The skies above the broken citadel churned with unnatural winds. Shattered spires lay like fallen titans, their stone bones jutting skyward. Ash drifted through the air—embers of a dying war—while the remnants of the Hollow King's magic bled into the fabric of the world.
Li Shen stood alone at the summit of the ruin, his breath slow, the seven blades humming at his back like a chorus of dragons. Around him, the battleground where the Inner Circle had fallen still crackled with residual energy—runes burned into the stones, fissures glowing with dying light.
Yet something deeper stirred beneath.
The sky darkened.
The world pulsed.
And in that silence, he heard the song.
Not a melody of beauty or memory, but something older. Something primordial. A sword-song that hadn't been sung in ten thousand years.
He turned. The final gate, hidden beneath the throne chamber of the Hollow King, now crumbled inward—revealing a wound in the world, a rift into the forgotten chamber where the Eighth Sword was entombed.
A blade not forged, but brought into being by the death of stars.
The monks of Nyakan once whispered of it:
"When the world forgets itself, when time unravels, the Eighth shall be found. Not to defend. Not to avenge. But to end."
Li Shen stepped through the gate, the final steps of a long road etched into his soul. Each footfall echoed with memories—his master's quiet death, the laughter of the Phoenix Monks, the cruel dance of the Hollow Council. He had climbed the Waking Wilds, bled in the Sapphire Reach, and carved through the Sea of Ash.
Now, beneath the earth, time seemed to bleed sideways. The walls were obsidian glass, and beneath their surface swam fragments of lives that never were.
Visions flickered in the mirrored stone:
A version of himself who joined the Hollow King.
Another where he never left the Silent Spire.
One where he died in the Vale of Mirrors.
All fates... but not this one.
Ahead, an altar of black jade. Floating above it, a sword suspended in a cocoon of crackling white-gold lightning. Not a blade of steel or storm or soul—but of pure finality.
He approached.
The cocoon cracked.
The blade fell.
And the cavern trembled.
The Final Blade – Nirujin, the Endborn
Li Shen caught it, and time screamed.
The sword was weightless yet infinite, humming with the sorrow of unmade worlds. As he gripped its handle, the other swords at his back dimmed—as if paying reverence. The Ocean Soul Blade, the Mirror Vale Blade, even Sērahn's Echo—all bowed to Nirujin.
An ancient voice echoed in his mind.
"You are not meant to wield me."
"And yet," he whispered aloud, "there's no one left who can."
The Hollow King's Return
From the distant tower, a flare of shadow erupted.
The Hollow King, or what remained of him, coalesced in the skies above the citadel. A crown of ruin. Wings of void. A cloak made from regrets. His voice, when it returned, shook the very laws of being.
"You found it. The Eighth. Then it is time."
Li Shen leapt from the altar as the ceiling collapsed, landing in the center of the broken courtyard. Wind swirled as the Hollow King descended, massive as a god, less a man and more a wound in reality.
Lightning crackled from Nirujin. Not white. Not gold. But a color that could not be named, drawn from the last moment of all things.
The Hollow King attacked, shadow blades lashing like comets.
Li Shen parried with the Mirror Vale Blade, deflected with Sērahn's Echo, countered with the Ocean Soul—and then drove Nirujin forward.
The first strike from Nirujin didn't cut. It unwrote. A portion of the Hollow King vanished—not destroyed, but as if it had never been.
The Hollow King roared.
"That blade… it does not belong to this age!"
Li Shen's answer was silence.
The duel that followed was more than swordplay—it was existence against erasure, eternity against closure. Each clash rewrote the battlefield. Mountains formed and shattered. Rivers boiled and reversed. Time spasmed.
But Li Shen did not falter.
Each breath was perfect form. Each movement, a prayer to every master before him.
And when the final moment came, as the Hollow King raised a storm of a thousand screams—
—Li Shen moved once.
Only once.
Nirujin pierced through shadow, through immortality, through all the King's stolen time—
—and ended him.
Aftermath
When the dust settled, the citadel was gone.
In its place, a stillness. A valley of silence, where no bird would fly and no echo would return. A mark upon the world, a scar made by a sword that ended more than a man.
Li Shen stood alone at the center. The blades were silent. Nirujin hummed softly at his side, and he knew its nature now:
It was not a weapon.
It was a farewell.
And soon, it would claim him too.
But not yet.
Not before he returned to the world and saw it heal.