The plain did not belong to anyone.
That was its danger.
Trade lights dotted the distance—lanterns strung between wagons, low stone buildings clustered where roads intersected, smoke rising in thin columns that spoke of industry rather than comfort. This was not a city. Cities required governance, and governance required accountability.
This was Crosswind.
A market-town that existed because no sect had yet decided it was worth claiming.
Kael entered at dusk.
The noise reached him first—voices layered over one another, haggling, laughing, arguing. Cultivation pressure hung everywhere, uneven and unrefined. Techniques flared briefly and vanished, like sparks struck without care.
Here, power was currency.
And currency was spent loudly.
Kael moved through the crowd without haste. People noticed him and then didn't. Their gazes slid off his presence, unsettled but uninterested. In a place like Crosswind, oddity was common. Survival dulled curiosity.
He stopped near a stall selling spirit-infused metal shards, their glow crude and unstable.
"You looking to buy?" the merchant asked, eyes flicking over Kael's plain robes. "Or sell?"
"Neither," Kael said.
The merchant snorted. "Then you're lost."
Kael continued on.
At the center of Crosswind stood a circular stone platform etched with overlapping marks—dueling sigils, arbitration seals, debt brands. It was where disputes were settled when words failed.
Or when words were never intended.
A crowd had gathered.
Two cultivators faced each other on the platform. One wore polished armor, confidence built on visible strength. The other was smaller, tense, eyes darting.
A contract dispute, Kael realized. Or the excuse for one.
The armored cultivator laughed. "You took the job. You failed. Payment is mine."
The smaller one shook his head. "The beast wasn't what you said it was."
The crowd murmured. Someone shouted for blood.
Kael felt the stillness inside him stir.
Not toward the fighters.
Toward the platform.
The sigils there were old, layered, rewritten again and again to favor whoever could afford better inscriptions. They enforced resolution—but not fairness.
The fight began.
It ended quickly.
The smaller cultivator struck first, desperation lending speed. His technique flared bright—and collapsed mid-motion. The armored cultivator's counter came clean and final.
The crowd exhaled.
Coins exchanged hands.
The loser lay still.
No one intervened.
Kael watched the sigils absorb the excess energy and settle back into readiness.
This is how the world prefers it, he thought.
Clear outcomes. No ambiguity.
He turned away.
He did not make it ten steps.
A ripple passed through the crowd—not fear, but attention. A widening awareness that something had shifted.
Kael stopped.
The platform behind him went quiet.
Not suddenly.
Gradually.
The hum of its sigils softened, their alignment drifting.
Someone laughed nervously. "What's wrong with it?"
A duelist stepped onto the stone—and hesitated.
The sigils did not respond.
They did not activate.
They simply… waited.
Kael felt the stillness inside him settle deeper, broader, like a weight finding its center.
He had not intended this.
But intention no longer governed outcome.
"Hey!" a voice shouted. "You—stop!"
Kael turned.
A man in layered robes pushed through the crowd, cultivation sharp and well-fed. Not a sect elder, but close enough—an arbitrator, someone who sold authority to the highest bidder.
"You did something," the man said, pointing. "The platform's reacting to you."
Kael looked at the stone.
"It isn't reacting," he said. "It's hesitating."
The arbitrator scoffed. "Platforms don't hesitate."
Kael met his gaze. "They do when they can't decide who they favor."
That unsettled the man more than accusation would have.
"You're disrupting trade," the arbitrator said. "That's not allowed."
Kael said nothing.
The stillness pressed outward slightly.
Not force.
Expectation.
The arbitrator swallowed.
"This place exists because no one interferes," he said, voice tight. "If you don't like how things work here, you can leave."
Kael nodded. "I will."
He stepped away from the platform.
The sigils flickered, then snapped back into alignment. The hum returned, louder than before, as if compensating.
The crowd released its breath.
Kael walked on.
By nightfall, he reached the edge of Crosswind.
Behind him, the market resumed its noise, louder now, as if to drown out the memory of hesitation.
Ahead lay open land and darker roads.
Kael paused once, looking back at the lights.
He understood something then.
Power did not need to be cruel to be corrupt.
It only needed to be transactional.
The stillness inside him settled into that understanding.
He did not know yet what it would demand of him.
Only that places like Crosswind would not forget what they had felt.
Not because he stayed.
But because, for a moment, the rules they relied on had stopped agreeing with themselves.
Kael turned away.
The road accepted him without question.