Chapter 9: The Fate That Watches Itself
Frostveil was changing.
The others didn't say it, but they noticed. Shi Ruan, who had once shared meditation sessions with her under starlit fields, now barely received a glance. Lan Kuang, who had fought back-to-back with her against the Watchers, found his injuries left half-healed. Xue Bian's grave had been left untouched by memorial rites.
Even Jian felt it.
She would vanish for hours—sometimes entire days—without explanation. Her presence, once warm and spiritually vibrant, had become hollow. Conversations grew colder. Her laughter had vanished entirely.
One night, Jian found her standing alone on the edge of a dimensional cliff, eyes staring into an endless storm.
"Why are you drifting?" he asked, voice low.
She turned, but her gaze felt a thousand miles away. "You wouldn't understand."
He frowned. "Try me."
She didn't answer. Instead, she dissolved into spirit particles.
---
Weeks passed.
Reports of strange phenomena began flooding in. Sword Anchors across the universes started pulsing erratically. Fate threads—those intangible fibers of destiny sensed only by the greatest of cultivators—began twisting, coiling around nothing.
Then the ancient cultivator oracle, Shen Zu, was found dead.
His final message scrawled in blood and burning ink:
"The Fate That Watches Itself has awoken. She is no longer bound. She is the trap and the one trapped."
---
Jian confronted her on the 13th moon of the Lotus Realm.
"Frostveil," he said, eyes narrowed. "What did you do?"
She didn't flinch. "You still don't remember, do you?"
He blinked. "Remember what?"
A blade of fate appeared behind her—not made of metal or Dao, but of pure paradox.
"You found me as a weak spirit... but that was my design."
Jian froze.
"Not me in that moment. But me from the future.
Five years from now, after I ascend beyond the Soul Dao… I gain the Fate Dao. And then I found her—my past spirit self, broken and confused. I weaved her path so she'd meet you. I rewrote the threads of reality to ensure you found me, helped me, trusted me."
"Why?" he asked.
"Because we're not just fighting the gods," she said, her voice cracking like glass. "We're fighting something worse. Something beyond even them. Something that sees all timelines as entertainment. The only way to stop it... was to guide us into becoming weapons it couldn't predict."
Jian took a step back. "You manipulated everything? Even me?"
She nodded. "Even you. Especially you. Because you're the only one who can kill me when the time comes."
A long silence fell between them.
"You're saying you're becoming it?"
She looked away. "No. I'm saying... I already did."
The stars pulsed red.
In a chamber far away, a Sword Anchor cracked.
In the shadows of time, Jian from five years in the future opened his eyes.
"We weren't supposed to remember this soon," he whispered.
And then, somewhere in the web of fate, a thread snapped.
---
To be continued.