One hundred and eighty-nine million, two hundred and sixteen thousand beats.
Nine years.
Kaiser Warborn was eighteen years old.
If the physical transformation at sixteen had been stark, the evolution at eighteen bordered on the divine. The pure white hair of the heir now blanketed the black stone floor of the Leyline Nexus like a pool of liquid moonlight. His hyper-dense musculature had matured, forging the slender boy into a towering, statuesque weapon of absolute physical perfection.
He sat perfectly still, Silence resting across his knees. The dark-silk blindfold remained tightly secured, but the air around his head seemed to warp, as if the space itself was trying to pull away from his face.
For the past two years, Kaiser had waged a grueling, microscopic war against his own biology.
He had successfully pinched a single drop of madness from the Void Eyes and weaponized it to break the Abyssal Wyrm. But projecting it once in a desperate defense was entirely different from mastering it.
The mana of the Void Eyes was a screeching, chaotic static. When he tried to weave it into his continuous Aura flow, it behaved like a rabid animal. It bit back. It burned his meridians with a cold, terrifying agony that felt like his mind was being splintered into a thousand jagged pieces.
It lacks structure, Kaiser analyzed, opening his physical ears to the deafening, silent roar of the subterranean Leylines around him.
The Earth mana had a heavy, dragging frequency. The Fire mana had a jagged, static crackle. The Water mana had a cascading, smooth hum. They all possessed a natural wave, a pattern that his Absolute Senses could map and ride.
But the Void mana had no pattern. It was the antithesis of order.
Kaiser slowed his breathing, suppressing a violent shudder as a thread of the abyssal madness threatened to bleed out of his control and infect his own frontal lobe.
To tame the chaos, he needed a container. He couldn't build a physical container, so he had to build a conceptual one.
His mind drifted back, crossing the boundary of transmigration, returning to the rainy, wooden dojo of his past life.
He remembered his two disciples, Amit and Aman. They had possessed raw power, fierce loyalty, and a burning, competitive aggression, but their strikes were often chaotic. Aman would attack too fast, losing his balance; Amit would strike too hard, telegraphing his intent.
How had the Sightless Sovereign tamed their chaotic aggression?
I didn't teach them to suppress it, Kaiser realized, the memory flashing with crystalline clarity. I taught them to channel it into a beat.
He had used a metronome. He had taught them the lethal, aggressive rhythm of a street fight—the syncopated tempo of slipping a jab and countering on the off-beat. He had taken their chaotic, monstrous energy and forced it to march to a highly structured, relentless cadence.
Kaiser brought his consciousness back to the pitch-black tomb.
The Void mana is a monster, Kaiser thought, a cold, calculating pragmatism taking over. A Rakshas of pure psychic energy. I cannot let it scream. I must force it to rap to my beat.
He didn't use an external metronome. He used his own heart.
He intentionally accelerated his resting heart rate from its glacial forty beats per minute. He pushed it to sixty. Then eighty. Then, he locked it at exactly one hundred beats per minute.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
It was a heavy, aggressive, marching tempo.
Kaiser seized the chaotic, screeching thread of the Void mana currently burning through his right arm. Instead of trying to gently guide it, as he did with the Leylines, he violently clamped down on it with his own pressurized Aura.
He forced the madness through the microscopic gates of his meridians, opening and closing the pathways in exact, flawless synchronization with his elevated heartbeat.
Beat. Release. Beat. Release.
The agony was instantaneous and staggering. The Void mana shrieked, rebelling against the rigid structure. It violently expanded, trying to shatter his veins. Blood instantly welled up beneath his dark-silk blindfold, trailing down his pale cheeks like crimson tears.
But Kaiser's will was a fortress of absolute iron. He did not yield. He maintained the aggressive, relentless tempo, forcing the chaos to flow in a structured, syncopated rhythm.
You will march, Kaiser commanded the madness, his internal furnace blazing with tyrannical heat. Or you will break against my shores.
Slowly, the screeching static of the Void mana began to change.
It didn't become peaceful. It didn't become "good." It remained deeply, terrifyingly malicious, but the chaos vanished. The madness was compressed into a heavy, rhythmic pulse. It transformed from a wild, flailing beast into a disciplined, marching army of pure psychological terror.
Kaiser felt the shift. He pushed the rhythmic Void mana out of his body and into the heavy, black metal of Silence.
The primordial blade, normally a silent consumer of energy, let out a deep, concussive THWUM.
The ambient gravity in the Leyline Nexus didn't just increase; it warped. The physical stone floor surrounding Kaiser—solid, abyssal rock designed to withstand the weight of a mountain—began to visibly ripple, like water reacting to a deep bass drop.
Kaiser slowly opened his eyes beneath the blindfold.
His Magical Senses expanded. The room was no longer just painted in the frequencies of the Earth, Fire, and Water Leylines. The air itself was saturated with a thick, pulsating, deep-purple hue of pure, structured terror.
He had created a domain.
Any living creature that stepped into this rhythmic field would not simply be crushed by gravity or burned by heat. Their mind would be forcefully synchronized to Kaiser's aggressive, dominant heartbeat, and then systematically shattered by the disciplined madness of the Void.
Kaiser slowly lowered his heart rate back to forty beats per minute. He reeled the Void mana back, locking it safely beneath his eyelids, sealing the gates of his meridians.
The heavy, purple terror in the room evaporated, leaving behind only the cold, damp scent of ancient stone and his own metallic blood.
Kaiser reached up and calmly wiped the crimson streaks from his cheeks. His hands were trembling slightly from the immense psychological exertion, but a chill, genuine smile touched his lips.
He had found the leash. He had given the monster a rhythm.
Directly above the Catacombs, in the sprawling Vanguard training yards of the Warborn estate, the morning drills had come to a grinding, chaotic halt.
The rain was falling heavily, but no one was paying attention to the weather.
Fifty seasoned Vanguard Knights—men who had stared down Beastkin warlords and Abyssal trolls—were on their knees in the mud. Some were vomiting. Others were clutching their heads, gasping for air as if the oxygen had suddenly turned to thick, suffocating ash.
The massive, heavily armored War-Hounds kept in the iron kennels were whining pathetically, pressing themselves against the back of their cages, utterly paralyzed by a primal, inexplicable dread.
Sir Kaelen stood near the armory, his wooden cane driven deep into the mud to keep himself upright. The veteran assassin's scarred face was pale, his breath coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
Duke Arthur Warborn strode out of the main keep, ignoring the downpour. His heavy, blazing Aura was fully flared, aggressively pushing back against whatever unseen force was assaulting his men.
"Kaelen!" Arthur barked, his voice laced with rare panic as he surveyed his crippled army. "Is it an attack? Church Mages? Assassins?"
Kaelen slowly turned his blindfolded face toward the warlord. The veteran shook his head, a gesture of profound, unsettling realization.
"It is not coming from the walls, My Lord," Kaelen rasped, pointing his trembling, scarred hand straight down at the muddy ground. "It is coming from the foundations."
Arthur froze. The Duke expanded his own immense perception, reaching past the panic of his men, pushing his awareness into the earth beneath his boots.
He felt it.
It wasn't a physical earthquake. It was a rhythmic, aggressive pulse of pure, suffocating darkness vibrating through the stone. It felt like standing too close to the beating heart of a slumbering demon god.
Thump-thump. Thump-thump.
The pressure was so heavy, so inherently unnatural, that even Arthur's towering Aura felt fragile against it.
"Kaiser," Arthur whispered, the word stolen by the wind.
"He is eighteen today, My Lord," Kaelen noted, his voice regaining a fraction of its usual cold steel, though the underlying awe remained. "He has been in the dark for nine years. Whatever limit you thought he possessed... he has broken it."
As suddenly as it had begun, the crushing, psychological weight vanished.
The Vanguard Knights collapsed into the mud, coughing and shivering, completely exhausted by a threat they couldn't even see. The hounds in the kennels stopped whining, though they refused to leave the back of their cages.
Arthur stood in the rain, staring down at the cobblestones. For nine years, he had held the King and the Church at bay with lies of a dying, crippled son. He had borne the weight of their suspicion, preparing his army for the inevitable day they would have to defend a fragile, blind heir.