The dream returned to Yan Zhuo that night.
He stood beneath the starlit canopy of the Azure Blossom Sect once again. But this time, the sky was on fire. Flaming lotuses fell like meteors, scorching the land. The faces of his comrades—Meilan, Shen Wu, Feiyan, Lu Chengwei—all stared at him in silence, blood dripping from their eyes.
A single voice, feminine and mournful, whispered: "We shattered it. We shattered you."
He woke with blood in his mouth.
His campfire had died. The moon was red.
Yue Lian sat nearby, sharpening a blade.
"Feiyan dreams of vengeance," she said softly, not looking up. "She asked me if you still kept the flute."
Yan Zhuo touched the pendant beneath his robes. The jade flute—broken but whole—rested near his heart.
"She'll try to kill me."
"She may try to understand you first," Yue said. "It's not the same as before. Something... something deeper is moving. Even the spirits are restless."
Yan Zhuo rose. "Then we find Lu Chengwei. Before heaven does."
The Sea Oracle's Circle
The Circle shimmered across layered water-temples floating above the Sea of Falling Stars. Each platform was a reflection of a memory—some glorious, others broken.
Lu Chengwei knelt before a statue of the Sea Oracle, hands shaking.
"I followed you, Yan Zhuo. Even into madness. But you let her die."
The water rippled.
A second voice echoed through the chamber.
"No, Lu," said Feiyan, stepping from the mist, fire blooming in her palm. "He didn't let her die. We did."
Lu looked up sharply.
"You... still carry the flame?"
"It never left. Just burned quieter."
Feiyan stepped forward. "The truth's rising. The fifth will awaken. The pact must be reforged."
Lu clenched his fists. "Then I must tell the truth. About Meilan. About Tian Mu. About the real reason the Heavenly Court ordered her death."
Flashback: Seven Years Ago
The Heavenly Tribunal.
Yu Meilan stood accused of soulcrafting—a forbidden art that allowed a cultivator to imbue life with will, even at the cost of their own.
She had done it to save a child.
The child was a Silver Judge's son.
And the soul she used?
Her own.
Yan Zhuo had knelt before the Court.
"She saved him."
The Oracle had turned cold eyes on him. "She corrupted the cycle. She must be erased from memory."
The Silver Judges struck. Yan Zhuo retaliated. Lu held him back. Feiyan cut down two judges to let Meilan flee. Shen Wu played the Song of Departure.
But in the end, Meilan surrendered.
To protect them.
The court killed her. And burned her name from all records.
Now
Yan Zhuo stood at the ruins of the Tribunal.
Nothing but blackened pillars and shattered jade.
A whisper in the wind:
"She gave herself to heaven. You gave yourself to vengeance."
"I gave myself to her," Yan Zhuo whispered. "But even that, they took."
Elsewhere, in the Celestial Fang Sect, Tian Mu meditated in silence.
Cracks had begun to form in his golden mirror—a mirror forged from Meilan's last breath.
He had lied.
He had taken her essence.
To become the Oracle's favored.
But the mirror now reflected more than light.
It showed him five shadows rising across the sky.
And one name whispered from its depths:
"Yan Zhuo."