Chapter: Whispers On The WindHigh above the borderlands, the floating manor of House Voss drifted through perpetual clouds, its golden spires catching the midday sun like a crown. Inside the grand strategy hall, Harlan Voss stood before a massive scrying mirror, its surface rippling with mana-fed images of the empire’s far reaches.He was twenty now, broader in the shoulders, flame mana coiling lazily around his fingers as he dismissed another report. The room’s other occupants his father’s advisors, a pair of clan elders, and Lord Voss himself waited in tense silence.The latest image faded: a grainy projection of Greyhaven’s lower arena, captured by a paid informant’s memory crystal. A lone figure in ragged clothes carving through raiders with terrifying efficiency. Black hair. Gray eyes. A greatsword that drank light.Harlan’s flame flickered, guttering for the first time in years.“It’s not him,” he said, voice flat. “Elias Voss is dead. I watched the airship drop him into the wastes myself.”One of the elder
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: Iron And BloodThe outer-ring dormitory was exactly what Liora had warned: a long stone hall packed with narrow bunks, the air thick with sweat, cheap ale, and the metallic tang of old blood. New cadets those who’d passed the trials were thrown in with the established outer-ringers: failed second-years, disciplinary cases, and kids from nowhere with nowhere else to go. Fights broke out nightly. Knives came out weekly. Instructors didn’t interfere unless someone died.Elias claimed a bottom bunk near the door, dropped his wrapped bundle, and sat. No one approached him yet. They were sizing him up the quiet one who’d walked through the trials like they were practice.Thorne materialized in the corner, invisible to everyone else, arms folded.“Smells like a barracks before a losing battle,” he said. “You’ll either make friends here or a lot of enemies. Probably both.”Elias grunted. He was unwrapping Crimson Reaper, checking the edge, when the door slammed open.A mountain walked in.The cadet was huge
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: The Gates Of GreyhavenThe journey to Greyhaven took another five days. The land healed as they traveled ash giving way to scrub, then rolling hills dotted with farms, until the road widened into a proper trade route. The survivors now a tight, wary group spoke little at first. Elias’s slaughter of the raiders hung over them like a shadow. Respect, fear, curiosity; he felt all of it in their glances.Liora rode beside him most days, silent for long stretches, then asking sharp questions about his fighting style or the wastes. She never thanked him again pride wouldn’t allow it but she shared her rations without being asked and took the night watch closest to his.The other cadets thawed slower. Jax, the broad earth-mana user, grumbled about “waste rats” until Elias helped reinforce a broken wagon wheel with raw strength; after that, Jax offered a grunt that might have been approval. The twins, Kael and Kora wind siblings kept their distance but stopped whispering when Elias passed.Thorne, invisible to all
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: Strom On The HorizonThe Ashen Wastes didn’t end cleanly. One mile the ground was cracked ash and bone; the next, stubborn grass pushed through, then scattered trees, until the barren scar gave way to ragged hills and the faint green of true wilderness. Elias walked for three days, sleeping little, eating what he could hunt with bare hands or Reaper’s edge. The bloodline kept him going wounds closed fast, hunger dulled to a manageable ache.Thorne kept up a steady stream of commentary: battle critiques, ancient war stories, and the occasional barb about Elias’s “soft modern upbringing.” It was irritating. It was also the only company he had.On the fourth dawn, smoke rose on the horizon thin, black, deliberate. Not a wildfire.Elias crested a ridge and stopped.Below, in a shallow valley, a small caravan had been ambushed. Six wagons circled defensively, canvas torn and burning. Bodies lay scattered merchants, guards, a few in uniform. Ash wolves prowled the edges, but they weren’t the main threat.A doze
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: Reaper's BaptismThe guardian hit the ground like an earthquake.It was a nightmare stitched together from the chamber’s dead bones of ancient warriors fused with ash-wolf skeletons, armored plates grown over like tumors, mana twisting the whole mass into something that had forgotten what it once was. Ten feet tall at the shoulder, four mismatched arms ending in claws and broken blades, a skull split open to reveal a pulsing crimson core where a heart should be.It roared, and the sound was every death in the room crying out at once.Elias tightened his grip on Crimson Reaper. The greatsword hummed in his hand, eager, almost pulling him forward. His new aura flared instinctively a veil of red mist coiling around his body, sharpening the world to a razor’s edge. Sounds became clearer, movements slower. War God’s Instinct sang in his blood.Thorne floated to his flank, expression grim but alive with something dangerous. “Guardian’s bound to the trial. Kill the core, it dies. Everything else just slows i
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
Chapter: Trial Of The Crimson HeartThe steps spiraled down into the earth, each one carved from stone that drank the faint crimson light bleeding from Elias’s veins. The air grew thick and warm, heavy with the scent of old iron and something deeper spilled blood long dried, battles long ended. Elias’s boots scraped against grit as he descended, Thorne’s translucent form gliding silently beside him.“Smell that?” Thorne said, voice low. “That’s history. Thousands of years of it. Your ancestors didn’t build pretty temples, boy. They built slaughterhouses disguised as sanctuaries.”Elias didn’t answer. His pulse thrummed in his ears, matching the low heartbeat rising from below. Every step fed the heat in his blood, stirring memories that weren’t his: the clash of armies, the wet crunch of bone under boot, the roar of a war god laughing in the face of divine thunder.They reached the bottom.The chamber was vast, circular, walls rising into shadow. In the center stood a raised dais of black stone veined with crimson, and
Last Updated: 2026-01-04
