chapter 7: The Fractured Sky

 Chapter 7 – The Fractured Sky

The sky had not looked the same since the Fold fell.

Where once it held the familiar weight of sun and star, now it shimmered—fragile, uncertain, like a reflection on broken glass. At dawn, it bled pale silver. At dusk, it pulsed with bruised purples and veined crimson. Birds refused to fly too high. The wind whispered with a memory not its own.

From the monastery ruins atop Mount Shenze, Lin Xian stood in silence, watching as the fractured sky trembled above him.

It had been seven days since he shattered the Tribunal's sanctum. Seven days since the world stopped pretending that the old balance still held.

All around him, echoes moved through the leyline threads beneath the stone. The place was old—older than the Fold, older than even the Architect's first temples. And yet, it felt awake now, watching him, as if the mountain itself had been waiting.

Mei approached, her breath misting in the chilled air. "You haven't slept," she said quietly.

"I don't think I can anymore," he replied.

She didn't press him. Instead, she handed him a carved obsidian charm—a protective relic salvaged from one of the old catacombs.

"It won't stop what's happening inside you," she said. "But it might remind you who you were. Who you still are."

Lin Xian took it, holding it in his palm. It felt warm, as if reacting to his pulse—or something deeper beneath his skin. The charm's edge shimmered faintly, then faded.

That was the problem.

The Abyss no longer fought him. It had begun to accept him.

And something else was blooming within it.

Below the monastery, the world reeled.

Sects once bound by caution had turned to war. The Moon-Binders began summoning spirits long forbidden. The Crimson Lotus declared Lin Xian a threat to the cosmic cycle. In the northern cities, fissures opened in the sky during prayer rites, and time stuttered—entire districts reliving the same hour again and again.

The Keepers of the Ninth Flame, usually silent, lit signal fires across their high peaks. Word spread: the Progenitor's return was beginning.

But none could agree on what Lin Xian had become. A prophet. A curse. A vessel. A doorway.

In the old world, he had been a student of harmony. In this new, unraveling one—he was its center.

It was on the eighth night that Serakai returned.

She emerged from the forest mist like a memory Lin Xian hadn't summoned. No blade, no armor—just robes the color of winter cinders and a tiredness that spoke of someone who had seen too far.

Mei reached for her sword instinctively, but Lin Xian lifted a hand.

"She's not here to fight."

Serakai bowed slightly, her eyes on Lin Xian. "The Tribunal is dead. Not all at once, but enough that its spine is broken. The rest are scattering—some to hunt you, others to hide from what's coming."

"What is coming?" Mei asked.

Serakai's gaze drifted toward the sky. "Everything that was once bound."

She stepped closer. "I didn't understand before. I thought the Abyss was an infection. Something that devoured souls and turned men into monsters. But it's more. It's memory without time. It's the shadow of creation."

Lin Xian narrowed his eyes. "You were sent to kill me. Why help me now?"

"Because I saw something in your blood," Serakai whispered. "Something older than the Abyss."

She pulled a scroll from her satchel—parchment weathered, etched in circular glyphs and spiraling ink. "I found this in the ruins of a forgotten enclave beneath the Glassen Wastes. It speaks of the Unbound Dream—a realm deeper than the Abyss, where soul and origin blur."

"And Vaeroth?" Lin Xian asked.

"Vaeroth is its herald. But not its king."

The wind howled through the stones, and for a moment, all three felt the pull of something vast just beneath thought—like standing on the edge of a dream you knew would drown you if you stepped in.

"We need to see what lies beyond the threshold," Serakai said. "You have to enter it willingly. Not as a vessel. As yourself."

That night, they prepared the ritual.

The leyline beneath the monastery pulsed with ancient cadence, answering Lin Xian's blood as if it had waited centuries for his return. They drew the sigils in salt, bone ash, and spirit-thread. Mei chanted the protective rites. Serakai placed six dreamstones in a spiral around him.

He sat cross-legged at the center, breath steady, hands on his knees.

Mei knelt beside him. "Don't lose yourself in there. If it pulls too deep—"

"I'll remember you," he said quietly.

Serakai murmured a final invocation.

The stones began to hum. The sigils glowed with a strange violet light, neither natural nor arcane.

And Lin Xian fell inward.

He awoke in silence.

Not the silence of emptiness—but the silence of a place that listened.

The sky above him was inverted—black rivers where clouds should be, and stars that pulsed like heartbeat scars. He stood in a forest of thought—trees made of golden veins, their leaves flickering between forms: feathers, bones, fragments of memory.

The air shimmered with language. With names.

And ahead, at the edge of a cliff that overlooked a sea of mirrored flame—stood another Lin Xian.

He turned.

Smiling.

"I was wondering when you'd come," the doppelgänger said.

Lin Xian stepped forward, wary. "What are you?"

"Not what. When."

The reflection moved closer, his eyes dark and brilliant, like the Abyss had shaped them to hold galaxies. "I'm a possible future. One where you stop fighting what you're becoming."

"I don't want to be a god."

The reflection laughed gently. "Then be something else. Be a myth."

Lightning cracked across the mirrored sea. Shapes stirred beneath it—colossal things with wings made of glass and teeth that whispered songs.

"You're not alone in here," the other Lin Xian said. "Vaeroth was only the first to answer. But others are watching now. Testing your limits. Measuring your soul."

Lin Xian clenched his fists. "Why me?"

"Because you were broken just enough to let eternity in."

The reflection faded—but not before reaching out.

Lin Xian took the hand.

And in that contact, visions tore through him:

—A city without time, devoured by thoughtfire.

—A sky made of eyes, blinking in unison.

—A throne of breathing stone, and Lin Xian's own voice speaking in a thousand tongues.

When he woke, back in the monastery, the sigils were smoldering.

Mei gripped his shoulders. "You stopped breathing for five minutes."

Serakai looked pale. "Did you see it?"

He nodded. "It saw me too."

He rose unsteadily, the obsidian charm still clenched in his hand—now cracked.

As he looked out at the dawn, the fractured sky bent slightly in response—like a ripple acknowledging his return.

The storm had passed.

But something far older had stirred in its wake.

And now, the world would begin to dream again.