The earth sealed shut behind him, but Yi Mochen did not look back.
He descended into darkness.
The cavern beneath the Nameless Burial Ground pulsed like a sleeping heart. Obsidian walls glimmered faintly with veins of old soulstone — a forbidden material once used in ancient blood rites. The deeper he went, the heavier his breath became, as though the very air tried to chain his lungs to the past.
He passed bone trees growing from the ceiling, their roots dripping black ichor, and lanterns swinging gently — but without wind.
They whispered in voices only the dead should know.
> "He returns."
"The last ember of the Crimson Flame walks again."
"But will he burn… or become ash?"
Yi Mochen said nothing. His steps did not falter.
At the heart of the cavern, a dais stood — ancient, circular, ringed with runes written in blood. Upon it, a black mirror pulsed, alive with something too old to name.
He approached.
And memory opened like a wound.
---
Flashback — Before the Fall
He was six, maybe five.
The sky above was golden with dusk. The valley was alive — blooming with sapphire moss, whispering reeds, and trees that never lost their leaves.
Yi Mochen's mother, Lady Xue Lian, knelt in the garden, humming. Her robes were white with a crimson sash, embroidered with a phoenix whose wings wrapped around her waist.
> "The world isn't as cruel as the sects say, Mochen," she told him once. "It only becomes cruel when people forget to protect what matters."
She was a spirit healer — the last of her line.
Yi Mochen brought her a flower, and she laughed softly, planting a kiss on his brow. It felt like light.
His father, Yi Qingshen, returned from a mission at nightfall — a dark silhouette on the ridge, robes torn, blade half-drawn, eyes ever-watchful.
A general once.
A traitor to the empire.
And the most loving father a child could know.
> "Your path will not be like mine, Mochen," Qingshen once whispered in the dark. "You will not be a sword. You will be the flame behind it."
They lived in secret, hidden from the sects who feared their bloodline. The world had turned on the Crimson Line long ago — for their soul-burning arts, their ability to weave death into power, and their refusal to kneel to the Heavenly Order.
But here, for a few years, there was peace.
And every night, they lit the Bone Lantern.
Crafted from the spine of a fallen star beast, it was carved with protective runes and filled with ancestral flame — an artifact older than memory. Its light bound the family together. When lit, their souls were connected across realms, dreams, and even death.
> "As long as this lantern burns," Lady Xue Lian whispered, "we will always return to one another."
Yi Mochen believed her.
Until the night the lantern went out.
---
The Memory Breaks
Flames. Screams. Crimson banners torn apart.
The heavenly sects came like a storm — not to arrest, but to erase.
They feared what the Crimson Line could become. So they slaughtered them all.
Yi Qingshen held them back with a blade of pure soulfire, fighting until his legs gave out. Lady Xue Lian chanted a forbidden rite, sealing her son in a stasis pearl — a tear-shaped prison of light.
Mochen watched — helpless, voiceless — as his parents died in flame and silence.
And the Bone Lantern, cracked and bleeding fire, fell into his tiny hands just as the memory collapsed.
---
Present
Yi Mochen's breath caught as the black mirror darkened.
His hands were trembling.
He looked down. In his palm, without explanation, was the Bone Lantern.
Whole again.
It had returned.
Or perhaps, it had never truly left.
---
From behind, the cloaked figure stepped closer.
Voice like rotted silk, smooth yet ruined:
> "Now you understand. They didn't just kill your family. They killed hope. They feared your blood because your blood remembers."
The figure extended a hand. Beneath the hood was no face — only a swirling void filled with faint stars. A remnant of something divine, or defiled.
> "Come, heir of the Crimson Flame. The Lantern burns. The Twelve Graves stir. The world must remember what it chose to forget."
Yi Mochen's gaze hardened. The flame within the lantern flared — not red, but crimson-white, hot enough to blind gods.
> "Then I will make them remember."
The ground beneath the cavern trembled.
The seal was breaking.
And somewhere above, in golden towers and jade palaces, the ancient enemies of his bloodline felt a flicker of fear for the first time in centuries.
---