Nova stared at the face that was his and not his.
The myriad's features had frozen in death, settling on a perfect replica of his own—silver hair, pale blue eyes, the slight asymmetry of his lips that he had never liked. Even the small scar on his chin, earned falling from a tree at age seven, was reproduced with unsettling accuracy.
"Kid?" Vex's voice came from somewhere distant. "You look like you've seen a ghost."
Nova forced himself to breathe. To think. The myriad hadn't been hunting him specifically—that was paranoia talking. Shape-shifters often took the forms of those they observed during battle, using familiar faces to cause confusion and fear. The creature had seen him fighting, marked him as a threat, and copied his appearance as a psychological weapon.
That was all. That had to be all.
"Just—" His voice came out rough. He cleared his throat. "Just never seen my own face looking back at me like that."
Vex followed his gaze to the corpse. "Huh. Didn't realize you were that pretty."
Despite everything, Nova laughed—a short, startled sound that surprised them both. Vex grinned, clapping him on the shoulder with her cybernetic hand. The metal was cold even through his jacket.
"Come on," she said. "Let's get you sorted. You're running on fumes, and we've got wounded to tend."
The aftermath of battle was chaos wearing an organized mask.
Guards moved through the clearing, checking bodies, collecting salvage, tending to injuries. Three were dead—two crushed by moguen, one taken by a bone demon before anyone could reach him. A dozen more carried wounds that would need proper attention. The caravan's healer, a tired-looking woman with a Healing affinity at 2nd Order, 3rd Rank, worked tirelessly among them, her hands glowing with soft light as she knitted flesh and mended bone.
Nova sat on the tailgate of a supply truck, a ration bar in his hand that he couldn't bring himself to eat. His mana had recovered to forty-three units—enough for emergencies, but far from full. The System's regeneration rate was painfully slow. At this pace, he'd need another twenty hours to reach maximum.
There has to be a better way, he thought. Techniques. Cultivation methods. Something to speed this up.
He pulled up his interface, studying the locked sections. The Godless System had offered a cultivation technique as reward for reaching the academy. But that was weeks away, assuming he survived the journey.
In the meantime, he had Nora's journal.
He pulled it from his inventory—a leather-bound book, worn at the edges, filled with his sister's precise handwriting. The pages were thin, almost translucent, and covered in notations that ranged from alchemical formulas to combat observations to fragments of what seemed like personal diary entries.
He flipped to a section marked Cultivation Fundamentals.
The body is a vessel. The soul is the fire. Mana is the fuel. Most cultivators never understand this—they focus on the fuel, trying to pack more into the vessel, never realizing that a larger vessel means nothing if the fire is too weak to heat it.
Nova—my Nova, the first one—understood differently. He cultivated his soul alongside his mana. That's why he could fight across orders. That's why the Shadows followed him. That's why the Emperor feared him.
I've included his basic cycling method here. It's not complete—the full Eclipse Sutra was lost when he died—but it's enough to start. Enough to build foundation.
Use it well, little one. Grow strong.
Nova read on, absorbing the instructions. The method was deceptively simple: cycle mana through specific pathways in the body, not just the core. Strengthen the vessels. Heat the fire. Expand capacity not by force, but by growth.
He closed the journal and straightened his back.
Try it now, he told himself. You have hours before dawn. Use them.
The meditation was nothing like he expected.
He had read about cultivation, of course—every child in every village learned the basics. Sit still. Focus. Draw mana from the air into your core. Repeat until breakthrough.
Nora's method was different.
Instead of drawing mana in, she taught him to draw it through. To trace pathways along his meridians, warming them, stretching them, making them capable of holding more than they were designed to hold. The mana didn't settle in his core—it flowed, a constant current that energized every part of him.
The first cycle took an hour. The second, less. By the third, he had found a rhythm—push, hold, release, repeat—that felt almost natural.
When he opened his eyes, dawn was breaking over the Ferrowood.
And his mana reserve had changed.
MANA RESERVE: 163/163 units
Note: Meridian expansion detected. Base capacity increased.
Fifteen units gained in a single night. Not through absorption, but through growth. His vessel was larger now. His fire burned brighter.
Nova smiled.
Thank you, Nora, he thought. Wherever you are—thank you.
The caravan moved at dawn.
Vex had made the call to push through without rest. The attack had cost them time and personnel, and every hour they lingered in the Ferrowood was another hour something else could find them. Better to move, to put distance between themselves and whatever intelligence had organized the assault.
Nova rode in the lead truck now, at Vex's explicit request. "You saw them first," she'd said. "You called the attack before anyone else knew we were compromised. You found the myriad when experienced guards were panicking. You're on point until I say otherwise."
He didn't argue.
The terrain grew rougher as they traveled, the western fork living up to its reputation. Trees pressed close on either side, their branches forming a canopy that blocked most of the sky. The hover-trucks slowed to a crawl, their anti-grav systems struggling with the uneven ground.
Nova kept his eyes on the forest, watching for movement, for shadows, for anything that didn't belong. His mana had recovered fully during the morning's travel—163 units, a new baseline—and he felt more alert than he had in days.
The method works, he thought. If I keep this up, I could double my capacity before reaching the academy.
The Godless System pinged.
QUEST UPDATE: "THE PATH BEGINS"
OBJECTIVE: Reach Sky Tower Academy and enroll as a student
PROGRESS: 2/30 days | Approximately 800 miles remaining
DIFFICULTY: D-Rank
REWARDS:
Basic Cultivation Technique (Grade: Earth)
100 Gold Coins
1x Random Herb Pack (Bloodline Enhancement Potential)
NOTE: Host's independent acquisition of partial cultivation method noted. Reward adjustment pending final evaluation.
Reward adjustment? Nova frowned. The System could modify its rewards based on his actions? That was both useful and slightly concerning.
He dismissed the screen and returned to watching the forest.
They made camp that night in a natural hollow, protected on three sides by rising stone. Vex positioned the trucks to block the open end, creating a makeshift fortress that would be difficult to breach without warning.
Nova drew first watch this time—the early evening hours, when fatigue hadn't yet set in and most creatures were still settling into their nocturnal routines.
He sat on the tallest truck, Nora's journal open in his lap, reading by the faint glow of the Godless System's interface. The journal contained more than cultivation methods. It held observations about the Abyss Planes, notes on the various demon types, and—most importantly—detailed information about the Shadows.
Benimaru, he read. Black Flame Dragon. Rescued by Nova during the Zephyr Campaign. Most loyal of all. Cannot be bought, cannot be broken. If he lives, he will find you.
Alpha. Elf. Strategist. She planned campaigns that defeated enemies ten times our number. If she lives, she is probably already looking for you. She was always the smartest of us.
Geralt. Rune Warrior. Carries the weight of his bloodline on his skin. If he lives, he is fighting. He never stops fighting.
Megan. Half-demon. She helped me with the ritual. She knows what you are. If she lives, she will protect you—not out of loyalty to you, but out of loyalty to me.
Alexander. Light Manipulator. Once called Coldblood for his precision, not his cruelty. If he lives... I don't know what he has become. The siege broke something in him. Be careful.
Nova memorized the names, the descriptions, the warnings. These were his people—or they had been, in another life. They had followed him into battle, died for him, survived for him. Somewhere in the universe, they were waiting for a sign that he had returned.
Not yet, he thought. I'm not ready. Not strong enough. Not whole.
He closed the journal and looked up at the stars.
The sky here was different from Oakhaven's—dimmer, somehow, as if the Ferrowood's dense canopy swallowed light before it could reach the ground. But he could still see them. Still feel their ancient indifference.
Where are you, Nora? he wondered. Are you watching the same stars? Do you know I'm here?
The universe, as always, offered no answer.
The watch changed at midnight.
Nova climbed down from his perch, handing responsibility to the lightning woman—her name, he had learned, was Riya, and she was 2nd Order, 1st Rank with a genuine Lightning Manipulation superpower.
"Anything?" she asked.
"Quiet. Too quiet, maybe. But nothing moved."
"Good. Get some rest. You look like you need it."
Nova nodded and made his way to the bunk he'd been assigned—a narrow space in the back of a supply truck, barely long enough to stretch out. He lay down, closed his eyes, and tried to sleep.
The faces of the dead watched him from the darkness.
Three guards. He hadn't known their names, hadn't spoken to them beyond passing greetings. But they had died in the same battle he survived, and some part of him—the part that had once commanded armies, that had carried the weight of every soldier lost under his command—refused to let him forget.
You couldn't save them, the voice whispered. You could barely save yourself.
I know.
Next time, you'll be stronger. Or you'll die too.
I know.
He slept.
He woke to shouting.
Nova was on his feet before his eyes opened, daggers in hand, mana flaring. The truck's interior was dark—dawn hadn't broken yet—but outside, lights flashed and voices called in urgent tones.
He burst through the rear door.
Riya stood at the camp's edge, lightning crackling around her hands. But she wasn't fighting. She was staring at something on the ground.
Nova approached cautiously.
It was a body. Human—or what had been human. The features were twisted, corrupted, half-transformed into something demonic. Claws where fingers should be. Teeth too numerous for any natural mouth. Eyes that still glowed faintly with residual Abyss energy.
"Found him at the perimeter," Riya said quietly. "Just... walking toward us. No weapons. No armor. No attempt to hide."
Nova knelt beside the corpse. The transformation wasn't complete—whoever this had been, they had fought it. There were scars on their arms, old ones, suggesting they had been resisting for a long time.
"Corpse demon victim," he said. "Or someone who tried to bind a demon and lost control. Either way, they've been walking for days. Maybe weeks."
"How do you know?"
He pointed at the feet—worn, blistered, wrapped in rags that had long since stopped providing protection. "These aren't combat injuries. This is travel. They were trying to get somewhere before the transformation finished."
Riya's face paled. "Trying to get here?"
Nova didn't answer. He was studying the body's hands, the way they were clenched, the way something was clutched in the dead fingers.
He pried them open carefully.
A letter. Sealed with wax—a symbol he didn't recognize, a tower rising toward a crescent moon.
Addressed to no one.
But inside, in handwriting that made his heart stop:
If you're reading this, I'm already gone. The demon took me days ago—I'm just writing by rote now, muscle memory, the last human part of me fighting to finish what I started.
They're watching the roads. They know someone important is coming. I don't know who, I don't know why, but the Abyss creatures are being directed. Controlled. Someone—something—is hunting.
Don't trust the shadows. Don't trust the silence. Don't trust your own face in the mirror.
The tower waits. The tower remembers.
Make it worth my death.
Nova read the letter three times.
Then he looked up at the dark forest, at the shadows that moved where no shadows should be, at the face of the myriad demon that had worn his features in death.
Someone—something—is hunting.
He folded the letter carefully and tucked it into his inventory.
"Riya," he said quietly. "Wake Vex. We need to move. Now."