Reborn before my betrayal

Breaking the Cage

The world erupted in blinding white light.

The palace's ancient, hidden array didn't just activate; it tore through the throne room floor like a waking volcano. The shockwave of pure, untamed primal energy smashed into the two elder mages before they could even finish their execution chant.

BOOM!

The crushing gravity locking my ankles shattered instantly. The two elders were thrown backward across the hall, their defensive barriers cracking like glass as they crashed into the marble pillars.

"The foundations are collapsing!" a minister shrieked, his voice drowned out by the thunderous roar of tearing stone.

Massive fissures spider-webbed across the floor, swallowing the pristine marble dais. Huge chunks of the frescoed ceiling began to rain down, crushing banquet tables and sending the remaining nobles into a state of absolute, screaming hysteria.

Through the dust and billowing smoke, I saw Julian. The triumphant smirk had been violently wiped from his face. He was clinging to a broken pillar, staring at me through the chaos with wide, terrified eyes. He had no idea how an unawakened prince could hijack the palace’s forgotten defense arrays.

I didn't waste a single second watching him panic.

The artificial adrenaline from the Crimson Eclipse Elixir was rapidly burning out, leaving my muscles feeling like lead. Blood was still leaking from my broken wrist, slicking my grip on the shadow guard blade. If I didn't cross the threshold of the palace gates right now, the structural collapse would bury me alive, or the Emperor would recover his composure and crush me himself.

I turned on my heel and bolted through the shattered double doors.

Behind me, the Imperial Throne Hall was roaring as the eastern pillars gave way, burying Julian's line of sight in a mountain of stone and dust.

I sprinted down the winding exterior corridors, ignoring the agony tearing through my overtaxed meridians. The entire palace complex was in complete lockdown. Emergency bells wailed from the guard towers, and streaks of light pierced the sky as the outer vanguards mobilized toward the throne room. They were running toward the disaster. I was running away from it.

No one looked twice at a lone, blood-stained prince sprinting toward the outer courtyard in the middle of a terrorist raid.

Within ten minutes, I reached the grand stables at the edge of the palace perimeter. Most of the stable hands had fled, leaving the imperial beasts whinnying in panic inside their wooden stalls.

I didn't need a legendary, high-tier drake. My current unawakened core couldn't handle the mental feedback of a magical beast contract. Instead, I cut the tethers of a simple, black midnight stallion—a beast bred for pure, continuous endurance.

I vaulted onto its back, using my good hand to whip the reins.

"Hah!"

The stallion surged forward, its hooves clattering violently against the cobblestones as we blasted through the unlocked western gates of the palace. I didn't look back at the smoking ruins of the Azure Palace. I rode hard, pushing the beast to its absolute limits as we tore through the lower streets of the capital, heading straight for the massive, jagged mountain passes that led to the imperial border.

Six hours later. The edge of civilization.

The lush green forests of the empire had completely faded, replaced by jagged, gray stone cliffs and a choking, sulfur-scented fog. Ahead of me loomed the Shattered Gate—the final, heavily fortified outpost separating the empire from the lawless, black-sand expanse of the Forbidden Outlands.

The midnight stallion collapsed beneath me, its lungs bursting from the relentless, six-hour sprint. I rolled off its back, hitting the hard dirt, my body screaming in absolute protest. The elixir had fully worn off. Every muscle fiber felt as though it was being scraped with a rusty file, and my unawakened core was a cold, hollow void.

Using my broken sword as a crutch, I dragged myself toward the iron-barricaded archway of the gate.

"Halt! State your lineage and produce your passage token!" a heavily armored border guard commanded, lowering a massive halberd toward my chest. A dozen archers on the wall above instantly notched their bows, their arrows glowing with lethal fire magic.

I raised my head, wiping the dried, caked blood from my forehead. I didn't have a token. I didn't have a name anymore.

"I am Kaelen," I rasped, my voice carrying a cold, dead weight that made the guard blink. "The Emperor has stripped my titles. My name is erased. Check the imperial bird registries if you doubt me."

The guard captain stepped out from the watchtower, holding a glowing communication crystal that was pulsing with an urgent, red light. He looked at the crystal, then at my blood-drenched clothes and broken wrist, his face turning pale.

"The registry just updated..." the captain whispered, his voice trembling as he stared at me. "The Third Prince... a rogue exile. Orders are to let you pass, but you are barred from ever stepping foot inside the empire again."

"Open the gate," I commanded.

The heavy iron chains groaned as the massive barricade slowly lifted. Beyond the archway stretched an endless, terrifying expanse of pitch-black sand, howling with a violent, unnatural wind. The Forbidden Outlands. A place where the sky was a perpetual shade of bruised purple, and where ancient, mutated monsters and rogue mages lived to slaughter.

I dragged my broken body across the threshold, stepping firmly onto the corrupted black sand.

The moment my boots touched the lawless soil, the invisible, structural seal binding my imperial bloodline didn't just loosen—it completely disintegrated. The empire's ambient light magic could no longer suppress me.

CRACK!

A sudden, world-ending pressure violently erupted from the earth beneath my feet. The sky above turned pitch-black, choked out by an instantaneous, unnatural eclipse. Deep within my chest, my empty, unawakened core violently shattered entirely, unlocking the true, ancient monstrosity dormant within my lineage.

A torrent of pure, unadulterated black energy exploded from my body, cracking the stone ground for miles.

The border guards behind the gate stumbled back, falling to their knees as their horses panicked. They watched in pure, paralyzed terror as my weak prince form was completely swallowed by an overwhelming, apocalyptic dark aura.

I raised my eyes, my vision shifting as my pupils burned with an ancient, predatory violet light. The pain was gone. The exhaustion was gone. The dark magic of the wasteland was rushing into my broken meridians, rewriting my power structure from the ground up.

But before I could even take a breath of my new power, a low, ground-shaking tremor rippled through the black dunes directly in front of me.

The sand shifted violently, exploding upward as a massive, skeletal hound—easily the size of a carriage—burst from the earth. Its ribs were exposed, glowing with a sickly purple flame, and its hollow eye sockets locked onto my radiating aura with a hunger that had lasted centuries.

A high-tier, feral shadow-beast. And it was lunging straight for my throat.

I was entirely unarmed, my broken sword dropped in the sand, my body still adjusting to the violent influx of raw, untamed dark energy.

A savage, monstrous smile spread across my face as I stood my ground, my violet eyes locking onto the beast.