Unsouled

Unsouled Plot Summary

Introduction

The testing bowl holds still water that isn't water at all—it's pure madra, the essence from which souls are made. For most children in Sacred Valley, the liquid responds: clinging like glue for future Enforcers, retreating from Strikers, rising for Rulers, freezing for Forgers. But when fifteen-year-old Wei Shi Lindon places his hand in the bowl for the seventeenth time, the water remains perfectly still. Empty. Unsouled. In a world where sacred artists harness the power of heaven and earth, where even children wield techniques that can shatter stone, Lindon possesses nothing. No affinity, no Path, no future—only a wooden badge bearing the character for 'empty.' Yet when an immortal messenger descends from the heavens with wings of blue flame, she shows him visions that will shake the foundations of his world. Sacred Valley is not the center of creation as he believed, but a backwater nursery. Beyond its mountains lies an infinite realm where Gold is merely the beginning of power, where those who dare can ascend beyond mortal comprehension. But first, Lindon must survive long enough to take his first step on the Path of Twin Stars.

Chapter 1: The Unsouled: Marked by Emptiness

The wooden badge feels heavier than jade against Lindon's chest as he walks through the Wei clan compound. Seven years have passed since his first testing, and the character for 'empty' carved into the wood seems to mock him with every breath. Around him, younger children flash their copper and iron badges—symbols of advancement, of belonging, of having a place in the sacred arts. He has grown tall and broad-shouldered like his parents, but his spirit remains as barren as winter earth. His sister Kelsa finds him sitting beneath an orus tree, its purple leaves rustling in the mountain wind. She settles beside him with the fluid grace of an Iron practitioner, her badge gleaming against white robes. "The Seven-Year Festival approaches," she says quietly. "The Foundation stage children will compete first." The implication hangs between them like a blade—he's the only fifteen-year-old who will fight among the eight-year-olds. "I've been preparing," Lindon tells her, though they both know preparation means little when you possess no techniques, no training, no Path to follow. The clan elders had deemed him unworthy of instruction years ago. Why water a tree that will never bear fruit, they said. Kelsa's hand finds his shoulder, warm despite the morning chill. "Father believes you should withdraw. Mother thinks you should embrace the shame and move forward. But what do you want, Lindon?" Her voice carries the weight of someone who has watched him endure seventeen failures, seventeen moments of hope crushed against reality. He looks toward Mount Samara rising in the east, crowned by its ring of eternal light. "I want to prove I'm not empty," he whispers. The words taste like copper and desperation. "I want to show them all that even the Unsouled can rise." But as the sun climbs higher, casting sharp shadows across the compound, doubt gnaws at him. How can someone with no spirit challenge those blessed by heaven itself?

Chapter 2: Divine Intervention: Suriel's Gift of Fate

The Seven-Year Festival arrives with trumpets and banners, the air thick with anticipation and the scent of fear-sweat. Lindon stands in the arena's center, having just achieved the impossible—victory in the Foundation tournament through cunning and the Empty Palm technique, a skill that disrupts an opponent's madra with pure, neutral energy. But his triumph turns to ash as Wei Jin Amon, the Patriarch's grandson, steps forward with iron badge gleaming and death in his eyes. The sky darkens. Not with clouds, but with the arrival of something that should not exist—Li Markuth, Grand Patriarch of the Li clan, descending on wings of black and white. His gold badge catches the light as he speaks of claiming Sacred Valley as his personal territory. The Patriarch of the Wei clan moves to defend his people, but Markuth is beyond their comprehension. His hand passes through the leader's chest, emerging with a still-beating heart. Time fractures. Reality bends. Lindon finds himself split in half by a casual blow, his legs separated from his torso, consciousness fading as blood pools beneath him. Death tastes like copper and regret. Then she arrives—Suriel, wings of blue fire spanning the sky, perfection given form. She reverses time itself, undoing the catastrophe, erasing the Grand Patriarch from existence as though he were merely a troublesome insect. When she speaks to Lindon alone in the frozen moment, her voice carries the weight of infinity. "I can show you some limited details of your fate," she says, fingers cool as starlight against his forehead. The visions flow like wine—a life of modest achievement, love, family, contentment. Then Sacred Valley crushed beneath the weight of something monstrous, everyone he's ever known erased in an instant of geological fury. "How do I fix it?" The words tear from his throat like prayer. Suriel's purple eyes regard him with something that might be compassion. "Steel yourself," she whispers, and reality explodes into light.

Chapter 3: Heaven's Glory: A School of Deception

Lindon's desperate gambit pays off in ways he never expected. Having humiliated the Wei clan's star disciple through trickery and Remnant hornets, he finds himself claimed by Elder Whitehall of the Heaven's Glory School—a child-bodied Jade whose youthful appearance masks centuries of bitter ambition. The school perches high on Mount Samara like a celestial palace, its buildings carved from rainstone that gleams like frozen tears. But paradise proves thorny. Kazan Ma Deret, an Iron Enforcer from the rival clan, corners Lindon outside his spartan quarters with violence burning in his eyes. "You made me look like a fool," Deret snarls, his fists wreathed in crushing madra. "Time to pay for that humiliation." The beating leaves Lindon's ribs cracked, his spirit drained, his precious advancement elixirs stolen. Elder Rahm finds him contemplating the treasures of the Lesser Treasure Hall—flying swords, constructs of impossible power, formation banners that could reshape reality itself. The ancient Forger's eyes twinkle with something like kindness as he guides Lindon through the displays. "The White Fox boundary formation," he explains, gesturing to purple banners stitched with silver foxes. "It gathers light and dream aura, creates illusions to confound your enemies. But formations take planning, boy. Foresight. They won't save you if you're caught unprepared." Lindon chooses the formation despite the warning, driven by desperate hope and childhood dreams. That night, when Deret comes seeking revenge, the boundary springs to life around them. Dream aura ignites in patterns of impossible beauty—phantom eagles soar through crystal forests while silver bells chime across endless meadows. Deret battles shadows and nightmares while Lindon slips away into darkness, clutching victory like a blade to his chest. Yet even as he savors the moment, unease follows him. The school's kindness feels hollow, its beauty a mask over something hungry and cold.

Chapter 4: Finding Yerin: The Sword Sage's Disciple

The mountain wind carries the scent of snow and old blood as Lindon picks his way across the broken terrain north of the school. For days he has searched, following whispered rumors and half-remembered directions toward the place Suriel showed him in vision. The girl with the sword, the one who might be his salvation or his doom. In the depths of a rocky chasm, she waits. Yerin emerges from shadow like death given form—black robes hanging in tatters, hair cut straight as a blade's edge, scars mapping every inch of visible skin like a catalog of battles survived. Her sword finds his throat before he can speak, its edge cold against his pulse. "I'd bet my soul against a rat's tail that I never told you my name," she says, her accent strange and foreign to his ears. "The heavens showed me," Lindon replies, and her laugh is sharp as breaking glass. But when he speaks of Suriel, of visions and divine intervention, something shifts in her scarred features. Desperation, perhaps. Hope like a guttering candle flame. They swear oaths on their souls, madra flowing between them in binding streams. Her power slips through his veins like liquid steel—alien, dangerous, infinitely sharper than anything Sacred Valley has produced. "I swear to help you escape Heaven's Glory," he pledges, even as her strength makes his bones ache. "In return, guide me beyond the valley." "This is the Path of the Endless Sword," she tells him as they wait for their pursuers. Her blade rings like a struck bell, and the air fills with invisible death. All around them, the world tears itself apart—stone splits, metal screams, and seven Heaven's Glory disciples learn why the outside world fears the disciples of the Sword Sage. When the battle ends and their enemies lie broken in the snow, Yerin turns to him with something that might be respect. "Ready to see what waits beyond your little valley, Wei Shi Lindon?" she asks. Behind them, Mount Samara burns with golden light as their former sanctuary becomes their hunting ground.

Chapter 5: The Ancestor's Tomb: Confronting Power

The Ancestor's Tomb squats on the mountain's edge like a stone god frozen in time, its walls covered with murals of four beasts locked in eternal combat. Two guards in Heaven's Glory white challenge them at the steps, their techniques painting the air with walls of golden glass and lances of searing light. Yerin moves among their attacks like water flowing around stones, her sword trailing ribbons of colorless force that part matter itself. Inside the tomb, the Sword Sage's body lies beside a blade of impossible whiteness. But his Remnant is waiting—six arms of liquid mercury sprouting from a torso that reflects the world like a perfect mirror. When it recognizes Yerin, there is no reunion, no tender moment between master and student. Only the song of steel as their weapons meet in a symphony that cracks the ancient stones. Lindon huddles against the wall, spirit-seals clutched in trembling fingers as death dances inches from his face. Every clash sends ripples through reality, invisible blades carving the air into geometric patterns of destruction. This is what real power looks like—not the parlor tricks of Sacred Valley's elders, but force that could reshape mountains. Elder Whitehall appears in the doorway like a child's nightmare, his jade badge gleaming against robes stained with others' blood. "Work with me," he offers, extending a bloodied halfsilver dagger. "I have no grudge against you. Together we can claim the Sage's treasures and leave this place behind." But his eyes burn with the hunger of someone who has tasted power and found it insufficient. Lindon stares at the blade, at the offered partnership, at the easy path that would see him safe and Yerin enslaved. "This is my second life," he says finally, straightening despite his exhaustion. "It was a gift from the heavens, and I'd rather die than waste it." The words surprise him with their honesty, their weight. Whitehall's face twists with disgust. "Trash," he spits, and drives his palm toward Lindon's core with killing intent. In that instant of contact, Lindon does the impossible—he tears his own spirit in two.

Chapter 6: Twin Stars: Dividing the Core

Pain beyond description floods through Lindon as his core splits like a broken mirror, creating two dim stars where once there was one. The agony drowns out everything else—Whitehall's attack, the battle raging around him, even his own heartbeat. But when the foreign madra floods into his body seeking to destroy his spirit, it finds nothing but empty space. The cores have moved, shifted just enough to avoid the Jade's technique. Whitehall turns away in satisfaction, assuming his work complete. But Lindon rises behind him on unsteady legs, and for the first time in his life, his weakness becomes strength. The elder may have the spirit of a Jade, but he wears the body of a child. Lindon's hands close around a narrow waist, lifting the sputtering figure despite his injuries. They fall through Yerin's sword-cut in the tomb's wall, tumbling toward the rocks hundreds of feet below. Whitehall's golden light flickers desperately as he grasps at empty air, his child's face twisted with panic and rage. The Thousand-Mile Cloud catches Lindon at the last moment, its rusty surface solid beneath his battered body as the elder's scream cuts off with sickening finality. Above them, Yerin emerges from the tomb with new metal sprouting from her back—a single blade-limb that marks her as something beyond what Sacred Valley has ever seen. The gold badge around her neck proclaims her advancement to a stage their world considers mythical. She kneels beside her master's body, taking up his white sword with reverent hands. "Is that what Gold looks like?" Lindon asks, watching the limb sway with her movements like a scorpion's tail. She doesn't answer directly, but when Heaven's Glory disciples arrive with reinforcement, they take one look at her and flee like rabbits before a wolf. In the growing dawn light, Lindon pulls the Starlotus bud from his pack and bites it in half. The spirit-fruit dissolves on his tongue like crystallized starlight, its power flowing toward his divided cores. But instead of letting it strengthen both equally, he guides all the energy into his right core, leaving the left pure and empty. The technique works—he can separate different aspects of power, potentially learning multiple Paths where others are locked into one. Yerin watches him with something like approval. "Two cores," she muses. "That'll take twice the work to maintain, but might give you twice the options. Clever, in a backwards sort of way."

Chapter 7: Escape: The Path Beyond Sacred Valley

The Ancestor's Tomb collapses behind them as they flee on the Thousand-Mile Cloud, its ancient stones finally yielding to the wounds inflicted by their battle. Yerin pilots them down the mountain's slopes with expert precision, her new sword gleaming at her side while the metal limb on her back sways with each turn. The sight should terrify him, but instead Lindon feels something he's never experienced before—the company of an equal. "Your clan elders deserved killing for what they taught you," Yerin tells him as they soar above the treeline. "That test you all love so much? It's rotting trash designed to trap you in boxes. Outside the valley, you don't call yourself a sacred artist until you've mastered all four disciplines and bound a Remnant to your soul. Your people are still in training." The revelation hits him like cold water. Unsouled—the word that has defined his existence, marked him as worthless—doesn't exist beyond Sacred Valley's borders. He was simply born two steps behind, nothing more. The Empty Palm is a Striker technique, however crude. The Heart of Twin Stars follows Enforcer principles. He hasn't been searching for his Path—he's been walking it all along. They reach the valley's edge as the sun climbs toward its zenith. Below them spreads an ocean of green forest, punctuated by movement that speaks of creatures beyond his imagination. Yerin slows the cloud, her scarred face serious as she surveys the wilderness ahead. "Sacred beasts the size of buildings hunt in those shadows," she warns. "Even I'm not strong enough to protect us both if something big decides we'd make good eating." But Lindon barely hears her warnings. His attention is fixed on the vista spreading before them—the first sight any member of his clan has had of the world beyond their mountain prison. Somewhere out there wait the Ninecloud Court, the Trackless Sea, powers that could sink fleets or reshape continents. Somewhere out there, people like Suriel walk paths that lead beyond mortality itself. He pulls out his manual and opens it to the first blank page. With careful strokes, he writes at the top: "The Path of Twin Stars." The ink gleams wet in the mountain light, dark as promise, bright as hope.

Summary

Lindon's journey from despised Unsouled to nascent sacred artist represents more than personal growth—it's the shattering of an entire worldview. Sacred Valley, which its inhabitants believe to be the center of creation, reveals itself as merely a protected nursery where children play at power while true sacred artists reshape reality beyond their borders. The wooden badge that marked Lindon as empty becomes the first step on a path that could lead beyond Gold, beyond any stage his people can imagine. Yet triumph carries its own weight. As he and Yerin disappear into the Desolate Wilds, leaving behind everything he's ever known, Lindon faces a truth that would terrify lesser souls: this is only the beginning. The techniques he's mastered would be considered parlor tricks in the wider world. The enemies he's defeated are barely worth notice to those who walk the true paths of power. But in choosing to step beyond the valley's protection, in daring to dream of heights his people cannot conceive, he has taken the first step on a journey that will either forge him into something magnificent or destroy him utterly. The Path of Twin Stars stretches before him like a river of light, leading toward shores that even immortals dare not name.

About Author

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Will Wight

Dyer reframes complex human experiences through a blend of fiction and nonfiction, often focusing on themes of identity and culture. His works interrogate the boundaries between different genres, creating a rich tapestry that challenges conventional narrative forms. By weaving personal anecdotes with broader cultural observations, Dyer crafts narratives that resonate with readers seeking to understand the nuanced layers of modern existence.\n\nExploring the intricacies of self and society, Dyer employs a method that juxtaposes humor with introspection, providing insights into the human condition. This approach is evident in his notable book, where he delves into the intersection of travel and personal discovery, offering readers a fresh perspective on how journeys can redefine one's sense of self. His unique narrative style engages those who appreciate a multifaceted look at life's complexities, drawing readers into a world where the line between reality and fiction blurs.\n\nFor readers interested in a bio that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of storytelling, Dyer's work serves as a testament to the power of narrative innovation. His contributions to literature not only challenge preconceived notions of genre but also invite audiences to reflect on their own experiences and identities. By embracing Dyer's explorations, readers gain a deeper understanding of how narrative can illuminate the ever-evolving landscape of human experience.

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