2025-09-16 15:04:40The next morning, the academy was alive with whispers louder than ever. Kael didn’t need to ask why. He could feel it in the way students avoided him, the nervous way instructors glanced in his direction, and the almost tangible tension in the air.
Word had spread—faster than he could have imagined. He walked through the courtyard, ignoring the stares. Rynald Draven still nursed his humiliation, but he wasn’t the only one watching Kael with hatred and fear. Eyes flicked from every corner—curious, calculating, dangerous. They all know, Kael thought grimly. And they’re already plotting. By midday, Kael found himself summoned to Instructor Veylan’s office—a rare and formal gesture that made his pulse tighten. “Kael,” Veylan said, his voice measured but tight. “Someone has reported… unusual activity. They claim you’ve been experimenting with your aura outside of sanctioned training hours.” Kael’s brow furrowed. “I was… training in the abandoned yard. Alone. No one should have seen me.” Veylan’s eyes narrowed. “Clearly, someone did. And you need to understand—the Elders do not tolerate unsupervised aura usage. You risk endangering the academy, yourself, and your peers.” Kael clenched his fists but remained calm. “I understand, Instructor. I only sought to learn control. My power… it won’t remain dormant, and I can’t risk losing it again.” Veylan studied him for a long moment, then sighed. “You have potential, Kael. But the world is not kind to those who rise faster than they are ready. Control it, or it will control you—and others will take notice, for better or worse.” Kael nodded silently, understanding the warning. He left the office and returned to the courtyard, where Rynald waited, surrounded by a few cronies. “You think you’re untouchable, don’t you?” Rynald spat, his voice trembling with barely concealed rage. “You humiliated me in front of everyone, and now even the Elders are whispering about you!” Kael ignored him, but the glint of his golden-flecked eyes caught Rynald’s gaze. “You can’t hide forever,” Rynald continued. “I’ll find a way to strip that thing from you… or burn it out of you!” Before Kael could respond, a shadow moved along the high wall, unnoticed by most. Only Kael, his aura still sensitive from the previous day, felt the faint brush of presence—silent, watching, evaluating. Not just Rynald, Kael thought. Someone else… someone stronger. That evening, Kael returned to his room, intent on meditating and refining his control. The dormitory was quiet, save for the occasional whisper from the hallways. He closed his eyes and called the aura inward, letting it coil around his chest like a living creature. The energy pulsed, obedient, but stronger than before—hungry, eager. As he concentrated, a sudden chill ran through the room. His eyes snapped open. At the corner of the window, barely visible, a cloaked figure observed him again. Kael’s heart thudded. This observer wasn’t one of the students. Their presence radiated a cold authority, a control that even his Dominating Aura felt wary of. The figure did not move closer. It only watched silently, then melted into the shadows before Kael could act. He clenched his fists. Who are you? Why are you following me? He waited to see if perhaps someone will say something but as he expected no one voiced a word. The answer didn’t come that night, but Kael knew one thing: the awakening of his aura had drawn attention far beyond the academy walls. Allies and enemies alike were now watching, waiting, and testing him from the shadows. And Kael’s journey had only just begun.
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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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