The Draethos Mountains never truly slept.Night here was different from night anywhere else. Darker, heavier, with the kind of darkness that had long been fully aware it was the master here and needed no one's permission to fill every corner the light couldn't reach. Thin mist drifted between the trunks of ancient trees so old their roots had become part of the stone itself, not merely planted above it. The wind moving through the leaves didn't sound like wind on flatlands—lower, deeper, like something breathing.Above all of that, two shadows moved.Not on the ground, but in the air, among the canopy of trees so tall their crowns nearly brushed the layer of mist hanging at a height uncomfortable for anyone relying on nothing but their own two feet.Caelan landed on a branch as thick as an adult's thigh, one foot forward, one back, with a balance that needed no hands to maintain. One second—that was all he spent there—before his knees bent and his body launched forward, passing throug

In no time at all, more than twelve thousand people had packed the area behind the massive gate—crowded, layered, with expressions that varied greatly but all pointed toward the same single point. Grand Elders in the front row, ordinary Elders behind them, core and outer disciples filling every remaining space as far back as the eye could see.The Supreme Leader stood at the very front.No one dared stand beside him without being asked.Then the massive gate opened.Two leaves of black stone—whose weight was already far beyond what ordinary human hands should have been able to move—swung inward with a deep, heavy sound, opening a gap that grew wider and wider until the entire view outside spread open.And there, under the dark night sky of the Draethos Mountains, with mist still drifting between the trees behind them, two figures walked in.One adult, one small child.Their steps were the same. Calm, measured, like two people walking into a place they had planned to visit, not a place

The arena was not something built in a hurry.Every stone composing it had clearly been chosen, not grabbed at random—black stone of the same kind as the walls of this sect, but denser, older, with a surface smooth not because it had been polished but because it had spent so long holding what happened on top of it. The floor was perfectly flat in a circle a hundred meters in diameter, with a circular line carved directly into the stone—not decoration, but a boundary recognized by anyone who had ever stood inside it as a line that could not be crossed before a fight was over.Four massive pillars stood at points dividing the circle into four perfect quadrants. Each twenty meters tall, from the same stone as the floor but different in one thing: carvings covering their surface from bottom to top. These were clearly not decorative carvings. They were very old symbols, from a cultivation writing system that far predated the sect itself, functioning as far more than mere ornament.At the c

The two figures met at the center of the arena.KRRAAANG.Not just the sound of metal meeting metal—this was far more than that. This was the sound of two forces unlike each other in nature, forced to occupy the same point at the same moment, and the world around that point couldn't fully contain what happened without reacting.A wave of energy exploded in every direction.Invisible but felt—felt in the chest, in the bones, in the way the air suddenly displaced itself from its position in a way ordinary wind could never manage. The arena floor, ancient as it was, shook, with thin cracks spreading from the point where the two swords had met in every direction like a spider's web. Dust and small stone fragments lifted off the floor's surface and scattered into the air.The protective dome from the four pillars lit up.Not in the way it usually lit up during training—this was different, the deep blue light suddenly surging to a bright blue, and that invisible layer became momentarily vis

The Supreme Leader charged.Not in the same way as before.This time faster, harder, with the black aura still pouring from his body adding weight to every movement. Not a weight that slowed—a weight that made every attack feel like not just a sword but his entire body coming down.Caelan shifted his feet, adjusted his stance, and received it.KRANG. KRANG. KRAAANG.Twenty strikes in one second.The thin silver sword moved in the Supreme Leader's hand like an extension of his mind. No time needed between intent and execution, no pause between one strike and the next. From the throat, to the left side, to the knee, back up, crossing to the right, back down again.In the stands, what was visible was no longer individual movements.What was visible were lines—silver flashes and black-gold flashes colliding at the center of the arena, with sparks scattering every time the two blades met. Those sparks lit the arena in irregular intervals, like small lightning with no rhythm, burning the ai