Chapter 22: Celestial Harbinger

The distorted stars cast jagged shadows over the fen, their light warping the air like heat rising from a forge. Lin Wei crouched beside the lifeless shard, its surface now dull and fissured. Yuelin prodded the ashes of the Sovereign's remains with her boot, her mortal-scorched hands trembling. Lin Mei paced nearby, her hybrid flames flickering erratically—cobalt one moment, void-black the next.

"The stars," she muttered, glaring at the sky. "They're watching."

Yuelin scoffed. "Watching, laughing—what's the difference?"

A cold wind stirred the fen's waters, carrying whispers in a language older than cultivation. Lin Wei's Qi Refinement senses prickled. "We're not alone."

Astralon materialized atop the leviathan's rib, their star-map cloak billowing despite the stillness. "Clever mortals. You break one toy, and the cosmos gifts you another."

Yuelin stepped forward, her voice steel. "What do you want?"

"Want?" Astralon's hood tilted, void-darkness pooling beneath it. "I want to see how far you'll bend before you snap."

They flicked a finger. The fen's waters surged, coalescing into a mirror that reflected not their faces, but a vision—a city swallowed by a black sun, its streets choked with figures bearing Lin Wei's eyes and Yuelin's scars.

[Celestial Vision: Possible Future (Probability: 87%).]

Lin Mei's flames roared. "Enough tricks."

Astralon laughed, the sound like shattering glass. "You'll seek me when the stars devour your resolve. Until then… play with this."

They vanished, leaving behind a shard of pulsating starlight. The moment Lin Wei touched it, the fen's waters screamed.

The shard's energy seeped into the earth, sprouting twisted flora—flowers with serrated petals, trees oozing liquid shadow. A deer stumbled from the undergrowth, its antlers fused with crystalline void, eyes glowing Sovereign-red.

[Ecosystem Corruption: 12%.]

[New Threat: Void-Touched Beasts (Adaptive Evolution).]

Yuelin crushed a mutated vine underfoot. "Astralon's 'gift' is a curse."

"No," Lin Mei said, her flames dissecting a void-touched bird mid-flight. "It's a test. They're seeing how we fight what we don't understand."

Lin Wei clutched the vision-shard, its edges biting his palm. "Then we don't fight. We learn."

Nightfall brought worse horrors. The stars pulsed like infected wounds, their light warping the terrain. Rocks levitated, rivers flowed backward, and time stuttered—a disciple's corpse from Thunder Valley reappeared whole, then rotted to bone in seconds.

Lin Mei's form destabilized, her ghostfire leaching into the soil. "It's the stars… they're unmaking this place."

Yuelin carved sigils into the ground with Astralon's shard, mortal qi flaring in desperate bursts. "We need to move. Now."

They fled north, pursued by the fen's newborn terrors. At dawn, they stumbled into a valley where the grass grew in perfect geometric spirals—a sanctuary untouched by corruption. At its center stood a stone altar etched with mortal hands.

[Sanctuary Discovered: Ancient Mortal Refuge (Qi Purity: 99%).]

Lin Wei collapsed against the altar, his blood seeping into its carvings. The ground hummed, and a hologram of the Silent Patriarch flickered to life—not a spirit, but a recording.

"If you hear this, the Sovereign has fallen. But its masters remain. Seek the First Flame—the spark mortals used to banish the stars' hunger. It lies in her heart."

The hologram died. Lin Mei's void-tinged flames guttered.

Yuelin stared at her. "Well? Where's the First Flame?"

Lin Mei's voice was a whisper. "I am."