The storm had passed, but the world had not calmed.
Jin stood at the edge of the shattered lake, the mausoleum behind him gone—collapsed inward like a secret sealed forever. In his palm, the Soulbrand Fang still shimmered with phantom heat, though no flame touched its surface.
Something inside him was different now.
Lighter.
And heavier.
The past was no longer chasing him.
It was inside him.
The Empress approached first. Her breath steamed in the cool air, eyes fixed on the dagger.
"You didn't just bind your echo," she said. "You devoured it."
Jin nodded once. "What we bury, we become. What we face, we command."
Qilin remained silent, watching the forest beyond. Her body was still, but her fingers tapped the shaft of her spear—once, twice, thrice.
"The Vale doesn't want us here anymore," she muttered. "It's retreating."
And it was.
The trees were curling inward, pulling back like ripples in silk. The shadows were dispersing. The sky above was beginning to resemble something close to normalcy.
But the world beyond the forest was not the one they had left.
By the time they reached the treeline, two full days had passed.
And everything had changed.
The sky was blood-orange.
The sun had a second ring.
And the air was full of dust that shimmered like glass.
The Empress squinted up at the horizon. "This is not the world we entered from."
"It's the same world," Jin said quietly. "But not the same time."
Qilin cursed under her breath. "We shifted."
Time travel wasn't impossible in cultivation. It was just suicidal. No cultivator sane or strong enough would willingly let themselves be caught in a temporal slip without reason.
Unless the reason… was war.
Jin looked at the mountains in the distance. Spires of black iron jutted up like broken teeth. Armored airships hovered in the sky like bloated beetles. Cities carved from obsidian hummed with unnatural energy.
"This is the Empire of Dust," he murmured.
The Empress paled. "That empire fell nine thousand years ago."
"Not here," Jin said. "Not in this... version."
Qilin took a step back. "We're in a fractured realm."
Worse than a pocket dimension. Worse than a time prison.
A fractured realm was a sliver of reality torn from the flow of existence and used as a testing ground—for weapons, for fate, for beings too powerful to walk the main plane.
Someone had brought them here.
Someone wanted him here.
And Jin already had a guess who.
They descended into the basin.
The land was dead—ashen soil, skeletal trees, rivers that hissed like boiling oil. But it wasn't empty. Scouts moved in the shadows. Constructs stalked across ridgelines, powered by arcane cores older than memory. In the sky, wyverns with bronze-plated wings circled like vultures.
The Empress kept her blade drawn.
Qilin barely blinked, eyes scanning everything.
But Jin? He walked with calm.
Because the echo was gone.
But the power it had left behind…
It whispered with every step.
The Soulbrand Fang had changed. It no longer merely drank pain.
It rewrote it.
Every injury Jin had ever suffered, every scar, every betrayal—it pulsed inside the blade, ready to be unleashed in a storm of reverse suffering.
He was no longer a ghost in the world.
He was a storm buried too long.
And the world would feel it.
They reached a ruined city by dusk.
Its gates were torn open, its walls scorched. Signs of battle were everywhere—slain soldiers, shattered automata, burned-out spell cores. But no blood.
Only ashes.
"Magic fire," Qilin muttered. "Unholy tier. Meant to erase souls."
Jin crouched by one of the corpses. What remained of it.
Charred bone. Melted armor. A sigil etched on the chestplate.
A phoenix.
But not his.
"Ashen Wing Sect," he said aloud. "They were a rebel faction during the Dust Reign. I fought them once. Long ago."
"Why are they here?" the Empress asked.
"Because this isn't just a fractured realm," Jin said.
"It's a memorial."
They made camp inside the city's cathedral—a structure once sacred, now hollowed by grief. Stained glass windows depicted gods with bleeding eyes and chained suns. The altar had been shattered and rebuilt into a war table.
Old maps. Tactical formations. Lists of names.
Jin stared at them.
And saw his own.
Marked in red.
The Empress sat across from him, drinking quietly from her flask. "Who would trap us here?"
Jin didn't answer right away.
Because he already knew.
He just didn't want to say the name.
Not yet.
Instead, he stood.
And said, "We're being hunted."
The attack came at midnight.
They moved like wind—cloaked figures with blades forged from moonlight and silence. Assassins. Elite. Trained not to kill, but to erase.
The first one reached Qilin.
He never touched her.
She spun with her spear, slicing the void, her weapon humming with storm-forged qi. One assassin fell. Then two. Then five.
The Empress drew her blade and danced like a demon, her strikes clean and final.
Jin?
He didn't draw a weapon.
He watched.
The moment they realized who he was, they fled.
But one was too slow.
Jin caught him with a look.
And the assassin's soul froze.
Jin walked to him slowly.
"Who sent you?" he asked.
The man's face twisted. "I… I don't… know."
"You do," Jin said. "It's etched in your blood."
He touched the man's chest.
And read it.
Not with eyes.
With the Soulbrand.
Symbols erupted—burned into the assassin's skin. A name. A face. A command.
The Empress paled.
Qilin gasped.
Jin's voice was colder than death.
"So," he said. "You're still alive."
The name carved into the flesh was one Jin had not spoken in 10,000 years.
Raijin the Severed.
The one who had orchestrated Jin's burial.
His old brother-in-arms.
His betrayer.
His executioner.
Raijin had been a hero once. A godslayer. The Blade of the Eastern Sky.
Until he turned.
Until he struck down his own Sect Master.
Until he broke the Unbreakable Oath.
Jin's voice was quiet.
But it carried.
"He knows I've returned."
Qilin stepped forward. "Then what do we do?"
Jin didn't hesitate.
"We burn everything between me and him."
They left the city behind at dawn.
The sky above was torn with lightning—not natural, but forged. Bolts stitched together from soulfire and divine metal. Weapons tests. War preparations.
Raijin wasn't hiding.
He was building an army.
Preparing for war.
But not against a nation.
Against Jin.
And Jin welcomed it.
By midday, they reached a ridge overlooking a battlefield.
Not current.
Historical.
Bodies frozen in time. Soldiers mid-swing. Arrows mid-flight. Constructs in half-motion. A thousand years of war, trapped in an eternal moment.
A monument.
A warning.
Jin walked among them.
And found his own body.
One of many.
A memory made flesh.
Each death he'd suffered.
Each failure.
Each burial.
Qilin whispered, "This place is madness."
The Empress whispered, "No. It's prophecy."
Jin stood before his oldest corpse.
And said nothing.
Until the eyes opened.
And it spoke.
"You're not ready."
The corpse lunged.
And the battle began.
Not of blades. Not of fists.
But of will.
A duel across time.
Jin against every version of himself that had failed.
They struck with shame.
With regret.
With fear.
But Jin was the one who had endured the Grave.
He had died.
He had risen.
And he would not fall again.
He raised the Soulbrand Fang.
And cut through them.
Not just with power.
But with resolve.
When the dust cleared, the battlefield was empty.
Only Jin remained.
Whole.
Awake.
And unshakable.
He turned to his companions.
And spoke.
"Now I'm ready."
The Empress knelt.
Qilin lowered her head.
The heavens trembled.
And in the far distance…
Raijin opened his arms wide.
And laughed.