The first thing Alaric felt was weight.
Not the crushing kind that broke bones, but a suffocating pressure that wrapped around his body like an invisible net. Every breath dragged through his chest as if the air itself resisted him.
This body was weak.
He opened his eyes.
A cracked stone ceiling loomed above him, veins of pale blue light pulsing faintly through ancient runes carved into the rock. Dust drifted down in slow spirals, disturbed by his shallow breathing.
So this was the Broken Foundation.
A place abandoned even by Heaven.
Alaric lay still, letting the memories settle not the memories of this body, but his own. The endless centuries. The silent ascent. The moment he stood one step from immortality… and Heaven erased him without hesitation.
Obedience had been rewarded.
Perfection had been punished.
A faint, bitter smile touched his lips.
"Heaven never makes mistakes," he murmured.
"That's what they said."
His voice cracked young, hoarse, unfamiliar.
Sixteen years old.
This body had barely begun cultivating. Its meridians were thin, damaged, and improperly aligned, as if someone had forced energy through paths that were never meant to carry it.
No wonder it was abandoned here.
Alaric pushed himself up slowly. Pain flared through his limbs, sharp and immediate, but he welcomed it. Pain meant reality. Reality meant he had not been erased completely.
The Broken Foundation was a graveyard for failed cultivators. Those whose paths shattered before they could even begin. Those deemed unworthy of correction.
Heaven's mercy had limits.
As he sat cross-legged, Alaric closed his eyes and extended his perception inward.
The difference was immediate.
His former body had been flawless, meridians refined over centuries and soul perfectly harmonized with Heaven's laws.
This one?
Crooked. Fragmented. Scarred.
Yet beneath the damage, something else stirred.
A resonance.
Faint. Incomplete. But undeniably familiar.
Alaric's breath slowed.
"This foundation…" he whispered, realization dawning. "It isn't broken."
It was unfinished.
Most cultivators built their foundations to align with Heaven's accepted paths ..safe, stable, obedient. This body's foundation deviated slightly at every critical point. Not enough to be unique.
Wrong enough for Heaven to abandon it. Wrong enough to be ignored.
Alaric laughed softly, the sound echoing strangely in the chamber.
"How fitting."
Heaven had erased him for walking too perfectly within its rules.
And now, it had placed him in a body that could never fit them at all.
The irony was almost poetic.
He adjusted his posture, ignoring the protests of muscle and bone, and began circulating energy slowly, carefully, refusing to follow the standard routes burned into the body.
Instead, he corrected them.
Not forcefully. Not recklessly.
Patiently.
Energy resisted him at first, recoiling from unfamiliar paths. The pressure deepened not crushing, but absolute, as if the world itself were weighing whether to allow him to exist.
A lesser cultivator would have panicked. Another would have forced it, shattering the foundation entirely.
Alaric did neither.
He remembered every mistake he had once avoided. Every shortcut he had refused. Every imperfection he had corrected for Heaven's sake.
This time, he let them exist.
The energy settled.
For a brief moment, the runes etched into the walls flickered brighter, reacting to something they had not sensed in centuries.
A foundation was stabilizing.
Not into perfection.
But into balance.
Sweat soaked through Alaric's robes. His breathing turned ragged as exhaustion crept in, but he did not stop until the circulation completed a full cycle.
When he finally opened his eyes, the pressure in the chamber had eased.
The Broken Foundation had accepted him.
He exhaled slowly.
"Good," he said quietly. "Then we begin properly."
Heaven watched all paths that sought immortality.
But it ignored ruins. Ignored failures. Ignored foundations it believed could never rise.
Alaric stood, legs trembling but steady enough to bear his weight.
If Heaven feared perfection…
Then he would build something it could not predict.
Not fast. Not clean.
But inevitable.
Outside the chamber, distant thunder rolled low, displeased, almost curious.
Alaric paused at the threshold and glanced upward, as if he could see beyond stone and sky.
"You erased me once," he said calmly. "Next time, you'll have to do better."
And with that, he stepped out of the Broken Foundation.