"You must never chase strength blindly, Kairo. Power should be wielded, not worshipped."
The words echoed like distant thunder across the void of Kairo's dreams—half memory, half omen. He drifted in that place between sleep and awakening, where the past walked like a shadow beside the present.
He was sixteen again.
Rain lashed the courtyard of Veilwither Peak, cold and ceaseless. The air was thick with the scent of wet stone, crushed night orchid, and cold incense curling from cracked braziers. Mist clung to the mountain spires, veiling the sky as if the heavens themselves turned their gaze away.
Barefoot and soaked, Kairo stood on the slick stone tiles, gripping the broken hilt of his training blade like a lifeline. Across from him, cloaked in silence and rain, stood the man who had forged him—not just in cultivation, but in thought, in spirit, in defiance.
Master Veylan.
The Ash-Eyed Ghost.
Feared for his silence, revered for his brilliance, and mythologized by those who never truly knew him. A phantom of Veilwither legend, his eyes carried the weight of worlds unseen.
"They say you were never truly part of this world," Kairo had said, the words more accusation than question. His voice trembled—not from cold, but from the awful pressure of unspoken truth. "That you don't bleed."
Veylan smiled, faint and distant, like a man remembering the warmth of a fire long extinguished.
"And yet here I am. Still breathing. Still bound."
He stepped forward, slow and deliberate, the rain sliding down his face like tears he refused to shed. In his hand, he held a small, irregular object—dark and gnarled, pulsing with a rhythm that seemed to echo with something ancient. He placed it in Kairo's palm.
"What is this?" Kairo asked, already unsettled by the pulse.
"A shard from the gate they sealed below our sect. Older than language. A fragment of silence. You'll hear it whisper when the world forgets you."
Kairo stared at the shard, feeling a cold sentience stir within it.
"Why give this to me?"
The question wasn't just fear—it was need. A desperate plea for understanding.
Veylan's smile vanished.
"Because the world will betray us, Kairo. One day, everything you know will burn. The names, the teachings, even your own face in the mirror. And when that happens, all that will remain is hunger."
The words struck like falling ash.
"I tried to shield you. But shadows do not bend forever."
"What do I do when that day comes?" Kairo whispered.
Veylan turned his back to him then. The wind howled through the stone corridors like a wounded beast. The master's answer was almost lost to the storm:
"You survive. You remember us. And if the heavens ever open again—"
He paused, head slightly bowed.
"You devour them."
Kairo never forgot the way his master stood that night—silent, unmoving, like a monument to defiance. That was the last time he saw Veylan.
A week later, the sky turned red.
And Veilwither fell.
Present day.
Kairo snapped awake beneath a sky so dark it felt hollow. No moon. No stars. Only the oppressive weight of memory.
His breath came slow, his heartbeat matching the pulse of something old and powerful beneath his skin. He looked down at his chest. The shard—no longer just a relic—was now fully awakened and merged with the Abyssal Nerve Codex. Its black tendrils webbed beneath his veins, pulsing like a second heart.
But it had done more than merge.
It had entered him.
Anchored within his very soul, the shard slowed the corruption of the Codex, holding back the worst of its madness like a dam against the tide. It did not stop it—but it tempered it, bound the howling dark just long enough for Kairo to remain himself. For now.
His master's legacy had not perished in the ruins.
It had evolved.
Twisted itself around his spirit, his bones.
"I remember."
He spoke it aloud—not for himself, but for the wind, for the spirits, for the void that had tried to bury his past. He would not be forgotten. Not by the world. Not by the heavens.
The night around him trembled.
He stood slowly, Twinblight sheathed at his back, his senses sharpened to every flicker of movement in the darkness. He was not afraid of the sects that hunted him. He was not afraid of the relics or the cursed tombs.
He was afraid of forgetting.
And now, he remembered everything.
"Master... if the heavens truly open again, I'll do more than devour them. I'll reshape them."
The cold wind rustled the leaves like whispering voices. Kairo stepped forward, eyes alight with purpose.
In the ash of Veilwither's fall, something had bloomed.
Something monstrous.
Something divine.
And it wore his name.