Nathan was dragged backward into the memory he could never escape. He was a child again, no more than seven, clutching his mother’s hand as they journeyed to represent the Azul Sky Sect in a competition. The path through the forest had seemed ordinary until shadows broke apart and assassins descended. He remembered his mother’s voice, melodic yet edged with concern, promising that she and his father would keep him safe. He had believed her, but promises could not withstand steel.
The assassins lunged. His father’s blade carved frantic arcs, his mother’s qi flared in defiance, and together they fought with desperate courage to shield their child. Steel rang against steel, bodies collided, and for a time they held the attackers at bay.
Then, in the chaos, one assassin broke through and seized Nathan. A blade pressed against his throat, and his parents’ guard faltered at the sight. His father surged forward, steel flashing, wrenching his son free—but the rescue left him wounded, blood spilling as Nathan was torn back into his mother’s arms. The fight’s balance shifted, their strength taxed by the cost of saving him.
But the storm did not relent. More assassins pressed forward, relentless and unending. His parents struck them down one after another, the ground littered with the fallen, yet the assault never ceased. Blood spilled, breath faltered, and though they fought until the last, the battle consumed them. They fell together, their lives extinguished in the same heartbeat, leaving only silence where their voices had been. The forest swallowed their final sacrifice, and Nathan’s cry for his parents echoed unanswered into the night.
He waited, shivering beneath the mist, until robed figures appeared with lanterns that cut through the dark. They spoke the sect’s name as if it were grace, yet their touch revealed cruelty. In that moment, he was lowered to a servant, his destiny stolen, and his promise erased before the heavens could even witness it.
The illusion dimmed to the gray of dawns spent in silence. Nathan learned the language of footsteps and orders, of being present but unseen. He carried water up the mountain steps, buckets biting into his shoulders until the ache became part of him. The stone was unforgiving; knees bruised, palms scraped, breath burning like fire through thin lungs. Disciples passed him with laughter tucked into their voices, mocking his clumsy stumbles, reminding him of his place. He bent, lifted, and climbed, and when he fell, the world waited for him to rise and continue. That was his existence: to move without being seen, to endure without being thanked.
The mist shifted to a courtyard strewn with training weapons. A sword lay snapped cleanly at its middle, sharp bright metal shining like accusation. A disciple’s finger pointed, and blame fell upon him without question. He was dragged forward, punished brutally, and the verdict was delivered in the rhythm of boots and the coldness of faces that did not look at him so much as through him. Pain followed in heavy waves, a lesson reinforced by words that stung more than any strike, branding him worthless, filthy, and unworthy. When it ended, the sky had turned toward evening, and Nathan curled around the hurt, counting breaths until the night allowed him sleep without dreams.
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Days layered into years. He learned to scrub training halls and polish floors to a mirror shine. He learned to wake before bells and to move after the lamps were dimmed. He learned that apologies were expected, explanations punished, and silence safest. When a disciple slipped and needed a reason, his name was there. When a task failed and required a scapegoat, his face fit easily. He became a boy that blame found without searching. And still he rose each morning, carried water, cleaned steel, and folded robes neatly as though order could rebuild the life chance had shattered.
The illusion tightened, breath thinning as the palace pressed its weight deeper into him. Nathan watched himself kneel on cold stone, hands raw and red, nails dulled by scrubbing. He saw the way his shoulders curved inward, trying to make less space in the world, and the way his eyes learned to look at the ground because looking up invited attention that never arrived as kindness. He remembered taking a fault that was not his so an older servant could keep their place. He remembered the first time he bled quietly, changing bandages alone rather than asking for aid he knew would be denied.
Then the cliff. It stood as it always did—vast, unfriendly, opening into a dark that held no bottom. Elder Albert’s presence loomed at one side, mouth a hard line, the air around him stiff with judgment. Madam Ronda’s gaze slid over Nathan like ice, cool and distant, as though he were a stain to be washed away. The wind carried voices that branded him dust, forgotten, a servant unworthy of notice. He felt hands at his back, not gentle. The ground slipped. Gravity seized him.
He fell. The world of stone and sky turned, and the rush took breath and thought together. He struck, pain flashing, and the cliff was there again—above, below, and within. The illusion did not offer mercy. It moved him to the edge once more, set him in front of watching faces, and cast him down. He fell in different ways—arms flailing, body limp, eyes closed, eyes open—each descent a new language of failure. He learned what the abyss sounded like: the hush between screams, the beat of silence in a heart that would not quiet.
Nathan tried to stand at the base of nothing and found that the ground could be worse than the fall. Laughter folded into the wind, crisp and light, as though every drop were a performance staged for an audience that never tired. The cliff reminded him that weight could be ritual; that some lives were built to be pushed. He tasted earth, grit scratching his tongue, and understood that the palace wanted more than memory—it wanted acceptance, the moment in which a boy agreed that he was nothing and stayed fallen.
The mist did not break. The cliff did not end. Nathan remained inside the vision, the cycle tightening around his breath, the palace feeding on a lifetime of quiet wounds it would not let him forget.
After what felt like an eternity of suffering, his dantian ignited and his mind blazed awake. The marble had activated, binding its wielder in illusion to test the strength of spirit. Only when Nathan chose to defy his fate did the oath he had sworn to ascend flare into action, shattering the vision and freeing him.
