The Sea of Falling Stars churned under a sky layered in strange colors—violet mist, pale crimson halos, and streaks of blue lightning. The waters below mirrored the heavens in chaos.
On Mirror Shell Isle, a forgotten isle few dared approach, two figures knelt before a stone lotus.
One was Yue Lian.
The other, a man with a blindfold over both eyes and a flute across his back. He was known only as Shen Wu, the last Lotus Envoy.
"The Tyrant walks again," Shen Wu said without needing sight. "I heard it in the river's current. I felt it in the lotus bloom."
Yue Lian offered him the scroll her mother had left behind. "And the pact is awakening with him. There were five. I have one name. You were the second."
Shen Wu traced the blood-sealed stamp with reverence. "So even her daughter walks the old path. Dangerous. Righteous. Damned."
He stood. "We must find the third."
Back in the Eastern Ascendancy, the Oracle of Stars collapsed for the second time in a week. Her forehead bled. Her disciples wept.
The High Priest read the marks on her arms—sigils of reversal, corruption, and remembrance.
"This is not just a return. It's a reckoning."
Meanwhile, Yan Zhuo stepped into the Southern Reach, barefoot.
Wanyu Ridge had changed.
The Azure Blossom Sect's ruins now hosted a lowly farming village. Children laughed in fields of moon grass where immortal herbs once grew.
He stood before a crumbled archway. Etched in the stone, barely legible:
Here stood the bastion of gentle thunder.
A child approached him, offering him a peach.
"You're not from here. But you look sad. My gran says sad people should eat sweet things."
He took the fruit, heart struck silent.
The villagers knew nothing of him. No fear. No worship. No blame.
Only kindness.
And so, for the first time in three centuries, Yan Zhuo sat under a tree and wept.
Far to the north, Tian Mu stood before a celestial mirror.
Within it, five silhouettes formed.
"Activate the Celestial Chain Protocol. We cannot kill a god, but we can remind him of mortality."
He touched the mirror and it hissed.
"The false peace ends. Let Heaven's blade be unsheathed."
And in the shadows of Hollow Reaches, the Ten Thousand Bone Hall stirred.
A voice echoed through the crypts.
"The Tyrant returns? Good. Let him distract the heavens. We shall pluck the roots beneath while their gaze is lifted."
A hundred skeletal warriors rose, draped in silk.
War had begun.
But so too had something else:
Remembrance.
Not of power, nor titles. But of a vow—the Heartswept Pact.
And those still bound by it.