Moonflame Hall hadn't hosted a council in years.
Its walls—lined with silver tiles and quiet lanterns—were meant for sealing, not for speaking. But today, five elders sat in its center, faces drawn, robes heavy with silence.
Bai Yujing placed a mirror glyph scroll in the middle. The lines curved gently, spiraling inward, marked with the pattern Su Xue had brought from Lu Xuan's sketch and the ruins below Blood Lotus.
She didn't speak.
She waited.
The elders leaned in.
"Is this new?" one asked.
"No," Bai Yujing said. "It appeared in the mirror before Lu Xuan arrived."
The room shifted.
Not with movement.
With unease.
"Then it wasn't drawn," murmured Elder Yan.
"It was recalled," said another. "By the world."
Bai Yujing didn't correct them.
Because they were right.
Meanwhile, Su Xue walked through a quiet village hidden in the hills. The path was covered in soft dust. Trees grew too close together. The wind felt dim.
She had found the last surviving monk once tied to the Blood Lotus cult—an old man named Yue Ping, who now ran a fading tea shop behind a broken gate.
He didn't look like someone who'd been part of a soul cult.
But when she showed him the sketch Lu Xuan had made, his hands shook.
"That's the mark," he whispered.
"The one from the altar?" Su Xue asked.
"No. The one I was supposed to die with."
He rolled up his sleeve.
There, burned into his skin, was a faded glyph—similar, but not exact.
It pulsed softly.
Even now.
In the council, Bai Yujing spoke slowly.
"I believe Lu Xuan is not just growing in power. He is reconnecting with something older than his current soul."
Elder Mian nodded.
"This glyph... it doesn't belong to any known formation."
"Because it was meant for sealing something that couldn't be named," Bai Yujing said. "It was used once before. Then lost."
Elder Yan leaned forward.
"Then we are past control.
Now we must choose: observation or preparation."
The room fell quiet again.
Until Bai Yujing said:
"No. We must document.
The world has begun to remember him.
We cannot afford to forget."
Back in the tea shop, Su Xue sat across from Yue Ping as he poured tea with slow hands.
"I was sixteen when they branded me," he said.
"What were you sealing?" she asked.
He didn't answer at first.
Then, quietly:
"A gate.
But not one in stone."
"Then where?"
"In someone's breath."
He slid an old parchment across the table—a fragment copied from an altar wall.
The lines curved just like Lu Xuan's sketch.
"I didn't understand it back then," Yue Ping said. "But we weren't closing something. We were waiting for it to return."
Su Xue folded the parchment and placed it next to Lu Xuan's drawing.
They matched.
Not exactly.
But enough.
"Did the seal work?"
Yue Ping smiled weakly.
"I'm still here.
So maybe not."
Lu Xuan sat by the river at sunset.
His eyes were closed.
He had tried to meditate.
But instead, a spiral formed in his thoughts—turning slowly.
No fire.
No sword.
Just the sound of someone speaking.
Not loud.
Just clear.
A name he didn't know.
But felt like it belonged to him.
He opened his eyes.
The spiral didn't disappear.
It stayed.
Behind the world.
Waiting.
In the council hall, Bai Yujing wrote a new heading across the scroll table:
Echo Stage.
"What is that?" Elder Mian asked.
"A term," Bai Yujing said. "For what comes before remembrance. When power doesn't grow—but returns."
Elder Yan folded his hands.
"Lu Xuan has entered it?"
"No," Bai Yujing said. "He is it."
Su Xue returned at night and placed Yue Ping's fragment on her desk.
She didn't activate the seal.
She simply watched.
The lines pulsed faintly in the moonlight.
Then, slowly… the seal in her sleeve pulsed back.
One beat.
Then two.
In the same rhythm.
She whispered:
"You're not moving forward anymore."
"You're moving back."
And far beyond the mountains, in the palace of Emperor Zhao Rui, the scribes finished carving the mirror glyph into royal stone tablets.
Zhao touched the surface.
It was cold.
But inside it—he felt heat.
Not his own.
"The boy doesn't need to declare," he murmured.
"The world already has."