She was born in a forest that no longer grew. Raised by a sect that no longer breathed. Taught by a master who died nameless beneath a sky that never wept. Her name was Veyra. She bore the Verdant Ember — the Path of Nature. But nature itself had withered. Even her spirit root, once lush, had calcified under the god's restrictions. Her dantian leaked rot. Her progress stalled. Her dreams crumbled. And still, she rose. They called her foolish. Others called her mad. But the broken do not fear breaking again. Veyra walked the dead forest, her steps echoing through bones and silence. There, among the ashen trunks of her fallen sect, she began something forbidden:
> She cultivated not to ascend — but to shatter.
She named it:
Heavenbreaking.
It defied all known teachings. Instead of reaching out — she reached inward. Instead of building — she burned. Every seal the god placed, she treated like tumor — to be excised through spiritual flame.
The Seal of Breath? She suffocated herself in a vacuum chamber for seven days, until her lungs adapted to pure spirit without air.
The Seal of Thought? She faced hallucinogenic mirrors showing her every failure, until her ego dissolved.
The Seal of World? She walked barefoot across spirit-quakes, refusing spatial stability, until her body no longer relied on form.And when she emerged?
Her aura bent gravity.
Plants flowered around her shadow.
Her eyes held silence, but not submission.
> "I will not ascend," she told the gathering of flame-starved disciples.
>"I will collapse the sky into my soul."
They followed her. Not because she was strong — but because she was the first to make failure sacred. Her sect rose again, not from walls or temples — but around a crater where her blood once burned through stone.
#They named it:
> Ashroot Hollow — the first rebel cultivation ground. Within a year, twelve cultivators broke their first seals.
By winter, three had reached a state never seen since Lumen himself:
> True Heavenbreakers — Flamewrought Souls.
But the god… was watching. And so was someone else.
> "Let them burn," said a voice beneath the Eternal Palace.
"For I will sell them the water to drown."
That voice belonged to one of Lumen's own.