The morning dawned the next day with blood on the breeze.
Kael stood on the balcony of his personal room, the Veinspire towering over him, its runes shining like veins of sacred ore. But something was amiss in the spiritual current of the capital. He sensed it, the insidious tug of purpose. Something malevolent was coalescing.
Behind him, Seris read from the stolen scroll.
"He wasn't merely executed," she explained. "They unmade him. The decree addresses you not as a rebel… but as a 'breaker,' a breaker of the Path of Designation."
Kael's brow crinkled. "The Path of Designation…?"
Seris nodded sternly. "The divine chain. The hierarchy that binds cultivators to their destinies. You didn't merely battle against the gods; you denied the notion that anyone was required to serve them."
"No wonder they buried it. No wonder they're afraid of what I might become."
Seris took a step forward, speaking quietly. "You weren't a threat, Kael. You were the source of heresy."
A bell sounded in the Imperial Spire.
But not a ritual sound.
A warning.
Kael's spine snapped rigid. "That's the Black Chime. That indicates an unauthorized breaking-through cultivation event is taking place—someone overriding cultivation limits without permission."
Seris flung on her cloak. "They'll believe it's you."
Kael was already in motion, his eyes burning silver.
"It is I."
The courtyard around the Veinspire was already encircled by Seer's Circle agents, attired in crimson and gold, their masks etched in the image of old saints. Cardinal point spiritual suppressors had been set up. Glyphs flashed on the floor, binding, draining, and silencing.
Kael entered into the heart of the circle.
Unarmed.
Unmasked.
Unapologetic.
A man emerged from the Circle, taller than the others, his face obscured beneath a sun-shaped visor. His aura yelled with divine Essentia eighth-tier, perhaps greater. A Grand Oracle.
"Kael Thorne," said the man, "you're in breach of the Sacred Order. By edict of the Emperor and the Circle of Seeing, you're hereby restrained for unauthorized divine resonance."
Kael smiled weakly.
"I see the Emperor sent his lapdogs. Not enough spine to face me himself?"
The Oracle's visor shone. "You will kneel."
Kael moved forward. "Then make me."
The initial assault came out of nowhere—a blast of gold-wired energy in the form of a spear, hurled from the other side of the courtyard. Kael raised his hand, and the spear halted in mid-air.
Not by technique.
Not by spell.
By will.
The golden weapon cracked, splintered, and then dissolved into nothing.
"I don't recall you," Kael said. "But my soul does."
His voice was imbued with a weight that none of the onlookers had ever experienced before.
A power not taught.
Not bestowed.
Born.
On a rooftop overlooking the courtyard, Seris stood, breath trapped in her throat.
He was stirring.
Not merely power but memory.
She experienced it as much as perceived it, the air creasing around Kael, his presence distorting the flow of Essentia in the region. The surrounding cultivators were struggling, not from fear, but from their own energy against them.
He wasn't directing Qi.
He was becoming its center.
Kael held his hands up.
Symbols erupted around him in the air, brands from another time. Not heavenly. Not hellish. Ancient.
One drifted in front of him, a broken circle gashed down the middle.
The Breaker's Brand.
The Oracle moved closer. "End your blasphemy."
Kael's eyes blazed.
"I am not under the will of your gods. I was created out of defiance of their will."
He tightened his fist.
The formation before him fell. Glyphs ignited to ash. Cultivators reeled back, gasping as their Essentia were torn from coherency. The suppression field broke like glass.
The Oracle bellowed and summoned a halberd of burning flame.
Kael didn't budge.
The Oracle attacked.
And the air tore.
But Kael remained unscathed. He had moved sideways, not through space, but through law. The halberd cut through a spot he no longer occupied.
The Oracle spun in shock.
Kael's fingers extended, and with one touch, broke the halberd into dying sparks.
"You came armed to battle an idea," Kael breathed. "That's your error."
And Kael's soul blazed open.
Silver and black. Storm and flame. Symbols and song.
A hymn of forgotten power singing the birthright of a soul that never should have come back and yet had.
The Oracle howled.
Not in pain.
But in realization.
Kael had already left them behind.
Not through training.
But through defying the design.
Hours passed; the courtyard was quiet.
The Oracle was unconscious, his mask broken, his divine connection severed.
Kael stood, breathing heavily, his body steaming, the sigil on his back glowing through his tunic.
Seris approached from the shadows.
"You declared yourself," she said.
"They forced my hand," Kael replied.
"They'll retaliate," she warned.
Kael looked up at the skies above the Veinspire.
"Let them. The fire is lit. If they want a war, I'll give them a revolution."
Seris stood beside him.
And they stood together, watching the sun rise over a capital that was no longer the gods' alone.
A storm brewed behind them as they abandoned the capital.
The Imperial Courtyard, once a testament to celestial order, lay in shambles. The air hummed with broken Essentia, and the broken Oracle had been removed in silence, his divine connection still severed.
Kael did not glance back.
He could not.
With every step back from the Veinspire, uncoiling the chain around his soul.
Wordless beside him, Seris sprinted, her red cloak flowing like the tail of a comet. She'd learned to navigate the tunnel through memorized stolen maps and led him out into forgotten catacombs hidden under the Old Scholar's Ward, long abandoned by the Circle.
They found themselves in wastelands beyond the outer wall, dust-ridden cliffs inhabited only by scavengers and lunatic prophets.
Kael dropped to one knee as soon as they were out of view.
Seris fell beside him. "You used too much. You're bleeding Essentia."
He coughed, and veins of silver mist seeped from his mouth. "It wasn't power alone. I remembered something… someone."
Seris supported him, holding his arm. "What did you see?"
Kael shut his eyes, and for an instant, the world shifted.
Memory.
Not a dream. Not a vision.
An eternity back, the Soulforger faced a legion of shattered warriors, faces marred, eyes blazing with divine rage. They weren't cultivators. They were rejects, those the heavens had found unworthy of fate.
And Kael, no, he led them, a black fire burning in his heart.
"We do not bend," he said. "We are not chosen. We choose."
He had crafted something there. Not rebellion alone. A path.
Kael gasped as he was back in the present.
"They chased me," he croaked. "In my first life… I led them."
Seris's voice fell. "That path wasn't lost. Not quite. There are still rumors of a sect past the Scorched Peaks—exiles, rebels, oath-breakers. They call themselves the Ash-Born."
Kael rose to his feet, his strength returning.
"Then that's where we go."
Meanwhile, far down in the Imperial Sanctum…
Emperor Virel stood before the Echo Basin, an obsidian pool that reflected not water, but destiny.
"Verify it," he said.
A quiet Seer moved forward, dropping the shattered sun-mask of the deceased Oracle into the basin. Waves of gold spread across the black.
"He carries the Mark of the Breaker," the Seer spoke in a solemn tone. "The Soulforger has returned."
Virel's fists balled at his side.
"Seal the capital. Engage the Warden Protocol. And call forth the Inheritor."
The Seers shifted uneasily.
"My Emperor, summoning her will stir old obligations."
Virel spun, his eyes blazing with unbridled power. "Then let the obligations weep."
Three Days Later: The Rim of the Scorched Peaks
Wind howled across the broken horizon. Ash billowed in clouds from the shattered ground, and even the sun hung back, reluctant to burn through the smoke.
Kael cinched his cloak around him, the chill biting deeper than any cut.
Seris pointed to a stone pillar in front, in the form of a sword thrust into the ground.
"That's the mark. If the Ash-Born still live… this is their border."
Kael moved closer, laying his hand on the stone.
It was warm.
A pulse ran up his arm, ancient, sorrowful, and awake.
You've come back, it whispered. But are you still worthy?
The earth rifted.
Seris leapt back as the ground split, showing a flight of shattered stairs descending into burning darkness.
Kael did not wait.
The Ash-Born did not meet them with torches and welcome shouts.
They welcomed them with swords.
Kael blocked the first blow, whirling into guard. Seris swept low across the ground, pushing back two men.
Out of the darkness came a woman, her face obscured by a half-burned mask. Her presence was choking—raw power encased in broken metal and memory.
"I am Ceyla Korr," she declared. "Blight-General of the Ash-Born, you wear the Breaker's Brand. Demonstrate it is not a lie."
Kael stood up straight.
"I remember you."
Ceyla leaned her head to one side. "Do you?"
"By my previous life… you pledged to obey me. You stood by my left hand when we broke into the Sky Citadel."
There was silence. Then laughter.
"Well," she said. "Let's hope your soul has not forgotten how to fight."
She launched an attack.
Not with carelessness or doubt, but with the rage of a person betrayed by time itself.
Kael did not block. He stepped with the strike, redirecting the energy, moving like ink around steel. His hands glowed with the same symbols he had called forth against the Oracle.
Their blows rang like thunder through the empty chamber, past and present meeting in anger.
Then, in a final turn, Kael struck not with a fist, but with his voice.
"I am Kael Thorne, Soulforged Sovereign. I do not require your loyalty."
He unfolded his arms, power radiating from each crease in his body.
"I ask for your freedom."
Ceyla stumbled.
The other warriors retreated.
Then one at a time they knelt.
Not to a god.
Not to a dictator.
But to the man who defied both.
Seris approached cautiously, out of breath.
"You just enlisted the Empire's worst nightmare."
Kael turned to her.
"No," he whispered.
"I just gave it hope."