Reborn before my betrayal

The Whispering Fissure

Vane didn’t hesitate. He drove the tip of his serrated hunting knife straight into the keyholes of Kaelen’s cold-iron shackles.

Clack. Clack.

The heavy metal cuffs hit the rusted iron grate with a dull clang. The sudden release of the mana-draining iron allowed the ambient dark energy of the cavern to rush back into Kaelen's raw, broken meridians. He grimaced, his body violently shaking as his shattered core absorbed the volatile power like parched earth.

He forced himself to his feet, using the iron bars of the cage to steady his trembling legs. He looked at Vane. "Your hunting party is fifteen men. The imperial vanguard sent a specialized thirty-man squad of Wind-Stalkers equipped with silencing arrays. If you run down the main tunnel, you will walk directly into their crossfire."

"Then we take the lower root paths," Vane grunted, buckling a massive spiked buckler to his left arm.

"Too slow," Kaelen said, wiping a fresh bead of dark blood from his nose. "Mara. Give me your spare bone dagger and two jars of that unrefined copper-sap you use for Vane’s medicine."

Mara stared at him through her single good eye for a fraction of a second, then reached into a leather crate behind her, tossing him a jagged, five-inch blade carved from a desert beast’s rib and two clay vials. "If this is a trap, imperial boy, I will personally skin you before the vipers can."

"Move," Kaelen commanded.

Five minutes later, Kaelen, Vane, and ten of the strongest rogue cultivators were crouching along the upper rim of the Whispering Fissure. The canyon was a narrow, jagged throat of black volcanic rock, barely six feet wide at the bottom. The wind howling through the cracks created a permanent, low-frequency drone that masked the sound of footsteps—making it the perfect place for an execution.

Below them, fifteen rogue scouts were backed into a dead-end cavern cove, their weapons drawn, surrounded by a semi-circle of thirty imperial Wind-Stalkers. The imperial soldiers wore lightweight, emerald-tinted chainmail, their faces hidden behind porcelain masks. Their short-swords were wrapped in faint green wind magic, completely silent as they closed the perimeter.

"They’ve set up a localized silence barrier," Vane whispered, his grip tightening on his great-axe. "Our men can’t even scream for help. We jump them from above."

"No," Kaelen hissed, grabbing Vane's massive shoulder. "The moment you clear the rim, their archers will pin you to the walls. The silence barrier works both ways, Vane. They can’t hear what’s happening outside their perimeter either."

Kaelen uncorked the two clay vials of copper-sap. He poured the thick, metallic sludge over the jagged edge of Mara's bone dagger, then reached deep into his chest. He didn't have a structured light core anymore, but he had the volatile, raw dark residue from the Obelisk. He forced the raw energy down his arms, turning his fingertips a bruised, neon violet.

He drove the poison-coated bone blade straight into a thick, pulsating tree root protruding from the canyon rim.

"The tree roots in this valley aren't dead," Kaelen murmured, his eyes glowing with an ancient, predatory light. "They are connected to the central leyline. They drink the same dark magic I do."

He injected the raw, volatile violet energy directly into the root.

The copper-sap, acting as a highly conductive metal agent, carrying the corruptive dark magic, sprinted through the petrified wood structure like liquid lightning.

The reaction was instantaneous.

Deep within the canyon walls, the massive, coiled lattices of the Iron Root didn't just vibrate—they violently awaking. The thick, subterranean tendrils thick as stone pillars burst outward from the volcanic rock faces, tearing through the canyon floor like colossal whips.

BOOM!

The structural shockwave shattered the imperial silence array in a cascade of green sparks.

Three Wind-Stalkers were instantly crushed into the stone walls by the erupting roots before they could even turn around. The sudden, violent disruption of the ground threw the entire imperial formation into chaotic disarray, their perfect synchronization breaking as the black rock beneath their boots split into deep fissures.

"Now," Kaelen growled, his voice cutting through the sudden roar of the canyon. "Slaughter them."

Vane let out a bloodthirsty roar, leaping from the twenty-foot rim with his great-axe raised, his iron-hard skin glowing with a dull grey light as he crashed directly into the center of the imperial vanguard. Mara followed, a swirling vortex of ash-grey fabric and flaming green steel as her executioner’s axe cleaved through porcelain masks.

Kaelen stayed on the rim, his hand still gripped tightly around the bone dagger embedded in the root. He was panting heavily, sweat mixing with the dried blood on his face. His young body was screaming at him to stop, but his eyes remained locked on the far end of the canyon.

Through the dust and spraying blood of the ambush, he saw him.

The commander of the Wind-Stalkers wasn't fighting. He was standing atop a stone boulder, his porcelain mask painted with a golden sun crest—the personal mark of Cassian’s inner circle. In his hand, he held a brilliant, sapphire-blue communication crystal that was already pulsing with light, transmitting the coordinates of the rogue hideout directly back to the main imperial legion.

The commander looked up, his eyes locking onto Kaelen through the chaos. Realizing the Third Prince was the source of the anomaly, the commander didn't try to join the brawl. He turned on his heel, using his wind magic to sprint backward up the canyon path, heading for the open plains to deliver the data.

If that crystal cleared the canyon, the entire imperial legion would descend upon the Iron Root before sunrise.

Kaelen wrenched the bone dagger out of the root. He didn't have the physical strength to give chase, and his mana was entirely depleted.

But as he stared at the retreating commander, a savage, cold smile broke across Kaelen's face. He knew this exact vanguard path. He knew what lay buried three feet beneath the dirt at the exit of the Whispering Fissure.

"Run faster, little viper," Kaelen whispered.

The imperial commander sprinted past the final volcanic boulder, his boots hitting a patch of seemingly ordinary grey sand.

CLICK.

A heavy, mechanical snap echoed from the earth. The grey sand violently dissolved as a hidden, ancient iron-jawed pressure trap—a remnant of the old continent's border wars that Kaelen had deliberately left unmentioned—sprung upward with explosive force, clamping its jagged, rusted iron teeth completely through the commander's thigh bone.

The commander let out a muffled shriek, crashing face-first into the dirt, the sapphire communication crystal flying out of his hand and skidding across the black stones, stopping mere inches from a deep, bottomless chasm.