The journey north took five days. They were days of wind and silence. Haru was a statue given motion, his gaze forever tracing the treeline, the cloud-scratched sky, the dip of the road ahead. He asked for nothing, offered less. Aki mirrored him, a second shadow tethered to the first by unspoken purpose. They moved with a shared, predatory economy, pausing only when necessary, speaking only to note a changed wind or distant smoke. They were not companions. They were two solitudes travelling the same azimuth.
On the fifth evening, the land began to climb. The pines thinned, replaced by slender, silver-barked birch and ancient, twisted cedar. The air grew sharper, thinner, carrying a mineral chill. They crested a final ridge as the sun bled into the western clouds.
Below them lay not a fortress, but a vision.
The Sky Dominion's southern enclave was a masterpiece of elevated austerity. It was not built upon the valley, but into the mountainside itself, a series of sweeping, interconnected structures of pale wood and polished stone that seemed to grow from the rock. Slanted roofs of slate-grey tile swept upwards like folded wings. Towers, slender and graceful, rose like needles seeking the heavens, connected by delicate, enclosed bridges that spanned dizzying drops. Lanterns of white paper, already glowing with a soft, moonlike radiance, hung from eaves, their light reflecting off vast, still pools of captured rainwater that mirrored the darkening sky. The silence here was not of the wild, but of profound order—broken only by the distant, melodic clang of a wind-chime and the whisper of a waterfall channeled through a stone culvert. It was beautiful, cold, and impossibly clean.
Haru stopped. The wind here plucked at his ash-grey coat and the high collar of his travelling clothes. "Remember," he said, his voice the only human sound in the vast, serene panorama. "They will test you. But their test is not of strength. It is of form. Of purity. Show them the River's footwork. The foundation. Hide the... conclusion. The infirmary is in the western pavilion, with the arched bridge. Earn your way there."
Aki said nothing. Her eyes found the pavilion, a low, elegant structure with a roof of deep blue tile, spanning a gorge where mist gathered. A destination. Just a place. Not a promise. The hope was a cold, small pebble in her gut. She focused on the practical: the climb down, the gate, the test. The pain in her shoulder was a constant, grounding thrum.
The gate was not a barred door, but a monumental, arched gateway of bleached white wood, standing open. The two guards who flanked it wore not leather, but lacquered armour plates of cream and dove-grey, fitted flawlessly, their faces impassive beneath helmets styled like stylized clouds. Their eyes, sharp and assessing, went past Haru to Aki, lingering on her faded, travel-stained haori—a splash of muddy blue in their world of monochrome grace.
One guard's gaze rested on the mist pattern. His voice, when he spoke, was cool and clipped. "A relic of the River. What business does its bearer have at the Gate of Soaring Mist?"
"She bears a skill, however unrefined," Haru answered, his tone matching their formality. "I found her dispatching a Menace-class in the neutral wilds. She seeks the discipline she lacks. The infirmary's care."
The guard's eyes swept over Aki, noting the proud set of her sword, the worn wraps on her hands, the slight, telling favour of her right side. "The Appraisal is at dawn in the Cloud-Spray Court," he stated. "Aspirants' quarters are in the Cliff-Side Hall. You will maintain stillness until summoned." His eyes held Haru's for a moment, a silent exchange of something Aki couldn't decipher, before he stepped aside.
The Cliff-Side Hall was a long, narrow building cantilevered over the mountain's edge. The walls were sliding screens of paper and wood, the floor polished cedar so clean it reflected the grey twilight. A single sprig of winter plum in a celadon vase was the only ornament. A handful of other aspirants waited there, all young, their movements restrained, their breathing controlled. They wore simple, pristine grey practice uniforms.
One of them, a young man with a carefully trimmed beard and an easy posture, watched her enter. His eyes took in her haori, her sword, the dust on her boots. A slow, confident grin spread across his face. "Well," he said, his voice a lazy drawl that cut the quiet. "They're scraping the bottom of the barrel from further afield every season, aren't they? The River must be truly desperate to lose its cast-offs to the clouds."
Aki stopped. She didn't look at him, but her stillness changed quality, becoming like a bowstring just before release. The other aspirants subtly shifted away.
The young man chuckled, undeterred. "That old coat... you look like you fought your way out of a grave. This isn't a gutter, you know. This is the Sky. We value precision. Grace. Not whatever brutish hack-work you learned in the mud." He took a deliberate sip from a small water cup. "I'd wish you luck tomorrow, but it would be wasted. You won't last the first pairing."
Aki slowly turned her head. She didn't glare. She simply looked at him, her eyes empty of anger, full of a flat, appraising coldness, like someone assessing the weight of a stone. "Your breath is loud," she said, her voice quiet and rough. "It wastes air. And it tells everyone where you are." She then turned and walked to the farthest corner, leaving a silence heavier than his words behind.
The grinner's smile froze, then melted into a tight, irritated line.
Dawn arrived as a wash of pearl-grey light seeping through the paper screens. The air was cold enough to see her breath. The pain in her shoulder was a tight, familiar fist.
The Cloud-Spray Court was a circular training ground of raked white sand, bordered by a low wall and then by nothing but a sheer drop into swirling cloud. A single, ancient pine, its branches meticulously shaped, grew from the center. Three evaluators stood waiting. They wore flowing robes of white and silver, their hair perfectly arranged. They did not look like soldiers; they looked like lethal priests. Their posture was absolute stillness.
The first test was Forms. The lead evaluator, a man with hair like spun silver and eyes of flint, led them through the foundational postures. Aki followed, her body moving with a mimic's hollow accuracy. Cloud-Breathing Stance. Mountain Root. Falling Leaf Descent. The names came to her, echoes from Jiro's bitter lessons about other domains. She was a ghost of the form, perfect and empty. The silver-haired evaluator's eyes rested on her like a physical weight.
The second test was Sparring. The evaluator pointed silently, pairing aspirants. As fate would have it, his finger pointed from Aki to the grinning young man from the hall. A flicker of satisfaction crossed the man's face as he stepped onto the sand. He gave a shallow, perfunctory bow, his cocky grin returning. "Try not to dirty the sand too much," he murmured, just for her.
He settled into his stance, light and confident. He moved first. It was not a brawler's charge, but a sharp, beautiful thrust—fast as a snapping branch, his body a straight, elegant line. It was a textbook opening move, designed to test reaction, to be deflected and spun into the complex dance of Sky style.
Aki's mind went quiet. No rage. Just the problem. Her body reacted with the ingrained grammar of survival. She flowed. Her feet executed the pure, gliding Flowing Step of the River, a lateral drift so smooth it seemed she was pulled by a string. The beautiful thrust passed through empty air, her body a hair's breadth from its line. The boy's momentum, built on the expectation of contact, carried him a fraction too far. His balance teetered on the ball of his lead foot, his center exposed.
For that shimmering instant, the elegant geometry of his form broke.
And then, instinct.
The beautiful flow shattered.
Her body, deaf to the poised philosophies of Sky or River, spoke its only brutal truth. Her right hand, swordless, became a blade of bone and tendon. It did not redirect; it concluded. A short, vicious hammer-blow from her forearm, not to the chest, but to the soft, unprotected junction of his neck and shoulder.
THWACK.
The sound was stark, a sickening percussion of flesh and compromised nerve. The grin vanished into a rictus of shock and agony. A choked gurgle escaped his lips. His legs buckled, not from a throw, but from systemic collapse. He crashed to his knees in the white sand, one hand clutching his ruined shoulder, his face pale, his confident eyes wide with pain and humiliation.
Silence, absolute but for the moan of the wind through the gorge below and the boy's ragged, shuddering attempts to breathe.
The silver-haired evaluator glided forward. His footsteps made no sound in the sand. He looked from his kneeling, broken student to Aki, who stood poised, her right arm already screaming with fresh, white-hot fire. Stupid. Again. The price, always the price. She kept her face a mask of stone.
"Your evasion was the River Flow," the evaluator said, his voice like frost forming on glass. "A foundational art of a rival domain. Executed with... perfect, soulless memory." He took a step closer, his eyes boring into the stiff, wounded set of her right shoulder. "Your resolution was nothing. It was base, anatomical efficiency. A corruption of all form. It is the violence of a butcher, not the discipline of a bladesinger." He paused, letting his words hang in the thin air. "You have been taught a half-truth. The half you know is elegant. The half you created is carving your own body apart. I can see the damage from here."
Aki said nothing. The wind plucked at her frayed haori, the faded mist pattern seeming to dance a taunting dance.
The evaluator's gaze lifted from her shoulder to her eyes, seeking something she would not show. "You will be accepted. As a probationary cutter. You will unlearn your conclusion. You will learn ours. You will submit to the infirmary's diagnosis and regime." His voice left no room for argument. "This is not an invitation. It is a prescription."
It was the door opening. It was the cage being defined, its bars of discipline replacing the bars of pain. Aki gave the faintest, sharp nod.
The silver-haired man turned. "The infirmary is waiting. Go. And shed that old skin," he said, not looking back. "It carries the scent of a river that has run dry, and the blood of fools who talk too much."
He moved away, his robes whispering across the sand. Aki stood alone for a moment in the perfect, cold court. The boy was being helped up, his cocky grin replaced by a pale, tight grimace. He would not look at her. The taste of the thin mountain air was like glass on her tongue, the new, deeper ache in her shoulder an old, familiar promise now sealed in a new, pristine setting. She had reached the sky. Now, the real work—and the real cost—would begin.