Cadia Riverlands, Year 642 of the Waning Star Calendar.
The village burned beneath a crimson sky. Screams echoed through the night as fire devoured the wooden homes like a starving beast. Shadows danced in the blaze—bandits, faceless and wild, cutting down men and women alike.
A boy crawled through the ashes, dragging a broken spear shaft clutched in both hands. His face was smeared with soot, and his breaths came sharp and shallow. He did not cry. There were no more tears left.
His name was already fading. His family—gone.
All that remained was forward.
---
Three days later, he collapsed on the Thousand Steps Pass, a sacred trail that led to the towering gates of the Tianyin Swordmaster Sect. The monks found him half-conscious, hugging a splintered spear shaft to his chest."
At first, they thought him a ghost.
---
"He has no name?" Master Longma asked, examining the boy with half-closed eyes.
"None he remembers," replied the old monk. "But he held that broken spear even in sleep."
The Sect had no tradition of taking in outsiders—especially not those who did not carry a sword. But something in the boy's silence unsettled the old master. Not fear. Not hatred. Just... stillness.
"Call him Zhao Long," Longma said at last. "Let the dragon watch over him."
---
Tianyin Swordmaster Sect – Five Years Later
The mountain mist was thick that morning as rows of disciples moved in perfect harmony, blades slicing the fog. Commands rang across the courtyards. Steel sang. Cadence was everything.
At the far edge of the field, outside the formation, a lone figure move like water, dancing with a spear.
Zhao Long.
No teacher guided him. No disciple joined him. The Sect revered the sword, calling it the purest path. The spear, they said, was crude—a soldier's tool, not a master's weapon.
But Zhao Long did not argue. He practiced the same movements every day. Thrust. Sweep. Parry. Circle.
He whispered the names he gave them himself: Piercing Cloud. Flicking Tail. Circling Scales.
---
"Why do you train with a spear?"
The voice belonged to Zhu Duan Meng, the golden prodigy of the Sect. He was taller, sharper—his swordplay was as elegant as it was lethal. The others parted around him like water before a ship.
Zhao Long paused mid-form, lowered his spear, and answered quietly.
"I don't know... I just do. My hands move even if I don't understand why."
Laughter rose from the younger disciples. Some mocked. Others jeered. But Zhao Long only bowed.
"I apologize if I disturbed the practice."
He left without another word, the wooden shaft trailing behind him like a tail.
---
That night, as the others slept, Zhao Long climbed beyond the training grounds to a clearing past the waterfall. Moonlight spilled over the cliff like liquid silver. There, he carved a circle into the dirt and began his forms again.
One hundred thrusts.
One hundred sweeps.
One thousand repetitions.
His hands bled. His arms trembled. But his eyes remained clear.
Above him, a cloud drifted across the moon—its curling form like a dragon watching silently from the sky, as if to say: it remembers.