The Remembrance Flame burned within Lin Xue, transforming her inner world. Her meridians had become rivers of frozen light, her core a lantern of living memory. But the Bone Lantern was not merely a relic or cultivation manual—it was a key. And its next door lay within the ruins of the Severed Heavens Platform.
Once a place where the celestial clans communed with the Heavens, the platform had long since fallen into ruin after Yan Zhuo defied the heavens and shattered their divine correspondence. Now, the floating islands where the platform once stood were haunted by specters—echoes of cultivators whose allegiance to heaven had become their curse.
Lin Xue arrived at twilight, wind howling between the broken sky-bridges. Her steps echoed on shattered tiles, inscribed still with runes of obedience. She walked over them without kneeling.
The Remembrance Flame flickered to life as she neared the center. The wind stilled. And then a voice, metallic and cold:
"You defy the Mandate. Turn back, or be turned to ash."
A celestial guardian emerged—eight-armed, haloed in gold, his robes flowing like starlight. He wielded eight swords, each a commandment of the divine order.
Lin Xue did not bow. "I seek only truth."
"Truth has no place here."
"Then I will carve it a place."
The battle began.
Swords clashed against the Remembrance Flame, which twisted and burned with memory, not heat. Where a blade struck, illusions shattered. Where Lin Xue struck, forgotten truths emerged—scenes from when Yan Zhuo faced the same guardian, pleaded for balance between mortal and divine.
Each truth weakened the guardian. Not physically—but spiritually.
"You dare expose the Heavens?" he bellowed.
"I remember," Lin Xue whispered. "He tried to save you."
With a final cry, she released the second verse of the Bone Lantern Scripture:
"Where Heaven binds, Memory severs."
The platform trembled. Her flame consumed the guardian, not destroying him, but releasing his memory: once a mortal, loyal to Yan Zhuo, twisted by the Celestial Courts into a weapon.
He bowed before fading.
"Your flame is not wrath. It is justice."
At the heart of the platform stood a monolith. Etched into it were the Heavenly Tenets. Lin Xue raised her hand, and the Remembrance Flame surged upward.
Each tenet she burned revealed a hidden one beneath:
Heaven is eternal → Heaven is afraid.
The Tyrant betrayed balance → The Tyrant preserved it.
And finally:
Mortals must obey → Mortals must remember.
The sky split.
A divine eye opened above, blinding and furious.
"She kindles the second flame," rumbled a voice.
"She walks the Tyrant's path," said another.
But Lin Xue did not kneel.
"I walk my own."
The platform shattered—but she remained, floating upon the storm of memory.
Elsewhere, a man cloaked in crow feathers turned toward the wind.
"She has begun," he murmured. "The lantern has chosen."
Behind him, a frozen coffin cracked slightly.
And far below, in the mortal realms, an old woman wept.
"My disciple," she whispered, "has remembered the truth."