Li Shen knelt beside the massive lotus husk, its petals now withered and blackened by his presence. With the Blade of Withering Bloom strapped at his side, he turned toward the obelisk of root and stone half-buried in the mire's edge—a forgotten threshold into the deep.
The entrance to the Pillars of Hollow Silence.
He placed his palm against the stone. A soft hum pulsed through it. Not energy—memory.
You are not the first to come seeking silence, a voice whispered within the rock.
But the lock relented.
The path opened.
And darkness swallowed him.
A spiral staircase of ancient jade and shattered runes led downward. The air was dry—impossibly so. With every step, the oppressive weight of the world above faded, and a deeper, more timeless pressure grew.
He passed murals worn by age, depicting sword-wielding monks atop vast columns, blades drawn not in war—but meditation. Words followed him along the walls, flickering in ghostlight script.
"Only those who silence the self may reach the Seventh Blade."
At the bottom, a round chamber opened, lit by a single ghostly brazier. A monk's skeleton sat cross-legged within a ring of broken swords.
Li Shen approached and bowed. The air stirred.
A wraith of echoing steel rose from the bones.
It didn't speak—but struck.
Li Shen reacted instinctively, drawing the Mirror Vale Blade to counter the first arc of spiritual steel. The clash sent a ripple through the air that shattered the brazier's light—and plunged the room into vibrating darkness.
The duel was soundless.
The wraith moved with impossible silence, blades gliding like shadows over moonlit water. But Li Shen had studied under Master Lin of the Unmoving Hollow, whose teachings of Soundless Reflection Form made his footwork a ghost's breath.
Strike. Twist. Evade. Redirect.
He switched to the Eidolon Blade, its pale blue light cutting phantoms with each stroke. Steel and spirit collided until the silence broke not with noise—but with stillness.
The wraith bowed as its form unraveled.
Another whisper echoed behind Li Shen.
"The Pillars await."
A narrow bridge of polished stone stretched before him. It passed over an abyss so deep, even sound did not return.
Dozens of statues lined the way—each robed, masked, and holding a sword downward like a tombstone.
These were the monks who had taken vows of forgetting. Their names removed from the world, their teachings left unspoken, their mastery preserved only in stillness.
As Li Shen walked, the pressure on his soul increased. Each statue whispered a forgotten regret, not in words—but through memory itself.
The boy who could not save his sister.
The blade that severed love.
The master who watched his temple burn.
These were not his memories. And yet he bore their weight.
His breath faltered. His vision blurred. The swords on his back grew heavier.
Until he reached the central pillar.
The final statue stood before a circular gate of obsidian and gold.
It held no sword.
Its hands were empty.
And Li Shen understood.
He knelt, and set all six blades before the gate.
Only then did it open.
The chamber within was vast. Twelve enormous pillars ringed the room, each carved with scripts so ancient even the Phoenix Manuscript made no mention of them. The air thrummed with stillness—so perfect it created a silence that consumed sound itself.
Floating above a dais of silver ash was a blade unlike any other.
The Seventh Blade.
The Hollow Whisper.
Its edge was indistinct, like a line drawn in the world and then forgotten. Its hilt bore no name, no sigil. And yet, it called to him—not as a weapon, but as a wound in the world.
He stepped forward.
And the blade spoke—not in voice, but by unmaking a memory.
He could no longer recall the face of his mother.
He could not even remember her name.
The price of drawing the blade was clear.
Each use would take from him.
And yet—he reached.
Fingers closed around the hilt.
And the Hollow Whisper became his.
The pillars trembled.
Dust cascaded from the ceiling.
Voices—not whispers now, but full-throated chants—rumbled from beyond the chamber walls.
From hidden passages, Ashen Pact monks emerged, robed in black and red, wielding curved blades and spears of bone ash.
Li Shen stood alone.
Seven blades at his side.
They did not speak.
They attacked.
He moved.
The Ocean Soul Blade flowed like water—rippling, redirecting, drowning.
The Mirror Vale Blade disoriented—flashes, reflections, impossibilities.
The Crimson Feather Codex formed flame-wings behind him—he flew.
And then he drew the Hollow Whisper.
Everything stopped.
The world lost color.
He struck once.
Ten enemies fell without a mark—their intent erased.
He knelt, breath stolen. A tear rolled down his cheek.
He did not know why.
But something dear was gone.
And in the silence, the Pact withdrew.
Atop the dais, the seven blades floated around him.
Not as weapons, but as witnesses.
He had claimed them.
Endured their tests.
But ahead lay the final three.
And one of them—the blade known as Vyrakar—was wielded not by a monk or guardian, but by a traitor hero of the old dynasties.
A warrior who once stood beside Li Shen's ancestor.
And betrayed them all.
The only path forward now led across the Crimson Waste—a desert where past and present bled together, and time walked in circles.
Li Shen wrapped his cloak tightly and looked toward the rising light of a sun that did not warm.
He had silence.
He had steel.
He had loss.
But he had not yet stopped walking.