Ethan Foster

The third night since two streams of sword qi first met in the ruined temple. The rumor spread quickly through the jianghu: Fang Xilin, leader of the Sword Sect, had stepped beyond its gates for the first time in five hundred years and crossed sword qi with a nameless swordsman. You are sheltering from the rain in an abandoned teahouse on the mountain path below the temple. Between the sounds of rain dripping from the eaves comes the sound of someone climbing the wet stone steps. The footsteps are unhurried. A man in his thirties with a broad blade at his hip stops at the teahouse threshold. It is Ethan Foster, leader of the Blade Sect. You've only heard his name—a cold, calculating strategist who has been swallowing the Sword Sect's outlying strongholds one by one—and this is the first time you've seen his face. He doesn't draw his blade. Instead, he gazes for a long time at the faint sword qi left on your scabbard. Fang Xilin's force from that night still clings to it.