"The blade remembers what the soul forgets. To swear the sword is to walk a path where mastery is not control, but clarity."
— From the Scroll of Empty Edge, kept sealed in the Sky Temple's inner sanctum
The mist rolled low over the steppes at dawn, silver sheets gliding over the fields beyond Qoruul like restless spirits. Out of that mist came a lone figure—silent, deliberate, and steady as a shadow cast by steel.
He wore no armor, no crest. Only plain robes and the long, worn sword on his back spoke of a warrior's life. His face was marked by sun and snow, his eyes dark as wet ink, and deeper still—eyes that had watched ten winters pass without a master, without a home.
The guards at the western gate watched him approach.
"Another drifter?" one muttered.
"No," the warden beside him said softly. "That's a man carrying the last piece of himself."
By midday, the man stood in the Sky Temple's courtyard, where students trained beneath fluttering banners and stone lions watched with blind patience. Altan emerged from the sparring ring, sweat still clinging to his brow, while Wen Tu slurped broth from a wooden bowl nearby.
"I am Ryoku," the stranger said, bowing low. "Ten years I've wandered the fractured paths—no lord, no sect, no doctrine. Only the blade. I came seeking a master who would not give me form, but break it."
Altan tilted his head. "And if I refuse?"
"Then I keep walking," Ryoku said. "But if you strike me down in one blow, I will stay. And rebuild everything I've unlearned."
Wen Tu groaned around a mouthful of noodles. "You people need hobbies."
Altan smiled faintly. "Fine. One stroke."
Ryoku's eyes sharpened, but he said nothing. Slowly, he stepped forward. His right hand touched his sword's hilt with reverence, not aggression. The courtyard held its breath.
The blade whispered free, and his qi stirred like a storm in deep water.
His body aligned—not rigid, but fluid. This was Void Mirror Form, a personal style Ryoku had forged alone in silence. There were no explosive movements. No spectacle. Just one truth: all falsehood is severed in stillness.
The sword rose with the weight of a mountain.
Before it could fall, Altan moved.
No flourish. No footfall.
He stepped inside the strike and gently pressed the flat of his sheathed blade against Ryoku's chest.
The force was barely a whisper.
But Ryoku froze as if an avalanche had fallen through his soul.
His qi unraveled. His wrist locked. His breath left him in a quiet gasp.
To the observers, it looked like nothing had happened at all.
Ryoku sheathed his sword and knelt.
"I searched ten years for a blade that cut through me like this," he said. "It wasn't power. It was truth. And I… I want to follow it."
Altan nodded. "Then stay. But understand—what I teach is not style. It is seeing."
The next day, Windsteel Yard.
The wind blew thin and sharp across the Windsteel Yard, the citadel's northern training ring—an open stone field framed by runed walls, chalk lines, battered dummies, and a dozen weapon racks that bore more dents than polish. Here, steel didn't gleam. It earned its color through sweat and strikes.
Children moved across the field. Some barely thirteen, others nearing thirty. They trained barefoot, sleeves rolled, breath steady. Some wore bandages. Others wore old Stormguard scraps—hand-me-downs from the dead or retired. They were the squires of the Gale Citadel, future Stormguards in practice if not yet in name.
They weren't training for spectacle. They trained to survive.
Wen Tu sat cross-legged atop a stone step, chewing noisily on a roasted root and speaking to no one in particular.
"I love it here," he said, mouth full. "So honest. So brutal. So—aaah, that one's limping again. Left foot's dragging. You see it?"
Ryoku stood nearby, arms crossed, eyes fixed on the squires. He didn't answer.
"Windsteel Yard," Wen Tu continued. "Name's poetic, no? Sounds like a smith wrote it. I asked a Stormguard why they call it that. Know what he said? 'Because wind and steel hurt more when combined.' Then he walked off. Rude."
Ryoku's gaze lingered on the field. Small groups of squires mimicked kata from Stormguard masters who circled between them—some correcting forms with gentle taps of wooden batons, others letting their presence alone shape discipline. One squire swung too wide and stumbled. His master caught his arm before he hit the ground and whispered something inaudible. The boy nodded, steadied himself, and resumed.
But not all squires had masters.
Across the yard, a half-dozen trained alone. Unpaired. They copied movements from memory or peered from the sidelines, trying to catch rhythm from those more experienced. These were the unbound squires—orphans waiting to be chosen.
"That one's from the Broken Cliff township," Wen Tu whispered, pointing with his root. "Stormguard took her in after the war, parents dead. That tall boy near the rack? Took him two winters to speak again. The short one with the chipped blade? He smiles like a fox, but he used to bite teachers."
Ryoku frowned. "You know all their stories?"
"Nope," Wen Tu grinned. "Just made them up. Sound right, though."
He leaned back, letting the wind pull his robe aside to cool his bruised ribs.
"But here's what is true. All of them came from the Black Vein Orphanage. Stormguard wards. Most were picked up from burning towns, plague carts, warfronts. They were raised in silence. Steel became their first language."
Ryoku stepped closer to the training yard's edge. His senses stretched subtly, tracing breath, blood, and flow.
"No elemental resonance," he murmured. "None."
"Ah!" Wen Tu jabbed the root like a teacher's pointer. "You noticed too. Not a single one has affinity. No fire, no frost, no sacred skyblood. But you know what they do have?"
Ryoku nodded. "A small amount of qi."
"Like coals buried under cold ash," Wen Tu said. "Faint. Weak. But there."
He rose to his feet and dusted crumbs from his robe. "They're not trained for power. They're trained for discipline. A squire without talent is still a squire with breath. And as Master Altan says—'Breath sharpens the blade, not the bloodline.'"
Just then, a Stormguard master barked, "Reset!" and the squires dropped low into horse stance, then rose into a new kata: Stone-Circling Wind. A high parry into an inward fold, followed by a grounded pivot into a reverse slash. Several stumbled. Others adapted. The sound of training staffs and effort struck like quiet thunder on stone.
Wen Tu tilted his head. "You see that? Even the worst of them keeps moving. No magic. Just repetition. That's the soul of Windsteel Yard. It doesn't care who you were. Only who you choose to become."
Ryoku's voice was low. "How long until they're chosen?"
Wen Tu shrugged. "When the blade fits the hand. When a master sees a question only that squire can answer."
A short silence passed as the wind swept dust across the yard. Then one of the older unbound squires stepped forward and helped a smaller one adjust her footing. No words. Just a nod and a hand on the shoulder.
"See that?" Wen Tu said softly. "That one'll be chosen soon."
Ryoku said nothing. He was watching more than just movement. He was watching legacy—wounds reforged into rhythm.
Wen Tu slung his staff across his back and stretched. "Come on, Ghost-Eyes. Let's go find Altan. You've got fists full of history and a face like a funeral. Might be time to see if the wind still respects your breath."
That evening, the grove behind the Sky Temple swayed with the hush of wind through leaves. Lanterns flickered softly. Wen Tu and Ryoku stood before Altan, who sat cross-legged on a stone, a curved wooden sword across his knees.
Altan lifted the sword with both hands.
"The sword is not a tool. It's a mirror. The sharper it becomes, the more clearly you see yourself—and everything false about how you move, breathe, and think."
He passed the blade to Ryoku.
"This is called the Empty Edge. The beginning of the Sword Path. It doesn't cut. It reveals."
Ryoku accepted it with the careful hands of someone cradling memory.
"There's… no form?" he asked.
"There is. But it begins like this."
Altan stood and stepped forward. One breath. One draw. The wooden blade moved in a cut that stopped just shy of striking—but in that final stillness, wind bent around the arc. Dust spiraled. Wen Tu's mouth fell open.
"That didn't hit anything," he muttered. "But I felt it."
Ryoku inhaled, trying to match the movement. He stepped forward, blade rising.
"No," Altan said. "You're chasing precision with muscle. Let it come from your center. The edge begins before the draw. Feel that."
Again.
This time, Ryoku exhaled first. The motion cleaner. Simpler. A fragment of something real—unshaped, but honest. A breath carried through the wrist.
He blinked. A pressure behind his eyes loosened.
Altan watched quietly.
"Each sword path ends differently. But all true paths begin with the same realization: you are not separate from the strike."
Beside them, Wen Tu had set down his bowl and was mimicking the breathwork, fingers twitching toward an imaginary palm strike.
"I see it," he murmured. "Your sword… my palm… both trying to say something without speaking."
Altan nodded.
"There are many names. Some call it the Cosmic Palm. Others, the One Breath Cut. I call it seeing without eyes. One motion, infinite truth."
Ryoku lowered the blade, voice low.
"Will I ever learn the final stroke?"
Altan turned his gaze skyward. The stars had begun to flicker above the towers of Qoruul, silver seeds in a sea of dusk.
"If you're lucky," he said quietly, "you'll forget to ask."