Ashes of the Ninth Root

In the Celestial Orthodoxy, a cultivator’s worth is decided at fifteen by the color of their spiritual roots. White roots serve, gold roots rule, and black roots are executed as omens of calamity. When orphaned furnace-boy Kael Veyron awakens with a forbidden Ninth Root—an impossible root said to devour fate itself—he should die beneath the sect elders’ swords. Instead, he inherits the Ashen Scripture from a dead immortal sealed inside the pill furnace he has cleaned his whole life.

Branded a demon, hunted by his sect, and haunted by memories that may not be his own, Kael must refine poison into medicine, shame into strength, and enemies into stepping stones. From blood-soaked tournaments to heavenly tribulations that judge the soul, his rise will shake the ancient order of the Nine Heavens.

But the higher Kael climbs, the more he learns: cultivation was never a path to immortality. It was a prison built by gods afraid of what mortals might become.