The wind had become his teacher, his tormentor, and his only companion.
Far beneath the surface world, in a hollow chamber carved by forgotten hands and sealed from time, Altan stood barefoot on cold stone. The silence here was not the absence of sound; it was a force, a pressure. A thousand breaths waited in stillness, coiled within the air like unseen serpents.
His arms moved slowly, carving shapes from emptiness. Each motion echoed a principle of the Whispering Path, a discipline born from ancient Orontai philosophy and forbidden across the Zhong Empire. This internal art did not shout its power. It did not clash. It cut by yielding. It struck through void.
Before him loomed the monolith, a smooth obsidian column etched with lines that pulsed dimly with qi. It was the anchor of the chamber and perhaps of something greater. Each rune aligned with the Elemental Sigils, inscribed by those who first learned to bend the wind not with strength but with surrender.
When Altan placed his palm against the symbol of air, the sigil responded with a soft thrum, a resonance in his bones. His breath adjusted unconsciously. His stance changed. No one had taught him how. He learned through failing, bleeding, and listening.
Every morning began in this wordless communion. He practiced the Seven Arcs of the Whisper, sweeping his arms in precise curves until his limbs no longer moved of their own will but were moved by current, instinct, and memory. The style demanded absolute presence. Even a stray doubt could cause his footing to falter.
On the third day, he collapsed from strain. On the fifth, he cracked a rib misaligning his internal breath flow. But each failure taught him something more: balance, stillness, and patience.
The old man never interrupted.
Clad in tattered robes the color of cloudless sky, the master who refused to give his name watched like a mountain spirit carved from dusk. He never praised. He never corrected. His silence judged sharper than any sword. Only when Altan moved without thinking, when the wind responded to his will as if recognizing its kin, would the old man speak.
"You are beginning to disappear," he said one evening. "Good. The wind has no face."
Altan had almost smiled then. Almost.
On the ninth day, the monolith changed. When Altan's hand touched the rune for Wind, it glowed brighter than ever before, then receded, pulsing with quiet danger. The air thickened. A chill swept the room. From the depths of the stone, a subtle vibration echoed outward, harmonizing with his heartbeat.
The old man's eyes opened fully for the first time.
"You've shaped the wind," he said. "Now it will shape you."
Altan turned to him. "Isn't that the point?"
The old man stepped forward. His presence, once as still as dusk, began to shift. A weight pressed down over the chamber like a gathering storm.
"You mistake harmony for control. Wind bends to no coward. It offers no gift. To master the Whisper, you must face its judgment."
A sound like stone cracking under ice echoed through the chamber. The monolith flared once more. Darkness began to spill from its base, curling upward in mist that shimmered with pressure. The temperature dropped. The air grew dense, old, and charged with intention. The mist twisted and began to take shape.
What emerged had no name in any Zhong record. But Altan's people had feared it in tales passed by firelight.
The Wind Wraith.
A being born not of flesh but of failure, formed from the shattered qi of those who came before and fell beneath their own arrogance. Its body was sinew and haze, its limbs ending in blades of compressed air that sang with every movement. No face. No voice. Only a presence that screamed with motion.
Altan stepped back. The old man didn't flinch.
"It does not spar," he said. "It remembers."
The Wraith lunged.
Altan barely rolled aside. The Wraith's blade tore through stone with the shriek of torn mountains. He retaliated by sweeping his arm in a crescent arc, invoking Arc Four, Cradle Wind. A sharp gust burst from his palm. The Wraith flinched but did not fall.
It moved again, flowing like a broken gust down a canyon wall, directionless yet unstoppable.
Altan raised both palms in Twin Reed Guard, but the impact rattled his bones. He ducked beneath the next strike and activated Empty Step, the secret footwork that let him vanish between breaths. He reappeared behind the creature, unleashing Spiral Breath, a narrow pulse of compressed qi drawn from the core of his being.
It struck the Wraith's back and disrupted its form briefly.
The Wraith turned. Its blade flashed forward and pierced Altan's side.
A flash of agony, then cold.
He dropped to one knee, vision dimming. He could feel the blood pooling, his strength fading. The Wraith raised its blade again. Death hovered a breath away.
But something shifted.
Not in the Wraith, but in the air itself.
Altan inhaled not from instinct but in defiance. He opened his body, not out of desperation but with acceptance.
If I die here, the wind dies with me.
No. Let it live. Through me.
And the wind answered.
It surged into his frame, not as an attack but as an embrace. He felt the current lift him, support him, ignite him from within. His bleeding slowed. His limbs steadied. The pain did not vanish but no longer mattered.
He rose.
One final step. One final strike.
With every breath aligned, every tendon guided, Altan unleashed Spiral Severance, a forbidden technique meant not to wound but to unmake. A thread-thin gale burst from his palm, silent, focused, and absolute. It passed through the Wraith's chest.
The creature froze. Its form cracked and unraveled. Then it collapsed into mist.
Gone.
Altan swayed, barely able to stand. The old man approached, not to catch him but to witness.
Then the pain returned. Not from the blade, but from within. The wind coiled through Altan's right arm, igniting every nerve and etching a mark into his flesh and spirit. He cried out as the sigil for Wind, a spiraling vortex, burned silver beneath the skin.
The old man nodded once.
"The wind marks those who survive. It knows your name now."
Altan looked toward the far wall, where the remains of the others lay—bones blackened by time, silent in their defeat.
He was not like them.
He had passed.
He had earned the wind.
And as the chamber dimmed, the monolith shifted once more. Its runes began to change.
A new symbol emerged.
Not Wind.
Flame.