The mountains were quiet the day they found him.
A smoldering wreckage lay just beyond the ridge—burnt wagons, bodies scattered like broken dolls. The air was thick with smoke and blood. A small cry rose from beneath a collapsed carriage, weak but stubborn, clinging to life.
"Boss," a grizzled man muttered, pulling back a scorched tarp. "There's a baby. Still breathing."
The leader of the Green Hollow bandits crouched, inspecting the child. "Survived that, huh?" He sighed. "He's got a fire in him."
The other bandits looked on, unsure. They were thieves, not fathers. But the old man simply wrapped the child in his cloak.
"We'll call him Ren. He's one of us now."
Ren grew up on stolen bread and harsh wisdom. The bandits were no saints—they robbed from nobles and merchants, never the poor—but they had rules, honor in their own rough way. Every winter, they gave food to a village of starving elders. Every spring, they trained their swords under the open sky.
Ren joined them in those trainings by the time he could walk. He learned how to move silently, to stalk deer, and to parry a blade with only instinct.
"Don't fight with strength," the chief always told him, watching him swing a wooden sword. "Fight with your breath. Your eyes. Your gut. The body will follow."
He sparred with older bandits, learned how to feint, how to strike without killing. He never once cried from pain or defeat. His calmness unsettled even the adults.
"Kid's got no fear," one whispered. "Like he was born for the blade."
Ren was thirteen when the world ended.
The Wei army crossed into Qin territory. In the chaos of war, a small detachment of soldiers stumbled onto Green Hollow. The bandits barely had time to grab their weapons before arrows rained from the cliffs.
They fought back, but they were outnumbered, outarmed.
Ren stood at the edge of the battlefield, frozen, watching his family fall.
The chief, bleeding and limping, found him among the trees. He knelt and placed his worn, heavy sword into Ren's hands.
"You live, boy," he said, voice trembling. "You hear me? Take this. And this too." He shoved a pouch of silver into Ren's chest. "The world's bigger than this mountain. Go find it."
And then, with one last look, he turned back toward the fight.
Ren didn't cry. He ran.
He wandered the forests for weeks. Hunting beasts. Sleeping beneath trees. He spoke to no one, thought of nothing but the next step, the next breath. The sword never left his side.
Then, one morning, he stumbled into a quiet mountain village. He had no plan—just hunger in his belly and silence in his mind.
And that's when he saw them.
A loud, scrappy kid arguing with a sharp-eyed girl and a soft-spoken boy in plain robes.
"Oi, Shin! You can't solve every problem with yelling!""Oh shut up, Ten! Sei agrees with me, right?"Sei just smiled.
Ren watched them from the shadows, unseen. Something stirred in him—something like instinct.
They were different. Strange. But... interesting.
He didn't know why, but he decided not to keep walking.
Not this time.