The biting wind howled relentlessly across the frozen wasteland, as if nature itself mourned the desolation of the Cold Moon Piercing Sect. Shrouded in snow and shadow, the fortress stood like a tomb—cold, unyielding, and merciless. Icicles hung like cruel daggers from the ancient eaves, and frost blanketed the cracked stones beneath, muting the echoes of forgotten footsteps.
Inside those towering walls, silence bore the weight of a thousand unspoken sorrows. The air hung heavy with the scent of old blood and broken dreams. Disciples moved like ghosts, their eyes sharp and cold, each carrying the burdens of rivalry, ambition, and whispered conspiracies. But among them, a single figure was all but invisible—a nameless boy with hollow eyes, dragging his broken soul through endless days of suffering.
To the proud disciples of the Cold Moon Piercing Sect, he was nothing. An orphan stripped of name and honor, a shadow beneath the towering legacies of the sect's elite. Even the biting cold seemed less cruel than their disdain.
The boy huddled in a corner of the training hall, shivering beneath his tattered robes. Around him, others sparred effortlessly, their strikes sharp and precise. He watched silently, biting his lip as laughter erupted nearby.
A group of core disciples approached, their faces twisted with amusement and malice. The tallest one, a smug youth with cruel eyes, sneered and kicked a small pile of snow onto the boy's head.
"Look at the orphan, freezing like a stray dog," he jeered loudly. "Why don't you just crawl back under the rock you came from?"
Another disciple shoved the boy roughly, sending him sprawling onto the cold stone floor. Laughter echoed as he struggled to rise, his body trembling from cold and humiliation.
The boy's eyes flickered with pain, but he said nothing. He knew resistance would only bring more torment.
Later, in the dim, drafty mess hall, the boy sat alone at a cracked wooden table. A plate of cold, barely edible food was pushed in front of him without a word. The elder disciples dined nearby, their eyes filled with contemptful disregard.
He reached for the food, but before he could take a bite, a figure passed by, knocking his plate to the ground. The food spilled across the floor, and a chorus of laughter followed.
"Clumsy little orphan," someone mocked. "Can't even eat properly."
He clenched his fists beneath the table, swallowing the lump rising in his throat. The bitter taste of loneliness and rejection was far worse than the cold.
Night fell like a shroud over the Cold Moon Piercing Sect. While the other disciples rested in warm chambers, the boy curled up in a narrow cell beneath the fortress, the stone walls pressing cold and unforgiving against his back.
The silence was broken only by distant echoes—whispers of secrets, footsteps of passing masters, and the sharp crack of a wooden staff striking a training dummy somewhere above.
His thoughts drifted to the forbidden teachings hidden deep within the sect's archives—the Heavenly Absorption Art. Forbidden because of its power to consume, feared because of the price it demanded.
He traced trembling fingers over a faded scroll he had stolen days before, his heart pounding with desperate hope.
"If only I could master this… if only I could rise beyond their hatred," he thought.
Suddenly, a voice shattered the quiet.
"Still alive down here, orphan?" The cold sneer came from a core disciple standing at the cell door. "Dream on. You'll never be one of us."
The boy said nothing, eyes burning with a mixture of pain and silent defiance.
Flashback — The River of Broken Promises
The biting wind was cruel even then, but the cold inside the small, tattered shack was far worse.
A woman, her face pale and drawn, clutched a small boy—no older than five—tightly against her chest. Her eyes were empty, hollowed by years of hardship and despair. The boy reached out, searching for warmth, for love—but found only cold indifference.
"Mother," he whispered, voice trembling, "please…"
She spat out a curse, her grip tightening. "Don't call me that."
Hungry tears welled in the boy's eyes as he watched the dirty world outside. The alley echoed with cruel laughter—the jeers and taunts of other children who shoved and kicked him without mercy.
His mother did nothing but glare, her gaze sharp as a blade. Food was thrown at him like scraps to a stray dog; her love was a forgotten thing, replaced by resentment and bitterness.
One cruel evening, as the sun dipped behind the grim skyline, the woman's eyes—cold and dead—fixed on the boy with a hollow emptiness. Without a word, she dragged him to the icy river that cut through the city like a wound.
Before the boy could scream, she pushed him into the freezing current.
The boy lay in the shadows, breath ragged and heart shattered. But even in that darkness, a spark stirred deep inside—a hunger for strength, for vengeance, for a place to belong.
He would no longer be broken.
The cold moon shone overhead, watching silently as a new chapter in the boy's life began—a chapter of pain, of fury, and of a forbidden power that could shake the heavens themselves.