The heat wasn't natural.
Jinryu had trained in lava fields, ascended volcanic sect peaks, even walked the burning Qi-forests of Pyrehan. But this was different. The Crimson Divide didn't just radiate heat — it radiated memory.
With each step, the line between present and past blurred.
The cat at his side didn't speak. It hadn't for hours. Its ears flattened, its eyes sharp. They both knew: this wasn't just a battlefield. It was a graveyard of Core Wielders. Thousands had tried to find what lay beneath the Divide.
Almost none had returned.
And none had returned sane.
They passed half-buried swords, rusted beyond recognition, and bones fused with fire, still humming with echoes of unfinished martial techniques. Burned robes from long-dead sects fluttered in still air.
Jinryu's breath remained even.
But inside his chest, the Ninth Core fragment began to tremble.
"She's close," he muttered.
The cat nodded slowly.
"And the Core wants out."
As they crossed into the inner valley, reality began to bend.
The sky cracked, not physically, but conceptually — revealing false stars burning red against a canvas of white flame. The ground rippled with phantom footsteps, echoes of warriors long dead, repeating the moments of their final breaths.
One by one, hallucinations took form.
A monk in tattered crimson robes stepped from the air, mouth filled with black flame.A child wrapped in chains crawled from the ground, eyes weeping molten Qi.A version of Jinryu — but older, corrupted, with a third eye in his forehead — raised a blade identical to Haeryun and whispered:
"You came too late."
Jinryu drew his sword — not to attack, but to ground himself.
The blade pulsed with clarity.Cold against the heat. Steel against illusion.
Everything vanished.
But the Core did not settle.
Instead, it screamed.
Jinryu dropped to one knee, clutching his chest.His vision split.
Memory.
The Tower of Babel, still standing.He stood beside a girl — hair red, eyes bronze, laughing as flames circled them like playful spirits.Not Maeryn.
But it was her. Before the split. Before the Core was torn apart.
"Don't let them divide us," she had said.
"If they do, the flame will eat everything."
He snapped back.
The cat hissed — not at him, but behind him.
From the heat-haze, figures emerged — tall, twisted, faceless.
Not Shadowbinders.
Not fully human.
Residual manifestations — memories of warriors who'd once tried to tame the Emberlight Core and had failed.
Their forms were incomplete — fragments of armor, melted weapons fused to bone, Qi spiraling like broken constellations.
And they attacked.
Jinryu moved instantly.
Haeryun sang through the air, cutting through the first phantom like a breath through fog. But it didn't fade — it screamed, split open into three copies, each one less human than the last.
He moved faster. Focused. Cold.
But for every blow he landed, his Core responded — growing more unstable, more awake.
Symbols began to trace across his skin again, glowing softly beneath his clothes.
The cat leapt into the fray, tail blazing with ghost-flame, its eyes glowing opposite colors.
They fought in unison.
Precision.
No wasted motion.
But still — they were being overwhelmed.
And then the flame split open the valley.
A crimson arc of Qi tore across the battlefield.
Every phantom shattered — instantly reduced to ash.
Jinryu didn't look up.
He didn't have to.
She was here.
Maeryn stepped through the falling dust, Shinma at her side, blade still humming with residual fire.
She said nothing.
Neither did he.
But their Cores screamed.
In recognition.
In warning.
They stood in silence, the Emberlight Sanctum behind her — glowing faintly beneath the ash.
She motioned toward it.
"You came."
"I had to," Jinryu replied.
She paused.
"I'm not going to stop you."
Jinryu's eyes narrowed. "Why not?"
"Because I've seen what happens if I do."
A gust of heat swept past them — not natural.
A flare of fate.
The cat hissed and backed away.
The Sanctum was opening.
And inside… the origin flame of the Seventh Core was waking.
Both of their Cores pulsed.
The next step would change them both.