The wind over Cold Iron Ridge was like the edge of a forgotten blade—sharp not only in temperature, but in silence. It cut through the fabric of sound, leaving behind only breath, footfall, and the cry of mountain crows circling overhead.

  Beneath that soundless sky, a boy stood.

  His name was Shen Liang, and at sixteen winters old, he bore the quiet weight of someone who had learned to walk gently upon the world, as though his footsteps might disturb something sacred beneath the earth.

  He stood at the edge of a high ledge, eyes fixed on the cloudless sky, where—like an ember caught in a slow descent—a light began to fall.

  A star.

  It fell slowly at first, then all at once, streaking down in a violent arc that split the sky from horizon to horizon. The heavens rumbled. Even the mountain birds fled. Shen Liang didn’t move.

  The star slammed into the far side of the ridge with a soundless impact. There was no roar, no tremor. Only the abrupt absence of wind, and a shimmer in the air like heat off stone.

  Then the world exhaled, and the cold returned.

  “Liang!”

  A voice echoed behind him—harsh, worn, but familiar. His father, Shen Fu, was climbing up the trail with a limp in his step. The man still wore the hunter’s cloak of cured fur, though the way he leaned heavily on his walking stick betrayed a body long past its prime.

  “You’re not deaf. You saw it too, didn’t you?”

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  Shen Liang turned. “The star.”

  “A bad omen,” his father muttered, eyes narrowing toward the rising smoke in the distance. “No such thing as good when the sky bleeds fire. Come down. The ridge isn’t safe.”

  “I want to see where it fell.”

  Shen Fu froze.

  “Absolutely not.”

  Shen Liang’s gaze didn’t waver. “What if it’s something sacred? The stories say stars that fall near mortals mark a trial of the heavens.”

  “And those same stories say it is the mark of devils who’ve lost their wings. Don’t go chasing after tales.”

  “But if it is something real…”

  His father grunted. “You’re just like your mother.”

  Shen Liang didn’t respond to that. He rarely did.

  That night, when the village slept and the moon veiled itself behind cloud and sorrow, Shen Liang left.

  The descent into the crater felt like stepping into someone else’s dream. Trees bent away from the impact zone, their bark charred black, yet untouched by fire. The ground bore no cracks—only fine, dust-like ash, light as breath.

  At the center, embedded half-submerged in stone, was a sword.

  No, not quite a sword. It was broken, its blade jagged at the edges, half of it missing entirely. But the hilt pulsed faintly with silver light, and as Shen approached, he heard it.

  A song.

  Not a melody with words. Not something that could be sung by the living. It was more like a memory—old and aching, humming in the marrow of his bones.

  His hands reached before his mind could stop them. The moment his fingers touched the hilt—

  His breath stopped.

  Time folded. Or maybe it shattered.

  He saw a battlefield where he—or someone wearing his face—stood among mountains of the dead.

  He saw a woman in white, her back turned, standing on a lotus lake as she wept a name he didn’t remember.

  He saw the sword—not broken, but whole—cutting down a giant cloaked in starlight.

  He saw himself die.

  And then he woke.

  Cold Iron Ridge had no answers for him the next day. The sword was gone, or perhaps had never been. But when Shen Liang reached within himself, where once he had found only breath and blood, he felt it.

  A single pulse.

  A spark in a dead sea.

  A vein, ancient and dry, now dusted with life.

  The Dust Vein, his mother once whispered, had long ago turned to myth.

  But it had awakened.

  And the heavens, watching, whispered in return.