The Sea of Ash had gone still.
Not the peace of silence—but the breathless dread before an earthquake splits the earth. Li Shen stood upon a dune ridge, cloaked in the golden flames of the Crimson Feather Codex. Sand coiled in uneasy spirals around him, each gust too calculated, too symmetrical.
He could feel it.
Something vast stirred beneath the dunes.
Not just moving—rising.
The Ocean Soul Blade pulsed blue at his back, and Sērahn's Echo hummed with the pitch of stars screaming across dark skies. Even the Eidolon Blade trembled in its sheath.
Li Shen knelt and pressed his palm into the sand.
The earth whispered.
They left it behind when the Hollow King carved the thirteen citadels into tombs.
They buried it in the Wastes to forget its name.
But names remembered themselves.
A distant tremor cracked the horizon.
Then, the desert split.
From beneath the earth emerged a city—or what had once been one.
Massive spires of obsidian broke through the dunes like jagged ribs. A colossal hand clawed upward, fingers miles long, dragging a shattered cathedral of black iron and chains. It rose higher, dust swallowing the sky.
Li Shen watched as the creature revealed itself.
A Hollow Titan—a relic of the old wars, forged by the Ashen Pact, cast into exile when its mind rebelled. Its body was made of broken temples, molten armor, bones of extinct dragons fused with cracked steel. Half its head was a bell tower that rang once, and the sky wept flame.
In its chest was a furnace where souls had once screamed.
And when it stood fully upright—its shadow covered the entire Sea of Ash.
"WANDERING FLAME," it boomed. "HEIR OF REBIRTH. RETURN WHAT WAS NOT MEANT TO BE FOUND."
Li Shen narrowed his eyes.
"You are a relic of a lie. And I am the blade that burns away what festers in the bones of time."
He unsheathed the Ocean Soul Blade.
The Titan stepped forward.
Each stride shook the dunes and flattened mountains in the distance. Its right arm—a spire ending in a cracked cathedral bell—swung downward.
Li Shen launched upward, sword first, riding a pillar of rising steam created by the Ocean Soul: Sixth Current – Boiling Tide Pillar.
He met the bell-fist with a strike of blue light.
Crimson Feather Codex – Third Form: Wings of Rebirth.
A phoenix-shaped flame burst from his blade and collided with the tower-arm. Metal screamed. The Titan recoiled, bell ringing madly in dissonant agony.
Li Shen dropped low, using Mirror Vale Blade – Prism Bloom Style, creating illusions of himself across the battlefield. Twelve Li Shens appeared, each rushing from a different direction.
The Titan unleashed chains of black fire, sweeping the dunes.
Half the illusions died instantly. Two more were caught in the pull of the Titan's gravitational will.
But the real Li Shen blinked into position just behind its skull.
Eidolon Blade – Silent Gale Pierce.
He drove the sword through the side of its neck. A blast of ghostly wind erupted from within, fracturing the corrupted runes that fed the construct's thoughts.
The Titan staggered.
"You remember pain," Li Shen whispered. "Good. Then you'll remember fear."
The Titan roared and slammed both arms into the ground, creating a chasm of molten sand. Lava rose around them, summoned from the core of the Hollow Pact's buried forges.
From its chest, it opened the soul furnace.
Screaming spirits poured out—ashen warriors clad in forgotten armor, each wielding spectral weapons once blessed and cursed.
A dozen surrounded Li Shen mid-air.
He spun, switching to Sērahn's Echo: Final Radiant Waltz, summoning trails of starlight from his sword. Each movement tore the air, leaving behind shimmering arcs that obliterated the spirit-warriors on contact.
But they kept coming.
You cannot kill the dead forever.
Li Shen gritted his teeth and called upon the Codex again.
His body ignited—not with normal fire, but with the Divine Flame of the Undying Feather. Wings of ember unfurled from his back, ten feet wide, feathered in flame and glowing calligraphy.
He dove into the Titan's soul furnace.
The scream of spirits swallowed the sky.
Inside the furnace, the world became madness.
An entire battlefield existed within—a soul-world of broken memories. Thousands of figures fought endlessly, locked in war long forgotten.
The Codex burned away the illusion.
Li Shen dropped into the heart-chamber, where a single glowing core—shaped like an eye—pulsed.
It looked at him.
"I WAS A TEMPLE," the core said. "I WAS A HOME. I WAS A GOD."
"You're nothing now," Li Shen said. "And I am fire."
He stabbed the Crimson Feather Codex into the ground—not the scroll, but the idea of it, the flame within.
The chamber ignited.
Sacred fire, blue water, memory, and ghostlight collided. The core screamed. The soul chains cracked.
And the Hollow Titan collapsed above.
Li Shen emerged from the smoking ruin.
The Sea of Ash had become a crater of glass and ember. The wind was silent. Ash rained like snow.
In his hand, the Crimson Feather Codex now glowed faintly, as if content.
The Titan was no more.
But far, far to the east, he saw towers in the shape of thorns rising from the horizon.
Thornspire.
The last known bastion of the Hollow Council before the sealed continent.
He sheathed his blades.
And walked.