The road leading to Aurelian Hospital Velmont's main entrance felt different from usual.More people were gathered near the main doors than should have been at this hour on an ordinary morning. Not patients waiting. Not staff on break. People standing with a certain posture, the posture of people who had come with a specific purpose.The automatic doors parted when Caelan walked in, and Aurelian Hospital's lobby welcomed him in a way far more lively than when he had returned from Valcoria.The sound started before anyone moved—a soft ripple of recognition, the way a crowd responds when something already long-awaited finally arrives. Then heads turned. Then the space between Caelan and the people already gathered began to close without anyone needing to be directed.Harven Colt was at the front, the same as the last time they had been in the same room. But the man standing before Caelan now carried himself differently from the man who had offered a long-term contract with barely-contai

Supreme Elder Gao.The first to step forward was already enough to make several junior disciples in the back rows unconsciously step back half a pace. Not because his expression was frightening, but because there was no expression that could be read at all.A man two meters tall with a body that never looked like it belonged to someone already in his forties, because nothing there was wasted. A black robe thicker than those of other sect members covered his body, with a mala—a prayer bead string whose individual beads were each the size of a fist—looped around his neck and falling to his chest. Pitch-black beads already polished by time until their surfaces could reflect light.And his eyes, always closed. Not from sleep, not from disability. It had been his way for a very long time, because he no longer needed eyes to see anything that needed seeing. His spiritual energy had already become a sense far more accurate than ordinary sight.Supreme Elder Nova.The second to step forward b

Dorian Ashford was driving alone, something he rarely did but occasionally needed when there were things easier to process in solitude inside a car than in an office or at home.Music from his car speakers played at exactly the right volume—not too loud, not too quiet. At a red light intersection, Dorian tapped the steering wheel to the rhythm, in the manner of someone who had forgotten that no one was watching.Green light.His car moved forward again.And in the rearview mirror, there was something that shouldn't have been there three seconds ago.Someone in the back seat.A woman—a face he didn't get to fully register because his reflex had already turned his head around before his eyes finished reading what they had seen in the mirror.And before his eyes finished focusing toward the back—Darkness.---In a work room at the Crest family residence, Elara sat at her desk in the manner of someone already very accustomed to working at hours when most people had long since stopped.Th

Fuzi was the first to respond.His staff was already in a parrying position even before Caelan reached the necessary distance, the manner of someone who had been in this world long enough to not need open eyes to read a person's movement.Blade met staff.CLANG.The sound filled the entire warehouse at once. Not an ordinary sound, but the sound of two objects each carrying something beyond just their material weight.In Fuzi's hands, something unusual happened.His hands, which had gripped that staff through more fights than could be counted, went numb.Not numb from ordinary impact. This was vibration that entered from blade to staff and from staff directly into his spiritual energy system, disrupting the flow in his palm's pathways in a way very precise and very stinging.Fuzi leaped back three steps—maintaining his staff, maintaining his position, but already very clearly showing that what he had just felt had changed his calculations.This strength—This isn't ordinary Fifth Realm

The fight continued in a way that gave not one of them enough time to properly catch their breath.Cirrus attempted an attack from the side—his blue blade moving with technique already very refined, using speed over strength. Two of his three strikes were blocked. The third caught the side of Caelan's waist, not deep but enough to be felt.Caelan turned with that momentum, and his left elbow landed on Cirrus's jaw before Cirrus had time to reset his distance.Cirrus was pushed back two steps. His jaw was already going to swell.Nova tried to take advantage of that opening, her white moon sword already in a thrusting position, targeting Caelan's right shoulder from an angle very difficult to block from the position after that elbow strike.But Caelan's senses had already read it before the blade moved.The black sword was already in a defensive position, and Nova's attack hit it in a way that bounced back further than she had expected. Her grip on the sword didn't release but there was