Jiang Xuan's POV
The sky was overcast the morning the whispers began.
Not the usual voice — the deep, ancient one that pulsed from the black mark on his neck.
No.
This voice was higher, colder. And it didn't whisper to him.
It whispered around him.
Like something watching from inside the cracks of the world.
---
Jiang Xuan walked alone through the lower gardens, where younger disciples were meditating around spirit stones. They avoided him — even now, even after everything.
He preferred it that way.
Except today, he couldn't focus.
The whispers were getting louder.
One word, over and over again.
"Echo… Echo… Echo…"
He paused by a moss-covered statue. The stone wept condensation, but it felt… warm.
He pressed a hand against it.
The whispers stopped.
Then a voice — clearer than before — entered his mind.
"He was sealed not with chains, but with memory."
Jiang Xuan yanked his hand back.
Memory?
---
In the high chambers of the sect, Grandmaster Yao stood before a massive golden map — engraved with the ley lines of the region, and marked with hundreds of ancient formations. Elder Wen stood beside him.
"We were wrong," the Grandmaster said. "The Black Coffin isn't the first seal."
Wen frowned. "Then what is?"
"Something older. Something mental. I believe… a soul seal."
Wen's eyes narrowed.
"You mean it's not the Demon God's power that's awakening?"
The Grandmaster turned.
"It's his identity."
Wen exhaled slowly.
"And once he remembers fully who he was—"
"—there won't be anything left of Jiang Xuan."
---
Yao Xi read the same words later that day.
The Grandmaster had left the scroll half-open. On purpose or not, she didn't care.
What mattered was what it said:
The final lock of the Demon God is not in the world. It is inside the reincarnation himself. A seal of false memory, rewritten fate… layered to hide his truth until it's too late.
She sat back in her seat, heart pounding.
It wasn't about power.
It never was.
Jiang Xuan's soul was buried under a lie.
And now it was unraveling.
---
Down in the old stone bathhouse, long abandoned by the sect, Jiang Xuan knelt in the drained pool. The cracked floor was dry and gray — yet black veins had begun to crawl through the marble like roots.
He traced one with his fingertip.
It pulsed under his skin.
And this time… the whisper was a whisper in his own voice.
"Let me remember."
He pulled his hand back, staring at it.
His fingers looked normal.
But they didn't feel like his.
---
Night came early.
The clouds wouldn't move, and the moon didn't rise.
In the distance, drums sounded — not from the sect.
From somewhere beyond the mountains.
A forgotten ritual site.
Jiang Xuan stood at the edge of the southern peak, robes tugging in the wind.
Yao Xi found him there.
"You feel it too?" he asked before she said anything.
She nodded.
"It's getting closer."
"No," he said. "I'm getting closer."
She looked at him then — and saw it.
His eyes weren't red.
They were glassy. Unfocused.
Like someone else was starting to wake up behind them.
----
Yao Xi's POV
That night, the inner sanctum of the Fallen Star Sect was lit only by candlelight.
Grandmaster Yao stood before a circle of elders, a map unfurled across the jade table. Lines were drawn in red ink, trailing across old ruins, abandoned villages, cursed forests.
At the center was a mark: a spiraling symbol.
Not of containment.
But of memory suppression.
Elder Wen narrowed his eyes. "This is where the Echo Seal was cast?"
"We believe so," the Grandmaster said. "The Valley of Forgotten Fires. Lost during the war four centuries ago."
"And you think we can restore it?"
The Grandmaster's fingers tapped the table.
"No. We can't restore it. We can only choose when to let it break."
The room grew colder.
---
Yao Xi stood near the door, silent. Listening.
The others still treated her like a guest, an outsider.
But she had been sent from the future.
And she remembered exactly what happened when the Echo Seal shattered on its own:
Jiang Xuan's voice deepened.
His eyes burned red permanently.
And he tore the sky open above the sect, letting in things that didn't belong in this world.
That memory wasn't just in her head. It was branded in her blood.
So when the Grandmaster spoke of letting the seal break…
her fists clenched.
---
Later that night, she found herself outside the old training grounds.
Jiang Xuan stood alone again.
He didn't hear her footsteps, but he still spoke when she got close.
"You're wondering if you should tell me."
She said nothing.
He turned, just a little.
"I can feel it. Something inside me is pushing. Not the voice that wants destruction. Something… older."
He tapped his temple.
"A memory. It's mine. But it doesn't belong to the boy I am."
Yao Xi hesitated.
Then: "The seal is weakening."
"I know."
"They want to find the origin."
"I know that too."
"Do you want to remember?"
He looked at her for a long time.
"Would you kill me if I said yes?"
She didn't answer.
Not immediately.
---
Jiang Xuan stepped forward, slow and calm.
"I'm starting to feel things I shouldn't. Memories that don't match what I've lived."
He raised a hand, pointing to the mountain's edge.
"That tree over there? I knew it had been burned, even before I saw the charred bark. I remembered it burning… centuries ago."
She looked at the tree.
It had black streaks up the trunk.
No one ever talked about it.
Jiang Xuan kept speaking.
"I remember killing someone under that tree. A sect elder. His last words were, 'The chains were never strong enough.'"
Her breath caught.
---
"I don't want to become that," he said.
"I don't want to remember how to become that."
He looked at her, something fragile flickering in his gaze.
"But part of me is curious. Because if I understand what I am… maybe I can fight it better."
She stepped closer.
"What if understanding makes it worse?"
"Then you kill me."
Again with that calm tone.
She hated it.
"Stop saying that like it's easy."
"It should be. You came here for that."
"Maybe I didn't come here only for that."
He blinked.
And for the first time, didn't know what to say.
---
She looked down.
"Tomorrow, the Grandmaster will send a team to the Valley of Forgotten Fires."
"You're going?"
"I have to."
He nodded slowly.
"If they find the truth… you might lose the option of killing me early."
"I know."
"Then why go?"
She didn't answer right away.
Then said:
"Because I need to see who you were. Before the seal. Before the fall. Before the part of you that killed my family."
He looked away.
"I don't know if he's better than me. Or worse."
"We'll find out."
---
That night, as she lay awake, staring at the ceiling, one thought haunted her:
What if remembering gives him peace?
And what if peace is the very thing that wakes the Demon God?
----
End of Chapter 13