The sky was not just above—it called.
Jin stared upward from the ruins of the Forgotten Sea. Behind him, the Leviathan slumbered once more beneath a broken cathedral of bone and shadow. The fragment of the Hollow Crown pulsed against his chest, freshly embedded, warping his essence with each breath.
Qilin stood beside him, silent.
Above them, stars began to shift.
No longer still. No longer silent.
"They're moving," she said, voice low. "Forming a gate."
Jin didn't answer. He was already levitating, the gravity around him warping as ancient cultivation paths awakened inside his soul. The Crown fragment had unlocked something unnatural—something forbidden.
But it was the only way forward.
The Starlit Crucible awaited.
High above the earth, past the clouds and the shattered constellations, hung a fortress of light and obsidian: a floating citadel from the time before memory, chained to the sky by the laws of forgotten gods.
It was not built by mortals.
It had grown.
A twisting labyrinth of metallic bone and celestial crystal, orbiting a heart of pure silence.
The moment Jin crossed its boundary, the world changed.
Gravity vanished.
Sound died.
And the Crucible opened its eyes.
Jin landed inside a vast chamber without doors or walls. Just emptiness, speckled with starlight. Floating islands of carved runes and molten gold spun in lazy circles.
He stood on a single platform.
Then the first test began.
From the void rose a mirror.
But the reflection was wrong.
It wasn't him now.
It was him before.
The boy who had begged for scraps in the gutters.
The boy who had been thrown into the grave.
The one who hadn't yet killed to survive.
"You don't belong here," the mirror version said.
"You're weak," Jin replied.
"I was honest."
"I was alive. You were just waiting to die."
The mirror's eyes turned silver.
Then it attacked.
Fists met fists in silence.
The Mirror Jin moved like water, graceful and desperate. His strikes weren't about killing—they were about making the pain stop.
Jin, the real one, fought with purpose.
With scars.
With weight.
With every blocked punch, he remembered starvation. Every counter, betrayal.
He disarmed the mirror with a single twist.
Snapped its arm.
Drove Mourningfang through its chest.
The mirror shattered into stardust.
A voice echoed through the Crucible:
"Unworthy selves must be buried. Progress requires sacrifice."
The next trial rose.
Three silhouettes stepped forward.
His former masters.
Each one had betrayed him.
Master Veylon, who taught him the first technique—and sold him for a spirit stone.
Elder Jian, who promised him a sect core—and sealed him in the grave.
And... Master Yin.
Who called him son.
And fed him poison.
They didn't speak.
They only bowed.
And then attacked.
This time, Jin didn't hold back.
He activated Shadow Entombment, cloaking the entire Crucible in artificial night. Tendrils of soul-forged chains erupted from the platform, lashing out like vipers.
Master Veylon was the first to fall—swallowed by a maw of spectral hands.
Elder Jian tried to fly—Jin broke his wings mid-sentence.
Only Master Yin remained.
Old. Fragile. Smiling.
"You never understood, child. The grave was a lesson. You were meant to rise."
Jin stared at him.
Then whispered, "Then die with your lesson."
Mourningfang hummed.
The old man crumbled to dust.
The Crucible pulsed.
All stars darkened.
From the heart of the void, something descended.
Not a person.
A presence.
A Herald.
The Crucible formed a new floor of molten silver beneath Jin's feet, forcing him to his knees with its pressure alone.
Chains of starlight wrapped around him. The fragment inside his chest reacted, vibrating violently.
Then the Herald spoke.
Its voice shattered stars.
"You have come far. But you walk a path that is not yours."
Jin's eyes glowed.
"I made it mine."
The air twisted.
And the Herald stepped forth.
It had no face.
No body.
Just a cloak of constellations and a blade made of silence.
The Nameless One.
The First Herald of the Hollow Crown.
Betrayer of Time.
Warden of the Crucible.
Jin stood, blood trailing from his mouth as he fought the weight of that presence.
"You kept the Crown's heart hidden," Jin growled. "Where is it?"
The Herald raised a finger.
And time froze.
Jin's movements slowed, breath suspended, soul strained. His mind screamed. Every moment stretched into eternity.
Then the Herald moved.
Its silent blade pierced Jin's chest.
Jin exploded.
Or should have.
But something else responded.
The Leviathan's mark.
The Pale Empress's blessing.
And the Crown fragment itself.
His body shattered—but reformed instantly, wrapped in a shroud of echoing flame and bone.
Jin grabbed the silent blade.
And broke it in half.
The Herald tilted its nonexistent head.
"No one has done that before," it said.
"Then you haven't fought me."
The battle tore through the Crucible.
They moved faster than thought, striking in the cracks between time and sound. Each blow collapsed a layer of reality. Runes failed. Platforms exploded. Islands fell into the abyss.
But Jin adapted.
He fed on the Herald's pressure.
Each second inside the fight, he grew.
Techniques layered.
Graveheart Flux.
Mourningfang Resonance.
The Ten Thousand Dead Hands.
Then—Lethe Break.
A fusion attack. Risky. Incomplete.
He combined it with a forbidden art from the Leviathan: Void Spiral Maw.
He dove.
Through the Herald's chest.
And devoured its essence.
Silence followed.
The Crucible darkened.
Only Jin stood—smoking, panting, alive.
In his hand was a new shard of the Hollow Crown.
And at his back… a gate.
Formed of starlight and bone.
Leading not forward—but downward.
To the Crown's Heart.
Jin turned to Qilin, who had been forced into stasis outside the Crucible's inner ring. The stasis cracked. She rushed to him.
"You're bleeding everywhere—"
"I saw it."
"Saw what?"
"The truth. The Crown wasn't created to rule. It was made to seal something. Something worse than the Heralds."
Qilin's face went pale.
"What?"
He turned toward the new path. It pulsed like a heartbeat.
"They built the Crown to trap a god."