Redeeming the Broken Stars.

CHAPTER 4: THE DAY OF REVELATION:

CHAPTER 4:

Kaelen stood at the window of his chambers, watching the sun descend toward the horizon. 

In six hours, the Ascension Ceremony would begin. The entire Ashwright Sect buzzed with anticipation, disciples decorated the ceremonial grounds, merchants sold commemorative talismans, cultivators from across the Nine Heavens arrived to witness history.

The youngest Grandmaster candidate in three centuries, ascending to godhood at nineteen.

"My son." Kaelen turned at the sound of his father's voice.

Soren stood in the doorway, and something about his posture made Kaelen's instincts flare with warning. 

The Grandmaster looked... diminished. Hollowed out. His steel-grey eyes carried the weight of worlds.

"Father? Is everything ready for tonight?"

Soren stepped inside, closing the door with deliberate care. When he turned, his face was a mask that was finally, after nineteen years, beginning to crack.

"There is something you must know about your destiny."

The words fell like stones.

Kaelen's hand instinctively went to the Convergence Star on his forehead. "What do you mean? The prophecies, "

"The prophecies are lies." Soren's voice was flat, rehearsed, as if he'd practiced this conversation a thousand times in his mind. 

"Not entirely, but enough. You will not ascend to godhood tonight, Kaelen. You will be sacrificed to it." His father immediately said.

The world tilted. "What?"

Soren moved to the window, staring out at the setting sun.

"The Convergence Star is not a blessing. It's a beacon. A mark that appears once every hundred generations, indicating a soul whose essence is compatible with entities we call the Devourers."

"The Devourers," Kaelen repeated numbly. "The beings who created the Nine Heavens?"

"Yes. But they are imprisoned now, trapped in a dimensional prison by the first Elders three thousand years ago.”

*The Devourers were too powerful, too dangerous. The Elders feared them and found a way to bind them in the space between dimensions."

Kaelen's mind raced, trying to process information that contradicted everything he'd been taught.

"If they're imprisoned, what does that have to do with me?"

"Imprisoned beings still need sustenance." Soren's hands clenched behind his back. 

"The Devourers feed on divine essence, the concentrated spiritual energy of exceptional cultivators. Without it, they starve. And when they starve, reality itself begins to unravel.”

"The Nine Heavens are their creation, maintained by their existence. If they die, everything dies with them."

"So the Elders feed them," Kaelen said slowly. "But not enough to let them break free."

"Precisely. Every hundred generations, a Convergence bearer is born, someone whose cultivation potential makes their essence compatible with the Devourers' needs. One marked soul, sacrificed to buy another century of peace."

The implications crashed over Kaelen like a tidal wave. "You're saying... I'm going to be killed? Fed to cosmic horrors? That's my destiny?"

"Yes."

One word. Simple. Final. Devastating.

Kaelen laughed, a broken, desperate sound. "No. You're lying. This is some kind of test. Master Typhon would have told me. Celestia would have, "

"Typhon has been preparing you for this your entire life.”

“Every technique he taught you was designed to make your essence more potent, more nourishing for the Devourers. And Celestia..." Soren's voice finally cracked. "Celestia has been chosen to wield the blade."

"No." Kaelen backed away, shaking his head. "She wouldn't. She loves me."

"She does love you. That's why the Elders chose her. The sacrifice requires willing participation from someone the bearer trusts absolutely.”

“She's been given an impossible choice: kill you, or watch her entire bloodline be exterminated. Three thousand people, Kaelen. They're holding her family hostage."

The room spun. Kaelen grabbed the windowsill to steady himself. "This can't be real. You wouldn't do this. You're my father."

Soren turned, and the anguish on his face was terrible to behold. "I am your father. And I love you more than life itself.”

“But I am also Grandmaster of the Ashwright Sect, sworn to protect the Nine Heavens.”

“I have known about your fate since the moment you were born. I have spent nineteen years loving you, training you, preparing you for this night."

"You knew?" The betrayal cut deeper than any blade. "For nineteen years, you knew, and you said nothing?"

"What could I say? That your entire life was a countdown to your death?”

*That every achievement, every milestone, every moment of pride was just fattening the lamb for slaughter?" 

Soren's composure finally shattered. Tears tracked down his weathered face. 

"I gave you the best nineteen years I could. I loved you with everything I had. I hoped... gods, I hoped you would somehow be spared.”

“That the prophecy would be wrong. That there would be another way."

"And is there?" Kaelen demanded, rage replacing shock. "Another way?"

"If there were, I would have found it. I've spent a century searching. But the sacrifice is absolute.”

“The Elders have made it so. Tonight, at midnight, you will be bound to the altar.”

“The Devourers will be summoned. And Celestia will drive the Soul-Severance Blade into your heart." Soren Ashwright's voice was laced with sorrows as he spoke.

Kaelen's spiritual energy flared, the Convergence Star on his forehead blazing silver. 

"I'll fight. I'll run. I'll destroy anyone who tries to, "

"You can't." Soren's voice was heavy with finality. "I've spent nineteen years preparing the binding formations.”

“They're infused into the foundations of this very chamber, woven through the ceremonial grounds, inscribed with my own blood and essence.”

“The moment the ceremony begins, you'll be trapped.”

“And even if you could somehow escape me, every Elder in the Nine Heavens will hunt you.”

“You can't run from this son…it's your…destiny.”