As Jia Lin pressed forward, the landscape convulsed.
The air thickened. The ink beneath her feet boiled.
Something was coming.
A mass of writhing script burst forth — all teeth and calligraphy. A creature not made of flesh but of forgotten edits — aborted legends, crossed-out names, abandoned endings.
The Forgotten Beast roared.
"It eats the selves you failed to become," the child said from afar. "To defeat it, you must wield what you discarded."
Jia Lin narrowed her eyes. The Echo Heart Gu shimmered.
She pulled from it a memory she had just denied — the version of herself who had married in the false village.
She shaped that identity into a blade.
Bloodletter Echo: Severed Self — Variant Form: Memory Wife.
She struck.
The blade cleaved not the beast's flesh, but its concept.
The Forgotten Beast howled — and vanished into script.
All around her, the sky dimmed.
The child clapped once.
"You have passed the second threshold. Prepare for the Spiral."
And the ink-stained horizon began to rotate.
The tower bent lower, beckoning her forward.
She stepped — not into shadow, not into myth.
But into something that remembered her too well.