Novels by Fayola

The Steward no longer bowed. His back, usually curved, was now bolt upright, as stiff as a gallows pole. The sword in his hand was steady, its red tip pointing directly at Li Wei's Adam's apple. There was no trembling, no hesitation."How much is my head worth, Uncle?" Li Wei's voice broke, his throat as dry as if he had swallowed sand.The old man did not answer. His smirk widened, revealing black stains between his teeth from the residue of soul-strengthening poison. Around them, the rhythmic stomp of boots hit the marble. Spears narrowed their field of movement, creating a forest of iron that locked Li Wei and Mei Ling in the center of the hall. The smell of rust and the copper tang of blood filled his nostrils."Don't look into his eyes," Mei Ling whispered. The girl's fingers gripped Li Wei's shoulder, her nails digging deep enough to pierce the fabric of his robe. "He's been hollowed out. He's just a vessel."Wonderful! The Sky Demon crawled along the walls of Li Wei's conscious

The enforcer’s eyes widened, the whites visible even in the dim, torch-flickered light of the archive. The man didn't just see a student in front of him; he saw a reaper cloaked in the rags of a disciple. As Ronald’s words hung in the frigid air, the frost on the nearby scrolls cracked, the ancient parchment curling inward as if recoiling from his very presence.The second enforcer, a man named Aditya whose arrogance usually served as his armor, dropped his sword. It clattered against the stone floor, the sound echoing like a death knell in the silence. He didn't pick it up. He turned and sprinted, his boots thundering against the flagstones, fleeing into the labyrinthine corridors of the library. Ronald didn't pursue. He couldn't. As the adrenaline spiked and began to recede, the bill for his exertion arrived with the crushing weight of a mountain. His knees buckled, and he collapsed, his shoulder slamming into a shelf of brittle, forgotten texts. The "original" Qi he had channeled

The golden spark didn't just illuminate the room; it screamed. It wasn’t a sound audible to the ears of the common disciples patrolling the corridors outside, but a high-frequency vibration that rattled the very marrow of Ronald’s bones. The shadows that had begun to stretch across the damp walls of the cell didn’t just lengthen they wept, warping into the silhouettes of burning spires and gargantuan statues that had been scrubbed from the collective consciousness of this era.Ronald’s breath hitched. The air in the cell, previously thin and stagnant, suddenly became thick, heavy with the metallic tang of ozone. His body, a fragile, malnourished vessel that had been beaten black and blue only hours prior, buckled under the sudden influx of atmospheric pressure. Control, he commanded himself, his internal voice cold and detached, a remnant of the godhood he had once possessed. The vessel is trash, but the intent remains absolute.He collapsed against the cold, uneven stones of the flo

The shadow of the training hall clung to Ronald like a second skin, a welcome reprieve from the blistering, artificial sunlight that seemed to beat down on this sect with an intensity that felt personal. His lungs burned each intake of air was a jagged, abrasive process in this weak, unrefined vessel. He pressed his back against the cool, damp stone of the corridor, his fingers tracing the rough masonry. He wasn't the invincible god-king who could shatter mountains with a flick of his wrist anymore. Right now, he was a guttering candle in a hurricane. He waited until the rhythmic, droning chants of the disciples faded into a dull vibration beneath his feet. Only then did he move. His steps were silent, deliberate, guided by a muscle memory that transcended this pathetic, broken body. He navigated the labyrinthine stone passages of the sect, his senses hyper-alert to the shifting patterns of the patrolling guards. Every instinct screamed at him to manifest a pulse of Qi to mask his pr

The air in the cell remained unnaturally still, the dust motes suspended like frozen stars in the dim, subterranean gloom. Ronald or the soul that once answered to that name clung to the uneven stone floor, his fingers white knuckled against the grime. The memory of the dagger, that cold, abyssal bite in his heart, was still clawing at his nerves, a phantom sensation that made his lungs scream for air he couldn’t seem to pull into this pathetic, hollow chest.He blinked, the movement feeling heavy, sluggish. His vision swam with static, the edges of his sight blurring into shades of grey. He stared into the stagnant puddle near the door, watching his own reflection. The boy in the water was nothing more than a ghost of a disciple sunken cheeks, a jagged, crusty gash running across a temple, and skin the color of curdled milk. But the eyes. Those eyes were a violent, piercing contrast to the wreckage of the face. They were the eyes of a man who had commanded the very fabric of existenc

The intake of air was jagged, a sharp, metallic wheeze that tore through lungs unaccustomed to the burden of oxygen. The body in the cell didn't just feel cold; it felt like a hollowed out husk, a piece of driftwood tossed into a gale. In the Imperial Capital, miles away, the ripples in the sky smoothed over with terrifying efficiency. The collective consciousness of the world shuddered. It was a momentary dissonance, a cognitive glitch that passed in the blink of an eye. In the royal archives, thousands of leather-bound ledgers lay open, their pages dry and yellowed by time. As the Empress’s decree settled over the land like a suffocating shroud, the ink on those pages centuries of carefully recorded history began to bleed. Scripts writhed. Where the name 'Ronald' had been etched into the annals of the Golden Age, the ink evaporated, twisting into new, unrecognizable glyphs. The portrait gallery in the inner sanctum, once dominated by the imposing, radiant figure of the First Culti