Night did not fall all at once upon Silent Fang Peak.
It seeped in.
Mist crawled down the mountain slopes like a living thing, threading itself between stone huts and narrow paths. The wind thinned. Sounds dulled. Even the sect's distant clamor—training shouts, metal striking stone—faded into a low, indistinct murmur, as if the mountain itself had chosen silence.
Azazel sat alone inside his hut.
The door was closed. The lamp unlit.
Darkness suited him.
The cracked jade slip lay across his palm, its surface rough, uneven, forgotten by countless hands before his own. It carried no glow. No warmth. To the sect, it was a discarded fragment—an inheritance that had failed too many times to inspire hope.
Azazel did not judge it by appearances.
He waited.
Stillness came gradually.
His breathing slowed. His thoughts thinned. The world outside the hut receded, leaving only the faint pressure of existence pressing inward.
When his awareness turned inward, the lotus was already there.
Not blooming.
Not stirring.
Simply present.
Its black-red petals hovered within his dantian, heavy and restrained, like something that understood patience better than urgency. It did not command him. It did not guide him.
It watched.
Azazel allowed the jade slip's intent to brush against his consciousness.
There were no diagrams. No orderly instructions. Only a direction—subtle, distorted, and deeply incompatible with orthodox cultivation.
Qi was not meant to circulate outward.
It was meant to sink.
He inhaled slowly.
Qi in the surrounding air was thin, barely worth acknowledging. But Azazel did not draw from it directly. Instead, he allowed absence to accumulate.
Darkness gathered first—not as shadow, but as compression. The space within his body seemed to narrow, as though something unseen pressed inward, squeezing excess away.
The technique did not ask his bones to endure pain.
It asked them to accept weight.
Pressure descended, deep and unrelenting. His skeletal frame felt as though it were being pressed into the earth, forced to justify its presence through resistance alone.
Microfractures formed silently.
Not breaking.
Rewriting.
Marrow thickened. Structure shifted. Something old and unyielding seeped into places that had once been fragile.
Azazel's breathing slowed further.
Then nearly stopped.
Time lost meaning.
The lotus pulsed once.
The pressure intensified.
Not violently.
Inevitably.
Something within his bones reached a threshold—not of endurance, but of compatibility. The darkness no longer resisted containment. It settled.
Like sediment sinking to the bottom of still water.
The pressure eased.
Not vanished.
Integrated.
There was no surge of power.
No tremor in the world.
No response from the mountain.
Only a quiet, internal conclusion—like a lock turning somewhere deep within him.
Dark Qi bound itself to his skeletal structure with unnatural ease, threading through bone and marrow alike, becoming part of him rather than something imposed upon him.
Bone Refining Realm.
First Stage.
Azazel opened his eyes.
The hut felt unchanged.
Dust still clung to the corners. The straw bed lay untouched. The wooden table bore the same shallow cracks as before.
And yet—
He rose to his feet.
Movement felt deliberate. Grounded. His body no longer felt provisional, no longer something waiting to collapse under strain. There was weight to him now—not mass, but presence.
He placed his hand against the stone wall.
Applied pressure.
The stone resisted. Slowly. Respectfully.
Then yielded a fraction.
Azazel withdrew his hand.
No cracks marred the surface.
No excess force lingered.
Only control.
So this is what it means, he thought,to stop borrowing strength.
The lotus receded.
Silent.
Observant.
He did not remain inside.
Before dawn fully broke, Azazel stepped outside.
Mist brushed against his face, cool and damp. The outer court lay half-asleep, huts looming like tired sentinels along the cliffs. Somewhere, footsteps echoed faintly—another disciple rising early, chasing progress that had not yet learned his name.
Azazel walked without hurry.
The mission tablet stood where it always had.
Unmoved.
Indifferent.
Stone etched with promises that did not care whether those who accepted them returned.
He stood before it for a long moment.
Reading.
Not weighing risk.
Understanding intent.
Some tasks promised safety and stagnation. Others promised danger and erasure.
Azazel's gaze settled.
He placed his palm against the stone.
Cold seeped into his skin.
A name surfaced.
Feng Azazel.
The tablet dimmed.
That night, preparation was minimal.
He did not gather supplies beyond necessity. No talismans. No pills. No unnecessary weight.
Attachment was inefficiency.
As he sat once more in silence, Azazel considered the sect.
Its rules.
Its hierarchy.
Its belief that time and obedience refined cultivators.
He found no resentment in the thought.
Only clarity.
The sect was not his path.
It was a delay.
Tomorrow, he would step beyond its walls.
Not seeking danger.
But understanding that growth rarely waited where safety gathered.
The lotus stirred faintly.
The mountain remained silent.
And in the dark, something that did not belong to this world prepared to move.