The Warden was gone.
But its presence lingered.
It hadn't failed.
It had measured him.
And now that Heaven had numbers… the world had answers.
Wrong answers.
The kind that lead to panic.
To fear.
To desperation.
High above the mortal continent, deep within a floating sanctuary surrounded by ten thousand golden swords, the Council of Divine Tribes convened.
They didn't speak like mortals.
Their words echoed through laws.
Each sentence they spoke left ripples across the fate lines of weaker realms.
"The Warden failed."
"He resists rewriting."
"Then we sever what anchors him."
A projection flared in the center of the room: a small, peaceful territory nestled between neutral sects and a forgotten village near the Moonfire River.
It held no weapons.
No cultivation treasure.
Just people.
Farmers.
Children.
And one woman who once helped a dying boy who said he was an electrician.
They didn't know her name.
Only that Raizen had walked past that village three years ago, injured and quiet.
And had smiled.
Only once.
"He remembers," one elder said.
"Then we burn it."
Raizen was meditating on a void plateau when the echo hit him.
Not sound.
Not energy.
Just… absence.
The kind you feel when something soft and small in your chest goes missing.
His eyes opened.
And a second later, he stood in the sky above the Moonfire Valley.
What he saw wasn't fire.
It was cleansing.
Divine formations spiraled down like drills, carving through the air in perfect patterns, ready to burn not just the land—but memory.
The people below didn't know why.
Didn't scream.
They just looked up, confused… as if asking Heaven what mistake they had made.
Raizen didn't shout.
He didn't roar.
He just fell—straight through space.
And stopped the formation mid-drop.
The divine elders watching from afar didn't understand.
He hadn't blocked the technique.
He hadn't reversed it.
He'd redirected it—inward.
Their own formation ripped back into the sky, shredding its own structure.
Their spell broke.
The villagers didn't even see it.
Time had slowed too far.
Raizen stood in the air, eyes cold.
Void cracked across his arms like veins of night.
"I left this place alone."
"I didn't come here to fight."
He reached into the sky with one hand—and pulled down a ripple of light.
Inside it: a divine messenger trying to flee with a spatial token.
Raizen yanked him through.
The man didn't speak.
His eyes bled from void pressure.
Raizen placed one hand on his forehead.
No pain. No screams.
Just a whisper.
"Who gave the order?"
The messenger's soul peeled open like a book. Raizen didn't flip pages—he consumed them.
And then he saw it.
The faces.
The sects.
The Council.
"They're starting to move faster…"
He let the man drop—unharmed, but unconscious.
A message.
He turned his back to the village.
None of them had seen him.
None remembered him clearly.
But he still felt the weight.
Not of weakness.
But of connection.
And Raizen knew something dangerous.
He hadn't forgotten who he was.
He'd just stopped acting like he cared.
And that?
Was about to change.