It was a cold early spring night when the Mistweaver first met The Master’s new protegee, around three years prior. She lay in wait for him in an old abandoned manor outside the Shining City of Togenkyou, for the Master had foretold of his coming. The Master was never wrong, and so she waited.

She did not have to wait long. He appeared, distraught and angry. A handsome young man, with such a pain-distorted face.

“Have you come to kill me?” Mistweaver asked, a smile planted on her masked face. “Your kind doesn’t waste time, does it?”

“Killing you won’t do anything.” The man replied. “I’m here to join you.”

“Oh?” Mistweaver knew this, but decided to toy with him anyway. “What if we don’t want you?”

“You accepted my brother,” the young man replied. “You’ll accept me.”

“Truthsword?” Mistweaver laughed. “That fool was your brother?”

At this, the young man went livid. He charged, sword drawn. He was quick, slicing where Mistweaver was in one precise cut.

All he cut was a cloud of black smoke. Mistweaver was laughing behind him.

The boy stammered and faced her. “What… magic is that? I did not even feel you casting any spells!”

“Of course you didn’t,” she replied. Another puff of black smoke in the moonlight, and suddenly she was by his side.. “Would you want to know more?”

He elbowed her, but only hit air. She re-emerged in front of him, mere inches off his nose.

She stared him down through the holes of her mask. “If you can wound me before sunrise, then you can join us.”

“Easy,” the boy replied, tightening his grip on the sword in his hand. Time and time again he sliced, and time and time again, he cut at only air. Mistweaver reappeared elsewhere every single time, in unpredictable places. He appeared to waver, each swing showing less and less strength and finesse.

“You’re boring,” she said from the rafters high above him. “You can’t even land a clean blow on me. You really are Truthsword’s brother. All brawn and no brain.”

He pointed his sword at her, panting. He had been at it for a good hour, and his stamina was starting to give way. Straining, he channeled one of the last morsels of his qi into his sword. The blade shattered, sending shrapnel straight up and towards Mistweaver.

Mistweaver nonchalantly disappeared in a puff of black smoke once again. The shards of steel fell to the floor with loud clangs.

“My, my, is that the last of your strength?” She asked as he fell to his knees. “I expected much more from you, but I guess you’re nothing.”

The boy’s vision was hazy, but his mind still burned with lucidity. He now knew what he had to do.

“Why would shards of steel fall to the floor after being shot at the wooden ceiling?” He asked. Mistweaver froze.

“There is no ceiling, is there?” he asked again. Mistweaver didn’t respond.

He picked up his sword, which still had enough blade left in it to make a decent-sized cut. He thrust the blade into his stomach, and the searing pain dissolved the manor around him.

Mistweaver wailed in agony, as her stomach too, had been cut.

“Hexcrafting,” He said as he gasped, blood spilling everywhere. “I couldn’t cut you, because this was all a dream. The only way to cut you was to cut myself.”

He passed out.

-

He dreamed. He dreamed of a valley filled with a stinking, black filth that was poised to fill the world. He dreamed of a gleaming sword, embedded deep into the earth, the fissure from which the filth spread. He dreamed of a pure white flower, unblemished and untainted.

When he came to, he was lying in a stone room. He rose, and noted that another masked figure was in the room with him. This person’s mask was a flat field of purest white, with no holes even for eyes. He was face to face with The Master.

“You passed the test. And I showed you the truth in your dreams. What did you see?”

The boy recounted what he saw. The filth. The sword. The Flower.

“I see,” The Master regarded the boy thoughtfully. “And do you understand? What is the truth?”

“I see it now. Shin Rikoku must be destroyed, not because of its evil, but because it allows for the continued spread of the contagion of the world’s souls. They cling to corruption, and hinder the progress of the world.”

“Good,” The Master evaluated, surveying the initiate from front to back. The Master felt within this young man a great conflict: dread and despair clashed with fiery resolve and indignation.

In short, he was the perfect person to execute the Grand Plan. The ultimate destruction of Shin Rikoku. But this peon was rough. If he were to be the next Sword of Truth, Slayer of Heretics, and Key to removing that blemish on the face of the Earth, he needed polish.

Lots of polish.

“I know what must be done, Master,” the young man said.

“Patience.” The Master was firm, correcting this student. “The aftermath of our failure has sown the seeds of Shin Rikoku’s downfall. But we must wait before they sprout and bear fruit.”

“How do we destroy them?”

The Master was pleased at the student’s zeal. “Very well. I shall tell you. Have you heard of The Failsafe?”

The failsafe was something spoken in hushed tones amongst the upper echelons of society in and around The East. It was, supposedly, the last of the weapons remaining from the Conflict of Heaven and Earth. One of the mythical devices from The Sleeping Age. Something that can level entire empires in the blink of an eye.

“The failsafe… is real?” He asked.

The Master nodded. “If our failure taught us anything, it would be that it exists. What else can explain their desperation to hide a key?”

“They have a key… That is impossible. The keys are hidden away by the other kings of the east.”

“No, not one of those keys… Think!” The Master reprimanded. “What else can undo the shackles from the relics of the past? Think of your vision.”

The student recalled his vision, and shuddered. He thought hard, and reached the only conclusion. “The flower.”

“The flower.” The Master acknowledged.

“But… How can we be sure?”

“We wait. As of now, it is only a possibility. We need to be certain. Wait for the flower to bloom. It might take years, but… I have been anything but patient. My patience has rewarded me greatly.” The Master gestured grandly, spreading their arms like an eagle before flight. “Your brother’s impatience, however, caused his downfall.”

The young man’s heart sank. But the resolve within him never dimmed - it was still a raging furnace.

“Pay for the sins of your family. Bring glory to The Order and downfall upon those who blemish the land.”

The young man took a deep breath, and tried to slow his beating heart. He couldn’t… There was a trepidation stirring within him, an anxiety clawing on him.

“Is there a problem?” The Master asked.

The student answered The Master. “No.” The voice he mustered was unsure, tentative.

The Master smiled behind the mask, impressed that the initiate was still so passionate. In many other cases, the initiate would be cynical and jaded in the face of raw truth. This one, however… This one is different. Of course, The Master has known this for a long time. The Master was no fool.

“Very well. Welcome to the Order, Morningstar." The Master reached for a mask, and put it on the student. The mask was white, like the Master’s. It had black lines emanating from where the nose ought to be, as if the face was being split into five triangular shards. Like a black starburst in broad daylight.

-

Lady Tanaka had begrudgingly handed Lord Morimoto a sack of gold - this month’s stipend for holding Royal Office. This was what Miri was after. Yuuichi having a stipend meant he could purchase books and not reread what was in the Palace’s meager collection, thus staving off the Thaumaturgical Compulsion. The other nobility, however, thought giving him any amount of money would be wasted on procuring things as useless as he was, like the wares sold by shady merchants, faulty musical instruments, or, perhaps most useless of all, sweet buns - something Lord Morimoto was known to regularly feast on.

Yuuichi, meanwhile, wasted no time in sending a servant over to purchase any books that were on his list: Books on Thaumaturgy, Convergence Theory, and if possible, the history of the Order of Kuusai.

On the topic of the Order, there were no books available. Only a short, heavily-redacted treatise written by a scholar of political history. Yuuichi perused the document for information.

The Order of Kuusai started as one of many organizations that aided the Royal House of Abe, the sovereigns of Washinoyama, west of the New Mountains. And they originally were quite benign, even though they espoused what many outsiders would call radical views when it came to politics and religion. Most controversial of these views was their disdain that the Kingdom of Shin Rikoku even existed, citing that historically, Shin Rikoku was and always will be the domain of the House of Abe’s predecessors, and therefore, belongs to the said House.

Yuuichi was disturbed from his reading by the door to his room opening. Kazuma was on the other side, asking Yuuichi to come with him.

Kazuma took him back to Skysteel tower, up through a staircase hidden from view by a set of blinds. The stairs snaked up in between the walls of the tower all the way to the top, which was little more than a crawlspace into a musty, attic-like room that was lit with an odd blue glow.

“Where are we?” Yuuichi asked.

“This is the heart of the Morita barrier.” Kazuma explained. “Unlike other wards, I don’t sustain it. That thing does.” He pointed at a glowing blue ball at the center of the room, no bigger than a quail egg.

“And what is that thing?” the sage asked.

“Beats me,” Kazuma replied.

Yuuichi approached the ball, and noted that its periphery was surrounded by writing in a language that was not-quite-human. These were familiar to him, after all, his textbooks on thaumaturgy were written in the exact same language. He looked back at his friend, “I thought wardsmithing wasn’t magic?”

“It isn’t,” Kazuma replied. “Which is why I brought you here. The Morita barrier was constructed around ten years ago, basing off my father’s notes. I mean, think about it: the Moritas are a family of apothecaries who just happened to be wardsmiths. It’s not our job.”

“So the Morita barrier wasn’t meant as a security measure?” Yuuichi concluded.

Kazuma shrugged. “More or less. Anyway, this is the reason I knew I could teach you how to make wards yourself.” He pointed at the spells written on the floor. “That’s thaumaturgy, right? So back when Ooyama was turning you into meat paste…”

“You taught me the concept of warding, knowing that thaumaturgy can copy it, so I can protect myself.”

“Exactly.”

“So why are we here?”

“I need you to teach me what these spells mean.”

Yuuichi scanned the text that was strewn all over the floor, itself emitting a soft blue glow. The texts ran in different directions and on and on in circles. It was hard to find where one sentence began and where it ended. “Keep it in,” he mouthed. “There’s a lot of complexity but the general idea is that it’s trying to keep something in.”

“And that something is?”

“I can’t tell. This stuff is way over my head.” Yuuichi admitted.

Kazuma deflated. “I see. I was hoping that knowing would help me to make this barrier better. You know, so that no more murderous madmen sneak in.”

Yuuichi crossed his arms. “Well, you should still be able to do that. The spells don’t control the ward, it just adds to it.” He glanced at the glowing ball again. “At most it allows the ward to be sustained by that thing, whatever it is.”

Kazuma nodded, making a mental note to tweak the barrier every so often. “So, considering we’re not a family of magicians, do you have any idea, then, on who made this thing?”

“Yes,” Yuuichi replied. “It was definitely my father.” Memories of Morimoto Soushi, the person who disappeared six years ago flooded back to Yuuichi. The man was always secretive, working on projects not even his family knew. Something nagged at the younger Morimoto, telling him that whatever his father was up to, traitorous or not, it was connected to the attack earlier that day.

He needed to go deeper.