Morning sunlight poured into the Thousand Shadows Sect, but it felt wrong—pale, drained of warmth, as if the heavens themselves had forgotten how to breathe.
Yan Zhi stood at the edge of the training grounds, his gaze sweeping across the hundreds of disciples.
Something was off.
Their movements were too uniform. Too rigid. Each strike, each stance was like the twitch of marionettes bound to invisible strings.
No shouts of spirit, no laughter, no chatter.
Only the hollow clatter of blades—and a silence that pressed on the ears until it hurt.
Even the wind no longer carried the scent of leaves. It moved… muffled, stripped of depth.
Yan Zhi clenched his jaw.
"This… is not the same sect as yesterday."
---
By noon, the abnormalities sharpened.
One disciple froze mid-swing, then spoke in the instructor's exact voice—tone, cadence, breath. When questioned, he continued training as if nothing had happened.
Another's eyes turned pitch-black, ink swallowing his pupils, only to return to normal in an instant.
No one noticed.
No one reacted.
As though only Yan Zhi had witnessed it.
And worst of all—the whispers.
"Corridor… corridor waits…"
They slithered not from walls, nor from the sky, but from the very air of midday, burrowing into Yan Zhi's ear and planting themselves in his skull.
---
Inside his body, chaos raged.
The Vein of Devourer writhed violently, resisting.
But the foreign whispers pressed harder, bleeding into his veins like black ink seeping into water.
His hands trembled. For a heartbeat, he saw himself—standing in the endless corridor, staring back from behind a fracture in reality.
That shadow-self smiled faintly, lips curved with mocking calm, eyes hollow yet brimming with dark promise.
"You are not my enemy, Yan Zhi. You are the door I require."
---
Night.
The sect's main cultivation hall quaked with a sound like shattering glass—
CRAAAKK!
Yan Zhi spun around. His pulse spiked.
Across the stone wall, a fissure had formed. A black crack glowing with a sinister light, spreading outward like veins of a bottomless abyss.
And then… it widened.
From its depths, hands emerged—skeletal, quivering, clawing at the air with blind hunger.
A thin laughter followed, rippling through the chamber, neither male nor female but endless.
"Hhhhhh—ahhh—hhhhhhh—"
A disciple standing too close was touched. His body convulsed, eyes rolling back into emptiness. Moments later, he moved again—stiff, soulless, a puppet bound to shadow.
One by one, those who were touched joined the silent ranks of the hollow.
Yan Zhi's fists tightened until his knuckles cracked.
His breath came ragged.
"This… is no longer just whispers."
---
He lifted his eyes to the crack.
Behind it, silhouettes pressed against the darkness, countless faces without shape, struggling, writhing, yearning to escape.
"The third fracture…" he whispered hoarsely.
"If the door opens fully… this world will no longer belong to men. It will become the Corridor of Shadows."
---