Kael didn't sleep that night.
After the mirror trial, his chamber had been relocated—no longer among the Azure Feather Sect representatives but placed in a solitary garden at the edge of the Trial Grounds. It was a message as much as it was protection.
Or containment.
The elders called it "an honor." Kael called it a cage.
Moonlight spilled across the tranquil pond, the only sounds being the rustling of silver bamboo and the faint chiming of spiritual wards layered into the soil. Kael sat cross-legged beneath a plum blossom tree, his mind adrift.
He hadn't told anyone what the mirror had whispered.
"You will open the Gate."
He hadn't told them because he wasn't sure what it meant. But deep within his core, where the obsidian shard now floated in a sea of violet qi, something was pulling—a sensation like the tide retreating before a devastating wave.
And worse… the pull was growing.
Just before dawn, Kael received an unexpected visitor.
She entered without sound, bypassing every formation like smoke through a screen.
Her face was half-hidden by a jade mask; her robes were pure black with gold trim—no sect emblem, no clan name. But Kael recognized the scent: a faint trace of moonflower and iron.
He didn't move.
"I was told you'd be asleep," the woman said.
"I rarely am," Kael replied. "You're not from the Trials."
"No," she said simply. "I'm from the Silent Court."
Kael's expression didn't change, but inwardly he tensed.
The Silent Court wasn't a sect. It was a force—an intelligence network bound to the Emperor himself. They didn't fight wars.
They ended them before they began.
"I've come with a proposal," she said, stepping closer.
"I don't accept proposals in the dark," Kael replied. "Only threats."
She smiled behind the mask.
"Then call it a warning."
She sat across from him. The moonlight caught her eyes—silver and sharp.
"You know what you are," she said. "Or you're beginning to."
"I'm beginning to understand what others think I am."
"Perception is power," she said. "And your existence is changing how the great sects perceive balance."
Kael didn't speak.
She continued, "We saw what the mirror revealed. The Abyss-born bloodline. The void resonance. The sealed cultivation core wrapped in illusions we still haven't unraveled."
"You've tried?" he asked mildly.
She inclined her head. "We've failed."
Kael let the silence stretch.
Finally, she said, "The Empire wants you to survive the Trials. But if your presence destabilizes the alliances we've built…"
"They'll kill me."
"No," she said. "We'll erase you. Every memory. Every trace."
Kael looked at her. "That sounds like a threat."
She stood. "That was the proposal."
After she left, Kael meditated again. But this time, he didn't reach for his cultivation core.
He reached inward—toward the memory fragment buried by the Crimson Vault.
It unfurled like mist.
A battlefield of dead stars.
A Gate of obsidian stone and pulsing red veins.
A name spoken by a being whose face was void.
"Kaelum. You will walk where gods fled."
He woke with a start.
The sun had risen.
And the second trial had begun.
This time, the trial was not a test of combat—but of choice.
Each sect representative was led into the Trial of Echoes, an ancient formation said to reflect one's destiny. The chamber was circular, carved into the very mountain, its walls covered in mirrors made not of glass, but of soulsteel—a rare metal that absorbed karma.
Inside, the competitors were shown three paths. Only one could be chosen.
Path of Glory. A road paved with fame and power, earned through triumph and sacrifice.
Path of Sacrifice. A life spent shielding others, at the cost of one's own dreams.
Path of Truth. A descent into hidden knowledge, where the self may be lost.
Kael stood before the mirrors. Each path shimmered with its own lure.
Behind him, Lei Fang had chosen the Path of Glory. Su Ren the Path of Sacrifice. Feng Lian, surprisingly, chose the Path of Truth.
Kael closed his eyes.
Then stepped forward.
He walked into all three.
The mirrors shattered.
The formation trembled.
Outside, the elders and Imperial observers rose from their seats.
"That's impossible," one muttered.
"Only one path is permitted," another growled. "The formation should have rejected him."
But it hadn't.
Kael emerged from the chamber calm, untouched, his eyes faintly glowing. Not violet.
But black and gold.
The Silent Court agent stood at the edge of the trial grounds, her jade mask tilted slightly.
"It's begun," she whispered.
That night, Kael was summoned to a private council.
Not by the sect.
By the Emperor himself.