Chapter 119: The Iron Baptism and the Monarch of Ashes
The screech of rusted pulleys echoed in the amphitheater of the Abyssal Auction House like the cry of a dying animal. The enormous black velvet curtain, stained by decades of dust and dried blood, finished rising, revealing the "Final Lot".
Inside an immense black iron cage, reinforced with Earth Grade suppression runes that buzzed with a sickly yellowish light, stood twelve figures. They weren't beasts, nor artifacts, nor scrolls of forbidden techniques. They were human beings. Or what was left of them.
They were filthy, starving, and wrapped in gray rags that barely covered their bodies, which were marked by methodical torture. Their shackles, forged from heavy metal designed to devour Qi, cut into their wrists and ankles, leaving open sores that would not heal. But what made the atmosphere in the Morningstar VIP box turn freezing cold was not the sight of misery, but recognition.
Those captives had dull silver hair, like the ashes of a long-extinguished fire.
Kael, standing behind Samael, gripped the pommel of the Magma Fang with such force that the wood of the railing beneath his other hand began to splinter. His golden eyes narrowed, recognizing their features.
"Patriarch..." Kael whispered, his voice a hiss of pure, restrained fury. "That emblem on their rags... the remnants of the Silver Ash Clan. They were Aunt Lilith's most loyal vassals on the southern border. They disappeared during the Valois purge two years ago. We thought they had all been executed."
Samael did not respond immediately. He remained seated on his velvet throne, the Crown of the Eternal Dawn projecting its Halo of Calm. His eyes, violet and crimson, did not see the filth or the rags; they saw the threads of destiny writhing inside the cage. One of those strings, the thickest and brightest, was in the center, vibrating with a golden agony that was seconds away from snapping.
Down below, on the stage, Gorno, the auctioneer, spread his arms with a smile that revealed his rotting teeth. His snake-scale coat gleamed under the spiritual spotlights.
"Distinguished lords of the night, ladies of war, and seekers of power!" Gorno shouted, his voice projected by sonic arrays. "What you see before you is the crown jewel of our evening! They are not mere slaves. They are the remnants of the Silver Ash Clan. A lineage of miners who can find Qi veins where others only see dead rock. And their women!" Gorno pointed his riding crop at two of the captives trembling in a corner. "They possess channels of purest Yin, priceless treasures for the dual cultivation of any master looking to break through a bottleneck."
A roar of lecherous laughter and greed-laden cheers erupted in the lower stands. Mercenaries and minor sect cultivators licked their lips, evaluating the "merchandise" with the coldness of butchers.
Samael observed the captives. Almost all of them had broken gazes, their souls crushed by years of servitude and pain. Almost all of them.
In the darkest corner of the cage, a young man, barely a couple of years older than Kael, remained standing. He was not cowering like the rest. His legs trembled from physical weakness and the poisoning of the shackles, but his back was straight. He did not look at the auctioneer, nor at the floor. His eyes, a stormy, icy gray, swept over the audience with a hatred so pure and distilled that it seemed to emit its own spiritual pressure. He had a deep scar crossing his throat, and his arms were decorated with acid burns.
Samael felt the System vibrate in his mind.
[System: Complete Target Analysis]
Name: Altair Ashborne. Age: 19 years old. Cultivation: Transcendence Realm Stage 8 (Sealed and degraded to Stage 2 by chronic torture). Status: Severe malnutrition. Runic metal poisoning. Potential: S-Class (Latent). Hidden Lineage: MONARCH OF ASHES PHYSIQUE. Lineage Description: A forbidden physique that absorbs and purifies metallic residues and "dead fire" (residual energy from destroyed attacks) to strengthen the bone and muscular structure. The more structural damage the body receives, the denser the meridians become upon healing. An absolute warrior of attrition.
There you are, Samael thought. The corner of his lips rose by a fraction of a millimeter. A reflection of what I once was. A flame of hatred that refuses to go out even when the oil has run dry.
"Starting price for the complete lot of twelve pieces: fifty thousand Medium-Grade Spiritual Stones!" Gorno announced, striking his gavel against the pedestal.
"Sixty thousand!" shouted the elder of the Purple Light Sect from the opposite box, his voice laden with an arrogance that no longer hid his lechery.
"Seventy thousand!" offered a burly mercenary in the front row, a gang leader with crossed axes on his back.
Samael stood up.
There was no shouting. There was no desperate bid. His figure, projected by the room's amber light, seemed to elongate, becoming an immense shadow that covered part of the stage. Samael partially deactivated the suppression of his aura.
A shockwave of authority, imbued with the Law of the Void, swept through the amphitheater. Conversations cut off abruptly. The auctioneer, Gorno, felt his knees buckle and had to lean on the pedestal to keep from falling. The air in the room became so heavy that many cultivators in the stands felt their own lungs collapsing.
"Two hundred thousand," Samael said.
His voice was not loud, but thanks to its polyphonic nature, it resonated directly in the bones of every person present. It was not a bid; it was a sentence.
The silence that followed was absolute, broken only by the sound of someone dropping a wine glass in the stands. The price was absurd. Two hundred thousand Medium-Grade Stones was the ransom for a small city, the war budget of a second-tier sect. For a dozen dying slaves, it was sheer madness.
The elder of the Purple Light Sect turned red with fury, but when he tried to open his mouth to protest, Samael turned his head slightly toward him. The Crown of the Eternal Dawn glowed with an icy white light. The elder felt the space around his throat tighten like an iron hand. The message was clear: If you speak, you die.
"T-two hundred thousand?" Gorno stuttered, wiping the sweat from his forehead with his scaled coat. "Sold... sold to the noble lord in the center box."
Samael did not wait for the bureaucratic paperwork of the auction to be completed.
"Bring them here. Now," Samael ordered.
Gorno did not dare refuse. He made a frantic signal to the guards. Minutes later, the heavy door to the VIP box burst open. The auction guards, roughly shoving the captives, forced them inside. The stench of dried blood, sour sweat, and the metallic fear of the slaves instantly contaminated the perfumed air of the luxury lounge.
The eleven members of the Silver Ash Clan fell to their knees on the velvet carpet, trembling, bracing themselves for a new master who, given the fortune he had paid, would surely be a hundred times crueler than the previous ones.
They all fell. All except Altair.
The ash-haired young man remained standing, although his legs trembled so much that the metal of his shackles clinked violently. His face was filthy, but his stormy gray eyes locked onto Samael's with a suicidal intensity.
Samael took a step toward him. Kael moved to intercept any attack, but Samael raised a hand, stopping him. The Patriarch halted just inches from Altair, observing him with the runic gaze of his crown, evaluating every crack in his soul.
"If you've paid so much to amuse yourself by torturing us, do it quickly," Altair rasped, his voice sounding like two rusted metal blades scraping together. "I am the walking dead. The dead have no patience for your bored noble games."
"Careful, pup," Kael warned, releasing a flash of his Magma Fang aura that made the guards at the door stumble back three steps from the heat. "You are speaking to the Patriarch of the Morningstar Clan. Show a little respect before I turn you into real ashes."
Samael smiled. It was a genuine smile, devoid of the mask of command, but laden with a darkness that made Altair recoil a millimeter—not out of fear, but from the recognition of an apex predator.
"You have guts, Altair Ashborne," Samael said softly. "Or you're stupid enough to believe your hatred makes you invulnerable."
"My hatred is the only thing I have left," the young man retorted, spitting a bit of blood at Samael's feet. "Use it however you want. In the end, we'll all end up in the same void."
Samael raised his right hand. Altair closed his eyes, expecting the blow or the soul-enslavement technique that would seal his fate forever.
Instead, Samael flicked a finger in the air.
A line of absolute black Qi, as thin as a hair but with the density of a collapsed star, sliced through space.
CLANG!
Altair's shackles, forged to withstand attacks from Origin Realm cultivators, fell to the ground, severed with molecular precision. The other eleven clan members gasped in unison as their own chains fell away in the exact same manner. The weight that had oppressed their bodies and their meridians for years vanished in the blink of an eye.
Altair looked at his bleeding, now free wrists. He looked at his people, who were weeping silently, touching their skin as if they couldn't believe the metal was gone. Then, he looked back at Samael with a suspicion that bordered on paranoia.
"What do you want from us?" Altair asked, his voice trembling for the first time. "No one in this rat canyon pays two hundred thousand stones to free ghosts. What kind of soul contract do you want us to sign?"
"I don't want your signature, Altair. I want to see if you are worthy of the blood running through your veins." Samael leaned close to the young man's ear, his voice dropping to a whisper only he could hear. "I know who you are. I know what your Monarch of Ashes physique can do. I know the man on that stage, Gorno, executed your father in front of you to break your will."
Altair tensed, his gray pupils contracting from the shock of a stranger knowing his most painful past.
In Samael's mind, the System issued the definitive notification.
[System: Special Recruitment Mission Activated]
Target: Altair Ashborne. Mission: Iron Baptism. Success Condition: The subject must descend to the stage, confront, and personally execute Gorno, the Auction Master. Restriction: The Patriarch must not intervene physically. Reward: Claim of the TENTH SEQUENCE Immediate restoration of Altair's cultivation.
Samael reached into his spatial inventory. In a flash of shadow, he drew a sword. It was not the Star Tearer. It was a heavy, unadorned sword, forged from a matte black metal that seemed to absorb light. It was a weapon from the Forgotten Pantheon Chest, a Heaven Grade weapon, heavy and brutal.
Samael tossed it at Altair's feet. The metal struck the floor with a heavy clatter.
"Gorno holds the keys to your past, Altair. And he holds control over your future," Samael said, his gaze turning as cold as deep space. "In ten minutes, this building will become a funeral pyre. You can choose to flee with your people while all hell breaks loose, or you can go down to that stage and collect the debt you are owed."
Altair hesitated. He looked at the black sword. He looked at his clan members, who were watching him with pleading, terrified eyes. He remembered the sound of his father's neck snapping under Gorno's boot while the mercenaries laughed.
His trembling, scar-covered fingers closed around the sword's cold hilt. Upon touching it, a connection of pure hatred flowed between the weapon and the warrior.
"If I die..." Altair said, lifting the sword with a strength that such a malnourished body shouldn't possess, "...get my people out of this place. Bring them to safety."
"You have my word as a Morningstar," Samael answered, and there was a note of genuine respect in his promise. "If you die, they will be protected. But if you live... you will be my Tenth Sequence. And then, there will be no one left on this continent who will dare put you in chains."
Altair said nothing more. He turned, dragging the tip of the black sword against the marble, producing a metallic scrape that made the guards' hair stand on end. He left the box, walking toward the staircase leading back to the stage, with the determination of a man who has already died once and has nothing left to lose.
Samael watched the door close behind him. The silence in the box was broken by the cracking of Eris's knuckles.
"Do you really think he can pull it off, brother?" Eris asked, her inner fire casting dancing shadows on the wall. "He's at Stage 2. Gorno is a solid Stage 8, and he has guards. It's suicide."
"The Monarch of Ashes physique isn't governed by the logic of ordinary cultivation, Eris," Samael replied, sitting back down and picking up his wine glass. "It feeds on damage. The more they beat him, the faster his true nature will awaken. It is a baptism. If he survives, he will be the shield the family needs."
Samael closed his eyes and connected to the mental link of the rest of his squad.
"Malak. Elara. Violeta. Status?"
"The shadows are in position, Master," Malak's voice resonated like a whisper from beyond the grave. "Gorno has sent three of his personal guards to intercept the boy in the hallway. Shall I eliminate them?"
"No. Let them reach the boy. But make sure no one from the VIP boxes, especially the Purple Light Sect, interferes with his advance. This is his moment. The rest of you... prepare for the signal."
"What will be the signal, Patriarch?" Violeta asked, her voice conveying the icy calm of someone who has already calculated every escape coordinate.
Samael looked through the railing toward the stage, where Gorno was already presenting the next lot, unaware that his executioner was only a few meters away.
"The signal will be Gorno's first scream," Samael said. "When he falls, Golden City will cease to be a city. Violeta, I want the vaults emptied in one minute. Malak, harvest the souls of every mercenary who bid on my people. Kael, Eris... clear the stands. I want no survivors left to tell what the face of an enraged Morningstar looks like."
"With pleasure," Kael murmured, the heat radiating from his body beginning to melt the varnish off the wooden table.
Samael leaned back, the Crown of the Eternal Dawn shining with absolute serenity. The auction continued below, the auctioneer kept shouting prices, the nobles kept laughing, and the rabble kept bidding on the lives of others. No one suspected that playtime was over.
Outside the canyon, a sandstorm began to howl, as if the world itself were responding to the pressure of the Primordial Dragon. Inside the Abyssal Auction House, the fragrance of luxury was rapidly mixing with the scent of iron and ash.
The shadows on the ceiling began to lengthen, moving independently of the lights. Elara was already in position behind the elder of the Purple Light Sect. Violeta had anchored her coordinates in the center of the treasure vault. Malak held his scythe in the astral plane, awaiting the first shedding of blood.
Samael took a sip of wine, his crimson-violet eyes fixed on the door through which Altair had exited.
"Tonight," Samael whispered to himself, "the ashes will drown the fire of Golden City."
On stage, Gorno had just raised his gavel to close the sale of a minor artifact when the sound of a heavy, metallic footstep echoed from the side aisle. A bloodied figure, dragging a black sword that left a groove in the stone, emerged from the darkness into the spotlight.
The auction came to a halt. The silence was total. Altair Ashborne raised the black sword, pointing it directly at Gorno's heart.
Samael smiled from behind his glass. The game of destiny had begun, and the first move belonged to the ashes.
[To be continued...]