Snow drifted silently across the northern ridge of the Withered Vale as Lin Xue descended from the broken skies. The second flame pulsed within her, not as a source of power, but as a slow-burning truth. Her every step left imprints of memory upon the earth, forgotten whispers rising where she passed.
But far from her, in the Blackfeather Province—where ravens screamed and the sun never fully rose—a figure sat before a cracked mirror. His face remained unseen beneath a crown of obsidian feathers. Around him, talismans hung like corpses from skeletal branches, swaying not with the wind, but in rhythm with breath.
The man in crow feathers was once called Ji Wuxian—the last Shadow Reader of the Ebon Library. But that name had died when he opened the Book of Null Prophecies and saw a future he should not have.
"She walks it," he whispered, watching as a wisp of memory curled into the mirror. Lin Xue, standing defiant atop the Severed Heavens Platform. "She burns what cannot be spoken."
Behind him, the coffin cracked again. A pale hand twitched against the frost.
Lin Xue reached a border village cloaked in silence. No birds. No laughter. Only eyes watching from behind papered windows.
The villagers recoiled when she entered. One elder muttered, "You smell of… him."
"Of whom?" she asked.
"Of the Tyrant."
A child stepped forward, clutching a wooden toy sword. "He once saved us. But the heavens said we must forget."
Lin Xue knelt. "Then remember. Tell me what he did."
As the child spoke, her flame flared softly. The house behind them cracked—a sealed shrine revealing a mural of Yan Zhuo shielding villagers from divine lightning.
At night, the old woman who wept in Chapter 17 arrived quietly. Her name was revealed: Mistress Ning, Yan Zhuo's last human disciple. Her body was frail, her qi flickering.
She offered Lin Xue a map drawn in blood and ink.
"It's not a place," she rasped. "It's a moment. Buried in time."
Lin Xue studied the map. It showed an impossible realm: a floating tomb orbiting three suns, locked in a time stasis. At its center: the words "Ashen Crown of the Forgotten Emperor."
Meanwhile, Ji Wuxian burned another feather. A vision flooded his sight:
Lin Xue walking into the Tomb of Ash.
A boy with golden eyes holding a broken jade talisman.
A gate of chains shaped like human arms.
And behind it all—a figure watching from a mirror, whose face was her own.
He trembled. "She's not just the heir. She's the fracture."
From the coffin, a voice whispered hoarsely:
"Then prepare the Third Flame."
And the man in crow feathers began to weep—not from sorrow, but remembrance.
Lin Xue did not know yet what lay ahead. Only that the flames would not stop.
And neither would she.