Halcyon

Before she became Halcyon, she was a girl without a name. Born into the chaos of war, her parents fled through the violence with neither the heart nor the means to give her one. In desperation, her mother stripped off her own azure tunic, wrapped her daughter with tender care, and placed her inside a small dark chest, setting it adrift upon the water to go wherever the current would take it. A final farewell, and yet, cradled in the last warmth her mother had left behind, she felt something strangely close to comfort. Perhaps Heaven took pity on her: the current did not carry her to her death, but to a chance at life. A woman washing clothes by the river heard the crying from within the chest and took the infant in as her foster daughter. But fortune is fleeting. Before the child could even be given a name, famine came. To keep them both alive, the young girl sought out a legendary broker of the jianghu, a man said to place a price on anything in the world. In his eyes, beast and man were worth exactly what they could fetch. In times of chaos, life was cheap. At first, hers was worth no more than three feathers from a rare bird. But she clenched her small fists and swung at him. She would prove her worth: the price of her fighting, the price of her life. In the end, she earned her foster mother a pouch of coins and a sliver of lustrous white jade. From that day on, she traveled the jianghu at the broker's side. The broker once told her that it was because she had no name that she had the audacity to go against fate. A nameless soul, even if she angered the Heavens, would leave the gods with nothing to strike down, and they'd have no choice but to let the thunder roll and go quiet. Impressed by her fearlessness, the broker gave her a task at the age of nine that no one else would take: to assassinate a key figure of Mohist Hill. She took the maps he tossed her and waited half a month along the appointed path, sleeping under open skies, scaling cliff faces, until she finally caught sight of her target. And then she stopped. He was just a child, two or three years younger than herself. In a world where life meant so little, was she really going to become someone who treated it the same way? She thought of the broker's kindness. She thought of the small fish she'd rationed herself to only half of the night before. She steadied herself and crept closer without a sound. The boy was using a sharpened wooden dagger to carefully pry apart a tangled knot of vines. "Ugh, you dummy... at this rate you'll be here all day. Here, use mine." Before she even knew what she was doing, she had handed him her iron dagger. The boy took it without any surprise, as if they had known each other for years. Even with the better blade, his movements stayed slow and gentle, taking care not to harm the bird caught inside the vines. That afternoon, two children and two knives worked through every last tangle. A bird burst into the sky, and two fates became bound together. She never took that life. At sunset, an angler arrived to collect the boy, and she realized she had the wrong person entirely. The angler seemed to know exactly why she had come, yet he only smiled, asked for her name, and asked if she would come back to the mountains with him. Back where? To a place where, even in a world this broken, people would still stop to save a single bird? She wanted to go. But she had to repay the broker first, for everything he had given her. Fifteen days. Give her fifteen more days. She completed a bigger job for him, killing a bandit chief who had plagued the region for years. She hunted several jackals in the forest and brought back the pelts to keep him warm through winter. Then she left. On the sixteenth day, she arrived at the stone bridge south of the city and followed her new master toward a place where the world might be made better. It was a shame: no matter how far she searched in the years that followed, she never found those kind souls from the mountains again. The years after were hard ones, every step paid for in blood. She never stopped moving. But it was on Mohist Hill that she finally received a name. From that day on, the world knew her as Halcyon.

After walking half a lifetime, she has finally arrived at journey's end. This place is still and silent, much like that drifting black chest from long ago, wrapped in the half-light of dusk. She closes her eyes, and it is as though her whole life might begin again from the very start. She is young once more, told by her Master to circulate her Qi in the quiet chamber. Eyes shut, her ears stretch out as far as they can reach. The trees are alive with cicada song. Senior Brother Zhang Wanshi is scolding Master again. And that man... the soft rustle of turning pages drifts through the room like a summer breeze through leaves. What could he possibly be reading? A slim little booklet, only a few dozen pages, yet he returns to it again and again as though it holds something inexhaustible. What is it that keeps him there? Unable to help herself, she quietly stirs her inner Qi. Her spirit slips free and drifts to his side, straining for a glimpse of the words on the page, when a sharp rap lands squarely on her forehead. "Still your mind if you want to guide your Qi." Strange. How had Master known her thoughts were wandering? That one knock drives back her reaching hand and pulls her stray Qi back into the present. Indeed... so much time has passed. The restlessness of her younger years has long since settled into the still depths of a quiet pool. The clamor of clashing ideals is gone, leaving only the cold, steady turning of interlocking gears. Her Qi has grown vast enough to awaken the Deriviation formation, yet she can never return to that summer afternoon alive with the sound of cicadas. As the formation pivot anchors to her meridians, bringing an agony that gnaws through to the bone, she finds herself wishing above all else to remember one particular fragrance. It was a winter night in her early years at Mohist Hill. She had stopped to right an injustice on her way home and arrived late again, soaked to the skin and shivering with cold. But the moment she pushed open the door, a sweetness like honeyed flower cakes washed over her. Whatever had been worked into the candlewick carried the scent of the sweets she loved most. Porridge simmered on the stove. Senior Brother Zhang Wanshi sat absorbed in repairing a wooden eagle. Master had already drifted off to sleep. And that man had simply, quietly set a soft cushion beside her usual seat. No one called her name. Yet within that warm, honeyed fragrance, she suddenly understood what it meant to have a home. Such warmth. Once, she had wished to stay inside it forever. But the fires of war rose again, and refugees crowded the roads in tears. Amid the fighting at the front, she looked toward villages where cooking smoke should have curled into the sky and found only smoldering ruins. It came to her then: the Haven the Mohists sought was simply a world where thousands like her could each have a thread of hearth smoke to look toward, and a home to return to. And so she turned to face the storm and walked out beyond the mountains. She threw herself into the study of formations, hoping that one day she might read the workings of the world entire and bring lasting peace to the realm. The years passed. Leaving behind her a trail of broken promises, she rarely caught that sweet warm scent of candle smoke again. Now and then, passing a lone cottage in the wilds and seeing a faint glow through the window, she could not help but stop for a moment. She wondered whether someone in there was also coming home worn and weary, and being gently held by the warmth waiting inside. When the world's troubles are at an end, I too shall go home. Slowly, her heartbeat fell into rhythm with the turning gears, and the fragrance that had once waited for her grew harder to recall. Master had said, "Still your mind to guide your Qi." She thought she had finally learned how. Yet when every last thought went quiet, a single birdcall was enough to bring it all flooding back: the old memories, and that warm, sweet smell. ...Wait. Why is he here? Perhaps she had never stopped believing that if she kept walking, forward and upward, she would one day reach up and take the moon from the sky. When that day came, he would surely make his way through the crowd and find her at a single glance. Then, pretending not to notice that the woman before him was a habitual breaker of promises and a bringer of death, he would simply smile and say, "You're back." Amid the scent of honeyed flower cakes, she finally read the page he had lingered on for so long.