The descent into the Severed Spiral was unlike any path Liu Shen had taken before.
Even the Abyss, with its churning void and shattered realms, felt grounded compared to this place. The Spiral was neither tunnel nor corridor—it was a bleeding wound in the world, a rupture of dimension and space where gravity bent sideways and time lost meaning.
One wrong step and you didn't fall—you unraveled.
Yu Meixing clutched the edge of her cloak as a gust of breathless silence rushed past. "This place… it doesn't want us here."
"It doesn't recognize us," Arthis murmured, his voice sharp and even. "The Spiral exists outside of oaths. Even the heavens fear to step here."
Liu Shen stood at the edge of the chasm, gazing down at the twisting fragments of pathways, staircases, and floating altars that spiraled into the black below. Runes of anti-order flared briefly on distant surfaces—sigils designed not to guard, but to erase.
Lei Qing scanned the area, adjusting his blade. "Why is the last beacon here? Why would you hide it in a place even the Abyss avoids?"
"I didn't," Liu Shen said. "She did."
Meixing's eyes narrowed. "She?"
The name lingered in the silence, unspoken, but Liu Shen's gaze fell into the Spiral with reverence… and pain.
"Before I fell," he said slowly, "there was one who walked beside me. Not a general. Not a consort. A scholar of unraveling truth—Sora, the Archivist of Ends."
Arthis flinched slightly.
"She foresaw the betrayal of the heavens. She warned me… I didn't listen. So when everything collapsed, she tore the final beacon from the Abyss and hurled it into this wound—to keep even me from reclaiming it too early."
A moment of quiet followed.
"So," Meixing said, "we have to face her."
"If she still exists," Liu Shen answered. "She became part of the Spiral to seal the beacon. That kind of merging… it isn't life anymore. It's memory made wrath."
They began their descent, stepping onto a shifting platform that reconfigured itself with every footfall. The world twisted around them—corridors appearing, collapsing, reappearing above them in strange inversions. Sound dulled. Magic fluttered like candlelight in a storm.
Each time they touched a platform, it reacted to their essence.
Fragments of Liu Shen's past flickered: his first throne forged from voidsteel, Sora's ink-stained fingers recording forbidden commands, the day he discarded the heavenly oath and branded himself unredeemable.
As they passed deeper, a figure emerged from the walls—drifting, faceless, cloaked in layers of torn parchment.
A voice echoed through the Spiral, clear and cold:
"Name the End."
Yu Meixing's breath caught. "What is that?"
"The Spiral's guardian," Liu Shen said. "It tests memory, purpose… and the right to reclaim the command."
Again, the voice intoned:
"Name the End."
Arthis stepped forward. "The end of sovereignty—"
"No," Liu Shen said, stepping ahead. "That is not the answer it seeks."
He stared at the drifting phantom and answered, "The End is beginning unchained. The collapse of what binds, to forge what must be."
The Spiral stilled.
The platforms beneath them realigned.
The voice whispered:
"Proceed."
And the path to the Vault opened.
It was a quiet chamber nestled in the heart of distortion, untouched by the decay of time or the shifting Spiral. A pedestal of petrified bone sat in the center, upon it a single shard of dark crystal—dormant, but thrumming with command.
The Third Abyssal Beacon.
Liu Shen approached and reached for it—but a hand of shadows shot from the pedestal, slamming into his chest.
A phantom of Sora rose behind the pedestal—formed of ink, tears, and fractured will. "You failed," it said. "You brought ruin. Why should this command return to you?"
He did not answer with words.
He let the beacon touch his hand—and opened his soul.
Visions poured forth—his rebirth, the Sect of Shadows, the trials in the Heart Loom, the oathbroken generals who still knelt, and the memories he had reclaimed one fragment at a time. Not as a tyrant. Not as a god.
But as a man who would not yield.
The phantom of Sora slowly faded, her last words a whisper:
"Then march, Sovereign… and burn the sky."
The beacon flared.
And in that instant, Liu Shen's authority surged.
The Abyssal Army stirred.
The heavens trembled.