The Ashfall Grounds stood deserted under a sky of bleeding red. Crimson light bled through clouded heavens, casting long, jagged shadows over scorched black stone. The air shimmered with heat and latent killing intent—like a battlefield that refused to forget its dead.
Lucius stood in the center of a scarred circle carved into the obsidian floor, barefoot, breathing slow and deep. Around him, shattered weapons and skeletal remains were half-buried in ash, remnants of long-forgotten duels. But Lucius was not here to honor the fallen.
He was here to surpass them.
He closed his eyes and felt the pulse of the Fang within him—a rhythm, once chaotic and violent, now synchronizing with his breath. The killing intent no longer lashed out of control. It curled inside him like a coiled serpent, alert, patient.
He moved. A slow kata at first—then faster, until each step, each motion became a word in a silent language. His blade danced through the air, invisible but heavy with meaning. Every slash bore emotion. Not rage. Not hatred.
Precision.
He was shaping his killing intent not to kill, but to define the threshold of death.
"Sixty percent," he whispered, finishing the final movement. The Fang pulsed softly, not in hunger, but in acknowledgment.
He had crossed a line. Not a boundary of strength, but of awareness.
And someone had noticed.
From the outer edge of the grounds, a figure approached—not hiding, not announcing themselves either. Lucius felt her presence before he saw her.
Seris.
"You weren't supposed to begin Phase Three until next week," she said, stopping several paces away.
Lucius didn't respond immediately. He slid the Fang back into its sheath and turned. His breath was steady, though his muscles trembled faintly with the strain of suppressing the overwhelming instinct to act on his killing intent.
Seris narrowed her eyes. "You've reached sixty percent mastery, haven't you?"
He nodded.
"That's why she's coming."
Lucius's gaze sharpened. "The Ashen Blade."
Seris didn't nod, but she didn't deny it either.
"She's already here."
The wind stilled.
A figure stood behind Seris—appearing not with force, but with absence. Cloaked in pale robes, her face partially veiled, and her eyes bound with crimson cloth, the Ashen Blade made no sound, yet Lucius could hear her clearly.
It wasn't telepathy. It was presence. A pressure that bent reality inward.
Lucius stepped forward, shielding Seris. "What do you want?"
The Ashen Blade tilted her head slightly. "You are unfinished," she said, voice calm and impossibly distant. "Yet already… dangerous."
Lucius drew the Fang.
She did not move.
"You wield intent like a child balances fire—barely restrained. You cut not with decision, but curiosity. That is how accidents become legends."
Lucius said nothing. His grip on the Fang tightened. He didn't intend to strike first. But he would not let her walk away without proving himself.
"I'm not interested in your approval," he said evenly.
"Good," she replied. "Then I do not need to give it."
She moved.
Lucius barely caught it.
The ground beneath his feet cracked as he pivoted, the Fang flashing in a defensive arc. Steel met air—but it was enough. He felt her pressure brush against him, like a razor wind grazing his soul.
She hadn't drawn a weapon.
She was the weapon.
Lucius struck back. Not wildly, not in rage—but in measured precision. A forward step. A horizontal slash. A reverse spin. Every move built from the Severance Art's stillness layered with Klaigos's wrathful swordplay.
And yet, none of it touched her.
She didn't dodge—she wasn't there where his blade landed.
"You still fight like you want to be witnessed," she murmured. "Like you fear being invisible."
Lucius stepped back, breathing sharp. "And you fight like you don't exist."
"I fight to erase."
Then she raised her hand.
And the killing intent in the air vanished. No pressure. No threat. Just... stillness.
That was the danger. Not flame. Not fury.
But the complete absence of resistance.
Lucius fell into stance once more, not to fight—but to understand.
He focused, quieting the Fang, lowering his internal fire. And in that moment, he saw her clearly—not as an enemy, but as an extension of a principle.
She was not death.
She was the moment before death.
And so, he mirrored her.
He stepped in—not with force, but choice. His blade sliced the air without noise. Not to wound. Not to kill.
To end.
The Ashen Blade blinked once.
Lucius stopped mid-swing—his blade hovering an inch from her throat. Her fingers brushed the flat of it gently, like one would brush dust from a table.
"You may yet survive," she said quietly. "Or you may become the reason none of us do."
Then, like a breath fading, she vanished.
Seris slowly exhaled, only now daring to move. "You… didn't lose."
Lucius didn't answer.
Because he hadn't won either.
"She wasn't testing your sword," Seris said softly. "She was testing your restraint."
Lucius lowered his blade.
"She asked me if I would draw meaning from silence," he muttered. "I think… I'm beginning to."
Elsewhere — In the Hall of Embers
The Council of Nine sat in cold firelight, the walls pulsing with ancient qi. The trial had been watched. And judged.
Elder Zhaarn hissed softly, his serpentine tongue tasting the air. "He mimicked her intent. Even if only for a moment."
Elder Niruna of the Spear Sect narrowed her eyes. "If he learns to suppress instinct fully, he becomes invisible and lethal."
Elder Khall tapped the hilt of his ruined sword. "He already walks the path of the Heaven Destroyer. And yet, his step leaves no trace."
High Elder Vaelin stood near the edge, half-shadowed. "The silence inside him is not from peace. It is born from refusal. That is more dangerous than ambition."
A pause.
Then Rengard spoke. "He has not failed the Ashen Blade. Which means he has been permitted to continue."
"Until when?" Niruna asked.
"Until his silence cuts deeper than our judgment."
Back at the Grounds
Lucius knelt where he had begun, ash swirling around him like fading memory. The Fang lay beside him, quiet.
He closed his eyes.
And breathed.
Each breath stripped away the need for power. Each heartbeat whispered less of the past and more of the present.
He had seen something in her—the Ashen Blade. Not power, but a discipline of non-existence. A way to end without effort. To define without needing to be defined.
Sixty percent.
He wasn't far from mastery now.
But something darker loomed beyond it. A final threshold.
He knew, deep within, that reaching full killing intent wasn't just about death.
It was about choosing who deserved to live.
And one day, that choice would not be his to make.
But tonight, beneath the crimson silence of the Ashfall Grounds—
He had survived.
[End of Chapter 19]
Bonus Chapter 19.5: Introduction on The Crimson Tyrant of the Abyss
Malgath Voruum — The Crimson Tyrant of the Abyss
Supreme Leader of the Velzarim Cult
To speak his name in the open is to invite silence. To whisper it in the dark is to feel the weight of chains tighten around the soul. Malgath Voruum, known to both his followers and enemies as the Crimson Tyrant of the Abyss, is not merely the leader of the Velzarim Cult—he is its origin, its god, and its curse.
Once a revered celestial cultivator of the Outer Realms, Malgath shattered his path to ascendancy when he peered beyond the veil of creation and returned changed—void-tainted, flame-wreathed, and unbound by mortal or divine law. His cultivation is no longer rooted in harmony, but in Abyssal Extraction—a forbidden path that devours emotion, destiny, and legacy alike.
With a voice that commands silence and eyes that reflect annihilation, Malgath is both sovereign and sentence. His presence alone bends the will of others. Draped in flowing crimson robes laced with living sigils and chained soul fragments, he is a walking archive of death. Each link in his ceremonial chains binds the remnants of sects he has erased—among them, the legendary Heaven Destroyer Sect, which he personally annihilated forty years ago.
None have seen him directly in decades. He rules from the unseen heart of the Velzarim stronghold, his voice carried through abyssal echoes, his will enforced by the Council of Nine and the Twelve High Elders. Even they kneel in fear when summoned.
Legends claim Malgath once fought Klaigos and Yevdel during the Warring Flame Era—and was the only one to survive untouched. Others whisper that he was once one of them, corrupted by something ancient beneath the fabric of reality.
The Abyss does not control Malgath.
It obeys him.
And one day, the only thing that may defy him… is the boy marked by both fire and void.
Lucius Ashborne.
[End of Bonus Chapter 19.5]