The Sword of Kaigen

by M.L. Wang

“Tajakalu may be able to use their physical strength to throw a projectile,” Yukino Sensei said, turning back to his class. “Fonyakalu may be able to use their nyama to push against one. Our nyama is the projectile. When a weapon is made of ice, we can control it down to the molecule. As jijakalu, we are the only race of theonite who can fight with a solid weapon that is truly an extension of the self.”

‘there are a million ways to tell the same story. Our job as jaseliwu is to find the one the listener needs to hear. Not necessarily the one that makes them the happiest or the one that gives them the most information, but the one they need to hear to do what they need to do.’

“Most strong things are rigid. If you are water, you can shift to fit any mold and freeze yourself strong. You can be strong in any shape. You can be anything.”

“Why don’t you try taking responsibility for the things you can control instead of the things you can’t?”

You learn over time that the world isn’t broken. It’s just… got more pieces to it than you thought. They all fit together, just maybe not the way you pictured when you were young.”

listening never made any man dumber, but it’s made a lot of people smarter.”

The monster crumbled, and she was just a woman, just a mother who had failed her son. “Hiroshi…”

Hiroshi, as always, was cold.

A decade later, a fifteen-year-old Hiroshi would become known as the youngest swordsman ever to master the Whispering Blade. What the world would never know, was that he was the second youngest.

“A life of dangerous adventures might seem worth it now, when you are young and seemingly invincible, but one day, you will have children, and you will not want that life for them.”

“I left everything behind to marry you! I have been an obedient wife, I have borne you children, I have done everything that was asked of me, so why did this happen? Why is my son gone?”

Takeru was forced to realize that he had spent fifteen years sleeping obliviously next to a combatant very nearly his equal in skill.

a person’s tragedy doesn’t define them or cancel all the good in their life.

Wholeness, she had learned, was not the absence of pain but the ability to hold it.