The sky turned red.
The ground cracked.
The sounds of madness became a collective hymn of death.
The soldiers, who moments ago were proud and strong, full of arrogance that reached the sky,
were now nothing but human beasts tearing each other apart.
The sound of breaking bones mixed with the sound of flesh being ripped.
Blood flowed over the ground like endless red rain.
Ashen stood among them, emotionless.
His face was cold, untouched by time.
The feral aura around him spun like a storm of blood and whispers.
Every step he took made the earth melt, turning into red mud that pulsed faintly.
One of the twisted soldiers attacked him from behind. Ashen raised his hand without turning.
He didn't touch him—the air itself compressed, the feral intent boiled, and the soldier's blood exploded from every pore, turning into red vapor that vanished before the body hit the ground.
The young man and the "guard leader" stood in the middle of hell, their eyes widening with every passing moment.
Their soldiers, who had surrounded Ashen proudly moments earlier, were now creatures covered in blood, biting and tearing at their own flesh.
The screams were no longer human—a mix of wailing, growling, and insane laughter.
The young man shouted, his voice hoarse:
"What is happening, for heaven's sake?!"
But the guard leader knew.
His face was pale, his breath uneven, his eyes fixed on Ashen, who stood in the center of the massacre without moving.
A cold aura surrounded him—a deadly calm in a sea of slaughter.
The leader spoke in a voice filled with both fear and understanding:
"Retreat… this isn't human energy. This… has gone beyond existence itself."
But the young man gripped his blood-stained spear, veins bulging, blood cracking his face.
"Enough! I am the heir of the Celestial Rune Clan. I will not bow to some filth born from a massacre!"
He raised his spear, and strange blood runes began to form around him, creating a complex circle of ancient symbols.
The "Cursed Blood Spear" spell.
The air grew heavier, and in a single instant, all the runes exploded toward Ashen.
But before they reached him, everything changed.
The world turned crimson and silent—filled only with pure savagery.
The blood spear dissolved like salt in water.
When the guard leader realized things were turning for the worse, he quickly reached into his pocket and pulled out a small bottle—its glass black as night, holding a dark red liquid that shimmered faintly.
Without hesitation, he opened it and drank it all.
He screamed, shaking the ground. His blood began to boil in his veins.
Black veins spread across his skin, his chest glowed red, and an ancient blood rune burned across his body as if carved into him from the inside.
In seconds, half his armor shattered, his flesh cracked, revealing a body that was half-human, half-beast.
Red markings covered his arms, and his eyes turned into pits of frozen blood.
He roared, a sound no longer human, and charged at Ashen like an arrow, each step leaving a crater behind.
When he raised his fist, the air itself split open.
That punch could have torn ten men in half—
but it never reached.
Time froze.
Everything stopped.
The blood hanging in the air crystallized.
Even the screams went silent.
Ashen's eye opened fully—
the feral eye that saw the soul.
It wasn't human—it was a gate.
Inside it was a black sea without end.
In that moment, the guard leader saw what should never be seen.
The world flipped upside down. He found himself surrounded by countless bloody hands—tiny as fingers, dense as nightmares.
They came from the void, from shadows, from his own blood.
They began devouring something inside him.
Not his flesh—but his soul.
He saw himself cracking, heard his own existence scream, felt something transparent being torn slowly from within.
He tried to resist, unleashed his spells, but all his runes vanished.
The forbidden blood he drank only gave him a few extra seconds—to watch his death from the inside.
The shadows consumed everything.
Whispers filled the void:
"You are all nothing but flowing blood… returning to the origin…"
In one instant, it was over.
Time resumed.
The hands were gone.
The guard leader fell standing—silent, bloodless, lifeless.
His eyes were open, staring into nothingness.
His body had no wounds, but whoever looked deep into his eyes would see a black void—as if something inside him had been ripped out and left.
Ashen didn't move.
His blood-red eye slowly closed.
He whispered softly, barely audible:
"The soul… is just another kind of flesh."
Then silence.
The air trembled.
Even the twisted beasts stopped for a moment, as if realizing that something sacred had died.
The young man stood alone, his spear trembling in his hands.
He couldn't speak anymore.
His lips moved soundlessly, as if denying what he had witnessed.
Ashen turned to him slowly.
When he spoke, his voice echoed like it came from a deep abyss:
"Who are you?"
The young man stammered, his eyes struggling to grasp the half-transparent figure before him.
He asked in a broken voice:
"What… are you?"
Ashen smiled faintly, a cold smile that seemed to come not from him, but from something within him.
"What am I?... I want to know that myself."
He raised his hand, and a bloody chain formed in the air—his feral intent merging with his will.
But before he could move, he felt something strange—sharp, terrifying—like time itself recoiling in fear.
The air shifted.
Space bent.
Something was coming.
A deadly danger.
Even the blood in his veins trembled.
An ancient rune suddenly lit up in his consciousness—the mark left by the "Heavenly Dao Eye."
A grayish-red light burst from it, tearing the space around him apart.
The ground turned to ash, trees burned without fire, and the only sound was reality itself ripping open.
As Ashen reached toward the young man, the light wrapped around him, pulling him in with unstoppable force.
Space shattered like broken glass—and swallowed him.
He vanished.
Then—silence.
Only seconds passed before the young man heard slow footsteps behind him.
An old man emerged from the smoke, wearing a black robe streaked with strange red threads, as if woven from blood.
His face was pale, but his eyes shone with indescribable experience.
He spoke calmly, though his tone carried hidden unease:
"If I had arrived a little later, your fate would have been the same as theirs, young master."
The young man didn't answer. His eyes were fixed on the empty space where Ashen had vanished.
His hand trembled, sweat dripping from his forehead like rain.
After a heavy silence, the old man asked:
"What was it that you faced? His blood's scent fills the forest, but it's… different. Not human blood energy."
The young man whispered hoarsely, more to himself than to the old man:
"I don't know who he is… but he's the one who took the dagger from the altar a year ago. Back then, he was like an ant—weak, almost killed by a single spell. He vanished after stabbing the dagger into his chest… and now…"
He stopped, looking up at the sky, where faint threads of blood rain were falling. His voice trembled as he continued:
"Now, I don't know how he became this. He's a living nightmare. His power… isn't from this world. That dagger must be the key."
The old man looked around—the forest was gone. He cast a spell.
Everything had burned, melted, or turned into silent gray ash.
The ground had collapsed into a vast, lifeless pit, as if every soul had been ripped from existence.
The old man spoke quietly, his tone heavy:
"Strange. He's following the cultivation path, yet he's still only at the first rank."
"If this is his power while still at the Blood Trainee stage… what will happen when he surpasses it?"
The young man didn't answer.
He only clenched his fist tightly, blood dripping from his palm.
He whispered softly:
"We'll see, monster… we'll see."
The wind blew, carrying the echoes of the voices the place had devoured.
The blood on the ground stirred one last time, as if smiling.
Then, eternal silence.