Hannah waited until the tent flap fell shut behind their mother before she spoke.
"You've made her worry again." Her voice was low, almost flat, but her eyes were bright with unshed tears. "With the state she's in… if you keep coming home covered in wounds, it won't be long before she—"
She couldn't finish the sentence. The words stuck in her throat like thorns.
Jason let his head fall back against the thin pillow. The swollen side of his face throbbed in time with his pulse. Shame and stubbornness warred inside him until he could only stare at the canvas ceiling.
"How am I supposed to leave you behind?" he asked quietly. "How am I supposed to watch those good-for-nothing bastards put their hands on you and just walk away?"
Hannah scooted closer on her knees. The mended hem of her dress brushed the dirt floor. "Big brother… they would have let me go after a few words. I was already looking for the opening. You didn't need to throw yourself into the middle of it. Please… don't get yourself in trouble next time because of me. Okay?"
Jason's jaw tightened. "It's only because we're not Fox family. That's why they treat us like outcasts. Like we're less than dirt under their boots."
The tent flap stirred again.
Clara stepped back inside, moving carefully, one hand still pressed lightly against her side as though something inside her chest refused to settle. She looked from one child to the other, then reached into the folds of her worn robe and drew out a small, tightly bound sack. The soft clink of spirit stones was unmistakable.
"If you want them to change the way they see us," she said, "then prove it with your fists."
Jason stared at the sack. "How am I supposed to prove anything when I don't even have the resources to train properly?"
Clara stepped forward and pressed the sack into his palm. The weight of it was startling—far more than he had expected.
"Which is why you're going to need this." Her voice was calm, almost gentle. "It should be enough for some ginseng from the market. Even the lower grades will help. They'll speed your progress a little, if I'm not mistaken."
Hannah's eyes widened. She shot forward, hands half-raised. "Mother—that money is for your treatment! Why would you give it to—"
Clara shook her head once, firmly. The motion made a loose strand of hair fall across her pale cheek.
"It's already wasteful to keep pouring everything into an illness that cannot be cured. Not even the physicians can find the root of it. Better to spend what we have on the one thing that might still change our future."
Jason's fingers closed around the sack until the stones bit into his skin. Something hot and painful rose in his throat.
"Don't say that," he said, voice rough. "Your illness *can* be cured. We just need enough to bring a proper physician. I know it."
Clara did not answer. She only looked at him for a long moment—long enough for him to see the quiet certainty behind the exhaustion—then turned toward the tent flap once more.
"Go get the ginseng," she said over her shoulder. "And begin your training in earnest."
She stepped outside again. The evening light caught the thin line of her shoulders as she moved, every step measured and careful, as though the ground itself might shift beneath her. Hannah watched her go, and the tears she had been holding finally spilled over.
Jason reached out and caught his sister's cheek between thumb and forefinger, giving it a gentle, familiar pinch.
"Come on, little sister. Stop crying." His voice softened. "Your elder brother promises to train hard. When the time is right, I'll find a way to cure her. Until then… we take care of her. Together."
Hannah sniffed, scrubbing at her face with the back of her wrist. "I believe in you, big brother. Don't let Mother and me down, okay? The fact that she gave you all of that… it means she believes you'll become someone great."
Jason's throat tightened. He nodded once.
After a moment he spoke again, quieter. "I heard from the attendants that they're still taking people for the labor positions. If I can get selected… if I can work for the Fox family even for a short time… I'll be able to buy better herbs for myself and something that might ease her pain."
Hannah only shook her head. A tired little sigh left her.
"There's no way they'll let outsiders like us in when they already have family servants lining up for the same work. Just forget about the job, big brother."
She rose, wiped her face once more, and slipped out of the tent without another word.
Jason watched her go. Alone in the quiet, his hands slowly curled into fists on top of the blanket. The sack of spirit stones rested heavy against his palm.
"Just watch," he muttered to the empty air. "I'm going to get that job… whether the world likes it or not."
The weight of the stones pulled his thoughts backward, the way they always did when the tent grew too quiet.
He remembered the night their world ended.
The McCray compound had burned under a black sky. Screams. Steel. The smell of blood thick enough to taste. Their father had stayed behind to hold the gate long enough for Clara to drag the two of them into the dark. Jason still sometimes woke with the sound of that final clash ringing in his ears. Somewhere in the chaos his mother had taken the wound that never properly healed—an illness that settled deep in her lungs and bones and refused to leave.
They had wandered after that, always moving, always watching over their shoulders, until the Fox territory became the farthest place they could reach from the people who wanted them dead.
Weeks ago, while walking the outer paths near the market, Jason had overheard an old outsider speaking to his companions in a low voice.
"I heard the Cain family was the one that wiped out the McCrays. Some old disagreement that turned ugly."
That night Jason had asked his mother. Clara had gone very still. She did not know if the Cain family had been the ones to strike the final blow, she said. But she remembered clearly that the day before the attack, the McCray family head had openly refused the Cain family head's demands.
It was enough.
Jason had stopped asking questions after that. Questions would not bring his father back. Strength would. And strength required resources.
He rose carefully, every bruise complaining, and tucked the sack of spirit stones into his belt. Outside, the sky had deepened toward dusk. He moved through the narrow paths between tents with deliberate caution, taking the longer route that kept him far from the places Andrew Fox and his pack liked to loiter. One more beating in his current state would not end with him walking away.
The market still held a few lingering stalls under oil lamps. Jason kept his head down, spoke little, and counted out the stones with careful fingers. Five low-grade ginseng roots—thin, pale, and far from the quality a true Fox disciple would accept—were all the sack could buy. When the last stone left his hand, the merchant's expression remained indifferent. Jason simply turned and started the careful journey home.
The roots rested against his side, wrapped in rough cloth. They were not much. But they were a beginning.
And beginnings, he had learned, were the only things left to men who had already lost everything else.