The Halo of Life had been only the first hinge of fate. When the last incense died and the priests folded their hands, courtiers drifted back into corridors and private business. But for the eight chosen children, the Empire had another rite – one that was not for show, not for market, but for the bone-and-iron of power itself.
Only a narrow company could pass beyond that veil: the Emperor, the Imperial Preceptor, the seven founders who commanded the great sects, and the eight marked children. No general, no minister, no curious noble could step inside. The key belonged to one whose title was older than most histories – Nehmis, Master of Time and Space. He waited at the threshold, hood drawn low, flanked by five elders who had sworn to him iron loyalty. Their voices rose in a steady chant, an ancient pattern so precise that the air itself seemed to thicken. The rift Nehmis produced was not meant to stay; if the chant broke for even a single breath, the portal would snap closed – and could not be opened again for three months. That was the pact. That was the risk.
Nehmis lifted his staff. The air folded like black silk. A seam opened in the world – not a blaze but a wound in the sky. One by one they stepped through: robed founders whose breaths could bend mountains, high priests heavy with ritual incense, the children with small shoulders set against a destiny. Kiaria followed, quiet as a shadow. The portal sealed behind them with a sound like a tomb closing.
They emerged into a chamber carved from the absence of light. The walls were condensed dark matter: flat black planes that drank torchlight and returned only a dim, hungry glow. Arrays were etched deep into the floor, runes that pulsed faintly like old bruises. Racks of weapons lined the walls – spears, halberds, banners folded and quiet – relics that still hummed with ancient rage. The air tasted of iron and old oaths.
At the chamber's center a husk lay, an orb sealed beneath a crust of stone. It seemed less an object than a thing that had been waiting for a very long time. It drew the eye and refused explanation.
The founders assembled like a court of weather. Hooded cloaks masked all but one; black smoke curled from collars, hiding faces and age. They were statues of authority – vast, insolent. Every movement suggested a history of being obeyed. Only Didhian, Founder of the Enlightenment Sect, stood unhooded, face open, eyes that had the soft cruelty of a man who had outlived most ends.
Nehmis did not linger. His five attendants chanted without pause, breathless cadence threading the portal's existence like a drawn bow. The Master's staff tapped thrice, a measured sound. He spoke once, grave and formal. "Remember – the chant must not break. The portal is held by duty; step lightly."
The Preceptor's voice answered from the shadowed ranks, flat as order: "Bring forth the child."
Kiaria stepped forward. His frame was small amid the cavernous dark, but his shoulders did not slump. He moved as if used to carrying something heavier than his years. He lifted his palm and struck the orb.
Crack.
The outer shell fractured. Dust fell like the sigh of old things. Beneath, a blue-white crystal in heart shape gleamed faintly, its light like drowned stars.
"Infuse your energy," the Preceptor ordered.
Kiaria pressed his hand. For a breath nothing happened. A founder's lips curled. The heavy air filled with the thin scent of contempt.
"One step toward farce," hissed a voice from beneath a hood. "They raise a child to be a beacon and are given only smoke."
Laughter answered the barb – a group sound, low and sharp, meant to embarrass and break the small thing before them. Mockery slid across the chamber like a blade.
The boy stood unmoved. The mockery did not rouse him into reaction; his silence was a kind of answer, a blankness that stung more than any argument. Where the founders expected collapse, there was only stillness.
Didhian moved then, measured and fierce. "Enough," he said, and the single word stopped the chamber like a struck drum. His voice did not plead or cajole; it demanded. He looked at the cloaked elders as if inspecting old armor. "You would be judges before trial. Give him another chance."
The mockers bristled. "Another chance?" one spat. "We stand on the threshold of the Empire's promise, and you ask us to indulge childish superstition?"
Didhian's reply was a smile that cut. "You would trade sight for vanity. Stand down and watch with your eyes open." He turned to Kiaria with an odd tilt of warmth and command. "Again, child."
Kiaria closed his eyes, focusing on heartbeat, not steady, not in rush, but familiar. At his fingertip a mote of pale, concentrated light formed – a trembling golden brilliance, so small it seemed impossible. He pressed it into the crystal heart. The chamber at first held its breath in suspicion.
Then the blue heart answered. A low vibration of heartbeat rolled through the air like the tightening of a drumskin. Golden waves radiated outward, striking the compact dark matter with tiny explosions of light. The crystal swallowed the light; pressure bloomed inside it until restraint broke.
BOOOOM.
The orb shattered in a bloom of shards and radiance. A geyser of golden luminance swept the hall, painting runes in new fire and sending echoes across the lined weapons. For a heartbeat every hooded mouth was open. Shame, for once, touched pride.
Didhian's laugh was short and bright. "See now," he said, voice ringing. "That which you scorned is not mere rumor. Even dark matter yields to a true spark."
The hooded founders stiffened, drawstrings of dignity pulled taut. One by one they smoothed their cloaks, drawing hoods closer as if dignity might seal over wounded vanity. But time had little patience with vanity in this place. The Lady Founder – pale, deliberate – lifted a hand and the chamber tightened as at the slow pulling of a string.
"It is not enough," she said. She was known for her ruthless actions. Her voice was likewise soft, but it carried winter in it. "Bring forth the Zhar Do Globe."
A word dropped like a weight. The chanting of Nehmis' five quickened; the portal's seam shivered. Someone breathed too sharply. Even the cloaked faces shifted.
"Senior Sister…" a Founder with gentle voice whispered, the question thin, "the Globe–its weight–many have not returned, are you prepared to risk more than spectacle?"
The Lady Founder did not meet his eye. With a small movement she produced a ring of dim light; it opened, and from her spacial ring the Zhar Do Globe unfolded into the air.
The Globe was not casually dangerous. It was infamous. Footnotes of history were stained with the names of those who had reached for it and been broken. Its surface swirled with colors that had no name; the light it gave was not kind. Arrays bent away from it. The dark matter walls drew inward as if to hide. The chamber's very breath altered.
Nehmis' chant moved into keener threadwork. The five loyal elders held the portal like a broken promise; were they to falter, the gateway would close and the world outside would carry on with no record of what had been attempted. That knowledge made every eye taut.
The Lady Founder turned her gaze to Kiaria. "Child," she said, voice rough, barely managed to gentle for not shock him, "a single drop. Let your blood speak."
Kiaria obeyed. He pricked his finger; a bead of red fell against the Globe's skin.
The effect was immediate and terrible. The Globe exploded a ring of rainbow light – a crown that arced across the chamber before dissolving into mist. The Five-Elemental Bloodline revealed itself. The scar on Kiaria's forehead writhed, greedy and fierce, but the Globe resisted. Its divine essence pushed back like ocean against cliff; two currents met and braided.
Then the sight came: two currents braided and would not be unbraided. One was a white stream, crystalline and bright. The other was a viscous black, deep as the void. Heavenly Path and Demonic Path intertwined.
Breath stopped. The Founders' faces betrayed them; priest's lips silently moved in prayers older than any decree. Nothing in the halls of doctrine had described such braiding; it was a violation of neat scripture.
And then – impossibly, the Globe folded inward, turned into fluid and dove into Kiaria's scar. Light plunged. A seal flared upon the boy's back palm of left hand: an intricate lattice of runes, terrible in their beauty. It shimmered and faded, leaving a faint map on skin.
Kiaria collapsed.
He would not open his eyes for seven days and nine hours.
Whispers broke into fear. "No one survives the Globe." One voice said it as a fact rather than a prayer. The Emperor's face was slate; he watched with the calm cruelty of a man who measures advantage like tax. The Preceptor's features closed into unreadable stone. Nehmis' five choristers did not falter, but their faces were paler. The portal hummed – fragile, dependent on endless chant.
Within Kiaria's inner sea of consciousness, the Globe's essence had not vanished but changed shape: a pale moon hung over still waters, fragments drifting into floating lands. The landscape was beautiful and strange, but outwardly his cultivation remained curbed – something waited behind a muzzle no onlooker could ever name.
On the eighth day the boy's eyelids moved. He opened his eyes into the Preceptor's measured face and the palace's pale light beyond.
They returned to the capital in a procession that tasted of ceremony and thin restraint. The palace tightened protections as if sensing a new flaring on history's seam: frescoes hid counter-arrays, pillars bore sigils that would flare if a gaze lingered too long. At the great dais the Seven Kings – rulers of the great sects – sat in rank. Beside them, among the eight chosen, stood the lone girl who bore the title of princess, already regal in the way one granted power looks regal.
When the Emperor entered the hall the room bowed like a field. Foreheads touched stone. The chosen knelt and stepped forward in ordered salute, Kiaria among them.
When silence grew unbearable, the Emperor's voice cut it apart. "From this day forth, Kiaria is the Chief Disciple."
Attendants brought a robe woven with divine thread and, wrapped beside it, the other relic – the Royal Sealed Divine Sword. It had been forged in a specialized chamber and sealed there after finishing; no living hand had managed to lift it since. Across the realm it was known by hush and half-cursing names: immovable, unwieldy. It would not be drawn until the sword itself recognized its bearer.
The Emperor fixed Kiaria with a gaze that weighed futures. "Take it," he said, voice iced with mockery and appetite. "And know: that sword has refused every hand since its completion. It will not move for the strong, nor bend for the proud. If you are lucky enough, boy… you will change its story. You will be the hand it recognizes."
Silence pressed down like a stone. Whispers spread like smoke – wonder, dread, calculation. The Preceptor's silence weighed most of all: not assent, not rebuke, but a ledger closed with careful fingers.
The Emperor's voice cut the marble hush. It was not kind. It did not need to be.
"All your seniors – the Seven Kings and the Princess – have tried. They have failed, been harmed, and some barely survived the attempt," he said, each word slow as verdict. "If you have the courage to face it, you are worthy to be taken. If not, I will make sure your body becomes chunks without beat."
The hall inhaled at that cruelty. Some stiffened, others lowered their eyes. The Preceptor's face did not move. A hush fell so deep it weighed on the lungs. Ministers dared not raise their heads. Nobles clenched trembling hands.
Glory was proclaimed to the people that day. Yet those who had stood in the hidden chamber knew what lingered beneath the decree.
Heavenly and Demonic both stirred within the child.
Glory and danger now wore the same face.