When consciousness finally clawed its way back, Cassius was met not with the ethereal songs of the Divine Realm, but with the searing, rhythmic agony of a rusty saw tearing through his lungs. Each breath felt like swallowing shards of glass, a brutal reminder that he was no longer a being of pure spirit, but a prisoner of frail, agonizing flesh.
He snapped his eyes open. His vision was a chaotic mess of blurs and shadows, but the first thing to settle into a grim focus was the sight of rotting, cobweb-laden rafters slick with black mold. The air he drew in was thick—a suffocating cocktail of stable stench, damp hay, and the acrid, bitter smoke of low-grade charcoal. This was not his domain. There was no immortal starlight, no hum of celestial energy vibrating through the ether. Only the grinding, soul-crushing poverty of the mortal world.
"Cough... cough!"
The convulsion wracked his chest, sending stabs of lightning through his broken ribs. Cassius attempted to sit up, but his limbs were leaden, unresponsive to the commands of his once-sovereign will. This body was more than just weak; it was a ruin. His very bones seemed to hum with a frantic shiver against the biting draft that whistled through the gaps in the stone walls.
Closing his eyes, he forced his internal gaze toward his spiritual core. He searched for the vast, starry ocean of his former cultivation, the infinite reservoir of power that had once made gods tremble. It was gone. In its place was a scorched desert of dry meridians and shattered pathways. Yet, in the absolute center of his parched dantian, a singular, microscopic spark remained—a grain of Void Darkness. It was a tiny, flickering ember of nihility, stubborn and cold, clinging to existence as if waiting for the entire universe to burn so it might finally feast.
Through the fractured memory fragments of the body's previous owner, the grim truth of his new life began to surface. He was still Cassius, but here, he was a shadow of a man. A pariah of the prestigious Frost family, born with a withered spirit-root that rendered him incapable of channeling the Holy Light. To the world, he was a biological error, a stain on a lineage of warriors. He had been bartered off like a piece of defective livestock, married into the main branch as a "consort" to the peerless Evelyn Frost—a political move to shield her from more predatory suitors while keeping a "useless" pawn close at hand.
Just yesterday, this boy had been beaten nearly to death by the younger disciples of the Law Hall on a trumped-up charge of stealing medicinal herbs. They had broken his ribs and left him to rot in this outbuilding, expecting the winter frost to finish what their fists had started.
Creeeeeak—CRASH!
The dilapidated wooden door was kicked open with such violence that it nearly leaped from its hinges. A gust of sub-zero wind surged in, swirling with jagged ice crystals that instantly extinguished the dying embers in the hearth.
A portly servant with a face of bloated arrogance and skin coarsened by cheap ale marched in. He carried a chipped porcelain bowl filled with a congealed, grey gruel that smelled of sour grain. He spared a contemptuous glance at Cassius, who was trembling as he sat upright, and slammed the bowl onto the dust-covered table. The lukewarm liquid splashed across the surface, soaking into the grime.
"Oh? Look at that. Our 'Illustrious Consort' actually has a bit of life left in him," the servant sneered. There was no deference in his tone, only the sadistic pleasure of a low-life realizing he could still kick someone even lower than himself. "The Patriarch sent word. Since you haven't had the decency to kick the bucket yet, you're required at the Bloodline Rite this afternoon. You might be a crippled parasite, but on paper, you're still Lady Evelyn's husband. Try not to piss yourself in front of the altar. The Frost family has enough embarrassments without you adding to the pile."
Cassius did not respond with words. Instead, he slowly lifted his head. His hair, matted with sweat and dried blood, parted to reveal eyes that were no longer those of a terrified boy. They were obsidian voids, deep and terrifyingly still.
He projected a sliver—a mere ghost—of the sovereign will he had forged during a thousand years of torture in the Silent Tower. It was a pressure that had once brought archangels to their knees. Even at a ten-thousandth of its former potency, the effect was instantaneous. The temperature in the small room plummeted. The servant's sneer froze on his face. The air grew heavy, as if the very shadows in the corners were stretching out to clasp around the man's throat.
The servant's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped bird. He felt a primal, instinctual terror—the kind a rabbit feels when it realizes the "shrub" it was sniffing is actually a crouching wolf. The insults he had prepared died in his throat, replaced by a sudden, inexplicable urge to flee.
"Leave."
The word was a rasp, low and jagged, but it carried the weight of a divine decree.
The servant stumbled backward, tripping over his own feet. He didn't even stop to retrieve the bowl. He turned and scrambled out into the snow, his breath coming in panicked gasps, not stopping until he was well away from the "cursed" outbuilding.
Cassius let out a sharp, cold breath. With a grunt of exertion, he swung his legs over the side of the bed. His bare feet touched the frigid stone floor, sending a jolt of ice up his spine that helped clear the fog in his mind. He limped to the frost-crusted window, peering out at the sprawling, white-washed jagged peaks of Frost-Ridge City.
"Seraphina," he whispered, his fingers tracing the ugly, purple bruising over his heart—the site of the blow that had killed the previous Cassius. "You likely sit upon your throne of light, convinced that I was erased in the fires of my own rebellion. You believe the Void has been silenced."
He gripped the wooden sill, the rotted timber groaning under the sudden, inhuman intensity of his grip.
"But I have returned. Since destiny has chosen this broken vessel as my forge, I shall embrace the cold. I shall turn this ridicule into my armor and this weakness into my weapon. From this frozen wasteland, I begin the tempering of a blade that will one day pierce your golden throat. Your Holy Light is nothing but fuel... for my hunger."