The journey to Skull Mountain was a pilgrimage through a graveyard of ambition. Saturu traveled light, his few supplies a stark contrast to the weight of Kayon's warning and the dull, throbbing ache in his newly-set fingers. The elven sorcerer had been true to his word the path was watched.
They found him on the third day, in the jagged foothills known as the Stone Teeth. Three of them, clad in the crimson and steel of the Vermillion Knights. They moved with military precision, emerging from the shadows of the rocks. Their leader, a man with a face like chiseled granite, gave a cold, formal nod.
"The exile should not wander so far from his judgment," the knight said, his voice echoing faintly in his helm. "The wilds are unforgiving. Your father's justice awaits completion."
Saturu stood still, his hand not going to the simple traveler's knife at his belt, but resting at his side. He had no sword. "My father's justice," Saturu replied, his tone flat, "was poison and betrayal. It needs no completion from you."
The knight's expression hardened. "We are here to deliver it nonetheless."
They attacked as one, a coordinated wave of steel. Their longswords swept toward him in practiced arcs. Saturu moved, not with the elegant forms of his clan's teachings, but with the brutal, efficient economy of a warrior from a forgotten age. He flowed between their strikes, the memory of Kayon's broken fingers a fresh brand in his mind. Control.
He could not unleash his Divine Authority; the backlash without a proper conduit could shatter him. He had to be the weapon.
As the first knight's blade descended, Saturu didn't retreat. He stepped inside the swing, using the man's own momentum against him. He grabbed the wrist below the gauntlet, twisted sharply, and drove a palm strike into the elbow joint. Metal groaned and the knight grunted in pain, his sword clattering to the stones. Saturu drove his knee into the man's armored midsection, then slammed his helmeted head against a nearby rock. The knight staggered and fell.
The second knight was on him, sword flashing. Saturu dropped low, the blade passing over his head. He came up inside the knight's guard, parrying a dagger thrust with his own hardened forearm. The impact sent a jolt of agony through his injured fingers. Gritting his teeth, he trapped the arm, spun, and drove his elbow into the knight's throat. The man gagged, stumbling back, and Saturu finished him with a powerful kick to the knee that buckled the joint.
The third knight, the leader, hung back, his eyes wide with disbelief. He saw not a disgraced youth, but a specter of calculated violence. He leveled his sword, a final, determined challenge. Saturu didn't dodge. He met the charge, his movements a blur. He deflected the blade with a sharp, precise strike to the flat of the sword, then closed the distance. He gripped the knight's sword hand, his fingers digging into the gaps of the gauntlet. With a sharp twist and a surge of force, he forced the weapon from the knight's grasp.
The knight stared, stunned, at his empty hand. Saturu stood before him, his expression devoid of anything at all.
"A message," Saturu said, his voice low and cold as the mountain wind. "For my father. Tell him his knights are not welcome on my path. The next ones he sends will not return."
He didn't wait for a response. He turned and continued his climb, leaving the broken men among the broken stones. His hand ached, the freshly torn skin on his palm a testament to the encounter. The pain was another lesson, another reminder. He was shedding the skin of the cursed son, the failed heir. With every step toward Skull Mountain, he was reforging himself into something else entirely.
The days blurred into a harsh rhythm of travel and vigilance. His broken fingers, bound in a rough splint, were a constant reminder of his limits. He ate sparingly, drank from cold mountain streams, and slept in short, fitful bursts. No further pursuers arrived.
The landscape grew more severe, the air thinner and sharper. The green of the lower forests gave way to grey stone and stunted, wind-twisted trees. He began to find the first signs that he was on the right path a broken hilt protruding from a crevice, a rusted blade half-buried in scree, the skeletal remains of a long-dead traveler still clutching a notched sword.
On the seventh day, he reached the Pass of Regret, a narrow defile littered with the bones of those who had turned back. Here, he found his second test. It was not his father's knights. It was a solitary figure, seated on a boulder as if waiting for him. The man was old, his face a web of deep lines, and he held a simple, worn sword across his knees. His eyes, however, were clear and sharp, holding a deep, abiding sorrow.
"You are young to seek the mountain," the old man said, his voice like the wind through the pass.
"I have need of what it offers," Saturu replied, stopping a respectful distance away.
"The mountain does not give. It only takes, and sometimes, it leaves something behind in the emptiness." The old man stood. "I turned back once, decades ago. The regret has eaten at me ever since. I have guarded this pass since, turning back those unworthy, so they may not share my fate. Show me you are worthy of proceeding. Show me your resolve."
He fell into a basic, unadorned stance. There was no flourish, no named technique. It was the stance of a man who had spent a lifetime with a sword in his hand.
Saturu understood. This was not a fight to the death. It was a test of spirit. He had no sword to draw. Instead, he raised his hands, one whole, one bound, and settled into the foundational stance Kayon had drilled into him.
The old man's eyes showed a flicker of surprise, then respect. He attacked. His sword moved with a lifetime's precision, a series of controlled, measured strikes meant to test Saturu's defense, his footwork, his calm under pressure.
Saturu did not meet the blade directly. He flowed around it, his movements economical. He used parries and deflections, his bound fingers a liability he worked around. He was not trying to win; he was trying to prove he belonged on the path. For several minutes, they moved in a deadly dance, the old man's steel whistling through the air, Saturu a hair's breadth from its edge.
Finally, the old man stepped back, sheathing his sword. "You carry a great weight, boy. And a greater purpose. Your path is not one of turning back." He gestured up the pass. "Continue. The true mountain lies ahead. May you find what you seek, and may it not destroy you."
Saturu gave a curt nod of thanks and moved past him. As he left the Pass of Regret behind, the air grew colder, and the first true sight of Skull Mountain's peak came into view a jagged fang of black stone piercing the sky, surrounded by a swirling, perpetual storm. He was close now. The final trial was ahead.