physical blocking him from simply leaping out to the ground thousands and thousands of feet below. He'd likely even survive the fall. But a script blocks that potential path of escape.

He turns and fixes his gaze on Lindon.

"You have had a most fortuitous encounter."

Lindon places the bucket of fish to the side, bends at the waist in respect, and does his very best not to freeze in sudden fear.

"Yerin, I believe her name was. Student of the Sage of the Endless Sword."

The body of the spirit fox splits. A copy of himself steps from him and walks to Lindon's right. Another moves to his left. His real body or is that one the illusion and one of the others the true form? The first body makes its way over to the bucket of fish and begins to eat. Even as it does so, its tails wave through the air in intricate patterns, looking as though script is being carved into the air. Lindon can almost see the runes, but runes aren't shaped like that.

The second whispers in Lindon's ear.

"Tell me the story."

His sharp teeth click together an inch from Lindon's ear.

Lindon is surrounded by multiple five-tailed snowfoxes, each taller than a man. He doesn't know which of them is real, or even if any of them are. But he swears he could almost feel those sharp teeth in his skin.

Lindon now has slightly more understanding why others would consider this a punishment.

He tells the story.

He decides to downplay the mentions of the outside world, he-

"No, no, none of that. You can't hide anything from me, Lindon. I was old when the mountains around this valley were young. I know what lies beyond the boundaries of this valley."

Lindon feels something pressing down on his spirit. He's felt the Wei Clan Patriarch using his spirit to suppress someone, to impress his power upon the audience. It felt like a heavy weight was trying to push down on his shoulders.

This does not feel like that.

This feels like the sky itself has decided to crush Lindon under its boot.

It makes the Patriarch's power feel like nothing at all.

It passes as quickly as it comes.

"Why are you still here?"

That- he's never felt anything like it.

Elder Whisper could simply destroy the solid stone walls of the tower and break the script circle that way.

"Because I want to be, of course. Now, continue, please."

He snaps up another fish and swallows it whole.

Lindon does. This time, he doesn't try to leave anything out.

"How strange. The script does not play out as it should, half the players changed, but the denoument remains the same even so."

"Now think, Lindon, do you know what that means?"

He racks his brain. He can't think of anything real.

"The people doing things are different but the ending is the same?"

"Exactly."