Ash still drifted from the ruined Forge of Gloom as Li Shen and his companions made their way into the deepened rift left behind. Where the fire had opened a scar in the land, it had also exposed something older — a stair carved into obsidian, slanting down like the rib of some fallen titan.
Sister Rain knelt beside it, touching the edge. "This wasn't made by the Hollow Council."
"No," whispered Brother Wei, reading the patterns of the stone. "This predates them. An original vault. One of the first."
Li Shen stared downward, the blades on his back humming faintly. The Crimson Feather Codex burned hot again. It was drawing him lower.
He nodded. "Then we go."
They descended into the dark.
The tunnel walls were smooth and cold. Glyphs, long forgotten, glowed faintly in purple light — not from torch or flame, but some ambient magic woven into the air. The deeper they went, the more they felt it.
Weight.
Not gravity, but memory.
Here, time thickened.
The stair ended at a vast arch — a doorless gateway of black stone shaped like wings folded around a tear. Beyond it was a chamber of colossal scale, with nine suspended monoliths, each wrapped in chains. Ghostfire drifted along the ground. Runes pulsed slowly in the air like heartbeats.
They had reached the Ebon Vault — the Hollow Council's deepest sanctum of forbidden memory.
A whisper licked at Li Shen's thoughts.
"Welcome, Flameborne."
He turned, blades half-drawn, but saw only darkness.
Until the monoliths shifted.
From them stepped guardians — armored wraiths forged from extinguished dreams, their weapons echoing the form of their lives. One held a bell-blade that rang with pain. Another swung a staff chained to hollow lanterns.
Sister Rain spoke under her breath. "Vault Sentinels."
Jun smiled grimly. "We going loud?"
Li Shen unsheathed the Mirror Vale Blade, light bending into a mirrored ripple around him.
"We go like thunder."
They clashed in a storm of silence and echoes.
Sister Rain vanished into mist, striking at joints and seams between ghost-armor, her blades reflecting the lantern glow. Jun drew twin sabers lit with his own life-force, whirling like a storm-dancer. Wei summoned spectral fire to seal fractures in reality where the Vault's pressure tried to drown them in memory.
Li Shen moved like a comet through shadow.
He used the Ocean Soul Blade to deflect the bell-blade's painwave, drawing water from the very moisture in the Vault's air. It turned to ice, then shattered as the Eidolon Blade pierced through.
He ducked under a halberd of grief, spun, and countered with Sērahn's Echo, igniting phoenix flame into the wraith's unlife.
Each blade strike echoed not just in space — but in time.
Flashbacks struck him mid-swing: visions of the first Flamebearers, of the Vault being built by monks who sang to the stars and bled light.
Then, a voice.
Not the Vault's. Not a wraith's.
But something older.
"He is ready."
The guardians suddenly halted. They backed away. The central monolith began to descend.
Within the monolith was not a corpse, but a man — or something that once was one.
Tall, draped in robes of woven moonlight and raven thread, with a mask like a cracked mirror. His presence distorted the Vault. Time thinned. The past scraped against the present like bone against stone.
He spoke not with sound, but with dream.
"Li Shen. The Blade-Touched. The Phoenix Echo. You wear the sins of five swords. You carry the silence of six."
"You have come to wake the Ebon Vault. So let it awaken."
He raised a hand.
The vault cracked.
Visions exploded around Li Shen: millions of stolen memories, ripped from monks, warriors, enemies, and children. Lives harvested by the Hollow Council and stored here, fed into the soul-forges above. He saw cities before they fell. Monasteries betrayed. Even glimpses of the Hollow Council's creation.
He saw one of the Nine — unmasked.
A woman once called Ji An, now the Hollow Architect, betrayed by her disciples and turned by forbidden arts. Her rage became architecture. Her will became empire.
Then the Vault began to burn.
Not by fire — but by release.
Li Shen stepped forward, eyes blazing.
"You stole too many lives. I'll return what I can."
The Hollow Dreamer lowered his head. "Then fight me, and break the seal."
Their blades met in silence.
Not metal on metal — but spirit on memory.
The Hollow Dreamer wielded a sword made of frozen recollection — strikes came with unbearable nostalgia, forcing Li Shen to relive griefs mid-swing: the death of his first master, the moment he saw his home engulfed in flame, the look in Jun's eyes the night they burned the Vale.
Li Shen staggered.
But then… he changed.
He embraced the memory.
Turned pain into momentum.
He drew the Crimson Feather Codex, and from it, a burning stroke:
"Wǔ Yàn — Fivefold Flame Verse."
He unleashed a quintet of sword forms:
Blazing Skyfall — struck from above, sundering the Vault's ceiling.
Phoenix Spiral — circled the Dreamer, carving heat-rings that melted the false mask.
Crimson Binding — rooted his opponent in guilt.
Mirror Echo Return — turned every strike back with twice the weight.
Ashen Resurgence — a final, rising sweep that cleaved through illusion and truth.
The Hollow Dreamer crumbled into light.
With his fall, the Vault began to collapse — not from damage, but from justice.
Wei's scrolls unfurled without his touch, releasing names long erased from history. Rain retrieved fragments of stolen memories and inscribed them into sky-charms. Jun helped Li Shen to the center altar, where the last memory-crystal pulsed.
He pressed his palm to it.
All across the continent — in temples, in ruined towns, in wandering souls — memory returned.
The Hollow Council's secrets had been breached.
The Vault cracked open.
And across the Ashen Empire, the people began to remember.