CHAPTER 155 :The valley didn’t return to normal after the failed attempt. The air kept pulsing—like the space around them remembered the rift being opened and refused to settle back down. Even the dust hovered longer than it should, refusing to touch the ground. Owen kept waving a hand through it like he couldn’t decide whether to be impressed or terrified.Billy was quiet. Too quiet.Tyla watched him from the side as he stared at the cracked stone platform. She didn’t push him—not yet. She’d learned that when the relic was loud inside him, forcing conversation only made things worse.Owen finally broke the silence.“So,” he announced, “good news and bad news.”Tyla didn’t even breathe before saying, “Start with the good.”Owen pointed at the valley’s center. “The good news is: that rift is definitely not dead. Whatever you did, Billy, it woke something up.”“And the bad?” Billy asked without looking away.“The bad is that everything in a twelve-kilometer radius is now giving off ene

CHAPTER 157 :The world came back to Billy Anderson in jagged, flashing pieces.At first, there was only the sting of cold wind scraping against his face — sharp, thin, almost metallic, as though every gust carried needles of sand. Then there was the faint taste of copper on his tongue. Then the realization that he was kneeling in grit, palms pressed into ground still vibrating from the relic shockwave he’d barely survived. His chest rose and fell too fast, too uneven, like his own lungs weren’t sure how to sync with him anymore.He’d passed.Barely.But “barely” for a Luoshen guardian trial meant something had been taken from him… or something had been added.He wasn’t sure which terrified him more.---“Billy?” Tyla’s voice broke through the ringing, sharp with fear she didn’t bother hiding. “Talk to me. Hey — Billy!”She stumbled toward him across the fractured stone platform, her braid slapping against her shoulder, her face streaked with dust and the residue of relic interference

CHAPTER 159 :The air around the hidden rift site still shimmered with the aftershock of Billy’s trial. The Luoshen guardian’s energy hadn’t fully faded yet, and every dust particle in the chamber drifted like it was suspended on invisible strings. Billy stood in the center of the cavern, shoulders heaving, skin glowing faintly with that unstable relic-light that had begun to pulse through him ever since he barely survived the guardian’s test.Tyla watched him carefully. Not with fear — with dread.Because she wasn’t sure who she was looking at anymore.And Owen?He was pacing, muttering under his breath, mumbling calculations and curse words back-to-back like someone trying to math his way out of a nightmare.Billy rubbed his forehead and winced. “It’s too loud in here.”Tyla stepped closer. “The relic… or your head?”“Both.”Before she could respond, a faint metallic click echoed from somewhere behind the stone pillars.Owen froze. His hand drifted toward his sidearm.“Did you hear

CHAPTER 161 :Tyla didn’t sleep.Everyone else managed to doze off in pieces—Billy collapsed against the wall after the energy outburst, Owen knocked out at his workstation with one earbud dangling, Alice and Lucas whisper-arguing in the corner—but Tyla’s mind refused to calm.Billy’s power spike at the rift had been too much. Too sudden. Too familiar.And it wasn’t just fear eating at her.It was recognition.A pattern she had seen only once before… on the Curator.She paced silently through the bunker’s dim corridor, replaying the moment Billy’s eyes glowed white, the way the air bowed around him, the crackle the relics made like they were responding to something older than him. Something not him at all.Every instinct in her body told her:You’ve seen this before.You know exactly whose signature that was.But she needed proof—not just intuition. Not just panic.Her brain finally clicked into scientific mode.If the Curator had left behind any kind of energetic residue—any imprint—

CHAPTER 163 :Billy sat on the cracked stone floor of the hidden rift chamber, his chest heaving. Every breath felt like he’d been dragging it through molten rock. The relic’s veins pulsed across his arms, brighter than ever, and a low hum thrummed in his skull, echoing the whisper of the Curator’s shadow lingering in the echo he had just fought. Even defeated, it hadn’t vanished. It was waiting. Watching. Learning.Tyla crouched beside him, her hand hovering just above his shoulder, not touching, but tethered by instinct. She didn’t speak; she didn’t need to. Both of them knew that the bond wasn’t something you could reason with—only feel, only wrestle with, and only control if you understood it better than it understood you.Owen’s voice broke the heavy silence. “Billy, listen—governments are converging on this area. We’ve got maybe… hours, if we’re lucky. Once word of this rift spreads, it’s going to be a bloodbath. You have to move. And the only way to find your father… is the rel