On the morning of the eleventh day, the sky wept black rain.
It hissed against stone.
Sizzled on skin.
And soaked the valley in silence.
No birds sang. No wind blew. Even the Spirit Trees—once blooming with golden blossoms—stood withered and bare, their roots recoiling from what approached.
From the east, it came.
Step by step.
The Divine Chain.
---
It didn't march like an army.
It dragged itself.
Twelve titanic links, each the size of a mountain, wrapped around a shifting mass of voidlight and cursed fate. At its center was no general, no cultivator.
Only a beating core of memory.
A prison of destinies long erased.
And it hungered.
> "Shen Liun."
The name echoed across the windless sky.
And with it, reality itself began to fray.
---
Inside the rebel camp, panic rippled.
Beasts howled. Cultivators trembled. Weapons cracked just from proximity.
Even the newly arrived sects—the Ironhearts, the Dreamless, the Hollow Sky Walkers—shrank from the pressure.
This wasn't a battle.
It was a sentencing.
Ranyi stood with her blades drawn, her eyes fixed on the horizon. "We won't survive if it reaches us."
Ning'er clenched her bow so tightly her fingers bled. "Even Soulwalkers can't defend against that. It's not power. It's fate unmaking itself."
Yan Wudi exhaled slowly, then turned to Liun.
> "It's not coming to fight."
> "It's coming to bind."
---
Liun stood at the center of the valley.
He felt the pull.
The weight.
Each link of the Divine Chain radiated a single law:
Obey.
And slowly… it began to wrap the air around him.
Invisible coils tightening around his soul.
---
> "You were never meant to rise," a voice whispered.
It wasn't the Emperor's.
It wasn't Aoshen's.
It was something older.
Deeper.
The Law of Heaven itself.
> "You are an echo out of place. A spark without design. Come quietly."
Liun dropped to one knee.
The ember of Cindervow flickered.
> "Liun!" Ranyi cried, starting forward.
But the ground split between them, a chasm opening like a mouth to the underworld.
Chains moved faster.
Link after link coiling toward him.
---
> "Let me go," Liun whispered to the flame. "Let me burn for them."
Aoshen's voice rose in panic.
> "If you accept the chain, even to destroy it, you'll become part of it! That's what it wants. Your defiance is fuel. Your flame is key."
Liun's mind raced.
> If he stood still, the camp would fall.
If he fled, the chain would follow.
If he fought it directly, he'd burn everything… including his people.
---
But one thought cut through the fear:
> "If I am the spark… maybe I choose where it lands."
---
Liun stepped forward.
And let the chain touch him.
The moment it wrapped around his chest, time fractured.
His body burned. His spirit screamed. Cindervow flared with violent twilight.
The chain tightened.
And suddenly—
> He was everywhere.
He stood in the ruins of the past, where the first cultivator begged the heavens for meaning.
He stood in a future where cities burned under golden tyranny.
He saw himself at every age: weak, broken, hopeful, angry, free.
And then—
He broke the link.
---
In the real world, a thunderclap shattered the valley.
The first link of the Divine Chain exploded, torn from itself.
Liun stood at its center, covered in soot and blood, his cloak in tatters.
But alive.
Ranyi gasped. "He… he broke a piece of it."
Wudi stared in awe. "That's impossible."
Ning'er whispered, "No. That's Liun."
---
But more links were coming.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
And now they moved with purpose.
---
Liun didn't wait.
He slammed his hands into the earth, sending his flame through the reinforced sect formations they had prepared.
Ancient wards lit up.
Soulwalkers poured from the trees.
The Ironheart Guardians raised a wall of qi-forged steel.
The Hollow Sky disciples twisted the battlefield into a mirrored realm.
And at the center—
Liun stood, flame-wreathed and still burning.
> "We don't survive this by standing behind walls," he said.
> "We survive by breaking fate."
---
Aoshen roared within him.
> "Then take everything I have left."
> "And burn the next link before it thinks."
---
As the second link lunged toward the camp—
Liun launched himself skyward.
His body trailed a comet of dusk-fire.
His voice shook the sky.
> "Ashen Verdict—Final Echo."
He drove his fist into the chain's glowing eye—
And split it down the middle.
---
The battlefield howled.
Two links down.
But seven remained.
And each one was learning.
---