Chapter 40: The Tainted Covenant

Lin Wei's body lay motionless at the fissure's edge, the nameless flame's light snuffed to a dying ember in his chest. His consciousness drifted in a void colder than death, where shadows whispered in Yuelin's voice. "The flame wasn't yours to carry," they hissed. "But it's yours to release."

Memories flickered—fragmented, burning. Yuelin's hands guiding his over a fledgling fire. "It's not control," she'd said. "It's surrender."

He stirred, the ember in his chest flaring weakly.

Lin Mei stood over Echo-0's writhing form, her corrupted flames devouring the colossus's starlight flesh. The abyss's rot coiled up her arms, whispering promises of dominion. Yuelin's spark flickered in Echo-0's chest, its light choked by tendrils of void.

"Pathetic," the colossus rasped, its voice a grating fusion of the Patriarch's malice and something older. "You think this ends me? The True Dark comes. It will feast on your—"

Her hand plunged into its chest. The spark seared her palm—Yuelin's spark—and for a heartbeat, she saw her: not as a ghost, but as a girl, terrified and brilliant, holding a shard of Harvester heart. "Take it," Yuelin begged in the memory. "Burn it all."

Lin Mei wrenched the spark free. Echo-0's roar shook the earth as its body crumbled to ash.

The surviving Harvesters converged, their star-lattice bodies fraying. "The True Dark rises," their leader said, voice trembling. "Your corruption… it's a bridge. Let it in. Control it."

Lin Mei stared at the rot crawling up her veins. "And if I can't?"

The Harvester's human eyes softened. "Then we all burn."

Lin Wei's ember pulsed. In the void, Yuelin's shadow sharpened, her form flickering like a dying flame. "The True Dark remembers the First Flame," she whispered. "It fears it. Use the spark. Merge."

He gasped awake, fractures blazing as the ember reignited—not gold, not void, but Yuelin's cobalt.

The fissure erupted.

The True Dark poured forth, a tidal wave of teeth and tar, its presence erasing light, sound, hope. Lin Mei raised Yuelin's spark, her corrupted flames intertwining with its glow. "Wei! Now!"

He lunged, the ember in his chest merging with the spark. Fire exploded—cobalt, nameless, and void—a triune inferno that scorched the True Dark's advance. The entity recoiled, howling.

"You cannot kill hunger!" it screamed, voice fracturing realms.

"No," Lin Mei snarled, the abyss's rot surging through her. "But we can starve it."

She plunged her corrupted hand into the fissure. The True Dark's tendrils seized her, flooding her mind with visions of the primordial void—the birth of hunger, the death of light.

"Mei! Let go!" Lin Wei shouted, his flames straining to pull her back.

"No." Her voice echoed with the abyss's chill. "I see it now. The True Dark… it's just afraid."

The fissure sealed with a thunderclap, severing the True Dark's tendrils. Lin Mei collapsed, her body half-consumed by void, the rot frozen mid-spread. Lin Wei's ember dimmed, Yuelin's spark now a shard lodged in his palm.

Above, the sky fractured anew. Not from the True Dark—but from something brighter. A figure descended, wreathed in the First Flame's pure white fire, their face obscured by light.

The Harvesters fell to their knees. "The Forgotten," they whispered.

Echo-0's ashes stirred.