The staircase spiraled downward, carved from black volcanic stone. Each step Li Shen took felt heavier than the last—not with fatigue, but with weightless memory, like unseen hands dragging his thoughts back through time.
The Veiled Hollow was not a place; it was a wound in reality.
Torches set into the walls burned without fire—blue flames dancing inside mirrored glass. As Li Shen descended, whispers stirred in the silence. They weren't in any tongue he knew, yet their meaning was clear:
"The traitor waits. And so does truth."
He gripped the hilt of the Mirror Vale Blade, not for comfort, but to ground himself. Around him, the walls wept with old visions—moments looped endlessly: monks dying with smiles, cities turned to salt, a child torn from his cradle and marked with flame.
His flame.
Li Shen's jaw clenched.
He reached the bottom. The Hollow opened into a vast chamber of floating platforms, suspended by chains that vanished into fog. Gravity twisted. Time ticked backwards in bursts. The center of the hollow was a shrine of broken swords, and atop its dais stood a figure.
Cloaked in dusksteel. The traitor.
The traitor's voice echoed before his mouth moved.
"You carry the weight of seven blades. But you lack the only one that matters."
From his back, he drew it.
Vyrakar.
The Blade of Ruin.
A sword forged from the moment of betrayal itself, its edge shimmered with reversed entropy. Sparks drifted upward, time-flawed and flickering.
Li Shen took a breath. And stepped forward.
"I don't need it to defeat you."
The traitor raised Vyrakar, and the Hollow howled.
They clashed.
Li Shen's first move was swift—Eidolon Blade drawn, he slashed horizontally, feinting a ghost trail to circle the traitor's side. The traitor twisted, deflecting with Vyrakar.
But the world stuttered.
The moment rewound—and Li Shen's strike missed, though he had just seen it land.
Vyrakar didn't block.
It unmade.
Li Shen shifted, drawing Ocean Soul, its water-wrapped edge spiraling like a tide. He danced, weaving between platforms. A blade song unlike any echoed through the Hollow.
Riptide Form: Thousand-Fold Surge.
A wave of phantom steel crashed forward, washing over the traitor. Stone shattered. Mist whirled.
But Vyrakar carved through it, each slash undoing the strike before it happened.
Time twisted again.
Li Shen dropped into the Mirror Step—an evasive technique drawn from his days under the Vale Master. He mirrored backward through himself, reappearing behind the traitor with the Crimson Feather Codex drawn, fire and scripture spiraling from its edge.
He struck—
—but Vyrakar split the flame, and the Codex flickered, dimming.
Then the traitor finally spoke.
"You still don't understand. This isn't just a duel. It's the reckoning of your line."
A burst of force hurled Li Shen from the platform. He hit another, rolled, and skidded to a stop.
The traitor lifted his helm.
And Li Shen saw his own face.
Older. Weathered. But unmistakable.
"I am what you become… should you claim the final blade."
Li Shen's heart pounded. "What are you talking about?"
The traitor—his future self—stepped down from the dais, Vyrakar still humming.
"There is an eighth sword, Shen. Hidden beneath the Sea of Echoes. It's bound to our soul, and it was sealed for a reason. Because whoever draws it becomes this."
He gestured to the Hollow. To the reversed moments. The undone truths.
"You don't defeat the Hollow Council by outlasting them. You defeat them by becoming their mirror."
Li Shen stood.
And drew all seven of his blades.
He planted them in a circle around him, and light pulsed upward—a seal formed not of scripture, but of resolve.
"Then I'll rewrite fate. Not unmake it."
He raised the Phoenix Manuscript, its pages glowing.
"Seven styles. One will. Bound by choice, not destiny."
The Hollow cracked. The traitor charged.
And Li Shen met him with all the fire of a forgotten empire.
Steel clashed. Magic roared.
Each blow from Vyrakar tried to erase Li Shen's strikes, but the Ocean Soul Blade adapted. Each time-skip was countered with Mirror Vale foresight. The Eidolon Blade echoed phantom cuts across moments the traitor thought secure.
Then—Li Shen stabbed downward with the Phoenix Manuscript blade.
Not into his enemy.
But into the ground beneath the dais.
The Hollow screamed.
And the truth was revealed.
A second altar, beneath the first—hidden in a fold of reality.
Upon it: a blade untouched by age. Sealed in chains of memory.
The Blade of Origin.
And a name: Li Soryan—the first of his line.
Li Shen turned.
The traitor was already fading. His face softened.
"You found it. Then maybe… you'll be better."
He dissolved.
And Li Shen stood alone, his breath heavy, his hands shaking.
The Hollow cracked. Collapsed. But Li Shen emerged from it—blades re-sheathed, steps steady.
The Blade of Origin still sealed.
For now.
Outside, the Crimson Waste shimmered.
And in the skies beyond, the Ashen Pact stirred. Across the world, echoes of the battle within the Hollow reached seers and swordmasters. One in particular—Grand Strategist Xu of the Hollow Council—opened her blind eyes and whispered:
"He has seen the eighth."
The game had changed.
And Li Shen knew…
The next journey would take him not only across realms—but into the Sea of Echoes, where the Blade of Origin was once cast into time itself.