The Blood Council Chamber lay deep beneath the ancestral estate, carved into the living heart of the Blood Crystal mountain itself. Crimson light pulsed rhythmically from veins in the walls like a slow, ancient heartbeat — casting shifting shadows across the vast circular table forged from a single slab of solidified ancestral blood essence that had taken three generations of Voss patriarchs to accumulate. Ancient runes etched into its surface glowed faintly, recording the words of every council held within these walls for millennia — silent witnesses to decisions that had shaped the clan's fate across the long centuries. The air was thick, heavy with the scent of iron and concentrated power, and the distant thrum of the continent's ley lines could be felt as a low, constant vibration beneath their feet — the Crimson Veil's own pulse, steady and deep and very much alive.
Seven elders sat around the table.
The survivors of the purge.
Their faces were grim, robes still bearing faint stains from the chaos mere hours before — marks that none had thought to remove, perhaps because removing them felt too much like pretending the evening had been ordinary. The empty seats, once occupied by the fallen, loomed like silent accusations around the circle — present in their absence with a weight that living people rarely managed.
Patriarch Arcturus Voss entered last, his footsteps echoing with deliberate weight through the chamber. He had washed the blood from his hands, but the memory of Elder Thorne's dying gaze lingered in his eyes like something that soap and water had no power over. He took his place at the head of the table, his Core Formation aura settling over the chamber like a crimson shroud — present, controlled, giving nothing away.
"Speak freely," he said, his voice low but filling the chamber completely. "The heavens have marked my son's birth with signs none can ignore. Blankness. Stars. Destruction. Glory. And then — judgment within our own walls. We must understand what this means. For Kairos, for the clan, for our future."
Grand Elder Valeria spoke first.
The oldest among them at nearly nine hundred years, her voice was dry as autumn leaves but her crimson eyes burned with the sharp, unsentimental clarity of someone who had outlived enough crises to recognize the shape of this one. A master of the Dao of Blood Divination, she had spent the hours since the purge in consultation with her oracles — spheres of coagulated blood essence that she now placed on the table, their surfaces swirling with slow, murky patterns that shifted as she spoke.
"The blankness gripped only the Crimson Veil," she began, pressing a trembling hand flat to the table's surface. A ripple of red light spread from her palm, forming fleeting images in the air — frozen moments of utter stillness, there and gone like breath on cold air. "Ten seconds where existence paused. The common folk have forgotten it already, their minds wiped clean by some force we do not yet have a name for. But we remember." She looked around the table slowly. "It was as if the heavens reached down, tested us — and found some among us lacking."
Elder Harlan, broad-shouldered and scarred from a lifetime of border skirmishes, did not wait for the silence to settle before slamming a fist on the table. The impact sent a spray of faint blood mist upward that drifted slowly back down like red snow. "The stars and the waves — they blanketed all of Lunara. My contacts in the trade ports of the Azure Storm Continent sent frantic talisman messages before the purge even began. Every major sect, every hidden expert, every warlord sitting on his mountain felt it." He leaned forward, eyes hard. "They know something extraordinary has happened. They will come sniffing soon enough — and when they do, they will not be polite about it."
Mira, the scholarly elder, adjusted her jade spectacles with the careful precision of someone organizing her thoughts alongside her hands. Her voice, when it came, was calm — analytical in the way that calm sometimes is when it has been constructed deliberately over instinct. "The celestial phenomena follow patterns recorded in the most ancient fragments of our library. Pulsing stars herald the birth of one favored by fate. Primal destruction warns of trials and bloodshed to come. The wave of destiny promises ascension — but only through fire." She paused, her gaze moving briefly to the empty seats. "And the purge was too precise to be mere possession. Traitors exposed and eliminated in moments, with intelligence none of us possessed consciously. Even—" another pause, shorter but heavier, "—even Elder Thorne."
The name landed in the chamber the way names like that always do — with a silence that is not really silence at all, but the sound of people deciding how much to feel about something.
Arcturus met their gazes without flinching. "My own hand ended him. In that moment I felt the truth of it — his hidden arrangements with the Iron Fang Clan, his ambitions to sell our blood mines in exchange for backing, his patience in waiting for the right moment to move against us." His jaw tightened almost imperceptibly. "The force that moved through us spared the loyal and struck only the rotten. It was judgment. Heavenly judgment — precise, absolute, and entirely beyond our own capabilities."
Valeria nodded slowly, the divination spheres on the table pulsing once in dim agreement. "Then your son is no ordinary prodigy. The signs are too grand, too layered, too deliberate in their sequence. The ancient prophecy scrolls speak of one who will bring an era of blood and war, yet rise above it — the holder of Heaven's Will, who shall rule the firmament and transcend." She let the words breathe for a moment before continuing. "We may be looking at the beginning of that."
The chamber absorbed this in silence.
Then Harlan's ambition, never far below the surface, pushed through his caution. "If Kairos is that one — if our clan stands at the origin point of such a destiny — then we are standing on the threshold of something none of our ancestors ever dreamed of reaching. We are weak now. Confined to this continent, paying tribute to stronger powers, scraping for resources at the edge of greater men's tables." His voice hardened with conviction. "But a heaven-born of this magnitude changes everything. He could elevate us to planetary dominance. Perhaps beyond. We must protect him at all costs. Strengthen the wards. Recall all outer disciples. Purge any remaining doubt before it becomes the next Thorne."
"And nurture him carefully," Mira added, softer but no less firm. "His features alone — the golden veins, the violet-crimson eyes, the way ambient Qi gathers to him even in sleep as though the world is already paying him tribute — mark him as something the world has not seen in a very long time. The Dao of Blood flows strongly in him, but there are hints of something beneath it. Something deeper." She chose her next word with visible care. "Something destructive."
The word settled over the table like a stone dropped into still water — the ripples invisible, but felt.
Arcturus leaned back, expression unreadable as he turned the full weight of the problem over in his mind. "The planetary phenomena were witnessed by all of Lunara. Already, sound talismans from distant continents carry questions. If we announce Kairos's birth now — if we allow even the suggestion of a connection between the heavenly signs and a newborn in the Voss Clan — every sect, every rival power, every ambitious force on this planet will draw the line between those two points and act on what they conclude." He paused. "They will descend on us. Spies today, assassins tomorrow, armies the day after. We cannot invite early doom through our own impatience."
He straightened, and when he spoke again his voice carried the particular finality of a decision already made.
"Therefore — we delay. The official announcement and celebration of my son's birth will be postponed. We will claim the phenomena passed hours before Kairos was born, that he arrived quietly in their aftermath. The grand feast, the invitations to allied families, the public declaration — all postponed by several days. In the meantime, we cite the internal incident, the mourning for the fallen, as reason to keep the estate sealed." His gaze moved around the table. "No word of the heaven-born leaves these walls until we are fortified enough to weather what that word will bring."
Valeria's eyes narrowed with quiet approval. "It buys us time. Time to reinforce, to recall loyal forces, to seed misinformation through trade networks pointing attention elsewhere."
Harlan grunted. "Let them think the signs herald some prodigy on a distant continent. By the time the trail leads here, we'll be ready to receive visitors on our own terms."
Mira inclined her head. "And it protects the child from immediate envy. The heavens have marked him — but we will shield him until he can shield himself."
Arcturus rose, the decision final, the matter closed. "From this day, all resources flow toward defense and toward Kairos's early nurturing. Silence on the true birth time. Mourning outward, preparation inward." He looked at each of them in turn — the survivors, the loyal, the ones the purge had deemed worth keeping. "The heaven-born has arrived. And with him, our destiny. We will not squander it through haste."
As the elders dispersed into the crimson-lit corridors, their footsteps fading in different directions with different purposes, the Blood Crystal mountain hummed faintly around them — as though the ancient stone itself understood what had just been decided and approved.
Far above, in the quiet of the birthing pavilion, baby Kairos slept on — dreaming dreams that no infant should possess, of vast skies split by falling stars, of rivers of blood carving their inevitable paths toward thrones of unimaginable glory, and of something distant and immense calling to him from the void with a voice that felt, impossibly, like his own.
The era of chaos had been foretold.
And it had already begun.