Yunlei staggered back from the keystone dais, gasping as the visions bled from his mind. The bone-palace groaned around them, ancient seals cracking under the weight of his touch. The air reeked of salt and time, as if the Drowned Empire had begun to wake.Meilin knelt beside him, clutching her temples. “I saw... fire. A woman with wings of ash. She screamed your name, Yunlei. Not in hatred. In mourning.”Jun drew his sword and turned a slow circle. “Something is moving in the walls. We need to go.”“No,” Yunlei said hoarsely. “This is the core of it. The Tribunal didn’t just rise from here. They stole something—someone. The Ash Phoenix wasn’t defeated. She was sacrificed to power their empire.”Lady Xue ran her fingers along the shattered seventh circle. “These aren’t just symbols. They’re sigils of containment. A divine soul was bound here. Torn into seven shards, one for each founder. That’s why they couldn’t kill her. They made themselves into her prison.”“Which means...” Meilin

The night sea shimmered under a bleeding moon, casting crimson ripples across the hull of the Riverlight, a merchant skimmer Meilin had commandeered from a sympathetic smuggler. The deck groaned with every wave, and the salt air carried an uneasy tension—as if the wind itself knew the Tribunal would return.Yunlei stood at the bow, arms folded, cloak fluttering around him. His eyes were locked on the horizon, where the storm clouds had finally broken, revealing a sky littered with wary stars. He had not spoken much since the battle.Behind him, Meilin leaned against a mast, watching him in silence.“He hasn’t rested,” she murmured to Lady Xue, who sat nearby mending her torn silk sleeves.“Neither have you,” Xue replied gently. “You’re worried about him.”“He channeled a Phoenix seal from a forgotten era,” Meilin said. “If the Tribunal couldn’t stop him, it’s only because they feared what was awakening within him.”Jun stomped up the stairs from below deck, his chest still bandaged fr

They emerged from the Ironroot Expanse as dawn broke, battered and breathless. Mist curled behind them like the fingers of a dying ghost. The Pyre Index had vanished behind its seal, reformed by the Iron Quorum’s will. But they had escaped—with the creed tablet.Yunlei slumped against a moss-covered rock, still clutching the slab. Blood trickled from a cut at his brow, but his grip never loosened.“This thing better be worth it,” Hong muttered, checking the blade gash on his side.Meilin knelt beside Yunlei, placing both hands on the tablet. It was warm—too warm for stone—and its etched flames shimmered with subtle movement.“This isn’t just a relic,” she said. “It’s alive with binding qi. Old Phoenix magic.”Kao Ren nodded from where he sat, bandaged and weak. “That’s the original creed. Before the betrayal. Before the clans rewrote it.”Lady Xue was already laying out scrolls and cipher maps on the flat rock beside them. “We’ll have to translate it line by line. This dialect predate

Xiangyan hovered above the clouds like a crowned phantom—its spires veiled in mist, its banners snapping in high-altitude winds. The ancient sky-fortress had no moorings, no engines. It floated by the will of elemental arts long lost to mortal cultivators. Only those chosen by the Wind Tribunal could pass through its gates unchallenged.Yunlei’s group stood on the edge of a sky bridge, their borrowed skiff anchored below. The wind howled, testing them.“Last time I was here,” Ren muttered, “they threatened to throw me off for wearing the wrong color sash.”Suyin rolled her eyes. “Then behave.”Yunlei said nothing. Since absorbing the earthen anchor, his aura had shifted—deeper, denser. Even the wind around him seemed to pause before touching his robes. The power within him no longer lashed or surged. It waited.Meilin adjusted the pin in her hair and stepped beside him. “You’re thinking about her. The Azure Consort.”“She was the Empress’s general,” Yunlei said. “But more than that… s

The moment the fourth anchor stabilized, a pulse of light spread outward from the shattered heartstone. Invisible to most, it was felt by all who were attuned to the deeper workings of the world. Across the empire, bells rang without being touched, spirit beasts howled into the heavens, and cultivators paused mid-meditation as their meridians shuddered with sudden resonance.In the high sanctum of the Cloudwatch Pavilion, Elder Jian opened his eyes from a hundred-year meditation. “The fourth seal... restored,” he murmured. “The storm is changing.”In the Forbidden Cradle beneath Mount Qilin, the last of the sleeping dragon-blooded stirred, their eyes glowing faintly gold. And in a forgotten chamber at the base of the Sea of Glass, a crimson sigil once thought dead flared to life.But Yunlei didn’t yet know the reach of his actions.He sat on the edge of the shattered battlefield in the Shadow Reaches, his arms resting on his knees, breathing slowly. The ground was quiet now. The oppre