Thunder rumbled far off in the heavens—not the sort that brought rain, but the ancient kind. The kind that came with shifting laws and forgotten names daring to wake.
In the heart of Wulian's hidden dominion, time slowed like honey in winter. The eternal dusk stretched over a forest of obsidian trees, their leaves glass-thin and whispering with every unnatural breeze. This forest wasn't mapped, and it didn't need to be. It obeyed only him.
He knelt beside a tree unlike the others—its bark patterned like cracked bone, its roots pulsing with gentle, silver light.
Wulian ran a hand along the base, and it shivered at his touch.
"Another tether has reconnected," the System chimed. It spoke less now, its voice taking on more... hesitation. As if it had begun to feel the weight of choices.
"Which one?" he asked, voice low.
"Name: Shao Jun. Cultivation: Suppressed. Realm: Jade Vein. Status: Active surveillance."
Wulian exhaled through his nose, though his expression never changed. "That one was supposed to sleep longer."
"She resisted the seals."
He looked up at the canopy above, where no sky existed, only shifting reflections of stars that weren't real.
"She always was stubborn," he murmured.
Shao Jun, meanwhile, stood barefoot at the edge of a frozen lake. The surface reflected the moon perfectly—but there was no moon in the sky above. Only a mirror.
Her breath came in slow curls, though she hadn't felt cold in years.
Memories pressed against the inside of her mind, like damp paper trying to dry.
Names. Places. A tune she used to hum when things were simple, before the world became tangled in hidden wars and celestial contracts written in blood.
She drew her fingers across her forearm, brushing away a layer of frost. Underneath, a mark glowed faintly—a thin ring of characters too old to be spoken aloud.
Someone had summoned her. Again.
She looked down at the lake, and then stepped onto it.
The ice didn't crack.
It hummed.
Back in the void, Wulian sat beneath the pale tree, motionless. His mind, however, was elsewhere—threading through realms like a weaver searching for knots in old cloth.
Images bloomed before him.
A man in chains dreaming of fire.
A child born without a heartbeat, singing lullabies to the dead.
An emperor with no eyes, ruling a kingdom where no one sleeps.
They were all pieces. Fragments from stories too old for books and too dangerous for temples. Each of them once bound to his will. Each now stirring.
"You don't seem worried," the System noted. It didn't ask—it never did.
"I've never been worried," Wulian replied. "Not since I let go of what I was."
"Yet you watch."
"Of course. Even gods have to wonder if the dice they threw centuries ago will land the way they hoped."
At the bottom of the mortal world, in a sunken ruin no one dared map, a boy coughed into his palms, pulling back sticky black blood. He wiped it against stone, panting.
He couldn't remember his name.
Not really.
They called him Ash, though that wasn't it. That wasn't the name etched into the bones he sometimes saw in his sleep.
He dreamed of strings. And voices. And someone watching.
Always watching.
The air was thick with old magic, broken inscriptions humming on the walls. Ash leaned against a crumbling pillar and tried to laugh.
"Still alive," he muttered. "Somehow."
A faint giggle answered him—childlike, but distant. Then silence.
Ash's knuckles whitened around the crude blade he carried, and he began to walk again.
Wulian opened his eyes. The tree beside him had stopped pulsing.
"They're waking," he said simply.
"So are the others."
His expression turned unreadable.
"That's the point."
Behind him, the Court stirred. Not with ceremony, not with war drums—but with intention.
Figures emerged one by one from the veil between shadows, each cloaked in secrets and bound to laws only Wulian understood. Their eyes did not shine. Their faces bore no names. But when they knelt, the Void itself bowed slightly in response.
"Your marionettes await," the System said.
"No," Wulian corrected gently. "These aren't puppets."
He stepped forward, the Court opening like a breath around him.
"These are choices."
And choices, after all, are the most dangerous things in existence.