They say only the dead find peace in Tianwu Valley.
Kael Ren stood alone among ruins older than memory—broken pillars scattered like the bones of an ancient beast, moss-eaten statues watching with empty eyes. In the umber dawn, mist snaked between shattered courtyards. Every sound was magnified: a pebble skipping down marble steps, a crow's cackle, the shaky hush of his own breathing.
Pain throbbed in his raw fists. He pressed bloodied knuckles to the cold stone, sucking in a shaky breath that stung as if the air itself resented being alive. The night's failed training replayed behind his eyes: stance faltering, his breath ragged, spirit refusing to surge.
*Always the same. No matter how hard I try,* Kael thought, lips tightening, *the world remains broken—and I with it.*
He remembered stories—the kind Elder Jian Mo would mutter over a dying fire, voice thick with unspent tears. Once, this valley was a sanctuary: disciples in ivory sashes, teachers with eyes like burning stars, laughter spiraling with the scent of incense. All gone. All dead or worse. Now, there was only him, scraping hope from bone and dust.
He wiped sweat from his brow, smearing grit across his cheek. How many mornings had he stood right here, heart full of dread, daring himself to believe there was still something worth fighting for? The answer hurt: too many and never enough.
A cold gust bit through his threadbare tunic, pinning memories against his ribs. Kael shivered—not from wind but from the ache of emptiness. *Is this all that remains?*
He forced himself into the ancient stance: knees bent, spine straight, arms loose but ready. He closed his eyes, searching for that elusive pulse he'd read about in moldy scrolls.
"Seize the marrow, crush the breath, split the void," he whispered. The mantra tasted like disappointment. Nothing happened. No surge, no clarity, just sweat pooled between his shoulder blades and the dull, familiar ache of wishing.
Anger coiled in his gut. He slammed his fist onto the ground; pain bloomed sharp and honest. If this hurt was the only thing that answered, then so be it. At least pain proved he was still fighting.
A presence drifted behind him—steps soft, steady. Instinct tensed Kael's muscles, but relief followed quickly: only one person could move so quietly through ruins.
"Training or punishment?" Elder Jian Mo's voice rumbled, creased by both wisdom and exhaustion.
Kael straightened, trying to mask his trembling. "It's all the same. The breath won't come." He hated how small he sounded, hated himself for hating it.
Jian Mo watched him—a gaze that weighed and measured but never condemned. The old master's robes hung heavy with patches, more mended than anything whole. His eyes, though tired, still carried an ember of something gentle.
"The way forward is never through force alone," Jian said. "Listen. Breathe for what is here, not for what is lost."
*Easy for you to say,* Kael thought bitterly. But this, he couldn't say aloud.
Jian Moon knelt beside him, the motion slow—painful, perhaps, for bones burdened by age and regret. "You are not alone, Kael. Not while one ember still remains."
If only Kael could believe the warmth in that statement instead of the cold pressing at his heart.
Then, from the distant ridge, a sound split the morning: not just a beast's howl, but a promise of hunger.
A shiver ran along Kael's arms. That wail—low, trembling, not quite beast and not quite wind—made his heart race. He glanced sidelong at Jian Mo. The old man's jaw had clenched, his knuckles white against the hilt of his wooden staff.
Kael felt the familiar urge to hide his fear, to play the brave disciple. But his stomach curled with dread. He remembered the stories: How monsters were drawn by anger, and how the desperate died quickest.
*If they come tonight, will I die screaming, or silent? Will anyone see? Will anyone care?*
Jian Mo moved closer, lowering his voice. "Inside, Kael. Quickly." The tenderness was still there, but now it was laced with urgency. "Seal the doors. The beasts are scouting earlier than usual. If the ancient markers still hold, they won't risk the main hall's wards tonight."
Kael hesitated, torn between shame and cracked pride. "Will you be safe?"
Jian Mo's lips lifted in a weary, fragile smile. "Safer for worrying about you."
Kael nodded, his throat tight as he turned toward the battered remains of the sect's heart—a ring of pillars encircling a stone dais, walls rebuilt a hundred times, banners so faded they looked more like scars than symbols. Each step away from his master was heavy.
Inside, the hall was stuffy and cool. Dust motes drifted, catching the thin sunlight that squeezed through shattered roof tiles. Kael pressed his forehead to one pillar, fighting the tremble in his arms.
*Why am I so weak?* The question gnawed at him every night. Sometimes he wondered if the world's ending had sapped everyone's spirit, or if it had only stripped hope from those already close to breaking.
Still, he settled into a corner, drawing his knees tight to his chest. The walls here whispered with memory—snippets of laughter, debate, the thud of a training stick, the echo of a hundred voices lost to darkness.
*Would they mock me? Would they pity me? If I fail, am I just another ghost added to the walls?*
He tried to focus on his breathing, as the elders—or what was left of them—had taught. In, out. Each inhale should draw in strength; each exhale, release poison. But instead of feeling power gather, he only felt the slow pulse of fear in his gut.
Outside, the wind rose, rattling the doors. Kael flinched before he could stop himself, shame burning in his cheeks. *Coward.* He tasted the thought, bitter and familiar. But the truth was, every night now felt like a last stand—hope and despair wrestling in the dark.
He remembered the old legends—a hero who once rebuilt a sect from dust, who found power not through strength but stubbornness and heart. Kael wondered what that hero would say if he saw him now: scrawny, battered, more haunted than hopeful.
Inside, he whispered a single vow. "I won't run. Not again."
He pressed his hand to the floor, feeling the cold stone's bite. If there was power left in Tianwu Valley, he would find it—or fall trying.
*Maybe that's the only kind of courage the world needs right now.*
He didn't remember falling asleep. One moment, Kael was upright, bone cold on stone; the next, darkness pressed in, heavy, the hush of Tianwu Valley replaced by a feeling of falling into water.
Then a dream took hold.
He found himself walking through a corridor of wind and moonlight—marble pillars not broken, but whole, blazing with inscriptions he could not read. Petals of pale flame drifted around his bare feet. The silence here wasn't empty. It was waiting.
His chest ached with longing. *Is this how it was, before everything fell?* He wondered what his family would say if they saw him now, lost in strange beauty.
He walked until the pillar-rows opened to a silver garden. At its center stood an obsidian monolith, cracked through but still standing, runes flickering. He reached out—his hand trembling, breath fast.
As his fingers brushed the stone, heat ran up his arm, and his heart thundered: not with pain, but possibility. Images flashed—a sky full of stars, monks breathing in rhythm with the cosmos, bodies glowing, impossible strength flowing through veins.
He recognized none of them, and yet they felt like memories he'd always had. Grief twisted through him—*my world will never have this again. I'm the last to see it. The only one left.*
The inscription on the monolith shimmered, words burning in his vision:
BREATHE.
DRAW THE NINEFOLD PULSE.
He obeyed.
He inhaled, filling himself not with air, but with that silver light—his lungs stretched, chest burning, marrow thrumming. He held the breath, body on the edge of something, his mind screaming to stop, to let go—
He exhaled.
The garden shattered in a burst of radiance, and the weight of centuries pressed through him as if every ancestor watched, hoping.
He jolted awake, sweat-soaked, heart hammering, body throbbing with strange heat as if he'd run for miles. The room was unchanged—just ruins and dust—but something inside him was not.
He flexed his hands. The ache was gone, replaced by a tingling energy that crept up his arms and settled in his bones. Power, faint but unmistakable, pulsed with his heartbeat.
He stared at the sky through a broken roof beam. For a moment, fear and hope warred inside him. *Was it just a dream? Did I—break through?*
A sound behind him.
He whipped around. Jian Mo, face smeared with fatigue and worry, stood in the doorway, staff poised.
"You felt it!" the elder gasped. His eyes were wide, and for the first time, Kael saw not disappointment, but uncertainty, even awe.
Kael swallowed, unsure. "I… think so. But it wasn't like anything you taught before. I saw… everything. A world I don't know. A technique I just—understood."
Jian Mo knelt, the movement stiff. "Describe it."
Kael told him about the dream the best he could—silver fire, ancient monolith, breathing that felt like becoming something other than flesh. As he spoke, Jian Mo's weathered hands shook.
When Kael finished, silence fell heavy. Jian Mo reached out and gripped his shoulder. "Be careful. Such visions bring gifts and curses. You walk a path no one else has."
*Alone again.* The thought was bitter, but somehow, with that thrum of energy still glowing in his chest, Kael felt—for the first time—not just fear, but resolve.
Outside, another beast's howl climbed the dawn. In the distance, the sky brightened—a new day, uncertain and cold.
Kael closed his eyes, feeling his breath move through him—no longer empty, but carrying hope, pain, and the memory of silver light.
He was not saved. He was not safe.
But he was different now.
And that would have to be enough.
He was different now.
That sense rode with him as he moved through the restless hush of the hall—every echo sharper, every shadow both more menacing and strangely less frightening. He flexed his hands as he stepped out, half-expecting pain to flare. Instead, there was an answering throb—powerful, persistent, foreign yet intimately his.
A faint, unfamiliar hope kindled deep in his chest. For a heartbeat, Kael dared to believe he could survive, maybe even more.
He found Jian Mo waiting on the steps, face turned to the dawn. The lines of the elder's face looked deeper, the eyes heavier with what they'd witnessed. Yet as Kael approached, those eyes met his, and some of the old sadness was gone—hidden or perhaps, just for a moment, overcome by surprise.
"You felt it, didn't you," Jian said, voice low but trembling.
Kael nodded, not trusting words. The old man studied him in silence, searching for signs of something lost—or something finally found.
"There is danger in new strength," Jian murmured. "And more danger in pretending it isn't there." He searched Kael's face, his own full of longing for hope but weighted by fear. "Can you control it?"
Kael tried to breathe as he had in the dream. The air was sharp and bright, tinged with a taste he'd never known—distant rain, old smoke, something else, something finer. He felt the subtle shift, the ghost of silver fire stirring in his blood, the surge answering his will, not overwhelming it.
"I think so," he said, breathless with awe and the trembling uncertainty of someone who doesn't trust miracles.
Jian nodded, slow, careful. "This valley has been waiting for someone to remember the old ways." His hand found Kael's shoulder again and rested there. "Perhaps it was waiting for you."
The weight of those words hit Kael with the force of both blessing and burden. The responsibility tasted dangerous and heavy. *Was he enough? Did he even want to be?*
But when the next beast's howl carried through broken stone, Kael stood up straighter. He looked outside not with terror, but with the cautious curiosity of someone who might finally possess a weapon to fight back.
As daylight bled through the clouds, Kael whispered a vow to himself:
*I may be alone. I may be the weakest. But I will not be forgotten, and I will not let this power twist me into something monstrous. I will use it—if only to see one more sunrise.*
He left the ruined hall as the dawn's chill crept over Tianwu Valley, heart pounding with fear, grief, hope, and something new: the shape of courage.
This was the beginning. The first breath in ashes.
[End Chapter 1]