The peace broke on the third day of snowmelt.
A man in green silk arrived, carried on a palanquin down the northern cliffside path. His boots were untouched by dust. His fingers gleamed with jade rings. But it was his eyes that unsettled them—too calm, too practiced, like a man used to ending lives mid-sentence.
He bore a sigil none of them recognized but which made Ashan's eyes narrow. Skyblade Sect.
He smiled as he entered the village. "What a quiet place. Peaceful. Too peaceful."
The villagers greeted him with careful bows. Tea was served. He was given the guest chamber carved into the cliff-face wall. But on the second night, he spoke.
"You've harbored a fugitive."
Ashan, seated on a flat stone outside the guest chamber, didn't even open his eyes. "Define 'fugitive.'"
The man grinned. "A cultivator who killed a Skyblade Elder and vanished into these cursed cliffs. We followed his qi signature here."
Ashan stood.
"I killed him," he said.
The man blinked. "You?"
Ashan nodded. "He slaughtered a village. I cut him down."
The air grew cold.
"You shouldn't have done that," the man said.
The next day, five more cultivators came. Robes of deep green. Blades that sang when drawn. And at their center, a man wearing an iron mask. Silent. Trembling with spiritual force.
Arin and Lira watched from their home. "Why are they here?" Lira asked.
"To hurt us," Arin whispered. "But they won't."
Ashan came to Arin that evening, placing a cloth-wrapped bundle in his hands — a bow made of bone and obsidian, lighter than air. Ancient.
"Your hands will shake," Ashan said. "Your aim will fail. But one day, they won't."
"Am I ready?"
"No." Ashan smiled. "But the world won't wait."
Kael, meanwhile, stood in the elder's tent that night.
The cultivators had returned with demands: surrender Ashan, or face judgment.
The elder refused, his voice steady. "He is one of us."
But Kael stepped forward, jaw clenched, eyes cold."And what of the rest of us?" he asked. "Are we ready to die for a swordsman with no past and no future?"
The elder's silence was his answer.
That night, the gates were left open.
That night, the seals on the outer paths failed.
That night, the village burned.
Ashan fought like a falling star, cutting through green-robed figures like wind slicing grain. He was fast. Too fast. Until the man in the iron mask moved.
A single blow shattered the earth. Another broke Ashan's blade.
From a distance, Arin watched as his master fell on one knee, blood tracing his lip.
Kael stood at the edge of the flames, his expression unreadable.
"You betrayed us!" Arin screamed.
Kael didn't flinch. "I made sure they didn't kill everyone. Just Ashan. Just him."
"They took Lira!"
Kael's silence was worse than denial.
The house collapsed behind them. Elara's hand — unmoving beneath the rubble. Ral's tools — charred. No survivors.
Ashan, bleeding and broken, reached out to Arin as the flames approached. "Take it… take the bow. Run."
"I won't leave you."
"You must."
A final whisper.
"Arjuna once said, A warrior's path is not chosen. It is walked."
Then he was gone.
Arin climbed the western cliff again, dragging the bow.
He bled. He cried. He didn't stop.
From the summit, he looked down at the still-burning remains of Stone Hollow.
"I'll find her," he whispered. "I'll become stronger. Not for revenge. For what you all stood for."
The wind was cold.
But Arin stood still.
He was no longer just a boy with a sling.
He was a disciple of Ashan. A bearer of the bow.
A seeker on the hardest path.