The stench hit first — blood, sweat, and rot baked beneath the sun.
Stoneveil's outer districts were worse than Zaxton had imagined. Streets once filled with traders and scholars were now crowded with gaunt laborers, their ankles chained, their eyes hollow. Overseers patrolled with crimson whips glowing with brand-magic.
Above it all, a twisted marble tower pierced the skyline — a monument to one man's ego. And inside it, the boy who had turned this place into a graveyard with gates.
Vaelrith, son of the Warlord Dakkur of the Blackened Iron Fangs.
A cultivator in name only. His power came from cruelty, not cultivation.
Rumors whispered of his "tests" — spirit-beast fusions, soul-bindings, and thought-erasure drugs all enacted on the poor and defenseless. He called it "art." The people called it a nightmare.
Zaxton didn't knock on the tower gates.
He walked through them.
---
INT. WARLORD'S TOWER – GRAND HALL
Guards rose, blades drawn. Laughter followed.
GUARD CAPTAIN
You lost, traveler?
Zaxton's response was a single whistle.
In a blink, the flame-falcon shot through the window, igniting the air. One beast tore through the left flank while another emerged from shadow and shattered bone with a crunch. The room fell to silence in seconds.
Zaxton stepped over a smoldering corpse and ascended the spiral stairs without looking back.
---
INT. THRONE ROOM – NIGHT
Vaelrith lounged on a throne made of chained bones, eyes glazed with alchemic joy, stroking the head of a stitched-together beast gasping on his lap.
His eyes flicked up lazily as Zaxton entered.
VAELRITH
Another righteous fool come to lecture me. What are you? A brother of the broken? A beast whisperer?
ZAXTON
Just a man with a memory. And a map.
VAELRITH
(chuckling)
You think this is justice?
Zaxton didn't answer. Instead, he vanished.
BLINK STEP.
He reappeared beside the throne, palm forward. A gravitational pulse—drawn from the Second Moon—imploded the air between them, slamming Vaelrith through his own wall and into the courtyard below.
---
EXT. STONEVEIL – COURTYARD – NIGHT
Civilians gathered. Chains fell as Zaxton's beasts snapped locks with practiced ease. From the smoke, Vaelrith stumbled out, coughing, eyes wild, summoning dark starlight.
VAELRITH
You'll kneel—
—like the rest!
His body began to glow. A monstrous form unfurled behind him: his soul-beast, an abomination stitched from a dozen tortured creatures.
Zaxton stood firm.
ZAXTON (V.O.)
It's not the beast that determines your strength. It's how you earned its loyalty.
He raised a hand. His own beasts surged forward — but stopped just shy.
He stepped past them. Alone.
The fight lasted twelve seconds.
Pressure collapsed the courtyard floor as Zaxton struck Vaelrith's chest with a precision blow that shattered bone and spirit core alike. No fire. No blood spray. Just raw, crushing will.
Vaelrith fell.
Stoneveil watched in silence.
---
EXT. STONEVEIL – DAWN
The sun rose behind the ruins of the tyrant's tower. Flags once bearing Vaelrith's sigil were burned. Zaxton stood on the shattered balcony, cloak fluttering, a new emblem burning behind him — a single star rising from shadow.
The people gathered below.
He did not speak like a conqueror.
He spoke like someone offering breath to the drowned.
ZAXTON
This city no longer belongs to the cruel. It belongs to the living.
If you can work, you'll work. If you can learn, you'll learn.
And if anyone else thinks to turn this place into a grave—
they'll be buried in it.
Silence.
Then a single voice: Don Starborn.
Then another.
And another.
The name spread like fire through dry grass.
Roots in the Ash
The tyrant was dead. But cities do not heal just because the monster is slain.
Stoneveil had become a hollow carcass of what it once was. Buildings stood, but purpose had fled. Its people lingered, but with no path forward. So Zaxton gave them one.
---
THE COUNCIL OF SEVEN
The courtyard where Vaelrith had fallen became a place of rebirth.
Stone benches were carved from fallen columns. The people watched, skeptical and cautious, as Zaxton called forth seven citizens—no nobles, no warriors, just those who had quietly endured.
Mara: A former librarian, keeper of the city's hidden archives.
Thalos: A blacksmith who once forged weapons for the Don Guard.
Sister Yen: A wandering healer and spiritualist.
Irren: A boy of sixteen who had organized food for the enslaved.
Master Huo: A retired tactician from the outer garrisons.
Silenn: A former slave turned spy within Vaelrith's tower.
And Zaxton himself: The final seat—reluctantly accepted.
They formed the Council of Seven, sworn not to reign but to serve the city's people, their decisions rooted in function, not hierarchy.
ZAXTON
"We are not a court. We are a compass."
---
THE LILAC ORDER RETURNS
Word traveled fast. Too fast, some said.
From the broken highlands came riders in violet cloaks, their armor dusty but intact. Once guardians of imperial dignity, the Lilac Order had faded after the Don Empire's collapse, disbanded and scattered.
But something about Zaxton called them back.
They arrived not with trumpets, but with purpose. Thirty warriors—men and women who had once been legends—now knelt before Zaxton in the temple ruins at Stoneveil's center.
LILAC COMMANDER
"We swore to protect the Starborn bloodline. We see it again… in you."
Zaxton didn't speak. He simply knelt and picked up their fallen banner, brushing off the dust.
The Grandmaster's sigil—a stylized lilac wrapped in constellations—flared with new light.
---
THE BLADE SCHOOL
Within a fortnight, training began.
The outer district was reforged into a campus of sparring rings, arcane classrooms, and beast-taming arenas. Civilians enrolled alongside orphans and ex-guards.
Zaxton, now Grandmaster, taught less with lectures and more through duels, watching how each fighter adapted, thought, and grew.
He wasn't building an army.
He was shaping a movement.
---
INT. COUNCIL HALL – NIGHT
A map of the Don Empire unfurled before the Council of Seven, lit by starlight filtering through a cracked dome.
THALOS
"The east still burns. The Warlord Dakkur sends more sons."
MARA
"And the north... frozen silence. No word from Embercross in months."
SISTER YEN
"We heal one city. But the empire bleeds still."
Zaxton folded his arms, eyes on the map.
ZAXTON
"Then we make Stoneveil a beacon. We light it so bright they can't look away."
---
Zaxton did not crown himself.
He did not sit on a throne.
But for the first time in years, Stoneveil had a heartbeat.
And far beyond the mountains, warlords and fallen lords turned their gaze westward—
to the boy with beasts, with stars in his veins, and a banner no one dared to challenge.