THE LOST HEIR OF THE IMMORTAL WAR GOD

CHAPTER 2: BLOOD ON THE ALTAR OF BETRAYAL

The first day after the message, nothing changed.

Axton went to school. Got shoved into lockers by people whose names he'd stopped learning. Bled quietly in bathroom stalls where the tiles were cracked and the mirrors reflected truths no one wanted to see. Came home to an empty room and dinner that had gone cold three hours before anyone remembered to send it up.

The scar on his chest itched. A new one. He'd woken up with it that morning, right over his heart...thin, silver, shaped like a character from a language he didn't know but somehow understood meant war.

He didn't show anyone. Didn't mention it. Just wrapped it in gauze and pretended the itch was ignorable.

It wasn't.

The second day, everything changed.

It started with the library.

Vail Manor had a library that most universities would envy...three floors of books and scrolls and cultivation manuals bound in leather that smelled like power and old violence. It was always locked. The kind of locked that came with arrays and wards and the implicit understanding that people like Axton weren't supposed to know what was inside.

But Axton had learned, over seventeen years of being invisible, that locks were just puzzles waiting for someone desperate enough to solve them.

Two in the morning. The house silent except for the sound of his own breathing. He stood outside the library door with a hairpin he'd stolen from Elira's vanity and a technique he'd learned from a Null kid at school whose older brother was a thief.

The lock clicked open after six minutes of careful manipulation.

The door swung inward without a sound.

Inside, the darkness smelled like parchment and something else. Something older than paper. Older than ink.

Axton slipped inside, closed the door behind him, and let his eyes adjust. Moonlight filtered through tall windows, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. Shelves stretched toward a ceiling lost in darkness. Thousands of books. Tens of thousands.

He had no idea where to start.

Bloodstone Altar, the message had said. He pulled out his phone...screen brightness turned down until it was barely visible...and used it as a flashlight, scanning spines and titles and categories that ranged from cultivation techniques to historical records to what looked like family genealogies.

He found it in the restricted section at the back. A leather-bound journal, no title on the spine, tucked between two massive tomes about divine warfare. He almost missed it.

Inside, the handwriting was elegant. Seraphine's handwriting.

Axton's hands shook as he turned pages.

Most of it was correspondence. Letters to and from people whose names meant nothing to him. Cultivation politics. Sect alliances. The kind of paperwork that ran the world behind closed doors.

Then he found the section marked Private.

A letter dated three months ago. Addressed to Seraphine. No signature, but a seal at the bottom...seven crescents arranged in a circle.

He read it twice. Then three times. Then sat down on the floor because his legs had stopped working.

Dear Seraphine,

The boy's bloodline remains dormant. The Thornweave Seal holds, though our analysts report increasing instability. We recommend the Bloodstone Ritual before his eighteenth year. After that, containment cannot be guaranteed.

The Warborne legacy is not a gift. It is a weapon. One we suggest you dispose of before it disposes of you. The ritual will accomplish two purposes. First, it will eliminate the last known heir. Second, it will transfer his dormant power to your bloodline, strengthening Castor and Elira's cultivation foundations.

We understand this may seem harsh. Consider it investment. The boy has no future in our world. But his blood, his legacy, his potential can fuel your family's ascension for generations.

The Revenant Heptarchy thanks you for your cooperation in this matter. Seventeen years of containment have been noted. Your reward will be substantial.

Regards, The Council of Seven

Axton's vision blurred.

Then focused with terrible clarity.

The words arranged themselves in his mind like pieces of a puzzle he'd been trying to solve his entire life, and suddenly the picture was complete, and it was so much worse than he'd imagined.

They hadn't adopted him out of kindness. They hadn't kept him alive out of mercy.

They'd been fattening livestock for slaughter.

And the slaughter had a date. Three days from now. Moonrise.

His suffering hadn't been random cruelty. It had been containment. Suppression. Keeping him weak, keeping him ignorant, keeping him sealed until the moment they could harvest whatever power slept in his blood.

Warborne, the letter said.

His real name. His real family.

A legacy that required disposal.

The library door opened.

Axton's head snapped up. The journal fell from his hands.

Castor stood in the doorway, backlit by hallway lights, golden pins gleaming even in shadow. He smiled. The kind of smile predators wore when prey finally understood the game.

"Reading above your level, mistake?"

Axton stood slowly. Put his back to the shelves. Calculated distances. The door was twenty feet away. Castor was faster, stronger, trained in combat since childhood.

Running wasn't an option.

"How long have you known?" Axton's voice came out steadier than he felt.

"About the ritual?" Castor stepped inside, closing the door behind him. "Since I was twelve. Mother thought I was old enough to understand the family business."

"The family business is murder."

"The family business is survival." Castor moved closer, casual, like they were discussing the weather. "You don't understand how the world works, Axton. Power isn't fair. It isn't kind. It's a resource. And resources get used."

"I'm not a resource. I'm a person."

Castor laughed. Actually laughed. "You're a Null. You're genetic dead weight in a world where cultivation determines everything. But your blood?" He gestured at Axton like he was a particularly interesting specimen. "Your blood is special. Divine heritage, locked away, wasted on someone who can't even access it. The ritual fixes that. Transfers your potential to people who can actually use it."

"To you."

"To me. To Elira. To the family line." Castor's smile widened. "You should be honored. You'll finally be useful."

Something in Axton's chest burned. Not the scar. Deeper. Older.

"And if I refuse to attend?"

"Then we drag you there." Castor's expression didn't change. Still smiling. Still casual. "The message said 'unwillingness to exist.' That wasn't metaphor. You attend the ritual, or we kill you right here and harvest what we can. Your choice."

The burn in Axton's chest spread. Down his arms. Into his hands.

"Some choice."

"More than you deserve." Castor turned toward the door. "Clean up this mess. Put everything back. And Axton? Don't try to run. We have people watching. Cultivators who can track a heartbeat from a mile away. You disappear, and we find you in hours. Save us the trouble."

He left. The door closed with a soft click.

Axton stood there, alone among books that held knowledge he'd never be allowed to access, and felt something crack inside him.

Not his heart. That had broken years ago.

This was something else. Something that had been holding very still, very quiet, waiting.

The scar on his chest burned like a brand.

And for just a moment, in the reflection of a glass-fronted bookcase, Axton saw his eyes flash black.

Not the whites. The pupils. Completely black. Absolute.

Then normal again.

He touched his chest. The scar was hot beneath his shirt.

Three days.

He wasn't going to run.

He was going to that altar.

And whatever happened there, Castor was right about one thing.

He was finally going to be useful.

Just not in the way they expected.

Day three arrived with the weight of inevitability.

Morning came gray and cold, the kind of weather that matched endings. Axton woke before dawn, dressed in the clothes they'd left for him...white robes, ceremonial, the fabric too fine for someone who'd spent seventeen years in hand-me-downs.

White shows blood better, Elira had said when she'd brought them. She'd been smiling.

No one spoke to him at breakfast. No one looked at him. He ate alone in the kitchen while the family prepared upstairs, and the silence was almost peaceful.

Almost.

He was finishing cold rice when the old maid found him. She'd worked at the Manor longer than Axton had been alive, a quiet woman whose name he'd never learned because no one introduced servants to mistakes.

She set down her cleaning supplies. Looked at him with eyes that had seen too much and decided to see more anyway.

"You're the Warborne boy," she said. Not a question.

Axton nodded, not trusting his voice.

She reached into her apron. Pulled out something small, wrapped in cloth. Pressed it into his hand.

"Your father gave me this. Seventeen years ago. Said if anything happened to him, I should keep it until you were ready." Her voice shook slightly. "I don't know if you're ready. But I don't think there's more time."

She left before he could ask questions.

Axton unwrapped the cloth. Inside was a knife. Small, barely longer than his palm. The blade was dark metal he didn't recognize, etched with symbols that hurt to look at directly. The handle was wrapped in leather that had molded to someone's grip over years of use.

His grip, he realized. It fit his hand like it had been made for him.

On the blade, engraved so small he almost missed it, were three words in a script he shouldn't be able to read but somehow could.

The Warborne Never Kneel.

Something in his chest answered. The scar burned. The knife seemed to hum in his hand, a frequency just below hearing.

Axton slipped it into his sleeve. The blade disappeared like it had never existed.

Then he went to meet his death.

The Bloodstone Altar wasn't in the Manor. It was beneath it.

They led him down at moonrise. Seraphine at the front, beautiful in robes of deep crimson. Castor and Elira flanking, both in formal cultivation dress. And behind them, dozens of others. Cultivators he didn't know. Important people, their pins ranging from silver to gold to colors he'd never seen before.

The stairs went down. And down. And down.

Stone walls gave way to carved rock. Carved rock gave way to something else, something that looked like it had been grown rather than built. Organic curves. Patterns that seemed to shift when he wasn't looking directly at them.

The air grew cold. Then colder. Then cold enough that his breath came out in clouds.

They reached the bottom.

The chamber was vast. Circular. The walls were covered in symbols that glowed faintly blue, providing the only light. In the center stood a stone altar, stained dark with centuries of use. The stains never quite came out, no matter how much you cleaned. Axton had learned that in history class. Bloodstone absorbed what was spilled on it. Remembered.

Around the altar, carved into the floor, was a circle. More symbols. More blue light.

And beyond the circle, in the shadows, Axton could see them. Fifty people at least. Maybe more. Watching. Waiting.

This wasn't a family ritual.

This was theater.

Seraphine turned to face him. Her expression was almost kind. Almost sorry.

"Axton," she said, and her voice carried in the chamber like she was speaking into a microphone. "You understand why we're here?"

He could lie. Could pretend ignorance. Could play the role they'd written for him.

Instead, he said, "You're going to try to kill me and steal my blood."

Silence. Absolute. The kind that came after someone said the thing everyone knew but no one was supposed to acknowledge.

Seraphine's expression didn't change. "Yes."

The honesty was somehow worse than any lie could have been.

"The Warborne legacy cannot be allowed to exist unchecked. Your father understood that. Before he died, he agreed to the containment. To the seal. To the eventual transfer." She gestured at the altar. "This isn't cruelty, Axton. This is necessity."

"For who?"

"For everyone." She actually sounded like she believed it. "Your bloodline ended gods. Do you understand what that means? In the wrong hands, that power reshapes the world. Breaks it. We're not killing you. We're preventing a war."

Axton looked at the altar. At the chains waiting for his wrists. At the cultivators watching from the shadows like this was entertainment.

"And if I don't cooperate?"

"Then we do this the hard way." Castor stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "Your choice."

The knife in Axton's sleeve felt warm. Almost alive.

The voice in his head whispered. The old one. The one that sounded like war.

Let me out. Let me show them what we are.

Not yet, Axton thought back.

Then when?

When it hurts most.

He walked to the altar. Lay down on stone that was cold enough to burn. Let them chain his wrists and ankles. Watched as they stepped back, forming a circle around him.

Seraphine raised her hands. The symbols on the floor began to glow brighter.

An old man stepped forward. White robes. A face like ancient parchment. He carried a knife that made Axton's hidden blade look like a toy.

"By the authority of the Revenant Heptarchy," the elder intoned, "we commend this blood to purpose. This life to function. This legacy to those who can bear its weight."

He raised the knife.

Axton closed his eyes.

Felt the blade descend.

Felt it pierce his wrist.

Felt his blood flow into the grooves carved in the altar, channeling toward the circle, toward the symbols, toward whatever the ritual was supposed to do.

And felt, with perfect clarity, the moment everything went wrong.

His blood hit the altar.

The blue light turned black.

The elder stopped chanting. Stepped back. His face went pale.

Seraphine stood up from where she'd been kneeling. "That's impossible."

Axton opened his eyes.

The blood flowing from his wrists wasn't red. It wasn't even the dark red he'd gotten used to seeing. It was black. Absolute black. The kind of black that wasn't a color but an absence of everything color meant.

And it was burning.

Not hot. Not cold. Just wrong. The grooves in the altar cracked where his blood touched. Stone that had survived centuries split like paper.

The chains on his wrists shattered. Not broke. Shattered. Exploded into fragments that hung in the air for a heartbeat before falling like rain.

Axton sat up.

Every cultivator in the chamber took a step back.

"What are you?" the elder whispered.

Axton opened his mouth to answer and someone else's voice came out. Layered. Echoing. Ancient.

"A mistake you should have killed when you had the chance."

Then the seal broke.

It didn't crack. Didn't fragment. It exploded. Whatever the Thornweave Seal had been doing for seventeen years, whatever it had been holding back, restraining, suppressing, it stopped doing all at once.

Power flooded Axton's body like water breaching a dam.

Memories that weren't his. Battlefields he'd never seen. The taste of divine blood. The sound of gods screaming.

A man standing at the center of carnage, face hidden behind a war mask, raising a sword that looked forged from frozen lightning.

His father. His real father.

Kaelix Warborne. The Immortal War God.

And behind him, through him, around him, the weight of every Warborne who'd ever lived. Every warrior. Every killer. Every weapon the world had created and then tried to forget.

They spoke as one.

We are.

Axton stood. The altar cracked beneath his feet.

Black lightning crawled up his arms, writing symbols in a language that predated language. His eyes...he could feel them...burned with light that wasn't light.

The first cultivator who moved raised a barrier. Golden Qi shaped into a shield that could stop a blade, a spell, a conventional attack.

It shattered like glass under a sledgehammer.

The man didn't have time to scream. Where he'd stood, only ash remained.

And the smell of ozone.

Axton looked at his hands. Covered in black lightning. Covered in something older than electricity. Covered in war.

He looked at the crowd.

They looked back.

And in that moment, everyone understood the same truth at the same time.

This wasn't a harvest.

This was a mistake.

And mistakes had consequences.

Castor moved first. Always the brave one. Always the hero. He raised both hands, golden Qi flaring, and launched an attack that would have killed a normal person instantly.

It hit Axton in the chest.

Did nothing.

Less than nothing. The Qi absorbed into his skin like water into sand.

Castor's face went from confidence to confusion to something that looked like fear.

"That's impossible. You're a Null. You can't..."

Axton moved.

Not fast. Not superhuman. Just efficient.

One step. His hand closed around Castor's wrist. Squeezed.

Bone cracked. Castor screamed. His cultivation center shattered.

Axton felt it break. Felt the power drain away. Felt his half-brother become what he'd always called Axton.

Nothing.

He let go. Castor fell. Alive. Mortal. Ruined.

Elira tried to run.

The black lightning reached her before she made three steps. Not killing. Just holding. Chains made of absence.

She screamed.

Axton looked at Seraphine. His stepmother. His jailer. The woman who'd kept him in a closet for seventeen years and called it mercy.

She didn't run. Just stood there, staring at what she'd created.

"We were trying to save the world," she whispered.

"From what?" Axton heard himself ask. His voice. The old voice. Both.

"From you."

He understood then. Not just the ritual. All of it. The cruelty. The suppression. The fear.

They'd known. The whole time. What he was. What he could become.

And they'd chosen to keep him alive anyway, to use him anyway, to treat him like nothing while knowing he was everything.

The black lightning surged.

He wanted to stop it. Wanted to control it. Wanted to be human.

But seventeen years of pain wanted something else.

And for just a moment, he let it have what it wanted.

The chamber filled with screaming.

When it stopped, Axton stood alone among the fallen.

Not dead. He'd held back that much. But broken. Cultivation centers shattered. Power stripped away. The mighty made mortal.

Including Seraphine, who lay crumpled at the base of the altar, breathing but barely.

Axton looked at his hands. Still covered in black lightning. Still thrumming with power he didn't understand.

The voice in his head spoke again. Clearer now. Almost gentle.

You have three choices, heir of Warborne.

Die here, drowning in what you've become.

Run, and let them hunt you until you're nothing but a memory.

Or rise. Become what they feared. Become what your father was.

Become the War God's last heir.

Axton looked around the chamber. At the destruction. At the people who'd tried to kill him and failed.

He thought about the knife in his sleeve. The words engraved on its blade.

The Warborne Never Kneel.

He'd been kneeling his whole life. Begging for scraps. Apologizing for existing.

No more.

Sirens in the distance. Cultivator enforcement arriving.

Axton walked toward the stairs. Toward the exit. Toward whatever came next.

Behind him, Seraphine called out weakly.

"You'll never be human now. You'll always be what we made you."

Axton stopped. Looked back.

"You didn't make me," he said. "You just broke the cage."

Then he ran.

Up the stairs. Through the Manor. Out into the night where rain had started to fall and the city lights blurred into rivers of color.

Behind him, everything he'd ever known burned.

Ahead, only darkness and the promise of more blood.

But for the first time in seventeen years, Axton Vail Warborne was free.

And in the shadows, something smiled.