During his earliest years, Sho-Tahn lived in seclusion at the monastic academy. This life was radically different than the years spent living on the streets. In the academy there was discipline, a set order for each day, constant supervision, and harsh judgement from his master. Life as a street urchin was free and wild with no discipline, expectations, or routine. Adults were prey not masters and judges. If he wanted to sleep all day, there was nobody to tell him otherwise. He lived as he wished, had the company of other children should he wish it, and answered to no-one. He would laugh and say he was his own master. However, his talents and innate abilities were equally undisciplined, and many adults and children, including fellow homeless children, some of which suffered serious injury or death.
Sho-Tahn would admit in his reflective later years that he lacked both control and compassion at this point, but more tragically lacked the knowledge of these deficits and felt no personal responsibility for the harm brought to friends and strangers alike. He was out of control, and it was a mercy to himself and the entire city that he and a number of other homeless children were rounded up and sent to the orphanage, returned to the orphanage in his case.
Indeed, Sho-Tahn was quite familiar with the orphanage. In fact, it was his earliest memory of home. He was adopted once when he was very young by a young couple who were later murdered. After this, he spent many months on the street with other orphans and homeless children. Except for those few short years, Sho-Tahn had no recollection of any other home, but the returning was definitely bittersweet. This time, there would be no more adoptions. As his first decade came to a close, the Master came for him, and his life changed forever.
Unlike his life on the streets, life inside the academy was very ordered, and that order was strictly observed. Discipline did not come easy for Sho-Tahn, but he soon learned to depend upon it. He seldom shared company with the other students, and he saw only a few of the instructors. It was said there were more than a hundred instructors at the academy, but Sho-Tahn can only recall meeting less than a dozen. Most of his time was spent alone in study and meditation. He was up several hours before dawn to begin his exercises, and he did not breakfast until an hour after sunrise. He would study math, science, religion, philosophy, and music eight hours each day, every day. His physical practices were no less rigorous and thorough. Strength and agility of the body were important, but strength and firmness of the mind was paramount.
His life inside the academy lasted nearly a decade. Sho-Tahn was in the middle of his teens when he finally got to see the outside world again. It was much bigger, louder, and more interesting than his vague memories would have suggested. He was only allowed a brief time each day, perhaps an hour or two, before he would need to return to the academy and resume his studies and exercises. These brief moments of respite became gems of great worth, and he looked forward to them each day. Usually, he would simply walk about the town or country and take in the vastness and wonders his eyes could only behold from afar. But, as fate would have it, he met a girl. As fate would also have it, this girl had many would-be suitors and a history that did not include Sho-Tahn.
Conflict was inevitable, and a particularly violent rejected suitor with many friends forced a confrontation. Sho-Tahn was able to best the suitor and his allies, but the girl also perished. The event left a lasting impression. He stopped visiting the town or countryside each day and spent the next several years in voluntary seclusion. The entire sequence of events are brought back to Sho-Tahn’s memories during the prelude to a similar confrontation in Book 3. Every day in the sun, every night when sleep would not come, and every moment of that fateful day are all locked in vivid memory within his mind even after centuries filled with battles, victories, and losses. She was the first. His first love, his first girl, his first kiss, his first damsel in distress, and his first victim. This gave birth to another first, his first vow: Never again.