The mask was made of lacquered wood, blackened and plain, with no markings. No crest. No signature. Just two slits for the eyes.
"Hold still," Yan said, and with a calligrapher's precision, pressed the cooled cloth against Nameless's face, fitting it one final time.
Nameless didn't flinch. He stared ahead, not at the old master, not at the flames, but at the cave's mouth — the place where silence ended and the Empire began.
"You know," Yan muttered, tying the final knot behind his head, "this is the part where most boys ask for luck or blessings or forgiveness."
Nameless breathed slowly. "Then they were still boys."
The old man grunted, approving and bitter all at once. "And what are you, then?"
"A wound," Nameless said. "One that learned to walk."
Yan paused. Then stepped back, arms behind his back, studying the figure before him. Wuye, the prince, was gone. Burned away in the grave.
What stood now was someone sharper. Quieter. He wore a threadbare black cloak over dark robes, and the voidsteel blade hung sheathed on his waist, humming faintly like a song only ghosts remembered but the most dangerous part wasn't the sword.
It was the silence behind the mask. Nameless turned to the elder who'd buried him once and forged him twice.
"I'm going," he said.
"To where?"
"Where rot pretends to be law."
Yan smiled, faint and cruel. "Then start small. A blade that swings too early breaks before it lands."
Nameless nodded once.
"I won't go looking for war," he said. "But if it finds me, I'll show it what I learned in your grave."
He left before sunrise.
No ceremony. No farewell speech. Just the soft crunch of boots in snow and the mountain wind hissing farewell through dead pine needles.
His steps were steady.
The cold was nothing now.
He passed the crooked tree where he'd first meditated. The shattered rocks where Yan had struck him with a wooden sword. The clearing where he'd stood still in a storm until the wind gave up.
Each place etched itself into him and still, he did not turn back.
The world beyond the valley was louder than he remembered. Birds called. Branches creaked. Somewhere far below, a river laughed to itself, unaware of the blood it would likely carry one day.
Nameless moved through it like a shadow.
Three days passed.
He hunted game. Drank snowmelt. Slept with one hand on the hilt.
By the fourth night, he reached the edge of a border town — just close enough to smell charcoal smoke and cheap wine, just far enough to remain unseen.
He crouched in the treeline.
Watched and saw it begin.
A man knelt in the snow, bleeding from the mouth. Another stood above him — draped in red robes, the seal of an Imperial Inspector gleaming on his belt. Five soldiers flanked him, armed with shortspears and bored expressions.
The inspector kicked the man again. "Where is the grain?"
"I told you," the villager gasped. "We don't—"
Another kick.
Nameless didn't move.
Not yet.
The inspector turned to the crowd. A dozen villagers stood nearby — silent, afraid, heads bowed.
"This man is a liar," the inspector announced. "And a thief."
"No," the kneeling man wheezed. "I just—my son's sick. He needed—"
"I don't care," the inspector said flatly. "If he dies, one less mouth to feed."
He turned, gestured.
One soldier stepped forward, spear raised.
Nameless stood.
He walked into the clearing like a shadow slipping between moments.
No grand entrance. No words.
Just footsteps.
The spear didn't fall.
The soldier paused.
Eyes narrowed behind the mask.
The inspector sneered. "Who the hell—"
He never finished the sentence.
Nameless moved.
The blade whispered and the soldier dropped, gasping, his weapon clattering to the ground — uninjured, but unmoving. His Qi thread severed.
The crowd gasped.
The inspector staggered back, reaching for his seal, but Nameless was already there. One hand gripped the man's throat. Lifted.
Not killing.
Just showing.
The blade didn't leave its sheath.
Didn't need to.
Nameless leaned in close.
Spoke one word: "Leave."
And the void behind that word made the inspector tremble.
He dropped the seal. Ran.
The soldiers followed.
Nameless turned.
The villagers stared.
Some in awe. Some in fear.
The man who had been beaten was still kneeling.
Nameless stepped forward.
Knelt, slowly and offered him a hand.
The man took it, wide-eyed.
"W-who are you?" he asked.
Nameless looked down at the sword in his hand.
At the path behind him.
At the future ahead and said: "No one."
Then he turned and walked into the night.
Later, as the town settled behind him and the moon rose high, he paused on a hill. Snow drifted again. He stared up at the sky, hidden behind his mask and finally spoke the vow he'd carved into silence:
"I will not reclaim my name.
I will not rebuild the house that killed me.
I will not kneel.
I will not rule.
I will only cut.
Until nothing false remains."
The wind carried it.
Not to gods. Not to ghosts but to the man he used to be.
The one who died poisoned and afraid. Somewhere in the cold night, that boy finally vanished and Nameless walked on.
He did not look back but behind him, the village stirred.
The man he'd saved sat in the snow, bleeding and confused, hand clenched around the warmth of survival. The inspector's seal still lay where it had fallen — a symbol broken not by violence, but by refusal.
The villagers whispered that night. Not loudly. Not joyfully.
Softly. Like people remembering how to speak after too long in chains.
They didn't know the masked man's name but they would remember what he did and how the blade never left its sheath.
Hours later, deep in the woods, Nameless paused beside a withered shrine. A single candle flickered inside — long since abandoned, its deity forgotten. Wind had stripped the roof of tiles. Vines curled around offerings no one had touched in years.
He knelt there. Not to pray but to listen.
To the quiet.
To the weight of what he'd done.
Not the strike. Not the mercy.
The choice. He took a piece of charcoal from his pouch. Scrawled one word on the inside of the shrine's rotting wall.
Remember.
Then he stood and vanished into the trees.