Heavenly Archmage

Chapter 3: First Step Into Murim

"Father, Mother, I am leaving now."

The boy's words dissolved into the mountain mist as snow clung stubbornly to the pines, melting beneath the first tentative light of dawn. Beneath the gnarled roots of an ancient tree, two graves lay marked only by smooth, weathered stones. Yeon Arin stood motionless before them, his hands clasped behind his back while his expression remained utterly empty of feeling. The cold morning air seemed to bend around him as though unwilling to touch his skin.

A faint shimmer bloomed outward from his position, wrapping around both burial mounds like a second shadow. The air itself warped, swallowing their presence completely from both sight and sound. SEALING SCRIPT – Memory Bind. His words emerged barely above a whisper, yet they carried the weight of finality.

"No one will ever disturb your rest," he murmured with a voice that held no warmth, only the cold promise of protection and erasure intertwined. "Your names will vanish from the world's memory, consumed by time and silence. But I will not forget. I will not rest until the debt is paid in full."

He turned with mechanical precision and descended the mountain slope, each footfall deliberate and measured against the snow-covered earth. The spell sealed itself completely in his wake, leaving behind only untouched white, as though he had never been there at all.

The dead are finished with their duty. Mine is only beginning.

Movement through the forest became something almost inhuman in its grace. Every living pulse within a hundred paces unfolded before his heightened awareness as delicate threads of ethereal light. ARCANE THREAD – Soul Weaving. Deer grazing in the hollow of a rotting stump. The ancient rhythm of the mountain's very breath. The trembling of insects beneath the bark. He threaded between them all without disturbing a single branch, moving with the silence of something that existed between life and void.

Days bled into one another beneath a relentless gray sky. Valleys fractured into cracked roads where stubborn weeds thrust through forgotten stone like defiant teeth. Villages materialized and evaporated like phantoms caught behind curtains of rain. Whispers followed his passing—a child walking alone through the wilderness, eyes far too calm for his tender years, untouched by hunger or fear. He never paused.

At a roadside inn carved from weathered wood, he listened while seated in shadows that seemed deeper than they should have been. Merchants and travelers spoke carelessly, their voices loose with wine and exhaustion. "They say another sect fell last week," one older man muttered between gulps. "Crimson robes again. Wiped them clean—no survivors, not even the youngest."

"Same fate as the Azure Cloud," another replied, shaking his head. "That was ten years back now. The Alliance called it divine punishment for their arrogance."

Arin drank a single mouthful of cold water and departed before the innkeeper could register anything unusual about the strange young guest. He left coins that far exceeded the debt, ensuring no memory would linger.

Divine punishment. The language of cowards attempting to mask the stench of spilled blood with righteousness.

The terrain opened gradually before him, the forest surrendering to the vast expanse of the Inwon Plains. Rivers carved their way across the landscape in wide, lazy arcs, their surfaces catching sunlight and throwing it back like scattered blades. Wind swept across the grasslands carrying the mingled scents of spring growth and iron-rich earth. He continued walking until the sun descended and painted the entire horizon in shades of deepest red, and then something struck his awareness—the violent collision of Ki against Ki, the discordant ring of steel meeting bone, the percussion of combat.

He halted and pivoted smoothly toward the disturbance.

Two distinct groups. Approximately a dozen signatures. Their power distribution is severely unbalanced. One will overwhelm the other.

He approached through the tall grass with deliberate silence until the scene crystallized before him. A clearing ringed by ancient stones opened into view, air so thick with disturbed dust it seemed almost solid. Men clothed in crimson robes advanced in a methodical circle, their blades moving with vicious efficiency. Arrayed against them stood a handful of blue-robed fighters making a desperate, losing stand. Their formation fractured as another warrior fell hard, blood streaming from a wound across his shoulder while another staggered backward, gasping.

Arin observed from beneath a tree's protective canopy, his gaze tracking the flow of Ki as it moved through each combatant. Threads of light wove through their bodies in patterns that revealed their nature—erratic and wasteful, hemorrhaging energy at every motion. He traced their fundamental flaws with casual, detached interest.

Blue robes represent orthodox doctrine, disciplined yet rigidly inflexible. Crimson embodies chaos and speed, technically reckless but devastatingly effective. The orthodox practitioners cannot win. They will be ground to dust.

He turned to depart. This conflict held no significance for him. These insects warring with each other amounted to less than background noise in the greater scheme. He took a single deliberate step down the path when a voice split the air like a blade through silk—laughter that carried the sharp edge of cruelty and triumph.

"Tell your sect master," the crimson-robed commander bellowed, his weapon pressed against the kneeling opponent's exposed throat, "that your pathetic organization will follow the Azure Cloud into ash and oblivion!"

Arin froze mid-stride. The wind stuttered and died completely. For a single, perfect heartbeat, the entire world seemed to hold its collective breath in anticipation.

So it was you.

He rotated with impossible smoothness, and the very air surrounding his form began to thicken as mana stirred awake like some slumbering god remembering hunger. His eyes caught the fading sunlight and threw it back in cold, unyielding reflection. The crimson-robed combatants laughed again, their awareness entirely focused on their overwhelming victory. One among them kicked aside a wounded enemy with casual brutality while another raised his sword to the heavens.

Arin lifted a solitary hand, his voice emerging soft and almost gentle, carrying a terrible courtesy beneath its surface.

"ARCANE THREAD – Soul Weaving."

Invisible filaments erupted from his fingertips like luminous spiders spinning their web through the air itself. They flowed across the clearing like liquid moonlight, brushing against every heartbeat, linking motion to motion in an intricate pattern of connection. None of the fighters registered the change as the threads settled invisibly into place.

"ARCANE BLAST – Wave of Annihilation."

A faint shimmer expanded outward from his position in perfect, concentric circles. Absolute silence accompanied the release. For a single instant the grass around the clearing bent as though compressed by tremendous invisible pressure, and then reality reasserted itself.

The crimson-robed commander opened his mouth to deliver another boast. No sound emerged from his throat. A line of pure light traced a perfect vertical path down his chest and divided him cleanly. He fell. The others followed in sequence, their bodies crumbling into dispersing powder before they could even touch the earth. Their weapons clattered free and settled into the grass with soft, final sounds that seemed impossibly loud in the sudden quiet.

Only the wind dared to move again.

Cause and erasure. The equation balanced perfectly. Efficient.

The sole blue-robed survivor remained frozen in place, his mind struggling to process what his eyes had just witnessed. All of his companions had already fallen, consumed by the incomprehensible power that had swept through the clearing. He knelt among the spreading ash of his enemies, his entire frame trembling uncontrollably while blood continued to drip steadily from the wound across his chest. Slowly, with tremendous effort, he lifted his gaze toward the young boy who stood perfectly still amid the devastation, his expression absolutely unchanged despite the carnage.

"Who... are you?" the man managed to whisper, his voice fractured between disbelief and soul-deep terror.

Arin walked forward with measured steps. The scent of burned air trailed behind him like a funeral shroud. His features remained utterly impassive.

"I'm just a ghost walking the path my sect left behind," he replied quietly, and the words carried a depth of meaning that extended far beyond their surface simplicity.

The man attempted to speak once more, but his eyes rolled backward and he collapsed limply onto the blood-soaked earth.

Arin stood motionless among the corpses as the sun completed its descent below the horizon, leaving the sky painted in shades of deepening purple and indigo. The grass began to sway in the rising evening breeze, carrying away the ash of the slain in gossamer clouds that scattered across the plains. He gazed toward the distant landscape glowing with the faintest hint of light beneath the twilight veil.

Jungwon Plains. The heart of this fractured world's slow decay and inevitable collapse. Let's see what truth hides beneath all these carefully maintained lies.