2025-09-16 08:05:59The next morning dawned with a chill, the academy grounds buzzing louder than usual. Word of Kael’s awakening had already spread like wildfire.
As Kael stepped into the courtyard, eyes followed him from every corner—some curious, some fearful, others openly hostile. No one dared approach, but the whispers never stopped. “He’s cursed…” “No, he’s chosen. Did you feel the ground tremble yesterday?” “Chosen? Hah! The Elders only let him live so they can dissect him later.” Kael’s jaw tightened. He forced himself not to respond, walking with his head high even as his stomach knotted. The academy had always been cruel, but this was worse. Yesterday, they saw him as a worm. Today, they saw him as a monster. But he refused to let either define him. By midday, the lectures began. Aura Theory, Combat Posture, and Advanced Resonance. Normally, Kael would sit quietly at the back, ignored or mocked. But today, not a single student sat near him. Desks shifted subtly away until a wide circle of empty space surrounded him. Even the instructor’s voice trembled slightly when calling his name. “K-Kael… present?” Kael nodded once. He didn’t miss the way the instructor’s eyes flicked nervously to his chest, as if expecting that storm of aura to burst out again. When the lessons ended, Kael didn’t return to his quarters. Instead, he slipped into the abandoned training yard behind the old library. The place was cracked, forgotten, weeds sprouting between stones. Perfect. No one would bother him here. He stood in the center of the yard, closed his eyes, and breathed deep. The aura stirred immediately, eager, as though waiting for him to call. It pulsed like a living heart, radiating invisible waves that pressed against his skin. “Show me,” Kael whispered. “What are you?” At his will, the energy surged outward. The air thickened, the ground quivered. His body felt both weightless and crushingly heavy at once. His fists clenched instinctively, and the stone beneath his feet cracked with a sharp snap. He gasped, staggering back. His hands trembled, glowing faintly as golden threads of power curled around his knuckles. The aura wanted release. Control it, he thought desperately. Don’t let it control you. But the harder he tried to contain it, the wilder it became. His breath came ragged, sweat dripping down his brow as the power lashed out—stones shattered, weeds flattened, the very air bending under unseen pressure. Just as his strength faltered, the memory of Selene’s words struck him. Learn to wield it… or it will consume you. Teeth gritted, Kael forced his will against the raging storm inside him. “Obey me!” he roared. The aura bucked—then stilled. In an instant, silence returned. The cracks in the stone remained, dust still hung in the air, but the power coiled back into his chest, simmering, quiet but present. Kael fell to one knee, panting. His muscles ached as though he’d fought for hours. But despite the exhaustion, a fierce smile tugged at his lips. He had done it. For the first time, he had bent the Dominating Aura to his will. But as he caught his breath, a faint sound reached him—the crunch of footsteps. Kael’s head snapped up. At the edge of the ruined yard stood a tall figure cloaked in black, half-hidden in the shadows of the library’s wall. The figure didn’t speak. Didn’t move. Only watched. Then, as silently as it appeared, it vanished. Kael’s chest tightened. Whoever it was, they had seen everything. He was no longer training in secret. His aura was no longer his alone. And the academy was no longer the only place watching him.
Previous Chapter
Latest Chapter
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
You may also like
Civilian Dragon lord
Drew Archeron185.8K viewsWorld Evolution
Zero_writer50.3K viewsThe Ultimate Devourer
Daoist Of Lies14.1K viewsSupreme Alchemist
Know Micro38.9K viewsBlood of the Beast God
Alex228 viewsBeast Driven
Darkvirus_184.6K viewsGATHERING STORM
Saint Nathaniel491 viewsOyi ga'aje (son of the soil)
Jon198 views