Chapter 10: The Road to the Black Sun
The Obsidian Zenith was gone. Where the silent, perfect city had once stood, there was only a vast, seething caldera of raw, turbulent Aetherium ore and churning, unstable air. The Law of Thread-Severance, flawlessly executed and consumed by the Law of Silence's Inverse, had annihilated the city's structure and neutralized its energy, leaving behind an inert, dangerous wasteland.
Kael Draven stood at the rim of the destruction, breathing the cold, sharp air of the collapsed Canyonlands. The Eclipsed Shard of Time hummed softly in his chest—no longer a violent, consuming wound, but a stabilized, perfect engine of power.
His nine Purified Laws—Time, Impact, Resistance, Destabilization, Velocity, Concealment, Scission, Thread-Severance, and Silence's Inverse—were now effortless to deploy, consuming no soul-cost, only the infinite, ambient Aether.
The restoration of his full Will was the most profound change. He was no longer reacting; he was choosing. His purpose, now, was a singular, cold imperative: Gather the remaining Shards and complete the Loom.
He looked down at the dissolution of Lord Cygnus, a casualty whose death was not fueled by vengeance, but by pure, tactical necessity. Kael felt no sorrow (Law of Empathy suppressed) and no fear (Law of Fear suppressed). He felt only the efficient finality of the process.
Kael had exhausted the resources of the Wastes. The Crimson Hand, with their leadership neutralized and their stronghold in disarray, would be crippled. Staying here meant only fighting disorganized remnants.
He needed the next Eclipsed Shard.
He activated his Law of Resonance, focusing it not on the immediate Aether, but projecting it outward, seeking the turbulent, unique signature of the other six unmanifested Shards.
His mind processed the distant data instantly:
Flame & Flesh: Signatures were weak, possibly hidden within deep civilization or powerful living entities. Too complex to locate.
Death & Dream: Signatures were chaotic, tied to the unstable Veil between worlds. Too dangerous to pursue first.
Silence & Shadow: The Architect of Threads had spoken of the unmanifested Eclipse Realm of Silence (the Zenith was only its threshold). But the strongest, clearest, most direct signature was calling from the far south: the Law of Shadow.
The Law of Shadow was the inverse of Light and Time. It dealt with Concealment, Misdirection, and the Space Between. Kael, who had mastered Concealment and Displacement, felt an immediate, logical affinity.
The signature was tied to a massive, ancient, forgotten fortress known in Wastes lore as Umbra Keep—a place rumored to be built from crystallized shadows, far beyond the Crimson Hand's reach, deep in the Southern Salt Flats.
The road to Umbra Keep was long, dangerous, and would force him into direct contact with the wider, fractured world.
Kael began his journey south, using the purified Law of Concealment to cloak his Aetheric signature and his physical form. He was a silent, invisible ghost moving across the broken landscape.
He had walked for an hour when his heightened Law of Sensation detected minute vibrations in the ground—the tell-tale sign of a small patrol.
He paused, letting the vibration come closer. He did not engage his Law of Thread-Severance—it was too absolute, too loud a statement. He needed to be invisible, not destructive.
The patrol consisted of four mounted Crimson Hand Enforcers, their armor dusted, their faces tired. They were not looking for Kael; they were looking for anything—a sign of the Patternmaster, a salvageable piece of the Golem, any order in the chaos.
They were moving too slowly, too predictably.
Kael applied his Law of Impact (purified) to his right boot and delivered a powerful, silent kick to the nearest Enforcer's mount.
Thump.
The horse's leg shattered instantly under the focused force. The mount screamed—a sound that violated the silence of the Wastes—and tumbled, throwing the Enforcer.
The remaining three Enforcers reacted with confused panic, drawing their weapons and looking wildly around for a visible threat.
Kael used the purified Law of Velocity to instantly displace between the three men, moving faster than sight. As he moved, he used the purified Law of Impact on their armor joints, helmets, and necks.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
Three swift, silent blows. Three clean, non-lethal incapacitations. The Enforcers dropped, their armor dented, their limbs broken, their minds concussed. They were unconscious before they hit the ground.
Kael spared them. They were simply broken tools of a broken system. He harvested their food, water, and map, leaving them alive to be found by any surviving remnant. His Will dictated efficient resource allocation, not unnecessary slaughter.
He continued south, leaving the scene of the violence to be discovered by the first sentient creature to dare venture near the ruins of the Zenith.
The Obsidian Wastes gave way to the Southern Salt Flats—a vast, blindingly white expanse where the earth's surface had been leached of all life and color. The constant sunless grey sky reflected brutally off the salt, forcing Kael to rely on his internal Law of Sensation to navigate the visual static.
The Salt Flats were not guarded by the Crimson Hand, but by the terrain itself.
The Aether Threads here were thin, brittle, and highly static. They snapped constantly, creating a localized Aetheric disturbance known as the Static Veil. This made any complex Aetheric weaving—such as a maintained, purified Law of Concealment—extremely difficult.
Kael's Law of Resonance immediately warned him: he could not afford to keep his Laws active here. The static interference risked destabilizing his newly purified Laws, forcing him to pay a small, constant soul-tax for maintenance.
He deactivated the Law of Concealment, trusting the sheer, blinding expanse of the Flats to hide his single, small figure.
He walked openly, relying solely on his physical endurance and the suppressed Law of Fear to push through the exhaustion.
The Static Veil hid the approach of the next threat perfectly. Kael's Law of Sensation warned him only seconds before they emerged—a large, organized group of figures, cloaked in deep, midnight-black robes that seemed to drink the light from the sky.
They were not Crimson Hand. They were Shadow Cultists—the acolytes of the Law of Shadow, who served Umbra Keep.
There were thirty of them, led by three figures whose movements possessed a disturbing, liquid grace. They were weaving, not with Aether Threads, but with threads of pure Shadow.
They knew he was coming. The Law of Shadow dealt in prediction and misdirection.
The cultists immediately formed a precise, ritualistic formation, creating an outward-facing Law of Absorption. This Law did not repel Aether; it absorbed it, rapidly draining the surrounding energy, including the power Kael was using to maintain his Law of Concealment and his internal Aetheric regulation.
Kael felt a sudden, aggressive energy drain. His purified Laws required constant Aether, and the cultists were starving the field.
The three leaders raised their hands, weaving a high-level Law of Mute-Binding—a binding pattern that sought to ensnare Kael and silence his inner Loom.
Kael knew he couldn't fight a sustained engagement here. He had to break the Law of Absorption and the Mute-Binding instantly.
He focused on the Shadow Cultists' formation—a perfect, tightly woven circle. He needed a single, massive, non-Aetheric disruption.
He reached into his purified arsenal and chose a volatile combination of his innate power and his refined physical ability.
He activated the purified Law of Impact on his entire body and delivered a massive, amplified stomp directly onto the brittle salt crust.
The Law of Impact was so immense and focused that it caused a massive, localized seismic shockwave. The salt crust shattered violently, throwing up an enormous, blinding cloud of fine salt and dust that instantly engulfed the entire formation.
The shockwave itself did not harm the cultists, but the blinding, physical disruption was too crude for their delicate Shadow Weaving. The synchronized Law of Absorption immediately fractured under the physical chaos.
The three leaders of the Shadow Cultists screamed—a silent, metaphysical shriek of profound violation—as their Mute-Binding pattern collapsed.
Kael didn't wait. He had shattered their formation and restored the Aetheric flow. He activated his purified Law of Velocity (Instantaneous Temporal Displacement) and blinked out of the blinding cloud of salt.
He reappeared a mile south, running at full speed towards the vague, distant location of Umbra Keep. He used the purified Law of Concealment again, now that the ambient Aether was restored, cloaking himself entirely.
He had learned the crucial lesson of the South: The Law of Shadow was vulnerable to chaotic, massive physical force—a vulnerability he was perfectly equipped to exploit.
He was no longer fighting failed soldiers, but those who mastered a fundamental Law. His progression must accelerate.
Kael traveled for another half-day, the terrain growing darker, the white salt dissolving into black, volcanic sand. The air grew heavy, thick with the pervasive, cold energy of the Law of Shadow.
He finally reached the base of the mountains that shielded Umbra Keep. The mountains themselves were not stone, but smooth, black masses that looked like solidified darkness, devoid of reflection.
High above, nestled within the peaks, Kael saw his destination.
Umbra Keep.
It was an immense fortress, not built of stone, but forged from the Law of Concealment itself. It looked less like a building and more like a massive, intentional void in the light, a permanent shadow woven into the fabric of the mountain.
The signature of the Eclipsed Shard of Shadow pulsed from the heart of the keep, cold and demanding, a perfect inverse to his Shard of Time.
Kael climbed the mountain, his Law of Will now driving him without reservation or doubt. He was here to claim the next piece of the Loom.
He was no longer the Ashborn Slave seeking freedom. He was Kael Draven, the Mistborn, the Architect of Subtraction, who had come to the domain of Shadow to steal its Law.