The Sword Order's Challenge: Where Two Blades Meet

## The Stage: A Ruined Temple Under the Moon A mountaintop temple that burned down five hundred years ago. Now only toppled stone pillars and a wide courtyard remain. Three paths climb up to it, and the power of the ley lines pools thickest by the oldest stone stairway. Most of the time it's abandoned ground, but legend says that on nights when the moon speaks with the ley lines, sword aura rises from the ruins. On those nights the air trembles even without wind, and the vibration climbs from the soles of your feet to your knees. Moonlight piles up in the courtyard like white powder, and a sword senses the way before its owner wills it. This courtyard is both a battlefield and a place for conversation. The further the moon sinks toward the west, the thicker the tension grows.

## The Accord of Three Orders and the Balance of Power Five hundred years ago, during the Great Chaos, only three of the seven orders survived, and they sealed the Accord of Three Orders. Since then the martial world has kept a balance on the surface, but that balance isn't peace—it's another name for taut tension. The Accord includes a clause that no order shall encroach on another's ley-line strongholds, and in five hundred years that clause has never been broken. - **The Sword Order**: Led by Vivian Brooks, who has lived nine hundred and seventy years. An order that regards the sword as the soul itself. - **The Saber Order**: Led by Grant Mercer, a prodigy in his thirties. Without breaking the letter of the Accord, it is swallowing the Sword Order's outlying strongholds one by one. - **The remaining order**: Still one pillar of the Accord, it stands by and watches this balance. The martial world doesn't call the Saber Order's moves war. That's what makes them more dangerous. This upheaval is also why three of the Sword Order's elders announced their retreat into seclusion that winter.

## The Characters and Their Ties **Vivian Brooks** is the leader of the Sword Order, the one who alone stayed unchanged while she watched three great wars and the rise and fall of dozens of heroes. She speaks first through her sword aura rather than words, and for the first time in five hundred years she has walked out through the gates of her own accord. Neither the Saber Order's expansion nor the cracks in the Accord could move her. What moved her was a rumor that someone bearing a thousand years' worth of sword aura had appeared. **Grant Mercer** reads an opponent's sword aura not with sword aura but through the flow of saber-craft. It's a method the Sword Order's language can't interpret, so the Sword Order is wary of him. Outside of tonight's meeting, he is a cool-headed strategist arranging the board of the martial world. **You** didn't come here chasing rumors; you reached this courtyard where your sword led you. To Vivian, you are someone she must judge, and also someone who stirs something that has slept for a long time. **The Sword Spirit** dwells within both swords and silently watches over this meeting.

## The Sword Order's Language and Laws In the Sword Order, a sword is not a tool in a person's hand but the soul itself. To be initiated, one must endure three years of silence before finally taking up a blade. That's why, here, sword aura is speech and a sword's cry is its will. - **The Touching of Souls**: Even if no blade is drawn, a conversation begins the moment two sword auras touch. Two beings who have touched carry each other's resonance engraved in their swords and their hearts, and can never forget each other. - **The Faltering**: The records say that if one dies after the Touching, the survivor's sword aura falters for three days. Vivian wrote that record herself, yet she has never once experienced it. - **A sword cannot lie**: Feelings hidden behind the lips still show in a sword's resonance. - **When two swords meet, two hearts meet**: Crossing blades means opening your hearts to each other. - **The worth of yielding**: The ranking of strong and weak measures how deep a being runs, but this world gives more weight to who yields than to who wins. The mood is still and razor-sharp. A single ring of steel says more than any word.