Chapter 10 — The Wolves Within

The halls of the Murim Alliance buzzed with low murmurs and echoing footsteps. Each corner of the jade citadel pulsed with layered conversations—couriers reporting skirmishes, elders debating positioning, spies whispering half-truths wrapped in riddles.

Inside the Council Chamber, the thirteen sect representatives sat in uneasy silence. It wasn't the cursed they feared most.

It was each other.

Jin Muheon stood once again in the center, flanked by Baek Do on his right, and an unfamiliar woman on his left. She was cloaked in royal gray, her eyes veiled behind a crescent-shaped mask.

"Who is she?" snapped Elder Mo of the Shadow River Sect, already irritated from the last meeting.

Muheon didn't blink. "This is Lady Nari. She represents the Clouded Veil, a neutral house tasked with containing cursed energy since before your sect ever existed."

Another elder grunted. "The Clouded Veil's methods are… unorthodox."

"Effective," Muheon corrected. "And that's all that matters now."

Lady Nari spoke, her voice like mist across stone.

"The cursed are evolving. They are no longer bound to chaos. They follow patterns now—purpose. You don't repel that with brute strength."

She unfurled a scroll across the chamber floor. A detailed map. Dozens of red marks clustered near lower-tier sects. A few dangerously close to mid-tier strongholds. Even two creeping toward a major sect city.

"Every attack so far has been calculated. It's a test. Probing defenses," she said.

Muheon nodded. "They're preparing for something larger."

A tremor rippled through the chamber—not from the ground, but from unease.

Then it came.

A black-cloaked messenger burst in, dropping to one knee before Muheon.

"Urgent report from the western border!" he said, panting. "The Violet Lightning Sect has been destroyed. Not overrun—erased. No bodies. No structures. Just ash."

A cold silence gripped the room.

Elder Mo slammed a fist into the table. "Who has that kind of power?! Even the cursed aren't capable of that!"

Baek Do finally spoke.

"We believe a god has moved."

The words hit like thunder.

A god.

One of the three symbolic legends — Sword God, Demon God, Martial God. Beings who had transcended mortal understanding. Their very existence blurred the line between mythology and reality.

"Which one?" asked an elder, barely above a whisper.

Baek Do didn't answer.

Because he wasn't sure.

After the meeting, Muheon stood alone in his chamber, watching rain streak across the windowpane.

"Tell me the truth," he said to Baek, who stepped in behind him. "Is it the Demon God?"

"No." Baek hesitated. "We believe… it's something worse."

Muheon turned slowly. "There's something worse?"

Baek handed him a thin slip of paper. On it, a single phrase:

"The Nameless One's Legacy has awakened."

Meanwhile, beneath the capital, in a locked vault guarded by formations that hadn't been broken in centuries, the elders of the Clouded Veil stood over a sealed stone sarcophagus.

Lady Nari placed her hand on its surface.

"The Eye is beginning to open."

A low hum vibrated through the chamber.

And the seal… cracked.