Dual Cultivation Path

Chapter One: Dust and Dreams

Roderic Vane stood taller than most, a lanky figure with a frame that promised strength it couldn't deliver. His dark hair fell in uneven strands across a sharp, sun-browned face, eyes a muted hazel that flickered with something restless. At nineteen, he was fine enough to turn a head or two in the dusty lanes of Hearth Hollow, but his thin arms and hollow cheeks told a truer story: a young man stretched too far by hunger and toil, with little to show for it.

He leaned against the warped handle of his shovel, the midday sun baking the cracked earth of the quarry. Sweat stung his eyes as he watched them pass—the boys and girls his age, draped in the crisp robes of the Verdant Crest Academy. Their chatter drifted over the ridge, bright and careless, blades gleaming at their waists and satchels stuffed with scrolls. Cultivators, all of them, their cores already humming with qi, their futures etched in jade and gold. Roderic's own core—a pitiful, sluggish thing—barely stirred, a faint ember mocked by the wind.

"Move it, Vane!" barked Old Tarn, the quarry overseer, his voice a gravelly rasp. "Stone won't shift itself."

Roderic grunted and drove the shovel into the dirt, his muscles aching from hours of hauling slabs for merchants who'd never know his name. He wasn't like them—the academy brats with their sponsors, their clans, their silken paths to power. He'd been born to a washerwoman and a father long gone, left with no coin, no lineage, and a core so weak it'd sputtered at his first test. The village elder had laughed, a dry, pitying sound, and sent him off with a pat on the shoulder. "Stick to the shovel, lad," he'd said. "The heavens don't favor everyone."

But Roderic watched anyway, every day, as the academy hopefuls trekked past the quarry toward the shimmering spires on the hill. He saw Jorin Tal, broad-shouldered and loud, boasting about his fire qi. He saw Lira Wen, her steps light as she clutched a sponsor's jade token, her hair catching the sun like spun copper. They were his age, his peers, yet worlds apart. If he had a sponsor—just one soul with a bit of faith and a few coins—he could be up there too, trading dirt for a disciple's robe, coaxing his weak core into something worthwhile.

He paused, wiping his brow, and let the shovel clatter against a rock. The others in the quarry didn't notice—gruff men too old or broken to dream—but Roderic tilted his head toward the academy's distant gates. He could almost feel it: the weight of a blade in his hand, the rush of qi through his veins, the chance to be more than a shadow in Hearth Hollow. All it'd take was someone to see him, to toss him a lifeline. A merchant, a rogue cultivator, even a drunk elder with a spare token—anyone.

"Wishing won't fill your belly," Old Tarn muttered, hobbling past with a sack of gravel. "Get back to it."

Roderic swallowed the ache in his throat and hefted the shovel again. The academy group vanished over the rise, their laughter fading into the hum of cicadas. He was alone with the dust once more, a tall, fine young man with a spark too small to light his way. But deep in his chest, that ember flickered still, stubborn and unyielding, whispering of a day when luck might finally turn.

The sun dipped lower, painting the quarry in hues of rust and shadow. Roderic's hands blistered against the shovel's rough grain, each scoop of earth a dull rhythm that matched the thud of his heartbeat. The other laborers grumbled their way through the day's end—Old Tarn barking orders, the younger hands trading crude jokes—but Roderic stayed silent, his mind snagged on the academy gates he'd never cross. His core twitched faintly, a pitiful pulse of qi that mocked him with every breath. Weak, the elder had called it. Barely worth the test.

He stabbed the shovel into the ground harder than he meant to, the jolt rattling up his arms. A few heads turned, but he ignored them, staring at the cracked dirt like it owed him answers. He'd tried, hadn't he? Nights spent cross-legged in his mother's cramped shack, breathing deep, chasing the faint threads of energy that slipped through his grasp. The manuals he'd scavenged—tattered scraps from a peddler's cart—promised power with focus, but focus didn't fill an empty stomach or mend a core that refused to grow. He needed more than effort. He needed a chance.

"Oi, Vane, you breakin' the earth or courtin' it?" called Gritch, a wiry boy a year younger, his grin gap-toothed and smug. The others chuckled, a low rumble that grated on Roderic's nerves.

"Shove off," he muttered, yanking the shovel free. Gritch laughed louder, but Old Tarn's glare sent him scurrying back to his pile. Roderic didn't care for their banter—he wasn't one of them, not really. They'd settled into this life, content to haul stone until their backs gave out. He couldn't. Wouldn't.

The workday bled into dusk, the quarry emptying as lanterns flickered to life along Hearth Hollow's crooked streets. Roderic lingered, tossing his shovel into the tool heap with a clang. His wages—three copper bits Tarn had pressed into his palm—jingled faintly in his pocket, barely enough for a bowl of millet and a scrap of dried fish. His mother would be waiting, her hands red from the washbasin, her eyes soft with a hope he couldn't bear to meet.

He kicked a loose pebble, watching it skitter down the quarry's edge into a shallow ravine. The academies taught their students to sense qi in the air, to bend it like a river. Roderic could barely feel the trickle in his own body, let alone the world's. But he'd heard the stories—lucky fools stumbling onto spirit herbs or lost talismans, rising from nothing to rival the clans. If the heavens could favor them, why not him? A sponsor, a relic, anything—just one break.

His gaze drifted to the ravine, where the pebble had vanished. Something glinted there, faint and fleeting, caught in the last slant of sunlight. A trick of the eye, maybe—shards of quartz littered these hills—but his feet moved before his mind caught up, boots crunching over loose stone as he slid down the slope. The air grew cooler, sharper, the quarry's noise fading behind him. He crouched, squinting at the spot: a jagged crevice, barely wide enough for a hand, cradling a sliver of dull metal.

Roderic's breath hitched. It wasn't quartz. It looked old, weathered, like a piece of something bigger, half-buried in the earth. His fingers brushed it, cold and rough, and a faint hum buzzed against his skin—not his core, but something else. Something alive.

Roderic's fingers hesitated over the metal shard, the faint hum tingling up his arm like a whisper he couldn't place. It wasn't much—smaller than his palm, edges worn and pitted—but it felt heavier than it should, as if it carried more than its size. He glanced up the ravine, half-expecting Old Tarn to bellow at him for dawdling, but the quarry was a dim silhouette against the twilight. No one had seen. Good. Whatever this was, it was his.

He pried it free with a grunt, the earth reluctant to let go, and tucked it into the torn lining of his tunic. The weight pressed against his ribs as he clambered back up, dusting his hands on his threadbare trousers. His mind raced—could be junk, could be a trinket to sell, or maybe, just maybe, something cultivators would kill for. He'd heard of relics sparking weak cores to life. A fool's hope, but it was all he had.

The walk to Hearth Hollow's outskirts was a blur, the coppers in his pocket clinking with each step. The village sprawled in a tangle of mud-brick huts and leaning stalls, smoke curling from cookfires into the crisp evening air. Roderic's home sat at the edge—a squat, crumbling shack patched with straw and cracked planks, its roof sagging like an old man's spine. The single window, a gap covered with oiled cloth, glowed faintly from the stub of a candle inside.

He pushed the door open, hinges groaning, and stepped into the familiar damp. The main room was barely a room at all—ten paces wide, with a dirt floor packed hard by years of footsteps. A rickety table held a chipped clay pot, a basket of wilted greens, and the last of yesterday's flatbread. A straw mat lay in one corner, his mother's when she wasn't out scrubbing linens till dawn. The air smelled of mildew and stale broth, a poverty so ingrained it barely registered.

"Roderic?" A voice, soft but bright, cut through the gloom. His sister, Tansy, straightened from the hearth—a dented iron pot simmering over a meager flame. She was sixteen, slight and wiry, with a mop of chestnut curls that defied the grime of their life. Her face was heart-shaped, freckles dusting a nose too pert for their dour world, and her eyes, a vivid green, sparkled with a warmth he envied. She wore a patched smock, sleeves rolled to her elbows, hands smudged from tending the fire. "You're late. Tarn keep you?"

"Something like that," Roderic muttered, brushing past her to kick off his boots. The relic jabbed his side, a secret he wasn't ready to share—not yet. Tansy tilted her head, curious, but didn't press. She never did, not when he got that look in his eye.

"Soup's thin again," she said, stirring the pot. "Got some roots from the widow's patch. Better than nothing."

"It'll do." He forced a nod, guilt gnawing at him. Tansy deserved more than this—more than a brother who couldn't even buy her a proper meal. If that shard was worth anything, maybe he could change that.

He crossed to the narrow doorway off the main room, ducking under the low lintel into his corner of the shack. His "room" was a closet of a space, just wide enough for a straw pallet shoved against the wall. A single shelf, warped and splintered, held a chipped clay cup and a stub of charcoal he used to scratch figures on scraps. The walls were bare mud, stained with damp, and a frayed sack curtain hung over the doorway for privacy that barely mattered. A faint draft whistled through a crack near the ceiling, chilling the air. It was small, mean, and his.

Roderic sank onto the pallet, the straw crunching under his weight, and pulled the relic from his tunic. It gleamed dully in the candlelight spilling from the main room, its surface etched with lines too fine to be random. His pulse quickened. This wasn't junk. He turned it over in his hands, the hum faint but insistent, and leaned closer to the light.