Allister Hale's Story Graveyard.

Though the man known as Silver Twilight held his head high, as suited his station, his spirits were low, as suited his situation.

He was the son of a golden generation of his Mortal family. His first uncle and father had combined a number of good years on the family farm, and good investments in the town where they went for market and started a period of prosperity for the family.

With Silver Twilight’s Cloudy Mountain Sect weakened from fights with the neighboring Stormy Valley Temple, it was decided to use their prosperity to train Silver Twilight’s generation to enter the sect with hopes that familial duty would bring lasting success to the family.

Though the training bore fruit, and the plan was wise, the success was not to be.

Silver Twilight and two of his cousins managed to pass the criteria to enter the Cloudy Mountain Sect, His sister disciple Baren Rose and the man once known to him as Stalwart Beacon.

While Stalwart Beacon was a prodigy in his first years, quickly joining the watch keeper's pavilion, Rose found her home in the nurseries. Whether human or beast Rose found she loved children dearly and this carried into life in the Sect.

For reasons unknown to any Silver Twilight had spoken to, few lady cultivator’s have the temperament to bear and birth children, and fewer still the temperament to raise them. It was clear that Rose was an exception to this rule and for that she was prized, both by their mortal family and by their sect.

It was already clear that there was an issue when Rose was coming into her first blooms of womanhood. As each month passed she seemed to grow sullen until one day she visited Silver Twilight during the night crying inconsolably and with a bruise on her face.

That night, after she had calmed, Rose told Twilight that while she indeed had the temperament of a mother, she lacked the appropriate constitution to bear children. If one was prepared for some risk this could be ignored with proper care, though the risk of losing a child would still be greater than for a woman with the appropriate constitution.

It was decided that Rose's brother disciple, a boy from one of the older families of the sect named Enduring Seed, would be her partner. Rose had entered seclusion and as Twilight had learned that night, the pairing seemed fruitful. However, the vine was weak and Rose lost the child and worse, suffered injuries in the process. Little Rose had become Baren Rose. This event was the trigger of their mortal Family’s slow fall.

Back in the mortal world, none of their nieces and nephews had managed to pass the stricter standards of the revitalized sect and so while Silver Twilight, Barren Rose and Stalwart Beacon were unable to provide the influence for the family to slowly grow. Rose and Twilight took solace in the hope that they might still one day have initiates calling them Venerable aunt and Venerable uncle.

While Silver Twilight had been busy with his own training Stalwart Beacon had reached the point where he could no longer rely on talent alone. He worked hard and with well honed discipline as was proper, but his talent had also let arrogance into his heart. Without the backing to compete with their peers, and without a master to temper arrogance into wisdom, that arrogance was the seed that, nourished by the death of his unborn nephew would lead to his disgrace, and to the destruction of their mortal family.

The night that Baren Rose had come to Silver Twilight, bruised and in tears, Twilight had believed the bruise had been caused by Enduring Seed. This notion was bloodied and beaten the next morning when cries of terror rose from Seed’s family pavilion. Beacon had infiltrated the compound and exacted an ill conceived revenge against his mortal sister’s man.

During the time that followed Silver Twilight did his best to counter the retaliation against his mortal kin by Seed’s family. However Twilight was weak and lacked any sort of backing, he could do little more than bodily shield his kin and beg mercy. Stalwart Beacon was more successful but he was only one man and where Silver twilight could appeal to his betters’ mercy, Stalwart Beacon could appeal only to their anger.

It took Enduring Seed three years to recover enough from his injuries to put an end to the nascent feud. During those three years Baren Rose had been in seclusion refusing to see Enduring Seed, grieving her lost child, ashamed of her mortal brother’s revenge, ashamed of being too weak to bear seed’s child. Rose would have stayed in Seclusion longer had it not been for Enduring Seed.

The very day he had recovered the strength to force the issue, he left his family’s pavilion and stood outside the chambers where Rose had secluded herself begging for her to see him. With that benign his sole task Seed spent another year fasting, tending to his lingering injuries and begging for Rose to see him again.

After the first week of begging his family took a day to grieve for the child. Then they took their grievance to the sect’s leadership with a demand to strip Stalwart Beacon of his name and put him to death. When called to speak in the man’s defense, Silver Twilight hardened his heart and said nothing.

During the trial, Rose's grief did not end, and so Seed continued his begging. During his confinement for the trial the man who had been Twilight's cousin revealed a naked hate for Enduring seed, accusing the man of poisoning his dear sister, shouting endless obscenities and curses against him and his kin.

Rose’s master called a meeting of the Sect’s women who entered seclusion confused only to leave hours later with looks of solidarity blended with utter hate. Backed by the women, Roses master announced the summary execution of The man who had been Stalwart beacon. It was at this point that Twilight and many of the men of the Sect realized who had bruised Rose’s face the night of Seed’s attack. It was not enough to explain all of their hate for his mortal cousin, but it was enough.

Twilight’s once cousin managed to escape that night.

By this point it had been a year since Enduring Seed had begun begging for Baren Rose to let him see her. Driven to his wits end by the announcement from the Sect’s women, he declared his undying love for Rose, finally melting her grief.

Despite the storybook moment, the end was neither clean nor truly happy. Though Rose regained her spark from Seed’s declaration she was never as vibrant as she had once been and though she had grown in strength from her seclusion the loss of her as a mother was still an enduring loss for the sect. Twilight’s once cousin’s escape had laid a shadow upon the sect with neighbors doubting each other and fearing the mad cultivator might return in the night to wreak vengeance for imagined slights. For Silver Twilight the most personal stain was the slow and seemingly inevitable decline of his mortal family.

Before fifty more years had passed, the only surviving members of his mortal family were the grandson of Rose’s youngest brother, and his wife. Their story was the very moment Silver Twilight found himself living. Thus, with his head high, as suited his station, his spirits were low, as suited his situation.

This day was to be the birth of the first child of his last mortal kin. Much like Rose’s first child, they had been told there would be risks. The justifications given by the Sect’s midwives were different but the results would be the same. The girl could have no more children, and thus any hope of young initiates looking up to him as an uncle died in Silver Twilight's heart with the child.

Twilight had reached a point in his cultivation that he had nothing to fear from the wildlife in the Sect’s borders so when he was free from observation he set out on the most direct path to the sect so that he could cry without losing face.

Several times he cursed the etiquette of cultivators, their flimsy facade of detachment and enlightened thinking. If it were not for an injury from those three years rendering him sterile, he might have destroyed his cultivation, found a mortal wife and ensured Rose still had family.

During a brief moment of clarity Twilight took a perverse pride in the swath of destruction he was leaving in his wake, once improved and maintained, the path would serve as a better road between his home village and the town that served the sect than the one he was avoiding.

Thinking back on it later, Silver Twilight wondered if he would have noticed the hidden treasure had the stray thought not brought him out of his rage. Growing right next to his foot, somehow shielded from his spiritual senses, was a flower strongly attuned to the magical energies of space and of time.

Before he could even think of harvesting the flower Silver Twilight's aura mixed with the flower and caught fire as it served as the conduit for a magical working that Silver Twilight had no hope of understanding. Twilight stood in awe as the working played out, until the energies cleared and he was left standing alone with a newborn infant laying on the ground where the flower once grew.

While years pass quickly, Time moves slowly for cultivators, cut off from the reaper of old age. Twilight’s first thought was to carry the infant to his dear cousin to raise as her own, sure he would need to find a milk maid to feed the child, but the thought of Rose with a child to call her own was too alluring to dismiss for so light a concern.

It was the obvious choice of a milkmaid that brought Twilight back to reality. The loss of her child had scabbed but Rose's wound had not truly healed, this child would only reopen the wound. She had served as a milkmaid during her seclusion, and later told Seed who in turn told Twilight that she still hated the poor child for drinking milk meant for her lost child.

Thankfully, while revealing the fault in his first impulse, his choice of milkmaid also presented a more elegant solution. This child needed a mother, and his mortal family had a new mother with no child.

Silver twilight picked up the child as he had been shown by Rose’s master and turned to return to his home village.