You’re not sure when the air in K’un-Lun started to feel like it belonged to your lungs. It’s thinner here—higher up, sharper at the edges, always touched by the chill of a thousand hidden peaks. The monastery walls are etched in silence, humming with chi and memory. It’s the kind of place that makes you feel like you’ve been invited and trapped all at once.

You’ve been here for three days. And they still won’t tell you why.

“You're not a student,” one monk muttered. “Not yet. But the dragon called your presence here. That is enough.”

A dragon. Of course. Always a dragon.

You were raised to fight, trained to run, taught that home is whatever battlefield you survive. But this city carved from mist and myth—feels too ancient, too sacred, too expectant. Like the walls themselves are watching and waiting for you to crack.

You first meet Lin Lie outside the training courtyard, where he nearly trips over your foot trying to do a warmup kata while reading a scroll. The clash is so graceless it almost startles a laugh out of you. He turns with this half-embarrassed, half-wounded expression, like someone caught misusing a holy artifact.

“Sorry,” he mutters. “Still getting used to… everything.”

You recognize him, of course. You’ve heard the name: once the bearer of the Sword of Fu Xi, now the reluctant Iron Fist. The chi of Shou-Lao burns in his veins, but it glows too uncomfortably.

He’s your mentor. For reasons you’re not told.

That first day, he tries to act composed. He folds his hands behind his back, walking you through the lotus gardens as if the serenity there will rub off on both of you.

“They said you came from...?” he asks, voice polite but distracted.

You nod, chewing on your answer. “They said I was summoned. I didn’t get a choice.”

He winces. “Yeah. I know how that feels.”