Smoke still curled from the forest when Kael walked back toward Dunfall.
The villagers did not rush to him.
They stepped back.
Mothers pulled their children behind them. Men who had once greeted him with quiet nods now held farming spears in trembling hands. The crystal lanterns above flickered as he passed beneath them, their glow distorting, bending toward him like iron drawn to a magnet.
"Stay back," Elder Marrin ordered, his voice thin but firm. "Boy… what did you do?"
Kael looked down at his hands. They were normal. No glow. No visible mark.
But inside—
Inside, something was roaring.
"I didn't do anything," Kael said, though his voice sounded deeper… layered. As if something spoke beneath his words.
A sharp crack split the air.
The ground beneath his feet fractured.
Not from force.
From pressure.
Spiritual energy in the air twisted unnaturally, spiraling toward him. Cultivators trained their entire lives to draw energy into their dantian cores.
Kael wasn't drawing it.
He was devouring it.
And he wasn't trying to.
Jorren stepped forward from the crowd, his earlier arrogance gone, replaced with anger. "He's corrupted. I can feel it. That energy isn't natural."
He ignited his aura — faint orange flames flickered around his fists. Ember Fist technique.
"You brought a cursed fragment into the village," Jorren snapped. "If you turn into a beast, I'll put you down myself."
Kael's heart pounded. He didn't want to fight.
But the power inside him surged at the threat.
Hungry.
Jorren lunged.
His flaming fist shot toward Kael's face.
Time slowed.
Kael didn't think.
He moved.
His hand rose instinctively.
The moment their fists met—
The fire shattered.
Not extinguished.
Shattered.
Like glass.
Cracks spiderwebbed through the air itself, black lines slicing through space. A deep, thunderous boom exploded outward. Jorren screamed as his aura collapsed violently, throwing him backward across the dirt.
Silence.
Even the wind stopped.
Kael stared at his own hand. Faint fractures shimmered around his knuckles before fading.
"What… did I just do?"
The voice returned, clearer this time.
"You break what binds the sky."
Kael staggered.
Memories flashed behind his eyes — not his own. Towering golden palaces floating above clouds. Nine radiant beings standing in formation. And something vast beyond them. Something chained.
He gasped and dropped to one knee.
Elder Marrin stepped back in horror. "That's not cultivation," he whispered. "That's… blasphemy."
Jorren groaned, struggling to stand. His meridians trembled; his spiritual flames would not ignite again.
"You destroyed my core!" he shouted.
"I didn't mean to!" Kael yelled back.
But deep down…
The power had meant to.
That night, no one let Kael return home.
He sat alone at the edge of the village near the forge, staring at the cracked anvil. The sky above pulsed faintly, as if reacting to him.
He clenched his fist again.
This time intentionally.
The air trembled.
A thin fracture formed in front of his knuckles — a black line slicing across empty space.
He punched forward.
The line exploded outward, ripping a shallow trench through the earth ahead of him.
No flame.
No elemental aura.
Just raw destruction.
His breathing grew heavy. The energy inside him was unstable — wild currents crashing through his veins. It didn't flow like spiritual energy.
It collided.
It shattered.
It consumed.
And then he felt it.
Hunger.
Not his hunger.
The fragment's.
It wanted more heaven.
More fragments.
More sky.
Kael pressed his hand against his chest. "You're not controlling me," he muttered.
"Control?" the voice echoed softly.
"You are not my vessel… you are my successor."
A cold wind swept across Dunfall.
High above, another crack split across the broken heavens.
Far away — beyond sight — something stirred behind invisible chains.
At dawn, a group of riders approached the village.
Their robes bore a blazing emblem of a clenched fist wrapped in flame.
The Ember Fist Sect had felt the disturbance.
And they were coming for the fragment.
Coming for Kael.