The Lone Step into the Tempet
The Environment relic chamber was heavy with breath and heartbeat.
Korbac's body lay broken beside the shattered consoles, his face half-buried in the dust of ruined technology. The other two Marauders—a scar-faced woman known as the Net-Weaver and a man with a short axe—sat bound and silent near the far wall.
Their eyes were dull, unfocused, filled with the hollow terror of those who had seen something that should not exist.
Lei Shan stood apart from them, facing the slope that led back to the surface. The storm's rumble pressed faintly through the rock above—an endless, distant growl that made the stone vibrate underfoot. Even this deep underground, the breath of the plains reached him.
Behind him, his team moved in quiet rhythm.
Aakash wiped blood from his shield in slow, deliberate motions.
Priya crouched near the field generator, her fingers tightening bolts that had cracked under stress.
Mohit paced restlessly, his spear tip drawing circles in the dust.
None of them spoke, but all knew what he intended—and none of them liked it.
From the edge of the shadows, Elina emerged. Her armor reflected the chamber's pale light, the serpent emblem on her shoulder faintly glowing.
Her expression was unreadable.
"Are we going up?" she asked.
Lei Shan didn't turn. "The surface is collapsing. I need to see how far it's spread."
"You mean to go alone."
He adjusted the clasp on his gauntlet. "Someone has to. If the upper layers fall, this cavern becomes a tomb."
"You could send Mohit," she pressed, her voice steady. "Or one of my scouts."
"They'd die before reaching five hundred paces."
She folded her arms. "And you think you won't?"
He finally turned to meet her gaze. "I've walked through worse storms."
A shadow flickered across her calm mask—perhaps a memory of the Black Forest, where he killed OXag wolf ,destroy the unbreakable portal, and what happened to Taylor? purple light and a Golden bead....
"You always walk alone," she murmured.
"It's easier that way."
"For you," she said, stepping closer, "not for those who have to wonder if you'll return."
He hesitated, tightening the final clasp on his vambrace.
"You remember too much."
"I remember enough," she said softly. The faint metallic scent of ozone mingled with her perfume as she drew near. "You could trust me with the rest."
His eyes, steady as stormlight, met hers. "Trust has a price I can't pay."
"Then let me owe you."
Her tone carried no seduction—only resolve.
He held her gaze a moment longer before answering quietly:
"If I don't return before the crystals fade twice, seal this place. Keep them alive. That's an order."
Her jaw tightened. "And if you do come back?"
A faint smile touched his lips. "Then we'll have more questions than answers."
She reached out, her fingers brushing his bracer. "Whatever you find up there, don't let the storm take it before I do."
He inclined his head in acknowledgment, then turned toward the others.
"Stay below," he said to his team. "No signals. No scouts."
Priya looked up, eyes heavy with worry. "You don't have to face it alone—"
"I can handle it," he interrupted gently. "I'll be back soon."
His tone carried command, final and absolute. Even Aakash said nothing more.
Mohit spat into the dirt. "At least take a beacon."
"No. The Watchers' eyes are gone, but their traps may still breathe."
And with that, Lei Shan started toward the sloping passage and began his climb to the storm above.
•The Surface of Ruin
The climb was long and suffocatingly quiet.Heat bled from the depths below; cold mist seeped from the upper tunnels, tasting of iron and ash. When Lei Shan reached the surface, the storm greeted him like an open wound.
The Storm Plains stretched endlessly under a violent sky.
Lightning carved veins of violet and blue across the horizon. Torn clouds spun like vortexes above cracked black soil that shimmered faintly with corrupted energy. The Null-Source Anchor blast from Moon Island had not only scarred the earth—it had crippled the heavens.
He drew his hood lower, suppressing the faint glow beneath his armor. His aura—what little remained of it—was tightly compressed, sealed until it was no more than a whisper of what he once commanded.
The wind screamed On plains like a living thing.
Each gust carried flecks of black sand that cut against armor and skin. The land was no longer alive; it throbbed, it pulsed—like a wounded beast refusing to die.
Lei Shan moved through it in silence. His steps left shallow footprints that the wind erased before the next heartbeat.
He walked without destination, guided by fragments of instinct that felt older than memory itself. Somewhere in his broken recollection, this storm meant something. A test? A punishment? He could not tell.
His first stop was what remained of a Crimson Dunes caravan. The once-brilliant red banners were now strips of ash twisted around shattered metal. Half-buried in the sand were bodies fused to armor by lightning marks.
One still lived.A young man, barely past initiation, his face half-burned. He tried to rise his hand when Lei Shan approached, reaching for a weapon that was no longer there.
"Easy," Lei Shan said, kneeling. His voice was calm, weightless.
The youth's eyes widened. "You… you're not one of them?"
"No," Lei Shan replied. "Who did this?"
"The storm," the man whispered. "It—took their minds. The captain, the mages… they started seeing things. Then they turned on us."
He coughed blood. The lightning marks on his chest were already spreading like veins of corruption.
Lei Shan placed his hand over the wound. A faint thread of golden light flowed from his palm—not enough to heal, only to ease the pain.
The air around them calmed for a moment, as if the storm itself bowed to that ancient resonance.
"Rest," Lei Shan murmured. "Your fight is done."
When the breath left the man's chest, he covered his face with the remains of a banner and kept walking.
Behind him, the storm devoured the camp, leaving no trace that either of them had ever existed.
Moments later he stop and around him the sand stirred.Two wierd shape creature crawled from the ruins—twisted forms that might once have been human.
Their armor had fused to flesh, faces warped into grotesque parodies of rage. Sickly green light burned in their hollow eyes.
The first creature lunged.
Lei Shan caught its face with one hand. A surge of golden energy flashed—and it turned to dust before it could scream.
The second creature attacked from behind. He pivoted, cloak snapping through the storm, and struck with an open palm. The air cracked. The ground cratered.
When the dust settled, silence returned.
He flexed his trembling hand. Golden veins flickered briefly under his skin before fading.
Still unstable… the storm feeds even me.
He had used barely three percent of his power… and already, the earth had bent beneath his strike
He looked toward the horizon. The night was falling—slow, heavy, and endless then start walk again and crossed the ravaged plains.
He found broken camps, shattered energy pylons, and scattered survivors—some sane, most corrupted by the storm's influence.
He helped where he could.
He gave them silence, direction, or mercy—whatever their condition demanded.
Soon he arrived at a place in front of him
A black ridge. And the waves of powerful energy coming from over it . Feeling familiar.
Lei shan a bit surprised thinking about it "this energy is somewhat familiar, but there is nothing like in my memory" what's going on here....
He shakes his head "Whatever this is, I'll have to check it out" and takes a step forward."
•The Shrine of Bones
The storm's roar faded as Lei Shan climbed the black ridge that marked the edge of the plains.There, the world changed.
The ridge rose into a circular plateau, at its center a ruin—a shrine of unknown origin.
Massive skeletal remains coiled around it: serpents with crescent horns and elongated spines, forming a broken cage.
Their bones radiated faint energy, as though the creatures' souls refused to die.
Lei Shan slowed his breath.
The aura here was so pure and ancient that even an S-Rank nobless would have been crushed to kneel.
He could not remember what this place was… only that something inside him recognized it.
He knelt at the dais, brushing away a layer of dust. The runes beneath flickered faintly—older than the Trials,Perhaps older than the war of realms itself.
Then he saw it.A golden egg, no larger than his palm, nestled in the heart of the altar.
Not stone. Not crystal. Alive.
Its surface pulsed softly, threads of light weaving across it like tiny constellations.
He hesitated.The serpent bones around the dais seemed to curve protectively toward it, as though guarding their final kin.
"Even after the death," Lei Shan whispered, "you still protecting this one."
He lifted the egg carefully. It was warm to the touch, resonating faintly with his own qi—not hostile, only curious.
The moment his fingers brushed the shell, the threads of light brightened.
The egg responded to him.As if it had been waiting for very long time.
"Whatever you are," he murmured, "your silence has lasted long enough."
He wrapped it in a containment field and slid it into the sealed compartment of his armor, against the hum of his life-force.
"Rest," he said. "You'll see the world again."
Thunder rolled across the sky, like distant laughter—or warning.
And from deep within the egg, something ancient stirred… listening.
Unaware of it, Lei Shan turned back toward the horizon.
The light around the egg intensified, faint golden thread's now glowing like veins of dawn through its shell—
as if life, long dormant, had been refueled by his touch.
He felt the storm shift.Somewhere far away, something had awakened.
_________
The sky burned above the hollow world.
When Lei Shan left the black ridge" shrine of bones", thunder chased him like a vow. The golden egg rested against his armor, faintly warm, pulsing in rhythm with his own heartbeat. The storm answered each beat with a distant growl—as if the heavens themselves acknowledged the secret he now carried.
The air was sharp and alive with ruin.From one edge of the horizon to the other, stretched the Storm Plains, a sea of broken rock soil. Fissures breathed white mist; lightning coiled across them like serpents of light.
Shattered banners fluttered from half-buried spears, each one a memory of a fallen faction.
Lei Shan walked on.His cloak snapped in the wind, edges torn by the storm's touch. Each step sank slightly into the scorched ground. Beneath the noise of thunder, faint voices whispered—echoes of those who had perished here, their will clinging to the fractured Qi currents that still drifted like smoke.
For a long while, he walked without purpose, only the storm and silence his companions. The egg hummed faintly beneath his chestplate, as though sharing the pulse of the earth. When he slowed, it grew still; when he pressed forward, it throbbed again with muted light.
•Echoes Among the Ruins
After a time, shapes began to emerge from the haze—remnants of battlefields, charred to ash. Weapons still lodged in the ground hummed with dying essence. Here, a shattered golem lay twisted like a fallen tower. There, the bones of great beasts protruded from the dust, blackened by the lightning that never ceased.
A faint cry reached his ears.
Lei Shan turned, following the sound until he found a collapsed camp half-buried in windblown dust. A man lay beneath a broken chariot—armor marked by the Azure king clan, his left arm gone to decay.
He releae a heavy bearth Sigh " Ahhh Another one" And walked towards it.
His breath rattled, more spirit than air.
Lei Shan knelt . "You fought the storm and lost," he said softly.
The man's eyes opened, clouded but aware. "We… tried to reach the heart of the plains. They said the relic… could call down the stars. But the storm—" He coughed, a wet sound. "It changed them. It changed us."
Lei Shan placed two fingers against the man's brow. "Rest now.The storm no longer owns you."
A whisper of golden Qi drifted from his fingertips, not to heal but to unbind. The man's pain faded, and so did his breath.
The wind carried what was left of him away.
Lei Shan rose, eyes cold but not cruel. "Another soul returned," he murmured, and continued on.
—————
•The Wanderer of the Storm Plains.
By dusk, the plains grew darker, clouds rolling low like mountains. Amid the drifting fog, Lei Shan found another remnant—a half-blind scout of the Oro-Spire, clutching a broken spear, her armor blackened to dust.
She flinched when she saw him approach.
"Stay back… you're one of them!"
He said nothing. Only raised a hand and drew a faint circle in the air. A ripple of pure Qi formed a barrier, keeping the storm's corruption at bay. The woman stared, her fear giving way to disbelief.
"You… you're still human?"
"Barely," Lei Shan replied, voice low. "Can you walk?"
She tried, stumbled, then steadied herself with his arm. Together they crossed the ruin until they reached a ridge that overlooked the dead horizon.
"There's a cavern east of here," she whispered. "Some of my kin still hide there."
He nodded once. "Go. The storm's path won't touch that ground for a day."
As she limped away, she turned once more. "Who are you?"
Lei Shan paused, gaze on the sky. "No one worth remembering."
By the time she blinked, he was gone, swallowed by the thunder.
•Rumors in the Wind
In the hours that followed, the plains carried whispers.
The survivors who crawled from shattered camps spoke of a solitary figure walking through the storm unscathed.
Some said he was a spirit born of lightning. Others claimed he was the last champion of the old age—the son of thunder reborn.
They called him The Wanderer of the Storm Plains.
To those dying of wounds, he brought peace.
To those twisted by corruption, he brought an end.
To those still standing, he brought silence—neither promise nor curse, only the quiet truth that survival had meaning.
Far from him, in the shelter of the southern ridges,
Under the leadership of Kael "Shadow Fang" Team of kaelthar gathered to accomplish an important goal
———
• The Shadow Fang Ambush
The storm had thinned to a gray breath by the time the Oro-Spire scout girl reached the eastern caverns. Her lungs burned with dust, her legs trembled beneath the weight of exhaustion. The plains had not been kind, but hope still burned faintly in her heart.
Beyond a ridge of jagged stone, half-veiled in mist, she saw them—dim lights flickering in the mouth of the shelter. The symbols carved around the entrance glowed faint blue, a ward against corruption. Her kin had made it this far. They were alive.
Tears blurred her sight.She wanted to cry out—but she had learned what silence meant in the storm.
So she crouched low behind a splintered pillar of basalt, watching.
Inside the cavern, shadows moved—tall figures, armored, their motions deliberate.
At first she thought them her own kind, Oro-Spire sentries returning from a hunt. But then she saw their cloaks: black like the inner void, absorbing even the faint light of the wards. The air around them twisted, heavy with killing intent.
The makes on their shoulders—the twin fangs in a ring of dusk.
Her heart froze. She whispers "Shadow Fang"
Kael's unseen hand. His silent blades.
Where they walked, only graves followed.
The scout pressed her trembling hand over her mouth as the first strike fell.
No warning. No words.
Just a flicker of movement and then—sound.
A scream, quickly cut short.
The wards at the cavern's mouth flared once, then died, snuffed out by a pulse of dark Qi. The light vanished, and what followed was chaos.
She could not see clearly—only fragments between the flashes of lightning overhead.
Figures leaping from shadow to shadow. Blades catching the storm's glow before vanishing into flesh. Her kin falling soundlessly, some clutching half-drawn weapons, others reaching for comrades who were already gone.
One of the Shadow Fang—a woman with a serpent tattoo across her throat—dragged a wounded Oro-Spire elder from the cavern's threshold.
The scout recognized him—Elder Vaen, the old mane one who had given her name and rank.
His voice cracked through the wind.
"Why? We served the Accord!"
The assassin's answer was a whisper of steel through air.
Blood sprayed the stone, bright against the dark.
The scout's breath hitched. She pressed herself lower behind the rock, knuckles white, tears cutting lines through the ash on her cheeks.
Another flare of light—a man channeling his last reserves of Qi. He hurled a sphere of blue flame that swallowed two assassins whole, burning their cloaks to ash. But three more replaced them, silent, precise. The flame died.
The storm howled louder.
It was feeding on the death.
The scout wanted to run. Every instinct screamed to flee, but her legs refused.
She stayed, Watched. Helplessly.
Counted every fall, every breath, until the last of her kin lay still.
When silence finally returned, she saw the Shadow Fang gather in the cavern's mouth.
One of them knelt, placing a hand on the scorched ground.
A faint red mark burned there—their report signal. A message to their unseen master.
Then, as silently as they had come, they vanished into the storm.
The scout remained frozen long after.
The wind shifted, carrying with it the scent of blood and ozone.
Her mind felt distant, hollowed out.
When she finally moved, she crept forward, crawling to the cavern's entrance. The glow of her kin's wards was gone. The bodies within were still, pale shapes in the dim.
She knelt beside the elder, touching his cold hand.
His eyes were open, unseeing.
Something inside her broke then—quietly, cleanly.
She rose, blood caked on her fingers, and turned to the plains where the thunder rolled.
In the distance, lightning flared—a pillar of gold against the night.
Her heart quickened.She had seen that light once before.
The man who walked through storms unharmed. Standing like mountain.
The one who spoke softly to the dying, who carried the light of the old world in his hands.
unknown.but Her savior.Her only Hope.
The one who could help her to bring retribution on shadow-fang.
She wrapped her broken spear in a strip of crimson cloth—her clan's last banner—and began to walk, the storm clawing at her every step.
Each flash of lightning etched her resolve sharper, brighter.She would find him.
And when she did, the storm would learn the meaning of vengeance.....
Dawn arrived like a thin blade across the broken plain — pale and ruthless. The storm had not gone; it had simply thinned to a low, hungry breath. Lei Shan moved through that gray morning with the same economy he used in battle: each motion precise, each step measured. The egg at his chestplate beat faint as a second pulse against his own; it was warm as a living thing.
He paused on the lip of a shallow ravine, eyes narrowing at the distance. The scout girl emerged from the haze like a memory.
She moved Falling and getting up again moving with the raw stiffness of someone who carried a graveweight. Her clothes were patched with old blood; the strip of crimson she had wrapped around her spear fluttered in a bitter wind.
When she saw him, the limp vanished. The sight of that single pillar of gold from the night before — the momentary miracle she could not explain — had become an anchor. She hurried closer on ankles that had blistered and bled.
Lei Shan did not move to meet her; he watched, folding small distances into larger questions with only his posture. Up close, she was younger than he had imagined a scar across one cheek, eyes the gray of a winter sky. She stopped a dozen steps away, breathing hard, clutching the spear like a prayer.
"You walked away," she said without preamble. "You walked away after you saved me. I followed you with the last of my all strength."
"I did not leave because I wanted to," Lei Shan said. His voice was low, rough as river stone. "There are things I must not reveal."
She spat blood into the dust and stepped forward, planting her battered spear into the ground. The strip of red snapped taut. "They came for my people last night. Men in black cloaks, faces like carved night. They cut through wards. They burned the entrance marks. They left no one alive." Her voice broke on the last words, but she forced it back. "They call themselves Shadow Fang. They do not take trophies. They mark their kills with a single brand — a pair of fangs wrapped in a ring. They left a mark. I hid watching and see them go."
Lei Shan's expression did not change, but something under his ribs tightened — an old chord struck. He glanced briefly at the crimson strip. It tugged at memory like a splinter.
"You want vengeance," he said. It was not a question.
She nodded, hard. "I want them dead. I want my elder given the burial that counts for something. I want their leader to know what it means to lose a clan."
A silence settled between them, thick as the storm. Lei Shan studied her face: the fierce grief, the raw, burning edge of resolve. He had seen that look before — in other face's, other times. It had been the same look in the Black Forest the night the Oxag wolf fell. It was a dangerous thing; grief that became hunger tended to grow into something monstrous.
"I am not a general of war," he said. "I choose where I spend what remains of my strength."
"You used your power for a stranger once before," she said, voice small, "and saved my kin. You can do it again please."
The words landed like a stone. He felt them — not because they were true or false, but because they pressed against an old ledger in him he kept closed. The memory — they were pieces he had buried to keep the world from unlearning itself.
"You should not ask this of me," he said finally. "If I come, it will draw eyes."
"They already watch," she snapped. "They watch and they take. If you do not stop them, they will take what remains of the east caverns, then the ridges. They will bleed the plains until only hunger remains."
Her certainty was a blade. Lei Shan weighed it the way he weighed a blade in hand: balance, edge, purpose. He looked at the horizon, at the ragged banners over the broken camps, at the thin columns of smoke where desperate fires tried to keep hope alive. The storm did not respect strategy. It only consumed what was offered.
"All right," he said at last. "We do not hunt in blind fury. Tell me what you saw. Tell me where they moved after the ambush."
She breathed in, steadied like a bow drawn taut, and began to speak in small, sharp bursts: the route the assassins took, the weak seam in the ward at the cavern mouth, the way they extinguished the ward with a clamp of dark force, not a spell—an engineering of killing that left no residual mark for ordinary wizards to trace.
"You are sure Kael gave those orders?" Lei Shan asked.
She flinched at the name. "They are Shadow Fang. Kael's face I did not see. Their pattern matches his clan. They move like his hunters, but —" she hesitated, "— the mark was their doing. I heard a word I did not understand. They called it binding. They leave this mark to show their master something has been taken."
Lei Shan did not reply. He folded her report into his mind like a map whose edges might be brittle with time. Then he reached toward the band of crimson she had tied around her spear and unwrapped it with a single motion. The cloth came away sticky with old, dry blood. He did not flinch; he folded the cloth and tucked it into one of his pouches.
"You will come with me," he said.
She stared as if she had not expected this. "I thought you would say no."
"You cannot enter caverns right now," he continued. "You will help me guide the path. We will avoid the main roads. You will show me where the wards failed. If we must strike, we will strike cleanly."
Her hand went to her spear as if to test it. "And if the Shadow Fang outnumber us?"
"We will make them smaller one by one." He looked at her, and for a fraction of a breath she saw something in him that had nothing to do with the man who had saved her before. It was not pity. It was a promise of violence wrapped in restraint. "Stay clear of their lines. When you see me fight, do not join unless I call."
"I understand." She drew a slow breath. "Do you even know how many of them there are?"
He shook his head. "No. But they do not travel with a banner. They move like hunters. They keep to the dark. That makes them dangerous — and also arrogant. Arrogant leaves a pattern."
"Then let us find their pattern," she said. Her voice had calmed; grief had become a colder instrument. "Find them, and I will watch them fall."
He inclined his head once, then turned toward the low ridge line that the scout had described. The egg at his chestplate warmed again as if it approved. He did not speak—orders in this world were often weapons of the tongue, and he was not eager to squander either.
As they moved, the storm seemed to tighten its focus, a spectator waiting to see whether the hunter or the hunted would bend first.
Far below,the atmosphere of the relic chamber echoed with the sound of dark promise.
Elina and the others waited on a command they did not have. Above them, the plains breathed and listened.
Lei Shan walked beside the scout in measured silence. She kept glancing at him, as if cataloguing proof that the legend about this person was true. He let her do it.
Legends were useful tools; they could open doors or close mouths. For now, the story she carried would be the map they needed.
They reached the first burned watch-post two hours later. A tiny flag nailed to a splintered pole showed the mark of the Oro-Spire; it had been cut in half, as if some invisible blade had decided the flag was too proud to stay whole.
He crouched, examining the scorched earth where the assassins had passed. In the charred dust, he found a narrow loop of roughly braided fiber, blackened at one end, still warm.
"Shadow Fang left a trace," he muttered, more to himself than to the scout. He looked up at her. "You said they sent a message at the mouth of the cavern?"
"Yes," she said. "A brand on the ground. Like a mark left for their master."
He did not laugh. In his pocket, the egg pulsed, like a drumbeat keeping time to a march he was not yet ready to call.
"Then we follow the trace," Lei Shan said. "Quietly. We take back what was taken — not for honor, not for glory, but because a world that allows killers to move in the dark becomes worse than the storm."
The scout's face set like stone. She felt something like hope, brittle but necessary, forming at the center of her ribs.
They moved out again —only two tiny figures an endless, breathing vast plain sheet. The storm watched; the plains listened; Shadow Fang, somewhere beyond the next ridge, still tasted the blood of the night.
To be continue...