"Do not fear the dragon who breathes fire. Fear the one who breathes memory."
— Old Murim proverb, scratched into the ribs of a dead saint
🐉 Beneath the Ice
Far below the northern tundras—deeper than light could touch, deeper than even silence dared descend—a cavern of bone and crystal stirred.
Its walls pulsed with runes that glowed softly in time with breath.
And at the center of this ancient hollow, wrapped around a pillar of glassized blood, lay Vaer'Yuul the Rememberer.
He was not the largest of dragons.
Nor the fiercest.
But he was the one that all others bowed to—because he remembered everything.
Every war.
Every betrayal.
Every vow made and broken.
Every soul that had fallen into the Hollow Realms without a name.
He opened one eye.
"The boy has touched too many memories," the dragon whispered to no one.
"And they've begun to touch him back."
With that, Vaer'Yuul lifted his tail, carved with the Scripture of Sorrows, and struck the cavern roof.
Across the realms, a thousand soul-scrolls unrolled, wherever history had been sealed.
🏞️ On the Frozen Vein
Jin fell to one knee, gasping.
"It's begun," he whispered.
Above his chest, an unseen flame shimmered into the form of three intertwining dragons. Their shapes did not burn—they bled time itself.
Lin Xue stepped forward.
"I thought you said only one would awaken."
"I thought wrong," Jin said, his voice shaking.
"Vaer'Yuul doesn't just awaken. He summons."
From the sky, shards of frozen parchment began to fall.
Each one held a name, a date, and a location.
War logs.
Dragon-written commands.
History manifesting as prophecy.
One drifted to Jin's hand.
📜 The War That Never Was
He read it.
A single line:
"In the 17th Cycle of the Hollow Realms, Jin of No Name struck down the Sky-Tyrant of the 12th Court, undoing the pact of flame and silence."
"I never did this," Jin muttered.
"Not yet," Lin Xue corrected.
"But the dragon has written it. Which means the realms will try to make it happen."
"Then the future is being… rewritten?"
Ash-Eye nodded.
"No. Not rewritten. Recalled. By a dragon who forgets nothing."
💀 Across the Realms — Sects React
In the Western Gravetide, the Bone-Pyre Cult screamed as all their tombs unsealed. The war memories of their ancestors spilled into the air, infecting the minds of their young.
In the Southern Lowlands, the Verdant Bell Sect wept as their sacred flowers turned black, blooming the faces of the warriors they had lost to an unwritten war.
And in the Eastern Emberfold, the Flame-Spiral Fortress crumbled under the weight of false memories—battles that hadn't happened yet, but were now being remembered as if they had.
The Hollow Realms were becoming unstuck.
Time was becoming fractured.
🌌 Vaer'Yuul's Oath
Inside his cavern, Vaer'Yuul rose.
He lifted a claw and drew a symbol into the stone:
☰ — The Oath of Returning Cycles
"This Jin has defied the script," the dragon said.
"Yet holds the memory of countless selves."
He closed his eyes.
"He shall be tested. If he survives, he shall write his own war."
The dragon roared—not with sound, but with remembrance.
Mountains cracked. Rivers reversed. Entire libraries caught fire, not from heat—but from relevance.
Jin had been written into the Record of Wars.
Now, every war in history would begin hunting for his name.
⛰️ Back on the Road: Decision
Su Ren approached Jin. Her armor was cracked. Her eyes tired.
"If all of history is now watching you, then where do we go?"
Jin looked up at the sky.
Shadows of other selves flickered in the clouds—some noble, others monstrous.
"We go to the Hollow Crown," he said.
"That's suicide," Ash-Eye hissed.
"That's where the Dragon Courts meet. Where war begins."
"Exactly."
Jin lifted the parchment Vaer'Yuul had given him.
"If we don't get there first, someone else will try to rewrite the war."
📍 Closing: The Hollow Crown Stirs
Far to the center of the world, atop a floating plateau wrapped in jade lightning, a horn blew for the first time in five thousand years.
The Hollow Crown—seat of the true Dragon Gathering—was opening its gates.
And only those written into the Record of Wars would be allowed to enter.