The inside of Elder Soo's home was simple.
One room. A fire, a table, two chairs, shelves covering every wall from floor to ceiling packed with documents and scrolls and books in various states of preservation. The kind of collection that accumulated over a very long time by someone who found throwing things away philosophically objectionable.
Max sat in one of the chairs.
Elder Soo made tea without asking if Max wanted any, moving around the small space with the efficiency of someone who knew exactly where everything was and had known for decades.
He set a cup in front of Max and sat across from him.
"Tell me your name," he said.
"Maxwell Thorne."
Something moved across the old man's face. Recognition, maybe. Or confirmation of something he'd suspected.
"Thorne," he repeated.
"Yes."
Elder Soo picked up his tea and looked at it for a moment.
Then he set it down.
"I won't help you," he said simply.
Max blinked.
"You smiled when I mentioned the Worio clan. You said finally. You invited me inside."
"I did all of those things yes."
"So why—"
"Because wanting to know about your clan and being ready to use that knowledge are different things." The old man looked at him directly. "You're damaged. Carrying grief so heavy I could feel it before you reached the plateau. You've been through something significant recently and you haven't finished processing it."
"I can process and learn at the same time."
"No," Elder Soo said pleasantly. "You can't. Not this particular knowledge. Worio cancellation responds to emotional clarity. Teaching it to someone whose emotional state is currently—" He searched for the word. "Flooded, would be like trying to write on wet paper."
Max looked at him.
"So what do I do."
"Rest. Eat. Sit with the mountain for a few days. Come back when you feel less like a person who recently survived something catastrophic."
"People are still dying while I sit with the mountain," Max said.
"People are always dying," Elder Soo replied, not unkindly. "The ones who died because you weren't strong enough won't be helped by you rushing into strength you can't hold properly."
That landed somewhere uncomfortable.
Max picked up his tea.
They sat in silence for a while.
"I'll come back tomorrow," Max said.
"I'll still say no tomorrow."
"Then I'll come back the day after."
Elder Soo looked at him with the expression of someone recognizing a pattern they'd encountered before.
"You're persistent," he said.
"I've been told."
He came back the next day.
Elder Soo was outside on his rock, eyes closed, same position.
Max sat on his rock and waited.
The old man opened his eyes.
"No," he said.
"You didn't even hear what I was going to say."
"You were going to ask me to teach you."
"Maybe I was going to ask something different."
"Were you?"
Max was quiet.
"No," he admitted.
Elder Soo closed his eyes again.
Max sat there for two hours anyway, watching the mountain and the stream and the way the light moved across the plateau.
Eventually he went back down.
The third day he tried a different approach.
He sat across from Elder Soo and didn't ask anything.
Just sat.
The old man watched him with mild curiosity.
An hour passed.
"What are you doing?" Elder Soo asked.
"Sitting with the mountain," Max said. "Like you suggested."
"I suggested you do that instead of coming here."
"I'm doing both."
Elder Soo looked at him for a long moment.
Then he almost smiled and covered it with his tea cup.
"Still no," he said.
The fourth day Max brought food from the town.
Good food — bread from the market, fruit, something the innkeeper had wrapped up without being asked when he'd seen Max heading east again.
He set it on the rock beside Elder Soo and sat down.
The old man looked at the food.
Looked at Max.
"This isn't going to work," he said.
"I know," Max said. "I'm just hungry and the climb is long."
He started eating.
After a moment Elder Soo took a piece of bread.
They ate in silence on the mountain with the stream moving beside them and the view of the Lily Kingdom spreading out below — blue flowers and waterways and the pale stone town where Max had been sleeping and eating and trying to feel less like wet paper.
"Why do you need it so urgently," Elder Soo said. It wasn't quite a question.
Max thought about how to answer honestly without turning it into a speech.
"There's a prophecy," he said. "A man in the sky who kills everything. The Star Vision. I've been told I might be that man." He paused. "I want to understand what I actually am before anyone else decides for me."
Elder Soo chewed his bread slowly.
"And if understanding what you are confirms the prophecy?" he said.
"Then I'll deal with that."
"How?"
"I don't know yet. But I'd rather know the truth and not have answers than not know the truth and have nothing."
The old man was quiet for a long time.
The stream moved.
The wind came across the plateau in one long steady breath and then settled.
"Come back tomorrow," Elder Soo said.
"You'll still say no?" Max said.
The old man picked up the fruit and examined it.
"Come back tomorrow," he repeated.
Max looked at him.
Something in the old man's expression had shifted slightly — not open, not agreeing, but something that hadn't been there on the first day.
"Okay," Max said.
He went back down the mountain.
Vista was waiting at the bottom, sitting on a rock beside the stream with her feet not quite touching the ground.
"He's going to teach you," she said.
"He said come back tomorrow."
"That's the same thing," she said. "From him."
Max looked up at the mountain.
"How do you know?"
"Because on the first day he said no immediately," Vista said. "Today he thought about it first."
She stood and fell into step beside him as he headed back toward town.
"Also," she added, "you brought food. Nobody brings food to someone they're going to keep refusing. It creates social obligation."
"That was an accident," Max said.
"Was it?"
Max thought about it.
"Mostly," he said.
Vista smiled.
They walked back through the blue flowers as the afternoon settled into evening, and for the first time in a long time Max went to sleep feeling like tomorrow might produce something different from today.