The ruins of Huangshen, once a jeweled trade city, now lay half-swallowed by the desert.
Sand flowed through its broken arches like time forgotten, and silence reigned where laughter and coin once echoed. Shenhai, Meiyan, and Baimu arrived under a dying sun, cloaked in dust and caution.
"This place was erased from maps," Meiyan whispered. "Buried after the Ash War. Officially, it never existed."
"And yet," Baimu said, eyes sharp, "it's where your scroll pointed."
They descended through a narrow stairwell hidden beneath a dragon-mosaic courtyard. At the bottom, iron doors carved with an imperial seal long outlawed stood half open, as if someone had entered recently… or never left.
Behind them: the Imperial Dust Repository, a forgotten archive where banned texts, forbidden cultivation techniques, and cursed legacies were sealed and left to rot.
Inside, paper crumbled at their feet. Shelves leaned like tombstones. The air smelled of ash and old blood.
Meiyan held out a soul-lantern shaped like a lotus, and its glow revealed murals etched into the walls: scenes of emperors taming beasts, sorcerers tearing stars apart, swords so massive they required whole sects to lift.
But in the final mural, a figure stood alone, holding a severed thread in one hand and a scroll in the other—facing an empire crumbling in flame.
Shenhai froze.
The figure's face… was blurred.
Not worn away by time, but deliberately scratched out.
"He severed the fate of the empire," Meiyan murmured. "So they severed him from memory."
They moved deeper, through scroll-vaults and cursed archives until Baimu stopped at a sealed case reinforced with qi-forged chains.
Meiyan examined it. "This wasn't made to keep people out. It was made to keep what's inside… asleep."
Baimu nodded. "We'll wake it."
Shenhai placed the rusted scroll—now warm and pulsing—against the seal.
The chains snapped silently.
Inside was a thin volume wrapped in scales of some long-dead beast. Its title: The Empire of Unweaving.
They read by the lotus-glow, page by cursed page.
It told of a time before the First Emperor. Before the dynasties. When the world was stitched not by men, but by Weavers of Fate—beings that designed destinies, cities, and souls alike.
But one Weaver went rogue.
The Unweaver.
He believed fate should belong to the strong, not the stars. He created a weapon—The Severing Blade—capable of cutting any thread, even memory itself. His goal was to destroy the Loom and rewrite all destiny in his image.
The early empire fought him. They succeeded in sealing him.
But not killing him.
Because he was not mortal. Not entirely.
"He is not dead," the final line read. "He is dreaming beneath the threads, waiting for a name bright enough to awaken him."
Shenhai stared at the scroll pulsing at his side.
A memory sealed. A name forgotten. A sword that had once been rusted, but was now awakening.
"What if… I'm not the one who stops him?" he whispered. "What if I'm the one who lets him out?"
Baimu placed a firm hand on his shoulder.
"That depends," he said. "On the choices you make now."
As they prepared to leave, Meiyan found a hidden panel behind the scroll case.
Inside: a half-burned star map, showing threadlines converging in one place—
The Heart of the Empire.
The Forbidden Capital.
A symbol was scrawled beneath it. One Shenhai had seen only in dreams:
A crescent moon split by a broken sword.
That night, Shenhai stood alone among the sand-wrapped ruins.
He thought of his mother, of the day she died, and of the rusted sword his father had left behind.
He drew it.
No longer rusted.
The blade gleamed under the moonlight.
And it whispered.
Not with words, but with memory.
Of choices not yet made.
Of empires not yet risen.
Of the Unweaver… still dreaming.