[Log Entry: Heavenly Calendar Year 711]
The training hall of the Silent Moon Sect didn't welcome; it judged.
It was a cathedral of silence where the air tasted of iron and old incense, thick with the weight of legacies passed down through forgotten generations. Roeyachi stood in the center of the expanse, watched by Crystalline Blades resting on stands of midnight wood—weapons that seemed to drink the thin light rather than reflect it.
Faded scrolls of the Celestial Beast Arts lined the walls, their captured movements frozen in eternal, potent grace, looming over him like the ghosts of ancestors waiting for a mistake.
Above the main entrance, the stone itself spoke the creed in deep, unadorned script:
"The Moon is our sovereign ally, for our arts are woven from the shadows our enemies fear. Let the dawn grant them solace; their comfort in the light only whets the unseen blade that will cut their twilight short."
There was no comfort here. Every weapon, every scroll, every footstep echoing against the cold stone was engineered for a single, brutal purpose: to ensure the memory of what you were remained heavier than any blade.
---
"Disciple."
The word clicked like a final lock. The Master sat in the center of the training hall, her voice severing the stillness. "The moon draws near. So does your first hunt. I will ask you one final time. Is this the path?"
The cage had been his world since the incident. Yet keep a beast confined long enough and it stops searching for the door. It starts dreaming of the throat.
He met her gaze, the beast testing its tamer.
"Yes, Master."
The words were quiet, but edged with steel. The resolve in them pressed back against the cold stone, filling a cathedral that demanded more than just breath and bone.
"You speak with the confidence of a warrior," she said, her tone dropping until the chamber carried it like a verdict. "But confidence without capability is only a shorter road to the grave. Demonstrate your control."
His answer came as a single, sharp command that cracked the silence.
"Ku-NAI!"
The air above his shoulder warped. Four blades formed in perfect alignment, dark steel drinking the light. Runes pulsed along their spines, each line a conduit for borrowed power. In the pommels, the circuits sealed, igniting the crimson glow of a fire crystal and the cool shimmer of a wind crystal.
They didn't sing. They hummed, a low, lethal promise. In the right hands, they were not a duel, but a sentence—written in the ink of another man's blood.
"Begin."
Roeyachi's palm shot forward.
A streak of white distorted the air. Steel screamed toward his Master's throat, vibrating with the thirst to draw first blood.
By the time he inhaled, the blade was dead.
It sat an inch from her jugular, trapped effortlessly between two fingers. Roeyachi didn't react. She was the Palace Master. Anything less would have insulted her rank.
"Passable."
The word lived for a heartbeat.
Then the air hissed.
A lock of Roeyachi's hair drifted to the floor. Behind him, the stone wall cracked with a violent, splintering groan as the dagger she'd thrown buried itself hilt-deep into the masonry.
He didn't blink. He didn't turn. He kept his eyes fixed on hers, pulse steady beneath the echo of the impact.
"I will prove your judgment was not wrong."
She studied him—the stillness, the discipline wrapped around something far less tame. For the briefest moment, approval flickered across her eyes.
"Then give me the blades."
Roeyachi's brow furrowed. "Pardon?"
"A cage keeps things in," she said, her voice carrying through the hall. "But it also keeps things out. If you want freedom, you must learn to survive without its walls."
He hesitated, then tapped the belt's release. The blades dropped at once, four dull clangs against the cedar floor.
"Good."
Her hand lifted. A heavy canvas bundle arced through the air and hit the ground at his feet with a muted, lifeless thud.
"If you wish to be a hunter, you must live like one."
Roeyachi knelt and loosened the knot.
Inside lay the skeleton of a loadout: eleven standard steel kunai, unenchanted and socketless. Beside them sat a pouch that hummed with unstable energy. Raw Wind and Fire crystals shifted inside, each pulse irregular, carrying the wild heartbeat of the beasts they had been torn from.
Roeyachi frowned. The training halls had never given him anything unfinished.
"Raw ore?"
The Master didn't answer immediately.
"The Silent Moon was not always a hunting order. We were shadows before we were guardians," she said. "You want to leave? Then pay the toll."
Roeyachi broke the seal of the accompanying scroll. The inked characters hit him with the force of a blow.
Her voice finished the sentence he hadn't yet spoken.
"His head," she said, as final as a gravestone, "must be on the altar by week's end."
He understood. A blademancer's path was a cycle of hunt, refine, and hunt again. She had given him the ingredients; now he must produce the result.
"I understand, Master." He stood, the contract heavy in his grip, and turned toward the exit.
Pausing at the threshold, he offered one last look—not for instruction, but for a sign. What he saw fluttered a trace of sadness in his chest. Her gaze was not on him, but fixed on the crack the dagger had carved into the wall moments before, staring into the stone as if reading a prophecy in its fracture.
"I am off," he said, knowing she already knew. The words were pointless. Perhaps he only wanted, in some buried part of himself, a single nod. A glance. Anything.
She offered none.
He turned fully then, and stepped from the shadowed halls of the Silent Moon Sect into the waiting light.