Snow blanketed the sacred mountain, endless and pure, but in the clan's secluded courtyard, silence weighed heavier than the cold.
Feixue stood alone beneath a barren pine tree, her wooden sword resting lightly in her small hands. The Grand Elder had ordered that no disciple was to disturb her training. Though only a child, she was unlike any other—each swing of her sword shifted the world itself.
She inhaled. The snow paused midair.
She exhaled. The snow drifted again, but slower—unnaturally slower.
Her eyes narrowed slightly.
"Too slow… not enough."
She stepped forward and swung. The strike was gentle, no louder than a whisper. Yet frost bloomed where her sword cut, spreading outward like crystalline veins across the ground. The air itself seemed to freeze, the falling snow suspended between heartbeats.
For a moment, it was as though time itself had stopped.
Then—crack. The ice shattered, and the world resumed.
The Grand Elder, who watched from a distance, trembled. His voice was hoarse. "This… this is no longer merely Ice or Sword. She is touching the flow of Time."
Such a thing was unthinkable. Time was among the most elusive of Daos, one that even immortals who had cultivated for hundreds of thousands of years could not grasp. Yet Feixue, at only seven years old, brushed against it as though it were a natural extension of her being.
Feixue lowered her sword. Her expression remained calm, but inside, a strange stillness stirred.
She had begun to feel it—the world's rhythm. Every falling snowflake carried a pattern. Every gust of wind marked a beat. Between those beats lay silence, and within silence… eternity.
That was where her sword belonged.
…
Later that night, in the ancestral hall, the elders once again gathered. The Grand Elder's report left them shaken.
"She is now touching the Dao of Time?" an elder asked, his voice sharp with disbelief.
"Yes," the Grand Elder replied gravely. "Sword, Ice, Silence, and now Time itself."
The hall fell into chaos. Some spoke of glory, of raising her as the clan's future sovereign. Others muttered of doom, of heaven's wrath descending. The debate grew heated, until one elder's voice cut cold through the air:
"We cannot keep this hidden forever. If she continues at this pace, the heavens will no longer hesitate. They will send judgment not upon her alone, but upon all of us."
The Grand Elder's hand tightened around his staff, but his voice was steady. "Then we must shield her until she is strong enough to shield herself. That is our only path forward."
…
Far beyond the mountain, in the endless void of stars, a ripple stirred. A celestial eye, unseen yet eternal, opened for the briefest instant. A faint will spread, scanning the realms. It did not yet find Feixue—but the disturbance she created in the laws of Ice and Time had not gone unnoticed.
The heavens were watching.
Back in her courtyard, Feixue sat cross-legged in meditation. Snow circled her like a river, rising and falling in a silent dance. Her small hands gripped the wooden sword across her knees, her eyes closed as though listening to something only she could hear.
The silence of snow… the flow of time… the stillness of the sword.
Her path deepened.
And somewhere in the distance, fate sharpened its blade.