Smoke still curled above the broken stars.
Li Shen stood in silence where the Hollow King had fallen, at the edge of existence where sky and soul unraveled. The final blade rested across his back — nameless still, but no longer hollow. The wind here did not move unless remembered. And so he remembered it: warm, spring-scented, and carrying voices from a land that had nearly forgotten how to sing.
Behind him, Rin watched the dying horizon flicker with light again for the first time in centuries. Her hair was matted with sweat and blood, but her eyes were alive, and her sword glowed faintly with residual chi from the mirrored heavens they had passed through.
They had won.
But they had not yet returned.
The Gate to World's End had collapsed in their wake, sealed behind by the death of the Crown. The bridge of sword hilts that had led them across the edge of the cosmos was now gone — unmade, like so much else in the Hollow King's wake.
Li Shen knelt and touched the ground. Or rather, the memory of it. His chi sank downward, brushing something old, something kindled by fire.
A seed.
He exhaled and let the Living Flame answer.
A golden lotus bloomed beneath his hand. Real, solid, warm — and for the first time, not drawn from an ancient blade style or secret cultivation scroll. It was born of choice, of grief, of renewal.
That was when the Song began.
It did not come from Li Shen.
It came from the land itself.
A low, resonant hum that grew with each breath. Mountains long turned to ash began to stir in the deep, unfurling from slumber. Forgotten rivers began to dream again. Across the veiled distance, cities that had fallen began to stir with lights unseen in generations.
The Living Flame — the last and oldest fragment of primordial chi — had awakened.
Not as a weapon.
As a witness.
And as it awakened, it began calling across the fractured ley-lines of the world, reaching into every corner where the Hollow King's curse had once taken root. But fire, even sacred, spreads without discrimination.
Rin felt it first — her blade beginning to vibrate violently in its sheath, the mirrored surface of the sword now reflecting not her own face, but a thousand flickering flames.
"Li Shen…" she whispered. "Something else is stirring. Beneath."
He already knew.
Far below the mortal plane, beneath the old bones of the Mountains of Dying Echoes, a presence stirred. Bound for millennia beneath soulsteel chains, The Ashen Wyrm — ancient enemy of flame and light — began to shift.
It had slept through the reign of the Hollow King, sensing no challenge worth rising to.
But the Song of the Living Flame was not a challenge.
It was an invitation.
A forgotten firebrand carved into the roots of the world cracked open. Molten light spilled from the base of the world.
The wyrm opened one of its eyes — vast, lidless, the color of sunken blood.
And it smiled.
Li Shen and Rin crossed through what remained of the Starless Crossing, carving new roads as they walked. Each step they took sang with chi that did not belong to any of the Five Great Sects. This was older than sects. Older than sword styles. It was Origin Flame, and it changed the world wherever it passed.
Forests regrew in hours. Forgotten beasts stirred from petrified silence. Old swords buried in sorrow rose from graves, their edges singing once more.
But the fire also burned.
In the city of Yoreharbor, the monks of the Ink Veil Temple fell to their knees as scrolls written in soulscript burst into flame. In the high cliffs of Karthen's Breath, an entire shrine collapsed under the sudden flowering of chi too pure to contain. Messages began reaching Li Shen in dream and whisper:
"The Hollow King is gone... but the fire you've lit is too great."
"The Living Flame has no master."
"The Wyrm remembers. It comes."
He could not unlight the flame.
So he would forge it.
They reached the Silent Spire, where Baelin had once trained — and where the remaining masters of the Wayless Path had gathered in preparation for whatever came next. Among them were surviving members of the Phoenix Monastery, disciples of the Broken Lotus Sect, and even a few wandering blade hermits who had once denied the call to war.
They all bowed when Li Shen entered.
Not to the blade he carried.
But to the fire in his step.
Baelin had survived — barely — and stood leaning on a staff carved from dreamwood. His beard had grown unruly, and his robes now shimmered with dozens of unseen sealmarks, constantly rewriting his lifeforce into temporary wholeness.
"You've brought us a new war," Baelin said without bitterness. "Or perhaps an old one we buried too deep."
Li Shen bowed deeply. "I brought what the Hollow King could not destroy."
Baelin smiled, weary. "Then we'd best survive it."
Preparations for the final stand began at once.
The Song of the Living Flame continued to awaken weapons, secrets, and artifacts long buried in grief. The Sky-Piercer Fang — a blade lost in the Collapse of the 5th Heaven — returned, embedded in a fallen meteor. The Bell of Resounding Names, once used to seal the gates of immortality, began to ring across forgotten valleys.
But none of it would matter without the core.
The flame needed an anchor — a vessel not of steel or soul, but of choice.
And Li Shen, for all his mastery, knew he could not hold it alone.
He turned to Rin.
"Walk with me," he said, and she followed.
They stood beneath the Weeping Lantern Tree, where legends said the First Sword once surrendered his blade in exchange for peace.
Li Shen offered her the second half of the Living Flame — a spark pulled from his own core.
Not as a gift.
As a bond.
"You don't need to carry this," he said. "But if we're to win — we need more than one sword. We need a song."
She nodded.
And together, they lit the world again.
But deep beneath the roots of flame and soil, the Ashen Wyrm broke free.
Its body spanned entire continents.
Its breath was extinction.
Its first roar shattered every mirror in the world.
Its second cracked the moon.
And it flew — toward the light that had awakened it.
Toward Li Shen.
Toward war.