The wind howls, biting with a cold that feels older than the world itself.
Above the clouds, where the air thins like drawn steel, the mountain rises—jagged and unforgiving, cloaked in ice. Snow barely clings to the earth. Silence reigns, broken only by the wind's cry—or the faint presence of something older. Watching.
Near the summit, a lone figure sits on the edge of a jagged outcrop, gazing down at the world he left behind.
His cloak stirs, trailing like shadow. At his sides, two blades rest—Twilight Reaper, dark as starless midnight, and Dawn Cleaver, bright as first light. Forged as opposites, bound as one—the Eclipse Blades, a harmony of dusk and dawn.
Eyes half-lidded, breath calm, Asen Velarion gazes not as a dreamer, but as one who sees through the veil.
He looks downward—not at the world below, but inward. His breath moves slow, fogging the air like incense before vanishing.
He narrows his eyes. A slow exhale escapes.
He blinks.
Sound fades in like steel breathing. Boots shift. Blades unsheathe. Wind brushes across the stone floor.
The training grounds are vast—marble-tiled, walled with tiered seating. The sky above is overcast, the cold light sharp. Dozens of disciples, instructors, and elder knights stand watching in still silence.
At the center:
Asen Velarion.
Clad in black attire, twin swords sheathed at his sides. His stance is relaxed, but his gaze is clear—reading, measuring.
Across from him:
Three Knights, armored in steel-gray lamellar, standing in a loose triangle. They do not speak. Their presence alone carries weight.
These aren't novices. They are combat instructors, veterans of war simulations, wielders of the Grail Discipline—a close-range, pressuring sword art designed for control and attrition.
No blood will be spilled. But the bruises will sing.
A voice from the dais:
"Begin."
They move first.
The knight on the left closes in—short blade leading, stance tight. He's already inside striking distance, using economy of motion, slashing with a quick left-right combo aimed at Asen's shoulder and thigh. Fast. Clean. Designed to test.
Asen shifts. His right blade—Dawn Cleaver—snaps up diagonally, catching the second strike with a sliding redirect. Twilight Reaper doesn't wait. It circles in low from the opposite side, aiming to tap the knight's knee—not to injure, but to unbalance.
The knight hops back cleanly. No hit.
But the tempo is broken.
Before Asen can breathe, the center knight presses in—double short swords, pushing hard. His movements are minimal but constant. Slash, step, thrust, redirect. Every swing transitions directly into another. He's forcing Asen back, keeping him reactive.
Twilight Reaper crosses blades mid-air with a quick flick, deflecting a thrust while Dawn Cleaver answers—a rising slash that glances the man's pauldron with a dry, metallic screech.
Asen's footwork spins out of centerline. Circular step, weight on the heel. He's not retreating. He's repositioning.
The third knight joins—heavyset, a shield-user. He doesn't rush. He angles, stepping to close Asen's escape arc, locking him in a triangle. The other two realign. This is textbook Grail Formation—compress, control, suppress.
They're not attacking recklessly. They're hunting.
The first true clash comes in a snap exchange—synchronized. The double-blade knight comes from the front, the shield-user cuts across from the left.
Asen steps into the attack.
Twilight Reaper binds the left-hand sword mid-motion, deflecting the incoming strike. At the same instant, Dawn Cleaver pivots behind the shield, tapping its outer rim and pushing it sideways—just enough to open the angle.
Asen slides through the narrow space between them. The entire sequence takes three seconds.
The audience gasps—not at the strike, but the positioning. A clean disengage and re-entry—flow without pause.
The knights adjust. They tighten the formation, eliminating space.
This time, all three attack together—swords moving like machine parts. High, mid, low. Pressure from three angles. Controlled aggression.
Asen answers with rhythm.
The very air buckles.
Before the knights move, Asen is already gone—a blur, a ripple through the dust. A sudden gust follows where he'd stood, the snap of displaced wind sharp like breaking cloth.
One knight grunts—jerking forward as a cold edge kisses the hollow of his throat. Asen stands behind him now, Twilight Reaper resting flat across the man's neck. Not a cut—a message.
"Yield," Asen murmurs.
The knight blinks—had he even seen him move?
From the right, the second charges. His style is tight, efficient—each step short, each motion a perfect thread through air. He strikes low, then high, steel singing sharp and fast.
But Asen never meets the blow.
He bends backward, spine arched like a bow, the knight's blade carving air inches above his nose. Then Asen kicks off the ground, twisting midair in a full inverted spin whirling like a banner caught in storm wind.
He lands behind him, blades drawn—
Dawn Cleaver sweeps high, Twilight Reaper cuts low.
Twin arcs. One aimed for the shoulder, the other toward the calf.
Clang—clang!
The knight barely blocks, caught in a scramble. Asen's feet are already repositioning—always turning, always flowing, his next strike starting before the last ends. It's like fighting the wind—shifting, never where you expect.
They clash again—fast. A blur of metal, but the sounds are uneven—Asen never blocks twice, always redirects, always steps inside their reach.
Then comes the third knight—the anchor, shield raised, eyes locked.
He doesn't chase. He waits.
A test.
Asen smiles—not cruelly, but with focus.
He moves—no, vanishes—appearing just outside the shield's edge. Blade flashes forward, but the knight turns, deflecting perfectly. Steel scrapes across steel.
But even as he defends, Asen is already inside again—a slide-step, a pivot, a faint blur, and suddenly he's at the knight's flank, blades low.
Twilight Reaper flicks behind the knee.
The knight stumbles.
Another flicker—
Asen ducks under a wild counter-swing, rolls forward, and rises behind him—twin swords crossed at the back of the knight's neck.
No blood.
Just silence.
Then a breath.
Three Grail Knights, panting. One on one knee, one frozen mid-turn, the third staring into the space where Asen had been only a blink ago.
Asen?
Not even winded.
His blades lower—not as weapons, but as proof.
Footsteps echo behind him—Masters approaching, whispers rising.
"Did you see that?"
"He didn't fight them… he dismantled them."
"It wasn't just technique. He reads a fight before it even begins."
"That's not something you inherit. Even the patriarch never moved like that."
"He's not reacting—he's navigating, like the outcome's already known."
"At sixteen..."
"He's not just from the Apex bloodline—he's the one who's defined what it means to be Apex."
The marble arena stands wide and silent.
Asen's blades lower with a smooth, practiced motion, the fight already concluded before the final blow is ever struck. He doesn't need to check on the three knights sprawled before him.
His gaze flickers briefly to the high dais, where the patriarch of the Velarion family sits, unmoving—Lord Valric Velarion, his father, the sovereign of the clan.
His voice rings out, deep and clear, carrying weight across the arena, not in volume but in purpose.
"We agreed on a condition. I expect it honored."
The wind, fierce as it was, seems to pause in reverence.
The memory thins—like breath fading on cold air.
The mountain returns.
The cold presses in—not cruelly, but clean, absolute.
Asen does not shiver. His body remembers the weight of swords and the shape of battles. Now, there is only breath. And clarity.
The wind brushes past, sharp with snow and secrets.
He tilts his head. His eyes lift.
Above him: a sea of stars—cold, distant, eternal.
He breathes, slow and steady.
No crowd. No father's gaze. No arena waiting for proof.
Only the thin edge where sky meets stone.
His hands rest on the Eclipse Blades. Not to wield—but to ground.
Behind him, a narrow hollow dug into the rock—bare shelter. A thin bed of moss and cloth. His pack sits near, almost empty.
What's left is what he carried from the lowlands: dried meat, dense bread, salted roots. Food meant to last. Enough for weeks, if rationed.
No hunting here. Nothing lives this high.
He watches the stars. No illusions. No prayers. Just sky over stone.
When he speaks, it's not for anyone to hear. Just a breath carried by the wind.
He rises. Slowly. Deliberately. A man moving not from rest but from purpose he remembers.
The wind tugs at his cloak as he settles into the hollow. There is no fire, no warmth to speak of. The cold bites, but Asen feels none of it. He is still, his senses awake, alert as ever.
His eyes close, but his mind does not. Every sound—the wind, the shifting ice—catches his attention. His body rests, but his mind remains sharp. He sleeps as a warrior does: ready. Always ready.
Night deepens, then slowly fades.
The first light finds him through the mist—soft and cold on his skin.
Asen blinks, then squints toward the pale sky.
"So," he murmurs, almost amused. "The sun's risen after all."
Slowly, deliberately, his leather-gloved hands flex once, then rub together—friction sparking faint warmth into fingers long accustomed to cold. Without hurry, he lifts them to his face, palms dragging across sharp cheekbones and along the bridge of his nose, dry-washing in a motion as much ritual as necessity. The cold grates clean across his skin, sharpening thought rather than dulling it.
He rises—motions spare, precise. His cloak falls in clean lines against his frame as he stands to full height.
His eyes open—clear now, alert.
His hand drifts to the leather bag at his side, drawing out a glass bottle. He uncorks it and takes a measured sip, swishing it slowly to clear the dryness, then releases it discreetly to the side—controlled, precise—before swallowing. The cool water clears the dust, soothing his parched throat.
He re-stoppers the bottle, tucking it away with a smooth motion, his gaze sweeping forward once more.
Below him, the valley stretches vast and hushed—a sea of mist, pale and thick as spilled silk, coiling between jagged cliffs and long-forgotten ruins. The land is veiled in twilight shadow still, though dawn's edge touches the peaks in distant gold. Nothing stirs within the valley. No birdsong, no movement. Just mist curling slow and patient, as if waiting.
Asen's gaze holds steady, reading the land as a swordsman reads a stance. Contours of rock, gaps in ridgelines, faint shadowed passes where old paths once wound their way downward. He notes them in silence, cataloguing what memory and instinct offer. A thousand tiny considerations flicker behind his half-lidded eyes:
Wind direction. Mist density. Crumble lines in the old escarpments.
Even now, descent is not merely travel. It is movement through terrain. Terrain is always a language—and every language tells of dangers unseen.
Without fanfare, his right hand drops—fingers brushing along the sheaths of Twilight Reaper and Dawn Cleaver. He doesn't draw. He doesn't need to. The weight of them grounds him as surely as footholds on stone.
He steps forward.
Boots crunch faintly against frost-laced rock as he angles down the narrow spine of the mountain. Each step is deliberate—not cautious, but controlled—the gait of one who has walked blade-thin ledges before, in places where one mistake was all the world required.
The trail had not been marked.
No cairns. No carved signs. No maps whispered of it.
Asen had found it the way old hunters find forgotten roads—by reading the land, not the parchment.
Broken roots jut from long-dead scrub pines, and a faint hollow in the stone—a depression where feet had once trod often enough—guides him further.
Not made for travel anymore. Not meant to be found easily.
But still, a way.
Hours later—half sliding, half striding along crumbling scree—he comes upon a faint game trail. No more than a deer path once, its narrow thread winds along a ledge where gnarled black pines cling stubbornly to bare rock. Their limbs twist against the sky, claws raked by wind and snow, but still alive. Where trees endure, valleys soften. That was the old teaching. And so Asen follows.
The wind shifts. Faint. Barely perceptible.
His pace slows—not hesitation, but awareness sharpening. His gaze narrows slightly as mist rises thicker from below, as if stirred by something unseen.
He descends without pause, every step taking him closer—not just toward the lowlands, but toward whatever calls through mist and memory both.
The cold brushes past again. His breath escapes in a thin curl before vanishing.
He does not look back.
He steps through.
And the world unfolds into silence.
Before him stretches a vast lake, its surface eerily still, extending beyond what the eye can grasp. The mountains rise steeply around it, their forms hazy in the distance, their presence almost oppressive.
The land is silent, the air thick, as if holding something back—something hidden just out of reach.
Asen stands at the edge, eyes narrowed, aware only of the lake, the mountains, and the profound quiet that presses against him.
As Asen blinks, the world shifts. The harsh stillness of the lake blurs, replaced by a warm, sunlit clearing.
A young girl, no older than fifteen, sits on a large rock, her attention fixed on a canvas. Her faint blue hair falls in soft waves around her shoulders, and she paints the same lake that lies before him, the mountains rising in the distance.
The girl's brush pauses, and her eyes—bright and clear—meet his.
Her gaze lingers for a moment, before the image blurs, and the memory fades,
Asen opens his eyes.