Chapter 273: The Awakening

The gate groaned as Bai Zheng pulled it open, the rusted metal scraping against the floor with a sound that echoed throughout the empty warehouse.

Beyond it was darkness.

Raiden’s heart slammed against his ribs, each beat sending a fresh spike of pain through his broken body, but he barely felt it. All he could think about was what waited on the other side of that door.

"Your sister is inside," Bai Zheng said, his voice smooth and calm, as if he were inviting Raiden to a meal rather than leading him toward something that had been haunting his every waking thought for hours. "Are you ready to meet her, Raiden??"

Raiden didn’t answer right away. His eyes were fixed on the darkness beyond the gate, his breathing shallow and ragged, his grip on the blood scythe the only thing keeping him upright.

Every part of him wanted to rush forward, to tear through whatever was in his way, but his body was failing him, his vision swimming at the edges, his legs trembling with each step.

"Cut the... crap!! Take me to my sister now."

Bai Zheng’s smile widened, just slightly, and he stepped aside, gesturing toward the open gate with a sweep of his hand.

"Then go ahead. She’s been waiting for you."

Raiden took a step forward.

Then another.

The warehouse around him seemed to fade, the faces of Bai Zheng, Lola, Trevor, and the others blurring into the background as his entire focus narrowed to the darkness ahead.

He could hear his own heartbeat, loud and erratic, filling his ears. He could feel the wetness of blood soaking through his shirt, clinging to his skin. He could feel the weight of the scythe in his hand, heavier now than it had ever been.

But none of it mattered right now. Nothing mattered except getting to Sylvia.

He crossed the threshold before he finally got to see her. As soon as he did, his entire world stopped.

Sylvia was hanging from the ceiling by a chain, her body limp and swaying slightly with each faint movement of the air. Her clothes were torn and stained dark with blood, her skin marked with bruises and cuts painting a horrific sight. Her head hung forward, her hair falling over her face, and beneath it, he could see a long scar that marked her face, and for one second, Raiden couldn’t tell if she was breathing.

The blood scythe slipped from his fingers.

It hit the ground with a dull clang as it dissolved into blood, but Raiden didn’t hear it. He didn’t hear any of it. The warehouse, the people behind him, the pain in his body, all of it vanished, swallowed whole by the sight in front of him.

"Sylvia..."

His voice came out broken, barely a whisper, and it cracked on her name.

Behind him, Bai Zheng’s smile sharpened.

This was the plan. This was always the plan. Let him see her. Let the sight of his sister, broken and bleeding, hollow him out for just one second. One second was all they needed. One second of shock, of grief, of a mind too overwhelmed to react.

"Now!!" Bai Zheng’s voice cut through the air like a blade.

The shadow panther exploded out of Raiden’s shadow.

It had been waiting there the entire time, silent and patient, blending into the darkness beneath his feet. Now it surged upward, claws extended, jaws open, aiming for the back of Raiden’s neck in a single, knockout strike.

At the same moment, all four of them released their Terra Beasts.

Trevor’s flaming eagle dove from above, wings blazing. Lola’s spider and hound surged forward from the sides, while her smoke serpent coiled through the air like a living whip. The stone golem’s fist came down like a hammer, and the shadow wolves fanned out in a circle, cutting off every path of escape.

It was a perfect trap.

A coordinated strike from every direction, timed to the exact second Raiden’s guard was down. And it worked. It worked way too well.

Because Raiden didn’t move. He didn’t even dodge or raise a hand.

He just stood there, staring at Sylvia, his eyes wide and empty, his mind somewhere far beyond the reach of fear or pain.

The panther’s claws were inches from his neck.

And then something inside him broke.

Something that had been sleeping at the very bottom of his blood, buried so deep that even he hadn’t known it was there.

The air around Raiden distorted, as if reality itself had flinched.

BANG!!!

A force erupted outward from his body, invisible and absolute, and in a split second, every Terra Beast in the warehouse was flung backwards as if an invisible train had hit them. The panther was thrown clear across the room, slamming into the far wall with a crash that shook the entire building. The flaming eagle was ripped from the air and sent tumbling backwards, its wings extinguishing mid-flight.

The spider, the hound, the serpent, the golem, the wolves- all of them were hurled away at once, crashing into walls and crates and each other in a chaos of shrieks and splintering wood.

The four Battle Masters didn’t fare any better.

Trevor was lifted off his feet and thrown backwards, his back slamming into a support beam hard enough to crack it. Lola hit the ground rolling, her lollipop flying from her mouth as she tumbled across the concrete. The blurry man and the laptop guy were flung in opposite directions, crashing into stacks of crates that collapsed around them in a cloud of dust and debris.

Bai Zheng was the last to be thrown.

He hit the wall near the gate, his glasses cracking against the impact, and for the first time since Raiden had walked into the warehouse, his expression turned into a deeply terrified one.

Because he had felt it. That force, that pressure. It wasn’t the power of a Gold-Tier Battle Master. It wasn’t the power of a Platinum-Tier, or even a Diamond-Tier.

He knew exactly what it meant.

Raiden stood in the centre of the warehouse, his back still turned to them, his head bowed, his body trembling. Blood dripped from his wounds onto the concrete, but it didn’t pool at his feet the way it should have. Instead, it seemed to hover, suspended in the air around him, trembling with the same invisible force that had thrown everyone else away.

And then his hair began to change.

It started at the roots, a faint silver spreading outward like frost creeping across glass, climbing through the black strands until half of his head was silver and half was still dark, the contrast stark and wrong beneath the dim light of the warehouse.

The ground beneath his feet began to crack from pressure.

The concrete split in thin, spreading lines, radiating outward from where Raiden stood, and the entire warehouse began to shake, dust falling from the ceiling in thin streams.

The hanging light swung wildly overhead, casting frantic, shifting shadows across the walls.

Raiden slowly raised his head.

His eyes were still burning, but they were different now. The purple in his eyes had deepened, darkened, until it looked less like human and more like something else, something that shouldn’t exist in the world.

His gaze found Bai Zheng, who started trembling fearfully under that gaze.

"You..." Raiden’s voice was low, rough, and it carried a weight that made the air itself feel heavy. "You touched my sister."

Every person in the warehouse felt them settle into their bones, cold and final, like a sentence being passed.

Raiden took one step forward.

The ground cracked beneath his foot.

Then another.

And another.

Each step sent a fresh tremor through the warehouse, and the pressure in the air grew thicker with each one, pressing down on everyone inside until breathing became a struggle. The Terra Beasts, even the Diamond-Tier ones, were cowering now, pressed flat against the walls, their growls long gone, replaced by whimpers they couldn’t control.

Lola’s hands were shaking.

Trevor couldn’t move.

The blurry man and the laptop guy were pressed against the far wall, their faces pale, their eyes wide with a terror they didn’t have words for.

And Bai Zheng, his back against the cracked wall, his glasses broken, his composure gone, could only watch as Raiden walked toward him, walking with slow and deliberate steps, with half his hair silver and an ancient, furious power rolling off him in waves.

He had seen the exact same thing once before, and that’s why he felt so terrified. The boy had done it; he had awakened it. He had awakened the—

{Ding!! Congratulations, Host, For Awakening The Dormant Ashen One Bloodline!!}