The world held its breath.
Storms churned in the skies above. The fractured realm groaned beneath the weight of a past long buried and a future yet unborn. Jin stood at the center of it all—half memory, half prophecy, entirely real.
The Soulbrand Fang pulsed with slow-burning certainty at his hip. Not eager. Not afraid.
Ready.
Qilin and the Empress stood beside him as he traced his fingers across the map burned into the cathedral's altar. Raijin's fortress wasn't just a seat of power. It was the cradle of the betrayal. The place Jin had once called home.
The Mountain of Hollow Suns.
"It's warded," the Empress murmured. "No approach by sky or ground. A hundred thousand spells carved into its bones. Thousands of defenders."
"Not all of them alive," Qilin added. "Raijin commands death now. His legions are stitched together from the bones of ten wars."
Jin didn't flinch.
"He's hiding in the last lie."
The journey to the Mountain began before dawn.
They crossed the River of Still Mirrors—a place where the dead remembered their reflections. Each step summoned whispers. Each ripple birthed fragments of forgotten selves.
Jin walked through them.
His old selves.
The child who believed in honor.
The youth who bled for loyalty.
The warrior who died for duty.
None stopped him now.
He had made peace with the past.
But others had not.
The first ambush came at the river's end.
They were waiting—twelve figures clad in robes of withered silver, eyes like burning coal.
Cultivators.
Ancient.
Marked by one symbol.
A broken sun.
Qilin's spear twitched. "Death-Sworn."
"No," Jin corrected softly. "They're worse."
He stepped forward.
And the first figure knelt.
Then the second.
Then all twelve.
They spoke in unison.
"Ten thousand years we have waited. Ten thousand years we have bled. Rise, Master. The Cult of the Waiting Dead answers your call."
It was no mere cult.
It was his.
Formed in the ashes of his fall, kept alive in secret, bound by loyalty stronger than life.
Each member had willingly died to wait for his return.
They called it sleep.
It was a prison of undeath.
Their bodies were mummified, their souls bound to the last spark of Jin's soul-echo. When the Soulbrand Fang drank his echo, it awakened them.
They rose.
Not as zombies.
But as immortal shadows of loyalty.
Qilin stared. "They preserved themselves for ten millennia?"
The leader—once called Disciple Wu—nodded. His voice was hoarse. "Raijin tried to erase us. But we were already dead."
The Empress narrowed her eyes. "What power sustains you?"
Wu raised his head.
And smiled.
"The truth."
They traveled with the cult.
Past dead cities entombed in glass. Past fields where angels once fell. Past forests that had turned to stone under centuries of silent war.
Each step closer to the Mountain of Hollow Suns made the Soulbrand Fang pulse.
It was calling.
No.
Something was calling through it.
A whisper that hadn't spoken in 10,000 years.
And Jin recognized it.
Not Raijin.
Not the gods.
Not even death.
It was her.
The voice came at night.
As the camp lay still, and the air crackled with silence.
She stepped from the flames of the campfire without burning.
Clad in silver-white, barefoot, eyes like dusk.
Jin didn't move.
Neither did the others.
Because none of them could see her.
Only Jin.
"Hello, Jin," she whispered.
He didn't breathe.
He hadn't heard that voice in ten thousand years.
"Amae," he said, the name cutting deeper than any sword.
She'd been the last to stand at his grave.
The one who hadn't betrayed him.
The one who'd vanished after his fall.
Now here she stood.
Not alive.
Not dead.
"Don't trust what you see," she whispered, reaching for his face. Her hand passed through him, light and cold. "Raijin wears masks, and beneath each is a lie."
"I know," Jin said.
"But you don't know the worst one," Amae replied.
Jin's jaw clenched. "Tell me."
Amae leaned closer.
Whispers curled around her lips.
And when Jin heard the words, the world tilted.
Because the truth was worse than betrayal.
It was design.
Raijin hadn't betrayed Jin out of envy.
Not revenge.
Not ambition.
Raijin had done it… because he was told to.
The gods had chosen him.
They had planned the burial.
Because Jin was growing too fast.
Because his cultivation wasn't bound by their rules.
He was cracking the system.
And the system fought back.
Jin's rise was never just a tragedy.
It was a culling.
When Amae faded, Jin didn't speak for hours.
The Empress noticed. Qilin asked. Wu watched.
But he said nothing.
Until dawn broke.
And the Mountain of Hollow Suns came into view.
Then, he spoke.
"This is not revenge," he said.
"This is war."
The mountain had changed.
Once a place of honor and trial, it now bristled with weaponry. Towers crowned with spirit-beacons. Gates forged from the bones of ancient beasts. Runes thick as blood circling the slopes.
And at the peak?
A single throne.
Empty.
Waiting.
Raijin's fortress wasn't a castle.
It was a challenge.
Jin turned to the cult.
"To your posts."
They vanished into shadow, melting like ink into the stone.
He turned to Qilin and the Empress.
"Hold the gates."
They nodded, no hesitation.
And then, he walked forward.
Alone.
The gates didn't resist him.
They opened on their own.
Because Raijin had been waiting.
The great hall was vast and cold.
Columns of jade and obsidian reached to the stars. The floor was etched with the history of Jin's fall—each scene depicted in brutal, mocking detail.
And at the end of the hall, upon a throne of silent iron…
Raijin waited.
He wore black and silver. His eyes gleamed like fractured glass.
"Brother," he said. "Welcome home."
Jin walked slowly, steps ringing like death bells.
"Don't call me that."
Raijin smiled.
"A shame. I've missed you."
Jin stopped ten paces away.
"You orchestrated the betrayal."
"I performed it," Raijin corrected. "The orchestra was divine."
"You buried me alive."
"I freed you from your delusions."
Jin's voice dropped. "You murdered Amae."
Raijin's smile vanished.
And then… returned.
"She was your heart. I removed it."
The silence after that was longer than time.
Then Jin drew the Soulbrand Fang.
And the hall darkened.
They clashed.
Not like mortals.
Not even like immortals.
They fought as forces.
Raijin's sword was the Eclipse Fang—a blade that inverted light and shadow.
Jin's dagger was smaller.
But deeper.
It drank each blow. Each lie. Each wound.
And turned it back.
Steel rang.
Walls cracked.
The throne room trembled.
Raijin struck with lightning. With void. With the power of every god who had touched him.
Jin struck with silence.
And never missed.
Outside, war erupted.
The Cult of the Waiting Dead clashed with Raijin's legions.
Qilin led a charge that broke three siege towers with her bare hands.
The Empress rode lightning across the sky, cutting down horrors made of sorrow and ash.
But inside the mountain, two legends fought for the soul of the world.
Raijin faltered first.
The Soulbrand Fang pierced his shoulder.
Then his gut.
Then his eye.
But still he fought.
Until Jin disarmed him.
And placed the dagger at his throat.
Raijin laughed.
"Kill me. End it."
Jin's voice was soft.
"No."
He leaned in close.
And whispered, "You don't get to end it. You watch."
He pressed the dagger to Raijin's chest.
And did not kill him.
Instead, he marked him.
With the brand of the Grave.
Outside, the fortress fell.
One by one, the spells died.
The legions crumbled.
The world began to shift.
The fractured realm buckled.
And the sky opened.
A way out.
A way forward.
Jin stood at the gates as the Cult gathered behind him. As Qilin wiped blood from her spear. As the Empress rejoined his side.
He looked back at the mountain.
Then ahead.
Into the real world.
And stepped through.
Because this war…
Was only beginning.