2025-09-17 14:00:25The echoes of the duel still lingered in the academy long after the dust had settled. Kael’s name was on every tongue, whispered in awe and fear.
“Did you see it? His aura crushed Dorian’s flames!” “He didn’t even look tired…” “If he can beat Dorian, who can stop him?” But the whispers were not all in his favor. Some were sharp, laced with envy. “He’s unnatural.” “Too dangerous. That power will bring ruin.” “The Elders must intervene.” Kael ignored them as he walked through the academy halls, but he could feel the weight of their stares, the tension in every step. Victory had not brought peace—it had painted a target on his back. When he returned to his dormitory, he found Selene waiting, leaning casually against the doorframe. Her emerald eyes sparkled with amusement. “Well,” she said, “you certainly know how to make an entrance. Beating Dorian in front of the entire academy? Bold. Reckless. Brilliant.” Kael brushed past her into the room, sitting on the edge of his bed. “I didn’t fight for them. I fought for myself. For control.” Selene followed, folding her arms. “And yet, every eye is on you now. You can’t undo what you’ve done. The stronger you grow, the more they’ll want to test you, to use you, or to destroy you.” Kael’s jaw tightened. “Let them try.” Her smile faded, replaced with something colder. “Careful. You think strength alone will protect you, but this is bigger than strength. Politics. Power. Influence. Those battles are fought in shadows, not arenas.” Kael said nothing, but his fists clenched. He knew she was right. That evening, the academy elders summoned him. The Council Chamber was a vast hall lit by glowing orbs, the air heavy with incense and authority. Twelve elders sat in a semicircle, their robes embroidered with runes of wisdom and power. Elder Mael, sharp-eyed and silver-haired, spoke first. “Kael Ardent. Your duel today has shaken the academy. You displayed great strength… perhaps too great.” Another elder leaned forward, his voice stern. “Where did this aura come from? Such power is not normal. It unsettles the balance.” Kael stood tall, golden eyes unwavering. “I didn’t choose it. It awakened. All I can do is master it.” Murmurs rippled among the elders. Some frowned, others whispered to each other. Finally, Elder Veylan—the uncle of Dorian—rose, his expression grim. “Power without discipline is a weapon aimed at the world. Your aura is dangerous, boy. Dangerous to you, dangerous to us all. Unless you can prove control, you may not remain here.” Kael felt the weight of their judgment, but he refused to bow. “Then test me again. Give me trials. Push me as hard as you dare. I will not fail.” The chamber grew silent. Some elders exchanged glances, measuring his defiance. Elder Mael finally nodded. “Very well. You shall be tested. Not with mere duels, but with trials of essence, trials of will. If you succeed, you may stay. If you fail…” His voice dropped like iron. “You will be cast out.” When Kael returned to the courtyard, Selene was waiting once more. This time her smile was gone. “They’re moving faster than I expected,” she murmured. “Trials of essence? They want to break you—or expose you.” Kael met her gaze, his own steady. “Then let them try. I won’t break. I can’t afford to.” For a long moment, Selene studied him, then her lips curved into a faint smile. “Good. That’s the resolve I wanted to see. Just remember, Kael—strength makes enemies as quickly as it makes allies. You’ll need to learn which is which.” That night, as Kael sat in meditation, the aura within him pulsed brighter, hungrier, responding to the fire in his veins. But even as he reached for mastery, a shadow moved beyond his window. Unseen, cloaked figures whispered to one another in the darkness. “He has awakened.” “The aura is real.” “The masters will want him captured—alive, if possible.” Their voices melted into the night, leaving only the promise of storms to come. Kael’s eyes snapped open, golden light flooding the room. He did not yet know who watched him, but he felt their intent like a knife against his skin. And for the first time, a smile touched his lips. “Come, then,” he whispered to the shadows. “Test me. You’ll find I am not so easy to take.”
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chapter 140 - The Drift Market
The salt air bit at their throats long before they saw the sea.Kael’s steps dragged, his boots crusted with white dust from miles of wind scorched plains. The horizon shimmered under heat haze, fractured light playing over something vast that floated above the distant waters. For a while, he thought it was a mirage until Selene pointed, squinting through the glare.“There. The Drift Market.”Her voice carried a faint rasp, exhaustion stitched between words.They’d been walking for two days since the Glass Node incident. Neither of them had slept properly. Every time Kael closed his eyes, he saw flashes of crystal light and felt the echo pulse at the base of his skull, the lingering hum of the Second Rhythm. It no longer hurt, but it remembered him, like something unfinished tugging behind his heartbeat.The Market came into view slowly, a sprawling patchwork of rusted hulls and ancient stone platforms lashed together by chains, drifting above a flat, mirrored sea of salt. Airships ho
chapter 139 - Dorian’s shadow
He woke to silence.Then came the pain.It crawled up from his ribs, slow, crawling, wet like something remembering how to live inside him. When he finally opened his eyes, the world was sideways. The ground glittered with black dust, and smoke coiled upward from what used to be the Dominion’s outpost.The air stank of ozone and blood. The shard that once lived in his chest lay inches from his hand, cracked into dozens of mirror splinters. Every fragment reflected a different piece of him, eyes, lips, jaw but none of them aligned.Dorian stared at them for a long time before whispering, hoarse, “You failed me.”The wind answered by scattering the pieces like ash.He tried to stand and nearly collapsed. The golden sigils that had once covered his arms were gone, leaving only faint burns in their shape. His body once a conduit of near divine power felt suddenly mortal. Weak. Breathing hurt, his pulse beat unevenly, like a clock missing half its gears.“You shouldn’t be alive,” a voice m
chapter 138 - The second seal
The plains shimmered like glass under a dying sun.Kael and Selene moved across the horizon in silence, boots crunching over brittle salt crust. The air was too still, so quiet that even their breath sounded like trespass. The world here had forgotten how to breathe.Ahead, the land rose into a mirrored swell curving upward like the frozen crest of an ocean wave. Beneath its translucent surface pulsed faint veins of pale gold, threading toward the heart of a buried sphere.Selene stopped first.“The Glass Node,” she whispered.Kael didn’t answer. He could feel it pulsing inside his bones, like a second heartbeat, an echo syncing to the rhythm that had haunted him since the Stone Vein. The closer he stepped, the louder it became. Not in sound, but in remembrance.Each pulse seemed to whisper through his ribs.“Return the balance… Unmade one…”He flinched. The words weren’t spoken aloud, but they still hurt.Selene glanced back. Sweat darkened the collar of her cloak; her hair clung to
chapter 137 - The glass steppe
Every movement sent ripples of fractured reflections across its surface, so that each step they took seemed to echo in light.A low hum vibrated through the soles of their boots. It wasn’t quite sound, not fully. It was a pressure that lived inside bone.Selene squinted into the glare. “It’s… beautiful,” she murmured, then frowned. “And wrong.”Kael didn’t answer. His pulse had already started syncing to the hum beneath their feet, an invisible rhythm threading through marrow and thought. The air tasted of iron and ozone, like a storm that had forgotten how to rain. When he blinked, the world seemed to split for half a heartbeat, two horizons, overlapping. Two Selenes walking slightly out of step with each other.He stopped.Selene turned. “What is it?”Kael pressed a hand to his temple. “I… saw...” He hesitated. “You. Twice.”“Heat mirage?” she asked, but her voice carried that careful edge she used when pretending she wasn’t worried.“Maybe,” he said. But it wasn’t. The mirage didn’
chapter 136 - The quiet between pulses
The desert had forgotten the battle, but Kael hadn’t.The dunes around the broken Stone Vein lay quiet again, no tremor, no light, only the faint shimmer of heat bending the horizon. Wind whispered through hollow rock, carrying the smell of dust and something older, ozone and ash, the lingering taste of what Dominion energy left behind when it burned through the world.Kael walked with a limp. His boots sank deep into soft sand, each step sending pain crawling up his leg. He could still feel the hum beneath his skin, faint but constant, like a second heartbeat refusing to fade.Selene followed a few paces behind, cloak drawn tight against the wind. Her hair stuck to her face with sweat and grit. She hadn’t said much since dawn. Neither of them had. Words felt fragile now, and silence easier to bear.When they finally reached the outpost, little more than three stone huts and the broken ribs of an old Dominion tower, Selene didn’t wait for Kael’s p
chapter 135 - The first node awakens
Dawn came like a wound, sharp, bleeding color across the horizon.Kael and Selene crested the final dune before the desert opened into a vast basin of black stone. The air hummed faintly, as if the earth beneath their boots were inhaling.At the center of that basin stood a monolith towering, smooth, half-buried in sand.It wasn’t carved, it was grown, its surface a fusion of glass and metal that seemed to shift colors with the rising light.And from deep within it, Kael could feel the pulse, the Second Rhythm, steady, waiting.Selene stopped beside him, shielding her eyes.“That’s the Stone Vein?” she whispered. “It doesn’t look asleep.”Kael nodded slowly. The Rhythm inside him was resonating, almost painfully.“It’s been awake longer than we thought.”The wind hissed through the basin. Sand skittered across the stone like whispers running between graves.They began their descent, cautious and silent. Each step drew them deeper into the hum, until it felt less like sound and more li
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