Once a sacred grove nourished by ley lines and minor spirit veins, it now trembled under a choking red haze. Qi was corrupted. Animals lay still, eyes white and blood frozen midstream. Trees groaned under the weight of unnatural rot. The very earth hummed with a frequency that clawed at the edges of sanity.
This was no natural blight. This was a tear in the veil between realms—a Gate of Withering, forced open by a Rakshaka ascending toward demonic enlightenment. Now fully birthed into the Nascent Soul stage, it had devoured two entire villages to stabilize its half-formed soul-core. Hundreds—men, women, even toddlers—had been drained of essence, their bones stacked like ritual cairns.
The sky bled.
Hope died.
A battered cultivator, robes torn and blood drying at his temples, fell to his knees at the edge of the defiled glade.
"We were caught off-guard ," he choked, clutching the lifeless body of a junior disciple. "Why did the Gods not come? Why… Why did no one answer?"
His companion, a wounded rogue cultivator whose blade had long since shattered, looked up with hollow eyes.
"Because we are insects to gods," she whispered, eyes brimming. "This thing… this thing is not meant for mortals to face."
In the distance, cries echoed from the treeline. Survivors from the outlying hamlets had fled here—elders clutching grandchildren, former cultivators now too weak to form a single hand seal.
A young boy screamed as the sky darkened above them.
The Gate pulsed.
Then the Rakshaka emerged.
Three heads. A dozen arms. A hundred faces—some still weeping—embedded in its shifting hide. The beast roared, and the air collapsed in on itself.
"Run! RUN!" a cultivator shouted, pushing others away before a tendril of cursed qi snatched him mid-step and ripped his essence from his spine.
Panic turned to despair. Screams turned to prayers.
"Please… please, anyone… gods, spirits, ancestors…"
The Rakshaka laughed.
"No one is coming."
Its voice spread like a plague, coating hearts with ash.
And then—
The mist parted.
The air cleared.
The world paused.
One man stepped through the veil, his presence calm—but absolute.
He wore no armor, only a storm-grey robe laced with river silk. On his back rested a blade bound in gold thread, etched with runes from before the age of men.
A disciple gasped.
"That's… That's the King…!"
"The King…?" another whispered, trembling. "But he's just a mortal…"
"He's just at Core Formation," a young disciple sobbed, blood streaked on his face. "How can he stand against a Nascent Soul demon?"
"No… no," whispered an elderly cultivator, his hands shaking. "He is… The Ashwattha Tidebreaker. The legends say he walks where floods rise and storms fall silent."
They watched as the mist parted and Shantanu stepped forward, aura like a river carved from moonlight—unyielding and serene.
King Shantanu stepped into the clearing where reality bent. His cultivation was only Core Formation—but where he walked, even heaven listened.
The Rakshaka's many mouths twisted in confusion. This presence—this balance—should not be possible.
"Mortals kneel," the demon hissed, coiling to strike. "Even gods bend when blood rivers flow."
Shantanu did not kneel.
He looked at the remains of the villagers, the broken cultivators, the steaming altar of bones.
The wind alone heard him:
"I was forged not in temples—but in the flood."
The Rakshaka struck.
The world cracked.
A claw backed by Nascent Soul pressure collapsed the surrounding landscape into molten ruin. Screams echoed for miles. Trees were erased. Essence ripped from the air.
But in the heart of the destruction, Shantanu stood unmoved.
His eyes opened.
Twin whirlpools of silver and tide.
Then came the river.
His aura erupted—not in heat, but in flow.
A glowing river burst around him, spiraling upward in arcs of spirit water laced with forgotten script. The air trembled. Even fate bent slightly, realigning.
The Rakshaka paused. It felt fear.
Then came the blade.
A single draw. No motion, no footfall.
Just one silent stroke—Flawless. Final.
And reality split.
The Rakshaka had no time to scream. Its soul was erased, its Gate collapsed into a void of divine law. The plague ended in a blink.
Silence reigned.
Survivors stared, stunned beyond breath.
A final ember of the beast's core floated toward Shantanu. He touched it with one thumb.
It turned to steam.
A hawk-shaped astral beast flew above. It circled once, then vanished.
Shantanu turned east.
The Ganga shimmered in the far distance, its song calling.
He stood in silence for a long moment.
"Even now…" he said quietly, "I'm not ready to face him."
He thought of Parashurama—the Axe Sage, the storm incarnate, the man whose very footsteps turned Nascent Soul cultivators to ash.
And yet the stars above had seen what none could deny:
Shantanu, 'the mortal King', had risen.
Not in noise. But in power, restraint, and inevitability.
And the Ganga waited.