Darkness devoured him.
There was no sensation of falling anymore, only the surrender to a place that existed outside of time. The chasm was not descent but dissolution. Wind became memory, cold became thought, and sound unraveled into silence so profound it gnawed at the edges of identity. Altan drifted through that void until pain recalled him to flesh.
He struck stone. A sharp jolt thundered through his body. The impact snapped ribs and split his vision into bursts of white. Then stillness. Gravity returned like a vengeful god. His breath hitched. His limbs refused command. He lay in the cradle of ancient rock, broken but not dead.
Somewhere above, the chasm's mouth flickered as a mere thread of gray against the abyss. Unreachable. Unreal.
Altan coughed blood and rolled onto his side. His saber was gone, lost in the plunge. The world around him pulsed with eerie calm. He was surrounded not by earth but by intention. The stone here was carved, shaped, commanded.
A narrow tunnel yawned ahead, framed in arching stone etched with lines too symmetrical to be natural. Symbols marked its throat: circles intersecting with blades, faded sigils repeating like mantras. Silence is the blade beneath breath.
He limped forward, one hand pressed to his ribs, the other dragging across the wall for balance. Every breath was pain. Every heartbeat a reminder of the world he had left behind.
Then the tunnel opened.
He stepped into a cavern vast as a temple, domed and silent, its ceiling lost in black. Pillars rose like petrified titans. Pools of still water mirrored his pale reflection. In the center, a monolithic stone stood upright, obsidian-dark, veined with silver threads that shimmered faintly. It pulsed. Not light, but memory.
Bones ringed the monolith.
Dozens. Some slumped against pillars, weapons rusted beside them. Others lay sprawled as if reaching for salvation that never came. Warriors, each one. Their armor bore styles lost to history. Their blades were not forged but formed from qi itself.
Altan stepped among the dead.
Each step slowed, heart matching the rhythm of the pulse. The monolith awoke at his approach. Symbols flared to life, not carved but remembered. They danced across the surface like wind-born fire. And then they moved.
Light shaped itself into memory.
He saw them: spectral warriors clad in robes of shifting color, locked in motion around the monolith. Their styles varied, but each flowed like water over stone. Strike, shift, breath, stance. Every movement was a conversation with the world. This was cultivation, not as violence but as expression. It was the martial Dao made visible.
Five figures coalesced from the light, circling him: one for each element. Wind danced with twin blades, fast and evasive. Fire struck like a hammer, limbs aflame in crimson qi. Earth stood grounded, each motion anchored like mountains. Water glided and redirected, defense turned offense. Spirit stood silent, still, centered, commanding without motion.
Altan exhaled. "Is this a trial?"
"What do you see?"
The voice echoed not from without but within. Dry, ancient. Not cruel. Curious.
"Patterns," Altan whispered. "Not attacks. Not defense. Conversation."
"Then you understand."
A figure emerged from behind the monolith, a man aged past the erosion of time. His robe was ash-grey. His hair the color of old snow. Eyes like coal embers. He walked barefoot yet left no mark on the dust.
"Who are you?"
"One who failed," he said. "And remained."
He gestured, and a ring of spectral blades rose around Altan, each shaped by a different elemental style. They turned, slow and deliberate, tracing paths through air and thought.
"This place," Altan began.
"Is a grave," the man said. "But also a forge. These who fell sought power. They lacked understanding."
Altan stared at the blades. His body trembled from exhaustion, but his spirit (that core the Orontai called the ember within) still glowed.
"I have no strength," he said.
"Then you are ready," the man replied. "Because true strength begins in surrender. What bends does not break."
He lifted a hand.
The blades turned inward.
Altan did not flinch. He stepped forward into their path.
The moment his foot touched the inner ring, energy surged through him. Not pain. Not fury. Resonance. His limbs lightened. The ache in his chest dimmed beneath a rising hum of qi. The spectral blades folded into him, not cutting, but weaving.
Visions swam before his eyes: riders galloping through grassfire, a woman singing flame into the storm, a man roaring defiance against spears. His lineage. His blood. His truth.
He dropped to one knee.
The old man watched in silence.
When Altan rose, the chamber pulsed anew.
The monolith opened. A single seam split its front. Within lay a saber. Not ornate. Not curved. Its blade was forged of voidstone and breath, its edge humming with remembered names. It thrummed in tune with his soul.
He reached for it.
As fingers closed around the hilt, the old man whispered, "You carry the last wind of a dying fire. Let it guide you."
The cavern darkened. The monolith dimmed. The bones stirred, not alive but as if relieved.
Altan turned toward the deeper tunnel now open behind the stone. The path forward called not with promise, but with purpose.
He did not look back.