The suffocating fog split apart. In the distance rose a colossal gate, forged from fractured shadows that gleamed like broken glass. Each crack pulsed faintly, as though the gate itself breathed—drawing in, rejecting, and reshaping the air around it.
Yan Zhi stood frozen, his body drenched in blood and the clinging darkness that had become his second skin. His breath came ragged, every inhale and exhale scraping like blades against one another. Yet his gaze locked onto the gate—not with curiosity, but with a hunger born of necessity.
Beneath his feet, the ground throbbed like the heartbeat of some buried giant. The silence was heavy, not empty but watching, filled with faceless eyes pressing down from every angle.
"The gate…" Yan Zhi rasped, "the heart of the Veil's core."
Each step toward it felt like crossing an ocean. Shadows whispered though no mouths moved, their voices not words but raw sensations—doubt, fear, madness—all poured into his soul.
And yet, beneath the storm, there was something deeper: the breath of shadow that now lived within him. He was no longer alone. The shadow that once sought to devour him now held him steady, guiding him forward.
The gate loomed nearer. Its cracks bled with faint crimson light, like veins swollen with boiling blood. Yan Zhi raised his hand, pressing his palm against the cold, living surface. At once, the cracks shifted, aligning into intricate patterns like veins of a beating heart.
A voice reverberated, not from outside but within the gate itself, striking deep in his chest:
"To pass… leave your last breath here."
Yan Zhi froze. He knew this was no command—it was a trial. His last breath, his last fragment of soul, demanded as the price.
But he clenched his will tighter. "If I surrender everything… who will walk beyond this gate?" he whispered. "I am not just a shadow rejected. I am the one who rejects rejection."
With the last of his strength, he exhaled. Black mist poured from his lips, a breath woven with his very essence, and seeped into the gate's cracks. The arena shuddered violently, the fractures splitting wide as darkness burst outward.
The gate opened—not with the creak of metal, but with a sobbing sigh, like the final breath of a dying man.
Yan Zhi stepped inside. And in that moment, he understood: every step ahead was no longer his alone, but shared with the shadow that had endured at his side.
The Gate of the Last Breath had opened.
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