The world was burning.
Not in flames, not yet—but in tension. In the weight of truths unsaid. In the moment when power turns the heads of tyrants, and everyone holds their breath before the fall.
Aren stood at the heart of the Dominion Arena, blood matting his hair, his body trembling with the aftershock of awakening. The parasite had fed—too much, too quickly. He could still feel Lunec's terror, the frayed edges of the constellation he'd devoured like a meal served cold. Something inside him still pulsed.
Hunger Status: AggressiveSystem Lock: PartialEvolution Threshold exceededParasite Intelligence: Subclinical. Dormant voice… stirring.
They were going to execute him.
He could hear it in the cries of the nobles, feel it in the weight of every condemning eye.
And above them all—her.
Lady Elira Valen.
His mother. The woman who once held him when he had night terrors, who combed his hair before festivals, who whispered that even without a constellation, he had a future.
Now she looked at him like a rabid dog.
Like something she should have drowned at birth.
"Mother…" His voice cracked, hoarse and hollow.
She didn't flinch. Didn't blink. Only said, "Let this be the end of your shame."
My shame?
Rage boiled under his skin. He had killed no one. Broken no rule that hadn't already been broken by the gods themselves. And yet here he stood—marked for death, as if their system hadn't already murdered him once.
"I will not kneel for you," Aren said, eyes glowing faintly, dark veins crawling like roots across his arms. "Not this time."
Lyon sneered from his golden seat. "Then die like the insect you are."
Aren's laugh came out cracked. "You've tried that already."
The Tribunal Chancellor raised a hand, power gathering in the divine seal above the coliseum. The air split with sacred flame, spears of celestial judgment forming—white-hot and sharpened by centuries of tradition.
"This is your final breath, parasite-bearer," the chancellor roared. "By decree of the Divine Concord, you are—"
"ENOUGH!" a new voice boomed.
Every head turned.
A cloaked figure stood at the highest arch of the arena, framed by twilight. Their voice cracked the sky.
A staff slammed into the stone floor with a sound like thunder.
Professor Malric.
The Hermetic of the Ash Vault. Ancient. Respected. Dangerous.
"You'll not lay a divine finger on a student under my ward," Malric said coldly.
One of the nobles scoffed. "You cannot protect a demon."
Malric's eyes gleamed like coals. "He is no demon. He is your consequence."
A beat of silence.
Then the sky broke.
A dark pulse emanated from Aren. Not visible, not even magical. Just… ancient. Raw. Like something older than gods had just shifted in its sleep.
From within his chest, something whispered:
Voice recognized: System core awakening.[You are not alone.]
He doubled over, gasping. Pain lanced through his body as his spine arched unnaturally. Wings of starlight and shadow burst once more from his back—only now they were stable, more defined. Scaled with black crystal, laced with symbols no mortal tongue had written in ten thousand years.
I'm changing again. No… I'm becoming.
The execution ritual shattered under the sheer weight of Aren's presence.
Chancellor Valeon fell back, stunned. "He… he broke the seal. That's impossible!"
Lyon drew his blade. "Kill him NOW!"
Aren raised his hand—and everything stopped.
Not time. But motion. Sound. Color.
He was standing in a void between seconds.
Where—?
A voice, feminine and fractured, like a lullaby gone wrong, spoke inside him.
"Little god-slayer… the path forks."
He turned slowly.
A figure stood in the dark. Not human. Not divine. Shaped of shifting galaxies, cloaked in ruin.
"I am the first host," she said. "And the last dream of the Forbidden Star."
The system has a memory… a mind.
"You're waking something terrible," she warned. "Every god that dies strengthens the cage. But what lies inside… is worse than death."
Aren's fists clenched. "Then I'll break the cage too."
She smiled, bittersweet. "That's what I said once."
Reality returned with a roar.
Aren dropped to one knee, panting. The nobles backed away in fear.
Malric stepped forward. "By right of the Ash Vault, I invoke academic sanctuary. Any attempt on this boy's life will be met with obliteration."
The Tribunal hesitated.
The game had changed.
Aren was no longer just an anomaly.
He was a problem.
A threat.
A heretic with a following.
From the stands, dozens of students rose.
Not nobles.
Underdogs. Bastards. Failed summoners. Forgotten mages.
One by one, they walked down the steps to stand behind Aren.
Kaelith stood first. "I'll follow him."
Then Lira—half-starborn, dismissed for magical instability.
Then Bren. Then Eliar. Then Tor.
In minutes, over thirty students had formed a line behind him.
Lyon's lip curled. "You think this changes anything?"
"No," Aren said. "I know it starts everything."
That night, the academy trembled.
Students whispered about the parasite forming a faction. About the boy who returned from death. About the tribunal's fear.
In the depths of the ancient library, Aren sat with Malric, Kaelith, and three others who had pledged loyalty.
"We need answers," Aren said.
Malric nodded. "Then you must enter the Vault."
Aren frowned. "The Ash Vault?"
"No," Malric said grimly. "The true vault. Beneath the academy. Where they buried the heresies."
"What's in it?"
Malric looked him dead in the eye."Truth. And possibly the beginning of your war."
The Vault's entrance was buried under centuries of denial.
They crossed the lowest halls of the academy under night's veil, the kind of dark only traitors and visionaries were permitted to walk in. They passed doors Aren never knew existed—archways made not from stone, but from petrified celestial bone.
Malric pressed his hand against a pillar that seemed to hum with memory. A dozen divine seals—each representing extinct constellations—peeled away like layers of ash.
"You must all swear silence," Malric said. "What lies beyond has been forbidden since before even the Tribunal's founding."
"I've already broken everything they hold sacred," Aren said. "I'm not afraid of a few more ghosts."
Malric's eyes flicked toward him. "Then may the dead accept your defiance."
The Vault opened.
Cold hit them like a physical thing. The walls were made of duskstone—etched in forgotten names and tangled runes. It was less a hallway and more a descending memory. A descent into truth carved by liars.
Aren's parasite pulsed wildly the deeper they walked.
Proximity Alert: Forbidden Core Signatures Detected. Evolution Potential: MAXIMUM. Warning: Mindbreak Threshold approaching.
"I feel it too," Kaelith whispered beside him. "Like something in here is… remembering us."
They passed shrines to dead gods. Altars bearing the broken sigils of constellations no longer worshiped. Skeletons of beings that had once ascended—then been erased.
Then they reached the center.
The final chamber.
A sphere of translucent crystal floated above a black dais, spinning slowly. Inside it—a dying star. Small, dark, and pulsing with a rhythm Aren's own heartbeat began to match.
Malric bowed his head.
"That," he said, "is the First Star the gods ever destroyed. And the parasite you bear comes from the ashes of its corpse."
Aren stepped forward, the parasite humming louder, faster.
Kaelith grabbed his arm. "Wait—what if it's a trap?"
"It is," Malric said. "But it's also the truth."
The system began to scream.
Contact imminent. System unlocking ancestral memory.
Core Synchronization: 51%... 64%... 81%...
Aren's eyes rolled back.
He saw fire.
Not just fire—divine fire. Worlds breaking. Stars screaming. God after god falling to an army of shadows wielding sigils like scythes. At the front—a girl with wings of ruin.
The same girl he met in the void.
Her eyes met his through time.
"Finish what we couldn't."
Then—
Silence.
He dropped to the floor, gasping, skin burning.
Malric knelt. "What did you see?"
Aren's voice was hoarse.
"The truth."
He stood, trembling. Looked back at his companions.
"We're not the first to defy the gods."
"And we won't be the last."
He looked toward the crystal. Then to the ceiling. To the stars.
"You hear me?" he roared.
"You made me your enemy."
"Now I'll become your end."