The cold returned with him.
Not the chill of frost or nightfall, but the kind that clung to the bones—the kind that followed the dead when they walked too close to the living. When he stepped back into the lower world, the mountains around the portal wilted beneath his feet, as if they, too, feared what had come through.
The shadows around him trembled—not out of loyalty. Out of instinct.
Something had changed.
He stood at the edge of the valley overlooking his quiet village, now lit by lanterns and soft voices preparing for evening. In the distance, his home—small, warm, filled with laughter—looked untouched.
But he knew better.
Whatever that thing inside the sealed realm was, it wasn't done.
Not with him.
Not with this world.
Not with his children.
He arrived at his home just past midnight, when the world was quietest and only those with sins too loud to sleep stirred in their beds. He didn't make a sound, yet his wife stood waiting at the doorway—lantern in hand, eyes already brimming with worry.
"You felt it," he said.
She nodded, stepping aside to let him in.
"They're not safe here," he continued, voice low. "The girl I saw… she wasn't just a soul fragment. She's the hunger given form. Everything I consumed and left behind—she's become it."
His wife poured him tea, not asking questions he didn't have answers for. That was what he loved about her. She never flinched from the darkness in him. Only from the silence it carried.
"She looked like our daughter," he added softly.
That made her pause.
But then she breathed deeply. "You said you sealed your past. Buried your power. And still it comes for you."
"It didn't come for me this time," he replied. "It came for the realms."
Outside, the wind whispered over the rooftops.
Inside, two children slept peacefully, unaware that reality itself had begun to unravel again.
He stepped into their room.
His son—small but fierce in spirit—murmured in his sleep, dreaming of heroes and sky-palaces. His daughter, curled beneath a handmade quilt, clutched a toy sword he'd carved her from an old branch.
He smiled sadly.
And knelt.
A thousand thoughts crossed his mind. Should he erase their memories? Should he hide them deeper, somewhere the realms couldn't reach? Should he leave again, walk into the void, and draw the hunger with him?
But none of those felt right.
This time, he wouldn't run.
He would teach them how to fight.
The next morning, before the mist burned off the fields, he called upon the first shadow.
The old one.
The King of Silence, once a god who had slain ten thousand cultivators with a single note before he was devoured.
Now, he kneeled like a loyal dog at his master's call.
"You'll train my son," he ordered.
The shadow nodded. "And the daughter?"
He paused.
"She'll train herself," he said. "She already knows more than I ever taught her."
He wasn't wrong.
That night, he found her sitting cross-legged in the courtyard, eyes closed, channeling qi through her palms with the precision of a seasoned practitioner.
She opened her eyes as he approached.
"You knew, didn't you?" he asked softly.
"I saw her in my dreams," she replied, not looking away. "The girl with the golden eyes. She told me she was going to eat everything."
His gut twisted.
"And what did you say to her?"
His daughter looked up, her gaze steady. "I told her I'd start with her."
Far away, in the Upper Realm, the chaos only grew.
Entire sects vanished overnight. Heavenly cities once thought untouchable burned like matchwood. The Celestial Court blamed the demons. The demons blamed the Court.
But the truth whispered in the dark: neither were responsible.
And at the center of it all, a name spread like a curse.
Kamazaki.
Whispers of the Devourer's return.
But no one knew where he was.
Because for the first time in three centuries, he didn't ride into war. He didn't gather armies. He didn't raise his blade or summon his shadows to slaughter nations.
This time, he built something else.
A school.
It began in silence, tucked deep in the forest between the three realms, hidden behind veils of illusion and protective sigils carved by godblood.
Only a few students at first.
His son. His daughter. A few wayward cultivators who had seen too much and survived.
But soon, more came.
Those who had lost homes to the growing hunger.
Those who had sensed something devouring the heavens.
Those who still remembered the old stories—the ones where a monster became a man.
He didn't teach them cultivation.
He taught them balance.
Power held in restraint. Strength that didn't need to roar to be heard.
And above all—
"Devour nothing you're not willing to carry forever."
But peace, as always, was fleeting.
On the eve of the school's first winter, a storm unlike any other tore through the forest.
The skies turned black. The wind howled with voices not born of any realm.
And at the edge of the school gates… the girl stood again.
The Hunger.
Older.
Stronger.
No longer a child.
She wore a robe of screaming faces. Her eyes now voids that swallowed light.
And this time—she wasn't alone.
Behind her stood legions.
Creatures made of collapsed souls. Broken cultivators. Fused deities. Feral gods.
Each one bore a piece of his past.
And they had come to take him back.