It had been raining since before dawn. The kind of mountain rain that never turned violent, just cold, patient, and relentless. It crawled down stone walls, turned stairs to slick traps, and blurred the edges of everything not nailed down or burning. At the gates of the Gale Citadel, the rain fell like punishment from a sky too tired to scream. Their cloaks hung like soaked canvas, stiff with rain and cold resolve. The Stormguards didn't move, didn't blink. Sigils ran like ink down their armor, but their eyes—if they had them—stayed locked forward, unblinking behind bronze helms. The stone beneath their boots puddled with the same steady downpour that had soaked the corpses of wars long past.
The wet season had come early this year, drenching the highlands without pause, drowning trail and time alike.
A monk arrived.
No fanfare. No banner or caravan. Just a man in drenched robes, staff in hand, soaked to the bone and ranting like a traveling fool. He camped just outside the gate. Sat cross-legged in the mud. Slept under the rain. Stood and shouted his titles at the walls. The guards didn't answer. Not on the first day. Not the first week. But he remained.
"I am Brother Wen Tu!" he declared again and again. "Monk of the Wayward Wind! Seeker of truth, breaker of pots, dreamer of enlightenment! I have come to convert your king!"
The Stormguards gave him nothing. No words. No movement. Their silence was an iron wall, unmoved by madness or devotion. Still he stayed. Ranted. Sang. Hummed tunes off-key. Recited mantras. Offered unsolicited sermons on qi alignment and the virtues of fermented soybean paste. Named the guards Helmet One, Helmet Two, Helmet Three.
On the twelfth day, he left a bowl of dried roots by the gate. On the fifteenth, he sat naked in the rain to test his will. By the twentieth, he'd built a rain-catcher using sticks, a boot, and his own belt. On the twenty-ninth, he collapsed mid-harangue, muttered something about the stillness of turtles, then resumed his lecture five minutes later. He greeted the guards each morning like old friends. "Helmet One! How was your watch? Dry, I assume. Bastard."
On the thirtieth day, the rain had not let up. But a Stormguard rider galloped through the outer gate—an Iron Hand courier soaked to the spine, his armor clinking from the weight of water. He knelt before the gatehouse and delivered his message. Altan and the wardens had returned from the Chasm.
Inside the Citadel, the Iron Hands brought the report.
"There's a monk at the gate," the soldier said, dripping mud onto the stone floor. "Been there a month. Rain, sun, night. Says he wants to convert you. Refuses to leave. Talks to the guards like they're drinking buddies."
Altan narrowed his eyes. "A month?"
"Yes, Commander. Never crossed the threshold. Hasn't drawn steel. Just rants and waits."
Chaghan spat into a brazier. "Eccentric. Or deranged."
Altan rose from his seat, hands clasped behind his back. Rain streaked down the high windows. "Open the gate."
The groaning creak of the inner gate broke through the drum of rain. The monk stood where he had always stood—head bowed, robes stuck to him like wet paper, a stubborn grin refusing to die.
From the mist stepped Altan, barefoot and clad in grey training robes. Chaghan followed, hood pulled low.
Altan looked down at the soaked figure. "You're the one who's been ranting at my guards for a month?"
Wen Tu looked up, water dripping from his lashes. "They've taught me much. About stillness. About suffering. About the cruelty of ignoring a man mid-song."
Chaghan muttered, "Should've left him one more week."
"Bring him in," Altan said.
The rain suddenly stopped.
Wen Tu groaned upright, robes clinging to him like drowned curtains. He raised his arms to the sky. "See! The heavens approve—I will enter the gate!"
Altan narrowed his eyes.
"So... does this mean I'm allowed to convert you now?"
Altan raised a brow. "You came to convert me?"
"Yes! Your strength masks suffering. Your focus hides attachment. One strike from me will clear your spirit!"
Altan's face didn't move. "Fine. One move."
Wen Tu grinned. Dropped into stance. The Dance of the Creaking Bamboo wasn't beautiful in the rain, but it flowed. Wind Thread Qi shimmered off his limbs in twisting arcs, barely visible beneath the downpour. Each motion uncoiled like bamboo caught in a gale.
He launched.
Altan didn't flinch. His palm rose in a blur.
Silent Wave Palm.
The rain seemed to bend with it, pulled inward by pressure and sheer dominance of will. It hit like thunder.
Wen Tu flipped back, staff spinning into the mud, ribs howling with spiritual dissonance. He landed hard and stared up, gasping. But not in pain.
In awe.
He'd seen it. Beneath the strike. A lattice of disciplines: Storm Root Qi grounding his stance, Spine-Spiral Harmonization adding the torque, and the hidden Vibration Pulse timed to disrupt inner flow. To the untrained, it was a push. To Wen Tu, it was scripture.
Altan offered a hand. "Still want to convert me?"
"No," Wen Tu coughed. "I want you to convert me."
Altan blinked. "What?"
"I saw it," Wen Tu said. "The thousand truths in a single strike. I'll follow. I'll ask questions. Meddle. Irritate. But teach me."
Altan grunted. "If you disrupt anything, I'll make you meditate in the latrines."
"Ah! Enlightenment through hardship!" Wen Tu beamed.
Chaghan muttered, "This city keeps getting weirder."
Altan turned. "Let him in."
Wen Tu followed like a limping stray. Wet, bruised, but grinning.
Training began that night. Not with ceremony. Not with incense or chants. With bruises. With callouses and torn tendons. Altan's open martial framework wasn't kind, but it was effective. Wen Tu copied each motion with obsessive hunger, learning how the breath circled from core to palm, how qi rooted not in thought but pain. He sparred with veterans who hit like falling masonry. He joined children barely past ten summers who trained with blindfolds in the rain.
Rain was constant. Drumming on armor, turning the dust of the courtyard to sludge. But they trained through it. Pain hardened resolve faster than any mantra. Rain blurred their vision, soaked through layers, chafed skin raw. But Altan never called a halt.
Five Wardens took charge of the Iron Hands. They trained first in the Stoneheart Method—breath anchored in the marrow, strikes that drew strength from compression and pain. Every session left muscles trembling, bones singing with pressure, blood forced to dance with the rhythm of the mountain.
Then came the rotations. Every three months, based on merit and sheer survival, those who passed were allowed to enter the next training tier: Waterheart Resonance. The shift wasn't gentler. It was cruel in a different way. Fluid, deceptive forms. Breath that evaded instead of blocked. Qi that twisted, reshaped, slipped through pain and made it someone else's burden.
The veterans trained first. They would pass it down later. And the rain never stopped.
Wen Tu didn't stop either.
He copied scrolls by candlelight, hands blistered from staff drills. He chanted beside shamans. When he slept, it was on wet stone. When he ate, it was whatever hadn't spoiled in the storm. And every night, through cracked lips, he whispered to the dark: "One strike. A thousand truths. May I live long enough to understand just one."