"When history rewrites itself, ghosts are not the only things that return. Entire sects crawl out of the forgotten cracks."
— The Forbidden Commentary on the Hollow Realms
🌌 The Memory Ripple Expands
In the aftermath of Vaer'Yuul's roar, the ripple of remembrance swept across the Hollow Realms like a second sun breaking across a storm-torn sky.
Where silence had reigned, now there were names.
Where graves had rested, now there were banners.
Where once only legends were whispered, now sect gates reappeared from thin air.
These were not new sects.
These were sects that had been erased from time itself—purged, censored, or buried in guilt.
Now, they rose again.
🏯 Flashback: Jin's Past Life — The Day of Thirteen Suns
In a burst of clarity, Jin collapsed.
His knees slammed against froststone.
Visions poured through him, not like dreams—but like a soul being forced to remember something it had sworn to forget.
A voice echoed inside him.
"The Day of Thirteen Suns… it was your fault."
And suddenly, he stood in another time—in another life.
Clad in the black and gold robes of the Celestial Phoenix Sect, he was surrounded by flames that did not burn, but cleansed memory.
Thirteen suns hovered in the sky.
Each one represented a sect of immortal cultivation origin.
And he—he was the executioner that struck them all down.
"I… I killed them?" Jin muttered in the present, stumbling to his feet.
"No… I erased them."
☯️ The Returning Sects: Echoes from Time's Abyss
Across the realm, reality bent.
And from the folds of distorted space, ancient sects blinked back into existence:
The Thousand-Path Sect, known for splitting their souls into multiple lives and gathering knowledge from every future.
The Shroudveil Palace, cultivators of disappearance, whose very name had been forgotten until now.
The Sect of Hollow Names, whose members all bore the faces of those they had once slain.
Each sect had been wiped from memory in previous cycles.
Each had returned now, with a vendetta against Jin.
Not because of who he was now…
But because of who he had been.
🏞️ On the Road to the Hollow Crown
Jin, Lin Xue, Su Ren, and Ash-Eye traveled under a sky now populated by floating sect emblems—symbols flickering in and out of reality, appearing like star constellations.
Lin Xue kept her gaze low.
"These sects… they shouldn't be here."
"They were supposed to be dead," Su Ren added.
"Their legacies were purged during the Fifth Reformation War. Even the scribes at Emberfold feared to write their names."
Ash-Eye spat on the ground.
"I once killed a man who spoke of the Shroudveil Palace. He begged me not to speak the name aloud. Said the silence alone was cursed."
Jin said nothing.
Because he remembered standing in front of that same palace… sword in hand… fire swallowing its sacred halls.
⚔️ Ambush: Ghosts of the Shroudveil
They were only a half-day from the Hollow Crown when mist rolled down the mountain like a living tongue.
Ash-Eye's chainblade snapped into motion—but too late.
Figures emerged.
No footsteps. No breathing. Only the scrape of void-weave robes.
The Shroudveil Sect.
Lin Xue gasped.
They weren't just ghost cultivators.
They were phasewalkers—beings who moved between seconds like thieves.
"We do not forgive," a voice whispered.
Jin didn't flinch.
"I didn't ask you to."
The air exploded into silent violence.
💥 Battle: The Soundless Execution
The Shroudveil attackers fought in erasure patterns.
Their blades moved not to kill—but to remove pieces of their enemy's identity.
Su Ren nearly lost her name in one strike.
Ash-Eye fell to one knee, blood pouring from his mouth as his past-life tattoo began vanishing from his skin.
Lin Xue screamed—then surged into a cold fury, her frost qi freezing time in tiny bursts to counteract the phasewalkers.
Jin faced their leader:
A masked figure named Grand Acolyte Yue, whose memory aura stank of betrayed legacies.
"You slaughtered our founding moon-priest," Yue hissed.
"Then devoured her echo to strengthen your flame."
"I remember that," Jin said solemnly.
"And I won't run from it."
He plunged his blade into his own chest—channeling the fractured memory outward.
A nova of searing light exploded—not flame, but guilt—weaponized.
The Shroudveil screamed.
The echoes fled.
The mist burned away into silence.
🌀 Aftermath: Jin's Reflection
Jin collapsed.
Ash-Eye caught him.
Lin Xue held his hand as Su Ren tried to cauterize the wound. The blade had missed vital organs—but memory bleeding was another matter.
"You fought your own past," Lin Xue whispered.
"And for now… you won."
Jin looked up at the mountain ahead.
The Hollow Crown floated above it—larger now, glowing with jade lightning and runes of sealed war.
"We'll reach it," he muttered.
"But what waits inside… may not just be dragons."
He clutched a broken emblem in his palm.
"It may be my own forgotten self."