Jon
Master Zhi's study smelled of ink and herbs, familiar scents that should have been comforting. They weren't.
Jon sat on the low examination bench, stripped to the waist, staring at a point on the wall where two scrolls hung slightly crooked. He focused on that imperfection because focusing on anything else—Mei Ling's worried face in the corner, Zhi's methodical movements, his trembling hands—was unbearable.
The shaking had mostly stopped. Mostly. His right hand still trembled intermittently, the fingers that had betrayed him twitching like dying insects. His ribs ached with every breath, a deep bone-level pain that he recognized from the storm, from Yunkai, and from all the times his body had been broken and put back together wrong.
I wanted to show them Arthur Dayne. I showed them a broken thing.
Cursed. White devil. The servants were right. There's something wrong with me.
"Raise your arms," Zhi said. "Slowly."
Jon obeyed. His ribs screamed in protest, the muscles along his sides spasming as he lifted. He got his arms perhaps two-thirds of the way up before the pain became a wall he couldn't push through.
Zhi noted the development without comment. His face revealed nothing—the same scholarly neutrality he brought to translating ancient texts or discussing military history. But over these months, Jon had learned to interpret the old man's subtle cues. The slight tightening around his eyes. The almost imperceptible shake of his head.
It wasn't positive news.
"Make a fist. Both hands."
The left hand cooperated, his fingers curling smoothly into his palm. The right trembled, the digits moving unevenly, the grip weak and uncertain. Jon stared at his hand like it belonged to someone else.
"Breathe deeply. As deep as you can."
Jon tried. His lungs expanded, filling with air—and then hit a wall. The scar tissue and damaged lung capacity were the legacy of seawater exposure and drowning. He coughed, the spasm sending fresh pain through his ribs.
Zhi continued his examination in silence. His fingers probed Jon's ribcage, pressing gently at points that made Jon hiss through his teeth. He manipulated Jon's right hand, testing each joint, each finger, his expression growing more grave with every movement.
Finally, he stepped back. He washed his hands in a basin on his desk. He took his time drying them, choosing words.
"Your techniques are extraordinary," Zhi said at last. "In all my years, I have seen nothing quite like them. The speed, the power, the enhancement of the body's natural capabilities—remarkable."
Jon waited. There was always a "but."
"But your body cannot contain what you're asking it to do."
The words landed like stones in still water, rippling outward into silence.
Zhi picked up a ceramic cup from his desk—a simple thing, pale blue glaze, the kind used for everyday tea. He held it up to the light.
"Imagine this cup is your body. Your breathing techniques are like pouring boiling water into it. A strong cup can hold boiling water without breaking." He tilted the cup slightly, and Jon saw what he hadn't noticed before: a hairline fracture running down one side, barely visible. "But a cup with cracks..."
He didn't finish the sentence. He didn't need to.
"Your fingers," Zhi continued, setting the cup down, "were broken and healed wrong. I repaired them as best I could, but the bone itself is weakened. Every time you grip a sword with full force, you stress fractures that never fully mended."
Jon looked at his right hand. The fingers that had failed him. The fingers that Grazdan's guards had broken one by one while they laughed.
"Your ribs have been broken at least three times that I can identify. Possibly more. They're held together by scar tissue and hope. The rotational force required for your techniques—especially with two swords—puts extraordinary stress on the ribcage. You're re-cracking them every time you push too hard."
Three times. Jon tried to remember. The storm, certainly. The beating in Yunkai when he'd tried to escape. And before that—had he broken ribs in Braavos? In Volantis? The injuries blurred together, a catalogue of damage he'd stopped counting long ago.
"And your lungs..."
Zhi paused. Something in his expression shifted—not pity, exactly, but something close to it.
"The seawater damage from the shipwreck. Scar tissue in the lung lining. Your breathing capacity is perhaps seventy percent of what it should be. For normal activity, the condition is manageable. For techniques that require deep, powerful breathing,
"I'm crippled."
The word came out flat. Dead. Jon hadn't meant to say it, but there it was, hanging in the air between them.
"You're damaged," Zhi corrected. "There's a difference."
From the corner, Mei Ling's voice cut through the silence: "There has to be something. Medicine. Treatment. Something."
Her voice was fierce, almost angry—not at Jon, he understood, but at the situation. At the unfairness of a world that would give a boy extraordinary gifts and then break his body so he couldn't use them.
Zhi turned to face her. "There may be. But it is not my art to teach."
Jon looked up sharply. "What do you mean?"
The old scholar moved to a scroll rack along the wall, his fingers trailing across the wooden handles until he found the one he wanted. He drew it out carefully and unrolled it across his desk.
"Your techniques strengthen the outside," he said. "Muscles, speed, reflexes. They are external arts. Magnificent, but external."
The scroll showed an anatomical diagram unlike any Jon had seen before. Not muscles and organs—bones. The human skeleton is rendered in intricate detail, with lines of energy flowing through it like rivers through a landscape. Characters he couldn't read annotated various points along the spine, the ribs, and the long bones of the arms and legs.
"In Yi Ti, we understand that power has two foundations. The external, yes. But it's also internal. The skeleton itself. The bones, the marrow, are the structure that everything else is built upon."
Zhi traced one of the energy lines with his finger.
"There are arts that strengthen the internal foundation. Arts that rebuild bone from the marrow out. That turns a cracked cup into an iron vessel."
Hope flickered in Jon's chest—dangerous, fragile, but there. "Can you teach me?"
"No. This is not my discipline." Zhi rolled the scroll closed again, handling it with the reverence of something precious. "But I know someone who can."
Jon
The twin practice swords rested against the wall where Sun Cao had left them.
Jon couldn't stop looking at them. His failure, rendered in wood. His dream seemed to mock him from across the room.
"Tell me about these," Zhi said, following his gaze.
"They're practice swords. For dual-wielding."
"I can see that. Why two?"
Jon was quiet for a long moment. Then, because Zhi had earned honesty—because Zhi had just laid bare the truth of Jon's broken body without flinching—he answered.
"There was a knight in Westeros. Arthur Dayne. They called him the Sword of the Morning."
He told the story more fully this time. The legendary blade Dawn, forged from a fallen star, pale as milk and sharper than any steel. The knight who was so skilled he needed no shield, who carried a second sword instead because one weapon wasn't enough to contain his mastery. The tales of his victories—the Smiling Knight, the Kingswood Brotherhood, a hundred other foes who'd fallen before him.
"He served three kings," Jon said. "With honor, unblemished. They say he could have taken the throne himself if he'd wanted. But he chose duty instead."
"What happened to him?"
"My father killed him." The words still felt strange, even after all this time. "At the end of Robert's Rebellion. This event took place at a tower located in the mountains of Dorne. They say Father wept when it was done. He'd killed the finest knight in all the Seven Kingdoms, and it broke something in him."
Zhi listened without interrupting. When Jon finished, the old scholar's expression was thoughtful rather than dismissive.
"You wish to honor this knight's memory? This man your father killed?"
Jon hesitated. He'd never framed it quite that way.
"I want to be... like him. Good at something. Great at something." The words came slowly, dragged up from somewhere deep. "Not just a survivor. Not just a bastard who runs and hides and barely makes it through. I wanted to be worthy. Of something. Of everything."
"You want to be worthy," Zhi repeated. Not a question.
"Yes."
Zhi was quiet for a moment. Then he picked up one of the practice swords, testing its weight and examining the balance.
"There is honor in aspiration," he said. "I do not mock your dream."
Jon waited for the rest.
"But consider: this knight—did he have another's memories flooding his mind? Did he have scars from chains and brands? Did he begin his training as a child with a body already broken by slavery and storms?"
"No."
"Then you cannot walk his path. Not as he walked it."
The words hit Jon like a blow to the chest. He had been aware of it, hidden beneath his hope. But hearing it spoken aloud—
"Dual-wielding requires extraordinary coordination, stamina, and skeletal strength," Zhi continued, setting the sword down. "Your dominant hand is compromised. Your ribs cannot support the rotational force. Even if your breathing techniques worked perfectly, your body would fail you."
He met Jon's eyes.
"You experienced this today. Three seconds of glory, then collapse. If you continue on this path, the collapses will come faster. The damage will compound. Within a year—perhaps less—you will have destroyed what's left of your body's capacity."
"Then what?" Jon's voice cracked. "Give up? Accept that I'll never be—"
"I didn't say that."
Jon stopped. Looked at the old scholar.
"I said that you cannot follow Arthur Dayne's path in the same way he did." Zhi moved back to the anatomical scroll, unrolling it again. "But there are other paths to the same destination."
He gestured to the diagram—the skeleton with its flowing lines of energy.
"The internal arts. The Golden Marrow. If your skeleton were rebuilt—strengthened from within—your body could support what your techniques demand."
"And then?"
"And then, perhaps, you could wield two swords without shattering yourself. But the foundation must come first. You cannot build a tower on sand."
Jon stared at the scroll. The lines of energy that flowed through the bones like rivers. This strength is different from anything Marcus had taught him.
"How long?"
"The first stage—Bone Washing—takes two to three months. Painful months, from what I understand. The second stage—Marrow Refinement—another six to twelve. Full mastery takes years."
Years. Jon did the math. Years before he could return to the twin swords. Years of building something invisible, internal, while his dream waited.
"That's... a long time."
"You're nine years old. You have time." Zhi's voice softened slightly. "The question is whether you have patience."
Jon looked at the practice swords again. Then at the scroll. Then at his hands—the right one still trembling slightly, the fingers that had failed him when he needed them most.
"If I do this," he said slowly. "The internal training. Will I be able to use them again? Someday?"
Zhi didn't answer immediately. When he spoke, his voice was careful and honest.
"I don't know. Perhaps. If you complete the training, rebuild your body properly, and integrate both the internal and external arts, then perhaps you will succeed.
"That's not a promise."
"No. It's a possibility. That's all I can offer."
A possibility. After everything—Winterfell, the slave pits, the storm—he was still chasing possibilities.
But possibility was more than he'd had when he washed up on that beach.
"Who teaches this art?" Jon asked. "The internal training?"
"A master named Feng Huang. He lives in a monastery in the mountains, three weeks' journey from here. They call him the Stone Tiger."
"Will he teach me?"
"That depends on you. He doesn't take students easily." Zhi began rolling up the anatomical scroll. "You'll have to convince him you're worth his time."
Mei Ling
The garden was golden in the late afternoon light.
Mei Ling found Jon on their bench, the twin practice swords laid across his lap, staring at nothing. His white hair caught the sunlight, and for a moment she was reminded of the day she'd found him on the beach—pale and broken and barely alive.
He'd come so far since then. And today, she'd watched him shatter all over again.
She didn't speak immediately. She just sat beside him, close enough that their shoulders almost touched. She'd learned, over these months, that Jon needed space before he needed words. That sometimes the best thing she could do was simply be present.
The garden was quiet around them. Birds sang in the cherry trees—leafy now, the blossoms long since fallen. A breeze stirred the branches, sending shadows dancing across the worn wood of the bench.
Finally, Jon spoke.
"I wanted to be like him. Arthur Dayne."
"I know."
"I thought if I could fight like he did—two swords, unstoppable—then I'd be more than just... this."
He gestured vaguely at himself. He was at everything.
"A bastard. A slave. A refugee. Someone who survives but never really wins."
Mei Ling considered her response carefully. She wanted to say the right thing—not the easy thing, but the true thing.
"You've won plenty," she said.
"When?"
"You survived crossing the world. You survived the storm. You survived whatever happened before you came here—you still haven't told me all of it, and that's fine, but I know it was awful."
She turned to face him directly, tucking one leg under her on the bench.
"You beat Sun Cao in that duel. You earned Master Zhi's respect. You made my father—who doesn't notice anyone—actually pay attention to you."
"That's just surviving. That's not—"
"That's not what? Not dramatic enough? Not like some dead knight from a story?"
Something sparked in her chest—not anger, exactly, but something fierce and protective. Something that refused to let Jon diminish himself.
"You know what I think about Arthur Dayne?" She didn't wait for him to answer. "I think he was probably born noble and rich, with the best teachers and the best swords, and everyone telling him he was special his whole life. I think he never had to wonder where his next meal was coming from or whether someone was going to chain him up and brand him like an animal."
"He was still the greatest—"
"He's dead, Jon." Her voice rose, sharp enough to make him look at her. "He's dead, and you're alive. That's not little. That's everything."
She grabbed his hand—the damaged one, the right one—and squeezed. His fingers were cold, trembling slightly. She held on anyway.
"You don't need to be Arthur Dayne. You need to be Jon. The Jon who walked out of slavery and crossed the sea showed up on a beach half-dead and still kept breathing."
Her voice softened, the fierce edge giving way to something gentler.
"That's the person I pulled out of the sand. That's my friend. Not some legend from a story. You."
Jon was quiet for a long moment. His grey eyes searched her face, looking for something—certainty, maybe, or truth. Whatever he found seemed to settle something in him, because some of the tension drained from his shoulders.
"Master Zhi says there's a way," he said finally. "Training that could rebuild my body from the inside. Make me strong enough to do what I want to do."
"The Stone Tiger?"
"You were listening."
"I'm always listening. You just don't notice."
A small sound escaped him—not quite a laugh, but close. This was the first indication of any emotion other than despair since his collapse.
"It will take years. And it won't be easy."
"Nothing with you is easy." She smiled despite herself. "I'm used to it."
"You'd wait? For me to come back? Every time I have to leave for training?"
The question was fragile, uncertain—the question of someone who'd spent too long believing he wasn't worth waiting for.
Mei Ling squeezed his hand harder.
"Jon. I sat with you when you couldn't even talk. When you woke up screaming and didn't know where you were. When you flinched every time a door opened."
She held his gaze, willing him to believe her.
"I'll wait. However long it takes. You're stuck with me, remember?"
Something shifted in his expression. The shame and defeat were still there, but underneath them—something else. Something like hope.
"Thank you. Mei Ling."
"You're welcome. Now stop moping. We have a plan." She released his hand and sat back, assuming her most businesslike expression. "You're going to learn this bone training, and then you're going to be even more annoyingly good at fighting, and I'm going to watch and say I knew you when you were just a sad boy who washed up from the sea."
Jon laughed. It was a small sound, rusty with disuse, but real.
"That's a terrible speech."
"I'm ten. I'm allowed to be terrible."
Jon
The sun was sinking toward the mountains when Jon made his decision.
He looked at the twin swords in his lap—the wooden blades he'd carved himself, sanded smooth, and balanced as well as his skill allowed. He'd held them for hours now, clinging to them like they might anchor him to the dream they represented.
But dreams couldn't be held. Only pursued. And occasionally the pursuit required letting go.
"Mei Ling. I want you to keep these for me."
She looked at the practice swords, then at him. "Keep them? Why?"
"Master Zhi says I need to rebuild my foundation before I can use techniques like these. Years of training. A different path."
He ran his fingers along the wooden blade one last time. The grain was smooth under his touch, familiar from weeks of practice in the grey hours before dawn.
"If I keep them, I'll be tempted. Every day, I'll look at them and think about Arthur Dayne and try to do too much too soon." He met her eyes. "I know myself. I'll push when I should wait."
The admission cost him something. It was one thing to fail, and it was another to acknowledge that he didn't trust himself not to fail again.
"But if you have them," he continued. "If they're somewhere safe, waiting for me... then I can let go. For now. Do what I need to do. And when I'm ready—when my body can handle it—I'll come back for them."
He held the swords out to her.
"Keep them safe. Until I'm worthy of them."
Mei Ling took them carefully, as if they were made of glass rather than wood. She understood, he could tell. The situation wasn't just about practice weapons. It was about trust. About placing his dream in someone else's hands because he couldn't carry it safely himself.
"How will you know?" she asked. "When are you ready?"
"I'll know. And so will you."
She nodded slowly, her fingers curling around the wooden hilts.
"I'll keep them in my room. Wrapped in silk. No one touches them but me."
"Thank you."
"Stop thanking me." But she was smiling. "It's what friends do."
She took the cloth he'd used to hide the swords and wrapped them again, carefully, the way you'd wrap something precious. Something that mattered.
"When you're ready," she said. "When you come back from the Stone Tiger's mountain and you're strong enough—I'll give these back. And then you can show me what Arthur Dayne really looked like."
"I might be different by then. "The training might change me in ways I can't predict."
"You'll still be Jon." She looked up at him, the wrapped swords cradled in her arms. "That's the part that matters."
They sat together as the sun sank behind the mountains.
Gold turned to orange, orange to purple, and purple to the deep blue of approaching night. The first stars emerged, pale and distant, scattered across the sky like scattered dreams.
Jon's hands were empty now. The weight of the swords was gone.
He'd expected to feel loss. And he did—a hollow ache where the dream had been, the knowledge that Arthur Dayne was further away than ever.
But something else had taken its place. Something lighter.
Possibility.
Not the wild, desperate possibility of a boy trying to become a legend. Something quieter. Something that began with acceptance instead of denial.
I am damaged. I am not crippled. There is a difference.
I cannot walk Arthur Dayne's path as he walked it. But there are other paths.
I am nine years old. I have time.
"Mei Ling?"
"Hmm?"
"I'm scared." The admission came easier than he'd expected. "Of the training. Of what happens if it doesn't work. Of everything."
She didn't dismiss his fear. She didn't tell him that everything would be fine.
"I know," she said simply. "But you'll do it anyway. Because you're you."
A pause.
"I will be very disappointed if you give up, and I know that you hate disappointing me."
"I do?"
"Yes. It's one of your better qualities."
Jon almost smiled. "I didn't know I had better qualities."
"You have several. Stubbornness. Surviving things that should kill you. Looking dramatically sad in gardens." She counted them off using her fingers. "Also, you listen when I talk, which is more than most people do."
"Those don't sound like qualities. Those sound like character flaws."
"It's all about perspective."
The night deepened around them. The garden filled with shadows, the cherry trees becoming dark shapes against a darker sky. Somewhere in the fortress, torches were being lit, servants preparing for evening. The ordinary business of life continued while Jon sat in the quiet dark and tried to imagine who he would become.
The Stone Tiger. The Golden Marrow Art. A new path.
And someday—someday—two swords, like Arthur Dayne.
But first: patience. Foundation. Becoming something new.
Mei Ling leaned her head against his shoulder. Jon didn't flinch.
This is what home feels like, he thought. Not a place. A person. Someone who holds your broken pieces and says, "I'll wait."
The stars wheeled overhead, ancient and indifferent. Tomorrow, everything would change. He would begin preparing for the journey to the mountains. He would learn what little Zhi could teach him about the internal arts. He would take the first steps on a path that would lead him away from everything he'd built here.
But tonight, in a garden that smelled of summer and memory, a boy who had crossed the world finally understood something important.
He wasn't Arthur Dayne. He never would be.
But maybe—maybe—he could become something else. Something that was his alone. Something built from the wreckage of his dreams and the strength of the people who believed in him.
It wasn't the ending he'd wanted.
It was better. It was a beginning.