That night, Kaelan stared into a cracked mirror in his barren room. His eyes were empty. Two women had defined his existence. A goddess and a saint. Both had found him worthless and discarded him.
A cold, final resolve settled over him. He walked out of the orphanage and into the forbidden Blackwood Forest, a place rumored to devour magic. He didn't seek death; he sought an end to the pain.
Deep in the forest's heart, in a clearing where no sound dared to exist, he found it. A sword plunged into an obsidian rock. Its blade was not metal but solidified shadow, a darkness so profound it seemed to swallow the very concept of light. Ancient, scale-like patterns coiled around the hilt, culminating in a pommel shaped like a slumbering dragon's head. It was named Black Dragon.
A voice, ancient and resonant with infinite malice, spoke in his mind. "You. The Empty One. The twice-betrayed. Your void is not a weakness... it is a throne waiting to be claimed. I am the Devourer of Magics, the End of Spells. I offer you a path of vengeance. A cultivation system of nine stages that turns your emptiness into ultimate strength. You will not use magic. You will consume it."
There was no hesitation. Kaelan grasped the hilt.
Agony unlike any other tore through him. The void where his magic core should have been became a vortex, and the sword's malevolent spirit flooded into it, filling him with a sublime, terrifying power. The Nine Stages of the Demon Sword Emperor seared itself into his soul.
First Stage: Void-Forged Body. His weak flesh was remade with the resilience of the abyss.
He opened his eyes. They now glowed with a faint crimson light. All emotion—the love for his mother, the devotion to Lyra—was severed, locked away in a vault of ice at the core of his being. All that remained was a cold, limitless thirst for power.
He was Kaelan no longer. He was the vessel of the Black Dragon.