Chapter 15 – All Who Die for Me
The winds over the bone-choked plains were heavy with the scent of decay and a strange sweetness—the rot of hope gone sour. Rin crouched behind the charred ribs of a titan beast, watching the flickering lights of the rogue encampment below. Tattered banners hung from crooked poles, inscribed with symbols half-forgotten by time: the sigil of the Pale Root Sect, shattered remnants of the Broken Vow Temple, and nameless glyphs etched in blood that pulsed faintly with residual soullight.
These were the fragments of once-great sects, now welded together by desperation and sacrilege. They had survived the divine purge only by crawling into the marrow of the world and feeding on corpses.
Rin didn't need Ny'xuan to whisper danger into his ear; the dagger at his side pulsed like a second heart, eager and aware. But he did not draw it. Not yet.
His body still bore the marks of the last trials—ashen veins from the Requiem Bloom that nestled dormant beneath his skin, and the burn of the Ravine's truth still whispering beneath his bones. He was half-mended, but fully resolved.
Tonight, he would not fight to escape.
Tonight, he would be taken.
He approached under the illusion of weakness, clutching a broken staff and bleeding from a self-inflicted wound across his ribs. His robes were torn and soiled with grave ash. He stumbled into their outer wards with the calculated tremble of someone lost, someone valuable, someone easy.
They took the bait.
Within moments, shadows surged from the dark, formed of lean cultivators with sickly skin and gleaming eyes. Chains of bone and sinew coiled around him, tightening as a woman stepped forth. Her cultivation robes were stitched with the preserved skin of children's hands.
"He bears the scent," she hissed. "The echo of the Gate."
They dragged him into the camp.