Irelion Vance, the Saint of Swords, came back to life with a gasp. The air that filled his lungs was wrong. Too thin. Too clean. It didn't taste of blood and ozone and betrayal. It tasted of pine needles and morning dew.
He sat up, the motion sending a jolt of weakness through him. The mattress beneath him wasn't silk; it was cheap, lumpy straw that crackled with every move. He looked down at his hands. They were a stranger's hands—smooth, unscarred, the fingers slender and untested. Not the calloused, leathered claws of a man who had held a sword for nearly fifty years.
This body was a cage. A weak, clumsy, twenty-year-old cage.
Irelion closed his eyes and reached for the Qi that was once his to command. His soul remembered the shape of power—the glacier-calm of Aurelia's ice, the crackling fury of Seraphine's lightning. It was all there, a symphony locked in a deaf man's skull.
He tried to hum the first note.
His body screamed.
It wasn't a rejection. It was a rupture. A phantom limb of god-like power, trying to flex through a hand made of clay and twigs. Fire—not the clean flame of Ravenna's passion, but the sickening burn of flesh failing its spirit—ripped through channels that were little more than dirt tracks. He folded over, retching, the taste of his own failure acidic in his throat.
This is the cage, he thought, the truth a colder shock than any blade. And the lock is made of my own flesh.
Then the memories came, not as a gentle stream but as a flood, dragging him under.
Aurelia's face, serene even as holy fire turned her to ash, her last silent apology for failing him.
Seraphine's final, choked curse, furious not at death, but at the fact she still hadn't beaten him.
Evangeline's hand on his cheek, her voice a whisper of forgiveness he would never deserve.
He slammed a fist against the cheap wooden wall of the room. A dull, fleshy thud echoed, followed by a sharp, splintering pain in his knuckles. Not the wall-shattering impact of a Saint. The weak, pathetic smack of a boy.
"Damn it," he snarled, the words tearing from his throat. He couldn't stay here. He couldn't drown in this coffin of a room.
He dressed in the rough grey robes of an outer disciple and stormed outside, needing the bite of the morning air to feel real. His feet carried him to the training grounds, a place he knew better than any other. It was a sprawling dirt field, already buzzing with the shouts of young disciples swinging their blades with more heart than skill.
He was a ghost walking through his own graveyard. He saw a boy—Lin Ren, wasn't it?—laughing with his friends. The sound was so full of life it hurt. Irelion's mind superimposed a different image over the scene: Lin Ren's body, face down in the mud of a mining camp two years from now, a rusty knife in his back. The fight had been over a worthless shard of Spirit Ore. He saw a girl practicing her forms, her movements filled with the hopeful grace of youth. He remembered finding what was left of her after the Siege of Azure City, a broken doll in the jaws of a Howling Ravager. The ghosts weren't just memories; they were prophecies. Every smiling face in the training yard was a skull waiting to be unearthed.
He picked up the least-rusty blade from a weapon rack, its balance off by a hair. He found a quiet corner and took a stance. He closed his eyes and reached for his Qi, trying to draw it in with the divine-grade technique his soul remembered perfectly. Frost Severance, First Form: Frozen Moment.
His mind saw the perfect, silent cut that could freeze the air. His soul commanded the flawless shift in weight, the precise twist of the wrist.
His body betrayed him.
His feet tangled. His arm, devoid of the Qi needed to support the technique, moved with the grace of a falling log. The sword wobbled, scribing a pathetic arc through the air before he stumbled, catching himself on one knee.
Laughter, sharp and cruel, cut through the morning air.
"Hey, look! It's Vance, trying to dance with his sword again!" The voice belonged to Jin, a broad-shouldered disciple with more arrogance than talent.
Irelion pushed himself to his feet, ignoring them. He wasn't humiliated. Humiliation was for people who had pride left to wound. All he felt was a cold, sharp-edged fury at his own weakness.
Jin swaggered closer, flanked by a few of his cronies. "What's the matter, Vance? Did you suddenly forget how to stand? Your technique is an insult to swordsmanship."
Irelion turned his head slowly, his eyes, ancient and weary, landing on Jin. He didn't look at his face. He looked at his stance. His grip. The way he held his shoulders.
"You carry your sword like a farmer carries a hoe," Irelion said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion. "You put all your weight on your front foot. Your grip is too tight. Keep fighting like that and you'll die with a blade in your back, because you'll be too slow to turn."
The laughter died. Jin's face turned red. The description was not only insulting, it was uncannily accurate.
"What did you say, you piece of trash?" Jin snarled, taking a threatening step forward.
But Irelion had already turned away, his gaze distant. The fight was beneath him. The boy was already dead. Arguing with him was pointless. He started walking away, leaving a stunned and furious Jin in his wake.
He couldn't rely on this body. He couldn't rely on techniques it couldn't perform. He had one weapon left. Knowledge.
He clawed through his memories, through the decades of war and politics, hunting for an edge, any edge a weak disciple could reach. He discarded forgotten treasure troves guarded by beasts he couldn't kill, and legendary herbs on mountains he couldn't climb. He needed something local. Something now.
And then he found it. A fragment of a conversation, an elder's careless remark from thirty years in the future.
The Weeping Grotto.
A worthless, damp cave behind the outer sect mountain. Unremarkable. Except for the hidden chamber deep inside. The chamber that grew a small, secret patch of Moonpetal Herbs. To a Saint, they were weeds. To a 3rd Stage disciple, they were the key to everything.
He had a goal. The first step on a forty-seven-year-long road to redemption.