Far from the sect's roaring fury, the forgotten lands slumbered in silence.
Amidst shattered stone and ancient roots, Aezrael stood upon the carcass of a fallen beast, his scythe dripping with more than blood. The air around him trembled with the echo of the massacre he had wrought days before.
He tilted his head, listening. Beyond the howling winds, he could hear it—the faint stirrings of armies moving, qi flowing like rivers across distant peaks. The sect was coming.
A cruel smile curved his lips.
"Good… let them march. Their numbers will only feed the soil with more blood."
His form was changing again. From the cocoon of his rebirth, power still lingered, reshaping his body piece by piece. His wings had grown darker, etched with lines that pulsed like molten veins. His claws lengthened, sharper than steel, and his eyes burned brighter, as though starlight itself had been twisted into wrath.
He descended deeper into the ruins, where ancient stone temples rose half-buried under moss and shadow. Strange glyphs glowed faintly on the walls, whispering in a language lost to time. Aezrael's scythe resonated, vibrating like a beast smelling its ancestral home.
At the heart of the ruins, he found it—
An altar of black stone, cracked yet still pulsing faintly with crimson light. Chains of rusted gold hung from it, as if it once bound something titanic. The air around it reeked of death and eternity.
Aezrael placed a clawed hand on the stone. For a moment, he froze. Then—
Boom.
A flood of memories not his own surged into him: visions of endless wars, blood rivers spanning continents, a forgotten age where beings like him carved heaven itself into ruin.
His wings trembled with ecstasy.
"So this is my legacy… chaos born not to serve, but to reign."
The crimson light seeped into him, merging with his veins, deepening the glow of his golden-red eyes.
Above, thunder rolled.
The Azure Sky Sect marched.
The predator waited.