Rain fell in the northern provinces.
Not a soft rain, but a sharp, stinging one—blades from the sky, cutting across the stone steps of a majestic mountain range that housed one of the Five Pillar Sects: the Heaven-Touched Sword Sect.
Here, silence did not mean peace. It meant power.
At the summit, deep within the Hall of Thousand Blades, dozens of swords stood upright, humming faintly in the presence of their master.
Elder Jing Lianzhen opened her eyes.
She had felt it. A scar—not a tear in the heavens, but in fate itself. Something had shifted beyond the reach of known cultivation. And more importantly, it had happened outside the sanction of the sects.
An affront to order.
She stood slowly. "Summon the Disciplinary Blades."
Within moments, five figures clad in silver robes appeared in kneeling formation, blades at their backs.
"There is a force rising in the eastern wilderness," she said. "A heresy born not from demonic cultivation, but from absence."
One of the silver-robed cultivators tilted his head. "Absence, Elder?"
"A void that does not consume—but denies." She turned toward a map carved into the stone wall behind her. "A path that leaves scars instead of footprints."
She placed a finger on a blank portion of the map. "I want it found. I want it burned from memory."
The five rose as one. "It will be done."
Jing Lianzhen watched them go. But even as they departed, she knew.
She was already too late.
---
Far from the sect halls, Xu Tianyin stood beneath a cliff's edge, watching the valley below. Storm clouds rolled in, but he did not flinch at the thunder.
Bai Yeming joined him, silent as ever.
He glanced at her. "You feel it too, don't you?"
She nodded. "The swords are coming."
Tianyin turned his face back toward the horizon. "Will they understand what we are?"
"No." Her voice was quiet. "But they will fear it."
He didn't respond.
Because deep inside, he wasn't afraid of the swords.
He was afraid of what he was becoming to face them.