I didn't sleep that night, which on itself was not unusual — as you already know, I usually don't sleep. But this was the first time in centuries that I would not have been able to, because the thing in my head was too heavy to put down and too sharp to hold.

  I'm breaking him.

  I sat by the dead fire. Wei slept four meters away. His core glowed — faint, warm, running hot and unaware. My qi flowed to him. I could see it now — couldn't unsee it. The stream was constant. Unchanged by my awareness. Unchanged by my horror. Autonomous.

  I watched it for an hour. Cataloging. The flow adapted to his cultivation cycle. When his core pulled, the stream surged. When his channels rested, it eased. The precision was obscene — an ancient energy source calibrating its output to match a thirteen-year-old's intake and the calibration was happening without my input, without my knowledge, without the conscious deployment that I used for everything else.

  My hands were steady. They always were. Even when the thing behind them wasn't.

  And I didn't know what my own body was doing.

  I looked up to the stars, which had been there the whole time and I thought about how they were the same as they had been for millennia and how they would be the same for millennia to come and how they didn't care about me or him or the stream or anything at all. Everything to distract me from the thing in my head that was screaming. Until finally morning came and the stars faded and the stream was still there, still flowing, still autonomous, still unstoppable, still—.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Wei woke and sat up. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his hands, a childish gesture he hadn't outgrown yet.

  "Morning."

  "Morning."

  "Did you sleep?"

  "Yes."

  A lie. I knew it. He knew it. Both of us refused to challenge it.

  He ate. Cold rice. His appetite had recovered since the descent — air thicker, altitude released, food staying down.

  I watched him eat and saw the stream. My qi, flowing. His channels, receiving. The exchange that had been happening in plain sight for months. Possibly longer.

  "We should move."

  "Where?"

  "Into the hills. Valley's too exposed."

  "More hills?"

  "Different hills."

  "At least not mountains."

  He packed. Efficient, the routine was muscle memory. Bedroll, pack, stand.

  "Ready."

  We walked. The habitual gap — three steps. Close enough for conversation. I counted his breaths. Fourteen per minute. Each one pulled at the stream. Not much. Too much.

  Wei matched my pace. He'd learned that my pace was information. Slow meant safe. Fast meant something else.

  Today I walked slow.

  "You're quiet and not the usual kind of quiet." he said.

  "Thinking." He knew me too well.

  "About what?"

  "Our route."

  He accepted that. Filed it. Stored it for later — Wei assembled incomplete answers into pictures I hadn't intended to give him.

  We entered the hills. The trees closed around us.

  The river faded.

  The stream didn't.

  It pulsed — soft, regular, timed to his heartbeat. I watched it the way a person watches a crack in a dam. I couldn't stop it. But I could watch it. To know how long is left.