The moon hung high, a silver crescent above the sect's quiet courtyards. Most disciples were asleep, their breaths lost to the stillness of night. Kaelen was not among them.
He slipped away from his quarters, moving with the practiced silence of someone who knew every loose stone and shadow. The Hall of Inquiry's warning still rang in his ears, but the memory of the fang burned hotter. The Archive's stolen glimpse would not leave him alone. He had to test it.
He chose the old quarry beyond the outer training yards, a hollow abandoned years ago after the sect shifted its stonework elsewhere. Jagged walls enclosed the space, shielding it from curious eyes. The perfect place to disappear.
Kaelen drew a deep breath, focusing inward. His serpent—weak and translucent to anyone else—coiled in the stillness of his Soul Palace. Yet within, something had changed.
The molt, sparked by the Archive's whisper, lingered.
He summoned the faint lines he had memorized from the fang, the twisted but precise flow of Qi. Not the clean, luminous paths of orthodox cultivation, but something darker, older.
The first attempt was agony. His veins burned as if scalded, every meridian straining against the alien rhythm. He nearly cut the flow off in panic—but forced himself to endure, teeth grinding until blood tasted iron on his tongue.
The serpent flickered, fading nearly to nothing.
Then—slowly—it adapted. The faint husk stirred, coils firming, scales sharpening in outline.
Kaelen exhaled. Relief flooded him, mingled with a dangerous exhilaration.
He tested the first technique.
A strike, deceptively simple: channeling Qi into his palm, then releasing it in a claw-shaped burst. On the surface, nothing special—until the aftershock rippled outward, distorting the air. The quarry wall shivered as if something unseen scraped its surface.
Stone dust cascaded down.
Kaelen froze. Not raw power—corrosion. The Qi gnawed faintly at the wall, lingering even after the strike ended. The fang had not only taught a technique—it had carried with it the nature of the beast.
This was no orthodox strike. It was meant to erode, to devour.
Kaelen's lips curved into a shadow of a smile.
He pushed further.
The second pattern was more complex, a coiling spiral that circled through his meridians before gathering in the serpent itself. The husk resisted, trembling, but the molt's echo carried it through.
The serpent's form shimmered, scales briefly solidifying before fracturing back into mist. Its eyes flashed with a hunger Kaelen had never seen before.
When he released the spiral, the air in front of him warped. A faint shimmer—like a serpent striking unseen—shot forward, carving a shallow line across stone as if the rock itself recoiled.
Kaelen's chest heaved. Sweat plastered his hair to his face, but exhilaration thrummed in every nerve. This was it. Proof that the Archive had been worth the risk.
But even as he steadied himself, a flicker of caution whispered through him. The elders had noticed a disturbance once. If he used this recklessly, he would be exposed. Worse—consumed.
He pressed his hand to the wall, feeling the faint corrosive mark his strike had left. It pulsed with lingering malice.
Power like this was not meant to exist in the open.
The quarry's silence shifted.
Kaelen's head snapped up, every sense on edge. Footsteps? A flicker of Qi? He couldn't be sure—but for a heartbeat, the shadows at the quarry's edge seemed thicker. Watching.
His serpent stirred uneasily.
He cut his Qi flow instantly, letting his body sag as though exhausted. If anyone was there, let them see only a weak disciple testing himself to his limits, nothing more.
The silence stretched. No figure revealed itself.
After a long moment, Kaelen turned away, sweat drying cold on his skin.
Whether or not someone had seen, one thing was certain: the more he delved into the fang's secrets, the sharper the risk.
But the taste of that power… he could no longer turn back.
Later, in his quarters, he sat in stillness. His serpent coiled faintly in his Soul Palace, eyes glowing dim with a hunger that matched his own.
Kaelen whispered into the silence:
"Let them praise Joren. Let them watch him climb. They will never see where I've gone until it's too late."
The serpent's eyes flared once, like embers caught in shadow.