The body of the relic hunter still bled onto the cracked stone, the blood dark and thick as it pooled beneath him. Steam rose faintly from the jagged, smoldering seal burned into his chest — a sigil of pain and finality, the unmistakable mark of Kairo's doing.
Silence pressed in around the ruin, broken only by the gentle hiss of that fading steam and the whisper of wind brushing through the shattered temple arches above. Twinblight, his cursed blade, curled like a serpent beside him. Its obsidian edge pulsed with a soft, sickly glow — a telltale sign that it had fed on something potent. It drank not just blood, but the remnants of spiritual will, and now it seemed... sated. Almost pleased.
Kairo knelt beside the corpse, moving with a cold, disciplined precision. His cloak rustled as he leaned down, the air around him dense with old incense and something fouler — the lingering stench of ruptured Qi.
With gloved fingers, he brushed aside the hunter's tattered robes. Out spilled cracked prayer beads, weathered coins, bits of broken jade, and—
He froze.
A flicker.
Not light, but Qi — faint, pulsing, coiled tight like a thing trying to hide.
Beneath the dead man's belt, wrapped carefully in aged cloth and bound in black thread, was a scroll. The binding shimmered faintly with a protective sigil, nearly invisible unless you knew how to look.
He broke it open without hesitation.
The air shimmered as the seal broke, releasing a low hum — like a sigh from something ancient. Within the scroll was no ordinary map. This was a soul imprint map, a living script woven from memory and Qi. It twisted and shifted in his hands, the ink swimming like liquid shadow across the surface.
The map pulsed.
Several locations flared to life across its length, each marked with swirling glyphs: shattered sect ruins, ancient tombs swallowed by time, forbidden vaults spoken of only in desperate whispers. All paths led to decay… except one.
At the center of the map hovered a sun-shaped glyph, radiant and golden, spinning slowly with otherworldly precision.
The Pale Sun Convergence.
"Spiritual tides will thin. The Veins of Heaven will bleed. The sealed will stir."
— Scrawled in the relic hunter's own hasty handwriting.
Kairo's brow furrowed, eyes narrowing as he read.
The Pale Sun Convergence… He knew the name. Legends buried in old sect scrolls spoke of it in half-truths and riddles — a celestial event, rare and unpredictable, when the barriers between realms faltered. It was said that during this moment, hidden legacies long erased from the world could be reached, touched, claimed.
The kind of event every sect, every clan, every rogue cultivator would kill to exploit.
And this hunter…
He hadn't come alone.
Digging further through the man's belongings, Kairo found something tucked into an inner pocket of the bloodied robe — a broken medallion. Its edges were scorched, but the sigil etched into the center was still visible.
Thirteen Petal Accord.
Kairo's lips twisted into a grim smile. A name wrapped in sanctimonious airs — a coalition of mid-tier sects pretending at virtue, but rotten with ambition. He had crossed paths with them before. Always circling ruin sites like vultures, hiding their hunger behind banners of peace.
"So they're after relics," Kairo muttered under his breath, voice low and razor-sharp, "but they're afraid of what might still breathe in these ruins."
Let them be afraid.
They would find no relics here. Only ruin.
And him.
The map trembled slightly in his hand, then — as if its purpose had been fulfilled — it dissolved into a trail of gray ash. The knowledge burned into his mind, the paths etched into his memory. But more than the coordinates and the glyphs, something else had been whispered into him through that imprint.
A name.
One that coiled in his thoughts like a curse whispered in a dream.
The Pale Spine Crypt.
An ancient Veilwither vault — thought long lost to time, swallowed by shifting geography and erased by the collapse of a forgotten age. Its mention in the imprint hadn't just been a direction. It was a warning.
A cold twinge of pain flared across Kairo's left shoulder.
He hissed and staggered back a step, instinctively pulling at his robes.
The skin beneath writhed — a black brand was blooming there, knotting itself into his flesh. The lines shifted slowly, almost alive, forming a twisted symbol that pulsed like a heartbeat.
Kairo stared at it.
The mark of corruption.
It had been growing stronger ever since he recovered the first fragment of the Abyssal Nerve Codex. But this…
This was different.
This was not merely corruption. It was evolution — something awakening inside him, changing. The Codex was no longer a passive curse he carried.
It was becoming something else.
He stood tall, the echo of the soul imprint still thrumming behind his eyes. Around him, the ruined world stirred faintly — wind keening like distant screams, stone walls humming with for
gotten tension.
War was coming.
And the dead hunter at his feet was only the beginning.