The Sky-Piercing Sect crowned the heavens with its nine floating citadels, each suspended by a different celestial law. From the ground, they looked like fragments of a shattered paradise—silver and jade towers, bridges of starlight, and terraces veined with rivers of liquid qi. Lightning crawled through the clouds beneath them like dragons with no masters, bound only by ancient pacts.
But peace was an illusion.
Inside the central citadel, a war council had gathered.
Grandmaster Hyridan sat on a throne sculpted from meteoric gold, his face carved with the weight of generations. He was draped in robes that shimmered like shifting skies, the symbol of the Sky-Piercing Sect—an open eye over a thunderbolt—gleaming on his chest.
He stared at the orb hovering before him: a vision crystal, pulsing with ghost-light.
It had shown a man. A cloaked stranger walking the Blooming Realm, unnoticed by most, but felt by every beast, spirit, and formation sensitive enough to tremble.
The world didn't know it yet—but something ancient had returned.
"Are you certain of what you saw?" he asked.
Beside him knelt a woman clad in ceremonial black, her eyes blind but seared with divine sight.
"I saw the bindings of fate recoil," she whispered. "As if the threads themselves feared to touch him."
Hyridan's jaw tightened. "Then we are already too late."
Around the chamber, elders muttered prayers and calculations. Plans unfurled like battlefield maps, listing forbidden techniques, divine contracts, and legacies they had sworn never to awaken.
"Should we alert the other sects?" one of the younger council members asked.
"No," Hyridan said. "If the Sovereign walks again, panic will only weaken our defenses. For now… we observe. We prepare. And if the worst comes to pass…" He let the sentence hang.
Everyone understood. If he returned, war was inevitable.
In the Ravines of Serath
Far from the eyes of civilization, Zeirion stood upon a cliff overlooking a valley drenched in shadow. Below, the Ravines of Serath whispered—twisting canyons where time thinned, and space bled. The screams of long-dead beasts echoed faintly through the mist. These lands had been sealed off by ancient sects. Forbidden. Cursed.
And yet… it called to him.
The wind shifted. He sensed them before they revealed themselves—seven figures, each clad in the armor of the Void Drifters, a secret sect that fed on forbidden knowledge and corpse-path cultivation. Their leader stepped forward, his skin marked with glyphs etched from bone marrow.
"You're in restricted territory, wanderer," the man sneered. "Leave your name and your corpse."
Zeirion didn't answer.
The wind obeyed him.
With a flick of his finger, the sky tore open above the ravine. A silent rupture—no thunder, no light—just absence. The kind of emptiness that consumes meaning itself.
One of the Drifters screamed as he was pulled upward, crushed by nothingness, his soul shattered before his body hit the ground.
The rest hesitated.
Zeirion's voice followed, calm as a still blade:
"I buried realms deeper than this grave you call sacred."
They attacked. Desperation, pride, and fear drove them forward.
Time blinked.
When it resumed, Zeirion stood alone. Not a drop of blood on him. Only the echo of their final thoughts lingered—fear, awe, regret.
He turned away, continuing toward the ravine. A path had revealed itself—one only the Sovereign could see. Beneath the ravines lay a temple older than all mortal lineages. Not even the gods remembered its true name.
But Zeirion did.
Because he had sealed it with his own hands.
Somewhere Between Stars
Aralya moved through the Celestial Weave, the starlit threads that linked realms like an unseen tapestry. Her form shimmered with grace and purpose, leaving trails of luminous petals with every step.
She reached the Altar of Forgotten Songs—a floating platform lost between worlds, where ancient melodies once shaped the cosmos.
A single note hung in the air. Broken. Incomplete.
She placed a hand on the altar.
It responded.
Music, soft and haunting, flowed out like memory turned sound. Her eyes closed.
She saw him—Zeirion, standing alone beneath the ruined heavens.
The bond they shared—older than lifetimes, deeper than law—stirred to life.
"Wait for me," she whispered into the void. "We'll find each other. Even if I must cross the deathless tide."
The stars trembled.
And fate, ever reluctant, shifted once again.