Rumors did not spread loudly.
They moved like cracks—quiet at first, almost invisible, until the structure failed.
At the edge of the abandoned valley, three cultivators fled through broken terrain, breath ragged, robes torn by stone and panic. None of them spoke as they ran. Words felt dangerous. As if saying them aloud would make what they had witnessed real.
Only when the ruins lay far behind them did one finally stagger to a stop.
"We shouldn't have gone there," he said hoarsely.
No one disagreed.
The leader—the one who had ordered the attack—sat slumped against a rock, face pale, eyes unfocused. His arm hung uselessly at his side, veins dark and swollen beneath the skin.
His foundation was screaming.
Not shattered.
Not broken.
But… wrong.
Every attempt to circulate energy sent agony tearing through his meridians. The paths he had relied on for years rejected him now, turning inward like thorns.
"It doesn't make sense," the second cultivator muttered. "He didn't overpower us. He didn't suppress us. He just—"
He stopped.
None of them could finish the thought.
They had all felt it.
That brief moment when the world itself seemed to align against them.
Not Heaven.
Not pressure.
Something quieter.
Something more precise.
Back in the ruins, Alaric walked alone.
The path he had taken narrowed again, winding between fractured stone and half-buried structures that no longer remembered their purpose. Each step stirred faint reactions beneath the ground—subtle, delayed, as if the land itself were deciding how to respond to him.
He ignored it.
For now.
His breathing was steady, but his body ached. The encounter had been short, controlled, and deliberate—yet even that had pushed this unfinished foundation close to its limits.
Too much correction.
Too soon.
He slowed and sat on a broken slab of stone, letting his body settle. Sweat beaded along his temples as he closed his eyes, focusing inward.
The circulation was uneven.
Not unstable—but strained.
Alaric adjusted subtly, easing tension instead of forcing correction. The pain dulled to a manageable throb.
"Still too early," he murmured.
Power gained without understanding always demanded payment later.
He had learned that lesson once.
He would not repeat it.
As he rested, faint impressions brushed against his perception.
Not presences.
Echoes.
The land remembered movement. Conflict. Disruption.
The ruins were not truly dead.
They were asleep.
And something about him had stirred them.
Alaric opened his eyes.
Far above, clouds drifted slowly across the pale sky. Too slowly. Their movement felt delayed, as if the heavens themselves were processing something unexpected.
Heaven was not acting.
But it was no longer indifferent.
Elsewhere, beyond the valley, beyond the ruins—
A sect outpost received a report.
The messenger knelt, head bowed, voice trembling as he recounted what had happened. Failed circulation. Sudden collapse. A youth with no discernible cultivation who struck not with force, but with… understanding.
The elder listening frowned.
"From the Broken Foundation?" he asked.
"Yes."
Silence followed.
The elder waved the messenger away and turned toward the window, gaze distant.
"That place was sealed off for a reason," he muttered.
Heaven ignored ruins.
But Heaven also recorded anomalies.
And anomalies, once noticed, invited scrutiny.
Back in the ruins, Alaric stood.
He adjusted his posture, testing his balance. The pain had receded to a dull reminder—useful, but no longer obstructive.
Good.
He would move carefully from now on.
Not hiding.
But not announcing himself either.
The world had begun to whisper.
Soon, it would speak.
Alaric stepped forward, deeper into forgotten land, unaware that the first thread connecting him to the wider world had already been pulled.
And once pulled—
It could not be undone.