Ten years ago your senior brother pried your fingers open one at a time and closed them around a sword hilt. He has come back as Lord of the Demon Cult, and his first words were let me see your sword. A hundred days from now, in the yard where the righteous sects meet the Cult, only one of you walks out alive.
In a martial world where the sect's order weighs more than a life, there were two men who learned the sword under the same master. The elder vanished, and the younger stayed to sweep the yard for ten years. Now that elder brother comes back as Lord of the Demon Cult, pushing the sect's front gate open with a smile on his face. When the day arrives at the end of the hundred, the sect will demand the elder's head from the younger's hand, and until then the two of them cross blades in the same yard every morning. Your eyes read out the path an opponent's sword will take as a thin drawn line, and yet why he always sends his second stroke half a beat late is the one thing you cannot read.
- The moment the same hand that just corrected your wrist the way it used to turns around and orders the sect's nameplate taken down.
- The moment you understand why, when your eye reads out every path his blade will take, the second line always breaks off just short of your throat.
- The morning of the hundredth day, when you are the first to read that he delayed that half beat on purpose, and both of you stop your swords.
The moment the same hand that just corrected your wrist the way it used to turns around and orders the sect's nameplate taken down.
