An hour before the meeting...
Elias stood at the edge of the wall, his eyes scanning the vast landscape beyond. The wall was tall, nearly twenty feet high—enough that even adults would have shattered bones if they jumped from it.
But Elias barely hesitated. After a moment of thought, he leaped off the edge.
When he landed, his knees bent slightly to absorb the impact, but there was no real damage. He straightened up, brushing off his clothes like nothing had happened. Most people would've broken their legs or worse, but Elias was now rank 2, and his body was extremely tough thanks to his rune.
Without wasting any time, Elias began walking steadily through the abandoned streets, his gaze fixed on the blue glow looming above the rooftops in the distance.
The silence around him felt strange, too quiet for a city that had once been bustling. He still remembers the first day he arrived, which was a big contrast.
Small, wooden houses with tiled roofs and curved eaves lined the path, but some of them were barely standing. Some walls were torn apart, leaving deep bite marks along the edges. It was obvious that some beasts had somehow infiltrated this place before.
As he drew closer to the flame, Elias noticed a group of cultivators gathered far from the flickering blue blaze. They stood with tense postures, their faces drawn and pale. Some had bandages wrapped hastily around fresh wounds, and all of them kept a cautious distance from the flame, shifting uneasily.
One cultivator raised his hand, conjuring a mist that curled around his fingers before he threw it toward the flame, hoping to smother it. But the blue light didn't even flicker.
"It doesn't react at all," he muttered, his face tense.
"And it's draining my aether," another added, looking nervously at the flame. "Feels like I'm suffocating the closer I get. I don't even want to approach it more than that."
"Any orders from the patriarch?" one asked, glancing around. But the others just shook their heads. No one had heard anything from the higher-ups.
Suddenly, one of them stiffened, his eyes narrowing as he spotted Elias walking toward them, calm as if he were on a stroll. They reached for their weapons, but his white robe and the small cloud-shaped pin caught their attention, marking him as a White smoke clan member.
Relaxing a little, one of them frowned and asked, "Aren't kids supposed to be in the warehouse?"
Elias didn't answer, sidestepping as they moved to block him. One cultivator tried to grab his arm, but Elias shrugged him off with surprising strength and continued walking.
By the time they regained their senses, he was already too close to the flame for them to do anything.
They hesitated, eyes wide. None of them dared to follow him any further. They lived almost all their life with aether, and for them, it was something akin to air, so being close to that flame felt suffocating, like trying to breathe underwater.
Elias stopped right in front of the flame, his gaze steady as he studied the eerie blue light that danced and twisted before him. Its glow spilled across the empty street, casting long shadows that flickered with each pulse.
The cultivators watched him from afar, shifting uncomfortably as they tried to make sense of what he was doing. Then, without a hint of hesitation, Elias stretched out his hand and touched the flame.
A collective gasp rose from the group.
"What… what is he thinking?" one whispered, his voice tight with disbelief. "Is he out of his mind?"
But to their shock, Elias remained unharmed. His hand remained within the flame, his skin untouched by even the slightest burn.
"How is this possible?" another breathed, eyes wide with confusion. "Didn't we send beasts in there as guinea pig, only for them to melt into puddle within seconds? And now… this child just stands there?"
Before they could make sense of it, Elias took another step forward, disappearing fully into the flame.
"He… he went inside..."
"No way… what is he doing?"
The flames wrapped around him, and as they did, the cultivators noticed his white robe and cloud-shaped pin slowly melting away, the fabric curling and dissolving to reveal his thin, pale frame underneath. The sight left them speechless.
Soon, the only thing visible was his silhouette, shrouded in the eerie blue light.
The group stared, their expressions a bit perplexed, but they quickly regained their sense.
The older cultivator, who seemed to be the leader, stepped forward, his expression grim. "We should report this to the elders first. There's still an unawakened group nearby. Capture them and throw them into the flame. Let's see if it only burns beasts."
The others nodded, looking uneasy but resigned. What choice did they have? Besides, the unawakened were easily replaced. As long as the clan stood strong, people would flock to them for protection.
A few minutes later, the group returned, dragging several people behind them. One girl struggled desperately, her face streaked with tears. "Let us go!" she cried. "We didn't do anything wrong!"
The cultivators ignored her pleas. "Quiet," one growled, his grip tightening. "Unless you want to die."
"No, please!" she begged, her voice breaking. She stumbled as they yanked her forward, forcing her closer to the eerie, flickering blue flame. "Please..."
Her pleas fell on deaf ears. The cultivators pushed her and the others forward without hesitation, dragging them despite the desperate resistance.
The air around the flame grew thicker, oppressive with the suffocating pressure that strained their aether. With hardened expressions, the cultivators shoved the group into the flame.
But instead of melting into puddles or burning alive, as they'd seen with beasts, the group stumbled out, coughing and confused, with only light burns and their clothes charred to dust, leaving them naked.
They blinked at each other, wide-eyed, and the cultivators' faces turned from detached cruelty to utter bewilderment.
"It… only burns beasts? How can that be?" one muttered, glancing around.
"Maybe it's because they're human?" another suggested uncertainly. "If that's true, we might be able to use it to wipe out the incoming beasts… We can perhaps use this a weapon?"
As the cultivators debated, the unawakened ran away in fear, but cultivators didn't seem to care.
A younger cultivator, his white robe stained with streaks of blood, narrowed his eyes at the flame. He took a few shaky steps closer, ignoring the heavy, suffocating feeling that thickened with each step.
Gritting his teeth, he reached out, his fingers inches from the blue light. He hesitated, then pressed his palm fully into the flame, watching as the glow danced across his skin.
A few of the others gasped, some even taking a step back. But the older cultivator kept his gaze fixed, observing every detail. At first, nothing happened. The younger cultivator looked back with a triumphant grin, but just as he pulled his hand back, faint dark burns traced across his skin, flaring up before vanishing as though something had snuffed them out.
The older man's eyes narrowed, piecing it together. He recalled the unsettling drain they all felt near the flame as if their aether was being pulled away.
"Step back," he ordered, his voice low. He didn't look away from the flame as he spoke to the others. "I think this fire doesn't just burn. It likely disrupts aether instead."
"Disrupts?" one asked, frowning. "What does that mean?"
The leader pointed at a small puddle of black liquid left where a beast had melted. "Look at that. You saw how the beasts disintegrated. The flame isn't burning them like regular fire. It's attacking their aether, disrupting it until they break down like that."
The others exchanged uneasy looks, glancing between the puddle and the flickering flames.
"But why doesn't it kill humans?" another asked.
The older cultivator's expression hardened as he explained. "The difference is in how aether is stored. Beasts keep it spread throughout their bodies, while humans store it in a separate aperture. For us, aether is kept apart from our bodies in a way. If someone has no aether—like those unawakened—then the flame ignores them entirely, just burning their clothes and barely scarring the skin. That would explain why even the building is burning. Aether is in everything, expect human body, if we ignore apertures and unranked material."
The eyes of the younger one who had touched the flame widened. "So if I entered my whole body along with my aperture in the flame... I would've died?"
"I don't know. You probably would be left crippled with a destroyed aperture and be left unranked, which means death. So yes, you would probably have died. But those are only theories."
"Then we should report- What?"
The cultivators fell silent, their attention snapping back to the flame, now shifting in an eerie way.
A subtle tremor ran through the ground. Then after a few seconds, the flame seemed to draw closer, inch by inch. They exchanged uneasy glances, feeling the oppressive aura of the flame bearing down on their own aether as if trying to snuff it out.
A tense silence settled over the group until one of them, wide-eyed, whispered, "It's… moving."
With a mixture of dread, they took a collective step back, staring as the flame slowly advanced past the mansion where it had been burning.
Some cultivators stumbled, nearly tripping over each other in their haste to retreat as they watched it glide out of the Xiawen estate.
In the center of this advancing fire, they caught a glimpse, from afar, of someone at its heart...
There, wrapped within the blue flames, was Elias. He walked slowly, his face twisted with concentration as he took each step with deliberate care as if every move drained him further.
The blue glow around him blazed, casting his thin frame in stark relief. A tiny, intensely dark blue flame flickered at the center of his palm, contrasting sharply with the lighter blue aura that spread around him like a halo.
"That flame in this kid's hand… it's not like the rest of it… It's the heart of the flame," one of the cultivators murmured, his voice barely audible as he watched Elias slowly walk toward The clan's Headquarter.