Emotions, in the Celestial Realm, were considered dangerous.
Not the soft ones — affection, amusement, duty — those were allowed, even expected, in moderation.
But love? Jealousy? Desire?
"Untamed hearts lead to broken realms."
So said the Divine Order.
So echoed the whispers now circling the edges of the heavens, carried on the wind like pollen laced with fire.
Somewhere north of the Jade Crescent Sky, past cloud bridges and halls carved from meteorite marble, a silver palace floated — proud and frigid.
And within it, she stood.
Xue Ran.
Immortal of Winter, Heiress of the Frozen Court, and the woman the heavens had once whispered would be Mo Yujin's destined match.
She had waited for centuries.
Watched him retreat from battlefields.Watched him bury himself in silence.Watched every immortal — god and goddess — fail to reach him.
And she had been patient.
Because she believed that no flame could melt the ice around him except hers.
But now…
Her reflection stared back at her in the frozen mirror — delicate, pale, perfect — and she saw what she had never seen before in her own eyes:
Jealousy.
Not of power.
But of a girl.
A no-name, clumsy, common-sect girl.
A girl who had fallen — not risen — and still been caught.
Xue Ran turned from the mirror, frost trailing behind her silk robes.
"Find her," she told her attendants."I want to know everything."
🌌 Meanwhile — in the Eastern Sky
The ruins had grown quiet again.
But the well no longer slept.
A steady hum radiated from it now, subtle but constant — the sound of unsealed memory, of a gate no longer locked.
Lian Qiao sat cross-legged nearby, flames flickering gently across her fingertips as she practiced containing the raw energy now awake in her body.
It wasn't easy.
It itched — like lightning dancing under her skin, like emotion barely leashed.
She had burned through two robes already. Accidentally.
Mo Yujin, observing her from a short distance, had said nothing — only summoned wind to extinguish the fires each time.
Finally, she snapped her eyes open and grumbled, "You could at least pretend I'm doing better."
"You're not," he said flatly.
She turned, indignant. "Excuse me?! I didn't explode this time!"
"You set the statue's eyebrows on fire."
She whirled around to see the stone guardian at the edge of the ruins now bearing the unmistakable scorch marks of a very unfortunate accident.
She winced. "Okay, fair."
But Yujin wasn't teasing.
His gaze was focused on her hands. Not the flames — but what they were trying to form.
"You're remembering faster than expected," he said.
She looked at her fingers. The flames now curled in loops — the early shapes of sigil weaving, an art long forbidden.
"I don't know how I know this," she whispered.
"You do," he said. "Because you always have."
He stepped closer. She stilled.
"You were born of divine rebellion," he murmured. "Your soul remembers what your mind cannot."
She looked up at him — at the face that had once been her greatest weakness and her greatest strength.
"And you?" she asked. "What do you remember?"
A pause.
Then, Mo Yujin's eyes glowed faintly — and from the folds of his robes, he drew something long and wrapped in black silk.
He unbound it.
A sword.
Elegant. Ancient. Sleeping.
Frostbane.
He held it out. Not toward her. Between them.
"I have not drawn this blade since you died," he said.
Qiao swallowed, sensing the shift in the air.
"And now?" she whispered.
He met her eyes — calm, clear, and unreadable.
"Now it stirs for you."
The sword began to pulse — softly. Not violently. Not in warning.
In recognition.
Far above them, in the Tower of Realm Signals, a bell tolled.
The guardians turned toward each other in alarm.
"The Blade of War… has awakened.""After ten thousand years…""Then the Fire and Ice shall soon collide."