Imitation never began with power.
It began with permission.
Kael felt it the moment they crossed into the wide plain. The land was open, unclaimed, dotted with old watchtowers and abandoned markers from borders that had failed to hold. Here, ambition lingered like heat after sunset.
"This is where they'll try," Kael said quietly.
Yun Rei glanced around. "Try what?"
"To repeat me," Kael replied.
They didn't have to wait long.
The air ahead rippled—not folded like negotiation, not cut like enforcement. This ripple was rough, uneven, like someone forcing a technique beyond its design.
A group of cultivators stood atop a low ridge.
Five of them.
Young. Confident. Carefully arranged.
Each wore different sect colors, but all shared one thing: their auras were misaligned. Not unstable—copied. Bent deliberately away from orthodox paths, forced into shapes that didn't quite fit their bodies.
Yun Rei's hand tightened. "They did this on purpose."
"Yes," Kael said. "They're testing replication."
One of the five stepped forward, smiling broadly.
"Kael Draven," he called out. "We hoped you'd pass through here."
Kael stopped several paces away.
"You hoped," Kael replied calmly, "that I would validate you."
The young man laughed. "We don't need validation. We followed your example."
Kael's eyes sharpened—not with anger, but with assessment.
"You followed an outcome," Kael corrected. "Not a process."
The cultivator raised his hand.
The air around him adjusted—briefly. Space thinned, pressure reweighted, a crude echo of Kael's effect.
Yun Rei inhaled sharply. "They're forcing reality to accommodate them."
"Yes," Kael said. "And it's costing them."
The echo faltered almost immediately. The cultivator's face tightened, veins standing out along his neck as blood trickled from his nose. He forced a grin anyway.
"See?" he said hoarsely. "It works."
Kael shook his head.
"No," Kael said. "It hurts."
The other four stepped forward together, synchronizing their auras. The adjustment stabilized slightly—still crude, still dangerous, but no longer collapsing outright.
"We trained for this," another said. "They helped us. Observers. Analysts."
Kael felt it then.
Not the cultivators.
The permission behind them.
Someone had allowed this attempt.
Not endorsed it.
Allowed it.
"That's the experiment," Yun Rei whispered.
"Yes," Kael replied. "And they're the sample."
Kael took one step forward.
The imitators flinched.
Not from fear.
From instinct.
The moment Kael moved, their forced alignment wavered. Reality no longer tolerated two centers of adjustment in the same space.
"You're standing too close to the answer," Kael said calmly. "Step back."
The first cultivator clenched his jaw. "We won't."
Kael sighed.
He raised one hand—not to strike, not to suppress.
To withdraw.
The world around Kael relaxed.
Just slightly.
The adjustment the five were forcing collapsed instantly.
Not violently.
Catastrophically.
All five dropped to their knees, gasping as their auras snapped back toward their natural states. Two screamed. One vomited blood. Another lost consciousness entirely.
The first cultivator stared up at Kael, eyes wide with dawning horror.
"You didn't do anything," he rasped.
Kael nodded. "That was the point."
Yun Rei moved quickly, checking the fallen. "They're alive. But… damaged."
"Yes," Kael said quietly. "Because they tried to skip the cost."
He looked past them, eyes unfocused, sensing far beyond the ridge.
"Did you see?" Kael said aloud.
The question wasn't for Yun Rei.
It was for the world.
There was no reply.
But somewhere, permissions tightened.
Protocols updated.
A quiet line was added beneath a growing list of failed projections:
REPLICATION ATTEMPT: INCOMPLETE
SUBJECT EFFECT: NON-TRANSFERABLE
RISK: SELF-INFLICTED
Yun Rei stood beside Kael, expression grim. "They'll keep trying."
"Yes," Kael agreed. "Because they think the danger is in failing."
He turned away from the fallen cultivators and resumed walking.
"The real danger," Kael continued, "is succeeding the wrong way."
As they moved on, the plain behind them fell silent again, broken only by the labored breathing of those left behind—living evidence of a truth the world was only beginning to accept:
Kael Draven was not a technique.
Not a template.
Not a shortcut.
And anyone who tried to become him
without paying the same price
would learn—
painfully—
why some paths could only be walked once.