The silence in the village of Oakhaven was louder than the battle had been.
Zayn stood amidst the cooling slag of the square. His chest heaved, each breath releasing a faint puff of grey smoke. He was the victor. The "Sovereign Scout" lay in pieces behind him, and the village was still standing. But as Zayn looked around, he realized he was standing alone in a circle of scorched earth.
"Zayn?"
The voice belonged to Elara, the baker's daughter. She was clutching a piece of wood, her knuckles white.
Zayn took a step toward her, his hand outstretched. "It's over, Elara. They won't come back."
He didn't realize that as he stepped forward, the grass beneath his boot didn't just bend—it withered and turned to white ash instantly. The heat radiating from his skin was no longer a glow; it was a distortion in reality. To Elara, Zayn didn't look like a hero. He looked like a tear in the fabric of the world.
"Stay back!" she shrieked, her voice cracking.
Zayn froze. The rejection hurt more than the Sovereign's blade. He looked at his hands. The veins were pulsing with a deep, rhythmic amber light, timed perfectly with the low-frequency hum of the earth beneath him. He wasn't just a man anymore. He was a Core.
"They fear the predator, even if it kills the wolves," a voice hissed in the back of his mind—the primal instinct of the Living Planet.
"I saved you," Zayn whispered, but his own voice sounded foreign, like stones grinding in a deep cavern.
Before he could speak again, the sky broke.
It didn't crack like thunder; it groaned like straining metal. Above the village, the clouds swirled into a perfect, unnatural circle, turning a cold, metallic grey. A massive vessel, sleek and terrifyingly silent, began to descend. It was a Cloud-Galleon, a ship of the High Sects, carved from solidified spirit-fog.
A beam of pale, silver light shot down from the ship's prow, hitting the center of the square.
The pressure hit a split second later.
[SYSTEM ALERT: CRITICAL MASS DETECTED]
[ENVIRONMENTAL STATUS: SUPPRESSED GRAVITY]
The villagers didn't even have time to scream. They were slammed into the dirt by an invisible hand. Houses groaned as their foundations sank inches into the soil. Zayn felt his bones creak. His knees buckled, the stone beneath him shattering as he fought to stay upright.
A figure descended from the beam of light, floating inches above the ground. He was dressed in robes of shimmering white silk that seemed to repel the very dust of the village. His hair was silver, tied back with a pin made of jade, and his eyes were as cold as a mountain peak.
This was Vane of the Iron Cloud.
Vane didn't look at the dying villagers or the ruined homes. He looked only at Zayn. He pulled out a small, glowing compass. The needle was spinning violently, pointing directly at Zayn's heart.
"Confirmed," Vane said, his voice carrying a resonance that made Zayn's ears bleed. "A Class-4 Irregularity. A 'Living Planet' seed in a gutter-born vessel. How... offensive."
"Get... off... my... land," Zayn growled. He forced his head up, his neck muscles bulging like thick cables.
Vane tilted his head, a look of genuine disgust crossing his face. "Your land? You are a maggot crawling on a diamond, thinking you own the shine. This world is a resource. You are a theft."
Vane flicked his wrist. The gravity tripled.
The ground around Zayn exploded downward, creating a crater ten feet deep. Zayn was forced to his hands and knees, the heat of his rage melting the floor of the pit into liquid glass.
"I am Vane of the Iron Cloud," the high-born said, stepping into the crater as if walking down a flight of stairs. "I have been sent to harvest the core you've stolen. Die quietly, and I might leave one or two of these peasants alive to bury you."
Zayn felt his heart hammer against his ribs—not with fear, but with a rhythmic, tectonic power. The Earth was screaming, and for the first time, Zayn understood the words.
He isn't just hurting me, Zayn realized. He's crushing the world.
The Internal Burn didn't just flare—it turned white.
"You want my core?" Zayn's shadow began to stretch and widen, turning into a jagged, mountainous silhouette against the crater wall.
He slammed his glowing, molten fist into the ground.
"THEN CARRY THE WEIGHT OF IT!"
[TECHNIQUE ACTIVATED: PLANETARY RESONANCE - STAGE 1]
The gravity didn't just break; it reversed. A shockwave of pure kinetic energy erupted from Zayn, sent directly upward. The invisible pressure of the Iron Cloud was met with the raw, upward thrust of a volcanic eruption.
The battle for the Upper Realms had begun.