The night was a cage of obsidian, and Jai was its only prisoner.
He didn't sleep; he existed in a state of suffocating paralysis, his mind a chaotic battlefield where the past and future collided. Every time his eyelids flickered shut, the darkness of his room transformed into the blinding, frozen white of that ancient battlefield. He saw the severing of the arm again—the wet, sickening thud of flesh hitting the ice. He felt the phantom spray of golden blood—the ichor of a god—burning his skin like concentrated acid.
Was he the butcher? Or was he the meat? These thoughts were like jagged shards of glass, grinding against his sanity until the sky began to bleed the gray, sickly light of dawn. Jai sat up, his silk sheets tangled around his legs like a shroud. He felt a strange, cold weight in his chest, as if his soul were being slowly replaced by something heavy, ancient, and deeply malevolent.
Finally, exhaustion won for a brief hour, but it was a hollow victory. A sharp, rhythmic pounding on his door dragged him back to the waking world before he could find any real peace.
"Come in, Mother," Jai rasped, his throat feeling like he'd swallowed a handful of dry sand. He assumed it was Mable; she was the only one in this cursed house who dared enter his sanctuary without a formal, groveling summons.
The door creaked open on silver hinges, but the scent was all wrong. It wasn't the expensive, cloying lily-perfume of his mother; it was the sharp, bitter smell of cheap lye and unwashed sweat. A maid with a pathetic Tier-10 cultivation—a level of power barely sufficient to light a candle or scrub a floor without collapsing—shuffled in, holding a silver tray.
Jai's eyes snapped open, glowing with a sudden, unearned ferocity that startled even him. "Why the fuck did you bring the coffee? Where is my mother?"
The maid flinched, her hands trembling so violently that the fine china rattled against the tray like chattering teeth. "S-sorry, young master Jai. Madam Mable is personally overseeing the preparation of the celebratory breakfast in the lower kitchens. She told me to bring this to you immediately... she said you needed to be alert for the ceremony."
Jai's temper, frayed to a single, glowing thread by the lack of sleep and the haunting ghosts of his dreams, snapped like a dry twig under a boot.
"Put the fucking coffee on the table and get the hell out of my sight before I find a reason to have your tongue pulled out of your throat and fed to the hounds."
The maid didn't wait for a second warning. She scurried forward, placed the tray with a shaky hand that spilled a few drops of the dark liquid, and bolted from the room as if the devil himself were at her heels.
As she closed the door, her fear curdled into a dark, silent resentment. Arrogant little shit, she thought, her eyes narrowing as she hurried down the hall, her heart still hammering. I hope the heavens spit on you during the ceremony. It would be a beautiful, glorious day if you awakened nothing—just like that beggar bitch Rena. Let's see how much you talk then, you worthless, golden-haired brat.
Jai ignored her existence entirely. He walked to the window, the cold stone floor biting at his bare feet. He sipped the bitter, scorching brew, staring out at the estate's gardens.
Below, rows of Blue Lilies and vibrant Sunflowers swayed in the biting morning breeze.
He was the one who had designed this sanctuary, the only person in the Chenwongo clan who spent hours tending the soil with his own hands, shunning the help of the "lesser" servants. It was the only place where the screaming in his head went quiet. He watched the flowers for over an hour, lost in the stillness of the petals, unaware that his family's patience was rotting away downstairs.
In the grand dining hall, the atmosphere was thick with a tension that felt like a physical weight. The walls were lined with the portraits of ancestors who looked down with cold, judging eyes.
Edward Chenwongo sat at the head of the long obsidian table, his fingers tapping rhythmically on the surface—a sign he was close to a violent outburst. Beside him sat James's father, a man whose face was a mask of similarly suppressed rage.
Both men were Tier-3 cultivators, nearing eighty years of age, yet their skin was smooth and their muscles taught.
They had used the clan's secret longevity techniques and consumed thousands of spirit stones to maintain their youth, but their souls were stagnant. They were big fish in a small pond, clinging to the glory of their ancestors while the real world passed them by.
"Why the hell isn't he down yet?" Edward growled, his voice vibrating with the low-frequency hum of his power.
Mable looked at the men, her expression calm but firm. "The boy is exhausted, Edward. He and James pushed themselves to the limit for the graduation. This is his day. Let him have his moment of rest before the world tries to tear him apart."
She didn't wait for a rebuttal. She knew Edward's temper was a wildfire, but she also knew how to dampen it. She took a tray of specially prepared spirit-grain porridge and ascended the stairs herself. When she opened Jai's door, she found him standing by the window.
His golden hair moved slowly in the cold air, and for a fleeting, tragic second, he was smiling—a soft, genuine expression.
"Jai," she called out softly.
The transformation was sickeningly fast. The smile vanished, replaced by a mask of cold, aristocratic indifference. He turned, his blue eyes as sharp as daggers. "What is it, Mother?"
"The maid said you were being difficult," Mable said, setting the food down on his desk. "I brought your breakfast myself. I want my son healthy and strong for the Synod. Your father is already losing his mind downstairs."
Jai looked at the food with a visceral disgust. "I have no interest in eating. I told the help that. But you still insist on shoving this down my throat, as if food can fix what's wrong with this family."
"Because I care about your success, Jai! Don't be a brat today of all days. Do you want to end up like Rena? Do you want to be the shadow in the corner that everyone steps on?"
Jai's jaw tightened. "I understood your concern the first ten times, Mother. Now, please... leave the room. I want some peace before the circus begins."
Mable's eyes flashed with a momentary hurt, but she knew his temper was a mirror of her own. She turned and left without another word, the rustle of her silk dress sounding like a warning.
Left alone, Jai stared at his hands. He thought about the Eighteen Powers and the Ten Tiers. In Aetheleon, the hierarchy was the only law.
The eighteen powers are :"Fire, Water, Earth, Metal, Wood, Wind, Lightning, Ice, Light, Shadow, Spirit, Poison, Blood, Space, Time, Gravity, Destruction, Creation."
Tiers 10 to 3: The "Mortals." Even at Tier 3, his parents were essentially higher-class meat. to God Seekers.
Tiers 2 to 1: The God-Seekers. These were the monsters.
His grandmother, Beatrice, was a Tier-2 master. She was over six hundred years old, a veteran of a hundred bloody wars, and she was still more beautiful and terrifying than her own daughter, the broken and powerless Rena.
Jai knew the secret of his parents' power. They hadn't earned it through the "Pure Will" he craved. They had inherited powerful artifacts—relics of the dead—to artificially boost their dantians.
I don't want their hollow, hand-me-down glory, Jai thought, his fist clenching. he also thinks :"what power am i going to awaken".
The Chenwongo bloodline was supposedly the direct lineage of the Emperor Dominatrix, the legendary warrior-queen who built the Human Kingdom. The elders whispered that Jai was her reincarnation, a miracle born to lead them back to the apex of the world. But Jai didn't believe in miracles. He believed in the cold, hard weight of a sword and the smell of blood on the wind.
"Get ready," Edward's voice boomed from the hallway an hour later. "We go to the Synod of the Veil to seek the Goddess's favor."
The Synod veil is built inside of the palace where they currenly living.
The Synod was not just a temple; it was a cathedral of arrogance. Built from polished white marble that seemed to glow with its own internal light, the air was saturated with a hallucinogenic incense that made the world feel blurry, distant, and holy.
It was a gate to the divine, a place where the human world touched the heavens, but to Jai, it felt like a tomb.
In the center stood the statue of the Emperor Dominatrix. She was beautiful, her form draped in a white dress that seemed to flow like water, but her face was hidden behind a thick, sculpted veil of stone.
Jai knelt alongside his parents. The silence was absolute, save for the crackling of the soul-incense.
Suddenly, the room erupted.
A pillar of blinding, golden light descended from the vaulted ceiling, slamming into Jai's head with the force of a falling mountain. His parents gasped, their faces lighting up with a manic, cult-like joy. "A blessing!" Edward whispered, his voice cracking with greed. "The Goddess has chosen him! The heir has been marked!"
But Jai wasn't feeling blessed. Inside his mind, the golden light was being torn apart by a shadow.
As the light hit him, his vision shattered. The marble temple vanished. In its place, he saw a void—a place where time and space ceased to exist. And in that void, he saw a boy.
He had black hair like the abyss and eyes that were a terrifying, Crimson Red.
They were the exact same eyes Jai had seen in his dream—the eyes of Yaowang Ming. The boy stood there, staring directly through Jai's soul with a gaze that promised nothing but slaughter, ruin, and the end of all things.
The fear Jai felt was primal; it was the fear of a rabbit looking at a wolf that had already killed it a thousand times before. The boy reached out a hand, and the golden light of the Goddess began to turn black, rotting away at the edges.
Who the fuck is this kid? Why is he in my soul?
The intensity of the vision—the clashing of the "divine" golden light and the ancient, crimson darkness—was too much for his physical shell. Jai's nervous system buckled. His eyes rolled back into his head, and he collapsed onto the cold marble floor, his body twitching as if he were being electrocuted by invisible wires.
"JAI!" Edward's hand was on his shoulder instantly, shaking him violently. "What happened? Did the power of the Goddess overwhelm your meridians?"
Jai blinked, the crimson eyes fading into the white marble of the temple. He felt deathly cold, his bones aching as if they had been frozen and then shattered.
"Nothing, Father," he whispered, his voice a jagged rasp. "I just... I dozed off. The incense is strong. I'm just worried about the ceremony."
His parents exchanged looks of triumph. They didn't see his terror; they only saw the golden omen and the promise of their own continued power. They led him back to the carriage and to his room, leaving him alone to "rest" for the grand awakening.
Jai lay on his bed, staring at the ceiling, his hand hovering over his heart.
He knew the golden light was a lie.
The Goddess blessed him in fear the boy i saw maybe the one who is going to take down the Chenwongo Bloodline.
And when it did, he knew the Chenwongo family wouldn't get the savior they were praying for. They would get a monster.