The lessons began at dawn on the penthouse balcony. The air was cool and clean, and the rising sun laid long shadows across Avalon. Alice stood opposite me with her hands folded, as unreadable as the morning sky.
"You have chosen your project," she said. "To keep an old promise by making a new path for an old art. Before you build, I must see the foundation. Show me the art as it is. Perform it as well as you know how."
I nodded. This was familiar ground. I settled into the opening stance of the Violet Mist Divine Art, Mount Hua's Grade 6 form, the one I had spent months learning from the inside after I'd sat at Mo Zenith's tea table and promised him a fifth movement. I let my High Radiant weight sink out of reach and drew only on the clean, ordinary mana the art was written for. For this, I wasn't Arthur Nightingale with Sword Accord. I was a swordsman paying respect to a tradition.
I began.
