The moon hung pale over the outer sect courtyard, draped in mist like a secret waiting to be uncovered.
Mei Yao crouched near a shallow spring, her palm hovering over the surface. Ripples curled upward unnaturally, bending light around her fingers. She closed her eyes and whispered a silent mantra—not of fire, or sword, or spirit.
But of Unveiling.
The water stilled, then mirrored not her face, but another's—her brother's smug grin, the scorn in their father's eyes, the chain on her ankle during her punishment in the Cold Pavilion.
She flinched, but didn't pull away.
"Show me the truth they fear," she whispered.
The image shimmered, shifting. Her reflection stared back, but this time with burning golden eyes and a lotus-shaped seal on her brow. Power surged for a heartbeat—then snapped like a thread pulled too tight.
She gasped, falling backward, sweat dampening her collar.
Amon's voice drifted from behind a tree.
"You're getting closer."
She spun. "Were you watching?"
"Always."
He stepped into the moonlight, hands in his sleeves, half-lidded eyes gleaming like a scholar watching an experiment unfold.
"You saw it, didn't you?" Mei Yao asked. "That wasn't just memory. That was... potential."
Amon didn't answer directly. Instead, he glanced at the spring. "Water reflects, but it also distorts. The Dao you seek doesn't reveal truth. It reveals what's beneath truth."
"Isn't that the same thing?"
He smiled. "No. Not even close."
Later that night, Amon stood alone in the abandoned library, surrounded by decaying scrolls and forgotten manuals. His finger traced a diagram etched on an ancient wall: the Ten Heavenly Seals of the Dao.
"This world doesn't know the Pathways," he thought, "but it has its sequences. They just call them something else: Realms. Daos. Cores. Names are such fragile things."
He closed his eyes.
"The Fool..."
"Klein, you climbed higher than I did. Not because you were more clever, but because you accepted limitation as strength. You became the dream, the spirit, the unknowable."
"But I—I refused to be boxed in."
His hand tightened behind his back.
"They feared you because you watched."
"They feared me because Iacted."
"And now you sit on the throne I was meant to take."
"But this world doesn't know you. Or the Seers. Or the Fool Path. Only me."
A quiet laugh slipped from his lips.
"So I'll steal this world before you even learn its name."
At the same time, Shen Ziyao stood atop a flaming pillar in the inner sect's Sky Hall. Her Dao Flame burned gently in her palm—a lotus of truth, spinning without heat.
"Report," she said.
A junior disciple bowed low. "Another masked cultivator defeated Senior Brother Yang in the training ring today. He mirrored his exact technique, down to the footwork flaw."
"A mirror?" Her voice sharpened. "Or a lie?"
"We suspect illusion, but no trace remains."
Shen Ziyao turned toward the outer sect valley, where shadows hung like veils over the rooftops.
"Truth fears no light. But lies only grow in twilight."
She opened her palm. The lotus flared white-hot.
"Time to burn the veil."
Deep within the sect's inner sanctum, Elder Sun Zhen studied a mural depicting the Nine Divine Tribulations. His fingers hovered over the fifth trial—"Judgment by Mirrors."
He whispered, "A mask among us. One who walks unseen and borrows names."
Behind him, talismans fluttered to life, glowing with spirit-light.
"To catch a fox," he muttered, "you don't chase it."
He laid a scroll on the table—one bearing the seal of the Mirror of Heaven Trial.
"You set the trap. Let it think it's in control. And then you show it... what it truly is."
Back in the library, Amon turned as Mei Yao stepped in. She held a cracked bronze mirror in her hands.
"What's this?" he asked.
"Your reflection," she said simply. "I want to learn how to break it."
Amon stared at her for a long moment—then, for the first time in weeks, laughed. Genuinely.
"Well said."