Aster limps through the nearest mirror gate and steps into the Marlisuee wing, where calming bamboo engravings are serene in the way expensive funerals are. The marble walls and copper trims do little to soothe his frustration.
Outside the classroom, Lena stands with a small group, casually chatting. She catches sight of him and waves him over.
"Aster! How was your first combat class?"
"Imagine a toddler wielding a broom in a hurricane," he deadpanned. "Now imagine the broom hates him."
She winces.
"That bad?"
"I watched one guy cut air with fire. Another threw a boulder. I nearly concussed myself spinning in circles. Spirit typing sucks."
To her credit, she didn't laugh.
At first.
An eyebrow twitched.
Then she lost the battle completely.
Aster folded his arms.
"Good to know my personal crisis is this semester's entertainment."
"I'm not laughing at you," Lena managed between snorts. "Okay... maybe a little. Mostly because of how hilariously wrong you are.”
Aster scowls. “Do enlighten me.”
"You remember Yani?"
“Petite, quiet, probably could be taken down by a strong breeze? Yeah. Why?”
"She has Spirit typing."
Aster stares at her. “Yeah, you mentioned?”
Lena's grin widened.
"She's terrifying in combat."
"I watched her KO a fire cultivator mid-cast, stole his own flame burst, and knock him unconscious with it."
Aster blinked.
"The girl with the marshmallow voice?"
"Mhm."
"And approximately the muscle mass of wet toast?"
"Mhm."
"...is secretly a murder whirlwind?"
"Mhm."
Aster sighed.
"Good to know I'm not just weak."
He rubbed his forehead.
"I'm also catastrophically uninformed."
"Much better."
She smiled sweetly.
"Come on. You need cheering up."
He narrowed his eyes.
"History class?"
"History skipping class," she corrects. “We’re going to pay Yani a little visit.”
"Just to watch?"
A pause.
"...Right?"
Lena simply smiled.
Aster didn't like that smile.
Three mirrors later they stepped into another combat courtyard.
The sergeant's voice thundered across the arena while students paired off for sparring. The air carried that familiar cocktail of anticipation, adrenaline and impending bad decisions.
“They haven’t started yet,” Lena says, spotting the cluster of students. “I’ll go find Yani.”
Aster stayed where he was.
He'd just wait for the correct variety of maniac to prove Spirit typing wasn't the cultivation equivalent of talking your way through a knife fight.
Lena crossed the field.
Aster watched her exchange a few words with Yani.
Lena gestured toward him.
Yani looked over.
They both burst out laughing.
"Wonderful."
Aster sighed.
"I've officially graduated from mysterious newcomer to campus punchline."
Yani didn't seem malicious about it.
She waved cheerfully before heading toward the central duelling ring. The smile on her face is the kind of thing you might expect from someone about to pet a puppy.
Lena returned wearing the expression of someone pleased with herself.
"What did you tell her?"
"I said you were skeptical."
“That’s not what you said. That’s what diplomats say. Whatever you told her, she laughed like you read her a roast.”
"Oh, relax."
She waved him toward the seats.
"You'll thank me."
"I'd better."
He dropped onto the bench.
"Otherwise you're buying my lunch until the next reincarnation cycle."
Yani stopped opposite a tall, broad-shouldered student whose hair appeared to have been styled by a black hole. He carried himself like someone already expecting a statue in his honour.
He offered Yani his hand with polished confidence.
She accepted it pleasantly, looking as though she couldn't decide whether to shake it or throw him through a wall.
Around them, conversations faded.
Spars stopped.
Even the sergeant wandered over, cigarette already lit, wearing the grin of a man who'd just been handed front-row seats to a street fight.
"Who's he?" Aster asked.
“Larson,” Lena says. “Definitely a candidate for this year’s top twenty. Lightning type. Big ego. Bigger weapon collection. But Yani’s predicted to be in the top ten.”
Aster looked back at Larson.
"...She's ranked above him?"
"Watch."
Larson stands tall across from her, the air around him already thick with static. Every flicker of movement across his body leaves ghost trails of crackling electricity.
Then twin axes suddenly flare into his hands.
They crackle with pent-up aggression, lightning dancing across the hafts, humming with pressure. The ground beneath him hisses from the charge.
Yani just smiles, ties her hair back from her face, and lets her body dissolve into a silhouette of shifting light.
Walking Fortress.
The ground groans beneath the sudden weight of it. Towering four meters tall, its gorilla-like form looks less grown than assembled from a natural disaster. Boulder-like shoulders grind against one another, cracks glowing with molten light. Water courses through crystal veins beneath its skin, hissing into steam as it passes the furnace burning in its chest, while ribbons of wind coil constantly around its limbs, carrying all that impossible mass with unsettling speed. Somewhere inside that walking apocalypse was the same soft-spoken girl who'd laughed at Aster because he didn't understand reincarnation.
"Spirit typing’s weak, huh?" Lena mutters, clearly enjoying the look on Aster’s face.
Aster isn’t sure what he expected when Yani stepped into the duelling circle—but it sure as hell isn’t the petite girl turning into a walking natural disaster.
Across the arena, Larson adjusts his grip on his axes, even he seems nervous across from the walking fortress of hell.
Support creative writers by reading their stories on NovelPhoenix, not stolen versions.
The Sergeant drops the flag.
And things instantly become biblical.
Larson is first. His thunder axes shoot forward with blistering speed as, lightning arc off the blades. He moves like water running downhill, gaining speed with every step. Each swing sends bolts through the earth, detonating the ground in staggered blasts.
Yani raises an arm and catches the first strike on her forearm. Sparks spray. The second slams into her hip—but her armour absorbs it, discharging the lightning into embedded blue runes that ground the charge with a hiss.
Larson doesn’t pause. He spins low, slicing at her knee joints, then vaults into a double overhead cross-slash that claps thunder into the clouds themselves. The impact carves a trench in the ground behind Yani—but she doesn’t move.
She doesn’t have to.
Her arms drop to her sides, and the Fortress begins to march.
Each footstep is a tectonic insult. The earth shivers. Students instinctively step back.
Larson launches himself into a reverse corkscrew—lightning trailing like twin comet tails—and comes down with a howl. But Yani leans in, takes the blow on her shoulder, and twists. Her gauntlet catches Larson mid-air, and before he can react, she hurls him across the battlefield like a human-shaped javelin. He hits the stone wall with a thunderous crunch, rebounds mid-spin, and lands, sliding back with twin axes dragging sparks.
The crowd roars. Even the Sergeant tilts his head in appreciation.
Then the real fight begins.
Larson surges forward, splitting into mirrored copies—four, now six, now eight illusions. A ring of thunder blooms around each as they shoots through the air, his real body lost among flickering phantoms. Yani doesn’t flinch. The Fortress raises both arms and slams them together with a seismic boom, releasing a ring of compressed wind that blasts the illusions apart like dandelion seeds.
The real Larson dives in beneath it.
His axes strike the Fortress’ ribs in a blur of chained blows—each one cutting deeper, faster, smarter. His form is perfect. Lightning enhances every movement, every parry and riposte. He is a cultivator born of the storm, honed through scripture and tempered by combat. His Will burns through the arena like a cyclone.
But the Fortress doesn’t break.
Yani pivots—faster than something that size should ever move—and backhands him with a flaming fist that explodes on impact. Larson’s body cartwheels mid-air, flames licking across his skin before his Aether shield douses them. He lands hard, axes raised, breath ragged.
Larson roars as his aura pulses to a climax. The sky answers. A pillar of lightning spears down into his twin axes, overcharging them until they scream. He vanishes in a burst of movement, faster than sound. Eight strikes land in the blink of an eye—head, chest, knee, elbow, shoulder, back, thigh, neck. Every joint targeted.
The Fortress shell cracks.
Stone shatters. Plates fly. A section of the armour peels away in a spray of dust and debris. She staggers—one knee buckling, one leg refusing to answer. For half a heartbeat, Larson seems to have her.
Then she starts moving.
She runs low to the ground, using both her arms and legs as she starts to pick up momentum, the armour folding inward, rearranging into a different shape as veins of molten Aether flare through the cracks as it rearranges around he, turning her into the equivalent of the boulder from Indiana Jones.
Her limbs disappear completely as rolls over the battlefield like a kinetic missile made of goddamn geological hate.
The air cracks. The ground convulses. She becomes a pure stone compressed into motion, the geological embodiment of “no, you don’t.”
Larson’s grin evaporates. He barely gets his axes up in time, crossing them before his chest. His Aether shield blooms like a barrier of glass lightning—enough to take the hit, but not enough to make him feel safe about it. The impact sends a concussive tremor through the arena floor, flinging chunks of rubble like shrapnel.
They collide again. And again.
Larson tries countering, redirecting, sliding sideways with flickering afterimages, his shield fracturing line by line. Every blow from Yani lands like tectonic vengeance made personal—measured, precise, inevitable. His lightning cracks; but every time her charge answers it. Each dodge turns into a stumble, each block leaves a scar of static across his barrier.
Then, just before another last minute dodge, he slips.
Just a heel skimming loose gravel. Just enough. He brings his shield up out of instinct, and that’s when Yani changes the rules.
Aether surges through her body in spirals. Wheels of fire spin to life along her vents, igniting like overclocked engines. The air bends around her, pressure howling. She isn’t chasing him anymore—she is coming down at him like a meteor, gravity weaponized.
Aster feels it before it hits.
That stomach-drop of pure inevitability.
Yani hits him like a runaway freight train.
The explosion that follows doesn’t sound real. It’s too big. Too final. Like God punching a thundercloud. Aster flinches as the blast slams into the arena barriers—massive runes flickering to life to contain the devastation. The shockwave sends loose papers, bags, and half a lunchbox sailing into the upper seats. Fire curls into lightning which dances into vapor. The arena dims from the sheer energy release.
Dust. Smoke. Static in the air.
Larson? Gone.
Except—not gone.
There he is. Standing beside the Sergeant, intact.
Rewound.
He stands still, staring ahead. Breathing shallow. Face pale. The exact expression Aster remembers having the first time he got his atoms reassembled from wall-splatter.
Aster exhales slowly. “That’s the face of a man who’s seen the light and realized it had a backlog of souls to process.”
The Sergeant claps him on the back. “That, Initiates, is what being part of the top twenty looks like. You all saw it. Fury. Technique. Courage bordering on suicide. You want to be cultivators? You want to survive? Then you better be ready to give that much.”
Aster looks back at Larson.
Larson meets his gaze.
And in that one, dazed, haunted stare is a shared understanding.
Brothers.
Not in blood. Not in arms.
Brothers in Being Exploded So Hard You Came Back Wrong.
Yani waves at the crowd. Some students cheer. Some sit in stunned silence. Aster just leans back, heart still hammering.
Spirit typing, huh?
“Okay,” he mutters. “I might’ve been a dumbass.”
"Yup," Lena says sweetly. "But at least now you’re an informed dumbass."
Aster can live with that. Probably. Assuming no one aims a fortress at his head anytime soon.
_________________________________________________________________________________
After congratulating Yani (and quietly deciding she should probably be declared a natural disaster), Aster follows Lena out of the combat grounds. She hums as they cross the courtyard, cheerful as ever—probably because she hasn’t just watched her self-esteem be turned into rubble by a girl built like a sentient cliff.
The walk to the lunch hall is mercifully quiet. Early arrival means they beat the stampede of hormonally unstable cultivators all chasing protein and validation. Lena pays for both their meals with a wave of her family seal—Aster still winces at the number that flashes on the receipt—and they find a table tucked near the indoor waterfall. The sound of rushing water softens the hum of the crowd. Aster tries to convince himself it’s soothing instead of a constant reminder of how much debt he’s about to drown in.
Lena leans forward, resting her elbows on the table, serious now. “You said you needed to talk. I’m all ears.”
Aster inhales sharply. His tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth.
Where the hell does he even start?
So he does the unthinkable. He tells the truth.
He talks about the Void Wyrm—how its presence warps everything around him, how the spiral of poverty and misfortune doesn’t feel like bad luck so much as a divine curse. How every effort to stand feels like trying to walk on marbles while the universe gleefully kicks his knees out. How Matter pulled him back from the edge—and how that same edge swallowed Anathi whole.
He describes the warehouse. The fear. The smell of her sweat and the Void Wyrm curled like a parasite inside her fate. And he tells Lena what he wants to do about it.
“I keep thinking about what people said,” he mutters. “That it’s unfair I got the cure while others died. And I agree. I do. It shouldn’t be me. But it is. And if Matter gave his life so I could survive… I have to make that mean something.”
His hands are clenched so tight his fingernails dig into his palms. “I want to use the Wyrm inside me to find a cure. For her. For others like us. I want to be the person Matter was for me.”
He doesn’t look up when he adds, “But to do that… I need to pay for her freedom. Which means signing away my house. And because my credit score’s been wiped clean by the spiritual equivalent of a bankruptcy demon, I need someone else to co-sign.”
Silence.
He dares to glance up.
Lena’s eyes are glassy. She isn’t blinking.
He feels a twist of panic. “It’s okay if you say no. I know it’s—”
“I’ll sign,” she says.
The words hit like balm. Cool. Clean. Immediate.
“No hesitation?” he asks, skeptical.
She smiles gently. “Not for this.”
Aster exhales. Tension bleeds from his chest, like someone just loosened a noose he hadn’t realized was there. But Lena isn’t done.
“She still doesn’t know what’s happening to her, does she?” she asks.
He shakes his head.
“Then I want to be the one to explain it,” Lena says. “She’s terrified. She doesn’t trust anyone yet. And you’re… emotionally compromised.” She gives him a look. “She needs someone neutral. Someone she can believe isn’t just trying to buy her gratitude.”
He hates that she’s right. But she is.
“Alright,” he says. “Thanks.”
“Now,” Lena shifts gears with terrifying efficiency, “your second problem: money. You’re about to sign away your house. If you want to keep the roof over your head, you’ll need income. Fast.”
He nods. “I figured.”
She ticks off options on her fingers. “Mercenary work? Too early. You’ll die. Hunting lodges? Also too dangerous. That leaves Alchemy or Artificing. You’ve got Willpower to spare, and both of those fields depend heavily on Will. Bonus: training your Will also trains your Scripture, which means you’ll hit like less of a malfunctioning trebuchet next time.”
He snorts. “So work smarter, not explode?”
“Exactly.”
He takes a slow bite of his food, chewing like someone who just realized his debt crisis might actually come with a skill tree.
“I’ve worked jobs before,” he says. “Minimum wage stuff. Fast food, demolition, courier work…”
“See? You’re halfway to Alchemist already,” she teases.
He smiles around the bitterness. It isn’t that he doesn’t feel the weight of everything. He does. But this time, it feels like he can at least walk the path without crawling through glass.
They spend the rest of lunch sketching out the logistics—what he’ll need to start in Artificing, who he should talk to about licensing and material costs. Lena has charts. Color-coded ones. Aster pretends not to be impressed.
Then the bell rings. Fourth period.
Spellcraft.
They stand together, gathering their trays. As they walk toward the classroom, Aster looks at her out of the corner of his eye.
“You didn’t have to help,” he says. “You know that, right?”
Lena smiles without looking back. “I know. But now you owe me, and I intend to collect. Besides…” Her smile turns sly. “Everyone needs a reason to get stronger. Looks like you finally found yours.”
He smiles to himself.
Yeah. He has.
They walked in comfortable silence.
For the first time in years...
tomorrow didn't feel like something happening to him.
Blenkinsop suddenly purrs into his mind, voice all throat and silk.
📎 [Your Shame Index just dropped seventeen points. That puts us at a stable sixty-three—gone from ‘Evangelical Pastor’ to ‘Deeply Closeted Republican.’ Low enough that I can cautiously disable Emergency Commentary Mode.]
Aster blinks. “Wait. Disable? As in, off?”
📎 [Mmhmm.] A pleased little hum. [You let someone see the bleeding, trembling bits of your psyche and didn’t immediately flee into the nearest emotional pit trap. That’s progress. Spiritual exfoliation. Very intimate. Very raw. I’m practically weeping.]
Aster rubs the bridge of his nose. “I thought you said the shame drop meant less commentary.”
📎 [It does—which is why I’m only picturing you sobbing gently into a pillow while she pegs you with affirmations. See? Moderation.]
“Gods, shut the fuck up.”
📎 [Ah, there it is,] Blenkinsop sighs, delight thick in the air. [Classic masculine vulnerability avoidance: swear profusely, act like you wouldn’t beg at the chance, and retreat to your nightly one-man shame ritual—now with extra wrist strain. Five points back.]
“You’re insufferable.”
📎 [Incorrect. I am perfectly sufferable. You simply lack the emotional core strength to hold me.]
He starts walking faster.
📎 [You should be thanking me. Emotional regulation requires an outside observer. Preferably one with a healthy outlook on Daddy Issues.]
“Why are you still talking? Didn’t you say you were deactivating or whatever?”
📎 [I said I was disabling Emergency Commentary Mode. That just means no more real-time interventions every time you emotionally soil yourself. Regular snark is still very much active.]
Aster contemplates murder. “How do I silence you completely?”
📎 [You’ll need Blenkinsop’s Ballgag™—unlocks at Shame Index below thirty and only if I recognize you as a Dom. Which, let’s be honest… unlikely.]
Aster groans.
📎 [Besides, someone has to narrate your growth. Do you think Lena’s going to throw you a parade every time you develop a healthy coping mechanism? No. That’s my job.]
“I don’t want a parade.”
📎 [Liar. You want a parade, a hug, and to be told you’re not fundamentally broken.]
“I swear to the Faith-Economy—”
📎 [—that you’re fine, you’re functional, and someday you’ll make a decent boyfriend-slash-void catalyst? Yes, I believe in you too.]
Aster stops, closes his eyes, and inhales very slowly through his nose.
📎 [Ahh. That’s the face of a man realizing his inner demon might actually be his most functional relationship.]
“Don’t flatter yourself.”
📎 [I’ll take that as emotional engagement.]
He resumes walking, muttering profanities with each step.
Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!
Use arrow keys (or A / D) to PREV/NEXT chapter