Smoke tasted like copper and burnt plastic.
Lavidacus dragged his boots through the knee-deep gray powder that used to be a bustling residential sector of Sector Nine.
Blackened steel beams twisted toward the violet-bruised sky like fractured ribs.
Nothing remained of the place he had called home.
Every building, every street, every living soul had been reduced to this silent, choking wasteland in a matter of minutes.
Searing heat radiated from the deeper craters, warning of lingering dimensional radiation.
He ignored the warning signs flashing on his cracked wrist-comm.
Red icons blinked lazily, informing him of lethal toxic levels in the atmosphere, but his lungs were already adapted to the harshness of the outer rims.
His jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth ground together, a sharp pain radiating up his temple.
Desperation had died hours ago, replaced by a cold, hollow focus.
Digging hands plunged into the warm ash, clawing through the pulverized concrete.
Sharp edges of rebar sliced his palms, leaving dark smears of blood on the gray dust.
Pain was a secondary concern, a distant noise compared to the roaring void in his chest.
Hours passed in this rhythmic, brutal labor.
Sweat poured down his forehead, carving pale tracks through the soot on his cheeks.
Underneath his fingernails, the dirt turned sticky and dark.
He didn't care about the blood.
Only one thought kept his muscles moving, defying the exhaustion threatening to buckle his knees.
He had to find her. Or what was left of her.
Silence hung heavy over the ruins, broken only by the whistling wind.
No rescue teams would come here.
No government forces would search for survivors in a zone deemed completely lost.
Left behind, just like always.
Abandonment was a familiar shadow in his life.
Before the skies broke, he had been an outcast, an average youth with no prospective future.
Now, he was just a ghost wandering a graveyard.
---
Memories of the attack flashed behind his eyes every time he blinked.
Sky ripping open like wet paper.
Violet-black tendrils pouring from the tear, silent and hungry.
People didn't even have time to scream before their physical forms dissolved into purple mist, drawn upward into the yawning maw of the Dimensional Confluence.
It wasn't an army.
It was a cosmic vacuum, an existential horror that viewed humanity as nothing more than loose energy to be harvested.
His mother had pushed him into the reinforced shelter beneath the floorboards.
"Hide, Lavi," she had whispered, her voice trembling but her hands steady.
She had given him a desperate smile, her fingers brushing his cheek.
Then, she had turned to face the encroaching void, channeling every ounce of her soul-force into a protective barrier.
A mere three seconds was all the barrier lasted.
Through the viewport of the hatch, Lavidacus had watched the violet energy bypass her defenses, tearing her soul-gem from her chest.
It had shattered.
A blinding flash of silver light had exploded, and then, there was only silence.
He had stayed in that metal box for three days while the world burned around him.
He had survived.
But survival felt like a curse when you were the only one left in the graveyard.
Why had she left him?
Why did everyone he ever cared about end up leaving him alone in the dark?
Perhaps he wasn't worth saving.
Perhaps he was simply too weak, a useless burden that others had to sacrifice themselves to protect.
This bitter realization hardened inside him, cold and heavy as lead.
He would never rely on anyone else again.
If he wanted to survive in this dying world, he had to be self-sufficient.
Trusting others was a weakness that only led to betrayal or death.
He would build his own strength, brick by brick, until he no longer needed anyone.
---
His knuckles struck something solid.
Metal clapped against metal, a hollow sound echoing through the desolate ruins.
He cleared the ash faster, his breathing coming in ragged, shallow gasps.
A heavy iron hatch appeared beneath his bleeding fingers.
It was warped, the edges melted by the intense heat of the dimensional tear.
Using a piece of jagged rebar as a lever, he wedged it into the seam.
He threw his entire body weight onto the bar, veins bulging in his neck, his muscles screaming in protest.
With a screech of protesting metal, the hatch flew open.
A puff of stagnant, hot air escaped from the darkness below.
He didn't hesitate.
Sliding into the cramped space, his boots touched the dusty floor.
Inside, the shelter was completely gutted.
Emergency supplies had melted into useless puddles of plastic.
But in the center of the room, lying amidst a pile of white ash, was a faint glint of silver.
Lavidacus dropped to his knees.
His chest heaved, a sudden, suffocating pressure squeezing his lungs.
Reaching out, his hand shook uncontrollably as he approached the small object.
It was a shard.
A single, jagged piece of his mother's shattered soul-gem.
Once, it would have vibrated with a warm, brilliant light, a testament to her gentle spirit and nurturing soul-force.
Now, it was cold.
Hairline fractures covered the dull surface, threatening to turn it into dust at the slightest pressure.
He closed his fingers around it anyway.
Sharp edges bit into his raw palm, but he squeezed harder, welcoming the physical pain.
It was the only thing that kept him grounded.
It was the only thing that proved he was still alive.
A tear slipped down his cheek, cutting a clean path through the grime before dripping onto the metal floor.
He wiped it away savagely with the back of his sleeve.
Crying was useless.
Tears wouldn't rebuild his home, and they certainly wouldn't bring her back.
From this moment on, he would not weep.
His face hardened, the vulnerability melting away to leave behind a mask of cold, unyielding resolve.
He stared down at the shard in his hand, his eyes narrowing into slits of pure obsidian.
"I will destroy you," he whispered, his voice dangerously quiet, vibrating with a promise of absolute vengeance.
These quiet words were meant for the sky, for the monsters hiding behind the dimensional veil.
"Every beast, every rift, every drop of that purple poison."
"I will burn it all."
"Even if I have to do it alone."
He knew he couldn't trust anyone else.
Cowardly military units had fled.
High-ranking cultivators had abandoned the outer rims to protect the inner sanctuaries of the wealthy elite.
Shattered and selfish, humanity was weak.
If he wanted vengeance, he had to rely solely on himself.
He would forge his own soul, temper his own body, and become the weapon that would pierce the heart of the Confluence.
Slowly, he stood up, pocketing the shard close to his chest.
Its weight felt like an anchor, pulling him down but also keeping him steady in the storm.
He climbed out of the ruined shelter, back into the ash-choked air of the dead city.
---
Walking through Sector Nine was like walking through a dream of the end of the world.
Ashen snow fell from the sky, landing on his bare shoulders and leaving cold, wet spots on his skin.
Every step kicked up clouds of gray dust that settled in his hair and eyelashes.
He passed the remains of a public transport vehicle, its metal frame fused to the road like a frozen wave.
Inside, skeletal shapes remained frozen in postures of panic, their bones crystallized by the sheer heat of the dimensional rift.
Lavidacus did not look away.
He forced himself to stare at each and every face of death, burning the images into his memory.
This was the price of weakness.
If he remained weak, this would be his fate as well.
Society preached unity and faith in the Great Sects, but he knew the truth.
When the Confluence opened its jaws, the Sect masters had retreated behind their barrier arrays, leaving the outer cities to be consumed.
They had abandoned Sector Nine.
They had abandoned him.
He would never forget the silence of the emergency channels as the rifts expanded.
Only static had answered their desperate cries for help.
"Never trust them," he muttered, his voice raspy from the ash.
"Never trust anyone."
---
Wind howled through the skeletal remains of the skyscrapers, carrying the distant, unnatural screeches of dimensional beasts.
Vicious predators were hunting.
Confluence scourgers always stayed behind to clean up any surviving life.
Lavidacus ducked behind a half-collapsed wall, his eyes scanning the horizon.
A shadow flitted across the toxic clouds, massive and serpentine, with too many eyes and wings made of distorted light.
He held his breath, pressing his back against the rough concrete.
He was weak right now.
Awakening soul-force was all he possessed right now, his physical body completely untrained.
To fight now would be suicide.
Pragmatism was his greatest shield.
He waited until the shadow passed, its terrifying aura fading into the distance.
Once the air cleared, he let out a slow breath.
He needed resources.
He needed a way to cultivate, a way to grow stronger than anyone else.
But how?
Distant academies were hundreds of miles away, and he had no money, no backing, and an average talent rating.
A bitter smile touched his lips.
"Average," they had called him during the aptitude tests.
"Unfit for high-level cultivation," the instructors had sneered.
Those fools didn't know anything.
Ignited by the ash of his mother's soul, a fierce fire burned inside him now.
He would find a way.
Even if he had to crawl through hell, he would climb to the top.
He adjusted the strap of his ragged backpack, preparing to make his way out of the dead zone before nightfall.
Night in the ruins belonged to the monsters.
As he stepped over a pile of shattered glass, his foot caught on a wire.
He stumbled, his hand instinctively flying to his chest to protect the soul-gem shard.
Instead, his fingers brushed against something else.
It was a pendant.
A small, circular piece of dark metal, completely unadorned and seemingly worthless.
His mother had hung it around his neck when he was a child, telling him it was a family heirloom of no real value, just a keepsake.
He had forgotten he was even wearing it.
It had survived the blast, the fire, and the ash.
As Lavidacus’s trembling fingers brush against a forgotten, unassuming pendant around his neck, a faint, almost imperceptible hum resonates, causing the air around him to ripple with an unknown energy.