Kirin’s vision was shaking, colors warping in and out as his body failed to respond, lightning crackled across his skin like wild snakes that had tasted blood. His chest rose in short bursts, pain crushing his ribs with every breath, but what really made his blood run cold was Seth’s voice, laughing, not the laugh of a friend, not the laugh he knew from Academy days, but something broken, something hungry.“Seth...” Kirin managed to whisper, his voice raw, barely more than breath, “What... what are you doing?”Seth’s eyes had changed. There was no warmth, no concern, just hunger. “You still don’t get it, do you? You’re not the chosen one, Kirin, I am. You were born lucky you know? Blessed by a God? Having two damn soul cores? Using the hardest and most powerful element? Being stronger than anyone at your cultivation level... you were always meant to break, to be used by me.”He raised his hand, and the moment he did, lightning surged from Kirin’s body and poured into Seth like a rever

Kirin was falling.There was no wind in this place, no gravity he could feel, yet his body kept tumbling downward into the black expanse endlessly.Time passed, though he had no way to measure it. Minutes? Hours? Days? Years? It all blurred together into the same numbing stretch of nothing.He tried to scream once, just to see if sound worked here. It didn’t. The moment the sound left his lips, it vanished into the void like a breath into cold water.So he stopped trying and he thought.That was the worst part, there was nothing else to do.No light, no end, no ground. Just himself, and his thoughts.The first ones were about Seth.His brother.Not by blood, but by bond. They had grown together. Trained together. Failed and laughed and bled side by side. Seth had saved his life once, back when they were both twelve and nearly killed by a misfired spell from a higher cultivator.Kirin remembered how Seth had stood in front of him, arms wide, to distract a mountain bare from attacking K

The air hit him like a wall.One second Kirin was floating in eerie silence, the next thing, he was falling.The fall ended with a brutal slam, his body hitting cracked stone with a loud thud. Dust and ash exploded outward. He rolled once, twice, before finally skidding to a stop against what felt like sharp rock and scorched earth.Everything ached.Every joint in his body, every nerve. His ears rang from the sudden impact as he lost balance, and he blinked rapidly to get rid of the dust and ash in his eyes. But no matter how many times he blinked, the view didn’t change.Dark.Not the darkness from the night, but an unnatural darkness.Above him, the sky churned with black clouds that looked like smoke trapped with nowhere to go. They moved in slow spirals, casting sickly shadows over everything. Lightning flashed behind them, but it wasn’t the kind he knew. These weren’t clouds made from rain or thunder. These were clouds made from something he didn't know.Ash rained down in thin,

The corpse of the creature lay twisted in the sand, smoke curling from the gaping holes Kirin’s lightning had burned through its chest and limbs. The air still hummed faintly with static. Kirin knelt beside the body, his hands shaking, not from fear, but from exhaustion, hunger, and the deep ache of something new taking root in his bones.He didn’t fully understand the black lightning yet. It wasn’t like the blue lightning he used to control. That had been an extension of his will. A tool, a weapon he could wield like a sword.But this? This was different.This lightning had a mind of its own.He clenched his fists and tried to summon it again, but nothing.No crackle, no spark, not even a warm tingle in his veins.He tried harder, focusing on the same flow of power he had felt earlier. His Dantian pulsed faintly, but the lightning didn’t come.“Come on,” he muttered. “Just a little... Anything is okay.”Still nothing.He stood up slowly and looked at the creature’s charred remains. I

The sunless sky remained a swirling mess of gray and crimson as Kirin stepped out from the cracked stone ruins he’d used as shelter. The wind was dry, coarse with ash, and the ground beneath his boots still crunched with old bones and scorched sand. The silence was never complete in this land. There were always whispers. Murmurs beneath the wind, like ghosts still trying to speak.Kirin glanced back at the ruins, at the mural that had meant nothing to him but somehow still felt important. It had whispers of chaos energy, of ancient sects lost to time, of something called the Black Flame. He had memorized every symbol, even if he didn’t understand them yet. Someday he might. But not today.Today, he had to move.The ground stretched endlessly ahead of him, broken only by the rise and fall of jagged hills and spires that pierced the horizon like blackened teeth. He moved cautiously, every step measured. The underworld didn’t look like the kind of place where one made mistakes.His body