The sect was a place of firelight and noise. Disciples sparred in the courtyards until dusk, their laughter and shouts echoing off the stone walls. Joren's name drifted on every tongue, a flame too bright to be ignored.
But Kaelen had no interest in fire. He preferred the quiet corners, the places where shadows deepened and eyes slid past without noticing.
That night, while the training yards rang with cheers around Joren's latest display, Kaelen slipped into the secluded valley behind the mountain library. The stream there whispered instead of roared, and the moonlight lay in pale sheets over moss and stone.
Here, no one bothered to look.
He sat cross-legged by the water, his serpent faintly coiling in the air behind him. To others it would seem weak, unimpressive. To him, it was a vessel of silence.
He closed his eyes.
And the world opened.
The Spectral Meridian Insight stirred. Threads of pale light emerged from the world itself—streams of energy, flowing through rocks, trees, even insects crawling in the grass. And when he turned his focus inward, the flows revealed themselves within him: rivers of Qi, coursing through meridians, subtle, precise.
Kaelen let his breath fall away until only rhythm remained. Then he recalled the forms he had spied during the last sparring sessions—the serpent strikes of Joren's clan style, the guarded palm techniques of another disciple. He traced them, not with muscle, but with vision.
Every strike left an echo. Every motion left a path.
And Kaelen learned by watching.
Slowly, his serpent lifted its head, its faint scales gleaming as it imitated the pathways Kaelen observed. The ghostly creature flickered, stretching, coiling, shedding fragments of its dull skin.
Inside his Soul Palace, the change was deeper. The serpent pressed against the inner walls, its form shifting with each fragment of insight Kaelen absorbed. Not grand evolutions—no, not yet. These were subtler: tighter coils, sharper fangs, a glimmer of patience in its silver eyes.
The growth was hidden, but growth nonetheless.
Kaelen rose and tested the flow. He shifted his stance, guiding Qi through the routes he had memorized. The strike came awkward at first—stiff, brittle. But he adjusted, following the meridian paths precisely as he had seen.
The second strike cut smoother.
The third hummed with resonance.
Water splashed as his palm cut the air, striking with the edge of stolen technique, tempered by his own refinement.
Not stolen, Kaelen corrected himself quietly. Learned. Adapted. He did not mimic. He understood.
And understanding was the root of mastery.
The moon had wheeled high when Kaelen finally rose. His breath steamed in the night air, his body weary, but his serpent gleamed faintly brighter in the dark.
On his way back through the shadowed corridors, he passed two disciples talking.
"…Joren's going to be chosen for inner sect training, you'll see."
"Of course he is. Look at Kaelen—still dragging behind. His serpent looks half-dead."
Their laughter trailed off as Kaelen passed, not bothering to glance their way. Their words stung no more than gnats.
The more they overlooked him, the more space he had to move unseen.
He returned to his chamber, sealing the door. Within the quiet walls, he let his serpent manifest fully in the Soul Palace. The dull grey skin shed another fragment, revealing scales like tarnished silver beneath.
"Not yet," Kaelen whispered, watching it coil. "Not until the time is right."
His serpent flicked its tongue, silent as shadow.
And Kaelen sank deeper into practice, while the sect burned itself bright above him.