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“I told you to focus! Look at what you’ve done- a block of the Rosy Dawn’s finest marble is wasted!”

There was something profoundly comedic about watching a nine year old boy so flagrantly berate a boy older and larger than him, and for that older, larger boy to cringe as if death itself was hanging over his head. There was sense to it, of course. The nine year old may have been younger and smaller, but his cultivation was also advanced beyond most initiates double his age. The older, larger boy, was hardly a cultivator at all. Certainly, he was no mystiko.

It was the final day of the qualifying week that prefaced the Rosy Dawn Cult’s annual initiation rites, and hopeful cultivators of varying ages had been coming in droves from far and wide to test themselves before their would-be seniors.

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Mryon demanded of the boy, who looked to be a few years older than him. Stout and muscled, he’d honed his body well. Alas, his cultivation evidently left much to be desired. “Well? Speak! I, your father, will decide your fate!”

The would-be mystiko shook, eyes darting frantically as he struggled to find an answer that would save his life. In the distance, amidst the crowd of parents and other relatives, his father took his sobbing mother into his arms and turned them both away. Myron’s pneuma rose as the silence grew long, expression darkening with affected rage.

“Ho, the young kyrios is fierce,” I said, planting a hand on my littlest cousin’s head and ruffling his hair vigorously. I smothered his pneuma beneath my own, and the young applicant gasped in a breath.

“Lio!” he cried, embarrassed. “You’re interrupting!”

“Is it not a senior initiate’s imperative to advise his junior when he errs?” I asked rhetorically. Ah, the boy was still here. “Begone,” I said, and he went sprinting back to his parents.

“I wasn’t erring,” Myron said, crossing his arms and glaring petulantly at the failed applicant’s retreating back. “That’s how father said seniors are supposed to handle failures. I was even letting him explain himself first.”

My uncle had surely been thinking along a different path than my littlest cousin. In his own way, Myron had been attempting to help the would-be initiate by giving him a chance to explain himself. I could easily imagine him procuring a second marble block for the boy if he’d managed to explain his first poor performance. Unfortunately, my cousin underestimated the effect he had on his juniors.

“Have a seat, cousin,” I told him, and he reluctantly obliged.

“Who would join the Rosy Dawn?” I called, and the crowd of hopefuls at the edge of the pavilion roiled and heaved. Another young boy was spat out, urged forward by his parents. He approached with visible anxiety.

I snapped my fingers. “Marble.”

Sol dropped a block of marble the size of a man down in front of the applicant. The boy flinched as stone slammed against stone.

“You’ve come here to pursue one of life’s greater mysteries,” I declared. The applicant nodded as if it had been a question. “The Rosy Dawn Cult has neither the time nor the inclination to polish every filthy scrap of bronze that presents itself to us. Lay your hands on this marble block and chisel it in your image.”

He forced himself to meet my eyes and knew I found him wanting.

“Let us see your soul.”

The boy grit his teeth and stepped forward, pressing both hands flat against the block and splaying his fingers out wide. His pneuma rose and pierced the stone, suffusing it from edge to edge. The boy eye’s clenched shut as he focused, whispering soundlessly to himself as he manipulated his life’s essence.

“You didn’t ask for his name,” Myron whispered crossly.

I blinked, confused. “Why would I want to know it?”

The stone groaned and cracked, hairline fractures appearing on its surface and spreading like the veins of a lightning strike. The applicant gasped, eyes flying open, and all at once a portion of the marble block simply fell away. Chunks and shards littered the ground around what now stood where before had been a formless pillar.

A statue of the applicant jutting proudly from the earth, the only immediate difference from the boy whose pneuma had carved it being that it was naked. Its expression, as well, was far more confident and assured, marble eyes staring wantonly up to heaven. It stood, back straight, one hand on its hip and the other clenched into a fist at its side. It was a strong pose, well conceptualized.

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There were small inconsistencies, issues of refinement. The nose was not quite the right shape, and the right ear was chipped at the tip. The musculature was off in several places. That being said, it was far better than the mangled wretch that the previous applicant had managed.

“Crude,” I observed, and the boy’s shoulders fell. “But I suppose I’ll accept it. Your fate is in the elders’ hands, now. Take your spirit marble and go find someone who looks too old to be alive, tell them the Young Aristocrat sent you.”

The boy’s face lit up and he frantically thanked me before heaving the spirit marble over his shoulder with some effort. He moved deeper into the pavilion in search of a philosopher. In the crowd, his mother jumped up and down in joy while his father accepted clasped hands and words of praise from the other men around them.

The pavilion that the qualification trials took place in was the central point of the Rosy Dawn Cult, from which its gymnasiums, bathhouses, and various estates branched out along the mountaintop. It was built in the same style as the grand agora within the Scarlet City where citizens gathered each day to do the majority of the city’s business, and was of a comparable size despite seeing far less daily traffic.

Pristine stone steps on each side led up to a massive alabaster plaza, framed by pillars in the shape of the cult’s greatest heroic cultivators, each one gazing longingly up to heaven. Within the center of the central pavilion was a grand fountain that gushed crystalline water from the open palm of a faceless man.