Book I is complete. Our active work is now Book II: The Martial Age, with The Quest for I-Ching as its story thread.
Book II is being rebuilt around a martial world: sects and masters, disciples and rivals, eagle-talons and dragon-claws-style fighting forms, swords and spears, concealed darts, fictional poisons and secret arts. These are not decorations around another kind of story. They drive its conflicts.
A victory is only the beginning
Mali answers a sect challenge at her home yard and wins. Then a concealed attack strikes her defeated rival, a wounded courier arrives, and a teaching case disappears. Keeping her rival alive takes her beyond the circuit she knows.
What survived Book I
The first heroes fractured the signal; they did not destroy it. The new story grows from that aftermath rather than restarting the first catastrophe. A clue associated with Sel's Codex connects the immediate martial struggle to the older mystery.
The replacement opening is drafted and being edited. Revised chapters are not yet published, and earlier Book II development prose is not this edition's reading order.