All Chapters of SILENT VEINS: THE BLOODBORN ASCENSION: Chapter 11
- Chapter 20
60 chapters
Chapter 11: Giants Falls
When something that weighs several tons moves at highway speeds, the results are catastrophic.The Guardian covered the hundred-foot distance in less than three seconds. Kaelen barely had time to register its movement before it was there. Massive fist, formed from concrete and rebar wrapped in gray flesh, descending toward them like a falling building.They scattered.Shen flowed left. Moving with liquid grace. Lira exploded right in a geyser of water propulsion. Kaelen threw himself forward, under the strike. Rolling across asphalt that cracked like thunder as the Guardian's fist impacted where he'd been standing a heartbeat ago.The shockwave alone lifted Kaelen off his feet and sent him tumbling.He crashed into an overturned car. Breath knocked from his lungs. Ribs screaming in protest. Through watering eyes, he watched the Guardian extract its fist from the crater it created. A hole six feet deep in reinforced city street."New plan." Kaelen gasped. "Don't get hit."Lira was alre
Chapter 12: The Edge Of Nothing
Kaelen was drowning in voices.Not metaphorically. Actually drowning. His consciousness submerged in a sea of corrupted memories. Each one belonging to a person or cultivator absorbed by Hollows. They crashed over him in waves.A mother trying to shield her child. Both consumed.A cultivator watching his entire sect fall.A teenager in the wrong place at the wrong time.A Council Elder who thought herself untouchable. Proven fatally wrong.Each memory came with emotions. Terror. Despair. Rage. Resignation. And underneath them all, threading through like a toxin, was the seductive whisper of Hollow Sickness.Let go. Stop fighting. It hurts less if you just... stop.Kaelen's sense of self was fragmenting. He couldn't remember his name. Couldn't remember why he was fighting. Couldn't remember what he was supposed to protect.But then.A hand. Small. Warm. Pressing against his cheek. And a voice cutting through the chaos."KAELEN!"~~~In the physical world, Lira had reached him.She was
Chapter 13: The Black Tower
Kaelen lost track of time in the darkness.The black bag over his head was heavy. Made of some material that didn't just block light. It absorbed sound. Dampening everything to a muffled whisper. He could feel movement. The sensation of being transported. But he couldn't tell if it was by vehicle. By flight. Or by some cultivation technique he didn't understand.His wrists ached where the steel cuffs bit into skin.Without the suppression runes, they couldn't seal his powers. But they also couldn't stop his body from trying to heal the constant friction wounds. Which meant the cuffs kept cutting through fresh tissue. Creating an endless cycle of minor damage.Blood trickled down his palms. Warm and sticky.He tried to focus on that sensation. Using the pain to keep himself grounded. It was a trick Shen taught him during meditation. "Pain is data. It tells you that you're alive. That you're present. Never fear pain. Fear numbness."Someone yanked the bag off his head.The brightness wa
Chapter 14: The Inquisition
They didn't take Kaelen to a torture chamber. Nothing so crude.Instead, they led him to a room that was somehow worse. Sterile. White. Filled with devices that hummed with barely restrained power. It reminded Kaelen of the university's medical wing. But everything here was designed not to heal. But to analyze.The three Elders arranged themselves in a triangle around him. Kaelen was strapped to a chair in the center. Not with chains. But with bands of solidified air that conformed to his body. Impossible to break.Elder Cassius circled him like a predator assessing prey. Up close, their beauty was unsettling. Too perfect. Like a sculpture rather than a person. "Do you know what we are, Kaelen?""The people who murdered my mother."The jovial grandmother, Elder Yumei, laughed. It was a warm, grandmotherly sound that made Kaelen's skin crawl. "Oh, he has spirit! I like this one, Cassius. Can we keep him?""The Voidborn is not a pet, Yumei." The tall, masked Elder, Arcturus, spoke with
Chapter 15: Faceless Sage Bargain
Kaelen stared upward through the transparent walls of his cell. Trying to locate the Faceless Sage's cell in the tiers above.The voice in his mind was different from the other prisoners. Not transmitted through cultivated telepathy. But something more fundamental. It was like the Sage was speaking directly into the core of his being."You wonder how I reach you." The Sage's thoughts carried amusement. "The Council believes their cells block all technique. They are correct. But I do not use technique. I use something older. The language that existed before cultivation. Before even the Ley Veins themselves.""What are you?" Kaelen projected mentally."A question I have asked myself for three centuries. Once, I was human. A scholar seeking enlightenment. Then I became something else. The Council calls me monster. I prefer 'evolved.'"The other prisoners' thoughts flooded in."Don't trust him." Darius warned. "The Sage is insane. He's been down here so long his mind fractured...""He kil
Chapter 16: Prison Break
The moment the suppression field dropped, the Void Keep transformed from prison to battlefield.Prisoners who hadn't moved in years suddenly exploded into action.Darius Korr in cell 47-B blasted through his transparent walls with a technique that turned his fists into living lightning. Each punch left scorch marks in reality itself.Professor Yuna Seo didn't attack. She creates, summoning barriers of crystallized knowledge around groups of weaker prisoners. Protecting them from the chaos while they oriented themselves.Marcus Chen, the former Enforcer, moved with military precision. Disarming guards and redistributing their weapons to other escapees. Turning rabble into an organized force in seconds.The Enforcers tried to respond. But they were overwhelmed. These weren't random criminals. These were some of the most powerful cultivators the Council ever captured. Held at the edge of death for decades. And now suddenly free.It was a massacre.And it was beautiful.~~~Kaelen absorbe
Chapter 17: PURIFICATION
Kaelen's hand trembled inches from the Vein Core's surface.He could feel the corruption pulsing within it. Centuries of intentional poisoning. Layer upon layer of gray rot wrapped around pure energy like a tumor strangling healthy tissue.Destroying it would be easy. One touch. Let his Silent Veins unravel the containment. And the whole thing would collapse. Prisoners free. Mission accomplished.But the vision the core showed him wouldn't leave his mind. The Hollow King tearing through reality. Billions dead. Humanity falling because they weren't strong enough when it mattered most."If you're going to be stupid, at least be brave about it." Wei Lin's voice echoed in his consciousness with something like amusement."The math is simple." Tarek added. "Purifying instead of destroying. Ninety-seven percent chance of death. Three percent chance of creating the most powerful weapon against corruption in existence.""As an healer." Mei said quietly. "I believe in saving things. Even ones t
Chapter 18: REBIRTH
Darkness.Not the oppressive darkness of the prison's suppression field. Not the cold darkness of Hollow Sickness. This was different. Vast. Peaceful. Infinite. Like floating in the space between stars, where light hasn't yet been born and won't die.He was dead. He knew that instinctively. His heart stopped. His body failed. He pushed too far.But he was also not gone. Somehow, impossibly, his consciousness persisted.Where was he?"Welcome to the Threshold." A voice said. Not the Hollow King. Not the Faceless Sage. But something else. Older. Deeper. "The place between life and death. Matter and void. Existence and absence."A figure coalesced from the darkness. Humanoid but indistinct. Made of starlight and shadow in equal measure. It radiated presence without having definable features."I am the First Voidborn." The figure said."Or rather, I am what remains of her consciousness. Encoded in the Silent Veins themselves. Passed down through every generation. Waiting for one strong en
CHAPTER 19: HUNTED
VOLUME 2: PART 1The platform crashed down in an abandoned industrial district on the city's outskirts.A graveyard of rusted factories and collapsed warehouses. The impact created a crater in cracked asphalt. Sending up clouds of dust that mixed with the dawn light. Creating an apocalyptic orange haze.Three hundred escaped prisoners spilled off the platform in controlled chaos. Some falling to the ground immediately. Years of captivity catching up to them. Others helped the injured. Forming triage stations with whatever materials they could scavenge. The Faceless Sage stood at the platform's center. His featureless face somehow conveying exhaustion as his protective barrier dissolved.Kaelen stumbled off last. Legs barely holding him.His new body, transformed by the Threshold, felt wrong. Too light and Too heavy. Both at once. Every step sent feedback through his nervous system that his brain couldn't quite process yet. The silver veins etched into his skin pulsed rhythmically. Li
Chapter 20: NO ESCAPE
The Enforcers didn't wait for a response. Morrigan gave a hand signal. The helicopters opened fire.Not with bullets. With cultivation-enhanced weapon. Streams of concentrated elemental energy. Fire,Lightning,Ice. All color-coded by type. Pouring down from the sky like the wrath of gods.The ruins exploded. Warehouses that stood for decades disintegrated in seconds. Concrete and steel turned to molten slag. To frozen shards. To charred ash.The freed prisoners scattered. Some froze in panic. Others moved with combat-trained efficiency. Professor Seo threw up barriers of crystallized knowledge. Translucent walls that absorbed the first wave of attacks but cracked under sustained fire.Kaelen didn't think. He moved.His transformed body responded differently now. Faster. More fluid. Like he wasn't quite bound by normal physics. He blurred across the battlefield. Blood-armor fully manifested. And reached the teenage girl with the tracker wound.She was frozen in shock. Bleeding. About t