The storm had passed, but the world remained quiet. Deathly so.
Kael lay nestled in a narrow crevice, veiled by brambles and shadowroot vines that no beast dared to disturb. The hidden hollow had no name—none that mortals knew. Even in his fractured state, he remembered this place.
A refuge from long ago.
He didn't know how he'd found it again. Maybe instinct. Maybe fate. Maybe the last flicker of something ancient, buried beneath pain and confusion.
What he did know was this: they wouldn't find him here.
Not the scouts. Not the generals. Not even the Seers of the Ferrum Order with their blood-etched maps and prophecy scrolls. The grove was carved between veils—a fissure in the world's spirit, a place neither wholly alive nor dead.
Kael sat cross-legged, his back pressed against cool stone.
His body ached. Bones shifted with every breath. His left side throbbed from the glaive strike, wrapped now in torn linen soaked with black sap. Yet none of that mattered.
He had survived.
In his past life—or whatever lay before this—he hadn't escaped. He had been captured, dragged in chains by the Skycarve Nomads, broken and humiliated. Branded as a threat and thrown to the pits, where only his strength had saved him.
This time was different.
This time he ran. Bled, yes—but ran free.
And that meant fate had changed.
He stared into the darkness of the cave. Not a flicker of light reached inside, yet he saw everything. The walls, the dripping vines, the pulse of tiny insects that dared not cross his shadow.
The power in him stirred—tentative, unsure.
He reached for it.
What met him was not the familiar hunger of the Fractured Void Path—the cultivation method he'd relied on in his first life. That technique had served him for years, but it had always felt… incomplete. Broken. Like wielding a sword with no hilt.
Back then, it was all he had access to. All they allowed him to learn. The truth had been locked behind sigils and lies.
But here, now—in this second chance—he felt something else. Something older.
Buried beneath his core like a chained beast. Whispering in syllables not meant for daylight.
A name echoed in his mind.
"Night Throne Requiem."
He didn't know how he knew it.
Only that it was his.
A cultivation method whispered from beneath the world's skin. Forbidden, perhaps even to the Demon Lord himself. It was not a path forged through fire, wind, water, or stone. It was born in the spaces between, in the stillness after death but before decay.
The power of dominion. The right of rule in shadow.
Kael drew in a breath, ignoring the fire in his ribs.
He closed his eyes.
And he descended.
The technique wasn't like other forms of cultivation. There were no breathing patterns. No soul diagrams to guide him. No flows of elemental qi. Instead, Kael focused on silence. On stillness. On the void behind thought.
He let go.
And in that surrender, the abyss stared back.
And it knew his name.
A rush of black light flooded his veins—not burning, but cooling, like sinking into deep water. His skin prickled. The wound in his side tightened. His heartbeat slowed. The flickering dagger of shadow he'd summoned days ago was no longer just instinct—it was a thread.
And now, it was anchoring.
His shadow deepened beneath him, stretching unnaturally far against the walls. A heartbeat pulsed through it—once. Twice.
Then stopped.
Kael gasped, snapping his eyes open.
His body remained broken—but his soul had changed.
He felt it. A foundation laid, not in stone or steel, but in authority. Not of command—but of right. As if the very darkness that once served him now bowed to him.
His hands trembled.
"This… was always in me," he whispered.
And he finally understood.
The Fractured Void Path was never meant to carry him. It had been a cage—gifted by the same clans that now hunted him. Designed to suppress his true cultivation. To bind his potential beneath layers of false power.
They were afraid of what he might become.
And now that fear had come true.
Still—his memories remained blurred. The faces, the betrayal, the final blow… it refused to fully return. All he saw was fire. Blue eyes. Blood.
Why did they betray me?
He stared into the shadow that flickered at his palm again—solid now, stable, but still juvenile.
He had work to do.
The clans were fractured. The Demon Lord still gone. The barrier still sealed. And the answers lay in the heart of the very sects that had turned against him.
Kael leaned back against the stone, closing his eyes.
He had time.
But not forever.