The mountain behind him no longer had a name.
Names were for places that still existed, for homes that might one day be returned to. What remained of the sect was ash and silence. And silence did not keep records.
Xie Yun walked anyway.
Not because he knew where he was going. Not because the forest ahead welcomed him. But because the blade's whisper still coiled behind his ribs like a breath he couldn't exhale.
Climb, it had said.
He didn't know what that meant. But he knew it didn't mean stay.
The narrow path beneath him twisted like an old scar, overgrown in places, broken in others. He moved with care. Not caution — he had nothing left to protect — but awareness. The kind of awareness you gained from being watched too many times in your life and surviving too few of them.
The blade in his palm had faded to a faint warmth. Not burning. Not guiding. Just… present. Like a lantern turned low.
The world here was quieter than he expected.
No beasts. No cultivators. Not even birdsong. Just the sound of his own footsteps against soil that had forgotten the taste of rain.
By midday, he reached the edge of a ravine.
It wasn't marked on any of the maps he'd once cleaned for the elder cartographers — those brittle old scrolls etched with mountains, rivers, and sect borders. This place wasn't on any of them. It felt wrong, like a memory scraped out of the world.
Below the cliff's edge, a shattered temple lay in ruin — choked with vines, its pillars fallen inward like ribs crushed by unseen hands. The air smelled of old incense and something older still: regret, perhaps.
He didn't know why his steps took him there.
Only that they did.
He descended carefully, one hand pressed to rock, the other curled unconsciously near his hip — where a sword should be.
He wasn't a swordsman.
He wasn't anything.
But the blade inside him — whatever it was — had memory, and some part of him was beginning to echo it.
The temple gates had long since collapsed. Stone lions lay broken, their faces weathered into formlessness. He stepped over them and entered.
Inside, the main hall remained intact in shape, if not in spirit. Dust hung in the air like smoke. The statues were blindfolded. The altar was gone.
In its place stood a mirror.
Framed in dark wood, polished to unnatural clarity. No dust touched its surface.
He stared.
At himself.
But… not quite.
The boy in the reflection looked like him. Mottled robes, ash-stained sleeves, eyes too tired for his age. But the mark in his palm — it was missing.
Instead, the reflected Xie Yun held a sword.
Black, curved slightly, no hilt — just a grip of wrapped cloth and an edge that drank the light.
He reached up, slowly.
The mirror itself didn't move.
It stared at him.
Then — the mouth moved.
But no sound came.
Just a single word, mouthed in perfect silence.
"Climb."
The mirror cracked.
Not spiderwebbed. Not shattered.
One clean line, from top to bottom — like a cut.
He stepped back.
The wind, which hadn't moved since he entered, sighed once and went still again.
He left the temple before nightfall.
Didn't look back.
Didn't question it.
He had learned, very quickly, that not all things in the world wanted to be understood.
That evening, he built a fire in the hollow of an old tree.
He watched the flames dance against the bark, throwing shadows across his hands. His palm — the one marked — looked quiet now. Normal. Almost forgettable.
He flexed it.
Nothing.
No voice.
No heat.
He leaned back against the tree trunk and closed his eyes.
The first dream came like a blade slipping beneath thought.
He stood on a black mountain.
Above him, the stars were wrong.
They moved.
Not drifted — moved. Turning in patterns, aligning and breaking like puzzle pieces trying to remember their shape.
Before him stood a door.
No walls. No threshold. Just a door of white stone, taller than any fortress, carved with runes that pulsed in a rhythm he couldn't match to his heartbeat.
He stepped toward it.
Something unseen stepped in front of him.
A figure — no face, no limbs, just a presence.
It held out its hand.
Xie Yun raised his marked palm.
The figure didn't stop him.
Instead, it reached through him.
He woke up with a gasp.
It was still night.
But the fire had gone out.
He sat up quickly, breath sharp.
Something had changed.
The air smelled wrong.
He looked around — eyes adjusting.
And then he saw it.
Just beyond the fire's edge, half-buried in the dirt, was a footprint.
Not his.
Not human.
A trail of them, leading away into the trees.
Fresh.
Still warm.
And beside them — a single object.
A hairpin. Silver. Unadorned.
The kind only worn by those from the upper sects — disciples who'd never set foot this deep into the mortal fringe.
He stared at it.
Then stood.
No sword. No plan. Just breath, and the memory of a blade not his.
He followed the footprints into the trees.
The trees here did not rustle.
They loomed.
Tall, gnarled things with trunks like ribs and leaves that reflected no moonlight. The deeper Xie Yun walked, the more he became aware that the forest was not simply old — it was waiting.
The footprints ahead were shallow but sure.
Three toes. Wide-heeled. No clawmarks.
Whatever had passed this way did not slink. It walked as if it belonged.
Xie Yun did not.
He passed beneath a low-hanging branch and paused.
The air had changed.
No breeze. No crickets. Even the usual nocturnal stirrings had vanished. The forest was not still — it was listening.
He stepped forward again. The hairpin from before now rested in his sleeve pocket. Cold, unbent. It hadn't belonged in this part of the world. Neither did he. But here they both were — strays of a system that had already ruled them irrelevant.
He pressed on.
The trail led to a clearing.
Or what used to be one.
Now, it was a pit. Circular. Clean. No natural formation ever carved something this perfect.
The trees stopped at the rim — not broken, not burned, just… halted.
At the center of the pit stood a single stone.
No altar. No steps. Just a flat, vertical slab like a gravemarker. Its surface was smooth, untouched by weather or moss.
But what caught Xie Yun's eye wasn't the stone.
It was what lay at its base.
A body.
Female.
Young.
Wearing the robes of a high-tier sect. Pale violet, thread-of-silver trim. Half torn, half soaked in something darker than blood.
She wasn't breathing.
Not anymore.
Xie Yun didn't move closer.
He didn't need to. Even from here, he recognized the stillness. The kind that couldn't be faked, couldn't be healed. Her eyes were open, but unfocused. Her mouth was parted slightly, like she had been mid-sentence when death arrived.
The footprints ended at her side.
And beside her…
A message.
Scratched into the dirt. Carved with something blunt. Maybe a nail.
The Sect of No Sword.
He stared at the words for a long time.
Not because he didn't know them.
But because he did.
They weren't supposed to exist anymore.
The Sect of No Sword had been purged a hundred years ago. Not disbanded — erased. Burned from every archive. Declared heretical for teaching cultivation without forms, without manuals, without permission.
The blade in his palm pulsed.
Not hot. Not cold.
Just… there.
As if it, too, was watching.
He took a step forward.
And the stone in the center of the pit split open.
Not cracked — split.
Down the middle.
Silently.
From within, light poured. Not bright. Not divine. Just a dim, pulsing white — like the glow of bone beneath skin.
Xie Yun did not retreat.
The blade had not told him to run.
And whatever was inside… had waited long enough.
He stepped into the pit.
Behind him, far off atop a twisted pine, the Tribunal raven turned its head.
Its third eye blinked once.
Then vanished into mist.