Draven stood in his courtyard and did not move.One second passed. Then another. Then many more.The silence was deep and heavy, like the world was holding its breath. The air still trembled faintly, as if it remembered how he had torn through the sky only moments ago. To anyone else, the courtyard looked the same as always. Stone paths. Training pillars. Quiet lanterns.To Draven, it was different.He could feel the Spire now.Not as a building. Not as walls and towers. He felt it as layers of energy wrapped around everything. Defensive patterns. Detection nets. Suppression fields. All humming softly in the Aura like invisible threads.They were powerful.They were clever.And to his new senses, they were flawed.“There,” he murmured, turning his head slightly. “And there.”Tiny gaps. Delicate weaknesses. Places where the patterns overlapped imperfectly. Places no one had ever noticed because no one had ever looked at them this way before.Draven exhaled slowly and walked inside his

Silence crushed the Pinnacle Hall.It was not the calm silence of respect or meditation. It was the kind that pressed on the chest and made breathing feel difficult. Eleven family heads sat frozen in their ornate seats, staring at the man who had walked through wards that were supposed to be absolute.Draven stood calmly in the center of the hall.For the first time in hundreds of years, the authority of the founding families meant nothing.The Flame Soul Patriarch, Ignis, was the first to recover. His expression twisted as rage surged through him. Heat rippled off his skin and faint flames danced around his shoulders.“You dare,” he thundered. “This hall is sacred. You violated blood wards and ancient tradition. Guards. Nothing happened.No boots echoed. No weapons rang.Ignis turned sharply toward the entrance, his fury deepening when he saw no one coming.The guards were still outside, staring at their twisted spears like men who had just watched their faith shatter.Draven took o

For one full month, the Verdant Spring Enclave felt like a sealed tomb filled with growing power. The air inside never rested. At times it was cool mist. At times it was warm like spring soil. Sometimes it smelled of fresh earth. Sometimes it crackled softly with trapped lightning.Goran stood at the entrance the entire time. He did not move. He did not sleep. He was as steady as a mountain.Selene came every day. She never entered. Instead, she placed stone tablets outside the door. Her data slate could not survive inside the wild, twisting energy around the room.Inside the chamber, Draven was fighting a battle.Not against an enemy.Against himself.The World Spanning Root Sap flowed through him like a patient tide. It pushed his Qi channels wider and thicker. His liquid Qi became heavier, denser, and far more powerful. His Chaotic Seed worked endlessly, breaking down and absorbing ancient, primal energy.It was slow. Painful. Absolute refinement down to the smallest part of his bo

The plan was settled long before anyone spoke it out loud. The Crucible would move in three hours, and every second until then mattered.Draven stood at the center of the courtyard, listening as reports came in. When the final team assignment was complete, silence followed. Everyone waited for his next words.“I will take the Sun Forge,” Draven said calmly.The words landed like a stone dropped into still water.“Alone?” Goran asked. His deep voice carried disbelief and concern.Draven nodded. “Alone.”“That place is guarded by elites,” another awakener said. “Even the family heads respect its defenses.”“I am not going to fight the defenses,” Draven replied. He looked down at his right hand, turning it slowly. There was no pride in his eyes, only calculation. “I am going to measure myself. And I need the enemy looking at me, not at you.”Goran studied him for a long moment, then gave a slow nod. “Then make it loud.”Draven’s lips curved slightly. “I intend to.”Three hours later, Fro

Draven shot toward the Frost-Dawn spires. The northern sky was a howling storm of white and blue. Selene’s stolen lightning from the Athenaeum arced through the blizzard, wild and unfocused. It was a distraction, not a weapon. He felt two familiar, strained energy signatures deep in the storm: Selene and Fen, holding a defensive position.He crashed through the outer edge of the blizzard. Ice shards the size of spears flew toward him, guided by Frost-Dawn cultivators hidden in the whiteout. They shattered against his Chaos Mantle into harmless powder.Below, he saw the battlefield. Selene and Fen stood back to back on a frozen bridge leading to a huge arched entrance carved into a glacier, the Ice-Heart Vault. The bridge was slick with blood and melting ice. Around them lay the twisted, frozen bodies of a dozen Frost-Dawn elites.More were coming. A solid line of twenty ice-armored warriors advanced across the bridge, their shields interlocking into a wall of shimmering cold. Behind t