The silence in the infirmary room was a living thing, a heavy blanket that smothered the air. Aurelia's question, her desperate, demanding plea for an answer, hung between them. Who are you, Irelion Vance?
Irelion lay on the bed, his mind racing faster than his broken body could ever hope to move. The truth was a poison that would brand him a madman. A denial was an insult that would cement him as an enemy. He needed a third path. A lie. But not just any lie. He needed a story forged from the scraps of his real life, a narrative so steeped in authentic pain that she would have no choice but to believe it.
He took a slow, rattling breath, the simple act a battle against his punctured lung. He met her gaze and, for the first time, didn't hide the ancient sorrow in his eyes—he let her see all of it, the weight of decades pressing through a young man's face.
"Irelion Vance is the name I was given when I joined this sect," he began, his voice a low, raspy whisper. "But it is not the only name I have carried. Before I came here, I was the disciple of a man you would have never known."
He paused, letting the weight of the words settle. Aurelia leaned forward, her expression a mixture of intense scrutiny and unwilling fascination.
"He was a wandering swordsman," Irelion continued, his gaze becoming distant, as if looking into a past she couldn't see. "Old. Broken. Dying. He found me as an orphan, starving in a ditch, and took me in. He was a master, a true master of the blade and of the battlefield, but the world had broken him. He was a refugee from a fallen sect in the Northern Continent, hunted by enemies he would never name."
He could see the flicker of recognition in her eyes. The story of a secret master and a hidden heir was a classic, tragic tale in the cultivation world. It was plausible.
"He taught me everything," Irelion said, and here, the lie began to bleed into a terrible, heartfelt truth. "He taught me tactics. He taught me how to read a battlefield, how to see the flaws in an enemy's stance. He taught me about demons, about their anatomy, their weaknesses. He had fought them his entire life, from the frozen wastes to the scorched deserts. He called it the 'anatomy of a monster'—the knowledge that every creature, no matter how powerful, has a seam in its armor, a flaw in its design."
"The flaw in my technique," Aurelia breathed, the question a sharp, silver needle. "How did you know it?"
"My master… he knew of the Frostbane clan," Irelion said, weaving the lie carefully. "He once fought alongside one of your ancestors in a forgotten war. He respected their power, but he saw the flaws born of their pride. He taught me how to counter the Frost Severance style as a lesson in humility, to show me that even the greatest techniques have weaknesses. It was a theoretical exercise. I never thought… I never thought I would face it myself."
The explanation was perfect. It explained the impossible without resorting to the insane.
"And the exam?" she pressed, her logical mind latching onto the next inconsistency. "Why would you hide all this? Why would you choose to fail?"
A genuine, bitter sorrow filled Irelion's eyes. He didn't have to fake this part. "It was his dying wish," he whispered, the words thick with the memory of a thousand real deaths. "His enemies were powerful. They had destroyed his sect, his family, everything he loved. He made me swear an oath on his deathbed: that I would never reveal the true extent of my skills. That I would live as a ghost, a failure, a nobody. He believed that to be powerful was to paint a target on your back. He wanted me to be safe. He wanted me to live."
He let out a dry, humorless chuckle that turned into a pained cough. "I was honoring his will. I was being a coward, just as he taught me to be."
He saw the final pieces click into place behind her eyes. His sudden jump in cultivation. His refusal to fight. His tactical genius. His sorrowful, weary demeanor. It all made a tragic, coherent kind of sense now. He wasn't a spy. He was a boy carrying the weight of a dead man's legacy, shackled by a deathbed promise.
"The shards," she said softly, her hand instinctively going to the collar of his robe where she knew the pouch lay hidden. "The broken swords."
"They were his," Irelion said, closing his eyes. "Mementos of his fallen comrades. The only thing he had left of the people he failed to protect." It was the truest thing he had said all night.
Aurelia sat back in her chair, the tension draining from her shoulders, replaced by a complex, dawning empathy. She looked at him, no longer as a puzzle to be solved, but as a boy who had endured a tragedy far beyond his years. The weight he carried was not a secret, but a burden.
"Your master," she began, her voice softer now, "he honored you with his knowledge. By forcing you to hide it, he also dishonored you."
Before Irelion could respond, the door to the infirmary room swung open.
The First Elder stood in the doorway, his hands clasped behind his back, his expression grim and unreadable. His gaze swept over the scene—the prodigy at the bedside of the failure, the air thick with an unspoken intensity.
"Aurelia," the Elder said, his voice calm but carrying an authority that could not be denied. "You were summoned. It is fortunate I find you here. We have many things to discuss."
His eyes then moved to Irelion, pinning him to the bed. The Elder had read the reports. He had heard the whispers. And now he was here for answers of his own.
"Disciple Vance," the First Elder said, stepping into the room. "You are awake. Good. Perhaps you can shed some light on the… fantastical tales I have been hearing." He stopped at the foot of the bed, his presence filling the small space with an immense pressure. "Tell me, boy. Who was this master of yours?"
Irelion's freshly forged lie, the fragile shield he had just constructed, was now being put to the ultimate test. He had convinced the prodigy. But convincing the shrewd, calculating leader of the sect was another battle entirely.