SUPREME WAR GOD The Despised Son-in-Law Returns

Chapter 2: The Seed in the Dark

"Don't call a doctor," Agatha ordered, her voice cold. "Doctors talk, and the Grants will hear every word. Lock him in the storeroom until he learns his place."

Derek and two servants grabbed Damon under the arms and dragged him through the kitchen, leaving a red line across the white tiles. They threw him into the storeroom, and his head hit a sack of rice; the door slammed, and a key turned twice.

"Rot in there, idiot!" Derek kicked the door. "Tomorrow you'll beg Lucas on your knees, or you'll wish that bottle had killed you."

His footsteps faded, and the whole house went quiet again.

Damon lay in the dark and let the memories come back, one by one, like soldiers returning from a long march.

He saw a frozen border town, and a nine-year-old boy fighting three grown men for a single loaf of bread. The boy was losing badly, until an old man in grey robes stepped out of the snow and broke all three men's arms with a wooden walking stick.

"You didn't cry when they hit you," the old man had said, kneeling in front of him. "That's good. My name is Solomon Grey. Do you want to learn how to never lose again?"

Seven hard years in the mountains had followed. Solomon taught him how to fight, how to heal and how to breathe; on the last night, he placed an old leather book in Damon's hands, the Asura War Scripture.

"This art belongs to you now, my boy," his master had said, smiling. "Never let anyone take it from you."

At sixteen, Damon joined the army. At twenty, he was a general, and at twenty-four, he became a War God, the first in a hundred years. He built the Black Dragon Legion into ten million soldiers, and the whole nation called him the Asura.

Then came Frostgate Pass, the frozen mountain road on the northern border. He had crushed the army of Korvath there in one long night of snow and fire, and afterward his four sworn brothers had sat with him around the victory fire. Bruno was the bearded giant, Ryker the silent swordsman, Hawk the scout with burned fingers and thick glasses, and Tobias Rook was the gentle one, the brother who always smiled and never raised his voice.

"To victory," Tobias had said, holding out a cup of wine.

The wine had burned like melted iron. Black lines had crawled up Damon's arms, his power had died in seconds, and masked killers in the colors of Grand Marshal Victor Draven's guard had rushed out of the dark. He had fought until a blade opened his side; then the cliff edge was gone from under his feet.

He remembered the frozen river, the smugglers who had dragged him out and sold him as a laborer, and the long months of wandering with a broken mind. At the end of it all was a bridge in Eastbay, cold rain and a gentle old voice.

"Come home with me, son. Nobody will hurt you now."

Arthur Whitmore had kept that promise for two years. Then he died, and the family began treating Damon like an animal.

Damon sat up slowly and pressed his back against the dusty wooden shelves.

"Five years," he whispered into the dark. "Five years on my knees, while Draven wore my medals."

And his brothers... he didn't even know if they were alive.

He closed his eyes and sent his mind inward, the way Solomon had taught him as a boy.

What he found made his chest tighten. His meridians, the channels that carried a warrior's power, were shattered like a dropped mirror; the great river of strength that had once let him split mountains was gone, and only a thin trickle remained. He had fallen to the very bottom of the Body Tempering realm, weaker than a gym trainer, weaker even than Derek.

"So this is what the poison did."

Then he felt something else, deep in his belly. It was a slow, heavy beat, like a second heart, dark and hot and hungry.

Damon knew this feeling from his master's oldest lessons. It was the Asura Core, the seed Solomon had planted in him when he was a boy, the seed that had slept quietly his whole life. Derek's bottle had cracked something open inside his skull, and now the seed was awake.

The words of the Asura War Scripture rose in his mind, clearer than they had ever been. The Asura grows stronger with every battle won, and it feeds on every rare herb; where other warriors climb step by step, the Asura leaps.

For an ordinary fighter, broken meridians took ten years to rebuild. For him, it might take weeks.

Blood was still running down his temple. Damon felt along the shelf, found an old sewing kit and took out one long needle. He struck a match, held the needle in the flame, then pressed it into three points on his scalp, fast and exact. It was the first form of the Nine Needles of Life and Death, a battlefield healing art no doctor in Valoria had ever seen.

The bleeding stopped at once.

A soft knock came at the door, and the lock clicked open. Lily Whitmore slipped inside with a bowl of soup, a roll of bandages and tears running down her cheeks. She was twenty and small, with short wavy hair, an old hoodie, cheap sneakers and a plaster on one finger, like always.

"Brother Damon," she whispered, "I stole the key from the kitchen. Please tell me you're not dying."

"I'm not dying, Lily."

She froze and stared at him. "Your voice sounds different."

"Different how?"

"Like you're finally awake." She knelt down and began cleaning the dried blood from his face with shaking hands. "Derek is a monster, and Mom is worse. And Vivian just sat there, Brother Damon; she didn't say one single word."

"Why do you always help me?" he asked quietly. "Nobody else in this house does."

Lily was silent for a moment. "Grandpa Arthur told me once that the way you treat a man who has nothing shows your real heart." She sniffed and wiped her nose on her sleeve. "Oh! Wait, I almost forgot. I have something for you."

She took a folded handkerchief from her pocket and opened it on her palm.

Inside lay a black jade ring with a coiled dragon carved around it. The dragon's single eye was a tiny chip of red stone that glowed faintly in the candlelight.

Damon's breath stopped.

It was the Black Dragon Seal, the ring of the Supreme Commander. It could open the Legion's secret war fund, and one word of its code could call any Legion soldier in the nation to his side.

"Derek pawned it last year at Kane Treasure House to pay a gambling debt," Lily said. "I knew it was yours, because you always rubbed your finger like something was missing. I spent all my savings to buy it back."

He slid it onto his finger, and it fit as if it had never left.

Lily tilted her head. "Is it special? It looks really old."

"It belonged to someone I used to be," he said, "someone I thought was gone forever."

"Well, he's back now," she said softly.

"Thank you, Lily," he said, and his voice was rough with feeling. "I'll never forget this."

She smiled through her tears and picked up the empty bowl. At the door, she hesitated and looked back.

"Brother Damon, something strange happened at that shop. The old man didn't ask my name when I bought it back." She frowned. "He only asked who the ring really belonged to, and then he wrote down our address."