Sorry for the late upload, readers I was not in my best condition.
Darkness swallowed Sabre as he plummeted into it, the world dissolving around him like wet ink running down parchment. His consciousness flickered in and out, and in that suffocating void, his heart—no longer beating with its natural rhythm—thundered like a war drum. It felt possessed, hijacked by a force far older and far more violent than anything he had ever known.
Then, suddenly, his heart changed.
A surge of electricity condensed at the center of his chest, forming a pulsing sphere of lightning. With every frantic heartbeat, arcs of raw current shot through his meridians, slamming into his acupuncture points like hammer strikes. His entire body trembled violently under the strain.
Above him, in the real world, the elders staggered backward in disbelief.
Sabre was no longer merely a boy.
He had turned into a motherlode of lightning.
Bolts spiraled off him endlessly—thick, vicious, snarling currents that crackled with enough power to turn a mountain into vapor. Even the iron-willed elders of the Iron Citadel Guild did not dare approach him. They took several cautious steps backward, their faces tightening with something they hated to admit:
Fear.
The citizens who had gathered around the arena—both normal humans and awakeners—were stunned into silence. Some trembled. Some covered their mouths. Some simply stared with dilated pupils, their minds struggling to accept what they were witnessing.
A single, collective thought formed across them all:
If he is already this strong without even cultivating… then how terrifying will he become once he does?
But Sabre himself was in no such awe.
Inside, he was struggling. Fuming. Panicking. Fighting for control.
He tried again and again to summon the astral energy that lay dormant inside him, desperately attempting to shape it into something—anything—that could save him.
"Damn it…" he growled internally. "I'm about to be killed because of this power… and this stupid power won't even respond to me!"
His frustration swelled, boiling past reason. The pressure in his chest climbed until it became unbearable, and finally, something inside him snapped.
A scream tore out of him.
A scream so primal, so filled with fury and despair, that the very air trembled.
The sound blasted outward like an explosion. Anyone within a hundred meters felt their eardrums rupture instantly. Blood ran down cheeks. People collapsed to their knees, clutching their heads, their eyes wide with horror.
And then…
A wave of energy surged out of Sabre's body.
It was invisible—yet impossibly dense, impossibly sharp. It collided with the fabric of space, shredding it like wet cloth. Cracks bloomed in midair, spiderwebbing outward with violent snaps.
Crack… crack… CRACK.
The world itself seemed to groan.
Then—
A rift tore open.
A jagged, swirling wound in reality.
Silence fell. Even the lightning around Sabre dimmed in comparison to the overwhelming wrongness leaking from the rift.
From within it, a silhouette emerged.
A creature that had never once been recorded in the history of the world stepped through the fracture in space. Humanoid in shape, but nothing else about it resembled a man.
Its skin was like cracked stone.
Its veins were replaced entirely by glowing star-lines—celestial maps that pulsed with cosmic energy.
Its body shimmered with a radiance sharper and clearer than cut diamond.
And its eyes… its eyes held galaxies.
Anyone who met that gaze felt their soul falter, as if drawn into an endless universe.
Then the creature spoke.
"What a tremendous amount of astral energy this galaxy possesses," it mused with awe, its voice echoing like layered constellations drifting across space.
It shifted its glowing gaze toward Sabre and added, almost begrudgingly:
"Pity. You're so weak that the rift you created can sustain only a clone of mine… and only for a few minutes at that."
Gasps rippled through the onlookers.
A clone?
This being—this monster—was only a clone?
The creature, later known to the world as the Astryx, turned its attention to the elders. The moment its gaze touched them, their legs trembled. Knees bent involuntarily. Their bodies shook as though mountains had been placed upon their shoulders.
Pressure. The kind no mortal was meant to withstand.
The Astryx blurred.
One moment it stood beside Sabre.
The next—
It was before the elders.
Its form rippled between tangible and intangible, shifting like starlight trapped inside a storm. It moved faster than light, the air hardly having time to scream under the force of its passage.
A single strike.
A single, effortless motion.
And the heads of the elders fell from their shoulders.
The crowd froze. Some fainted on the spot. Others forgot how to breathe.
The Astryx clicked its tongue with regret.
"Pity I can't stay any longer. If I could, I might have broken through another layer."
It turned back to Sabre.
"One last thing, child."
Its voice deepened—cold, ancient, and impossibly vast.
"You are a double-edged sword to us Astryx. You may become the key that allows us to conquer this galaxy… the only being capable of stopping us. But remember this:"
The creature leaned forward, and the star-lines on its face pulsed.
"We alone are worthy of killing you. Do not let anyone else take what belongs to us."
The rift behind it began to destabilize—cracks crawling over its edges like fractures in glass.
The Astryx's form shimmered.
"Survive, Sabre. Grow. And when you are ready… the galaxy will tremble."
With that, the rift snapped shut.
The lightning around Sabre flickered. His body finally gave in, collapsing to the ground as the world shook from the aftermath of the Astryx's brief visitation.
Citizens stumbled backward. Guards screamed orders. Awakeners dragged the wounded away.
But Sabre heard none of it.
The darkness returned, swallowing him again.
Only this time, there was no peace.
No numbness.
No stillness.
Something inside him had awakened—completely.
In the depths of the void, he felt it.
The first spark of cultivation.
The opening of the First Gate on his path.
And far, far in the distance, he could almost hear the Astryx laughing.
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Pls vote with powerstones, readers