The upper ridges of the Duskwind Mountains were not meant for human travel. The atmosphere was thin, and wild pockets of Qi raw, volatile energy coiled like angry snakes between the peaks. It was precisely this natural chaos that offered Arin his best cover. The sect's formation arrays were focused on order; they hated the unpredictable.
Arin climbed with desperate efficiency, his Blood-Engraved resilience proving its worth. He could ignore the tearing exhaustion in his lungs and the sharp pain of clinging to jagged rock faces. The subtle strength in his limbs made every grab and leap precise. He navigated the mountain range not by following a path, but by aiming for the densest concentrations of wild, swirling Qi zones too unstable for Kaelen Dravos's elegant tracking compasses to penetrate reliably.
He was moving through a narrow pass, hugging the shadow of a monolithic spire, when he heard them below. Their voices were muffled, but the cold, high-pitched energy signature of Kaelen Dravos's Qi was unmistakable.
"The spiritual residue is strongest here, near the pass, but the Qi flow is disrupting the signal," Kaelen snapped, his voice tight with impatience. "He couldn't have gone far. He is a base mortal, he would be exhausted."
Arin flattened himself against the cold stone. He was less than a hundred yards away, hidden only by a sudden, churning pocket of green-hued Qi that momentarily confused the spiritual sensors. He could see Kaelen, surrounded by three other core disciples, his face a mask of escalating frustration.
The tracking compass in Kaelen's hand suddenly stabilised for a fleeting second, the needle swinging directly toward Arin's position.
He sees me.
Arin didn't panic. Panic was death. He didn't use his power to fight, but to run. He leveraged the slight, sudden burst of speed granted by his Blood-Engraved stage, pushing off the cliff face and scrambling vertically up a near-sheer slope, moving like a shadow. It wasn't a human movement; it was a desperate, fluid scramble fueled by a divine imprint.
The compass needle twitched violently, then spun again, overwhelmed by the sudden, focused movement and the interference of the volatile Qi.
"Did you see that?" one of the disciples questioned nervously.
Kaelen cursed under his breath, his expression hardening into pure anger. "A rockslide. Or an animal. The cursed whelp is playing tricks with our focus. He's lower down. We sweep the ravine." Kaelen's arrogance saved Arin; he refused to believe a mere labourer could move with such impossible grace.
Arin climbed until the sounds of the search party were merely faint echoes. He was safe, for now, his heart pounding a triumphant rhythm of sheer survival.
He reached the Triallands Entrance just as the first slivers of dawn stained the eastern sky. It was a desolate, terrifying place. The mountain here was scarred by an ancient cataclysm. A sheer cliff face was dominated by a gigantic, circular arrangement of black, cracked runes the Heaven's Gate Seal. The air was heavy, charged not with Qi, but with a thicker, more profound energy: the residual power of forgotten gods and shattered laws.
Arin felt a profound sense of awe and danger. He had found the deep well.
The crescent Divinity Mark on his collarbone was no longer merely throbbing; it was vibrating violently, a cold, focused pull. The seal was designed to keep the divine out, but Arin was already a walking fragment of the banished goddess.
He realised the mark wasn't just reacting to the seal; it was reacting to the fragment Seliora had mentioned a piece of her essence hidden within the complex energies of the Triallands ruins.
He crept toward the outer edge of the formations. He couldn't touch the seal itself; the volatile array was visibly warping the light, and even a breath near it could mean annihilation. But the Mark demanded it. It was like standing next to a magnet when his soul was iron.
Arin placed his hand on a massive, moss-covered boulder twenty feet from the primary seal a secondary warding stone that helped anchor the formation.
*NYETHRA…* The word echoed in his mind, the fragmented voice of Seliora, an instruction in the Divine Tongue. Reveal the hidden truth.
Arin didn't speak the word aloud, fearing its cost, but focused the intent deep within his core. The Mark responded, pulling on his meagre life force, which was instantly converted into a beacon for Seliora's scattered power.
The secondary warding stone suddenly felt alive. Arin realised the stone was not just a seal anchor; it was slowly, infinitesimally leaking minute traces of the ancient, residual divine power from the shattered realm within. This leaked energy was too dilute and chaotic for the Duskwind disciples to use, but it was pure, refined fuel for Seliora's fragment.
A crack in the wall, Arin realised. The shallow well feeds on the dregs of the deep one.
He took a risk that would have been unthinkable to any mortal cultivator. He didn't try to stop the drain; he actively encouraged the Mark. He pushed his consciousness into the crescent, making it an open conduit, and began to intentionally siphon the volatile, residual divine energy leaking from the formation's anchor stone.
The rush of power was explosive a torrent of raw, mythic energy that burned away the grime of his low-level cultivation. The Mark drank deeply, converting the chaotic force into stable, cold power that layered over his Blood-Engraved foundation, thickening the silver veins in his blood and strengthening his spiritual resilience. It was the purest form of advancement he had yet experienced, rapid, brutal, and terrifyingly efficient. He was essentially cultivating by violating the universe's most profound laws.
But the violation came with a price.
The warding stone beneath his hand abruptly cracked, a sharp, audible sound in the silence of the dawn. The massive, circular Heaven's Gate Seal in the distance flickered violently once, twice, then settled again.
Arin snatched his hand back, gasping, sweat turning instantly cold on his skin. He had taken too much, too fast. His act of siphoning had resonated through the complex formations, sending a tremor through the ancient system.
He glanced up at the sealed gate. It was silent again, but the spiritual air around it felt watchful. Somewhere, far away, in the deep halls of the Celestial Tribunal, or perhaps among the elders of the Duskwind Sect, an automated monitor or a patient watcher had just registered a momentary, impossible spike of Lunari energy near the forbidden Triallands.
Arin scrambled away from the cracked stone, finding a small, hidden fissure beneath a rock overhang twenty yards away. He was now hiding in the most dangerous possible place, fueled by stolen divine energy, and having just alerted the most powerful beings in the known world to his location.
The hunt was no longer just local. It was cosmic.