The wind smelled of smoke, but not the kind that meant danger.
It was the scent of burning wood and herbs, old cookfires, and mountain tea leaves. Above the narrow cliffs and stone-path trails, the sky stretched open — a great sheet of silver clouds and lazy sunlight. The air was cold, always cold, but clean. Crisp. Honest.
Arin was eight years old when he first climbed the west cliff alone, barefoot, with nothing but a sling in hand. His target? A silver-horned rabbit rumored to be a spirit beast's descendant.
He never found it. What he did find was something stranger.
A man with hair like snow and eyes like thunder, sitting cross-legged on a moss-covered stone, reading a book upside down.
"Are you going to kill it?" the man asked, without looking.
Arin froze. "What?"
"The rabbit." The man flipped a page and blinked slowly. "You're hunting it, right?"
"…Yes."
"Why?"
"For food."
A pause.
"Fair enough," the man chuckled. "But let me teach you something. Don't kill what you can't protect afterward."
Arin blinked. "What does that mean?"
The man finally looked at him. His gaze wasn't kind. It wasn't cruel either. It was sharp. Heavy.
"It means someday, you'll be strong enough to take things," he said. "But if you take them without knowing how to hold them, someone stronger will take them from you. Understand?"
Arin nodded slowly.
That was the first time he met Ashan, the wandering swordsman who never gave his real name, who stayed in the village for seven winters, and who taught him everything.
The village had no name. Outsiders called it Stone Hollow, but the villagers just called it home.
It wasn't big. Maybe forty houses in all, carved into the side of the cliffs, with rope bridges connecting the upper platforms and steep stairs winding into the earth below. No walls. No guards. Only the cold, the wind, and silence.
But it had rules.
No stealing.No killing.No kneeling.
It wasn't a cultivation village. There were no sect banners, no flying swords, no pill furnaces. Just hunters, weavers, shepherds, and one woman who carved talismans with a knife made of bone.
Arin's mother, Elara, rose before the sun each day. Her hands never stopped moving—kneading dough, mending cloth, mixing herbs. Her voice, always humming, filled their small stone home with warmth.
"If you're going to chase rabbits again," she said one morning, handing him a satchel, "come back before dark. And don't fall off the cliff this time."
His father, Ral, was the village's carpenter. He rarely spoke, but when he did, it stuck.
"You build slow, it lasts longer," he said, passing Arin a chisel. "Same with people. Same with words."
His little sister, Lira, was four and believed he could talk to birds. "If you catch the rabbit," she whispered one night, "can I keep its ears?"
"Only if it gives them to you," Arin said, tucking the blanket around her.
But it was Kael who stood out most.
His older brother was nearly fourteen, tall for his age, with a cold kind of brilliance. He was already crafting talismans that lit up at night, already whispering that the world outside the mountains was full of fools and monsters.
Kael didn't train with Ashan. "I don't need a hermit's riddles," he scoffed, carving bone-needles with frightening precision. "The world eats men like him."
"He's strong," Arin said once.
Kael looked at him. "So is a boulder. But boulders crack."
Ashan trained Arin alone, under the banyan tree past the waterfall bend. No sword. Just a wooden staff and a flat boulder with a single deep scar in it.
"Strength is meaningless without direction," Ashan would say. "A blade cuts both ways. If you don't learn where to aim it, it will end up in your own back."
Arin practiced day after day.
When other children played, he trained.When snow fell, he stayed barefoot, learning how to walk without sound.
He wasn't the strongest. Or the fastest.But he was the most stubborn.
He once stood under the waterfall for three hours without moving, just because Ashan said, "Your breath is louder than your step."
The village elders laughed. "He's not normal."
Ashan just smiled. "Normal boys don't survive storms."
But there was something else stirring in Arin.
He often carved shapes into the dirt with sticks — always the same curve. A bow.
One day, while alone, he found a fallen branch, smooth and curved. Without thinking, he strung it with twine and aimed it at the horizon. Not at anything real. Just the wind.
He held his breath. Pulled the string.
And for a moment… the wind stopped.
His hand trembled. Not from fear — but memory.
That night, he dreamed of fire and banners. Of a great warrior in white armor speaking calmly in a field of death. And a voice said:
"Even the wind listens to you. That's not skill — that's stillness."
He woke with tears in his eyes, not knowing why.
He admired that man. Arjuna. The name came to him like a whisper. Not because he was famous — but because he was right. Because his arrows never strayed, and neither did his heart.
And deep inside, Arin knew — not just that he wanted to be strong…But that he wanted to be like him.