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Chapter 7 — Echoes in the Aftermath
The world was holding its breath.
A faint wind stirred the shattered trees, carrying with it the acrid tang of scorched earth and something far less natural—like the cold aftertaste of infinity. Where once a training ground stretched in neat lines and ordered formations, now only a crater remained. It was shallow but wide, its edges blackened as though reality itself had been peeled back and burnt.
Disciples stood at the periphery, their faces pale, whispering as if speaking too loudly might awaken whatever had just passed through. The air was unnaturally clear, but it shimmered faintly, like heat haze on stone. Birds did not sing. Even the insects were silent.
Kael stood at the center, his clothes torn and his hands still trembling. The fragment pulsed faintly beneath his robes—warm against his chest. He wasn't sure if anyone else could hear it, that low, arrhythmic hum that seemed to vibrate through his bones rather than his ears.
He hadn't done this. Not fully. But everyone had seen.
A cluster of outer elders arrived first, robes billowing as they descended. They exchanged curt gestures, forming an invisible perimeter around the crater. Moments later, the inner sect banners unfurled overhead, and figures far above his station began to gather.
Kael lowered his gaze. The Nexus fragment's heartbeat quickened.
From above, the Sect's Grand Pavilion loomed—its silhouette carved against the sky like a blade. The summons would come. He knew it before anyone spoke.
---
The path back to the sect was too quiet.
Disciples parted as Kael passed, some with reverence, others with unease. He caught fragments of their murmurs:
"…never seen energy like that…"
"…how is he still standing?"
"…if it wasn't him, then what was it?"
His every step felt heavier, as if the world had shifted a fraction to the side and only he noticed.
By the time he reached the outer courtyard of the Grand Hall, the elders were already assembled. Incense burned in thick, lazy coils, but it did nothing to mask the tension. At the far end of the hall, beneath the towering statue of the Sect Founder, a semicircle of seats awaited him.
Each was occupied.
Elder Yao, all sharp lines and colder eyes, tapped his staff once against the floor as Kael entered. Elder Mei leaned forward with the languid grace of a serpent, her smile too patient to be kind. Sect Leader Han sat at the center, hands folded, gaze inscrutable.
"Kael," Han said, voice carrying without force. "Step forward."
He obeyed.
"Do you understand why you stand here?"
"Yes, Sect Leader," he said. His voice didn't waver, but his pulse thundered beneath his skin.
Mei's voice slid through the silence. "A blast strong enough to uproot half the training ground. Witnesses say you were at its center. And yet here you are—alive, untouched. Curious, isn't it?"
Kael kept his gaze low. "I don't fully understand what happened, Elder Mei. I was meditating. Then there was… something. A pulse."
Yao's staff struck the floor again, louder. "You expect us to believe you felt a pulse and then this happened? Are you toying with powers you don't comprehend, boy?"
Before he could respond, another voice entered—a smooth, amused tenor. Elder Qian, whose sect faction always lurked between loyalty and ambition. "Let us not rush to conclusions, Yao. Perhaps the boy is merely… blessed."
Kael's head snapped up before he could stop himself. The glint in Qian's eyes told him the elder noticed.
"Blessed?" Mei's voice was silk over steel. "Or harboring something forbidden?"
The hall's air thickened. Cultivation auras pressed in subtly, like waves against the shore. Kael straightened his spine despite the weight. He could feel the fragment stir within him, as if listening.
Sect Leader Han raised a hand, and the pressure eased. "Enough. This is not a witch hunt. Not yet. We will hear him properly."
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The interrogation began.
Not as a shouting match, but as a dance. Elders asked questions not to seek truth, but to test. To push. Some were sharp, meant to pierce inconsistencies. Others were deliberately vague, baiting him to reveal more than he intended.
Yao leaned forward. "Did you acquire any object recently? Anything strange?"
"No," Kael said. His throat was dry.
Mei circled around, voice deceptively soft. "Power does not simply manifest from nothing. Not in someone like you. You are… talented, perhaps, but ordinary. And yet this blast. This crater. This silence afterward." Her eyes narrowed. "Do you hear anything even now?"
The question was too close.
Kael forced a frown. "Just the echoes of what happened."
Qian chuckled low. "Hm. Interesting choice of words."
One by one, the elders shifted from questioning to posturing. Mei implied negligence. Yao pressed for discipline. Qian hinted at hidden potential. Others weighed in—some demanding punishment, others urging caution, and a few sensing opportunity.
Through it all, Han remained silent, observing.
Then Elder Rui spoke up, quiet but piercing. "I was there," she said. "At the edge of the grounds. I saw… something in the air. Before the blast. Like a fracture in glass. It centered on him."
Murmurs rippled.
Han finally stirred. "This is serious." His gaze pinned Kael like a nail through silk. "Whatever happened, we cannot afford ignorance. If this was an external attack, we must find the source. If it came from within…" He let the words hang like a blade. "…then we must understand why."
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Outside, thunder cracked faintly, though the skies were clear. The Nexus fragment pulsed once, deep and resonant. Kael nearly flinched. No one else reacted.
"Enough for now," Han decided. "We will continue this."
But Yao's voice cut through. "Sect Leader, with respect—if he is hiding something, delay could prove disastrous."
Qian smirked. "Unless, of course, what he's hiding could be… useful."
The factions stirred again. Accusations masked as suggestions. Questions as weapons. The hall shifted like a living thing.
And through it all, Kael stood very still, feeling the Nexus fragment thrumming beneath his ribs like a second heart.
He had no idea how long he could keep it secret.
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---
The silence that followed Han's words was brittle. Every elder wore a different mask—suspicion, calculation, ambition—but they all stared at Kael as if he were a puzzle with a missing piece.
Then Yao broke it. "If we let him walk out without answers, we invite disaster." His staff struck the ground again, the crack echoing through the hall. "The sect has faced calamity before from hidden seeds. I will not see it repeated."
Mei's voice was smooth, but her eyes glinted. "And if the seed grows into something… extraordinary? Would you crush it out of fear?"
"You speak like a schemer, Mei," Yao snapped.
"And you like a hammer," she replied, her smile not faltering.
Sect Leader Han exhaled slowly. "Enough." But his voice no longer softened the room. The factions were stirring too deeply now, threads pulled taut.
Kael stood at the center of their storm. He could feel the fragment pulsing in rhythm with their voices, feeding on tension. It wasn't a sound anymore. It was a pressure behind his eyes, a weight beneath his ribs.
Qian leaned back lazily, watching Kael the way a cat watches something it might pounce on later. "Perhaps a demonstration is in order," he said, too casually.
Kael's blood ran cold.
Mei tilted her head. "A test?"
"Nothing extreme," Qian continued, feigning innocence. "We simply place him in a controlled array and observe how his qi reacts. If he truly has nothing to hide, the truth will reveal itself."
The elders murmured. The idea was dangerous—but also tantalizing.
Yao seized it. "Yes. Let the array strip away deceit. If he's touched something foreign, the formation will expose it."
Han hesitated. "This could destabilize him further if something is inside him."
Mei's smile sharpened. "Then we'll finally know."
Kael wanted to speak—to protest, to explain—but the words caught in his throat. The fragment pulsed harder. It was no longer warm; it was cold, and its rhythm was not his own.
The elders rose. The formation hall lay beneath the Grand Pavilion, a place of glowing sigils and carefully inscribed stone. As they led him there, disciples followed like a growing tide, whispers rippling through the sect.
By the time they reached the circular chamber, the air itself felt charged. Intricate lines carved into the floor pulsed faint blue, waiting to be fed.
"Step into the center," Han ordered. His voice was calm, but his eyes were unreadable.
Kael obeyed.
The moment his feet crossed the innermost circle, the sigils flared. Light climbed the walls like vines of fire. Elders took their positions at cardinal points, channeling their qi into the array.
The pressure built slowly, like a tightening fist.
Kael tried to steady his breathing, but the fragment stirred violently. The hum became a roar only he could hear. His veins felt threaded with ice. His heart skipped, then matched the fragment's alien rhythm.
Mei's voice cut through. "Increase the flow."
Light intensified. Kael's vision blurred at the edges. The array was meant to draw out any foreign presence—but what lay inside him wasn't something it could contain.
And then it happened.
A single point of light appeared above his chest—not bright, not loud. Just a pinpoint. But it wasn't light in the ordinary sense. It was like a hole in the world, a speck where reality bent inward. The air warped around it, sound thinned.
Elder Rui gasped. "There—do you see it?"
Yao's face hardened. "Something is there."
Mei's smile faltered, replaced by genuine intrigue.
The point expanded, slow and soundless, until the Nexus fragment's silhouette bled through Kael's robes like an afterimage.
Kael's mind slipped.
---
He was somewhere else.
Not a room. Not a hall. A vast, endless plane of shifting geometry—lines that didn't obey Euclidean logic, planes folding into themselves like reflections in a shattered mirror.
The Nexus hung above him. No longer a fragment, but an impossible structure. A sphere and a spiral and a void, all at once. Its presence was not warm, nor cold—it was indifferent, like a law of the universe observing a mayfly.
Kael felt himself unmade and reassembled between heartbeats.
> "You are seen."
The voice wasn't sound. It was a pressure in his thoughts, a resonance in his bones.
> "The veil thins. They reach for what is not theirs."
Images crashed into his mind—elders as shadows clawing at the edges of infinity, the array cracking like glass under a tidal wave, something vast turning its gaze.
> "Will you deny? Or awaken?"
Kael's breath caught. He didn't know how to answer.
The plane folded.
---
He fell back into his body with a gasp.
The array was fracturing. The sigils were flickering wildly, some shattering like breaking mirrors. Elders staggered, faces pale. Yao shouted commands, Mei laughed in exhilaration, Qian's eyes glittered like a predator's.
"What is this?" Yao roared.
Han's aura burst outward, holding the collapsing array together by sheer force. "Seal it—NOW!"
But it was too late.
The point of light above Kael's chest expanded. Lines of impossible geometry sketched themselves into the air. The walls groaned as if something massive pressed from the other side.
And for a heartbeat, everyone in the room heard it—the Nexus's pulse.
Kael's body was the anchor.
Han moved, faster than Kael could track. The Sect Leader's palm struck the air before Kael's chest, forming a sigil seal. "Contain it!" he barked.
The light buckled. The sigils dimmed. The chamber quaked.
And then—
BOOM.
The floor cracked in a perfect spiral beneath Kael. Wind roared inward, not outward. Every torch guttered.
Kael's eyes snapped open fully, pupils dilated like a predator's.
For a heartbeat, something else looked out through them.
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Above the sect, thunder split the cloudless sky. The Nexus pulse echoed through every courtyard like the tolling of some distant, colossal bell.
Elders turned toward Kael. Some with fear. Some with awe. Some with hunger.
The sigil seal shuddered. Han gritted his teeth, pouring his qi into the barrier.
"Something is coming through," Elder Rui whispered.
Kael felt the fragment burning against his chest. He could feel its will pressing against his own.
And then, from somewhere far beyond the sect walls, a second pulse answered.
The air grew colder.
Han's face drained of color. "That's… not from him."
Before anyone could move—
The outer walls exploded.
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[End of Chapter 7 — Echoes in the Aftermath]
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