The night the Azure Sky Sect fell, the heavens themselves trembled. What had been one of the most revered sects beneath the Radiant Empire's banner was reduced to ash and silence in a single evening. Disciples were slaughtered, elders torn apart, and the very Sect Lord's final scream was carried on the wind as nothing more than smoke.
But history did not end there.
The death of a sect was a wound. The death of an empire's sword was a calamity.
From the ruins, whispers spread. From whispers, fear. From fear, chaos.
The Ebonflame Continent staggered beneath the weight of a name it had not spoken in centuries—
Aezreal.
The First Year
The Radiant Empire moved swiftly. Envoys and assassins were dispatched, armies gathered at borders, banners unfurled to remind the continent of its "divine supremacy." Yet not one blade ever touched its target. Assassins vanished in shadow. Armies broke themselves on phantom storms. The empire's rage grew, but so too did its hesitation.
In taverns, stories spread: a lone figure standing amidst flame and ruin, a scythe devouring souls, a beast of shadow howling at the heavens. He was not spoken of as a man. He was a calamity in mortal form.
The Azure Sky Sect's ashes had become the soil where legends took root.
The Second and Third Years
The other empires stirred.
The Frozen Hallow Empire to the north sent their frost-clad cultivators to "test the darkness." Not one returned. Their silence was louder than a thousand funerals.
The Emberfang Dominion of the south rejoiced. Rivals broken meant opportunities seized, and their volcano-forged warriors carved deeper into contested lands.
The Verdant Myriad Dynasty cloaked itself in secrecy, its rivers whispering strange omens. They did not march, but their forests stirred with ancient wards.
And so, balance shifted. Where once four empires had held each other in check, a fifth shadow now towered unseen, unbound, unspoken.
The Radiant Empire raged, yet could not strike. The others watched, yet dared not move too close.
The Fourth and Fifth Years
The name Aezreal was no longer whispered. It was feared aloud. Songs of warlords and cultivators no longer carried glory, but ended with warnings: Do not seek the shadow with the scythe.
Children learned the tale as bedtime horror. Elders traced his name with trembling hands. And the sects? They closed their gates, fortresses ringing with wards, disciples drilled not for pride but for survival.
And through it all, one truth spread like wildfire:
He is not rising. He has already risen.
The Silent Figure
While the world burned with rumor, Aezreal moved in silence.
In hidden valleys, mountains cracked beneath his cultivation. Seas raged as his aura spilled into them. Tribulations descended—storms of heavenly wrath, divine lightning that could reduce entire cities to dust—but none could break him. Each thunderclap became fuel. Each strike became marrow in his bones.
Nyx, his companion, grew alongside him. From a newborn terror, the beast stretched its wings wider than mountain ranges, its roar echoing across entire empires. With every battle, every hunt, its form refined—becoming not merely his companion, but the herald of his dominion.
And his scythe… once crimson, now burned with black flame, etched in shifting runes that no mortal tongue could name. It had feasted upon sects, upon cultivators, upon every assassin fool enough to wander near. It was no longer a weapon. It was the hymn of extinction itself.
The Present
Five years passed.
Where once stood a cultivator clawing his way upward, now stood a sovereign at the pinnacle of the Tribulation Realm, his power swelling, his body on the very brink of breaking through into a realm untouched by mortal breath.
The skies darkened when he breathed. The earth quaked when he walked. And when he stood still, all the world seemed to hold its breath, waiting, fearing, dreading the step he had yet to take.
It was then that the System's voice stirred once more—five years of silence broken in a single chime.
> [Sign-In Complete – Five-Year Mark]
Primary Reward: Nyx, Primordial Chaos Companion (Awakened)
Secondary Reward: Blood Resonance Perfected – Weapon, beast, and master bound in eternal cycle.
[Next Sign-In Location Revealed]
Radiant Empire – Capital of Celestara.
The words echoed, not only within his mind, but across the heavens themselves. For in that instant, thunder rolled over the continent, lightning tore across clear skies, and cultivators everywhere shuddered without reason.
The silence was over.
Aezreal opened his eyes. The scythe rested against his shoulder, its runes pulsing in time with Nyx's heartbeat, in time with his own. He gazed eastward, toward the Radiant Empire's glittering capital, and the faintest shadow of a smile touched his lips.
"Five years," he murmured, voice low, heavy, unshakable. "Let them prepare their armies. Let them polish their crowns. The throne of heaven belongs to no empire."
Nyx stirred, wings spreading wide enough to tear the clouds.
"The time has come."
And with that, the shadow moved.