No sunlight had ever reached this place. Deep beneath the shattered mountains, the chamber breathed with an eerie stillness, the air dense with old power. Walls of blackened stone bore etched runes that shimmered faintly when touched by thought, not sight. Eight pillars surrounded a raised obsidian dais, veins of cerulean crystal running through its base like the arteries of a slumbering beast. Everything about this place pulsed, not with sound, but with presence. It was a sanctum. A crucible. A memory carved into the bones of the world.
Altan awoke at the center of it all, aching and raw. His breath was shallow, ribs protesting with every inhale. Blood crusted the corner of his lip, and the muscles of his back screamed as he sat up. His saber lay beside him, notched and dulled, its edge a mirror of his own broken state. But it wasn't pain that stirred him. It was something else. A hum beneath the surface of his skin. A vibration within the air. As though the mountain itself were breathing through him.
Ten paces away sat the old man, robed in gray the color of old ash, his eyes closed but still, somehow, watching. His presence was not loud or commanding, but impossible to ignore. He had been there when Altan collapsed, and he had not moved since. The silence between them felt ancient, as though it carried the weight of forgotten wars and paths never walked. Then the man spoke, his voice low and dry as dust, yet unshakably firm.
"Your body is alive. Blood moves, breath enters your lungs, but your spirit is still gone. The noise in your head won't stop. You know something inside you hasn't come back."
Altan exhaled through cracked lips, struggling to his knees. His voice was hoarse.
"I survived the fall. Isn't that proof enough?"
"Survival is not strength," the old man replied without opening his eyes. "Even the wind survives by changing its shape."
He rose with a motion that defied age, fluid, boneless, graceful. His feet made no sound against the stone. There was something unnerving about his stillness, the way even silence seemed to obey him. He circled the platform slowly, a teacher measuring a student not by posture or scars, but by the weight of their breath.
"If you wish to rise as a cultivator," he said, "you must do more than live. You must listen."
Altan frowned. His tribe, the Orontai, believed in motion. They rode the winds of the steppes and fought like storms, fury, speed, unrelenting strikes. Theirs was the Way of Thunder Hoof, a path that drew strength from rage and momentum. But this place did not welcome fury. It welcomed stillness. It demanded surrender.
The old man lifted one hand, and the air shifted. From the runed pillars, a subtle spiral began to form, not a breeze, not true wind, but a movement of force, of qi. Altan felt it coil around him, brushing against his spirit, not his skin. The sensation was invasive, intimate. Not pushing. Probing.
"This is the breath of the sanctum," the old man said. "It is not wind as you know it. It is Pathless Qi, wild, formless, older than empire, untouched by the doctrines of cultivated schools. It will not answer your commands. But it will respond to your truth."
Altan tried to stand. His knees buckled. Pain throbbed behind his eyes as his inner qi clashed with the force outside him. The stone beneath his feet pulsed. This was not ordinary stone. It was Khal'an Obsidian, sacred to ancient cultivators, known to channel ambient qi into the body of anyone who endured upon it. He realized then that the sanctum was not a temple. It was a forge.
"It's pressing into me," Altan said through clenched teeth.
"Not pressing," came the reply. "Testing."
The old man extended a hand. Fingers parted like the wings of a crane. Instantly, the wind coiled in front of him, thin threads of pale green and silver, spinning tighter, denser. With a flick of the wrist, he released the gathered qi.
It cut through the air like a scythe, spiraling across the chamber. A distant pillar split with a thunderclap. The sound echoed for long seconds.
"That was the First Motion of the Silent Gale Stance," the old man said. "You will not master the wind by wielding it. You must become the current. Yield to shape. Flow with strength."
And so began Altan's training.
He was given no instruction beyond three words: Stand. Breathe. Endure. He stood upon the platform for hours, perhaps days, drinking only water infused with bitter spiritroot, which dulled his hunger and kept his body from collapse. The Pathless Qi assaulted him in waves, pressing not just against his skin, but into his meridians, those invisible rivers through which a cultivator's energy flowed.
Each wave was a hammer. His qi, born of rage and tempered by survival, fought it. It burned, clawed, resisted. But resistance brought only more pain. The old man watched in silence.
"Let go," he said once. "Let it shape you."
Altan screamed more than once in the days that followed. His sweat soaked the platform. His breath became jagged. But slowly, something within him began to shift. He stopped fighting. He began to feel. The wind, no longer an enemy, became rhythm. Pressure became tempo. His breath matched it. His stance adjusted without thought. His spirit, raw and beaten, began to listen.
And then, without warning, he moved.
It wasn't a conscious decision. His foot turned. His body tilted. The incoming surge of wind passed through him like water around a rock. A training stone behind him cracked in half from the redirected force. He didn't fall.
The old man nodded once.
"You've touched the First Gate."
Altan blinked, chest heaving.
"Gate?"
"The gate between movement and intention," the old man said. "Where breath and body become one."
He raised a single finger.
"Now, you will learn the Second Motion of the Silent Gale: Returning Wingbreak."
Another current formed. Tighter. Faster. It launched toward Altan like a coiled beast. But this time, he didn't brace. He flowed. He shifted his palm, redirected the current, and, without knowing how, returned it.
It spiraled backward and split another pillar.
Altan stared at his hand in disbelief. His pulse thundered.
"I can shape it."
"Not yet," the old man said, voice soft. "But now, the wind will listen."
That night, if night could exist in such a place, Altan sat cross-legged on the obsidian, his limbs trembling, his heart calm. His qi no longer screamed. It moved. Flowed. Harmonized. He had not yet broken through, but he stood at the Threshold of Foundation, the first true step into cultivation. His breath was aligned. His intent anchored. His body honed by silence and strain. And for the first time, he realized the truth: the wind did not serve. It guided.
Somewhere deep within the mountain, a new current stirred, thicker, hotter, smelling of ash and ancient smoke. It did not test. It watched.
And it was waiting.