The desert of reflective bones lay beneath a sky marred by the crimson embrace of the blood eclipse. It was not merely a celestial phenomenon; it was the heavens' way of purging, of cleansing the worlds below by seeping their decay into the soil of the earth. Where the moon's light should have been a cool, silvery radiance, it had instead been stained with the deep red hue of an eternal wound. The landscape trembled beneath the weight of that heavenly corruption.
Rin Xie stood in the midst of it all, his form swaying as though caught between this world and the next. The desert stretched endlessly before him, the bones of long-dead creatures scattered across the land like jagged shards of forgotten lives. Their reflection, distorted in the cracked earth, mocked the very idea of life—an endless cycle of death and rebirth that could never truly find peace. The bone fragments shimmered under the eclipse, each shard casting an unnatural glow, as though the moonlight sought to devour them in its wake.
The wraiths came first, thin figures birthed from the moon's glow, their bodies nothing more than wisps of shadow. They were creatures of regret, born from the souls of those who had perished under an eclipse. Souls whose unresolved remorse had transformed them into mindless husks of lingering anguish. Their eyes, if they could be called eyes at all, were twin pools of black, empty voids that seemed to devour the light around them. As they drifted forward, the very air chilled, thick with the bitter taste of failure and abandonment.
Rin's senses sharpened in response, his grip tightening on the death-forged sword at his side. He had learned long ago that survival was not a matter of fighting the dead—it was about controlling them, mastering the emptiness they left behind. But these wraiths were unlike any he had encountered before. Their presence was like a vice tightening around his chest, as though they sought to suffocate him with their ceaseless wailing, the cries of all those who had died in vain.
"Come," Rin muttered, his voice barely audible above the wind that howled across the barren expanse. "Come and face your end."
The wraiths circled him, their forms indistinct and ever-shifting, as though they were made of smoke or the very fog of despair. Each time one came near, it seemed to draw something from him—something deep, far beneath the surface. His hand trembled around the hilt of his sword as he realized the truth: these creatures were not just reflections of death—they were reflections of his own growing numbness. Their hunger, their need to consume, was not unlike his own.
And that was the problem. He had come to understand that death could be refined, controlled, used. But now, as he faced these wraiths, it was clear—he had become something akin to them. His grief, his anger, his torment—they had all begun to fade into the background, swallowed by an ever-growing emptiness. He was no longer the man who had mourned. The man who had wept.
In that moment, he realized: he feared not the wraiths, nor the power that had led him to this point. He feared the person he was becoming, for in their hollow eyes, he saw only a reflection of himself—dead and empty, a wraith in the making.
The ground trembled beneath his feet, a warning he barely had time to heed. From the heavens above, a celestial fragment descended with the force of an avalanche, trailing a ribbon of fire that split the sky. It was as though the heavens themselves had cast down a punishment—an act of cleansing from a world far beyond this one. The fragment, a shard of celestial rock, crashed into the desert with a thunderous roar, sending up a wave of sand and bone that threatened to bury everything.
Rin's eyes snapped to the fallen fragment. It was no ordinary celestial remnant. This was a fragment of the very punishment that had been cast upon the worlds where death cultivation had taken root. The eclipse, a cycle of celestial retribution, was a mark of heaven's disapproval. Those who had harnessed death as a tool were forever marked by it. The fragment, now buried in the sand, pulsed with an unnatural energy—a force that radiated both death and life, a paradox.
As Rin approached, the wraiths shrieked in unison, their mournful wails rising into the air, as though the fragment itself had awakened something within them. The air grew thick with malice. It was then that Rin felt it—the warmth, the heat of a flame long thought to be extinguished.
The Crimson Eclipse Flame.
It surged from the fragment, spiraling outward like a living thing. A breathless hunger. It enveloped the wraiths, and where it touched them, they dissolved into ash, their forms scattering to the wind. But the flame did not stop. It turned its gaze upon Rin, beckoning him closer. And he understood. He had no choice but to accept it.
He stepped forward, his hands raised to the sky as the flame wrapped around him like a lover's caress, but there was no tenderness here. Only an unrelenting power, burning through his very core. As the flame touched his skin, a pulse of raw energy surged through him, an agonizing moment of transformation.
The world seemed to halt, suspended in that burning moment. His body trembled as the technique he had been seeking—the forbidden art that would set him apart from all others—began to take root within him.
Soul Wither Pulse.
It was a technique born of the Eclipse, of the very cycle that had cursed the heavens to drip corruption into the land. A forbidden power, one that could devour the soul itself. The pulse did not merely kill. It withered, eroded, and consumed, leaving behind only hollow shells. Those who wielded it did not live; they merely existed, a dark echo of what they once were.
As the pulse settled into his core, Rin felt a chill so deep it seemed to freeze his very soul. The wraiths had been mere shadows, empty echoes of regret. But he, with the Soul Wither Pulse, had become something worse—something beyond death itself. And the worst part was, he felt no sorrow for it. There was only the cold satisfaction of power, a hunger that could never be sated.
Rin's eyes shifted to the sky above, where the blood-red moon bathed the land in its suffocating light. He could feel the heavens' rot, seeping into the very fabric of this world. The Sky Rot, as the old texts had called it—a celestial punishment for those who dared to defy the natural order, those who sought to control death. The heavens bled their corruption into the earth, purifying it through entropy, through decay.
And he had been chosen.
Rin's mind swirled with the implications of his new power. The Soul Wither Pulse would make him unkillable, but at what cost? The wraiths had shown him what he feared most—not the death of his body, but the death of his heart, the erosion of his very humanity. He could no longer mourn. He could no longer weep for the dead.
And that, he realized, was the true price of power.
He turned from the fragment, his eyes meeting the horizon. The world was changing. And so was he.
In the distance, the wraiths began to reform, not as they had been, but as something darker, their forms twisting and warping into something far more dangerous. They were not his enemies anymore—they were a reflection of what he was becoming.
A part of him, the last shred of his old self, screamed in defiance. But it was a faint whisper, barely audible over the pulse of power that now thrummed through his veins.
And so, Rin Xie continued forward, into the desert of reflective bones, under the blood-red moon.
The echoes of his past, of the man he had once been, consumed by the flames of the eclipse, would follow him always.
But it was no longer his concern.
His path was set. And there was no turning back.
To be continued…