The cliffs of Ebonrise loomed like jagged fangs against the storm-lit sky.
Wind howled through the skeletal trees, and the air reeked of rusted spirit and long-dead hope. It was a place the living avoided, a graveyard for cursed cultivators and banished bloodlines.
But for Mo Lianyin, it felt like home.
He stood before the hidden gates of the Rebellion Sect, cloaked in ash-stained robes, Meiran at his side. The talismans that once warded this place trembled at his presence. The Lotus of Undoing pulsed faintly beneath his skin—quiet, but watching.
"You sure this is the place?" Meiran whispered.
"Yes," he replied. "The dead remember."
He raised a single finger and traced a symbol into the air—the broken circle, the sigil of those cast out from the nine heavens.
A low rumble followed.
Then the stone split apart.
And beyond it lay a forgotten realm.
---
Inside, they were met with drawn blades.
Dark-robed figures descended from every ledge, silent and swift, their swords engraved with forbidden runes. Spirit seals shimmered in the air like hovering moons, ready to strike.
"Halt," said a voice.
A woman stepped forward, barefoot on the cracked stone. Her eyes were pure black, her hair streaked silver despite her youth. A tattoo of chains wrapped around her neck like a collar.
"Who dares disturb the final silence?" she asked.
Lianyin bowed his head.
"I am Mo Lianyin."
Murmurs broke out among the disciples.
The woman raised an eyebrow. "The Mo bloodline was extinguished."
"I lived," he said simply. "Long enough to be cursed. Long enough to awaken what the Emperor buried."
A pause.
Then the woman unsheathed her blade.
"Prove it."
Lianyin didn't move. Instead, he closed his eyes—and let the Hollow Flame flicker once.
The fire did not burn the ground.
It erased it.
Half the stone platform vanished into nothingness.
The woman flinched back. The other disciples took a collective step away.
Then the air grew still.
And she dropped to one knee.
"Forgive my test," she said, voice low. "I am Ailara. Flamekeeper of the Rebellion Sect. We have awaited your return… Moonbreaker."
---
They were taken deep into the cavernous stronghold of the sect, where walls pulsed with embedded spirit bones and rivers of mist snaked through forgotten altars. It was less a sanctuary and more a wound in the world.
Every disciple they passed wore remnants of a shattered legacy—tattoos, iron brands, cursed eyes. Some had no voices. Some had no shadows. All had been broken by the Emperor's decree.
Meiran whispered, "How many of them…?"
"Hundreds," Ailara answered. "All survivors. All betrayed. And now, all loyal to you."
"To me?"
She stopped before a stone mural, cracked but still legible. It depicted a lotus split into seven petals, and beneath it, a figure cloaked in moonsmoke with no face.
"This prophecy was carved when the Rebellion Sect first fell," she explained. "It foretells of a boy whose soul would fracture seven times… and from each fracture, power would bloom."
Lianyin stared at it.
"I never asked for this," he murmured.
Ailara smiled sadly. "No prophecy chooses kindness."
---
That night, a feast was prepared.
Not with joy.
But with purpose.
For Lianyin's arrival was not salvation.
It was war.
"We've intercepted the Emperor's command," said an old cultivator named Shenhai, half his body turned to petrified jade from spirit poisoning. "They've begun moving forces to the Northern Ridge."
"They believe we are gathering strength," another elder added. "They plan to strike before we rise."
"They'll wipe this place out before we can even breathe," said Meiran.
Lianyin stood.
"No," he said. "They'll try. But they won't succeed."
He turned to the gathered rebels, voice calm but unwavering.
"They burned your sects. Branded your bodies. Cut the tongues from your children and called it law. I carry their curse… but I do not carry their fear."
He summoned a fragment of the Lotus of Undoing. Violet flame coiled around his hand.
"This art does not protect me," he continued. "It destroys me a little more each time I use it."
"But it will end them."
"I am not your leader. I am your mirror."
"And if you rise with me… you rise for every part of you they tried to erase."
Silence.
Then Ailara stepped forward and knelt.
"As long as your flame burns," she said, "I will kneel to none but it."
One by one, the others followed.
Not in submission.
But in memory.
Because the Rebellion Sect had never truly died.
It had only waited for its grief to grow teeth.
---
Far away, beneath the palace of golden jade, the Emperor stood before a sealed chamber.
Inside, a figure sat in darkness—chained by spirit nails, eyes covered, limbs broken.
His name was Wuqing.
Once the first wielder of the Forbidden Arts.
Now, a prisoner.
The Emperor opened the door.
"You feel it, don't you?" he asked.
Wuqing's lips cracked into a grin.
"The seventh art stirs," he rasped. "And it does not obey you."
"I want you to kill him."
"You mean the boy you shattered?"
"Yes."
Wuqing tilted his head. "And what will you give me?"
"Your freedom."
The prisoner laughed. The sound was blood and madness.
"Then release me, Your Majesty," he said.
"And I will show your world what true betrayal looks like."