Chapter 56: What Lies Beyond the Veil
The battlefield was silent, save for the whisper of wind that refused to carry sound. Cracks still marred the sky where Kai's Celestial Requiem had split reality—no longer an attack, but a scar left on existence itself.
Ash floated down like snow. Fighters, observers, and sect elders alike stood speechless. The once-vibrant Stormbell Cradle, a crucible of martial might, now felt like a graveyard for past assumptions.
Kai stood at the center of it all. Calm. Unbothered. His hand, still half-raised, slowly lowered to his side.
Ren and Hinara watched from a distance, both unable to fully process what they had seen. Instructor Vale narrowed her eyes—not in suspicion, but in acceptance. He's gone beyond.
Kai's gaze swept over the crowd once, then turned away. No grand speech. No follow-up strike. He didn't need to explain. The message had already been carved into the bones of everyone who witnessed it.
—
Far away.
Beyond the fractured skies, in a place where time thinned and thought blurred, something stirred.
Beneath layers of dead reality—where broken cycles of failed worlds slumbered—it awakened.
A humanoid form, or something close. Limbs without skin, a body of shifting void and exposed concept. Eyes didn't blink, but bled trails of collapsed time. Its chest was hollow, a vortex where a heart might have been.
It felt Celestial Requiem. Not as a threat—but as a call.
"The Spiral moves… reality shudders."
It tilted its head.
"I was made to feed on this."
The being turned toward the realm of the living. Chains of forgotten laws shattered around it like wet paper.
It stepped forward, and the husks of universes flaked off its skin like ash.
⸻
Back in Emberlight Sect.
Kai sat alone at the highest peak, legs crossed, breathing slow. Though still in his Reality Apex form, he remained utterly still—his core rotating like a silent spiral within him.
Ren approached slowly. "So… that's your real strength now?"
Kai didn't open his eyes. "No. That was restraint."
Ren sat beside him. "You planning to reveal the rest?"
Kai opened his eyes just enough to look at the horizon. "Only when I must. There are things now awake that should never have opened their eyes."
Vale arrived shortly after, arms crossed. "You scared them. Every sect here, every clan, they're plotting already."
"I know," Kai replied, standing. "Let them. I need them to come."
"Why?" Vale asked.
Kai stepped into the wind, his eyes still locked on something unseen.
"Because the real enemy isn't them. It's on its way."