The night wind howled outside the shattered hall as Kael stood alone amidst the wreckage of what used to be the Frostgrave Pavilion's elite courtyard. Blood mixed with snow. Cracked jade tiles glinted with mana scars. Silence had returned, but it was the kind of silence that hummed with the echoes of a fight that should never have happened.
Kael exhaled slowly. The breath wasn't simple. It bent space.
Mana swirled around him—not pulled, not forced—but called. As if the very fabric of the world leaned closer just to hear how he breathed.
He had begun to piece it together days ago, from fragments found in the diaries of madmen and heretics, forgotten murals on dungeon walls, and a single sentence uttered by the dying old woman who had claimed to once walk beside the Sovereign of the First Era:
> "He did not cultivate...he simply breathed."
Kael lowered himself into a seated stance, spine aligned, arms resting on his knees, palms upward. No formations. No pills. No elemental focus. Just him, and the breath that came from deeper than the lungs.
Inhale.
The stars trembled above. He could feel their pulses between his ribs.
Exhale.
The frost beneath him cracked and hissed as the snow evaporated in pure silence.
His mind didn't wander. It didn't need to. Every breath became an act of defiance, a rejection of the System's chains that demanded structure, categories, ranks.
Breathing like this wasn't cultivation. It was sovereignty.
Then the voice came.
> [Unauthorized Breathing Pattern Detected]
[System Override: Failed]
[Anomaly Class: Chainless Potential Confirmed]
Kael smiled without humor. "You noticed. Good."
Suddenly, a presence swept through the mountain range. Cold. Boundless. A Sovereign-level pressure that crushed everything beneath it.
Kael's breath didn't falter.
"Who gave you permission to breathe like that" the voice thundered from the sky.
Kael opened one eye lazily. "You're asking the wrong question."
The sky split as a divine avatar descended—golden eyes, endless robes, wings made of inscriptions. But Kael stood up slowly, his body radiating calm.
"I didn't need permission."
The divine avatar paused, sensing something off.
Kael stepped forward and inhaled once more.
The wind stopped.
Mana froze.
Even the System's presence around them flickered...as if the world itself held its breath in response.
"Let me show u what breathing like a Sovereign means" Kael whispered.
The next exhale shattered every inscription within 10 kilometers. Birds dropped from the sky. The avatar's wings dimmed.
And the Sovereign Breathing Technique was just getting started.