Chapter 131 – Edge of the Spiral
The Spiral Verge was not a realm. It was a wound.
A torn strand of the divine web, coiled endlessly into a dying orbit around a hollow star, long collapsed into silence.
Floating ruins spiraled through the void—shattered temples, dismembered god-frames, broken time-loops still twitching through centuries of corrupted system code.
And at its heart: the Vault of the Forgotten, locked beneath a dead continent of obsidian glass. A black monolith towered above it—once the Spire of Origin, now half-consumed by entropy and divine corrosion. It pulsed faintly, a rhythm of a heart long thought silent.
No Court had dared reclaim it. No god remembered who once ruled here.
But something remained.
Beneath the ruins, within the sealed Vault, seven sealed caskets pulsed weakly. Inside them: the last remnants of the Original System Weavers, trapped in stasis, their power still tethered to ancient code.
One of them twitched.Another… exhaled.
And the Vault recognized Chen's signature approaching—Soulflame dancing in foreign code.
A single glyph burned to life on the surface of the Vault.
ACCESS PENDINGPROTOCOL: REBIRTH INITIATEDWARNING: UNRECONCILED USER DATA DETECTEDWARNING: DIVINE COUNTERFORCE EN ROUTE
The Spiral stirred. And the Weavers began to dream again.
The sky darkened in waves as the group stepped through the final gateway.
There was no grand portal, no divine welcome—only a low, static hum, like the universe holding its breath.
Chen stood at the prow of the floating skiff, the Voidwind tugging at his cloak. The others stood with him—Ye Yue, silent but radiant; Lanmei, her spear crackling with suppressed energy; Sarina, scanning the horizon with narrowed eyes; and Mei, fingers twitching from a pulse of instinctive unease.
They had entered the Spiral Verge.
The stars were wrong here. Their positions twisted unnaturally with each blink, a remnant of a broken divine orbit. Shattered temples drifted lazily across their path, frozen mid-collapse, icons of forgotten gods etched into their ruin.
"…It's like time never finished dying," Mei murmured.
"No," Ye Yue corrected softly, gaze fixed forward. "It's worse. Time still thinks it's alive."
Below them, the obsidian continent stretched out—flat, barren, and cracked from within by veins of dim violet light. The monolith rose in the center, jagged and crude, as though some ancient force had simply stabbed it into the world.
Chen's eyes narrowed. "That's it. The Vault's beneath that."
"Can you feel it?" Sarina whispered, her hand hovering near her blade. "That power—like something old trying to remember itself…"
"I can," Chen said. "It knows we're here."
His Soulflame shimmered behind his irises—no longer just gold, but threaded with white and violet strands, remnants of the relic they'd claimed. Something in him resonated with the Vault, as if part of him had been born from whatever lay sleeping inside.
Lanmei crouched at the skiff's edge, scanning the rippling distortions below. "Movement. Not divine… not alive either."
"Defense constructs," Ye Yue confirmed. "Waking up. They'll come for us the moment we land."
Chen smiled faintly. "Then let's land loud."
He turned to the group. "This is the Spiral. We don't just walk through it—we tear our mark into it."
They nodded—battle-tested, bonded, and stronger than they had ever been.
Lanmei dropped first, spear spinning behind her like a comet. Mei followed, her seals already unfurling into golden butterflies. Sarina slipped into stealth, while Ye Yue descended beside Chen, her wings forming not from light, but from pure divine memory.
The moment Chen's boots hit the obsidian surface, the world shuddered.
And far below, the Vault began to open.