A person's mental state does not grow simply with the passing of time and years.
It completes its growth in an instant, after a single event.
To make one's own choice is only to come of age; to make one's own choice, and then to bear all the responsibilities it brings, and even knowing full well the consequences that choice will entail, yet still never regret it—only then can it be called growing up.
That final thrust of the Great Khan's spear drove the armor on Ashina's chest outward to the back.
Yet it seemed as though it had pierced straight into his heart as well.
It made that once unruly Seventh Prince Ashina, who had until recently been brimming with high spirits, become in an instant the Khan of the Turkic remnants upon the steppe; his shoulders broad enough to bear the weight of fate and his people, and so those great nobles who, even now, still harbored murderous intent and unwillingness became the targets he had to sweep away.
