In a final wisp of mist, Luohua watched from the shadows. Twelve-year-old Nikolai was hidden in the reeds by a pond, his expression one of heartbreaking wonder as he observed a mother duck shepherding her line of ducklings.

“How cute…” Nikolai whispered to himself, a softness on his face his master rarely saw. “She is like Master, isn’t she?”

The words were a dagger to Luohua’s heart. 'I honed your blade but left your heart unsharpened with warmth.' A wave of crushing guilt silenced his breath. He had given this child discipline, power, and purpose. But he had stolen everything else. He had taken the future a child deserved and replaced it with a destiny. Nikolai was not a normal child, for fate itself had robbed him long before his teacher ever arrived.

He decided that day to be less stern. That evening, he prepared his favourite dish for the young one: spicy wontons, a humble offering of care.

But the dish was later thrown to the ground by a furious Nikolai, enraged that he couldn't force a sapling to grow faster and accusing his teacher of not helping. They both ignored the distant tremor that shook the ground.

“I… I could’ve been a normal child,” Nikolai whispered, the anger draining into a well of profound hurt.

He got up, clenching his fists at the man who had raised him. “You never showed love to me on purpose.” Tears welled in his eyes. “I thought… I thought perhaps you just weren’t used to it, or that if I just impressed you enough, you’d finally…”

His master did not respond, only watched.

“You!” Nikolai shouted. Vines burst from the floorboards, wrapping around both of them in a tangle of hurt and power. “You only saw me as a weapon! That’s all I ever was to you!”

His master nodded silently, biting his lip, accepting the accusation.

“You..” Nikolai breathed heavily. “I’m not normal. I’m just a boy abandoned in the forest. All I remember… is a female voice. I’m not even sure who it was.”

“It was Rhya.” That was all his teacher said.

“Who?”

His teacher got up and walked to the window. He opened it onto a view of the forest outside. Trees were fallen, plants were dying and shrivelled. The vibrant life of Sylvakion was leaching away into grey decay.

“What does this mean?” Nikolai asked, walking over, his anger forgotten in the face of the blight.

“What does this mean?” He repeated, desperate for an answer.

His teacher finally spoke. “It is the next arc of your journey. I have taught you all that there is to know.”

“What?”

“I, Master Luohua, now give you permission to leave this forest and defeat the evil corrupting this world.”

“You can’t. You can’t just send me away like this.”

“And I will not,” Luohua said, his voice firm yet soft, “before I test if you have learnt my final lesson.”

“How?”

“In a fight.”

Without another word, he turned and left through the door, stepping out into the collapsed forest to find an empty spot of grass where it would end.

“Here.” 

Master Luohua tossed a basic, unadorned staff at Nikolai’s feet. It was a simple length of wood, nothing more. “The one who falls here, will lose.”

“Falls?” Nikolai asked, his voice tight.

“Does not rise back up.”

“What?” Nikolai was startled, his anger freezing into dread. “You’re not… you’re asking me to stake our lives on this?”

Master Luohua nodded, his face a serene mask. “The greatest honor for a master is to be surpassed by the student. The greatest lesson is the final one.”

With that, Luohua bent and snatched a fallen branch from the blighted earth. As his fingers closed around it, power hummed in the air. The gnarled wood straightened, smoothed, and began to glow with a soft, inner light, transforming from deadfall into a weapon of legend.

Nikolai roared, charging forward. He ignored finesse, driven by a storm of hurt and confusion. He pressed his own staff hard against his master’s neck. But Luohua did not yield. With a whisper and a flick of his wrist, a concussive gust of wind erupted from nothing, slamming into Nikolai’s chest and hurling him backward into the husk of a massive fallen tree. The air left his lungs in a painful gasp.

He would not give up. Pushing through the pain, he rose, his focus narrowing to the simple staff in his hand. He remembered the pond. Still water reflects the sky. He forced his breathing to calm, his rage to still. The air around him grew heavy. A circle of dead leaves began to tremble, then rise, orbiting him like a crown. With a sharp exhalation, he thrust his staff forward. The leaves shot toward Luohua not as a scattered mess, but as a single, sharpened whirlwind, a blade made of the forest’s corpse.

Luohua didn't block; he flowed. His magnificent staff became a blur, deflecting, parrying, each movement a lesson in economy and precision. He weaved through the assault, the leaves shredding against his defenses but never finding their mark. He coughed, not from injury, but with a proud smile. “A master’s final duty,” he declared, his voice cutting through the whirlwind, “is to become unnecessary.”

Their duel became a deadly dance, a crescendo of cracking wood and unleashed energy that drove them backward, step by step, toward the edge of a high cliff, its precipice hidden by the mist of corruption below.

Master Luohua chanced a look behind him at the fatal drop, then back at his panting, desperate student. His smile was gentle, full of a sorrowful love Nikolai could not yet understand.

“A student,” Luohua said, his voice suddenly soft, “must use his teachings even after he’s graduated.”

Nikolai was confused, lowering his staff a fraction. “What?”

It was all the opening Luohua needed. He gave Nikolai one last, devastating smile—a look of utter pride and farewell—and then, with no attempt to catch himself, he simply let himself teeter backward over the cliff’s edge.

“MASTER!” Nikolai’s scream was raw.

He sprinted, diving for the edge as Luohua’s robes fluttered, the man falling serenely into the abyss. Time seemed to stretch, to snap. Nikolai didn’t think. He acted. Reaching out with every ounce of his being, he didn't try to grab the falling man—he grabbed the air around him. He remembered the lesson of the gust that had thrown him, the stillness of the pond that reflected truth. He didn't fight gravity; he commanded it.

Stop.

The relentless pull downward ceased. For a heart-stopping second, Master Luohua hung suspended in mid-air, a painted image against the grey sky.

Return.

Nikolai reversed the flow, his entire body trembling with the strain. Like a thread being wound back on a spool, his master was pulled up from the void, set down gently and precisely back onto the solid ground of the cliff from which he’d fallen.

“What was that?!” Nikolai exclaimed, collapsing to his knees, his energy spent.

Luohua straightened his robes, his expression one of profound peace. “A final test. And you have passed it.”

“So… what if I didn’t manage to save you?” Nikolai whispered, the horror of the implication dawning on him.

“Then we both would have known you were not ready,” Luohua said, his voice quiet but absolute. The unspoken truth hung between them: it would have meant death for them both, the ultimate failure of master and student.

Nikolai swallowed, the weight of the moment crushing him.

“So that means I can leave now?”

Master Luohua nodded. A worn traveler’s pack, heavy with scrolls and a few meager possessions, conjured itself onto his back. “It means I have nothing else to teach you. It also means… After twelve years… I can finally go home.”

The simplicity of it was a new kind of blow. Nikolai looked around at the dying forest, suddenly feeling more alone than ever before. “What about me?”

“You?” Luohua asked, as if the question was both expected and its answer obvious.

“Yes…” Nikolai’s voice was small, that of the lost boy in the reeds. “What do I do?”

Master Luohua looked at his student, his masterpiece, his son in all but blood. His expression was not stern, but filled with a heartbreaking mix of love and resolve.

“That,” he said, turning to walk away into the mist.

“You’ll find out,” Luohua halted.

“Zephyr”