The silence after awakening was heavier than death.
Aaryan sat cross-legged beneath the dead banyan, breath uneven, as shadows crawled beneath his skin. The once-familiar rhythm of spiritual energy had turned venomous—cold, ancient, alive.
When he opened his eyes, the world itself had changed.
Colors bled away. The air thickened. Every heartbeat echoed with whispers that did not belong to him.
The Sha Essence—the forbidden power erased from history with the fall of the Eighth Sun—now flowed within his veins. It wasn't spirit energy. It was memory. A remnant of something that had survived the death of worlds.
"Feed. Grow. Ascend."
The voice coiled inside him, neither man nor beast.
He bit his lip until blood filled his mouth, forcing the pain to anchor him to reality. Faint black veins shimmered under the moonlight. His hands trembled. The boy who had entered the forest was gone.
He had been reborn into something else.
Far away, deep within Shadowmist Sect, an ancient bronze bell trembled on its own.
Meditating elders snapped open their eyes. A wave of pressure, dark and boundless, brushed against the sect's protective array—a power that shouldn't exist.
"Someone… has awakened it," whispered Elder Suwan, voice thin as wind.
In the main hall, the Grand Elder rose from meditation, his gaze turning toward the northern forest. "Seal that region," he ordered coldly. "No creature enters or leaves until I say so."
Back in the forest, Aaryan forced himself to breathe.
His spiritual sea had been devoured, replaced by a pit of black flame. When he looked inward, he saw a vast void scattered with eight dim lights. One flickered faintly—the Eighth Sun, trembling within the darkness.
"The Eighth Sun was not destroyed," the whisper murmured.
"It was consumed. And now, it consumes through you."
Aaryan clutched his chest, the pain almost unbearable. The more he resisted, the more the essence pressed back—testing him, tempting him to surrender.
Visions flooded his mind: cities collapsing under a black sun, cultivators turning to ash, a sky without light.
He realized then that the Sha Essence wasn't meant to be cultivated—it was a curse meant to devour the heavens themselves.
And yet… it was his only path forward.
Within the sect's inner court, disciples whispered as a cold wind swept through the meditation halls. A dark mist rippled across the spirit lake and vanished.
"An omen?" one asked.
"No," muttered another elder. "A power has returned. But that path was erased ages ago…"
Grand Elder Suwan's golden eyes glimmered. "No power returns without reason. Whoever bears it now will either become our sect's doom—or its salvation."
Aaryan's trembling finally ceased. The whispers quieted, replaced by a terrible calm.
He looked up at the pale moon through the dead branches and whispered, almost to himself,
"If this power is a curse… then I'll make the heavens kneel before it."
The forest gave no answer.
But deep beneath the earth, something stirred—an ancient pulse answering his defiance.
The forbidden essence had not awakened alone.
The world had felt it.
And the hunt had already begun.