Chapter 1: The Sovereign's Return
The ditch reeked of blood and cowardice. Lin Moran lay broken in the filth, his meridians shattered by his cousin's poison. Above him, Lin Wei's laughter rang out, sharp and mocking.
"Look at our sect's former genius," Lin Wei sneered, kicking dirt into Moran's face. "Three years ago, you stood at Xia Qingyue's side. Now? Even the dogs won't lick your wounds."
The name sent a flicker of memory through Moran's fading consciousness—Xia Qingyue, silver-eyed and untouchable, the only one who had protested when the elders cast him out.
Then, the voice came.
"Foolish child."
It was not sound but presence, a weight that crushed the air from his lungs. The Eclipse Codex—its pages forged from oblivion itself—unfolded in his mind.
"You are not Lin Moran. You are Zhuo Tianfeng, the Eclipse Sovereign. The heavens once trembled at your name."
Memories tore through him: a throne of smelted stars, a woman's dagger between his ribs, the taste of betrayal like spoiled nectar.
Lin Wei raised his sword. "Enough staring. Let's end this—"
Moran moved.
Not with the sluggish desperation of a dying disciple, but with the terrible certainty of a sovereign reclaiming his dominion. His hand—wreathed in black flames that devoured the very light around it—closed around Lin Wei's throat.
"You dare?" Moran's voice was no longer his own. It was the grinding of celestial gears, the sigh of dying worlds.
Lin Wei's eyes bulged as the Voidflame seared his skin. The other disciples stumbled back, their swords falling from nerveless fingers.
Xia Qingyue arrived as the screams began. She saw:
Lin Wei's body kneeling in perfect submission, his face frozen in eternal terror. The disciples prostrating themselves in the mud. And Moran—no, Zhuo Tianfeng—standing amid the carnage, his eyes twin voids of black fire.
"Qingyue." His voice carried the weight of dead empires. "Tell your elders the Eclipse Sovereign has returned. Their reckoning begins at dawn."
As the first screams echoed from the sect leader's compound, Moran smiled. The game was afoot.