The skies cracked open like shattering glass, divine lightning tearing through the void as Jiaren floated at the apex of the Celestial Altar.
His body hovered, suspended by nothing but will and destiny. Robes fluttered like ash in a storm. Golden runes blazed across his skin—testaments of ten thousand lifetimes carved into flesh and soul.
He had done it.
He had reached the Ninth Heaven.
He had ascended.
And then the sky… went silent.
A tremor passed through the realms. The stars blinked out. The heavenly gate, a spiraling portal of pure divine law, pulsed once—and stopped.
The light vanished.
And Jiaren… fell.
---
His scream never reached his lips.
One instant, he floated on the edge of godhood.
The next, he was being ripped apart.
Each soul fragment, each cultivation root, each memory—torn from his being and hurled into the darkness.
The celestial tribunal had judged him.
And they had rejected him.
---
When he awoke, he was in a place that did not exist.
No light.
No sound.
No time.
Only a flickering pulse in the void, like a heartbeat trapped in the ribcage of a corpse.
Jiaren gasped. It sounded like glass breaking inside his throat.
He tried to move. Pain flared. His arms—shattered. Legs—missing. Half his chest was burned, bones exposed. Blood dripped into nothing, never touching ground.
This was not death.
It was something worse.
> "The Failed Realm," he whispered.
"So the legends… were true."
This was where failed Ascendants were cast. Where broken gods came to rot.
Where ambition was punished.
---
Time passed—or maybe it didn't. Jiaren hung between waking and drifting madness. Flashes of memory returned like broken mirrors:
His master smiling—then stabbing him through the back.
The sect watching in silence as he bled out.
The moment he crossed the threshold, thinking he was worthy.
He screamed again. This time, something answered.
A flash.
A whisper of heat.
He turned—or thought he did—and saw it:
A shard.
A fragment of divine law, pulsing in the void like a dying star.
It floated toward him, slow and impossibly heavy.
He should not touch it. Mortal hands couldn't hold Law. It would obliterate his soul.
But Jiaren had nothing left to lose.
He reached.
The moment his fingers grazed the shard—
The world exploded.
---
Flames consumed him.
Not fire—concept. The Law of Flame roared through his veins, setting thought itself ablaze. Memories turned to cinders. His bones melted. His core cracked.
But…
He didn't die.
Instead, something inside him opened. A wound? No—a void. A space where law could enter.
> I am broken, he realized.
And so the laws do not recognize me. I am beneath judgment.
The fire calmed. The shard melted into his palm, searing a mark into his skin.
A glowing rune: 焰 — Flame.
Jiaren breathed, smoke escaping his mouth.
He had done the impossible.
He had stolen divine law—and survived.
---
More lights blinked into existence.
Hundreds of fragments. Thousands.
Each pulsed with a different truth: Ice. Shadow. Time. Wind. Blood. Void.
He reached for a second.
A scream tore across the realm—this time, not his.
The skies above the void split open.
A golden eye, massive as the moon, peered down.
A voice, terrible and ancient, thundered without sound:
> "He Who Failed Has Broken the Law."
"Sever Him."
"Erase His Name."
Jiaren bared his teeth.
> "You already took my name."
He reached for the second shard.
Lightning struck—but the bolt vanished before it reached him.
He touched it.
Cold flooded his veins—Ice Law.
He gasped, blood turning to crystal for a moment. His breath became mist.
Still… he lived.
And he laughed.
It was a mad sound, cracked and hollow.
> "If the heavens won't let me ascend," he said,
"Then I will climb their corpses to reach the top."
---
Far above, in the Celestial Council, the Arbiter of Order sat upon his throne of starfire.
He looked down into the void, eyes unreadable.
> "A Heretic is born," he murmured.
"A devourer of law. The first since the Shattered Aeon."
His voice echoed through the halls of the divine.
> "Dispatch the Executors. Let none of his soul remain."
---
Back in the void, Jiaren stood for the first time.
His limbs reformed, patchwork of bone and blood, held together by flame and frost.
He felt pain—but it was real.
And it meant he was alive.
The fragments whispered to him, calling for hunger, calling for purpose.
He looked up at the cracked sky.
> "You should have let me in."
Then he turned—and began to walk through the dark, glowing with stolen light.