as a thousand ages

Spring comes, and Nie Huaisang is seen with his sabre for the first time since— anyone's guess as to when. He is aloof on it, when pressed, in the keen way he wields and weaponises best. Eventually, when all prying fails to yield reward, other novelties overtake it as gossip du jour, and its time as a mainstay topic of conference conversation comes to an end. There are more pertinent things to discuss, anyway, especially where Sect Leader Nie is even peripherally involved. And when the fount runs dry— well. He has an almost preternatural talent for untapping fresh reservoirs for talk.

More springs come, as their wont. Other things pursue, new beginnings ripened for flourish, close at hand. And yet, nothing seems to come at all of Nie Huaisang's newest proclivity for being armed by habit. There is no apparent effect on his level of cultivation, no surfacing of proof that the presence of his sabre at his side is anything more than happenstance.

More springs come, without relent. Nie Huaisang dies at an age considered modest for a cultivator, his sparse few secrets still closely kept. As a sect leader of Qinghe Nie, he departs venerated both by years and in tranquillity thought unreachable by his predecessors. He is interred in the Stone Castles with his sabre and a body to keep it at bay, as his brother and Baxia before him, as their father and his broken blade before them.

When the time comes, as it must, as it is meant to, as it always will, the Nie who will soon be zongzhu journeys to their ancestral sword hall. They perform the rites of binding, as written, as taught, as practiced, on a sabre that is still unbloodied steel, barely a day parted from the smithy.

What comes when called through the bedimmed break in the veil is an oddity among abnormalities: one spirit comprised of two. Separates made whole, complements in complete connate concord. Exceptional, but yet no different, where important: it still demands its fill of violence, as due. And its wielder dutifully obliges, having forgone by oath their right to choose otherwise.

Springs come, go, pass, arrive only to depart again. Even this sabre spirit's inherent harmonious counterbalance is not enough to tempt fate off its fatalist course. Its sect leader dies to a qi deviation, in the end, as have all the rest, in fashions of more or less. Miracles are priceless, after all, but insufficient payment to wipe ledgered blood debts. The costs of karmatic stains run deeper than even quanlu; demand compensation in patience and repentance, will crouch in wait and take their fill through dynasties.

Another steps into the shadow cast by Qinghe Nie's mantle. The cycle begins again.

This one endures a little longer than the last. Just some short years, but time enough to feel the creak and bend of their bones from the brunt of decades of Qinghe's harsher winters, to see the bloom of a second generation.

The one that follows next outlasts even that.