We heard a sound from the undergrowth — not the anti-sound of a predator, the opposite. Human sound. Pain that was too exhausted for screaming and had settled into sustained distress. A moan. Continuous. Someone who had been hurting for long enough that the hurting had become background.

  Wei stopped.

  I watched him. His body arrested mid-stride, his head turning toward the sound with total immediacy. Automatic. The response of someone whose wiring connected the-sound-of-pain to the-action-of-response without intermediary.

  This was him at the base layer, the thing that Wei was before Wei was anything else — someone who heard pain and moved toward it.

  He was already running.

  "Wei—"

  Gone. Into the undergrowth. No assessment, no pause, no calculation. Just reacting to someone who is hurt.

  I followed. Fast. Scanning for threats, feeling the qi-field for anomalies, performing the tactical assessment that he hadn't performed.

  Wei knelt before a woodcutter. An older man in his fifties, his leg pinned under a fallen tree — not large, but large enough, that he couldn't move it. The trunk lay across his lower leg at an angle that said broken, probably.

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  His face was grey with pain and sweating. His eyes were wide and desperate.

  Wei was reaching for the tree.

  "Hold still," he said. The command voice. The authority of someone who had been in danger and came out the other side carrying confidence like a tool.

  He channeled qi into his arms. Raw amplification — strength beyond muscle. He gripped the trunk and lifted. The tree moved — not much, but enough.

  The woodcutter dragged himself backward, gasping — the desperate scramble of a body that had been waiting for exactly this chance. His broken leg trailed at the wrong angle and the groan that escaped was relief and agony in equal measure.

  Wei let the trunk drop. It hit the ground with finality..

  "Your leg." He assessed — field assessment. He gathered branches for a splint and tore a stripe of cloth from his own shirt for binding, the compression wrap I had shown him once. He executed it from memory with the accuracy of someone who learned by seeing once and doing forever.

  He splinted the leg. Not perfectly — the angle was still a bit off, the binding tight in one place, loose in another. But functional. Sufficient.

  Wei lifted the man and supported him with his right shoulder under the man's arm — taking care of his own injuries.

  They walked toward the settlement. Slowly. The woodcutter leaning on Wei, while Wei was steady and patient. Bearing a weight that should have been too much for a body that had just fought a qi-beast.

  I followed behind.

  Of course you'd help.

  This boy could not not help.

  I watched him carry the woodcutter. Thought about the lynx. Thought about the grin. Thought about the warmth in his sternum and the two-second breath-stop and the word he'd used — tired — and the word I would have used — beginning.

  The thing that made him beautiful was the thing that made him vulnerable.

  And the thing that made him vulnerable was the thing that would—

  I didn't finish.

  We walked home.