Vellasera didn’t need an excuse to throw a party, but it appreciated having one.
Katarina’s tenth birthday had turned the port town’s central square into a small festival. There were lanterns hung between the buildings on strings, food stalls dragged out of storage, and someone had set up a music stage near the fountain where three women were playing stringed instruments with more enthusiasm than skill.
Valdari celebrated every birthday, but the tenth was different. Katarina had gathered enough cultural context over the years to understand why. Ten was when a child stopped being a child in the eyes of the community. Now, she was still not an adult, not yet, but she was no longer a cute decoration.
Ten was when cultivation potential was formally assessed. Ten was when the family learned what their kid was made of.
Brynn had been vibrating about it for a week.
"I bet she’s a physical cultivator," Brynn had told Seris over dinner three nights ago. "Look at her breathing control. Look at her stance work. She’s got the foundation."
"She’s got your optimism," Seris had replied.
"That’s not a no!"
Katarina, for her part, was less interested in her martial potential than she probably should have been. She knew cultivation mattered in this world. Different sects would hear about this and be interested and all that.
She knew it was the difference between being a person and being a person people listened to. But her CEO brain still filed it under "useful tool" rather than "core identity," the way a CFO might view the company gym. Good to have. Not the point.
Still. She was a little curious.
The assessment array was set up in the square, a circular formation about ten feet across carved into a stone platform. The carved lines were filled with a pale mineral that Katarina didn’t recognize. Seris had arranged the whole thing, which meant it was either very expensive or a favor being called in, and Seris hadn’t mentioned the cost, which meant Katarina shouldn’t ask.
"You just stand in the center," Seris told her, one hand on Katarina’s shoulder. "The array reads your spiritual root and shows your affinity. It doesn’t hurt."
"What if I don’t have an affinity?"
Seris smiled.
"Everyone has something, piccola."
"Okay... What if mine is boring?"
"Then we’ll love you anyway... and Brynn will cry about it for a week."
[Fair.]
A small crowd had gathered. Neighbors, shopkeepers, a few kids from school who were eating candy and watching with the mild interest of children who hadn’t had their own assessment yet.
Vessa was in the front row with her arms crossed, looking like she was about to watch a sporting event.
Katarina stepped onto the platform. The stone was cool under her bare feet. She walked to the center of the array and stood there, hands at her sides.
"Ready?" Seris asked.
"Ready."
Seris placed her palm on the edge of the array and pushed qi into it.
Katarina felt the energy move through the carved lines, a low hum that started at the perimeter and spiraled inward. The mineral in the grooves began to glow.
The array read her. She could feel it, a warm pressure that started at her feet and climbed through her body until it found her chest and settled there, right behind her sternum, in a place she hadn’t known existed. It wasn’t painful. It was like being looked at from the inside.
Then it answered.
The glow turned blinding. White-gold light erupted from every carved line at once, so bright Katarina saw it through her closed eyelids, so bright that the people standing closest stumbled backward with their hands up. The hum became a sound she felt in her teeth.
Four colors. She saw them even with her eyes shut. Red, blue, green, and violet, braided together, distinct and simultaneous, each one blazing with equal intensity.
It lasted three seconds. Then the array dimmed and Katarina was standing in the center of a platform that was still smoking faintly at the edges.
She opened her eyes.
The crowd was silent. Brynn had both hands over her mouth. Vessa was staring at Katarina with her mouth open and a half-eaten candy forgotten in her hand.
Katarina looked down at the array. The carved lines had gone dark. A few of them had cracked from the output.
[Huh. Okay.]
Brynn exploded first. She vaulted the low wall around the platform, grabbed Katarina, and swung her into the air with a whoop that scattered birds from the nearest rooftop.
"FOUR PATHS! ALL FOUR! DID YOU SEE THAT?! SERIS, DID YOU SEE?!"
"I SAW!" Seris was already around the other side of the platform, her composure gone, her hands on her cheeks, looking at Katarina like she’d just produced a miracle. "Four affinities! Katarina, do you understand what that means?!"
[It means I have a diversified portfolio. Can I get down now?]
"FOUR!!!" Brynn was spinning her, actually spinning her in public.
"Brynn, put her down, you’re going to—"
"SHE’S A GENIUS, SERIS! OUR BABY IS A GENIUS!"
"She IS a genius, now put her DOWN before you—"
Brynn did not put her down. Brynn lifted her higher and the crowd, which had been stunned silent five seconds ago, erupted. People were talking over each other, pointing at the cracked array, and Brynn was parading Katarina around on her shoulders like she’d just won a war.
Seris gave up trying to impose order and started crying instead. Not the subtle kind. The open, unashamed, mascara-would-be-ruined-if-mascara-existed kind, while simultaneously trying to explain to a bewildered neighbor what four-path affinity meant and why it was important and why her daughter was the most extraordinary child ever born.
[My mothers have lost their minds. Both of them. Completely and simultaneously. Over a cultivation result. Which I am going to use primarily for negotiation tactics.]
The Ledger flickered at the edge of her awareness.
All-Path Affinity confirmed.
Last recorded instance: Ithara (approx. 600 years ago).
[Six hundred years. Huh.]
She filed it away. It was important, probably. She’d research Ithara later, figure out what the political implications were, maybe draft a risk assessment. Right now Brynn was carrying her through the crowd like a trophy and Seris was ugly-crying into a neighbor’s shoulder and Katarina was trying very hard to maintain the dignity of a woman who had once addressed the United Nations General Assembly.
She was failing.
Vessa shoved through the crowd and grabbed Katarina’s dangling foot, since that was the only part of her she could reach.
"What the hell was that?!"
"Cultivation assessment."
"You broke the ARRAY!"
"I think it was already old."
"Kat, it was SMOKING."
"That does happen with older formations."
"YOU’RE NOT EVEN EXCITED!"
[I’m excited about what it means for enchantment-path applications in supply chain preservation. Does that count?]
"I’m excited," Katarina said, with all the enthusiasm of a woman confirming a dental appointment.
Vessa stared at her, then looked at Brynn, who was still whooping, then at Seris, who was still crying, then back at Katarina, who was dangling from her mother’s shoulders with the expression of someone watching a mildly funny bit.
[Same, honestly.]
The walk home was quiet.
Vessa had gone back with her mothers an hour ago after hugging Katarina so hard it compressed her ribcage. The festival was winding down behind them, lantern light fading into the warm dark of a southern evening.
Katarina walked between her parents on the road up to the estate. Brynn was on her left, swaying gently, because Brynn had celebrated her daughter’s assessment results by drinking with everyone who would drink with her, which was everyone.
Seris was on her right, sober, her hand resting on Katarina’s head.
"Four paths," Brynn murmured for probably the thirtieth time that evening. "My little dumpling. Four whole paths."
"You’ve mentioned that."
"I’m going to mention it every day for the rest of my life."
"Please don’t."
"Four paths, Seris. Four!"
"I heard you the first twenty-nine times, amore."
Brynn grinned and looped an arm around Katarina’s shoulders, pulling her into a sideways hug that nearly knocked her off the road.
"So," Brynn said, with the studied casualness of a woman who had never been casual about anything in her life. "That Vessa girl."
"What about her?"
"She’s cute."
"She’s my friend, mother."
"Mhm. Your friend who hugged you for thirty seconds and turned pink."
"She turns pink at everything. She’s pink-skinned."
"Pinker than usual."
"Mother."
"Have you kissed her yet?"
"I am TEN! I am ten years old! Today! Right now! You were there for the birthday!"
Brynn cackled. The sound echoed off the canyon walls and probably woke up half the port town. Seris was laughing too, quietly, her hand still warm on Katarina’s head.
"Leave her alone, Brynn."
"I’m just asking!"
"She’s ten."
"I had my first kiss at ten!"
[This absolute den of degenerates...]
Katarina’s face was burning but she was smiling, and she hated that she was smiling, because it meant the baby hormones excuse was fully expired and she had to admit that she was happy.
Just happy. Walking up a dark road between two people who loved her loudly and without condition.
The stars were out. The canyon walls rose on either side of them and somewhere below a dog barked and the last of the festival music drifted up on the warm air.
Brynn started humming, off-key, naturally.
"That’s terrible," Seris said.
Brynn hummed louder.
For a moment, Katarina’s mind went back to what Seris just said a while ago.
[Pfft. Kissing... I never kissed anyone in my previous life and yet I still made it to the top of society. What’s so special about that? You know what? I’m gonna do the same here, out of spite. I won’t kiss ANYONE.]