The tavern exploded into chaos.
Tikshn's blade shrieked through the smoky air as it met steel, the echo of its clash singing a grim chorus through the blood-washed walls. In the flickering lamplight, his silhouette darted like a specter—fluid, cold, merciless.
The Ash Circle had descended like phantoms, their grey-cloaked forms moving in eerie synchronization. Ten against two.
Tikshn welcomed it.
His sword—Silver Sorrow—drew arcs of blinding silver through the thickening mist. It responded not to his grip, but his will. Where others fought with technique, Tikshn fought with memory. Every strike held a scream from his past. Every parry carried the ghost of his fallen bloodline.
He didn't see enemies. He saw the hollow faces of those who watched as his village burned. The laughter of nobles when his powerless kin begged for mercy. He fought not to survive, but to remember.
Lian Xue flanked him, her twin sabers dancing in tandem. Her form was less wrath, more wind—measured, elegant, efficient. Together, they carved a path of devastation across the wooden floor. Chairs splintered, walls cracked, and bodies collapsed in heaps.
Then came the real threat.
A shimmer in the mist. The veiled woman.
She moved like a specter—graceful, weightless. Her palm touched the floor, and a ripple pulsed outward. Tikshn's vision blurred. His legs trembled as nausea swelled within.
"Poison Qi," Lian muttered, staggering.
Tikshn's eyes narrowed. He stepped forward, ignoring the corrosion in his blood. The Silver Sorrow pulsed—no longer just a weapon, but a challenge to fate.
The woman extended a hooked dagger. "You are not ready, boy. That sword will devour you."
"It already has," Tikshn whispered, and charged.
Their blades clashed once. Her form shimmered away. A feint—she appeared behind him mid-turn. Her dagger nicked his ribs, but he rotated, ignoring the pain, and his blade traced her side.
Blood misted the air.
She hissed and vanished into the fog as her remaining followers fell.
Tikshn stood, bloodied but upright. Lian leaned on a broken beam, coughing.
From behind the counter, a child peeked—a boy with a wooden sword.
Tikshn sheathed his blade and met the boy's eyes.
"Don't forget this night," he said. "Not every warrior walks the path of glory. Some walk through fire."
The boy nodded, silently committing the words to his soul.
---
Dawn never truly broke in the borderlands, but the mist thinned. The pair left behind the ruined tavern and continued eastward into the Cloudspire Range—territory untouched by the Five Grand Sects.
Word had already raced ahead of them.
Whispers in tea houses.
Notes tied to hawks' feet.
"Tikshn wields the blade of ruin."
"The Sword That Remembers has awakened."
They passed villages burned to ash. Not from war—but silence. Silence after forced submission. Sects asserting dominance on all who dared claim strength without heritage.
Then, the Monastery of Hollow Pines.
A quiet monastery nestled between gnarled pines, its monks chanting beneath prayer flags strung between trees. Yet even peace carried scars.
The abbot emerged—an elder with a weathered face, hands like cracked stone, and eyes that had seen too much.
"I remember you," he said. "You were just a boy when your village begged the Jade Serpent Sect for protection. Your father stood against their envoy. A blade against bloodlines. A mistake."
"Why didn't you stop them?" Tikshn asked.
The abbot's silence answered.
"They feared your father's ideas. That strength could be earned. That anyone—common or noble—could rise. So they erased him."
Tikshn's grip on his sword tightened.
"I won't let them erase the next child who dares to dream."
Lian stood beside him. "Then we burn the foundations of Murim."
"No," Tikshn said. "We carve a new one."
---
That night, the world changed again.
A thunderstorm churned over the mountains, rain slicing down like knives. Tikshn and Lian found shelter beneath an uprooted tree trunk. But even there, fate found them.
A girl stumbled from the dark—soaked, blood-splattered, barefoot. No older than twelve. Her hands were raw, her eyes hollow.
"They killed everyone," she whispered. "Because I stole a sword to train. They said I had no right."
Tikshn crouched before her.
He wrapped her in his cloak and offered dried meat.
She devoured it slowly, then looked up at him.
"Will you teach me?"
He saw her—truly. Not a student. Not a symbol. A reflection.
"I'll teach you to survive," he said. "To stand. And to fight so no one decides your worth again."
---
Later that night, as the fire crackled in the hollow of their shelter, Tikshn stared into the flames.
His mind wandered to her.
Ailia.
The girl who once stood beneath the plum blossom trees, waiting for him after training. The one who smiled when he broke his first wooden sword out of sheer obsession, not rage. The only one who believed in him before the world tried to erase him.
She had been the daughter of a healer. Gentle hands, fierce spirit. Her dream was to tend to those too broken to continue. His dream had always been to protect.
But dreams, like blades, are brittle under tyranny.
She died during the siege—struck down not for her defiance, but for her closeness to him. The Jade Serpent Sect made an example of her.
They nailed her body to the gates.
He was twelve.
That was the first time he picked up a real blade.
The sword didn't sing. It howled.
And from that moment, Tikshn knew. He was never meant to follow. Only to cut.
---
Hours later, a red glow painted the sky.
Lian's eyes widened. "The monastery—"
Flames consumed it. The Hollow Pines Monastery—neutral for decades—had been declared guilty by association.
A warning.
Tikshn stood, his cloak billowing in the wind.
The girl clung to Lian's hand, eyes wide with fear and awe.
Tikshn looked to the east. Beyond the range, sects gathered. Grand Masters, heirloom blades, blood-bound cultivators.
But he would not kneel.
For the powerless.
For the forgotten.
For
Ailia.
For the boy with a wooden sword.
For the girl who stole one.
The storm had begun.