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Chapter 169. The Threefold Sky.
The days bled together, gray and heavy. Rhok could no longer measure time by the rising and falling of the sun, he barely even saw it anymore. His world was confined to the corner of the cracked stone chamber where he hid, breathing shallow, his body wasting away piece by piece. The brand carved into his flesh by the Triad pulsed like a rot that would not heal. Every hour, he felt more of his mana leaking out through the scar, vanishing into the void like water dripping from a broken jug.At first he tried to fight it, meditation, focus, drawing on whatever scraps of strength remained. But that only hastened the loss. The more he pushed, the faster it bled. By the third day, he could hardly lift his arm without feeling his vision blur and his chest seize. By the fifth, walking felt like dragging an anchor across broken glass.So he did the only thing left to him. He listened.Not to people, he had no company here. But to the shadows. They whispered if you let them, not exactly in word
Chapter 168. Welcome to Kyraleth.
Rhok had seen many strange places since faking his death. Villages that prayed to gods no one remembered, ruins that bled with curses, caves where shadows whispered his name. But Kyraleth was different. It wasn’t simply strange, it was unsettling, like walking into a dream he didn’t belong to.The city was hushed. Not silent, not empty, but hushed, as though the air itself demanded restraint. People moved with deliberate grace through the pale streets, their faces hidden behind masks. Some masks were carved from bone, some painted wood, others hammered metal. No two were alike. Some bore the likeness of animals, others of twisted gods, and many were so plain they seemed expressionless, lifeless.At first Rhok thought it was a festival, but he quickly realized it was no celebration. This was life here. Every man, woman, and even child wore a mask... not for joy, but for reverence.“For the dead,” Veyra explained when she noticed his stare.“The dead?” Rhok muttered. His voice felt too
Chapter 167. Veyra the priestess.
The village was louder than usual. Smoke from roasting meat mixed with the smell of wet hay, children’s laughter, and the clatter of old tools being repaired. Rhok stood near the edge, half in shadow, watching.Sayo was in the middle of a small group of older teenagers. The boy’s voice carried through, excited, stubborn, even bold. He was pointing at a stick in his hands, pretending it was a blade, reenacting some story he must have picked up from one of Rhok’s tales. The older boys laughed, clapped him on the back, let him speak as if he belonged.Rhok felt something inside him twist. For days, the boy had been his anchor. His voice during the darkest nights. His eyes, too innocent for the blood stained world Rhok lived in, had reminded him that there was something still worth protecting. But watching him now, surrounded by his own kind, his own age, Rhok understood what he had been ignoring: keeping the boy close meant dragging him into the fire.He didn’t deserve that fate.Sayo la
Chapter 166. The Blooming Scar.
The land changed before Rhok even reached the valley. The air thickened with a copper taste, like blood left too long in the mouth. The soil grew darker, cracked in jagged lines that pulsed faintly as if veins ran beneath them. And then he saw it, the valley known by the whispered rumor as The Blooming Scar.It stretched like an old wound carved into the earth, wide and deep, with blossoms of crimson sprouting from every fracture. They were not natural flowers. Their petals were thin as paper, glowing faintly in the dying light of the horizon, and they swayed despite the still air.The locals had avoided this place. They told stories of people who wandered in and never came back. They spoke of curses, of a god whose name had long been scraped out of stone and memory, but whose roots still lived in this soil.Rhok didn’t hesitate. He walked straight down into the valley.The moment his boots touched the scar’s floor, the flowers shivered. Their petals curled toward him like listening e
Chapter 165. Tuvan’s Warning.
Rhok had grown used to the ache in his body. Hunger, fatigue, wounds that refused to heal, all of it was familiar. But the brand was something different.It was carved into the side of his neck like a cruel brand of ownership, its mark alive with an ugly glow that pulsed faintly under his skin. The curse had a hunger of its own. He felt it every moment, gnawing, chewing away at his reserves of magic, draining him drop by drop. It wasn’t like blood loss, sharp and immediate. It was more insidious. Like watching your own strength trickle through a crack in the floor, knowing you could never stop it.What unsettled him most was that the stolen power didn’t just vanish. It circled back. The brand fed on him to sustain itself, creating a loop, a perfect trap. His magic wasn’t gone, it was simply devoured to keep the chains alive, ensuring his body remained marked, weakened, tethered. The more he resisted, the hungrier it became.Tonight, he lay in the cage of rusted iron bars, hidden deep
Chapter 164. The Second Brand.
Far away from the endless roads Rhok and Sayo walked, in the silent chambers of Zenyra, the Triads gathered. The air smelled of incense and burnt parchment, the kind of stench that always lingered after heavy spellcraft. Each of the Triads sat within their etched circles, carved into the obsidian floor. A meeting of this magnitude was not casual, it was desperate.At the center of them sat Emek, robed in grey, his eyes reflecting more weariness than malice. He leaned forward, running his fingers over the curling edges of a parchment pinned to the floor. It was a wanted poster. Rhok’s name scrawled beneath a crude sketch, his hooded face more shadow than flesh. Dozens of them had been issued across Seroth in recent weeks, though most commoners were too frightened or too loyal to tear them down. To the Triads, however, those posters were more than just warnings, they were a doorway.“He grows beyond what any of us predicted,” said one Triad, her voice sharp, like a blade dragged across
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