So the tournament, gathering thousands of the best and most gifted Practitioners to fight and shed blood, was only a farewell ceremony for a Rank 5 Spark? Adyr thought it in silence, a faint smile touching his mouth.

He felt no resentment toward that truth, only amusement and a quiet recognition that it made sense. For someone at an Adept’s level, sending an old friend on his last journey with spectacle, struggle, and the world as witness was a fitting rite.

In its own way, the spectacle mirrored the logic of Adyr’s former life.

After losing his family, he devoted himself to blood and the taking of lives, as if every spill were an offering to the dead—a wash for their souls, a means to cleanse resentment and hardship.

He imagined that each life taken might smooth their passage beyond, making it easier for them to find peace wherever they had gone; yet even as that belief steadied his hand, he was never naive enough to think grief alone explained his bloodlust, nor foolish enough to blame his becoming a serial killer only on that loss.

He understood that the loss merely opened a channel; what rose through it was older and darker: a primal appetite for killing.

From a serial killer’s vantage, "good" and "evil" are tools invented by ordinary people to scaffold rules and keep a society intact. Within that frame, killing or inflicting pain requires no reason; if an act is to count as true evil in the human sense, it arrives without pretext or excuse, with no story to dress it up, done simply because the doer wills it.

A person whom society names "evil" may still carry sympathetic motives or a history of trauma. Those facts can explain the path that led there; they do not redefine the nature of the act.

Being born evil and being driven toward evil are not the same: one names an essence, the other a trajectory. The gap between them is wide, and Adyr had always known exactly which side of that line he once chose to stand on.

After a few short seconds, the Wanderer Merchant rose to his feet and drew a long breath. Then, with a single whoosh, he blew across the piled dust—strong enough to make onlookers wonder at the power in his lungs.

The bone dust scattered in a pale cloud and cleared away what it had hidden: a broad, perfectly round hole yawning in the ground.

The Wanderer Merchant turned back to face the 200 and spoke. "This is the door to the Legacy Domain."

For a heartbeat, the Practitioners were stunned. They had expected a flashy gate, a shining arch, or perhaps a written formation that would teleport them into the dimension. Instead, there was only a plain, depthless shaft in the floor, dark and unadorned. Confusion tightened their faces, the surprise sitting oddly upon them.

Seeing their expressions and guessing the thoughts behind them, the Merchant laughed. "Do not forget: the plainest stone hides the richest vein."

Adyr added in his mind, or the best meals are sold by the humblest street vendors. He found the analogy more fitting for the scene before him.

"Now you may begin entering. Just jump through the hole and you will find yourselves on the other side. It is vice versa: if you jump into the hole over there, you will return here again. This hole will be your only entry and exit, so do not lose track of its location once you are inside." The Wanderer Merchant stepped aside after his final instructions and watched as Practitioners, without hesitation, began to jump one by one in no particular order.

Adyr stood somewhere in the middle of the crowd. He had taken that spot when he first entered the tent and simply waited his turn, unhurried.

To many minds, waiting might have looked foolish. The first to enter could be the first to grab the best resources; they might also loiter at the landing to ambush latecomers. Adyr reached the opposite conclusion.

First, he doubted anyone would strike at the threshold. The Wanderer Merchant had warned them not to turn one another into enemies, reminding them they might need each other later. Even those with killing intent would think twice about an immediate attack while a Rank 5 Adept was watching and while the consequences were unknown but assured.

Second, the belief that first entrants would secure the first valuables ignored a simpler truth: they would also meet the first threats. In an unknown dimension, the opening wave does not only harvest; it absorbs the initial danger.

Everyone understood they were stepping into uncertainty. No one sensible would charge forward blind. Even the boldest, upon arrival, would hold position, take stock of the terrain, test the air, and confirm that no immediate hazard pressed in around the entry point.

That was exactly Adyr’s plan: let others touch the ground first and expose any danger near the entrance. Then, when he crossed over, he would not have to divide his focus between orienting himself and guarding against an unseen strike the instant he opened his eyes on the other side.

As everyone went through without delay, Adyr’s turn came. He drew a single breath, looked into the hole, dark and bottomless, and jumped without spreading his wings.

The darkness swallowed him at once. Air tore past his ears; pressure gathered in his chest. He let himself fall, unsure when impact would come or what waited below, his speed climbing like a stone dropped into a well.

After about 10 seconds, a faint glow appeared far beneath him. It swelled quickly, washing the shaft in pale light. As he reached it and his speed began to plateau, he burst out of the tunnel into open space, his body pitching upward as if hurled toward the sky.

"Wow."

He glanced down. The hole hung beneath him. The world had flipped. He felt gravity shift, hooking him and drawing him the other way.

Before the drop reclaimed him, he swept the scene with a quick, disciplined scan and fixed it in memory.

The Legacy Domain was vast, far larger than his own Sanctuary; beside this place, his would pass for a small garden.

The difference was not only in size. This was not a single land under a single sky. Everything existed inside an endless void, with wide islands drifting as far as sight could carry. It looked as if one great continent had shattered long ago and its pieces had become countless islets, all floating in the dark.

Unlike his Sanctuary or any he knew, there was no endless sea of energy. Only the black of the void surrounded everything, yet it was not truly dark. An unseen source lit the world with a steady, soft clarity, like the quiet brightness of midnight when you look up from the ground.

The upward throw of his jump bled away, and gravity seized him again.

He tightened his posture, knifed the air with sharp adjustments, and let himself drop the last few meters. He landed beside the hole, boots thudding into grass-covered soil, the weight of his body driving cleanly through his soles into the earth.