The Temple of Embers stood tall at the heart of Ayothira, its flame pillars burning with ceremonial pride. Every year, children of noble blood gathered beneath its dome to undergo the Flame Rite—a sacred ritual that awakened their cultivation path and marked their entry into the spiritual world.
But the Indrajeet brothers were absent.
Jagan and Karthi, heirs of a once-revered lineage, had been denied the rite. Their names were struck from the ceremonial scrolls. The elders whispered of a curse. The nobles scoffed. "Dim flames," they called them. "Failed heirs." Sect leaders refused to train them. Relic masters turned them away.
Yet in the silence of rejection, something ancient stirred.
Jagan, alone in the ruins of a forgotten training hall, felt his body resonate with elemental rhythm. His muscles absorbed Qi like stone drinks sunlight. He mastered the art of movement, blending body cultivation with sword rhythm. Every strike was a beat. Every breath, a tempo. He didn't need a temple—his battlefield was his altar.
Karthi, deep beneath the earth in his forge, awakened differently. Spirit cultivation surged through him, but so did something stranger. His machines began to respond to thought. He summoned astral constructs from elemental cores. He studied summoning scrolls, beast taming glyphs, and spiritual harmonics. His cultivation was not linear—it was layered, unpredictable.
They were not failures. They were anomalies.
The Flame Rite had not abandoned them. It had simply come in a form the world could not recognize. And that made them dangerous.
In the shadows, relics pulsed. Forgotten scrolls whispered. The Eight Demons stirred faintly beneath Ayothira's soil, sensing movement. And somewhere, the Shadow Legion watched in silence, waiting for the bloodline to call.
The world had turned its back. But the flame had not.