Three days after the battle, the dust still hung in the air like a wound that refused to scab over.
The ruins beyond the sanctuary's barricades were littered with the blackened husks of mutated beasts—twisted things with too many eyes, limbs fused into jagged claws, their skulls cracked open by a single, effortless strike from the man who'd been sleeping through the attack.
Survivors whispered his name now like a prayer: Kael.
The one who wins without waking.
The lazy god of the wasteland.
It was on this morning—gray, brittle, the sky stained crimson at the edges—that a ragged figure was dragged through the outer gate by two wide-eyed refugees.
"Found him near the Shattered Spire," one stammered.
"Wouldn't stop muttering about 'seals' and 'the Seventh Pillar.' Thought he was mad. But… he kept drawing symbols. And they matched the ones under the temple."
Kael didn't get up.
He was sprawled across a chipped stone bed in the central chamber, one arm draped over his eyes, the other dangling a half-eaten mango.
The scent of ripeness clashed oddly with the iron tang of blood still drying on the walls.
Elara stepped forward, regal even in scavenged armor, her gaze sharp as a scalpel.
"You claim to know what this place is?"
The man—Orin—lifted his head.
His clothes were torn, his face gaunt, but his eyes… they burned with the fever of a man who'd seen the gears behind the world.
He looked past her, past the guards, straight to the cracked stone floor beneath their feet.
Then he dropped to his knees.
"It's real," he whispered.
"The Seventh Pillar's anchor… still intact."
He clawed at the ground, brushing away dirt to reveal a spiral of interlocking glyphs carved deep into the rock.
"This—this is Lockheart Sigilry. Ancient. Forbidden. Used only once. To chain the Red Will beneath the earth."
A silence fell so heavy it seemed to crush the air.
Elara's breath hitched.
"The Red Will? You mean the Crimson Tide?"
"The Tide is a symptom," Orin hissed.
"The Will is the source. A consciousness born from corrupted cultivation, buried beneath seven pillars across the continent. If one breaks…" He looked up, wild-eyed.
"The North becomes a blood hive. Millions consumed. The world reshaped in agony."
Kael slowly lowered his arm.
His voice was lazy, half-bored.
"So we're sitting on a bomb. Great. Anyone else hungry?"
But beneath the surface, his mind was a storm.
He remembered the moment in the mine—his blood on the crystal, the voice in his head: Host life force critical.
Activating Insight Mode.
The sudden warmth.
The surge of power.
The way the crystal pulsed like a heartbeat.
Now, as Orin babbled about ancient seals and planetary veins of corrupted qi, Kael reached out with a sliver of his own energy.
Qi Condensation Thread, a technique he'd "figured out" in a nap two weeks ago.
Thin as spider silk, invisible, it snaked down through the stone, tracing the roots of the glowing crystal at the center of the chamber.
And then he felt it.
Not just the crystal.
Below.
Deeper than the deepest mine shaft.
A network.
A chain of symbols, vast and cold and old—older than empires, older than memory.
The crystal wasn't just power.
It was a key.
Or a lock.
Or both.
That night, the wind changed.
No alarms.
No tremors.
Just a slow, creeping cold that slithered through the cracks in the walls.
Then—soft footsteps on stone.
A man stepped out of the fog.
Tall.
Dressed in a long black coat lined with crimson silk.
Pale hands clutching a white flag that fluttered like a dying breath.
His smile was polished, his voice like velvet over steel.
"Sylas," he introduced himself, bowing slightly.
"Herald of the Crimson Skull King. I come in peace."
Elara stood at the gate, crossbow in hand, face like ice.
"Peace? You left a trail of flayed corpses from the Eastern Wastes to here."
"And yet," Sylas said, smiling wider, "you still breathe. We could have burned this place to ash before you woke your sleeping saint." He tilted his head toward the temple.
"We didn't. Because we understand what you have."
Kael appeared in the doorway, scratching his neck, yawning.
"You couldn't burn it. This place doesn't burn."
Sylas chuckled.
"Clever. The Skull King offers you a place in the new world. Blood Nobility. Power without limits. Just surrender the core of this sanctuary. The crystal. The Pillar's heart."
Elara spat.
"You sacrifice innocents to fuel your mutations."
"And you let a man nap while others die defending this rock," Sylas countered smoothly.
"Progress demands sacrifice, Princess. Your era of hiding, of clinging to dead laws, is over." He turned to Kael.
"And you… do you even know what you are? That system of yours—it's not a gift. It's a trap. It feeds you power while the seal weakens. Every time you sleep, every time you 'gain insight'… it's not you growing stronger."
He leaned forward, voice dropping to a whisper.
"It's the Will waking up. And when you finally sleep too deep… it won't be you who opens your eyes."
The wind howled.
Elara tensed.
The guards raised their weapons.
Kael just blinked.
Then he stretched, long and slow, like a cat in sunlight.
He looked at Sylas, sleepy eyes half-lidded.
"You talk a lot," he said, voice thick with drowsiness.
"For someone who's scared of a man who likes naps."
He turned, taking a step back toward the temple.
And just as the heavy stone door began to close—
his eyes snapped open.
Cold.
Sharp.
Full of quiet, terrifying understanding.
Then the door shut.
And the silence returned.
But somewhere beneath the earth, the crystal pulsed.
Once.
Like a heartbeat.
The air inside the Temple hung still, thick with the scent of ozone and old stone.
Moonlight filtered through cracks in the newly formed quartz ceiling—crystalline growths that hadn't been there yesterday.
Kael lay sprawled across a pile of furs, one arm draped over his eyes, snoring softly.
A faint golden aura pulsed around him like a heartbeat.
+17 DP/sec.
The Passive Cultivation Field hummed beneath the floor, drawing energy from his deep, dream-filled slumber.
Outside, the world burned.
Smoke curled into the sky from the scorched remains of the first assault wave—twisted amalgamations of bone and rusted metal, what survivors called Huskbeasts.
Their shattered bodies littered the perimeter, fused into glassy craters by a single, sleep-muddled burst of power Kael had unleashed moments before drifting off again.
Elara stood at the edge of the sanctum, her silver cloak fluttering in the wind funneling through the broken outer wall.
Her fingers traced the ancient glyphs carved into the central monolith—the Pillar of Drowse, as Orin had named it.
"This isn't just a shelter," she whispered.
"It's a lock."
Orin hunched over a cracked tablet salvaged from the ruins beyond, his cracked spectacles glowing faintly as he channeled residual mana into its surface.
Ink bled across the stone, revealing lines of forgotten script.
"When the Sleeper stirs, chains break. When the War