The road stretched endlessly before Soen, winding through lands untouched by war, past villages that knew nothing of the banners of Hymn.
For the first time in his life, he walked with no title, no purpose dictated by another.
But that did not mean he walked without a goal.
The Frozen Chimes was a lie—or rather, a twisted version of something older. A doctrine meant to create warriors, but only long enough to use them. If it was a copy, then somewhere in history, the original had existed.
Something had been erased.
And Soen was going to find it.
So he did what no warrior of Hymn had ever done.
He abandoned the battlefields and walked among the people.
He spoke with elder storytellers, those who remembered wars before the kingdom of Hymn had risen to power.
He sat with wandering scholars, those who collected knowledge too inconvenient to be preserved in the kingdom's libraries.
He listened to merchants and nomads, men who crossed lands that no army had ever claimed.
The first clues came from the old towns, where warriors of the past were still honored in faded murals and statues long forgotten.
Their inscriptions spoke of warriors who never burned out, never shattered beneath their own strength.
And one name that kept appearing in whispers, in stories, in the worn-out carvings of broken shrines.
Auron
A king whose warriors had not been sacrificed to their own power.
A kingdom that had never fallen.
But every trace of it led only to silence.
As if the world itself had worked to bury it.
Yet, through patience, through careful listening, the stories began to align.
The last warriors of Auron's time, the ones who had carried his knowledge, had left behind no graves, no ruins.
Only a single, unspoken warning.
"No one has ever returned from the highest peak."
Soen exhaled slowly.
The highest mountain in the continent.
A place untouched by man.
That was where the truth had been hidden.
And if no one had ever returned—then Soen would be the first.
The climb began where the world ended.
The last village sat on the edge of civilization, a place where even the most desperate did not dare to go beyond.
"You're mad," one villager told him, shaking his head. "The winds will tear you apart before you make it halfway."
Others spoke of shifting trails, of stone that refused to be climbed, of nights where even the stars seemed to vanish in the storm clouds above.
No one had made it past the first ridges.
Not warriors.
Not scholars.
Not even the reckless fools who had once called themselves explorers.
And yet, Soen took the first step toward the mountain no one had ever returned from.
---
The wind was merciless, carving into his skin like unseen blades. The ascent was not just steep—it was unforgiving. There were no trails, no paths, only sheer rock and treacherous cliffs.
His body, trained for war, had never fought an enemy like this.
Here, there were no swords, no strategies—only survival.
His first mistake was trying to overpower the mountain.
He climbed with the same mindset he had trained under in Hymn—pushing forward, enduring, ignoring the screaming protests of his muscles.
But the mountain did not yield.
It punished him.
The cold seeped into his bones, draining his strength with each step. His hands numbed, his breath came in short, painful gasps. His body was failing.
Not because he was weak.
But because he was fighting the wrong battle.
The kingdom had taught him to resist.
But resistance meant nothing here.
Pain was not an obstacle to overcome.
Pain was a warning.
The only way forward was to listen.
So he adjusted.
He moved not against the mountain, but with it.
He timed his steps with the wind, pausing when the gales became too strong. He let his body recover in the silence between each grueling motion.
He became part of the climb, instead of trying to conquer it.
And in doing so—he endured.
Higher up, the cold was absolute.
There was no shelter, no warmth, only the endless white void of snow and sky.
His fingers trembled from the cold, his breath barely visible against the thin air.
And yet, something felt different.
His body, worn from days of climbing, should have been on the verge of collapse.
But instead, he felt lighter.
As if, step by step, he was unshackling himself from something unseen.
It was here, on the final stretch of his climb, that he understood the true flaw of the Frozen Chimes.
Its teachings had always been about pushing forward, never stopping, never allowing oneself to recover.
But the body was not a machine—it was a living force.
One that did not grow through destruction, but through understanding itself.
He remembered the Spectres.
The way they moved. The way they fought.
They had not simply been fast.
They had known themselves in a way no warrior of Hymn ever had.
They had found their center.
Soen let go of the pain.
He let go of the rigid lessons of his past.
And when he did, he felt his body move as it was meant to.
Not weighed down by discipline.
Not forced into rigid control.
But free.
He reached the final ledge, pulling himself up.
And then, he saw it.
At the very peak of the mountain, untouched by time, stood the remnants of something ancient.
Stone pillars, cracked but still standing. Carvings half-buried in the snow. Symbols that had been erased from history, now revealed only to the one who had climbed far enough to find them.
And one name etched into the rock.
Auron.
Soen's breath slowed.
He traced his fingers over the carving, feeling the weight of the name, the presence it carried.
This was it.