The Archive Tree shimmered in the twilight of the Vale, its limbs curling upward like the fingers of a slumbering god. Li Shen stood at its base, the newly-formed Sērahn's Echo resting in his grip—a blade like a ribbon of night sky, its edge marked by constellations that flickered with forgotten truths.
When he moved it, the stars upon it shifted. Not reflected, not etched—but alive.
The Eidolon Blade and Ocean Soul Blade hung heavy at his sides, but silent.
Only Sērahn's Echo whispered now.
And it whispered of danger.
A sudden chill passed through the ruins. The wind died, then reversed. The stars above flickered like failing lanterns.
A shadow rose beyond the Archive Tree—first one, then five.
Black-cloaked figures stepped from fractured rifts in the sky itself, their movements tearing thin slashes through the world.
They did not walk.
They unraveled into place.
At their center stood a tall figure—clad in layered robes stitched with bones of birds and moths. His mask was glass, filled with slow-turning smoke. From his back grew what appeared to be a withered spine—each vertebra carved with runes that shimmered crimson.
Li Shen had heard of him in whispers.
Vaelith the Severant.
One of the Hollow Council's twelve sorcerous generals.
A Voidspine Warlock.
"You carry what should never have been awakened," Vaelith said, his voice both echo and absence. "The Astral Blade was buried for a reason."
Li Shen raised Sērahn's Echo. "Then you came to take it."
"No," Vaelith said, stepping forward. "I came to erase you."
The rift behind Vaelith split wider—releasing six shadowblades stitched from curses and regret. Each floated like a predator above his acolytes, drawn to Li Shen's life-force.
They attacked as one.
Li Shen vanished.
With a thought, Sērahn's Echo twisted space around him.
He reappeared behind the nearest acolyte and struck with Starborn Form: Comet Spiral—his blade becoming a helix of silver light that spiraled upward before crashing down. The acolyte screamed as the stars burned through him, unraveling his body into motes of stardust.
But the other five were already mid-incantation.
"Null Aria."
Chains of silence lashed toward Li Shen—ropes of magic designed to sever thought from intent.
He countered with the Ocean Soul Blade's Ninth Form: Moonlight Undertow, slashing upward and sending a wave of rippling water into the air. The spell dissolved in its tide, refracted into harmless droplets.
But the moment of defense cost him.
Vaelith moved.
And the sky broke.
A chunk of the heavens above cracked and fell like a mirror, reflecting an inverted battlefield. Within it, a copy of Li Shen fell screaming toward the ground.
"You are already fighting your echo," Vaelith intoned.
From the mirror-sky, a copy of Li Shen landed—wearing his face, wielding his blades.
But it had no soul.
Only calculation.
III. Duel of the Selfless and the Hollow
The echo struck first with Mirror Vale's Seventh Reflection: Serpent Splinter—a twisting sequence of multi-angled cuts.
Li Shen met it head-on.
Eidolon Blade: Second Veil – Void Memory Pulse.
A ring of unlight expanded, erasing the air between them.
The blades clashed in silence. Neither bled, neither yielded.
It was not skill that decided the duel—but spirit.
The echo had perfect form, but no reason.
Li Shen remembered why he fought.
Not for power.
Not for legacy.
But for freedom—from the fate his ancestors had surrendered to.
With a defiant roar, he leapt high and crossed all three blades—Ocean Soul, Eidolon, and Sērahn's Echo—into one rising strike:
Trinity Cut: Soul, Shadow, Star.
It carved a sigil of brilliance into the sky, severing the echo clean through the heart. The mirror above shattered. The ground trembled.
And Vaelith finally drew his own blade.
A jagged, blackened thing made of grief.
Vaelith spoke no words.
His blade moved with the weight of centuries—each swing undid a law of reality.
Time slowed. Colors bled. Mountains in the distance flickered between past and future.
Li Shen met him with all he had.
Sērahn's Echo: Second Starfall Form – Celestial Lattice.
The stars on his blade aligned mid-strike, forming a glowing cage around Vaelith—binding his movement within collapsing constellations.
But the warlock laughed.
"Child of light. I was born before your stars even learned to shine."
His own blade shattered the lattice.
It was then, desperate, that Li Shen let go of restraint.
He plunged Eidolon into his own shadow.
"Third Veil—Ash of the Unspoken."
Black fire roared around him. Eidolon fed on fear, on memory, on the void itself.
And through it all, Sērahn's Echo did not scream.
It sang.
Li Shen merged the starlight and the void into a final technique:
Eclipse Draw: Last Light of the Falling Heaven.
A single draw-cut.
But it sliced the world sideways.
The rift behind Vaelith collapsed in a scream of unmade souls.
The warlock fell, his spine-blade shattering into salt and smoke.
The Vale was still.
Yara appeared at Li Shen's side as the sky mended.
"You defeated a general of the Hollow Council," she whispered. "But you've marked yourself now."
"What do you mean?"
"They will send someone worse. Someone who remembers the First Dusk."
She looked to the east—where a new storm was brewing, far beyond the stars.
And Li Shen felt it too.
A breath. A shadow.
Something older than the Hollow Council.
Something that had once ruled the sky—and wanted it back.