The door opened softly.
Seraphina stood there, dressed simply, her long silver hair loosely tied. The faint scent of incense and dragon-blood herbs lingered in the air behind her—she had been cultivating.
Her eyes widened slightly when she saw Azrael.
"You came."
Azrael leaned against the doorframe lazily. "You sound surprised."
"I am," she replied honestly. "You usually avoid me after court."
He shrugged. "Court was noisy."
She stepped aside without another word, allowing him in.
The chamber was warm, protected by layered formations personally installed by the Empress. It was one of the safest places in the palace—yet Azrael's senses still spread outward instinctively, mapping every hidden array, every blind spot.
Still too many vulnerabilities, he thought. I'll fix them later.
Seraphina closed the door.
For a moment, neither spoke.
Then she turned to face him.
"People are saying things," she said quietly. "About last night. About you."
Azrael raised an eyebrow. "Good things?"
She shook her head. "Strange things. That Heaven's lightning avoided your courtyard. That the assassins never even reached your chambers."
He smiled faintly. "Rumors grow when people are bored."
Seraphina stepped closer.
Too close.
"You're lying," she said softly, not accusing—observing. "You've changed."
Azrael looked down at her.
She was almost at his chest now. He could hear her heartbeat—steady, fast, alive.
Mine, the dragon stirred again.
For an instant, the weak aura peeled away.
Not fully.
Just enough.
Seraphina felt it.
Her breath caught as something vast pressed against her senses—ancient, coiled, endlessly possessive. Her legs weakened for half a heartbeat.
Then it vanished.
Azrael sighed. "You cultivate too much. It makes you imagine things."
She didn't move away.
"…If you're in danger," she said quietly, "tell me."
Azrael reached out and rested two fingers on her forehead.
A simple gesture.
Yet it carried weight.
"Grow stronger," he replied. "That's all you need to do."
Seraphina's face warmed.
"…I will," she promised.
When Azrael turned to leave, she watched him go, eyes dark with thoughts she didn't yet understand.
—
Beyond the empire, the world reacted.
Sects closed their gates.
Clans recalled disciples.
Messenger talismans burned nonstop as rumors mutated into fear.
The Eternal Nocturne Empire had survived a Heaven-backed strike.
Worse—
Heaven had lost something.
In the White Meridian Sect, the Heaven's Chosen Son sat alone in his cultivation chamber.
His name was Jin Yao.
Once.
He stared at his hands, trembling.
The world felt… dull.
His cultivation still existed. His talent remained monstrous.
Yet something was missing.
Luck no longer bent naturally toward him.
Opportunities slipped through his fingers.
Even his breathing felt heavier.
"Calm your heart," his master's voice echoed through the chamber. "This deviation is temporary."
Jin Yao clenched his jaw.
"No," he whispered. "This is theft."
He closed his eyes and circulated his cultivation.
Nothing responded the way it used to.
Instead—
A vision surfaced.
A black-scaled silhouette seated casually beneath a broken moon.
Golden eyes.
Amused.
Watching.
Jin Yao screamed as he was thrown from his meditation, coughing blood onto the jade floor.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Heaven's Favor: Unstable
Luck Flow: Interrupted
Hidden Cause: Unknown
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Far away, Azrael paused mid-step.
"…Oh?"
The System pulsed, pleased.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Fate Link Strained
Target: Heaven's Chosen (Fragmented)
Recommended Action: Pressure
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Azrael chuckled quietly.
"Already breaking," he murmured. "You disappoint me."
—
That night, in the inner palace, Empress Lilith gazed out over the capital.
"You're interfering more than necessary," she said without turning.
Azrael stood behind her, hands in his sleeves, posture lazy.
"Heaven interfered first."
Lilith smiled faintly.
"True."
She finally looked at him.
For a moment, mother and son simply regarded one another—dragon blood recognizing dragon blood.
"Be careful," she said softly. "If Heaven confirms you're the cause…"
Azrael's eyes gleamed.
"Then I'll kill Heaven's expectations too."
Lilith laughed quietly.
The sound echoed like distant thunder.
—
High above the world, the firmament shifted again.
Another record updated.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Anomaly Status Escalated
Observation Priority: Elevated
Heaven's Son: Degrading
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
The game had changed.
And the one pretending to be weak was already holding the board.
—
Jin Yao could no longer meditate.
No matter how many calming techniques he used, his heart refused to settle. The world that once bent gently around him now felt sharp, resistant—hostile.
For the first time since his awakening as Heaven's Chosen, he felt fear.
"This cannot continue," Jin Yao muttered, pacing the cultivation chamber. "If Heaven's favor is unstable, I must force destiny back into alignment."
His master's warning echoed faintly in his mind, but he ignored it.
Desperation bred arrogance.
And arrogance bred mistakes.
That very night, Jin Yao activated a forbidden talisman—one meant to lock a destined encounter into place.
A woman appeared in his mind.
Silver-green hair. Eyes like dawn through leaves. A bloodline whispered by Heaven itself.
Elyndra, the Elf Saintess.
In the original flow of fate, she would have met Jin Yao during a sect trial, fallen gradually under the weight of destiny, and become one of his greatest supports.
Now, her fate thread flickered—unsteady, fraying.
"Come to me," Jin Yao growled, blood dripping from his lips as the talisman burned. "You are mine by Heaven's decree."
The talisman shattered.
The spell… only half-formed.
—
Far away, deep within the Verdant Spiral Forest, Elyndra paused mid-step.
The wind stilled.
Her heart skipped.
Something had tugged at her soul—forceful, intrusive, wrong.
She frowned, clutching her chest.
"…No," she whispered. "That isn't fate."
Above her, unseen by mortal eyes, two forces collided.
One was thin, golden, trembling.
The other—
Black.
Coiled.
Ancient.
Azrael lounged atop a broken ruin at the forest's edge, chin resting on his palm, eyes half-lidded as he watched invisible threads clash.
"So this is your answer," he murmured. "Sloppy."
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
System Alert: Forced Fate Invocation Detected
Target: Elf Saintess (Elyndra)
Origin: Heaven's Chosen (Jin Yao)
Permission to Interfere: Granted
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Azrael sighed and stood.
"Troublesome," he said, tone bored. "I was planning to nap."
He lifted one finger.
Just one.
The black thread lashed out—not violently, not greedily.
Precisely.
The golden thread snapped.
Not destroyed.
Redirected.
Elyndra gasped as the pressure vanished, replaced by a strange warmth—calm, heavy, impossibly reassuring. She fell to one knee, breath unsteady, her instincts screaming a single truth:
Something else is watching me.
And for some reason—
She didn't feel afraid.
She felt… claimed.
—
Jin Yao screamed.
The backlash slammed into him like a hammer.
He was thrown across the chamber, crashing into the far wall as blood sprayed from his mouth.
"No—!" he roared. "That was mine!"
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Heaven's Favor: Severely Unstable
Destined Encounter: Failed
Fate Feedback: High
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
His master burst into the chamber, eyes wide in horror.
"What have you done?!"
Jin Yao struggled to rise, veins bulging, eyes bloodshot.
"Someone is stealing from me," he hissed. "Someone hiding behind the imperial bloodline."
The old man's face went pale.
"…An Anomaly."
The word hung heavy in the air.
—
Back in the Eternal Nocturne Empire, Azrael returned to the palace before dawn.
No one noticed him enter.
No one ever did.
He slipped into his chamber and collapsed onto the bed, arms spread, yawning.
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Fate Successfully Redirected
Target Acquired: Elf Saintess (Dormant)
Influence Level: Minimal (Hidden)
━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━
Azrael smiled faintly.
"One heroine secured," he murmured. "And you didn't even see my face."
Outside his door, Empress Lilith paused briefly, sensing a ripple she couldn't quite grasp.
Inside another wing of the palace, Seraphina woke abruptly, heart racing, whispering his name without knowing why.
Far away, in the White Meridian Sect, Jin Yao stared at the ceiling, trembling—not from pain, but from the realization that something unseen was dismantling him piece by piece.
And above them all, Heaven watched silently.
Confused.
Angry.
For the first time, the board no longer obeyed its hand.
Azrael closed his eyes.
"The aftermath phase is over," he thought lazily. "Now comes the harvest."
—