The air shifted with every step.
Jalen moved in silence, Lloyd at his right, Tera floating slightly behind. Their destination: the northern rim of the Vault—an elevated basin of fractured stone and constant light spirals. It was here the Supreme Grade Spirit Light Sabre awaited its chosen one.
Jalen had completed the final five techniques. Faster than he'd anticipated. He thought mastering the remaining forms would take weeks—months even—after separating from Lloyd. But it had taken only five days alone in that hidden sub-realm of complete focus and nonstop training. And now, all fifteen light techniques hummed within him like celestial threads bound to marrow.
Technique 11 – Flash Reversion A teleportation pulse anchored to reflective surfaces. Allows the user to vanish from one light-bearing point and reappear at another, even mid-combat. Not raw displacement—but radiant reversion. Once mastered, it lets the user rewind presence, returning to any location previously touched—even before possessing light qi—so long as space itself holds a memory of them.
The technique is limited to a sixty-mile radius. Beyond that, spatial echoes thin and the thread collapses. Strategic use depends on prior presence, environmental reflectivity, and light qi density. Blind leaps are impossible—but anchored ones feel like destiny answering a whisper.
Technique 12 – Flare of Recursion A healing burst that rewound qi fragmentation. Not brute force regeneration—but graceful realignment of spirit threads. Fast. Silent. Efficient. Of course this takes a lot of qi so it's not a technique that can be used on repeat without completely draining the user. And if mishandle drained them to death.
Technique 13 – Luminal Edge A blade-shaped beam summoned from pure radiant force. Cuts through formation fields, splits domain barriers, and humbles spirit constructs.
Technique 14 – Lightform Ascension Jalen could teach it. He understood every glyph in its structure. But he couldn't cast it. To mold the body into a being of light required the Light Physique—and that belonged to Lloyd alone.
Technique 15 – Thread Fusion His most dangerous creation. It allowed two mastered techniques to merge—movement with offense, healing with blast radius, and teleportation with containment. When activated, it bent the Vault's logic around him.
They reached the north by late morning.
Their descent was slow—measured.
The Summit of Blades spread beneath them: crater-like, surrounded by levitating platforms where cultivators from all corners of the Reigned Continent stood. representatives from the twenty top Sects and ten Royal Families. Their banners rippled. Their disciples postured. Spirit fusion realm and peak imperial realm elders from all the factions hovered mid-air like thunderclouds holding judgment.
And in the center?
The supreme-grade lightsaber, floating vertically, tip down, a pillar of compressed violet light humming with legacy.
It had not moved since it first showed up a few days ago.
Not for anyone. Not even for the Spirit Fusion Realm cultivators who destroy mountains and quake the skies.
Until now.
Jalen walked forward—no ceremony, no announcement. Lloyd and Tera followed several steps behind. Gasps echoed from every vantage point. Murmurs turned into alarm.
The saber floated directly into Lloyd's palm as if it belonged there.
Silence.
Not shock.
Not fury.
Just silence.
Like even the realm paused to bear witness.
The saber touched Lloyd's grip with grace—not rebellion. It shimmered. The Vault floor cracked beneath him. Glyphs flared across the ridge. Light harmonics surged in every direction.
Lloyd then began to convulse. His qi spun violently. Dantian pressure ruptured. And then—
His cultivation base in one big bang grew from the Early Enlightened realm to the Early Star realm.
Tera flinched. "How is this even possible?"
He didn't use some rare realm advancement pills.
No growth from combat.
No years of training.
But from resonance.
And she wasn't the only one shocked by this phenomenon; everyone present, near and far, was.
Among the crowd, one star realm disciple from the Sabre Sect turned toward a familiar woman cloaked in obsidian robes.
"Verna… is that that boy we ran into a couple of days ago?"
She didn't respond.
Because her pride was already splitting.
When she first met Lloyd, he was a Peak Amethyst nobody.
Barely worth her techniques.
She had humiliated him. Robbed him.
And now?
He stood near the Supreme Sabre—a Star Realm cultivator at seventeen years old. Not even months had passed, and his name was threading into legacy. She clenched her jaw. Her fists shook. Her spirit wavered.
Rage didn't help.
Shame didn't hide.
Fear curled inside her like poison.
Then came the echo—low, deep, and final.
A massive ring of pressure surged outward.
The sky dimmed.
Stars flickered.
And the cultivators moved.
A circular formation closed in around Jalen, Lloyd, and Tera. Peak Imperial Realm elders from the top sects and families hovered in solemn stance. Spirit Fusion elites radiated silent death threats.
They said nothing for a moment.
Until one stepped forward.
Themo Tenison.
"Hand over the Supreme Saber… or die."
His voice came like hammer strikes on granite.
His pressure arrived not as flame but as glacial dominance. A surge of qi like razored frost coiled through the Vault, chilling the air until glyph platforms frosted over and cultivators exhaled mist. The Royal Prince of the Crown Kingdom was no longer posturing—he was freezing the battlefield into submission.
Tera shivered mid-flight. Her limbs stiffened. Breath turned brittle as her meridians locked in place. Ice crusted along her sleeves where her qi failed to repel the pressure.
Lloyd's light qi flared defensively, but even he staggered back a step. A freezing force pressed against his chest, and shards of frost erupted around his spirit core like anchors pulling his body toward collapse.
But Jalen?
Unfrozen. Unmoved.
The icy suppression spiraled around him like a blizzard searching for weakness—and found none.
Themo's gaze sharpened. His glacier-born qi surged harder.
But Jalen's light didn't flicker.
It extinguished the ice—not with flame or fury, but with the quiet clarity of a spirit untouchable.
Even the sky seemed to thaw.
Jalen lifted his gaze with unshaken calm. "With just you?"
The words landed like a dropped blade on polished marble—dead silence followed, so still you could hear the air recoil. He had addressed a figure whose lineage stretched back through generations of sovereign rule: a Tenison, scion of one of the Reign Continent's ten elite royal families. This man was revered, feared, and venerated. But Jalen? He stood untouched by awe.
Did he even fear death?