RUST AND AETHER - The Rusty Iron by the Wash-Pool

The stone under his cheek

The stone under his cheek was cold, slick with dark river-moss and smelling faintly of stagnant silt.Julian groaned, his fingers curling instinctively into the grit.

A migraine hammered behind his temples like a blacksmith’s sledge, each throb bringing a wave of nausea that tasted of cheap sour wine and copper.Too much to drink, he thought, blinking against the amber twilight.

The graduation dinner…

Frank bought that awful grain liquor…Then the second set of memories hit him—not as a gentle recollection, but as a hot spike driven straight into his brain.It wasn’t a greasy tavern back in his hometown.

There were no neon signs, no screech of city traffic, no greasy takeaway boxes.

There was only the cold wind sweeping down from the mountain, the smell of crushed pine needles, and seventeen years of quiet, hopeless misery.Julian sat up so fast his vision swam.

He stared at his hands.

They were thin, calloused across the palms and knuckles, red-raw from scrub brushes and coarse straw brooms.

He wore a tunic of dyed-grey hemp, stiff with dried mud and frayed at the cuffs.

Beside him, lying half-in and half-out of a puddle of dark water, was a sword.Or what passed for one.

It was a slab of unrefined iron, three feet long, pitted with orange rust along the spine and wrapped at the hilt with greasy leather strip.He leaned over the edge of the pool.

The water of the

Wash-Pool was still, dark as black tea under the dying light of the sun.

The reflection staring back at him was young—seventeen at most—with high, sharp cheekbones, dark, almond-shaped eyes, and a mouth pulled tight with a habitual, defensive cynicism.

It was his face, yet not his face.

He remembered cramming for college entrance exams; he also remembered shivering through mountain winters in a draughty wooden hut, living on boiled turnips and salted wild cabbage.”Transmigrated,” Julian muttered.

The word felt strange on his tongue, heavy and ridiculous. “I actually… died?

Or just swapped out?”He touched his neck.

Pulse was steady, if a bit fast.

The air here was thin and razor-sharp, smelling of high altitudes and ancient stone.Memory fusion was a messy business, like two wet sheets of paper pressed together until the ink bled through.

But as the fog in his mind cleared, the grim geography of his new life laid itself out with brutal clarity.This was

Vaeloria—specifically, the

Frost-Reaches of

Caelen, a brutal northern province where winter lasted eight months of the year and wild beasts roamed the treelines outside human sanctuaries.

He was currently sitting at the lower grounds of

Ascendant, the seat of the

Order of the

Order was an ancient, eight-pin sect, an iron-walled fortress spanning hundreds of miles of mountain peaks, housing tens of thousands of disciples, elders, and servants.Julian

Finch was not a disciple.

He was a sweeper boy.

An unranked servant belonging to the lowest rung of the

Order’s massive logistical machine, responsible for sweeping the three thousand stone steps that led up to the outer gates every morning before dawn.His history before the age of ten was a blank slate—no parents, no family name, just a shivering stray found at the base of the mountain.

But he did remember

Clara.Clara.

His little sister.

Four years younger, small-boned, with eyes too big for her thin face.

Three years ago, during a brutal blizzard while

Julian was out on duty, a woman had come to their hut in the

Witnesses said the woman wore white robes that didn’t touch the mud and moved like wind over snow.

She had picked up the crying five-year-old girl and vanished into the storm.On the doorframe of their hut, carved deep into the oak by a single fingernail, were two lines of writing:She possesses the

I take her to the

Realm. —Evelyn.Julian’s hand tightened around the grip of the rusted iron sword.

The grief wasn’t a distant memory from a stranger; it was a cold, jagged rock sitting in his chest, heavy and suffocating.

To find her, he had to leave

Caelen, he had to cross thousands of leagues of demon-infested wastes.

And to survive even ten miles outside the

Order’s protective barrier, he needed power.Which brought him to the most pressing, terrifying deadline of all.Fifteen days.In fifteen days, the

Order of the

Blade would open its gates for the annual

Trial, recruiting new

Apprentice disciples.According to the ironclad laws of the

Order—and indeed, the entire province of

Caelen—seventeen was the absolute age limit.

If an applicant could not condense an

Seed and pass the foundational tests by seventeen, their martial channels were considered permanently hardened.

They would be branded a lifelong commoner, fit only for sweeping stairs, shoveling beast dung, or farming tundra barley until winter fever or an escaped beast finished them off.Julian was seventeen.

This year was his fifth and final attempt.”Fifteen days,” Julian whispered, his breath clouding in the dusk. “Fourteen years of failing, and

I’ve got a fortnight to turn a sweeper’s body into a warrior’s.”He stood up.

His knees popped, sending a dull ache through his shins.

Malnourishment had left his frame light and sparse, lacking the dense muscle required for heavy swordplay.Sitting here whining won’t thicken my meridians, he thought, his old life’s stubborn streak flaring up.

Work with what you have.

First, see what this body actually remembers.Julian gripped the hemp-wrapped hilt and drew the rusted blade from its puddle with a wet shluck.

The steel was heavy, ill-balanced, and pockmarked.He closed his eyes, filtering through the sweeper boy’s memories.

For seven years, watching the outer disciples practice from half a mile away, the original

Julian had memorized the

Order’s most basic entry-level routine—the

It was a crude set of drills taught to three-year-old toddlers in wealthy martial clans to build wrist strength and foot coordination.Julian opened his eyes, planted his heels in the wet gravel, and thrust forward.Form

Thrust.The rusted sword wobbled.

His right shoulder hitched awkwardly, his elbow flaring outward.

It was clumsy, weak, the strike of a boy who had spent his life holding a broom instead of steel.He reset his stance and tried again.Form

Sweep.On the second strike, something shifted deep within his skull.It wasn’t a magic spell or a divine light.

It was a sudden, terrifying shift in perspective—as if his mind had suddenly been fitted with a pair of hyper-precise calipers.

The fusion of two adult souls, combined with his modern, analytical way of thinking, ignited a state of uncanny, cold clarity.He didn’t just see his arm moving; he saw the geometry of the swing.

He felt the exact moment his foot slipped two millimeters on the slick algae, wasting ten percent of his hip rotation.

He saw the way the rusted blade dragged against the air because his wrist was angled four degrees too high.Julian froze, breathing through his nose.Again.He stepped forward, executing

Block.This time, his body moved before his conscious mind could overthink it.

His heel drove into the gravel, his hip pivoted, and the blade snapped up at a crisp forty-five-degree angle.

The rusted iron cut through the twilight air with a sharp, dry whir.No wobble.

No wasted motion.Julian’s eyes widened. “What the…”He didn’t stop.

He pushed straight into the rest of the routine.

The movements became faster, sharper.

The awkwardness of a starving sweeper boy was stripped away with every stride, replaced by an terrifying, mechanical efficiency.By the time he reached the final four forms—the ones the original

Julian had spent two frustrating years trying to master—his mind was operating with terrifying speed.Form

Light-Splitter!Julian stepped off his left foot, his rusty sword flashing upward in an arc.

The tip traced a crimson line through the twilight, slicing through a falling pine needle before it hit the water.Form

Ice-Breaker!He pivoted on his heel, bringing the heavy flat of the blade down with a sudden, bone-rattling snap of his wrist.

Air cracked like a small whip.Form

Cloud-Scoop!Form

Wind-Chaser!The rusted piece of iron became a blur of dark metal.

Red rust flecks flew off the blade like sparks as

Julian wove through the twilight, his grey hemp sleeves snapping with every turn.

His footwork was light, almost floating, his breath syncing perfectly with the extension and retraction of his chest.SHIU!Julian came to a dead stop, his sword thrust straight out, the tip quivering exactly one inch above the surface of the

Wash-Pool.A tiny ripple spread outward from the sword’s point, cutting through the dark water.Julian stood frozen in the quiet woods, his chest heaving, steam rising from his soaked grey tunic.

Sweat dripped off his nose and splashed into the pond.

His muscles throbbed with a deep, burning ache—his lungs felt like they were coated in hot sand.He pulled the sword back and stared at his hands.”Hyper-comprehension,” he breathed, a slow, grim smile touching the corners of his lips. “My soul fused… and it turned my brain into an engine for muscle memory.”The physical vessel was still weak.

His meridians were thin and dry, his muscles lacked mass, and he couldn’t sustain that level of intensity for more than half an hour without tearing his tendons.

But the software—the mental mechanics of martial arts—was firing at a level that defied common sense.He looked up toward the summit of

High above the clouds, the pavilions of the

Order glowed with faint, ethereal array-lights, looking like an immortal palace floating in the heavens.

Down here, at the base, it was cold, wet, and smelled of mud.Fifteen days.Julian wiped the sweat from his eyes with his sleeve, sheared the rusted blade back into its crude scabbard, and shouldered his broom.”Not a bad start,” he muttered into the dark. “Now let’s see how much trouble a sweeper can make.”