Getting Started
The first thing Michael registered was the murmur of voices. They were distant and muffled, as if he were hearing them from the bottom of a deep well.
The second was the smell of dust and burnt ozone, and the sharp, coppery tang of his own blood in the back of his throat.
He groaned, a pained sound that seemed to come from someone else. His entire body was a symphony of agony. He felt like he'd been run over by a mountain, then had the mountain catch fire and explode. Twice.
"He's alive!" a soft voice said, so close he could feel the warmth of her breath. It was filled with a desperate, trembling relief.
He forced his eyes open, the lids feeling as heavy as lead. The world swam into a blurry focus of shattered rock and hazy, twilight sky.
The secret chamber was gone. Utterly gone.
In its place was a massive, smoking crater in the middle of the Veridian Maze. The explosion had torn a hole straight through the pocket dimension.
Chloe Virelle was kneeling over him, her flawless face smudged with dirt and streaked with tears, her eyes wide with a mixture of raw terror and dumbfounded awe.
Her cultivation was still a faint, fragile flicker, but she was conscious and watching him.
Behind her, two figures stood like titans against the bruised sky, their power a palpable weight on the world.
The Founder of the Sword Character Immortal Palace, his ancient face a grim mask of stone, and Lady Thalassa of the Maestro Sect, her usual coolly amused expression replaced with one of cold, calculating fury.
"The boy is a complete mess," the Founder grumbled.
He flicked a finger, and a small, glowing pill, humming with life force, shot into Michael's mouth.
A wave of pure, cool energy washed through him, knitting together shattered bones and soothing burned nerves with an almost instantaneous effect. The blinding agony subsided to a dull, throbbing ache that felt almost pleasant by comparison.
"What… what happened?" Michael rasped, his throat raw.
"You happened, boy," the Founder said, his ancient eyes narrowed, seeming to pierce right through Michael's soul.
"You blew a hole in a Nascent Soul-level bounded domain. You will explain yourself. Now."
Before Michael could even begin to fabricate a plausible lie, another elder - the real, withered Elder Valerius - was carried from the wreckage by the Sword Marshal.
He was weak and disoriented, but alive.
One by one, the other Immortals of the sect began to appear, teleporting to the site of the disturbance, their faces a mixture of shock and confusion.
"That poison…" one of the elders gasped, kneeling beside Chloe and examining the faint, dark residue on her robes.
"It's an Aetherbane Pill! A forbidden concoction of the highest order! Who would dare use such a thing here?"
All eyes, a dozen pairs of ancient, powerful, and very suspicious eyes, turned to Michael. He was the epicenter of it all. The questions were coming, and they would not be gentle.
Okay, kid, think fast, Umbra's voice was a weak, staticky buzz in his head, the mental equivalent of a dying radio. Lie.
Lie like you've never lied before. Lie like your life depends on it, because it absolutely, one-hundred-percent does.
The Founder loomed over him, a living mountain of judgment.
"I will ask you one more time. What. Happened."
Michael pushed himself into a sitting position, gritting his teeth against the wave of dizziness. He looked the Founder straight in the eye, forcing a look of exhausted defiance.
"It was a trap," he said, his voice hoarse but clear.
"The man… the impostor… he called himself Malakor. He said the whole trial was a setup for him to find something. A treasure. The Hell-King's Horn."
He had to make it believable. Partial truths were always the best lies.
"He was too strong," Michael continued, letting his voice crack.
"I knew I couldn't beat him. Chloe was down. He was going to kill us both. So I… I used everything I had left."
"And what, precisely, did you use?" the Sword Marshal demanded, his voice as sharp and unforgiving as a blade's edge.
"A pill," Michael said, the lie forming on his tongue.
"A Berserker Pill I found in the maze, next to some fruits. It boosted my strength, but… it almost tore me apart."
That would explain the sudden, unstable power surge.
"And the final attack… it was a one-time-use treasure. A defensive talisman my… my family gave me. For emergencies."
That would have to explain the impossible final blast.
"It's gone now. It used up all its power to save us."
He reached into his pouch, his hand trembling slightly, and pulled out the pulsing, malevolent Hell-King's Horn. He held it out, an offering of peace and proof.
"He wanted this. I managed to grab it from him before… before the end."
The elders stared at the horn, their eyes wide with a dangerous mixture of greed and horrified recognition.
The Founder's gaze shifted from the horn to Michael's exhausted, bruised face.
He saw the story: the "sacrificed" treasure, the "dangerous" pill, the suicidal bravery, and the decisiveness to seize the prize even in the face of certain death.
He saw a disciple with the kind of guts that couldn't be taught.
"Hmph," the Founder grunted, a sound of grudging, undeniable approval.
"Reckless. Foolish. But ultimately, effective."
He waved a dismissive hand.
"The trial is over.
You have proven yourself beyond any doubt.
I am accepting you directly as an inner disciple of the Sword Character Immortal Palace.
You will wear the white robes."
A murmur of shock rippled through the assembled elders.
Bypassing the entire process, especially for a boy with such a chaotic and mysterious origin, was an unprecedented honor.
The Sword Marshal, however, was not convinced. His face was a mask of stern skepticism.
"Founder, with all due respect, this is highly irregular. His power is unstable, his story is… convenient.
I wish to see the source of his skill. The foundation upon which this power is built."
He fixed his piercing gaze on Michael.
"Draw your sword, boy. Show me your swordsmanship."
Michael's heart sank like a stone. This was it. The final hurdle.
They would see the taint of Devil Lo in his techniques, and it would all be over.
With a weary sigh that felt like it carried the weight of a decade, he struggled to his feet.
He drew the simple, unadorned Feiling Sword. He was too weak for anything complex, too drained for any of his advanced arts.
He simply fell back on instinct, on the muscle memory burned into him by a thousand repetitions in the Sanctum.
He fell into his most basic stance and executed the two moves he knew better than his own name.
The Unification Move, a simple, direct, perfect thrust.
The Zephyr Step, a fluid, evasive, flawless sidestep.
They were the first things he had ever learned. Simple. Unadorned. Pure.
But the moment he moved, the entire atmosphere on the shattered clearing shifted.
The Founder's eyes, which had been narrowed in judgment, shot wide open.
Lady Thalassa, who had been watching with a detached, regal interest, took a sharp, audible breath, her cold composure shattering like thin ice.
The Sword Marshal, the most skeptical of them all, staggered back a single, involuntary step, his face a mask of utter, world-shaking disbelief.
They weren't looking at a simple sword style performed by a battered recruit.
They were looking at a ghost. A legend made real.
"That swordsmanship…" Lady Thalassa whispered, her voice trembling with an emotion Michael couldn't place. "It cannot be…"
The Founder stared at Michael, his ancient eyes boring into him, seeing not just a boy, but the unmistakable echo of a man he hadn't seen in ten thousand years.
"The Starfall Swordsmanship," the Sword Marshal breathed, the name a sacred, forgotten relic on his tongue, a name that should have been lost to the ages.
He looked at Michael as if he were seeing a phantom.
"By the heavens… boy… where did you learn that?"