Heiyun Jue stepped through the threshold.
The chamber embraced him immediately—a space separate from the infinite library beyond, sealed by principles older than the concepts that shaped reality. Light emanated from everywhere and nowhere, soft and constant, illuminating the tome that hung suspended at the center.
He approached it slowly.
The book looked ordinary. Bound pages, worn leather, the weight of accumulated years visible in its weathered surface. But appearances meant nothing here. This was ancient knowledge given physical form—truths that predated existence itself, waiting to be absorbed by those strong enough to survive them.
Heiyun Jue reached out and touched the cover.
The chamber sealed behind him.
For the next three months, he would be here. Reading. Absorbing. Forcing his consciousness against knowledge that resisted being known. The pocket realm would turn without his guidance. His subordinates would manage—or fail to manage—without his oversight. The natural awakener would continue her mysterious development, watched by eyes he hadn't informed of his absence.
Everything he'd built now rested on hope.
He opened the tome to the section he sought—the passages that spoke of beings beyond Transcendence, of powers that existed outside the framework of the world, of protections that even gods could not pierce.
The first words pressed against his soul like a weight settling onto his shoulders.
He began to read.
✦
Chen Yè sat in his courtyard, staring at nothing.
He'd returned from Bai Zixian's domain a few hours ago, but sleep wouldn't come. His mind kept turning over what he'd heard—Kiran's representation playing on repeat, each detail examined from different angles.
Three rooms.
He leaned back against the wall, letting the cool surface ground him.
The first room.
Musicians. A group of them, seated in a circle, playing instruments with obvious reverence. Beautiful instruments—ancient, intricate, the kind that suggested meaning beyond mere sound. Their fingers moved. Their hands struck. Their breath flowed.
But no sound emerged.
Silence, Chen Yè thought. Music without sound. Expression without result.
What did that mean? He turned the image over in his mind, searching for connections. Silence wasn't just absence of noise. It was... suppression? Containment? Something that should exist, being prevented from existing?
Or maybe it was deeper than that. Maybe the silence wasn't about the sound at all. Maybe it was about the musicians—beings who performed endlessly, who went through all the motions of creation, but produced nothing. Effort without outcome. Action without consequence.
Incomplete, he thought,but a start.
The second room.
Empty space. Bare walls. No furniture, no decoration, nothing visible at all.
But Kiran had felt presences. Multiple presences, all around him, watching. They were concealed—more than invisible, more than hidden. They had removed themselves from being perceived entirely. He'd known they were there without being able to find them in any specific way.
Concealment, Chen Yè considered. Invisibility?
No. Those words felt too small. Invisibility was about light, about what eyes could see. This was something else. The presences hadn't just hidden from sight—but from perception in all its forms.
What kind of concept allowed that? What truth of reality could erase something from awareness while still leaving it present?
He didn't know. The question circled in his mind without resolution.
The third room.
This was the one that troubled him most.
Kiran had described it as a domain. A space belonging to something else entirely. And he'd known—with absolute certainty, without explanation—that anything entering that room would be dead. Not killed. Not attacked.
Cut off. Severed from the world. From existence itself.
Chen Yè frowned.
Death didn't work like that. Death was an ending, yes, but it left something behind. A body. A memory. Evidence that something had once existed. What Kiran described was different—a complete removal, an absolute erasure.
He sat with the problem for a long time, turning it over, testing different interpretations.
Then, unbidden, a memory surfaced.
He was seven years old, maybe eight. Hungry, as always. He'd been caught near a market stall, not quite stealing but close enough to earn the vendor's wrath. The man had grabbed him by the collar, lifted him off his feet, and screamed curses into his face.
Most of the words had blurred together—the usual threats, the usual promises of violence. But one phrase had stuck.
"Better pray to the old gods I never catch you near my store again, or you'll be lost to the void!"
Lost to the void.
At the time, Chen Yè had dismissed it as colorful language. The kind of thing angry adults said when they wanted to sound threatening. He hadn't given it any real thought.
But now...
Void.
He tested the word against what Kiran had described.
The third room. A domain where anything that entered ceased to exist. Not death—something more absolute. An erasure so complete that even the concept of the thing was removed.
Lost to the void.
The phrase fit. Not perfectly—he couldn't explain why it fit, couldn't provide logical proof or systematic reasoning. But something in his gut recognized the connection. The vendor's curse had touched on the same truth that Kiran's representation pointed toward.
A place where things stopped being. Where existence itself ended.
Void.
Hope flickered in Chen Yè's chest—small, fragile, but present.
This might be wrong. He knew that. He was a street orphan with no education, no training, no foundation for understanding concepts and representations and the truths of reality. He was guessing, essentially. Throwing words at a problem and hoping something stuck.
But it felt right.
And tomorrow, when the group gathered again, he would offer this interpretation. See what Kiran made of it. See if the word void resonated with whatever the boy had felt in that dark corridor with its three impossible rooms.
It might help.
It might be nothing.
But it was something to contribute. Something to offer. And in this place, where usefulness was the only currency that mattered, having something to offer was everything.
Chen Yè pushed himself up from the ground and headed toward his sleeping quarters.
Tomorrow would reveal whether his instincts held any truth.
Tonight, he would rest.
✦
Yao Xian returned to the manor as night deepened.
The artificial stars scattered across the pocket realm's sky cast faint light through the crystalline structures, painting everything in shades of silver and shadow. She moved through the outer courtyards without hurry, her senses extending ahead of her, taking the measure of the space before she entered it.
Something was different.
She paused at the manor's entrance, her brow furrowing slightly.
There was a presence in the air. Not a person—not the weight of another divine existence or the subtle pressure of someone watching. This was something else. A resonance. A vibration at the edge of perception, like the hum of a distant instrument playing a note too low to properly hear.
Concept, she realized.
The scent of it hung in the atmosphere, seeping through walls and corridors, bleeding outward from a single source. Faint but unmistakable—the signature of concept manifesting in the physical world.
It was coming from Xīng Hé's room.
Yao Xian moved faster now, her footsteps quickening as she passed through the manor's outer chambers. The guards she encountered stood at their posts with unusual stiffness, their eyes darting toward her as she passed. They felt it too. They didn't understand what they were sensing, but they knew something was wrong.
Or not wrong, perhaps.
Something was happening.
She reached the corridor outside Xīng Hé's quarters and stopped.
The door remained sealed. It hadn't opened since yesterday—the maids had confirmed as much during her morning visit. But the resonance was stronger here. Much stronger. The air itself seemed to thicken with it, carrying that faint scent of concept like perfume from an unseen source.
A maid stood nearby, her face pale, her hands clasped tightly before her.
"She still hasn't emerged," the woman whispered. "We've heard nothing. No requests, no movement. Just... this."
She gestured vaguely at the air, unable to articulate what she was feeling.
Yao Xian understood.
Something was happening inside that room. Something significant. The natural awakener—a girl who shouldn't be capable of anything like this at the Awakened stage—was doing something that even trained divine existences could sense from outside her sealed door.
What are you, little Xīng Hé?
The question had no answer. Not yet.
Yao Xian considered forcing entry. Demanding answers. Interrupting whatever process was unfolding behind that door. She had the authority. She had the power. Heiyun Jue had assigned her to watch this girl, and watching meant knowing.
But something held her back.
The resonance wasn't dangerous. It wasn't the chaotic surge of a concept running wild, or the destructive pressure of a manifestation gone wrong. It was steady. Controlled. Almost... deliberate.
Whatever Xīng Hé was doing, she was doing it on purpose.
And interrupting might do more harm than good.
"Continue monitoring," Yao Xian instructed the maid. "Inform me immediately if anything changes. If she opens the door, if the... presence intensifies, if anything at all seems wrong."
The maid nodded quickly, relief evident in her expression. She was glad to have clear instructions. Glad to have someone else make the decisions.
Yao Xian turned and walked back down the corridor, her thoughts churning.
The guards she passed were whispering among themselves. She caught fragments of their conversation—never felt anything like this, natural awakener indeed, what's she doing in there—and chose not to respond. Let them wonder. Let them speculate.
She had her own speculations to consider.
A girl who awakened naturally. Who recovered from the burden in two days instead of a month. Who evolved during a five-day punishment walk. And now this—concept manifestation strong enough to permeate an entire manor.
Yao Xian reached the outer courtyard and stopped, looking up at the artificial stars.
Something abnormal was happening.
Something that defied the patterns she'd observed across two thousand years of existence.
Something... legendary.
The word surfaced unbidden, and she couldn't dismiss it.
Something legendary is about to happen.
She stood in the darkness for a long moment, listening to the faint resonance that drifted through the manor like a promise waiting to be fulfilled.
Then she went to find a place to wait.
Whatever was coming, she wanted to see it.
End of Chapter 15