The amphitheater hall of the **Academy of Shattered Nightmares** yawned like the throat of some ancient beast.
Forged from black volcanic glass, its walls gleamed to a mirror sheen—polished so perfectly that every student seated within saw themselves reflected back… warped, elongated, devoured by shadow. Faces bent into unease. Eyes stretched hollow. Hunger made visible.
Etched across the obsidian were murals of the **Twenty-Two Lost Ascension Chains**.
Colossal figures towered in frozen agony—godlike beings mid-collapse, their divine forms fracturing into torrents of radiant essence that spilled like bleeding constellations across the stone. In the corner of Xia Ying's vision, the carvings seemed to move.
Watching.
Waiting.
For someone audacious enough… to reclaim what had been shattered.
He sat in the middle rows, posture loose, hands folded calmly in his lap.
Around him, the elite cohort of twenty shifted in subdued murmurs. The air was thick—oppressive with the island's ever-present dread. Overhead, ward arrays hummed in layered resonance, containing the volcanic fear-leaks that seeped from the earth below.
Containing…
—but never silencing.
At the front stood today's lecturer.
**Instructor Harlan.**
A Realm 6 veteran.
Gaunt. Hollow-cheeked.
His left sleeve hung empty, pinned at the shoulder.
The stump was not concealed.
Instead, jagged crystallizations of condensed dread jutted from the severed limb—black shards like frozen flames, pulsing faintly with abyssal light.
A living lesson.
"Abyss backlash," Harlan began.
His voice echoed like sound dragged from the bottom of a grave.
"The Curse brands us with Dominions of terror. Grants power drawn from the Veil's nightmares. But power is never free."
He paced slowly.
"Hunger… is the price."
He lifted his crystalline stump.
"Unchecked consumption of terror essence leads to inversion. Your Flaw—the core weakness bound to your Dominion—turns inward."
A pause.
"It feeds on you."
A projection flared to life above the podium.
Archived Bureau footage.
First subject: a flame-Dominion prodigy—once a rising star of the **Dread Legion**.
The recording showed him inside a Rift clearance. He devoured wave after wave of nightmare spawn, absorbing panic, fear, agony—his flames burning brighter, hotter, purer—
Until—
The fire reversed.
It ignited from within.
In seconds, he was consumed. No scream escaped the inferno.
When the blaze faded, only a charred silhouette remained—still standing.
Mouth open in eternal, soundless agony.
Silence crushed the hall.
A girl in the front row went pale.
"Another," Harlan said.
The projection shifted.
A perception-Dominion specialist—famed for dismantling illusions.
He had delved too deep into a high-tier Rift, harvesting layered dread strata.
Backlash came swiftly.
His eyes bled liquid mirrors—reflecting infinite versions of his own unraveling psyche. He clawed them out before containment teams arrived.
Now he wandered the outer islands—
Blind.
Mad.
Whispering secrets to winds that whispered back.
---
Xia Ying watched without reaction.
They present dissolution as tragedy, he thought.
As if the abyss is something to fear.
For most…
Yes.
It devours the weak.
But for me—
It is sustenance.
The **Divine Dominion** within him stirred, vast and patient.
Hungry.
And perfectly obedient.
His gaze slid forward.
Zuo Flameheart sat at the front, arms crossed, posture carved from arrogance.
"Primitive mistakes," Zuo scoffed loudly as the footage ended. "My clan's refined Flame Chain tempers hunger. We embody without backlash. These failures were undisciplined."
Harlan's dead eyes settled on him.
The silence that followed was heavier than rebuke.
Xia Ying noted it.
Zuo's pride was a bonfire in darkness.
Bright.
Loud.
Convenient.
---
"The exercise today," Harlan announced, dismissing the projection, "will test your control."
A gesture toward the exit.
"Diluted terror essence motes await in the adjacent chamber. Absorb one. Embody a micro-trace of your Chain."
His crystalline stump glinted.
"Let hunger spike… and feel the edge of the abyss."
---
The warded chamber beyond was circular and compact.
Containment sigils glowed across the floor in concentric rings of blue light.
At the center floated dozens of motes—translucent spheres no larger than marbles, swirling with captured dread harvested from low-tier Rifts.
They pulsed like frozen heartbeats.
Students formed a queue.
From elevated platforms, instructors observed—Harlan, the ever-watchful perception specialist **Instructor Vale**, and several assistants.
The first student stepped forward—a wind-Dominion girl.
She drew a mote into her palm.
It dissolved into spiraling gusts around her fingers.
Shaky.
But successful.
Others followed.
Failures came quickly.
One boy vomited shadows as his essence rejected the mote.
Another's skin blistered with phantom burns.
The wards hummed louder as dread leakage thickened the air.
---
Lin Mei approached midway through the line.
Xia Ying watched carefully.
Her healer Dominion was rare—pure, restorative, antithetical to destructive hunger. Absorbing terror essence was like inviting poison into sanctified flesh.
She reached for a mote.
It resisted.
Her face tightened.
Slowly, it began to sink—
Then recoiled violently.
Cuts split across her arms, weeping light instead of blood.
Backlash.
She gasped, stumbling, forcing the wounds closed with trembling hands.
"Failed," Harlan intoned. "Control your rejection instinct… or it will control you."
Lin Mei retreated silently, shame heavy in her posture.
---
Zuo Flameheart strode forward next.
He snatched a mote mid-air and crushed it in his fist.
Flames erupted—controlled, radiant, precise.
A perfect corona.
Murmurs rippled.
"See?" he said smugly, extinguishing the fire. "Discipline. Clan legacy."
Vale's gaze lingered on him…
Then shifted.
To Xia Ying.
---
Xia Ying stepped forward last.
He extended his palm.
A mote drifted toward him—drawn like iron to gravity.
It touched his skin.
Vanished.
No flare.
No shadow surge.
No visible embodiment.
Just… gone.
Silence thickened.
Harlan frowned. "Flawless integration. No spillover."
Xia Ying inclined his head modestly. "Camp practice, Instructor."
Internally—
They see absence of error and call it talent.
They don't sense the Divine depth swallowing it whole.
No backlash…
Because the abyss bends to me.
Vale's perception brushed his aura—subtle, probing.
Xia Ying deflected it like shadow sliding across still water.
---
### Evening — Study Hall
Ancient tomes lined the chamber walls beside holographic interfaces.
The cohort's group research loomed: reconstructing fragments of the shattered **Flame Ascension Chain**.
Rankings depended on it.
Zuo's subgroup—Xia Ying included—claimed a central table.
Clan scrolls lay spread open.
Zuo arrived late.
Disheveled.
Bloodshot eyes.
Irritation radiating from his aura.
"Archive delays," he muttered.
The truth was simpler.
Xia Ying's planted **Aura Seeds** had bloomed.
Over days, subtle pulses of doubt had gnawed at Zuo's mind. Once-certain citations now felt flawed. Hours of work seemed amateurish.
He rewrote obsessively.
Perfection receded further each time.
A slow psychological harvest.
Xia Ying slid forward the finalized draft.
"I consolidated our research. Streamlined parallels. Integrated clan texts with embodiment case studies."
Zuo scanned it.
His expression darkened.
The work was superior.
Elegant.
Insightful.
And Xia Ying's name dominated key analyses.
"You rewrote my sections?" Zuo asked quietly.
"Refined," Xia Ying corrected mildly. "For cohesion."
Subgroup members nodded quickly.
"It reads better."
Zuo's fists clenched under the table, heat flickering at his knuckles before dying.
Humiliation burned hotter than flame.
Xia Ying smiled faintly.
Doubt is a slow poison.
Let it mature.
---
### Night — Rooftop
Storm winds howled beyond the island wards.
Xia Ying leaned against the railing, watching black waves batter volcanic cliffs.
Dread whispers rode the wind.
Footsteps approached.
Lin Mei.
Bandaged arms clutched to her chest.
"Can I talk to you?"
He turned, expression softening.
"Of course."
Her voice trembled as fear spilled out—failure, inadequacy, fear of being reassigned to expendable outer legions.
He listened silently.
Desperation first.
Devotion after.
"You're not weak," he said gently. "Your Flaw protects you. But protection can be… adjusted."
A thread of refined shadow uncoiled from his palm—purified, masked.
She hesitated—then accepted it.
It wrapped her wrist like a bracelet.
"Now try again."
He revealed a spare mote.
She absorbed it.
This time—
No rejection.
Soft healing light bloomed in her hands.
Her eyes widened, tears falling freely.
"It worked…"
"Balance," he said. "Your purity needed a veil."
She clutched his sleeve fiercely.
"I'd be lost without you. Anything you need—I'll do it."
Devotion forged, he thought calmly.
Aloud, he only smiled. "Friends help each other."
Her relief tasted sweet as it seeped into his Dominion.
A quiet harvest.
---
### Later — Stairwell Shadows
Wei Jun emerged from darkness.
Silent as always.
"Instructor Vale is investigating you," he said without preamble. "Full records. Camp files. Rift footage."
Xia Ying remained calm.
"He once exposed a Divine echo," Wei Jun added. "Student vanished afterward."
"Suspicion," Xia Ying mused.
"You hide perfection too well," Wei Jun said bluntly. "That draws hunters."
Xia Ying nodded slowly. "Good intel. I owe you."
"Alliance," Wei Jun replied, vanishing again.
---
### Dormitory — Midnight
Alone, Xia Ying sat cross-legged.
He drew forth the day's harvest:
Zuo's frustration.
Lin Mei's devotion.
Wei Jun's wary respect.
Instructor curiosity.
They compressed into his core.
Refining.
Deepening.
Ascending.
No backlash.
No inversion.
They teach us to fear the abyss, he thought.
I'm teaching the abyss…
—to fear me.
Outside, dread storms whispered across the island.
Inside, shadows gathered close—
Obedient.
Hungry.
Waiting.