The platform of execution was effective, at least.
Kael Yuan observed this not out of morbid fascination, but by rote. Knowledge had worth, even if you only had minutes to live. The stage was ten feet above the audience, made of blackwood coated with preservation oils. Twelve posts of execution in a semicircle. Elder Shen in the center, hands already imbued with pale blue light—Soul Condensation level, powerful enough to rip souls from bodies but too weak for Foundation Establishment to resist him.
Kael stowed the information away, although he couldn't imagine a situation in which it would make a difference. He was going to die. The math was easy.
He stood third in line.
Before him, a woman cried. The mob mocked. Her offense: peddling fake cultivation pills. The punishment: soul removal, leaving her body alive but hollow—a vegetable, only good for organ donation. The sect would gain twice over: once by killing her, again by selling her body to alchemists.
Efficiency.
Elder Shen laid his hand on her forehead. Forty-three seconds of shrieking. Kael timed it. When it stopped, her eyes turned white, blank. The soul—a five spirit stone equivalent—now belonged in a jade container at Shen's side. Top grade: young, healthy, comparatively free of karmic baggage.
The audience applauded.
Kael felt nothing. Not horror. Not sympathy. Just observation, data filing itself away like ledger entries in a merchant's book. This was the way the world was. Strength devoured weakness. Worth was extracted. The leavings were cast away.
He had learned it young.
Three days prior, his sister had perished.
Not from plague or cultivation backlash. From hunger. The sect sat on mountains of spirit stones, but a girl with no cultivation root couldn't even afford medicine for an ordinary infection. She was called Mei. She was sixteen.
Kael attempted to recall her face now—the tilt of her eyes, the curve of her smile when she thought he wasn't paying attention. Nothing. Blank space where the memory had to be. The feeling already had started to crumble. Grief was not practical. It resolved nothing. So his mind had begun breaking it down, fragment by fragment, transforming it into something more productive: fuel for action.
He'd robbed from the sect vault. Not discreetly—simply walked in, shoveled a satchel of spirit stones into his pack that were equal to three months' salary for an elder, and departed. They caught him short of the Outer District. He paid for the medicine despite that.
Too late. She was already dead.
The sect's punishment had been quick: public execution, complete attendance, utmost humiliation. The accusation was theft. The actual offense was presumption. A human presuming to steal from heaven's agents.
"Kael Yuan."
His name, uttered by an official reading from a scroll. The accusatories came next: "Theft of sect resources. Killing of Outer Disciple Han Wei in said theft. Consumption of stolen cultivation pills."
The murder accusation was untrue. Han Wei had been murdered by his competitor, Chen, in a wholly different corner of the complex—readily checked if anyone cared to look. But looking took work, and Kael was handy. Useless. Disposable. A human among cultivators.
Furthermore, Chen's father was an elder of Mid Foundation. The balance of justice tipped toward influence.
Kael stood without being pulled. The sect disciples appeared dejected—they'd prepared restraints and procedures for a condemned man who'd fight. His compliance denied them catharsis.
He approached the platform. Elder Shen stood there, hand glowing, face professionally impassive.
"Last words?" Shen inquired. Routine. He asked all prisoners.
Kael thought about the question. Then something clicked—a minute detail, a thread in the inefficiency.
"Souls from executions are worth five spirit stones apiece," Kael told him. His voice was calm, which surprised Shen. "The sect levies extraction fees on the victim's family, or confiscates property if they have none. Extra revenue. The body is then auctioned to alchemists or organ harvesters. Revenue number three. The victim's personal belongings—confiscated as forfeit. Revenue number four."
He paused. Elder Shen's hand had ceased to glow.
"The crying, perhaps. That's drama. The crowd doesn't benefit. The sect doesn't benefit. So why keep up the spectacle? Why not take souls in secret, where processing would be quicker?"
Elder Shen's face set.
"Since fear is a commodity," Kael went on. "The outer disciples observe and recall: the sect has total control. The merchants and families flee in terror, more obedient, less prone to oppose taxation or conscription. Fear adds about eight to twelve percent to behavioral obedience, according to standard economic theories."
"You are wonderfully placid about dying," Shen said slowly.
"Death isn't the issue. I became irrelevant to the sect when I didn't awaken a spirit root at the age of seven. I was a liability when I couldn't help cultivation progress. I was a nuisance when I stole. The execution is mere formalities." He fixed Shen with his gaze. "What fascinates me is that you're hesitating."
For an instant, nothing. The crowd was silenced. Even the elders in the pavilion craned forward.
Then Elder Shen's face changed. Not anger.
Something nuanced. "Put your hand on the post," he said. "Let me demonstrate something interesting."
Kael complied. The post was plain wood inscribed with preservation runes. Nothing extraordinary.
Elder Shen started the removal.
The feeling began as tugging—hooks of awareness, pulling something essential up towards a jade cup Shen had filled. It was painful, clearly. Physics required it.
And then something retreated.
Not through Kael's volition. Through something within him. Something that lay dormant, sleeping, waiting for this precise moment.
Something that understood what was occurring and protested.
Ache broke out all over his right hand. Not extraction ache—something different. Seething. Spreading. Black spots breaking out on his skin like watercolors spilled on water, taking on shapes that ached to see. Chains. The idea of chains.
Elder Shen screamed.
Not the scream of soul extraction. The scream of a man whose art was being turned inside out, twisted backward through his own channels.
The extraction reversed. Energy flowed the wrong direction. Shen's cultivation—eighty years of built-up power—suddenly began draining toward Kael like water going down a sink.
"What are you—" Shen gasped, struggling to break contact.
But the brands on Kael's hand had turned into chains. Black iron chains, not real but not metaphorical, coiling around Shen's arm, holding him in place.
The crowd screamed. Real panic, not performance.
Kael's awareness divided. Half stayed with his body, observing with clinical detachment. Half was elsewhere—a world of agreements and obligations and the arithmetic of cost.
A voice addressed him. Not in the ears or mind, but in something greater.
"Do you want to live?"
Odd question. He was to be killed. Of course he wanted to live.
But that was too easy. The voice demanded subtlety.
"What's the cost?" Kael said.
The voice expressed something akin to satisfaction.
"Everything you were. To become what you must be."
This was what Kael thought. Horrible offer on an objective level. He'd be giving up his self, his memories, perhaps his humanity.
His sister was dead, however. The sect hated him. His life had been full of rejection and failure. What, precisely, was he giving up?
"Acceptable," he told them.
The chains burst outward.
They burst into a tempest of black iron and darkness given substance, stabbing Elder Shen's chest—not to kill, but to bind. They destroyed the execution post. Shattered the platform.
The crowd dispersed. Disciples created techniques but were too confused. The platform gave way.
Kael plunged through splintered wood into darkness.
And in that darkness, something laughed. Not ridicule. Hunger.
"Welcome to the Pathway of Binding. Your ascension begins now."
[Four Hours Later - Chain Order Archive, Eastern District]
The news arrived with regular protocol: a jade slip brought by a messenger who had just managed to survive.
"Incident at Azure Sky Sect. Execution interrupted. Mysterious phenomenon. Elder Shen—cultivation impaired, consciousness disintegrating. Medical evaluation: irreparable damage. Sect seeking Chain Order investigation."
Seris read it thrice.
She was Pale Blade, Sequence 6 Rune Warden. She wasn't thrilled about sect accidents.
But this report had patterns.
Pattern one: Active manifestation. Instant, tangible bursting out of prohibited power.
Pattern two: Contract formations. Binding vows, enforced submission, metaphysical debt constructs.
Pattern three: The criminal was a mortal. No cultivation. No spirit root.
Pattern four: The signature didn't belong to any of the Nine Known Pathways.
Which meant either it was a new Pathway (impossible), a degraded fragment (bad), or something the Order didn't know about (worse).
"Mobilize retrieval team," Seris commanded. "Destination: Azure Sky Sect. Objective: Find escaped prisoner—Kael Yuan. Likelihood he's a pact-bearer: ninety-seven percent. Authorized lethal response if capture not feasible."
She stamped the order.
Then sat by herself in her austere office and pondered patterns.
The Nine Pathways had been sealed ten thousand years. There should be nothing new.
But the world had just gotten more complicated.
She feared it would be disastrous.