The sect's grand tribunal hall stood beneath an ancient canopy of spirit-forged pine, its roof etched with ancestral glyphs that shimmered faintly under the dawn. The stone steps leading to the dais bore the weight of generations—each crack and groove marked by the echoes of trials past.
Zhen Hu ascended slowly.
His robe, stained faintly with the residue of Nytherion, fluttered in the cool wind. His hair was disheveled, and his eyes—though calm—held an exhaustion no sleep could mend. Beside him, his spirit guide Aelira walked silently, visible only to him, her presence steady but distant. She had not spoken since the Oracle reading.
The tribunal hall was filled.
Elders in gold-fringed robes. Disciples lining the marble balcony. The Oracle, eyes veiled in linen etched with runes. Conservation Base elders stood at each corner, monitoring ZEN fluctuations. The atmosphere pulsed with unease.
And on the central throne—Zhen Xun, the Patriarch of Dawnyu Sect.
Zhen Hu's father.
His face was carved from stillness, but the corners of his mouth twitched with tension. When their eyes met, there was no warmth.
Only unanswered questions.
Zhen Hu bowed low, voice steady.
"Disciple Zhen Hu, Aethonix Realm—First Layer, presents himself for judgment."
Zhen Xun's voice was thunder after a silence.
"You stand before this tribunal accused of concealing your true energy source. The Oracle speaks of interference, an anomaly neither Kyrekh nor Aethonix could bear."
Elder Juon stepped forward, holding the Oracle's sealed script.
"The reading revealed not only deviation," he said, "but contamination. A resonance of foreign Intent—ancient, primordial. Something even the Oracle could not name."
Gasps spread through the crowd.
Zhen Hu didn't speak.
Zhen Xun gestured, and the guards stepped aside.
"We do not judge blindly, son," he said. "Tell us. What ZEN do you cultivate?"
A pause.
Aelira's voice hummed faintly in his mind—"You may lie, and buy time. Or speak the truth, and carve your own exile."
Zhen Hu lifted his head.
"I do not cultivate ZEN," he said, voice unwavering. "My path is Nytherion. Death-born. Decay-fed. I did not choose it—but it chose me."
The silence that followed was thicker than stone.
Even the Oracle stirred.
"You admit," said Elder Qiao, "to drawing from the forbidden?"
"I survived it," Zhen Hu said. "Where others would have perished, I lived. I do not wield it to defile the sect—but to live, to grow stronger."
Zhen Xun stood.
All eyes turned to him.
There was something wounded in his gaze—hidden under centuries of discipline. His voice lowered, softened.
"Why, Hu?" he asked. "Why didn't you come to me?"
Zhen Hu swallowed, his voice caught for a moment before he spoke.
"Because I knew what this moment would become."
Zhen Xun stepped down from the throne, slowly approaching.
The hall held its breath.
"Do you understand what this means?" he asked. "You bear something none of us can contain. It will consume you—or worse, consume others through you."
Zhen Hu didn't step back.
"Perhaps," he said. "But it is a part of me. And if I must fall, then let me fall forward—not hidden in shame."
Zhen Xun stood inches from his son now. His eyes searched him—not for lies, but for the boy he once held as an infant. The son who used to bring him broken spirit stones to fix.
He raised a hand.
Zhen Hu flinched—but the hand didn't strike.
It rested on his shoulder.
Zhen Xun's voice cracked.
"I wish… I could protect you."
And then, louder, to the hall:
"As Patriarch, I declare Zhen Hu—banished from Dawnyu Sect. He may not enter its borders, nor claim its name, until the day he can control the thing within him."
The sentence fell like a sword.
But Zhen Hu only nodded.
Aelira touched his back lightly, invisible to all.
"You were not meant for this garden, Zhen Hu," she whispered. "Your roots belong to deeper soil."
He turned his back on the tribunal. On his father. On the place that raised him.
And walked into the dawn.
Behind him, Mie Xian stood in the shadowed crowd, her hands trembling, eyes wide with silent questions.
The first day of his exile had begun.
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