**Chapter 1 – Ashes Beneath the Sky**
The Emberwind Mountains were unforgiving.
Chill winds cut through the cliffs like invisible blades, whistling past the jagged rocks and dusty trails. Even in daylight, the air was heavy with the stench of ash and lost blood. Centuries earlier, this had been a battleground where Sovereigns fought fiercely. Now, it served as a graveyard for the discarded remnants of the cultivation world.
And Li Fan was on the brink of death.
His breaths were shallow, each one sharp with pain as it stabbed at his ribs. Blood coated the corners of his mouth, vivid against the frayed white of his robe. His right leg lay twisted and useless beneath him after his fall, and everything around him swam in and out of focus whenever he blinked.
Above, the sky stretched out in a muted gray silence. No gods lamented. No ancestors stirred to action.
At seventeen, he was a boy who had already been worn down by life.
With gritted teeth, Li Fan pulled himself forward another inch across the gravel and ice. His fingers were lacerated, knuckles scraped raw from dragging over the rough stones.He didn't stop. He couldn't.
"Keep crawling, you spineless rat," his cousin's mocking voice echoed in his mind, laced with disdain. "Even ants put up a fight before they meet their end."
That moment felt like ages ago—before they shattered his spirit bridge, before they flung him over the edge like he was nothing more than trash. That was before his once-great clan, the Li family, had declared him beyond saving.
Li Fan didn't cry out. He never did. Not when they broke his bones, not when they injected poison into his meridians, and not even when his own father turned his back on him.
He understood that sometimes, silence could wound deeper than any outburst.
Now, all that remained for him was a thin trail of blood and the tenacious flicker of hope in his heart that refused to extinguish.
He had no idea how long he had been crawling.
Time seemed to vanish in the mountains. The sun sank lower, casting long shadows as snowflakes began to drift down.
Eventually, Li Fan found himself collapsed at the entrance of a narrow cave—a hidden crack behind a ridge of jagged black stone and brittle, dry weeds. The wind howled fiercely outside, but within the cave, he sought refuge.He sensed it before he even laid eyes on it—a tugging feeling, as if someone were watching him through a curtain. Goosebumps crawled up his neck.
Inside the cave, a faint glow emerged beneath a layer of ancient ash.
Li Fan pulled himself closer.
With a trembling hand, he cleared away the debris.
What he found was a mask.
Deep black in color, it had a crack running along the left cheek, devoid of any features except for a ring of silver markings, too worn to decipher. It wasn't made of wood or polished metal; it seemed to throb softly, like a living piece of obsidian.
As his fingers grazed the edge, a voice rippled through his mind.
"You are broken. That's good."
Li Fan recoiled, his heart racing.
"Who's there?" he managed to whisper, but his words fell into silence.
The mask pulsed once more.
"Only the broken can be remade. Only those who have been abandoned can be reborn."
A sudden warmth flooded his arm—his energy channels, once dormant and sealed, sparked to life like fireflies in the dark. Not with qi, but with something far deeper. Something primal.
Emotion.
Despair. Anger. Shame.All the pain he had kept hidden surged forth like water bursting through cracked soil, and the mask absorbed it eagerly.
"You offered your suffering to them," the voice murmured. "Now, share it with me."
He knew he should have stepped back.
But he didn't.
Li Fan clutched the mask and pressed it tightly against his chest.
A scream erupted into the stillness, one that the mountains refused to echo.
He was engulfed in fire.
Every nerve ignited, every scar felt as if it were being burned anew. Visions surged behind his eyelids—structures made of bone, skies torn apart, and Sovereigns bowing before a figure cloaked in flames and shadows.
Power seeped into him like both poison and healing. Not qi, not spiritual energy—something far more primal and profound. It was power rooted in emotion.
When the torment finally faded, Li Fan lay gasping in the darkness, the mask resting beside him.
His injuries lingered. The ache in his bones persisted. Yet his spirit bridge—a fractured, sealed pathway—now vibrated with an unfamiliar energy. And in a distant corner of his consciousness, he sensed a presence. Observing. Anticipating.
"You will refer to me as sovereign.""Or nothing at all," the voice murmured, softer now. "Follow my path, and the world will either bow to you or go down fighting."
Li Fan didn't reply.
Instead, he lifted the mask and pressed it to his face.
High above, on the edge of a cliff, two disciples dressed in black robes leaned over to peer into the chasm below.
"Do you think the cripple is dead?" one of them asked.
"Does it even matter?" the other scoffed. "Even if he's alive, no sect will want anything to do with someone without roots. He's as good as gone."
Deep within the mountain's core, something began to stir. A faint whisper danced on the breeze.
They never heard it.
But soon enough, they would feel its presence.