Wen Tu asked only once: "Teach me the Thousand Palm." Altan didn't answer. He simply walked. Wen Tu followed, past the shrines and scorched prayer halls of the Gale Citadel, through corridors lined not with statues but with cracked stone and faded banners. They climbed until they reached the Sky Temple's upper sanctum, where a circle of Stormguard elemental shamans waited. They wore no armor, only robes woven with breath-scribed silk. The air stank faintly of burnt sage and old storms. One by one, they stepped forward. Fire. Stone. Water. Wind. Spirit. They carried no weapons, only the weight of knowledge old enough to kill.
Altan said, "Before you walk the Thousand Palm, we need to know what walks with you." No dramatic ritual followed. The shamans circled him and began to chant. Their tones didn't soar. They sank, humming in Wen Tu's chest like something alive. As they spoke, symbols cracked into light around the circle. He didn't understand any of it. Just pressure. Heat. Something tightening behind his teeth. Then it broke. Three sigils burned brighter than the rest: Water, Earth, and—uncommon, nearly forgotten—Wood. Leaves scattered across the temple floor though the air was still.
The shamans glanced between each other. One nodded. Two more followed. Then they left. Altan stood still, arms crossed, looking at nothing. Finally, he muttered, mostly to himself, "Fitting. He'll lead the next detachment—if he survives me." Then softer, like he hated the words even as they left his mouth, "I found him. The one who'll carry it all."
The next morning came with a strange quiet. No wind, no birds. The Citadel held its breath. In a clearing just outside the Sky Temple, Altan stood barefoot beneath an ancient tree whose roots coiled like old scars in the earth. He wore nothing but training robes and the weight of decades. Beside him, Wen Tu itched in his skin. He'd never seen Altan like this. No armor. No weapons. Just calloused hands and a look that dared you to flinch.
Altan took a stance. Legs apart, knees loose, spine coiled like a loaded spring. His arms hung, not limp but deliberate, curved as if shaping something invisible. "This is the Root of Still Storm," he said. "Everything starts here." Wen Tu tried to copy it. He looked like someone mid-piss during a bar fight. Altan didn't laugh. Just exhaled through his nose and continued. "The Thousand Palm isn't a technique. It's a path. Each palm awakens a layer. We begin with the first: Eight-Palm Flow."
Then he moved. Eight strikes. Not fast. Not brutal. But each one carried weight like a tide rolling in slow. The first swept wide, drawing force from the dirt into the gut, then the spine. The second folded inward, condensing breath like iron smelted in the lungs. The third dropped down with the weight of high air. The fourth drifted sideways, loose, like tall grass bending beneath stormwind. The fifth caused the ground to vibrate under Wen Tu's feet. The sixth cracked with recoil—too fast to see. The seventh pulled taut like a drawn thread. The eighth stopped everything. Not because Altan held still. Because the space around him simply refused to move.
Wen Tu watched, stunned. The strikes didn't just hit—they called to something. Altan's qi layered deep: Stormroot at the core, veined with Skyflow energy that curled off him in faint distortions, like heat shimmer rising off broken stone. Each strike warped the air, folding sound and shape around its rhythm.
Then Altan stepped back. "Your turn."
Wen Tu cracked his neck. "Eight strikes. Got it."
He didn't. First strike, fine. Second, messy. By the third, he overcompensated. Fourth, his balance shifted wrong. Fifth, his breath broke rhythm. Sixth, his qi flared uncontrolled. Seventh veered wide. Eighth—he went down. Hard.
Altan stared down at him. "That was terrible."
Wen Tu wheezed. "...I know."
Altan walked a slow circle around him. "You relied on muscle, not flow. On form, not intent. You moved like a man trying to impress a crowd, not shift the wind."
"I was trying to move the wind," Wen Tu muttered.
Altan dropped beside him, digging his fingers into the soil. "The Thousand Palm doesn't perform. It echoes. Each strike is a question. If you ask wrong, the world won't answer."
Wen Tu stared up at the bruised sky. "So what comes after eight?"
Altan paused, as if the question wasn't new, just unwanted. "Then nine. Ten. A hundred. A thousand. But there's no end. The art shifts with you."
He stood and raised his hand. His palm shimmered. Not with light, not with fire. With distortion. The air around it bent, refused clarity.
"When I hit you in the courtyard, I didn't use a form. I used what I know of it."
Wen Tu sat up, fingers twitching. "So how many palms have you mastered?"
Altan smiled without warmth. "I stopped counting. The forms change. You change. One day, if you survive long enough, you might touch the Cosmic Palm."
Wen Tu winced. "That sounds made up."
"It probably is. But they say it hits the soul, not just the skin. A strike with the weight of stars. Heaven Echo. Starstruck Hand. Pick your poison."
Wen Tu blinked. Inwardly, he saw the stars—not as sky, but as weightless shapes. They formed lines. Patterns. Slowly turning. Drawing a palm through the void. No sound. No breath. Just gravity. Then it passed. He swallowed hard. Looked down at his blistered hands. "Guess I'll just try not to fall on my ass next time."
"Good start," Altan said. "Forget the stars. Just get through eight."
That night, Wen Tu climbed the ridge alone. The Gale Citadel wasn't quiet in the way people hoped for. It was quiet like something was watching. The wind never rose. His hands bled now. The skin had split by the fifth strike. By the eighth, he couldn't grip. But he didn't stop.
Eight strikes. Breathe. Anchor. Pull. Again. Again.
Somewhere past pain, somewhere in the breath between his last strike and the one he didn't take, something shifted. Not outside. Inside. A thread pulled taut through his ribs.
He exhaled, quiet and long. "One strike," he muttered, "a thousand truths."
Then he laughed, bitter and short. "Let me find the ninth."