The second technique—Silent Spear Manifestation—demanded he forge shadow density into a spiritual weapon mid-combat without pulse ripples. This one took longer. The concept nearly shattered his mind until he realized it wasn't about brute shape—it was about intent.
By year 25, he had mastered two.
A rhythm developed: wake, meditate, study texts, attempt formations, fail, rest, repeat.
There were no nights.
No sounds.
Only the subtle hum of the chamber and the ever-burning torchlight that never flickered.
Jalen screamed into the walls sometimes—not from pain, but from silence. He missed laughter. Missed people. Missed noise.
So he began work on the third technique: Echo Twin Manifestation.
It was the easiest of the ten to master—he completed it in just under a year.
The technique allowed him to create clones of himself, or even of others, using shadow qi. These weren't illusions. They were physical echoes—capable of movement, combat, and basic interaction.
The clones shared his sight and memory, but couldn't use his techniques. They fought only with physical styles, and their qi was limited. Still, they were autonomous enough to act independently, and Jalen could swap places with them using Eclipsed Motion.
He used them for sparring, for distraction drills, and sometimes… just for company.
He made a clone of his father. Then Rana. Sometime Simon and Jana.
They didn't speak. But they stood nearby while he trained.
And for a few hours, the silence didn't feel so empty.
By year 50, he unlocked the fourth form: Shadow Domain Compression.
It engulfed a 200-foot radius of it's user in pure shadow. Blinds enemies, drains qi, reveals all movement and presence. Jalen becomes omniscient within it—able to detect, defend, and dominate. For now he can hold it up for a minute but duration increases with cultivation.
When Jalen mastered it, something clicked inside his body. His core expanded. His meridians pulsed anew.
He reached Peak Moon Realm.
The aura shift was seismic—his qi stopped flashing with youth and instead flowed like a river through a canyon: deep, deliberate, relentless.
Still, silence.
But now he could feel the weapon pedestal reacting. Just a flicker of energy every time he passed near it.
In year 60, he began work on the fifth technique: Shadow Blades Manifestation.
Unlike the spear, this required dual control—two blades forged from shadow qi that could shift shape mid-combat. He failed repeatedly, unable to maintain balance between them.
It wasn't until he began syncing his breath with the chamber's pulse that the blades stabilized.
They weren't just weapons. They were extensions of his will.
With this form complete, his cultivation surged again. His body convulsed for three days as energy rearranged inside his bones.
He stepped into the Imperial Realm.
And the realm trembled.
The Origin Shard within him pulsed stronger. It resonated with the chamber's walls.
For over a hundred years, it had tried to seize control of his second spirit core.
Not once. Not twice. But hundreds of times.
It reached with force—threads of radiant energy that lashed like chains.
It reached with finesse—gentle pulses, subtle rhythms, spiritual whispers.
But the second core never yielded.
It flared with quiet defiance, resisting every attempt.
Sometimes Jalen felt it—deep in meditation, a clash of wills inside his dantian. A ripple of tension. A war no one could see.
The shard grew more aggressive. Then more patient. Then quiet.
And eventually, it changed.
It stopped trying to dominate.
It began to pulse in rhythm with both cores. Not fused—but present. Not rejected—but accepted.
And slowly, the space between them narrowed.
Jalen began to channel shadow qi and wind qi together. Not as separate streams—but as a single flow.
His meridians adapted. His techniques evolved.
Two affinities. Two cores. One rhythm.
The shard had not conquered the second core.
It had learned to coexist.
And in that coexistence, Jalen became something new.
For the next 90 years, he trudged forward.
Five techniques complete.
Then six: Dusk Rend Spiral.
A cyclone of orbiting shadow blades that sliced through everything within reach. It was brutal, chaotic, and nearly tore his meridians apart the first time he cast it.
But once mastered, it became his most reliable crowd-control technique.
The seventh technique—Shadow Devour—was the most dangerous.
It didn't strike. It uses the enemies own shadow to consumed them.
Jalen learned to absorb all ambient shadow in the chamber, expanding it outward like a living tide. Anything caught within was swallowed—qi, aura, even spiritual threads. It wasn't a weapon. It was a void.
But the cost was brutal. Qi burned like wildfire. His body nearly collapsed.
He only used it twice.
The first time, the chamber's walls warped.
The second time, one of his clones vanished—no trace, no echo, no recovery.
It was not a technique for combat.
It was a technique for erasure.
The eighth technique—Shadow Surge Overdrive—was also another high risk technique for the user that is.
He absorbed all ambient shadow in the chamber, boosting his strength and speed exponentially. But the cost was brutal. Qi burned like wildfire. His body nearly collapsed.
He only used it twice.
The ninth form: Puppet Eclipse Control.
Manipulating the shadows of others required intense focus and spiritual dominance. He practiced on his training dummies, then on projections of past enemies.
When he finally succeeded, he made a shadow clone of Jayquan's shadow strike itself.
He cried afterward.
Not from pain. From memory of being with his father. He missed him a lot.
And the tenth form awaited.
The final technique: Eclipsed Soul Vanishing.
No glyph. No instruction.
Just silence.
The only clue Reuven Duskborn left was a line scratched into the wall:
"To master the final form, you must stop trying to wield shadow—and become it."
Jalen spent 100 years learning what that meant.
He stopped cultivating. Stopped practicing.
He walked. Slept. Meditated. Sometimes didn't use qi for years.
He let shadow live in him—not as a weapon, but a rhythm.
Then one day, his breath stilled.
His aura vanished.
His spirit pulsed once—and split.
The Origin Shard burst into light.
Time stopped.
Jalen's consciousness soared beyond stars.
He saw Upper Realm cultivators—giants of energy, waging wars that cracked planetary crusts, weaving dimensional gates from flame, water, and void.
They chased something radiant—a crystal pulsing like a sun.
The Origin Shard.
They couldn't hold it. Couldn't claim it.
It slipped through them.
And drifted.
Until it found him.
Jalen hovered in spirit between galaxies as the shard nestled inside his being. He wasn't just chosen.
He was synchronized.
His body convulsed. Qi surged.
He rose into the Spirit Fusion Realm.
The moment his breakthrough settled, the chamber groaned.
Glyphs dissolved.
Light folded.
The realm ejected him with a pulse—not painful, but final. But while he was on his way out the supreme grade shadow weapon was stored within his body.
Behind him, the inheritance chamber collapsed into dust.
Jalen stood in Rage Forest again.
Trees swayed.
Winds whispered.
He looked no different than the first time he entered fifteen years old.
But in his soul: 350 years of training.
The Time Stone had warped the flow—based on what he read in the legacy texts, only a few months had passed outside.
So that makes him sixteen years old in real time.
And the world would never understand what he had become.
__
Meanwhile in the Crown Kingdom, Reign Continent Jaquan Hewitt was bound in qi suppression shackles and bound by formations. He felt hopeless that he might die before seeing Jalen again or his unborn child. This angers and saddens him, but in this situation he was endless.
How did he end up here?
Let's go back to just over five months ago, when everything changed.