Chapter 39: Embers of the True Dark

Lin Wei slumped against the jagged teeth of a shattered monolith, his breath shallow and frayed. The nameless flame writhed beneath his skin, its light searing through cracks that split his flesh like overstrained glass. Each pulse etched deeper, turning his hands translucent, veins glowing like molten ore. Across the ashen waste, Lin Mei paced, her void-flames sputtering with erratic black tendrils—the abyss's corruption threading up her arms, inky veins clawing toward her heart.

"You look like a cracked lantern," she said, voice strained but sharp, her eyes flickering between cobalt and void.

He laughed weakly, the sound brittle. "Feel like one too."

A tremor shook the ground. On the horizon, Echo-0's silhouette loomed, its colossal form rippling as it devoured another realm. Starlight drained from the sky, siphoned into the maw of its chest where Yuelin's spark pulsed—a faint, smothered glimmer.

The surviving Harvesters found them at dusk, their star-lattice bodies flickering like guttering candles. Their leader stepped forward, human eyes stark against a face of shifting constellations. "The True Dark stirs," they said, voice a rasp of wind through dead leaves. "Even Echo-0 flees its shadow."

Lin Mei's flames flared, the abyss's rot creeping toward her fingertips. "Then why come to us?"

"Because you carry its taint." The Harvester's gaze lingered on her corrupted hand. "And he carries the flame that might sever it."

Lin Wei pushed upright, fractures flaring white-hot. "What's the True Dark?"

"The first hunger. The void before fire. It birthed us… then devoured its own."

Another tremor. The fissure in the earth groaned, exhaling a chill that iced their breath. Shadows pooled at its edges, coalescing into shapes—skeletal, fluid, hungry. The True Dark's vanguard.

Lin Mei's void-flames recoiled. "It's here."

The Harvester leader retreated, star-lattice dimming. "We cannot face both. Choose."

Lin Wei met his sister's gaze. Her corrupted flames mirrored the fissure's void, but her eyes—still hers, still fierce—narrowed. "Get the spark," he said, nodding toward Echo-0's distant silhouette. "I'll hold this."

She gripped his wrist, her touch searing cold. "You'll die."

"Then make it count."

The Harvesters hesitated, their forms flickering. "We will… distract Echo-0."

The plan unraveled fast.

Lin Wei plunged the nameless flame into the fissure. Light clashed with void, the abyss shrieking as the flame scorched its advance—but the fire dimmed, its strength leaching into the endless dark. Above, Lin Mei and the Harvesters struck Echo-0, her corrupted flames searing its starlight flesh. The colossus roared, Yuelin's spark flaring in its chest—alive, pleading.

Lin Mei lunged, fingers brushing the spark's cage—

A tendril of pure void speared Lin Wei's chest.

The flame snuffed out.

The fissure exploded.

Darkness swallowed the world.