The sky didn't weep the day Lucien Vael was exiled.There were no ominous clouds or roaring thunder.Just a quiet blue sky, too clean, too still—as if the heavens didn't care enough to notice.
Lucien lay on the edge of the cliff, his cheek pressed to the cold stone. Blood seeped from the corner of his mouth. His robes, once white and embroidered with gold patterns of the Vael Clan, were torn and soaked in dirt. The crest on his chest had been slashed off. It was the final insult—a silent confirmation that he no longer belonged.
"You were born tainted," the elder said, voice heavy with judgment, not pity. "The heavens have denied you. We do the same."
Lucien said nothing. His voice had already been beaten out of him.
Behind the elder stood dozens of cultivators—some family, most not. Their faces wore expressions carved from stone: cold, unreadable, detached. Even his own father wouldn't meet his gaze. His mother looked at him once. Just once. And then turned her head away as if he were something shameful.
With one final push, they cast him into the abyss.
He fell.
The wind roared in his ears. Branches and thorns tore at his flesh as he plunged from the high cliffs of the Northern Celestial Province into the world below. His body slammed into the earth like a discarded doll, bones snapping under the weight of the fall.
But he didn't die.
Not because of strength. Not because of fate.
Because he refused.
Even in his broken state, Lucien clawed his fingers into the dirt. Each breath was agony. His vision blurred. His ribs were shattered, and his core—his dantian—was nothing but a ruined void. His connection to the world's energy was gone, crushed by the clan's patriarch himself.
Without a dantian, he could never cultivate.
He was meant to rot.
And yet, he moved.
Not toward revenge. Not even toward hope.
He crawled because something deep inside him refused to stop.
By the time night fell, he was more dead than alive. He dragged himself beneath twisted trees and gnarled roots, unaware of the direction. Each movement scraped his raw skin against the cold, wet ground.
Then, through a tangle of vines and stone, he saw it.
A rift in the earth, like a wound in the land.
Black fog drifted lazily from its mouth. The wind carried whispers from within, unintelligible and heavy with intent. No animals ventured near. No birds flew overhead. This place was untouched—rejected—forgotten.
Lucien didn't hesitate.
He crawled inside.
The world changed the moment he passed through the rift.
The air was thick, dense, like it resisted being breathed. The stone walls pulsed faintly beneath his hands, warm to the touch. Ruins stretched before him—pillars of broken obsidian, carvings worn away by time, and strange symbols glowing faintly under layers of ash and moss.
He had entered a tomb.
No, not a tomb.
A prison.
He could feel it. Whatever had once lived here… had not been allowed to leave.
Lucien dragged himself deeper into the heart of the ruin. There was no logic to his steps, only instinct. Something—some unseen force—guided him, called to him through the cracks of the world.
Finally, he reached a chamber.
It was circular, cavernous, and impossibly still. In the center was a pool—not of water, but of something thicker, darker. Liquid like oil, but alive. It shimmered faintly under the torchless dark.
He collapsed beside it, his strength finally gone.
And the pool responded.
The liquid stirred, sloshing against invisible boundaries. It rose, tendrils forming shapes—letters, glyphs, a language he didn't know but somehow understood.
He wasn't afraid.
This was the only thing in his life that had looked at him and not turned away.
The black tendrils coiled gently around his arms, wrapping over his shattered chest. Where his dantian had been destroyed, the liquid sank in like a knife into soft flesh. He gasped, arching his back, every nerve in his body screaming. But the pain didn't drive him away.
It awakened something.
Then, he heard the voice.
It was not loud. It didn't echo. It didn't demand.
It whispered, quiet and warm—like a secret.
"You are not broken, Lucien."
"You were born different because the heavens feared what you could become."
"They call it curse. But it is your truth."
"You are not meant to cultivate like the rest."
"You are meant to devour."
Lucien's breath hitched.
Devour?
He didn't understand. But something deep inside him did. Something primal. Something that had always been there, sleeping.
"You are compatible with Wrath," the voice continued. "The first sin. The first truth."
"You may reject it now and die forgotten. Or you may accept, and be remembered forever."
His lips were cracked. His throat dry. But in his mind, the answer rang clear.
Yes.
The pool surged.
From its depths, a book rose. Bound in dark leather, stained with age, sealed shut by black chains. Its cover bore no title, but the moment Lucien laid eyes on it, the name appeared within his mind.
The Codex of Sin.
The chains uncoiled, one by one.
The book opened to a blank page.
Then words appeared—fiery, alive.
Lucien Vael.
Bearer of Wrath.
The Codex glowed.
And pain consumed him.
He didn't scream this time.
The fire that erupted within his chest was different. Not like the pain from broken bones or crushed spirit veins. This was deeper. A fire not of flesh, but soul. A heat that scalded the lies he had been told since birth.
You are nothing.
You are broken.
You are unworthy.
Those lies burned.
And something new was born.
His dantian didn't heal.
It changed.
Where a cultivation core once sat, a black sphere formed—dense, pulsing, hungry. It wasn't spiritual energy. It wasn't elemental.
It was rage, given form.
He gasped as power rushed through his veins.
New words formed in his mind.
[Wrath Seed Awakened]
[Sin Trait: Strength increases when under pain, stress, or fury]
[Skill: Infernal Pulse – Release stored pain as a shockwave of force]
[Status: Sin-Linked. Presence detectable by Righteous Sects]
Lucien collapsed again, but it wasn't from weakness.
It was the weight of something new.
Power.
For the first time in his life, he had it.
He woke some time later, unsure of how many hours—or days—had passed.
The chamber was still. The pool gone. The Codex nowhere to be seen. But he felt it inside him. Not like a sword sheathed, but like a second heart, beating with every pulse of his blood.
He stood.
The pain was still there.
His ribs still ached. His legs still shook. But they no longer felt like chains.
They were reminders.
He looked at his hands—scarred, trembling, stained with blood.
And then he smiled.
It was faint. Small.
But real.
"They threw me away," he whispered. "They thought I'd die."
He looked toward the entrance, toward the world that had left him behind.
"They were wrong."
Above, far in the celestial realms, a flicker appeared in the sky—a red light, faint and wrong.
An elder paused in his meditation.
A priestess dropped her sacred candle.
The wind shifted.
The heavens stirred.
And the gods began to whisper of a name that had once been erased.
Lucien Vael.