“So it was a Seeker,” Yensu, Regent of the Wild Wardens, said, her green eyes alight with a raw, untamed power.

  “I was right,” Shuyin murmured, her golden eyes glowing softly, “Kaius has been dabbling in machinations far beyond his understanding.”

  The patriarch of the Talahan clan smiled faintly, his aged and fragile appearance doing nothing to mask the danger that clung to him as a blade sheathed in silk. He stood like a storm hidden behind cracked porcelain.

  “Can you say with certainty,” Kaius replied, voice cold and deliberate, as he raised a hand and pointed across at them all, “that you, that any of you, know what kind of threat he truly poses? A Highlord—one so gifted I am considering tying him to my clan by marriage—threatening cults that have stood for millennia?”

  “Stop playing coy,” Bashu rumbled, arms folded, his muscles flexing with the effort of restraint, eyes glowing like embers in a firestorm.

  “You know as well as we all do the danger he presents. A bloodline of Alana is not something to be ignored. Peace has reigned only because we’ve kept the blades from our throats. You would endanger that?”

  “Peace,” Kaius echoed, stroking his beard, a distant look softening his eyes before a wide, almost wistful smile curved across his face.

  At the center of the proto-space they occupied, Yara, Queen of the Arcanists, sat cross-legged in silent meditation. Above her floated a glowing sphere of intricate runes and ancient script.

  Words formed and dissolved in pulses of aetheric light, rearranging themselves in endless permutations, choosing their final forms with a weight that shook the space around them.

  “Peace in our world,” Kaius continued, chuckling darkly, “is often a sign of horror yet to come. Why wait with bated breath for destruction... when you can strike first?” His laugh echoed like breaking glass across the chamber.

  “Do you agree with your father, Jaito?” Ayun’s voice rippled across the space, gentle as mist, yet sharp enough to cut stone.

  He addressed the silent man seated beside Kaius—a younger, sterner figure with arms folded, eyes closed in thought.

  “The heavens will remain the heavens,” Jaito said, voice serene, a coy smile playing on his lips, “for as long as existence itself persists. What will be, will be. Karma, fate, the stars... our lives are merely extensions of the inevitable.”

  A heavy silence descended. Then Shuyin burst out laughing, rich and mocking.

  “Listen to him! Spouting riddles like that senile old monk in the Eastern peaks! Even the Bahataba do not presume to command fate. That’s our domain, little storm,” she sneered.

  Little Storm—Jaito? The man whose storm-cloud of blood and thunder decimated an entire Arcanist invasion force? Who had refined metal, bone, and blood into living weapons so perfect, so horrifying, that it had drawn his father out of seclusion after a century of closed-door meditation?

  If the young Talahan clan head was offended, he gave no sign. He simply smiled, like the calm before a cataclysm.

  “If you were such masters of fate,” Jaito said quietly, “why did none of you foresee the Seeker’s return?”

  The Keeper’s wrath swelled in the air, a coiling serpent of malice, as Ugad stepped forward.

  “Or better yet,” Jaito added, voice still gentle, “the deaths of your students... at his hands?”

  “Ugad,” Jaito said, now addressing the advancing Paragon directly, smile still etched on his face, “you do not want to do this. A dozen centuries is a long time to waste on a needless death.”

  The Paragon hesitated, glancing back at his regent. Shuyin, though bristling, gave the barest shake of her head.

  “You know not what forces you toy with, child,” Shuyin muttered, voice low with warning.

  “If you do not clip the Void Child now, don’t come crawling to me when he tears down everything you care for,” she added.

  “With or without Kaius’s permission,” Ayun of the Mistwalkers said, tone flat, “the Seeker will die.”

  “I grow weary of this,” Zian of the Veil Walkers hissed, his voice a chorus of agony, like a thousand souls screaming through shredded veils.

  “The child means nothing to us. Besides… will not the Formation condemn him regardless, Lady of the Runes?”

  All eyes turned to Yara, who opened her eyes slowly and nodded once.

  “If you so wish it,” she replied, her voice like distant thunder through the veil.

  “Then it is decided,” Arin of the Chronomancers said, rising finally, ancient and dignified.

  “The Seeker is to die.”

  “And who decided that?” Kaius asked, his tone soft but sharp as a blade hidden beneath silk.

  “Would you go against what we have agreed upon?” Bashu asked.

  His voice was calm—too calm—but carried the unmistakable tremor of promised violence.

  “I only state,” Kaius said, steepling his fingers, “that if this concerns what we are gathered for, then all voices should be heard.”

  “You cannot be serious,” Shuyin snapped.

  “They too, have a claim,” Kaius replied cryptically, eyes gleaming.

  “Or has an eternity of deception so thoroughly clouded your memory of truth?”

  “He is right,” Arin sighed after a pause.

  “They also hold stake in this. So—what say you three, Messengers of the Unorthodoxy?”

  Three silent figures stood in a distant corner, watching with a mix of amusement, detachment, and quiet madness. They did not move. They did not blink.

  “The child must die,” the Death Paragon said with such chilling finality that one might wonder if the Seeker still lived at that very moment, were it not for the regents holding the line of fate.

  “The Necropolis cares not for one cultivator,” the Ghoul King rasped.

  “Only that which was promised… is delivered.”

  “Death,” the Asura said.

  Just that word. And in his eyes danced madness and prophecy alike.

  “Then it is decided,” Shuyin said with steel in her voice.

  Kaius sighed, exasperated.

  “At least I tried,” he said dramatically.

  Jaito chuckled beside him.

  “Perhaps the Divine Beast will finish the job for you all,” the Patriarch mused.

  “Assuming he doesn’t overcome that as well,” Ayun murmured.

  “That space,” Shuyin began, frowning now, “it once belonged to a dead regent. It lacks vitality, lacks Ethra... all that exists there is—” She stopped, realization dawning on her face.

  Kaius laughed, full and rich.

  “All of this,” Yensu said, voice calm but urgent, “has no bearing on what’s truly at stake.”

  “How long until the Arks attain the required power, Queen Yara?” she asked.

  “Someone’s eager,” Fehan’s mechanical voice grated, “don’t you care what happens to that former child of your dynasty?” he added, voice buzzing with disdain. He had spoken at last, and the others were reminded why the regent of the Chronomancers had kept silent for so long.

  “She chose her path,” Yensu said with a dismissive wave.

  “The coldness of metal proves how useless she is to me.”

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on Royal Road.

  Fehan laughed.

  “Such brutal honesty.”

  “Soon,” Yara said, eyes never leaving the runes above her.

  “The convergence is nearing its peak. The heavens will descend... and we will take what is required.”

  “Good,” Kaius said with a low chuckle.

  “In the meantime... let’s see what this Seeker can do—against a Divine Beast.”

  *************

  The true players of the competition had revealed themselves in that instant—those for whom the banquet had truly been intended. Not the hundreds who had perished in the farce of blood and spectacle that had claimed countless potentials in the earlier stages, but the true contenders—the ones the heavens, the factions, and the regents had gathered to witness.

  Rhyn of the Heralds stood tall, the former Scion of Clan Verdan, a war orphan forged in the fires of the Cult of the Warbringers. He had survived their crucible and emerged not merely intact but exalted—deemed worthy.

  In his hands were the twin blades, Yin and Yang, forged by the most revered Forgesmiths of the cult. Weapons meant for a master, not a Highlord. Yet Rhyn wielded them with ease, the only cultivator in the cult’s recorded history able to do so without being consumed by the fragment of True Authority embedded within their cores.

  A direct disciple of Kael Ironedge, master of the Enclave of Blades, it was no secret within the cult that Rhyn would one day inherit the Ironedge legacy and take his place as the next blade master of their order.

  Then there was Elyria—Elyria of the Rust Tyrant Style. Once mocked as Elyria the One-Armed within the Technocracy, the slur had been born from pity and disdain. She had arrived at their borders with nothing but the tattered clothes on her back and an almost empty void ring.

  Many believed she was meant to be harvested, repurposed for her parts, for service to someone worthier. But Elyria had other plans. She had torn her way through the ranks with nothing but tenacity, fury, and unmatched martial skill.

  Blade by blade, she earned her place and carved a path straight to the feet of a master who saw not her weakness, but her terrifying potential.

  Shui—the Blood-Born, the Bloody Blade, the Blood-Mad. Her titles were many, and every one of them had been earned in blood. Student of the Asuras, Shui was a nightmare given form. Orphaned by rogue disciples who had razed her village, she had hidden in the dark of a well for a night and emerged in silence.

  Then, one by one, she had killed her tormentors as they slept—ending with tearing out the throat of the final one using nothing but her teeth. She was barely ten. An Asura had been passing, drawn by the carnage, and recognized something savage yet sacred in her. She was claimed, inducted, and quickly rose through the blood-stained path laid out for her. Her ferocity made her a natural among the Asuras.

  Little was known of the factions of the Boundless Seas, and even less of the legendary Clan of the Razor Jaws. Yet here stood their prodigy—the Seaborn, whose true name could not be spoken in the human tongue.

  A once-in-a-generation talent, he had trained under the direct supervision of the clan's Paragon and inherited the lethal Razor Jaw Art of water and blade. To him, victory was secondary.

  What mattered was proving his mettle—demonstrating to his Paragon that a new protector of the seas had risen. The banquet was the perfect crucible for such a revelation.

  Then came Thorne—Traitor, Killer, Betrayer, Cursed. Titles clung to him like the chill of the grave. Once a shining light of the Warbringers, a herald bound for greatness, Thorne had turned his back on righteousness and embraced the shadow of undeath.

  Now a Highlord under the Necropolis, a chosen of the Ghoul King, he bore the Ghoul Blade—a weapon forged from the bones of a slain Asura and blessed by the Paragon himself. That alone marked him with unspeakable honor. But Thorne did not fight for victory or acclaim.

  He craved only battle, the raw, intoxicating madness of carnage. As the Tree of Undeath unfurled behind him—an avatar of the Ghoul King’s will—necromantic authority bled into the field. Thorne stood within its reach, basking in it, smiling as the thrill overtook him.

  Then, something shifted.

  They all felt it.

  Even the Thunder Roc, floating and crackling with golden lightning, stilled as its gaze turned. Something ancient stirred—something not of this realm.

  The space they fought in—whatever proto-plane it was—belonged to the Keepers. A prison where no Ethra, no aura, no vitality could exist without consequence. A dead zone for cultivators, where prolonged exposure meant annihilation.

  And yet...

  The space rippled. With power. With life. The presence they had ignored, or perhaps underestimated until now, surged to the forefront.

  The Thunder Roc rose with a shriek of golden fury, crackling with storms, and turned its full attention to him.

  Tunde—the Wastelander.

  Chosen of Varis.

  Unknown, yet unmistakably familiar. An enigma to some, a nightmare to others. Once friend to Thorne. Mortal enemy to Shui. A danger to the Seaborn. And the killer of the student of Death itself.

  He did not enter the stage.

  He claimed it.

  The thunder roc roared, its cry splitting the air as lightning-wrought formations surged into existence, a tempest of golden arcs streaking through the void. The storm it conjured painted the empty expanse gold, as though the heavens themselves had turned their wrath upon Tunde.

  Above, a bird forged of pure lightning ascended with regal majesty, blue lightning dancing in its eyes — the avatar of its fury and pride. This was no ordinary beast. It was the thunder roc, once the undisputed king of the skies above Old Adamath, now summoned in its full glory.

  In that instant, the others struck. Techniques rained down in a deluge of devastation — enough power to fell a Highlord instantly, to leave even a Master gravely wounded. Blades of wind, slashes of intent, spears of condensed Ethra—every technique detonated against the roc.

  Its wings flashed wide in retaliation with a clap of blistering power, and it ascended even higher, its eyes fixed not on the battlefield, but on one man alone. It brought its full strength to bear, unrelenting, unyielding.

  "You!" it screeched, voice ringing with divine fury.

  "How could they allow you to exist? Have the false powers gone mad with hubris?"

  Tunde heard none of it. He felt….. He felt powerful. Terribly so. The very space around him thrummed with the deep resonance of the void — welcoming him, embracing him like a long-lost son. It wrapped around him, cloaked him, as if recognizing something within him. Something ancient. Something rightful.

  Within his soul, something shuddered. A sleeping force stirred, vast and untamed. It belonged to him — he knew this — but he wasn’t ready for it. Not yet. The power understood, and in the brief stillness between the roc’s attack and Tunde’s awakening, it waited. It would not let him go. Not now. Not again.

  His instincts guided him. His fist flashed forward, sheathed in the crackling heat of essence flames and the quiet, terrifying technique of empty silence. The void responded — a deep, low gong echoed in his mind, maybe in reality, maybe in the space between.

  It was impossible to tell. The silence took shape, a serpent at first… no. Something grander. Something primordial.

  It burned a vivid, almost royal violet — no longer grey — and even his essence flames shifted to match. His spirit trembled under the weight of it. This wasn’t Ethra. Nor aura. This was something else.

  Authority. The Authority of the Void. It echoed within him, through him, as the very realm lent him its power, its favor.

  The serpent of silence slammed into the thunder roc’s attacks—and they ceased to exist.

  No explosion. No clash of titans. No grand display. Simply… nothing. The attacks were devoured, consumed by silence, leaving behind the cold, merciless stillness of the void.

  Tunde exhaled slowly, taking the stance of the Boundless Asura. His naginata gleamed in his hand, transformed into an instrument of judgment.

  Around him, everything changed.

  The others felt it first. Their access to authority — muted. Stolen. Their power did not belong here. This was not their realm. Even the viewing constructs, the very mechanisms that projected the battle to spectators, fizzled and died as the realm siphoned their energy into itself.

  All attention turned to Tunde.

  Not a man.

  Not a beast.

  Something more.

  His eyes narrowed, locking onto the thunder roc.

  “Divine beast,” he whispered.

  The roc’s gaze flared.

  “Haven’t your kind done enough harm to this world?” it spat.

  “You closed the gates. Now you return to finish what you began?”

  Tunde didn’t answer. He couldn’t. The power within him needed release. He was on borrowed time — like holding back a wildfire with a candle. The void was him, but he was not yet the void.

  The thunder roc recognized this too. It raised one mighty hand and summoned a lightning-forged spear, its form splitting to reveal a set of golden armor wrought from divine essence.

  It fused with the beast, transforming it. Its wings blazed like twin suns, searing the eyes of those watching. The tree of undeath behind Thorne withered to a husk. The asura blade sealed itself voluntarily — a rare refusal.

  Rhyn’s dual blades dimmed, reduced to ordinary forged weapons. The seaborn retreated, his watery cocoon boiling away as he fled to a safer distance.

  Elyria watched from the edges of the battlefield, heart pounding. This wasn’t a duel of egos. This was a clash of truths — one rooted in divine legacy, the other in defiance of everything known. Tunde, an abomination to some. The thunder roc, a divine beast. The first she had ever seen outside of Silvershade… and it hated him.

  Yet she watched Tunde raise his weapon again, his eyes calm as always.

  She knew authority when she saw it. The entire realm bent to his will. The thunder roc’s very presence — overwhelming, divine, majestic — demanded subservience. To everyone. Except Tunde.

  He bowed to no one.

  The roc raised its spear, that sacred weapon forged from the remains of another thunder roc, and shrieked its final command:

  “Destroy him!”

  The lightning surged.

  Every cultivator watched in awe, helplessness blooming into dread. This was not a technique. This was divine judgment. It would obliterate a Master. It was absolute. Unstoppable.

  Until… it simply vanished.

  Elyria’s breath caught.

  “No…” she whispered. What she’d been watching… wasn’t Tunde. It was an echo. A whisper. He had already moved.

  Behind the divine beast, the real Tunde stood — silent, expression unreadable — his naginata plunged through the roc’s chest. In his other hand, he held the core of the divine beast, glowing bright gold and blue.

  The roc choked, trying to speak. Its essence unraveled in seconds — Ethra, aura, life force — all of it devoured in an instant. Not even bones remained. Everything it was… claimed.

  The wastelander inhaled slowly, the divine core pulsing in his hand. Then his eyes snapped open.

  Elyria took a step back on instinct — shame rising in her chest — until she realized everyone had done the same.

  “Get out of my realm,” Tunde said, his voice heavy with finality.

  She blinked. His realm?

  A force tugged at her gently, pulling her through the fabric of space until she landed softly on the island proper. Around her, others tumbled in violently. Thorne slammed into the base of a mountain with a groan.

  “His realm?” she whispered again, dazed.

  In the center of the battlefield, space warped. A rift opened — and from it stepped Tunde, radiant, burning with presence. He wasn’t a Highlord. No… this was the pressure of an early-tier Master.

  Elyria gasped, stunned.

  “This is… impossible.”

  She scanned him. He looked to her briefly and smiled — a tired, fleeting thing — before the weariness reclaimed his features. He was barely holding on.

  She was at his side in an instant. And so were the others — Jing, Harumi, Zhu the Ethralite, Sera, Zehra.

  In his hands, he held two things: the rift core and the core of the thunder roc.

  Around them, dozens of cultivators began to shift, eyeing the cores with desperate greed, cycling their Ethra for a fight.

  Then—

  A great gong echoed across the realm.

  “Cultivators, one and all!” the announcer’s voice boomed across the realm.

  “I present to you… The winners of the third round!”