A year is a long time when counted in victories and a short time when measured by scars.
The cave that had once felt like a cradle had become a forge. We hammered at our flaws until they bent, burned what we could not salvage, and learned to move as a pair instinctively. The years outside continued in cycles of politics and cruelty — but here, in the mountain, our time had a different rhythm: sweep, train, meditate, test, repeat.
Alex learned spatial forms until he could fold a hallway into a single step and the cave into a sanctuary. He composed spatial sigils that let him tether a pocket of air to the pedestal and draw it like rope. His aura became a strange geometry — a presence that made light buckle at the corner of your eyes. He moved like a thought; sometimes I think I could watch him for hours and still only half-guess his next step.
I, meanwhile, learned to weave qi and mana into single techniques. My blade carried a storm of mana but struck like mountain iron. My breath could send a qi ripple that unbalanced an enemy before my sword reached them. I practiced the Emperor's breathing cycles until the marrow in my bones had learned to swell and recede like the tide.
We each bore new scars. I had a long ridge across my left forearm — the remnant of the ape's grip — etched with glittering veins where qi and mana had fused oddly. Alex had a faint line across his throat where a wyvern claw had nicked him; whenever he laughed now, the light around him would waver for a heartbeat and then settle.
People outside would have called us monsters. That was all right. Our faces hardened. We spent months testing ourselves against simulated threats the Phantom Emperor's manuals suggested: controlled summoning of basic-tier packs, corrosive mana fogs, and anchor collapse drills (spatial wells that would pinch your limbs).
We also learned restraint. We learned how to stop using land as a weapon when the only cost was blood. The Phantom Emperor's legacy had not been pure cruelty — it had a stern mercy: the stronger you were, the more careful you had to be with what you destroyed.
In the last week before our departure, I sat at the cave's lip at dawn and watched the horizon redden. We had forged new armor from Gerald's remains, tempered in mana-smithing processes Alex had gleaned from a tome. The plate on my shoulder bore the sigil of a phoenix and a dragon, gilded now with lines of runic mana that thrummed in time with my pulse. Alex's blades were thinner, his gauntlets set with tiny spatial anchors that let him scramble out of a net as if stepping through a door.
"Ready?" he asked, sliding a blade home with a practiced motion. The question wasn't about weapons. It was about the world beyond the mountain.
I could have gone back to the Vardar Empire. I could have stormed the palace, carved Randy's name into the sky. But we had learned too much to let vengeance be our only map. Instead, we would head east — to the Qin Empire. Not to beg, not to kneel, but to test ourselves against a different order: a land of cultivation academies, iron politics, and artisans who might teach us what the mountain could not.
"The Qin Empire," I said, tasting the name. It felt like a promise and a warning. "We go east."
Alex grinned, that fierce boyish grin that had survived every trial. "To Qin, then. New maps, new enemies."
We packed lightly. Our cores were full, our anchors entrenched, and our skills tempered like hammered steel. As we descended the mountain, the sanctum's runes dimmed behind us, as if giving their blessing and permission to leave.
At the mountain's base, the world opened. Rivers flowed like new veins on a map. Far to the east, faint smoke rose from the Qin border — the first sign of a new life, and new storms.
I should have been afraid. I was. But fear now sat like an old friend on my shoulder; it sharpened me rather than broke me.
We walked toward the east, two brothers bound by blood and iron and a fire that would not be quenched. The path ahead promised danger and the possibility of answers. For now, though, the mountain's wind sang one last song at our backs — a lullaby for what we had become, and a trumpet for what we would do next.