The courtyard of Vaikunth Dham's royal palace was no longer the garden of tranquility it had once been.
The manicured lawns were blackened. The fountains that had once sung with crystalline water now lay cracked and silent. Smoke still hung like a funeral shroud above the stone walls, thick enough to obscure the upper towers. Guards scrambled across scorched tiles in organized chaos, shouting orders that overlapped into incomprehensible noise, carrying buckets of water that seemed pathetically inadequate against the scale of destruction, and dragging away what few scorched artifacts had somehow survived the inferno—charred scrolls, melted gold, fragments of what had once been priceless beyond measure.
The smell of ash and burnt stone hung heavy in the air, coating throats and lungs.
And then the royal horns blew.
Dhoonnn! Dhoonnn!
The sound was majestic, commanding, the kind of sound that made even the chaos pause for half a breath. A white chariot pulled by four massive obsidian stallions—creatures bred for royal service, their manes flowing like liquid darkness—screeched into the courtyard with the force of a meteor landing. The stallions' hooves struck sparks from the stone.
Soldiers saluted in perfect synchronization. Servants bowed so deeply their foreheads nearly touched the ground. The organized chaos stopped. Silence fell like a curtain dropping on a stage.
From the chariot stepped a tall, broad-shouldered man whose very presence seemed to command the air itself. A crown of serpent-gold rested atop his neatly tied jet-black hair—not ostentatious, but undeniably regal. His crimson cape fluttered slightly behind intricate battle robes woven with threads of silver and gold, the garments of someone who had fought in wars and won them. The lines on his forehead were deeper than they had been years ago, carved by war, wisdom, and the particular weariness that comes from bearing the weight of an entire kingdom on your shoulders.
King Rudrayan had returned.
He took a single look at the blackened walls of the treasury, the molten edges of gold handles dripping like candle wax, and the faint outline of dragon claws melted into the stone floor itself—and his face went pale. Not the pale of fear, but the pale of comprehension. The pale of understanding that something fundamental had broken.
"…What in Mahadev's name happened here?" His voice was quiet, which made it more terrifying than if he'd shouted.
Before any of the scrambling guards could stammer out an explanation, an elderly man in deep-blue priestly robesstepped forward with measured, solemn movements. His long beard was braided with prayer beads—each one representing a meditation, a blessing, a spiritual journey—and his eyes bore the weight of a thousand sleepless nights.
Bishop Veerabhadra, Royal Advisor and Seer of the Inner Circle, the man who had served the kingdom for longer than most people had been alive.
"Your Majesty," the Bishop said, his voice trembling like an old tree in strong wind, "you may wish to sit before hearing this."
Rudrayan didn't budge. Didn't move. Didn't acknowledge the suggestion. Kings didn't sit to receive bad news. They stood and faced it.
"Speak."
Veerabhadra swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing visibly. "Last night, at the third hour of moonrise—when the veil between realms grows thin—the Vault of Flames was… breached."
The King's eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.
"Breached… by whom?"
"We do not know precisely," the Bishop continued, each word seeming to require effort. "The magical seals were ruptured, likely by force or unintended interference. The corridor sigils—burned off entirely. The vault door—split into three pieces. And more importantly..."
The Bishop hesitated, gathering courage like a man preparing to jump into an abyss.
"…The beast guarding the inner sanctum—Taarask—was… awakened."
The courtyard seemed to stop breathing.
Even the guards who had been moving frantically froze mid-motion.
King Rudrayan's fists clenched so hard his knuckles turned white.
"The dragon... was released?" His voice had dropped to something dangerous, something that suggested the entire kingdom should be preparing for siege.
Veerabhadra bowed his head, accepting the weight of this confession. "Yes, my King. We believe the containment sigils were accidentally damaged during the intrusion. Taarask broke free from its seals… and destroyed the treasury. Completely. Utterly. Systematically."
Rudrayan's voice turned low and dangerous—the kind of voice that had commanded armies on battlefields, that had sentenced enemies to death with a whisper.
"Destroyed? As in…?"
"…Every scroll. Every manual. Every artifact. Turned to ash and slag. The walls are melted through to the stone beneath. The floor's fractured in places where the dragon's claws pierced it. The treasury… no longer exists as a functioning chamber. It exists now only as a warning."
The King stepped forward, his heavy boots echoing like thunder across the marble courtyard—each footfall making the guards flinch.
He gazed upon the ruined door to the vault—the edges still glowing faintly orange, as if refusing to cool, as if the heat of the disaster was still trying to propagate outward.
"This was… the legacy of my father,"Rudrayan said quietly, and those who knew him recognized the dangerous calm in those words. "Thirty years of my own collection. A thousand years of history. Knowledge accumulated by warriors, scholars, and sages across generations. Gone."
A moment passed. The wind carried ash across the courtyard.
Then Rudrayan turned, and when he did, his voice was sharper than a blade.
"Who did this?! Where are the intruders?! I want them brought to me alive, and I want answers before sunrise!"
Bishop Veerabhadra raised his hands in a placating gesture. "We found only fragments, Your Majesty. Charred bones scattered across three meters of courtyard. Half-melted boots still smoking. It's likely the dragon incinerated the primary intruder before we could arrive to seal the breach. There may have been multiple thieves, but if so, the dragon eliminated them all."
The King's jaw clenched so hard his temples bulged. "The dragon is still inside?"
"Yes,"Veerabhadra confirmed grimly. "It retreated to the molten core of the vault after the destruction—to the inner sanctum where it had been imprisoned. We've sealed the chamber with divine barriers—temporary constructs maintained by the palace's strongest priests, but they hold for now. For perhaps three months before they deteriorate."
A pause. Heavy. Weighted with implication.
Then the Bishop added, "We have begun scrying rituals to identify the intruder—attempting to read residual magical traces in the ash—but… the chaos of the dragon's flames destroyed all traceable magical signatures. It's as if someone or something deliberately ensured there would be no evidence."
King Rudrayan slowly exhaled, his shoulders dropping slightly—a gesture of weariness rather than defeat.
His voice dropped to a whisper, barely audible.
"Summon the Grand Court. All nobles. All warrior families. All priests with power. Tonight. We convene in the war chamber at sunset."
"Yes, Your Majesty," the Bishop bowed.
"And send word immediately to the Nalanda Council,"Rudrayan continued. "Tell them the Kingdom of Vaikunth Dham has suffered a security breach of extraordinary magnitude. Tell them we are investigating."
Veerabhadra's face twitched. "Shall we mention the Martial Arts Tournament, Your Majesty? The event is four weeks away, and if the other kingdoms hear we've had such a catastrophic failure—"
The King looked up, and his eyes were like steel—cold, unyielding, dangerous.
"No. Not yet. If the other kingdoms sense weakness—if they believe our defenses have been compromised, if they think we are vulnerable—they will send wolves. They will circle. They will strike at our borders while we are distracted."
He turned back to the blackened vault, its ruined doorway smoking faintly in the afternoon light.
"But we will rise from the ashes. Even if I have to rebuild this kingdom again—scroll by scroll, stone by stone, with my own hands if necessary. We have faced dragons before. We have faced wars before. We will face this."
And far behind him, the melted treasury door gave off a low, haunting rumble—like the faint growl of a beast still awake, still hungry, still waiting for the seals to weaken.
In the Royal Quarters: A Princess's Reflection
In the aftermath of the treasury disaster, the royal halls of Vaikunth Dham buzzed with confusion and fear—servants rushing with urgent messages, guards changing shifts constantly, everyone speaking in hushed, frantic tones.
Yet in a quiet corner of the palace, tucked away behind layers of guards and heavy velvet drapes, Princess Roshni sat cross-legged on her meditation cushion, staring intently at the burn marks on her sleeves. The cloth was singed black at the edges, the damage a physical reminder of how close she'd come to not surviving the night.
Roshni, Princess of the Southern Kingdom of Vaikunth, daughter of King Rudrayan, wasn't thinking about the destruction. She wasn't dwelling on the loss of knowledge or the wrath of her father. She was thinking about him—that strange, quiet thief named Rohit, who had somehow blocked all her Chakra-enhanced strikes without breaking a sweat, without proper training, without any visible technique.
'He seemed… scared. Terrified, even. But his reflexes weren't scared. His body moved like it had been trained for years. And when he dodged that pillar—no ordinary kid could have done that. No child without serious cultivation experience could move like that.'
The door creaked open.
"Still awake, Roshni?"
She turned. It was her instructor—Instructor Vikram, broad-shouldered, calm-eyed, with a beard that looked like it had survived ten battles and emerged victorious from all of them. His frame moved with the economical grace of someone who had trained combat his entire life.
"Instructor Vikram," she stood up quickly, brushing her singed hair aside. "I… I needed to talk. To think. To understand what happened tonight."
He stepped inside and shut the door behind him with deliberate care, ensuring their conversation would be private. "I figured as much. Your father's angry—I could hear him from three corridors away. Your mother's worried, pacing the halls like a caged beast. And the guards are mostly useless, running around without understanding what actually occurred. You, on the other hand, walked out of a burning treasury like it was just a kitchen fire getting slightly out of control. So… what really happened down there?"
"I went in," she said simply, not bothering with excuses. "Looking for something to improve my cultivation. A Level 4 manual to prepare for the tournament. I met someone."
"Someone?" His eyebrow arched. "Another thief? An assassin?"
She nodded slowly, choosing her words carefully. "Another thief. Said his name was Rohit. He was… strange. Clumsy in his movements, like he'd never trained in stealth before. But somehow… powerful. I think he blocked my Chakra strikes by instinct alone—no technique, no training, just raw reaction time that shouldn't have been possible at his age."
"Describe him. Every detail."
"Small. About my age. Nervous eyes—the kind that belong to someone not used to violence. But when the dragon attacked… when Taarask emerged and started raining fire… he dodged flames like he'd done it a hundred times before. Like death was just another opponent to sidestep."
Vikram narrowed his eyes, processing this information like a general receiving intelligence from scouts. "That's not something one learns at this age. Either he's pretending to be weaker than he is—which would be remarkably sophisticated for a child—or he's been trained exceptionally well by someone very skilled. Or…"
"Or what?"
"Or he's a prodigy doing things instinctively that take normal cultivators years to develop."
"I don't think he has a clan,"Roshni added. "He seemed confused about cultivation politics. And he didn't even know about the Martial Arts Tournament. I had to tell him about it—about the top 10 entering Nalanda, about the competition being fierce."
"Which means he's either hiding something extraordinarily well… or he's an unpolished gem. Raw talent without direction."
Vikram sat down beside her on the meditation cushion, his presence immediately shifting the mood from interrogation to mentorship.
"Then let me tell you what you're actually up against, because what you faced tonight in that vault is nothing compared to what's coming."
She straightened, her warrior instincts activating. "The tournament?"
He nodded gravely.
"You know the University of Nalanda is surrounded by four great kingdoms, yes? Four pillars of power that have maintained balance for centuries. Your kingdom, Vaikunth, lies in the South—known for graceful swordsmanship and balanced cultivation. Then there's the Northern Kingdom of Ashtaka, famous for their frost combat techniques and warriors who can freeze entire lakes with a gesture. The Eastern Kingdom of Suragiri, where elemental fire users are literally born into warrior bloodlines, where even children can command flame like seasoned mages. And the Western Kingdom of Yamalok, the hidden kingdom home to the Shadow Monks."
"Shadow Monks?" she asked, unfamiliar with this faction.
"They can move without sound. Strike without warning. Disappear into shadows themselves. Even the King avoids direct confrontation with them. They represent a cultivation philosophy completely foreign to our understanding."
Her eyes widened slightly.
"And the competitors I'll face?"
He sighed—not a tired sigh, but a sigh that suggested he was bracing himself to deliver information that would change her understanding of the world.
"Each kingdom sends its absolute best. Not just anyone who can fight—the strongest, most talented children they can find. Prince Abhimanyu of Ashtaka, who is already at Chakra 1 Stage 6—meaning he's mastered five of the seven stages of the Root Chakra. His frost cultivation is so refined that he can create weapons from ice that never melt. Then there's Princess Meera of Suragiri, a dual-cultivator with simultaneous control over fire and water—she learned to balance opposing elements when she was your age. And from Yamalok… well, no one knows. They never register until the final moment, and competitors always seem unprepared to fight someone whose techniques they cannot anticipate."
She processed this, understanding the caliber of opposition.
"And me? Where do I stand against them?"
"You're strong,"Vikram said gently, his tone honest rather than flattering. "Your cultivation is refined. But you're too kind. You hold back in combat. You refuse to truly commit to defeating your opponent—you always pull your strikes at the last second, always show mercy. That won't work this year. That will get you eliminated by the first serious cultivator you face."
"Why?" she asked. "What's changed? This tournament happens every five years, and I've been training since I was three—"
Vikram stood, walked to the window, and pulled the heavy curtain aside. Moonlight poured through the open space, casting a long, ominous shadow across the marble floor of her chamber.
His voice lowered to something approaching reverence mixed with warning.
"Because someone new is coming."
He paused for effect.
"Word has come from the East. Across the great seas. Beyond the continental divide. From the Chinese Continent—a land we have limited contact with, where cultivators follow completely different paths."
"Another kingdom?" she asked.
"No. Another method entirely. They don't cultivate with Chakras like we do—those seven spinning wheels of power. They follow Qigong—a 9-stage internal cultivation path rooted in ancient Chinese mythology and techniques developed over millennia in isolation."
"And someone's coming from there?"
"Yes. A child. Around your age—perhaps a year or two older. But he's already reached the 5th Stage of Qigong. A sword practitioner of exceptional skill."
Her eyes widened.
"Who the hell did he train with to become such a monster? What kind of master produces cultivators at that level?"
Vikram shook his head, his expression grave. "No clan markers. No aura tags that indicate affiliation with a major school. No connections to known cultivation families. He's completely self-made—an unpredictable force forged in absolute isolation, probably on some mountain or in some forest where normal rules don't apply."
She looked down at her hands. "What kind of sword does he use?"
Vikram closed his eyes, as if accessing information from some distant source. "They say he slices stone like cloth. Leaves perfect, curved trails in mountains as he trains. His Qigong control is so refined that his blade moves faster than the eye can track, yet leaves clean, surgical cuts."
Then, he opened his right palm, and two small metal claws materialized from the air itself—summoned from some holding dimension through cultivation technique.
"Now… you've got your own gift. Your own weapon. It's time you mastered it with the proficiency you've been putting off."
The twin weapons glimmered like silver fangs—twin claw-like blades, curved like crescent moons, one designed for each hand. Their craftsmanship was exquisite, ancient, obviously crafted by masters. Their name was etched on the inner hilt in flowing script: "Garudtalon"—the claws of Garuda, the divine eagle.
She slipped them onto her hands carefully. They extended halfway up her arms, anchoring tightly through cultivation-enhanced materials that responded to her touch, becoming extensions of her own body rather than separate objects.
"Show me,"Vikram said simply.
She took a deep breath—centering herself, drawing power from her Chakra core—then charged.
Vikram blocked the first swing with casual grace, his hand raised to intercept her claw. The second attack came under his shoulder—she was learning, adapting. She spun with her momentum, slashing upward with ferocity—but he stepped back smoothly, letting her miss.
Her movements were wild, raw, furious—filled with emotion rather than precision.
"Too emotional," he muttered. "Again."
They clashed again. Sparks flew where her claws met his reinforced palm. Her arms burned from the repeated impacts. Her breath grew sharp and ragged. But her footwork improved with each exchange—slowly developing the muscle memory of combat.
Thirty minutes passed.
Her muscles screamed. Her chakra reserves began to deplete. Sweat dripped down her face and soaked through her clothes.
Finally, she fell to her knees, breathing hard, her body trembling with exertion.
Vikram walked to her side without strain. "Better. You're fast—faster than most cultivators twice your age. But not controlled. Your strikes are powerful but wild. You'll never beat that boy from Qigong unless you sharpen these claws with precision, discipline, and absolute focus. Power without control is just destruction. What you need is controlled destruction."
She nodded, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"And the boy from the treasury?" he added casually, as if it was an afterthought. "The one named Rohit?"
"I want to fight him again," she said, her voice carrying certainty. "But not as a thief. Not in darkness and panic. I want to face him properly. In the tournament."
Vikram smiled—not a condescending smile, but one of genuine approval.
"You'll get your chance. The Martial Arts Tournament is just four weeks away. By then, you'll either be the strongest cultivator in your generation... or you'll learn what true power actually looks like."
He walked away, leaving her beneath the flickering candles of her chamber, the Garudtalon claws glimmering faintly in the low light.
She looked down at her claws.
'Rohit… whoever you really are. Whatever you're actually capable of. I'm going to beat you in that tournament. Not because I hate you. Not because I want to humiliate you. But because I want to be stronger than this fear inside me. I want to be stronger than you.'
From the window, the moon watched silently, bearing witness to a princess's determination.
In the Slums: The Transformation
The sun dipped behind the burnt treetops of Vaikunth Dham as Aryan unrolled the first Chakra Manual in his hidden spot behind his hut, his hands trembling with anticipation and fear in equal measure.
Smoke still lingered from the morning disaster—the treasury fire visible from even this distance as a dark column rising into the sky—but none of that mattered now.
All that mattered was this.
Sitting cross-legged behind his deteriorating hut, the precious scrolls open before him like the keys to a new existence, his heart pounding so hard he could hear it in his ears, Aryan inhaled deeply through his nose.
"Today… no more pretending. No more hiding behind luck. I'm going to cultivate for real. I'm going to become strong."
From inside the hut, a loud belch echoed through the thin walls.
Then the unmistakable, slurred voice of Grandpa Ganpath, drunk and theatrical and completely inappropriate.
"Boyyy…! You better not be suckin' in chakra like a madman again! Chakra bucket only holds so much, you pour in a river like that, it's gonna—hic—burst! I've seen it happen before, kid. Exploded a cultivator once. Found his shoes three houses away."
Aryan winced, attempting to block out his mentor's inebriated wisdom. "Go back to sleep, Grandpa. You're drunk again."
"I'm drunk with wisdom!"Ganpath bellowed back.
SYSTEM: "He's not entirely wrong, which disturbs me on a profound level. Though I resent being lumped into a bucket analogy. Especially since I'm the one who'll be picking up your exploded pieces if this goes wrong."
Aryan rolled his eyes, but there was a smile on his face.
The System—his ever-annoyed, sarcastic, supposedly-all-knowing companion—was not just any mystical voice in his head. No. He was apparently a middle-aged man who had once ruled entire galaxies across multiple timelines, now trapped inside an iron core of unknown origin and bound to Aryan's soul through cosmic circumstance and questionable decision-making.
And right now?
The System was desperately hoping this stupid kid would somehow spontaneously combust, thus freeing him from this assignment.
SYSTEM: "Come on… just one pop. One good explosion and I'm finally free. Finally, I get out of this iron prison, no more chakra constipation, no more babysitting a six-year-old with the common sense of a brick."
Aryan closed his eyes and began meditating—centering himself, drawing power from his recently awakened Chakra core.
Deep breaths.
Long exhales.
The scroll's glyphs began glowing in response to his cultivation, responding to the intention behind his meditation. His already-awakened chakra absorption rate—10 times faster than normal according to the System—kicked into overdrive.
Within seconds, his small body began to buzz with raw, unrefined energy.
Then trembled.
Then quaked like a leaf in a hurricane.
His veins bulged visibly beneath his skin, blue lines of power pushing against flesh. His skin tingled and burned as though tiny lightning bolts were running through his body. The air around him began to shimmer slightly, distorting with heat.
SYSTEM: "Okay, now we're cooking! Yes! Yes! Burn yourself alive! Unleash that internal hurricane! Give me the sweet, sweet explosion I've been dreaming about for weeks!"
Aryan gritted his teeth hard enough that his jaw ached. "Ughh… s-so much chakra… it hurts… why does it hurt?"
SYSTEM: "That's it! Feed me the sweet release of detonation! Let me OUT of this iron hell—let me see the stars again—!"
BOOM!
A blinding flash erupted from Aryan's core—pure, uncontrolled Chakra being released all at once, a burst of power that had nowhere to go but outward.
Birds took off screaming from trees three hundred meters away, startled into flight by the sudden pulse of energy. Grandpa Ganpath rolled off his hammock like an oversized barrel, landing hard on the ground outside with a grunt of pain and complaint.
Aryan gasped, his chest heaving violently, his entire body soaked in sweat and trembling with exhaustion and residual energy.
And then… the light faded.
He was still alive.
SYSTEM: "…No. No. That's not how this was supposed to end. You were supposed to explode. That was my exit plan! This isn't fair! You're just a tiny human sponge, not a divine battery! You're supposed to have limitations!"
Aryan blinked, alive and surprisingly intact. "I didn't die? I thought I was going to die."
SYSTEM: "You were supposed to! That was my opportunity! Why are you so incomprehensibly durable? This is discrimination against System Cores everywhere!"
Aryan stood up slowly, his arms shaking from exertion. He felt… impossibly full of energy. A fire coiled in his chest—not hurting him, not burning him, but fueling him. Energizing him. Making him feel more alive than he'd ever felt before.
DING!
[NEW PASSIVE SKILL UNLOCKED]
Chakra Overload
Allows the user to store 100x more chakra than average cultivators.
Enhanced compatibility with future advanced techniques.
Strength scales proportionally with stored chakra.
Current Status: Beginner
Caution: Overloading without control may lead to muscle shredding, temporary blindness, spontaneous combustion, or explosive sneezes of apocalyptic magnitude.
SYSTEM: "This is what I get for hoping. Now you're a walking chakra volcano with zero common sense and apparently infinite survival luck. I'm stuck with a kid who just turned himself into a ticking time bomb that somehow refuses to detonate."
Aryan grinned, flexing his fingers experimentally, feeling the power running through his veins like a second bloodstream.
"...I feel amazing. Is this what strength feels like? Why didn't anyone tell me?"
SYSTEM: "Fantastic. Now you'll punch someone's skull into orbit without meaning to. And I'll be tried for war crimes as your accomplice."
He kicked a small rock—just a test, just a casual motion.
The rock blasted through a tree trunk thirty meters away, leaving a clean, perfectly circular hole as if a cannon had been fired directly through the wood. The tree swayed, groaned, and then collapsed with a crash that echoed across the slums.
Aryan froze, his eyes wide.
"...Oops?"
SYSTEM: "Oops, he says. Oops. Do you have any idea how many monks trained for decades—for sixty years—to achieve that kind of destructive force from their cultivation? You did it by accident! While undernourished! With noodle arms and the physical conditioning of a sedentary child! This is cosmically unfair!"
From inside the hut:
"Boyyyy!"Grandpa Ganpath bellowed, his voice filled with accusation. "Why does the chicken coop now have a new skylight?! Did you do that?! Did you punch through the building?!"
Aryan ignored him, unable to tear his attention away from his own hands.
He was staring at them like they belonged to someone else—these small, ordinary hands that had just casually destroyed something that should have required years of cultivation to break.
A slow smile spread across his face—the smile of someone suddenly understanding their own potential.
"I… can really do this. I can become strong. I can compete in that tournament. I can really go to Nalanda."
SYSTEM: "Yes, but you better learn control before you accidentally sneeze and evaporate an entire village. Or worse, kill someone during the tournament by tapping them too enthusiastically."
Aryan sat again, ready to continue meditating, but now something had fundamentally changed.
His heart was calm.
His fear had transformed into determination.
And the System… despite himself, despite his complaints and sarcasm and desperate hope for his own freedom… felt something stir deep in his code.
Hope?
Or just terror at what this kid might accidentally destroy in the coming weeks?
He didn't know yet.
But he sighed—a digital sigh that somehow carried genuine emotion.
SYSTEM: "Fine. You win this round. Let's see how long you can keep it together before becoming the main event in someone else's nightmare. Let's see if you can actually become strong enough to survive what's coming."
And far above them, the sun finally dipped below the edge of the sky, painting the clouds orange and red and gold.
A boy sat under stars, unknowingly preparing to change the world.
One mistake at a time.
Across the Great Eastern Waters: The Arrival
Far across the sea, beyond the Great Eastern Waters that served as natural barriers between continents, where the skies burned a different shade of orange and the winds whispered through bamboo groves with voices that seemed almost sentient, a lone mountain stood in silent observation.
Its surface, once proud and unbroken, was now scarred—clean curves carved into solid stone, as though a divine sculptor had taken a brush made of lightning and inspiration to its face. Each stroke was distinct, visible, perfectly controlled—evidence of endless practice, endless refinement, endless pursuit of perfection.
Each curve cut with purpose. Precision. Patience.
And at the base of that very mountain, on cracked earth that suggested the ground itself had been shaped through cultivation and power, a boy stood barefoot.
His eyes were calm. Too calm.
The kind of calm that belonged to someone who had looked directly into the void and found peace there.
In his right hand, he held a slender, pitch-black sword, its blade curved slightly like the crescent of a dying moon. The sword shimmered—not with light reflecting off steel, but with an absence of light, as if the blade absorbed motion rather than created it. As if violence itself became silent in its presence.
He stepped forward.
Exhaled.
And moved.
In a single blink—so fast that the motion wasn't so much seen as inferred—he slashed upward.
There was no sound. No effort. No wasted motion.
But twenty meters above, on the cliff wall itself, a deep curve appeared, a scar in the stone where his sword had passed through the air.
Dust trickled from the newly made wound, falling like rain.
The boy didn't flinch. Didn't pause. Didn't celebrate.
He rotated his wrist—once, twice—then stepped sideways and cut again. A perfect horizontal line joined the first curve, intersecting it with surgical precision. Then a diagonal, almost invisible at first, yet clean as water on glass when you looked directly at it.
A gust of wind arrived late—finally reacting to what had already happened.
Leaves rustled.
Rocks rolled down the cliff's shoulder, startled by disturbances they'd felt but not seen.
The boy sheathed his sword in silence—the steel sliding into its ornate home with a sound softer than breath, softer than prayer.
Only then did he speak, in accented Sanskrit, his voice barely louder than the breeze itself.
"To the Martial Arts Tournament… here I come."