> Location: Emberveil – Inner Healing Hall, beneath the Monolith Core
Time Since the Choir's Retreat: 2 Hours
The flame within Emberveil hadn't calmed.
If anything, it burned brighter now.
But it wasn't rage or war.
It was memory—old threads surfacing, rebinding.
And at the center of it, resting in the flickering shadow of the Monolith Core, was Xia Zhi.
The girl who sang.
The girl who refused to forget.
---
"I Wasn't Born in Silence"
Jiang sat across from her, Tian Xue beside him, Su Lian gently rethreading energy across Xia Zhi's arms where ghost-chains had once lived.
Xia Zhi's eyes were brighter now—less glass, more starlight.
> "They erased me when I was ten," she said. "Stripped my thread identity. Made me sing against myself. But my flame kept a spark buried… a seed."
> "A voice?" Tian Xue asked.
> "A memory," she said. "A boy. He told me: 'You're not broken. You're just early.'"
Su Lian froze. "I know that line."
They all did.
It was something Long Chen once said, recorded only in old system shards.
---
The Forgotten Flame
Xia Zhi raised her hand and let her flame manifest.
It didn't burn like Sovereign threads.
It didn't spiral like Jiang's chaos.
It shimmered in layers—overlapping images, flickers of lives she didn't live but still remembered.
Jiang leaned forward.
"What is that?"
She hesitated. "It's called the Echoframe Flame. It stores memory across timelines. Not just mine."
Jiang's breath caught.
Timelines?
Su Lian stepped closer. "That's… pre-Sovereign structure. Ancient weave format. They purged that centuries ago."
Xia Zhi nodded.
"But not all of it. My brother kept pieces. And hid them… in me."
---
The Prophecy Burned Into Her
She opened her palm.
And a glyph burned into the air—not one Jiang recognized.
It curved and folded, like a loop trying to remember its start.
And a voice—not hers—spoke from it, low and deep, like an echo from under the world:
> "When the chaosflame finds its echo, the universe will burn clean—then choose anew."
Silence.
Jiang met Xia Zhi's gaze.
"You think that's me."
"I think it was always going to be you."
Tian Xue stood.
"And now they'll come for her," she said. "Harder than ever."
Xia Zhi smiled faintly.
"They already are."
---
Final Scene – Sovereign Edict Unfolds
Far away, in the Crownreach—the tallest spire in the Sovereign Domain—three High Sovereigns sat in a triangle of starfire.
A lesser figure approached and bowed low.
> "Revision Choir has failed."
> "Subject Xia Zhi defected."
> "Echoframe Flame has activated."
The eldest Sovereign rose.
Then spoke one word.
> "Invoke Edict: Skycleave."
> "Erase the Nexus. Collapse all pathways. Cut the song before it spreads."