Chapter 3 – Whispers in the Wind
The Seven Lakes Pavilion was built on harmony. But harmony was never meant to last.
Word of Ved's duel with Jin Su-Ryang spread faster than either sect intended. Murim's balance was fragile. When something moved unexpectedly, old scars remembered how to ache.
By the third day, Ved noticed the difference.
Whispers when he walked past. Eyes that lingered too long. Disciples who once trained beside him now kept their distance.
Some out of jealousy. Others out of fear.
---
In the inner quarters, a young disciple named Baekho scowled while sharpening his blade.
> "He's not even one of us. He came out of nowhere. No sect. No scroll. And he beat Su-Ryang?"
Another boy shrugged. "They say he sees visions. Dreams of blood and gods."
Baekho spat on the ground.
> "If he's not Murim… what is he?"
---
Ved trained alone near the Pavilion's sixth lake. The water here was colder, quieter. His reflection on its surface flickered—sometimes his face, sometimes… another's. Eyes not his. War-torn plains. Blue flames.
And a voice again:
> "धर्मो रक्षति रक्षितः।"
"Dharma protects those who protect it."
He gripped his sword tighter.
---
That evening, Master Haejin invited him to the Scripture Hall, a place few disciples ever entered.
Dust covered the wooden shelves. Most scrolls were written in Murim scripts—codes, manuals, philosophies. But in the far corner, beneath a sealed cloth, lay a thin volume in a language Ved somehow understood.
Not from study. From memory that wasn't his.
> "Why show me this?" Ved asked.
Haejin replied, "Because before you find where you belong… others will try to decide it for you."
---
Outside the Pavilion walls, strangers watched.
One wore a mask shaped like a lotus. Another, an old man who coughed into a black sleeve laced with silver thorns. Their sects were unmarked—but their presence, unmistakable.
> "The boy carries echoes," the masked one whispered.
> "He must not reach the border," the old man rasped. "Not yet."
---
Back inside, Ved stood alone in the meditation courtyard. Night fell. Snow drifted silently around him.
And again, a dream came.
He stood not as himself, but inside another's eyes. Surrounded by warriors in robes he didn't recognize. Their weapons burned with light. Their chants—ancient, terrible, beautiful.
A battlefield of gods and demons. And at the center of it all, a man in blue, untouched by dust or death, whispering Sanskrit verses with eyes like endless sky.
Ved woke in sweat.
---
The next morning, Pavilion bells rang.
An emergency summoning: two disciples found unconscious outside the outer perimeter, their meridians disturbed—struck with a technique none could identify.
No warning. No enemy in sight. Only a symbol burned into the dirt beside them: a golden falcon with wings of flame.
Ved stared at it for a long time.
Something in him stirred.
And far below the Pavilion, locked beneath forgotten stone, an ember flared to life.
---