The Breath of the New World
The first city stood where the glass dunes had once stretched. Its walls of silver stone glimmered under dawn's strange new light, water threading through channels carved by Yuran's hands, murals blooming under Yexin's illusions, the outer edges guarded by Qingxue's ring of steel. What had begun as destruction had become something else — a hearth at the heart of ash.
But beginnings always draw eyes.
Beyond the horizon of green and mirrored sands, something older than the Eternals stirred. The continent had been carved around the Origin. Its guardians had fallen. But its currents — the living rivers of will that ran beneath the soil — had not.
The Whisper in the Roots
That night, while Hei Long and his women sat at the fire, the new grass rippled though there was no wind. The streams darkened. The murals on the walls shivered and shifted of their own accord, showing not phantom people but eyes, endless and watching.
