And for that moment, despite the smoke, the blood, and the weight of what lay ahead, the Feilun Sect stood unbroken.
The storm had broken.
But the war had only begun.
The night bled slowly into dawn.
The horizon glowed faintly, not with the gentle radiance of sunlight, but with the simmering aura of foreign qi. To the west, a haze shimmered—unnatural, cold, threaded with chains of light that pulsed like veins across the sky.
The obelisks had advanced. Their jagged silhouettes stood stark against the ridges, feeding a slow corruption into the land beneath them. The soil cracked, the rivers warped, and beasts that once prowled freely now hid, keening in silent terror.
