Consciousness returned to Saturu in waves of agony. Each breath was a sharp, stabbing pain in his chest where Nozashi's mountain-weight blow had landed. He was no longer on the training grounds. The air smelled of ancient parchment, strange herbs, and ozone. He lay on a simple cot in a circular room lined with bookshelves that reached into shadowed heights—Kayon's sanctuary.
"Your ribs are cracked, not broken. A fortunate thing."
The voice was calm, melodic, and utterly devoid of pity. Kayon stood by a bubbling cauldron, not looking at him. The elven sorcerer's silver hair seemed to glow in the dim light. "The Mountain's Weight authority is designed to shatter fortresses. That it only cracked you is a testament to whatever durability you've managed to forge into that childish body."
Saturu tried to sit up, a groan escaping his lips. The memory of the battle returned with brutal clarity: the sensory-deprivation gas, the shattering of the Blossom Sword, the catastrophic loss of control. Shame, cold and sharp, joined the physical pain. He, the Oni Slayer, had been broken and saved. Again.
"You intervened," Saturu stated, his voice rough.
"Obviously." Kayon finally turned, his luminous eyes narrowing. "Your father's servants were taking your 'lifeless' body to a pyre, not a healer. It seems his pact requires a confirmed death. I merely corrected the narrative." He approached the cot, holding a steaming clay cup. "Drink. It will bind the bone and clear the spiritual channels you nearly ruptured."
Saturu took the cup, the liquid inside black and foul-smelling. He drank it without hesitation, the bitterness a fitting punishment. "The Northblades... they were tools. My father..."
"...Is a greater fool than I anticipated," Kayon finished, his tone dry. "To invite those puritanical zealots onto his grounds while reeking of demonic pact himself was a bold, idiotic gamble. He believed their hatred of aberrant power would blind them to his own. It nearly worked."
The potion took effect, the pain in Saturu's chest receding to a dull, manageable ache. But the deeper wound remained—the knowledge of his own weakness. The Blossom Sword was gone. He had no weapon, and his body was still a liability.
"I need a sword," Saturu said, the words a low vow. "A true one. Not a clan symbol that shatters under pressure."
Kayon studied him for a long moment, his expression unreadable. "The Blossom Sword was a crutch. It forced you to rely on a style that is not your own, on elegance over efficacy. Your power is too vast, too raw for such refined instruments. It is why they keep breaking."
He walked to a window that looked out over a mist-shrouded forest. "If you want a sword worthy of the Heavenly Seal Authority, you must go where swords go to die. And to be reborn. You must journey to the Skull Mountain."
Saturu looked up. "The Mountain of Fallen Swordmasters."
"Precisely. It is a place of judgment. The mountain itself tests a warrior's worth. Countless masters have journeyed there seeking a legendary blade. Most join the skeletons that litter its slopes. But if anyone can claim a weapon from that place..." Kayon glanced back at him. "...it is the man who has already died once."
The plan solidified in Saturu's mind. It was a dangerous path, but it was his path, not his father's, not the clan's.
"Before you go," Kayon said, his voice dropping, "there is the matter of my payment."
Saturu met his gaze. "You said you didn't expect me to fail."
"And I don't. This is not payment for failure. This is payment for the lesson." Kayon's hand moved faster than a striking serpent, grabbing Saturu's wrist. "The lesson you just learned about control. Or the lack thereof."
A searing pain, far worse than any broken bone, shot through Saturu's arm. He watched, jaw clenched, as Kayon methodically broke the index and middle fingers on his right hand with two precise, sickening cracks.
"The pain is a reminder," Kayon said calmly, releasing him. "Your power is a double-edged sword. Uncontrolled, it will destroy you long before any enemy can. Let the agony focus you. Let it teach you the cost of recklessness."
Saturu cradled his broken fingers, sweat beading on his forehead, but he did not cry out. The pain was indeed a sharp, clarifying force. It was the price for his survival, and for the path ahead.
"Now," Kayon said, turning back to his cauldron as if he had just adjusted a shelf and not shattered bone. "We must discuss how you will survive the journey. The Northblades will be watching the roads. And your family... your family will be watching everywhere else.
The words hung in the air, heavier than stone. Kayon's voice, usually a steady anchor, was now thin,
"And the factor worth noticing," he said, his gaze holding mine with an unnerving intensity, "is how your body's spiritual manifestation is the sole reason you can't handle mana expansion."
A cold knot tightened in my stomach. I had trained, I had pushed, I had felt the raw power of the universe strain at the seams of my being, only to have it sear through me, a wildfire with no outlet. Every attempt left me broken, my channels scorched and my spirit bleeding.
Kayon leaned forward, his ancient eyes seeing not my face, but the fractured truth within. "This is because your soul is missing its fragments."
The statement was so absolute, so fundamentally devastating, that the world seemed to tilt. A soul wasn't a thing that could be chipped or broken; it was supposed to be whole, the inviolate core of a being. But as he spoke, a deep, resonant part of me knew. I felt the hollow places—not as emptiness, but as phantom limbs of the spirit, a profound and aching absence I had carried my entire life without a name for it.
"To master mana expansion, you need to recover your fragments." His voice dropped, becoming graver still. "Those fragments can be your past authority… or one of your senses."
The cost of power was not just pain or discipline. It was a piece of one's self. My mind reeled at the horror of it—to quest for the echo of a forgotten crown, or to willingly sacrifice the taste of rain, the scent of dawn, the very sight of the world?
I looked at Kayon, my mentor, my only guide in the treacherous waters of the arcane. But I saw a finality settling over his features, a profound weariness that went beyond the physical.
"I am afraid," he said, the words soft with a genuine, heartbreaking regret, "I won't be able to help on that journey."
He sighed, a long, slow exhalation that seemed to carry the weight of centuries. The light in his eyes, once a furnace of knowledge and power, was guttering like a candle in the wind.
"My time has come."
The silence that followed was not empty. It was filled with the immensity of the path ahead—a path I would have to walk alone, hunting for the missing pieces of my own soul in the vast, unforgiving dark.