The moon sagged low over the upper realms, casting its pale, silver light across a world suspended between dream and discipline—floating palaces with roofs of jade and bridges spun from crystallized qi. Tonight, the stars seemed distant, veiled by swirls of turbulent energy that rippled like bruises across the sky. And at the heart of it all, sealed behind a dozen illusions and wards older than language, the last sanctuary of the Nine Searing Sects pulsed with awakening dread.
Within a chamber shaped like a lotus carved from void-stone, seven figures sat in a circle. Their robes shimmered with heaven-forged silk, threadless yet bound by intent alone. Their breathing was slow, practiced, but a tautness clung to the silence between them. These were the True Pillars—survivors from a time before the first rise of the Demon King, the final remnants of sects that had once dared challenge fate. Though their lifespans now outstripped history, they looked aged tonight. Weathered. And, above all, afraid.
Word of the massacre had spread not through whispers, but through absence—an entire battalion, swallowed whole. No battle cries. No scattered remnants of cultivation. No fragments of soul or shattered weapons left behind. Not slain. Not overwhelmed.
Erased.
Not even the heavens remembered them.
It had not been war. It had been demonstration. Not vengeance, but prelude. And in the echo of that silence, each of them recognized the name that could no longer be spoken lightly.
The Glutton had returned.
The eater of light. The one who whispered in the marrow of saints. The king of ruin who once consumed a god's heart beneath a moon drowned in blood.
"I warned you," Grandmaster Fei rasped, his voice brittle as the bone staff gripped in his fingers. The knuckles had gone white long ago, and now the flesh cracked like parchment. "We should've ended the remnants when the seal was fresh. But we let him rot, foolishly thinking time would finish the job. We were arrogant."
"And yet," murmured Grand Scholar Jin, who sat with perfect posture, brushing away imaginary dust from his lap as if decorum still mattered, "he was rotting. Until now. This isn't resurrection. This is continuation. We didn't kill him—we merely paused him. And now he breathes again… deeper than before."
It was Elder Mo who finally broke the rising tension, his voice slow and raw, like stones grinding beneath centuries. He had not spoken in council since the day the Demon King was sealed. That day, he'd lost more than his left eye—he had lost his mount, his sect, and something far deeper he never spoke of.
"If this is his full awakening," Mo said, his single eye reflecting the moonlight slanting through the chamber's high lattice windows, "then sealing him again is no longer a possibility. He's not a soul now. He's a convergence."
Not one mind. But many. A fusion of all he had consumed. Every victim. Every power. Every fragment of self.
For a time, the room held only the crackling of incense and the brittle rustle of ancient robes. Then the Crimson Seer stood, her form tall beneath cascading crimson robes that shimmered like blood wrapped in glass. In one hand, she held a smooth, gray sphere—a relic long thought lost, carved from a material that no longer existed in this plane of existence.
"We have no time to argue," she said, her voice low but unwavering. "We must awaken the Fangs."
A hush settled over the room like frost.
Fei's head jerked up first. Even Elder Mo straightened in his seat.
"You would dare bring that thing back into the world?" Fei hissed, rising to his feet. "Do you even remember what it is?"
"I do," the Seer replied, her grip tightening on the orb. "Because I helped forge it."
The Fang Beneath the Mountain. A weapon born not from steel, but from the regrets of dying gods. Its blade was emotion sharpened to a killing edge. Its hilt, sculpted from the bloodlines of three extinct clans. And its core… its core was something older than myth.
A single rib.
Torn from the sleeping body of the Glutton himself—cut free by a rogue cultivator who believed salvation required sacrifice.
The bone still held pain. Still echoed with screams. It had one purpose and only one: to destroy what could not die.
"You know what that means," Jin said, his voice suddenly quiet again. "This weapon doesn't simply kill. It unravels. It could tear apart every soul he's ever consumed. And not all of them were monsters."
Mo nodded slowly. "There were innocents. Collateral. If we use the Fang, we may be condemning thousands whose only crime was being near him."
The Seer's expression did not change.
"This is not justice. This is necessity."
Fei's hand trembled at his side as he stepped forward. "Then let it be known. The Nine Searing Sects no longer fear the price. We'll bring oblivion to the monster we once dared call kin."
Far below, in the world untouched by celestial politics, the one they feared stood barefoot on the smooth stones of a riverbank, his sleeves rolled up and a soft breeze tugging at his hair. Beside him, his son held a wooden training blade, brows furrowed in concentration as he mimicked a striking stance. The man crouched, adjusted the boy's wrist gently, and spoke with a calm rooted in centuries.
"Too stiff," he murmured, guiding the child's movement. "Don't wield the blade. Let it become you. Not an extension—an evolution."
The boy gave a sharp nod and tried again. The movement was still flawed, but less so than before.
Better. Not yet perfect.
A small smile touched his lips. He ruffled the boy's hair and let his hand rest briefly on the boy's shoulder. Dappled sunlight streamed through the canopy above, turning the moment into something golden. Peaceful. Fragile.
For the briefest breath of time, he believed this could last.
But his bones disagreed.
Deep within the marrow of his being, something old stirred. A pressure. A hum. He recognized it immediately.
The Fang was waking.
And it would not care what he had become.
That night, seated by the fire while his wife read beside him, her fingers delicately turning pages, he finally broke the silence that had hung between them since the shift in the air.
"They're going to come," he said, his voice low, almost lost to the crackle of flames.
She didn't look up. "They always come."
"This time, they'll bring something meant to end me."
At that, she finally turned her gaze toward him. Not frightened. Not angry. Just steady.
"Then we'll bury it too."
He exhaled, the sound almost like laughter. "You've always been crueler than me."
"Only when protecting what's mine."
High above the mortal world, far beyond clouds and comprehension, the ritual had begun.
The Fang, entombed beneath the mountain where he'd first been sealed, shifted in its cradle of null-stone. Runes carved from forgotten dialects burned with sacrifice—not of blood, but of memory. Lives wiped from existence to fuel the invocation.
The weapon did not rise quietly.
It screamed.
A wail of pain and purpose that echoed through the realm. And within that scream, the heavens heard a name they had hoped never to speak again.
Not his mortal name. Not the name once shouted in rebellion or whispered in fear.
But the name born in silence, carved from consumption, and sealed in screams.
Devourer.