The silence that hung over the shattered ruins of the Veilwither Sect was thick and mournful, like a veil of ash over sacred ground. Even the wind dared not speak too loudly here. Moonlight slithered through the broken spires and crumbling walls, casting pale shadows over remnants of what was once a thriving bastion of cultivation.
Crunch.
A footstep shattered the stillness. Then another. Slow. Measured. Intentional.
A figure emerged, wrapped in a patchwork cloak of faded reds and dusty browns, hood drawn low over eyes that glinted with purpose. His breath misted in the cool air, and a talisman fluttered around his wrist, pulsing with weak golden light.
He was a relic hunter — one of the many bottom-feeders who scoured the ruins of fallen sects in search of knowledge, tools, or forgotten power. But this one moved with more than desperation. There was calculation in his movements, a scholarly coldness to the way his gloved fingers caressed the cracked walls and scattered bones.
He paused before a broken dais, upon which the weathered remnants of a ceremonial blade lay. Around it, broken talismans and sealing glyphs lay in tatters, their protection long since unraveled. The hunter whispered under his breath — a prayer or perhaps a spell — and brushed dust from an embedded sigil.
Kairo watched from the shadows above, crouched like a phantom in the remnants of the shattered shrine tower. His breathing was slow, but his muscles were coiled, every sense attuned to the man below.
He hadn't expected anyone to come so deep into the heart of the Veilwither Ruins. Not yet. But the stirrings of the Abyssal Nerve Codex had been growing louder these past nights. And now he understood why.
The relic hunter drew a scroll from his cloak and unrolled it, revealing a glowing diagram of an ancient binding technique — one meant to harvest and seal residual spiritual energy from the dead. The hunter chanted softly, a golden array forming in the air around him, expanding into a radiant disc of celestial symbols.
It pulsed.
Kairo felt it — a pull, subtle but unmistakable. The technique wasn't just drawing from residual energy. It was attempting to access Veilwither's core — what remained of the sect's soul.
And it called to him.
Kairo closed his eyes for a breath, then let go of restraint.
From within his cloak, Twinblight slithered forth — a chain tipped with sickle-like blades at both ends, its body etched with writhing crimson veins. It twisted in the air like a serpent, responding to his intent.
With a flick of his wrist, he lashed out.
The corrupted chain hissed through the air and struck the glowing technique, instantly coiling around it. The hunter stumbled back, alarmed, shouting in a dialect older than most remembered.
Too late.
The Abyssal Nerve Codex surged to life within Kairo. It reached out like a hungry maw, twisting the hunter's luminous binding technique into something else entirely — something wrong.
The golden light dimmed, flickered, and then deepened into a writhing black-purple hue. Chains of shadow erupted from the circle's edge, spearing through the ground and coiling around the relic hunter's limbs.
He screamed.
But the sound was cut off as the chains tightened, draining his energy, his spirit, and his technique — all being rewritten, devoured, made his.
Kairo dropped silently from the ledge and landed just outside the corrupted array. The twin sickles at either end of Twinblight now shimmered with a ghostly glow, feeding on the stolen light.
The relic hunter raised his head weakly. His face was pale, lips flecked with blood. "W-Who... what are you...?"
Kairo's voice was cold, hollow. "You trespass on sacred graves. The Veilwither Sect may be ash... but its wrath still lingers."
Without another word, he swung Twinblight in a clean arc. The sickles danced like reapers through the air, and in one fluid motion, the man's breath was silenced.
The chains recoiled, then slithered back into Kairo's grasp, their hunger sated.
Kairo knelt beside the corpse, placing a hand over the man's chest. From the still-warm body, threads of spiritual residue rose like smoke — the remnant of a refined technique not yet fully consumed.
He inhaled sharply, and the Codex opened within him. The threads of light twisted and contorted as they entered his core. Where once they had been bright and golden, now they darkened into threads of abyssal flame.
A new seed bloomed in his dantian — a variation of the hunter's Binding Light. No longer radiant. Now a technique of Devouring Grasp, where chains not only bind but consume.
Kairo stood, breath steady, eyes closed as he adjusted to the new technique.
The ruins were quiet again.
But his pulse remained alert. The relic hunter had not come alone — they never did. Someone would notice his absence. And whispers would spread.
He gazed toward the horizon. The world was stirring. The Tribunal, the Accord, all those who had buried Veilwither... they would come to sniff through the bones.
Let them.
He would bloom in the dark — one forbidden technique at a time.