The Gale Citadel loomed like a rising mountain over the chasm, its towers still braced in scaffolding, its walls echoing with the clang of hammers and shouted orders. Eighty percent of the fortress now stood—ramparts, courtyards, the half-carved halls that clung to the cliffs like roots digging into bone. Inside its heart, Altan summoned his lieutenants.
Burgedai, Khulan, and Chaghan entered his chamber just after dawn. The room was sparse, lit by oil lamps and a single high window cut into the stone. On the table before Altan lay two wrapped scrolls and a leather-bound book, all old, but humming faintly with sealed intent.
Altan nodded to Burgedai first. "You've held the line before. Now you'll lead it." He handed the large scroll to him. "Infantry formations, saber and shield technique, javelin throws, counter-press strategies. And a cultivation method tailored to men like you—those who grow sharper under pressure."
Burgedai opened the scroll slightly and exhaled. "This is old doctrine. From the pre-Empire age."
"Exactly," Altan said. "It's not perfect. You'll adapt it. Make it yours. Once it's in your bones, burn it."
Khulan raised an eyebrow. "Secret knowledge now?"
He turned to her and handed over the smaller book. "For a former bandit queen. Archery stances from the Ashen Clans, stealth movements drawn from the Hollow Step style, blade work meant for close-quarter ambushes. And a lightfoot cultivation technique. You'll be our eyes. Our knife in the dark."
She flipped through the pages, eyes narrowing. "Some of this... I've only heard in rumors."
"You've lived in shadows. This will let you command them. But when you've memorized it—burn it."
They both nodded, the weight of oath heavy in the silence.
When they left, Chaghan remained. He stood at attention, quiet, but not uncertain.
Altan didn't speak at first. Instead, he walked to the far wall and unlatched a sealed iron box. From it, he drew a thick parchment bound in silk. The air in the room shifted.
"This is the second level of the Stoneheart Resonance," Altan said, handing it to him. "You earned the first when you refused to yield in the south pass. You'll earn this one in pain."
Chaghan unrolled it slowly, eyes tracing the inked diagrams and dense script. "It's different. It's slower."
"It's meant to be. This isn't a path of force. It's a path of presence. The world breaks what moves too fast. But stone outlasts the storm."
Altan led him out of the chamber. They descended deep into the citadel, past sealed doors and glyph-lined corridors, until they reached the rear edge of the Kharan Chasm. There, behind a curtain of ivy and jagged stone, a narrow cave mouth yawned.
"This place doesn't exist on any map," Altan said. "I carved it myself. With hands and breath."
They stepped inside. The tunnel twisted, then opened into a vast chamber. Crystalline glyphs pulsed along the walls, carved into every inch of rock. Runes traced constellations across the floor. From the ceiling, a lattice of glowing gems lit the space in steady, silent light.
Time here felt... wrong. Slower, deeper.
"One month inside equals a year outside," Altan said. "Train here. Adapt to the next stage. Let your body and mind reshape."
Chaghan walked to the center. He sat, placed the scroll on his lap, and began breathing in rhythm.
For the first month, he cultivated in silence, absorbing the second level: Resonant Pulse. He let his breath deepen, his limbs grow dense with mineral qi, and learned to send tremors into the floor with each step, listening for echoes beyond sight.
But from the second month onward, the trials began.
Wraiths emerged not all at once, but like assassins in the dark. They came in silence—some stalking, some rushing from blind corners, all of them aimed to kill. These were not mere spirits, but echoes of failure. They moved with the malice of shattered cultivators, remnants of those who had walked this path and broken halfway through.
They did not give him rest. Most hours of the day were spent in combat, eyes raw from vigilance, limbs sore from tension. Only in the deep hours of night could he sleep, and even then, only behind a circle of hastily scrawled protection runes and weighted breaths that kept his qi steady and undetectable. Even his dreams trembled with the memory of strikes barely dodged.
A year passed inside that secret chamber, though only a month moved outside.
Chaghan's muscles became corded with endurance. His bones ached with weight, but he learned to anchor each step like stone pressing into the earth. His strikes no longer chased momentum—they became it, moving slow and final. The wraiths grew stronger as he did, but he stopped retreating. By the twelfth month, he no longer fought in desperation. He endured.
And when the last wraith fell into vapor, silence reclaimed the chamber.
Altan stepped from the shadows, expression unreadable.
"You held. Through time, through pain."
Chaghan did not answer. He knelt, soaked in sweat, one eye swollen shut, but his posture unbroken.
"You'll be the first of the Stormguards," Altan said.
Above them, the chamber's runes flared once and then dimmed, as if exhaling in acknowledgment.
Outside, the wind over the chasm carried a different weight.
Something had changed.
The Citadel had gained its first anchor.