"In every realm, there exists a flower that blooms only from betrayal. It feeds not on water—but memory, blood, and shattered oaths."
— Sutra of Severed Bonds, Verse 13
🌫️ The Hollow Crown's True Heart
Beneath the surface chamber where dragon spirits wept and remembered, Jin descended deeper—guided not by torches, but by the faint glowing sigils stitched into his soul during the Crown's judgment.
The air grew thick.
Not from pressure—but from intersecting realities.
Each step down the spiral path passed through a thin veil of another possibility—like pages in a book where fate had been written differently.
In one flash, he saw himself seated upon a throne of bones.
In another, he was screaming, crucified in the sky by golden chains.
In another still, he was a child… holding a lotus dripping with blood.
"The Blood Lotus…" Jin whispered.
The visions converged.
And before him bloomed the thing that should never grow in this realm.
🌺 The Blooming
The Blood Lotus had thirteen petals.
Each petal pulsed with a soul.
It hovered above a bottomless pit—a wound in the world left open since the Fall of the Dragon-Blood Pact, a time even the Hollow Realms dared not speak of.
Its roots slithered into the void like veins, drinking not from soil but from the betrayals of those who had entered this place before Jin.
Floating before the lotus was a woman.
She wore robes of red and silver, her face hidden behind a cracked mirror mask.
"You have returned," she said, her voice like a whisper echoing through blood-soaked halls.
"I've never met you," Jin said.
"Not in this life," she replied. "But in another… you gave me my name."
Jin's eyes narrowed.
"Who are you?"
"I am the Keeper of the Pact," she said. "And you… are the Breaker."
💔 Memory Recovered: The Day Jin Sealed the Pact
The lotus pulsed, and a wave of memory slammed into Jin like an ocean of knives.
He staggered as the vision consumed him.
—
Another life. Another time.
Jin-Ra knelt on the crimson tiles of a shattered temple, surrounded by kneeling sect leaders and dragon avatars, their wings torn and bound in iron scripture.
At the center was the Blood Lotus.
He held a blade etched with vows in thirteen languages.
One by one, he slit his palm and dripped blood onto the petals.
"We seal this pact," he said. "So that the dragons may sleep and the sects may rule without them."
It was a decision made to end a war.
But the cost? Everything.
The dragons were bound.
The lotus fed.
And the sect leaders became immortal traitors, feeding the flower for eternity.
And Jin—he chose it.
Because back then, he believed peace was worth sacrificing truth.
—
"You sealed the pact," the masked woman said in the present.
"And now it blooms again. Because the Realms are once more at war."
🩸 The Pact Reoffers Itself
The lotus trembled, opening its final, forbidden 14th petal.
"If you sign again," she said, "you can end the coming wars. The dragons will sleep once more. The sects will forget. Peace will return."
Jin stared.
"And what's the cost?"
"The same as before: your memories, your flame, and the truth of the Hollow Realms. Your friends will forget you. The realms will begin anew. You will become the flame that flickers but never burns."
Lin Xue, Su Ren, and Ash-Eye stood at the edge of the abyss now, having descended behind him.
"Jin," Lin Xue said, voice tight, "don't do it."
"You already made that mistake once," Su Ren added.
Ash-Eye's hand hovered near his chainblade.
"If you sign it again, I'll kill you myself. For your own good."
Jin said nothing.
He looked at his hands.
They had signed this once before.
And the Realms still bled.
☯️ The Breaking of the Pact
"I won't seal this cycle," Jin whispered.
He raised his blade—the real one, not the vow-carver—and pointed it toward the lotus.
The flower pulsed, resisting.
Screams echoed from its roots—the sect leaders of old, their immortal bloodlines bound to its growth.
"You would unbind the Realms?" the Keeper asked, her mirror mask now cracking.
"No," Jin said.
"I will let them remember."
He stabbed the lotus.
The world went red.
🌩️ Realmquake
The Hollow Crown screamed.
Lightning surged through every land—north, east, south, and west.
Dragon seals cracked.
Sects stirred as forbidden banners returned to their halls.
Even across the void seas, distant realms looked up, sensing the shift.
The pact was broken.
And memory was returning to the world.
The dragons would wake.
The forgotten wars would begin again.
But now, Jin would face them as himself.
🐉 The Eyes of the Past Begin to Watch
In the sky, twelve great dragon constellations opened their eyes.
One turned its gaze toward Jin.
And somewhere far, far away—in the Southern Necro-Lotus Sect, buried in silence for a thousand years—a bell rang.
DONG.
Its sound awakened a cultivator who had once dueled Jin-Ra in a battle that split an island in two.
"He returns," the cultivator said.
"The cycle is shattering."