The Names Beneath the Ash
The black rain resumed its fall—quiet, heavy, and thick with memory ash.
Crescent City's spires wept molten silver, mourning the brief rupture in time caused by the Soul Hunter's failed hunt. The temple's roof had collapsed, exposing the broken sky above them, but in the center of the ruin stood two figures—unburned.
Bound. Changed.
The boy opened his palm. The mark was no longer just a root.It had evolved—shaped like a burning tree, its branches etched with names not yet spoken aloud.
"That… thing," he said, eyes still glowing faintly, "was trying to erase me by burning the path of my name through time."
"It failed," the girl whispered, clutching her chest. "Because we shared the flame."
She looked at him. This time, not with fear, but with awe.
"You're stronger than you were in any of your past lives. It's like you're becoming something more…"
He didn't answer.
Instead, he walked to the Soul Hunter's corpse. Or what remained of it.
Just bones now. And ash. Yet beneath that ash… something pulsed.
A slab of stone.
No, not stone—bone. Engraved with names.
Names that pulsed red when he touched it.
Each one had been forgotten, severed from history. Wiped out by the very same organization that had sent the Soul Hunter.
"This is a list," he muttered. "Cultivators... erased from time."
He felt them—dozens, maybe hundreds—each name like a flicker in his mind.
But one name glowed brighter than all.
He knelt beside it.
And read it aloud.
"Lian Xue."
The girl froze.
"What did you say?"
"This name. It's the only one I can read. The others are broken."
She stepped forward, eyes trembling.
"That was… my original name."
"Your first life."
"The one before I killed you the first time."
Her voice cracked. And for the first time since they met, she looked human.
"I didn't know it still existed. I erased it myself… to hide what I did."
"What did you do?"
She didn't answer.
Suddenly, the slab vibrated—and the ash around it rose.
The engraved names screamed.
Like trapped souls. Echoes. Desperate to be known.
"They want to be remembered…" the boy said softly. "But the more I focus on them, the more my own thoughts blur."
"That's the curse of the Root of Memory," she said. "If you remember everyone else too deeply… you lose your sense of self."
He stood.
"Then I'll remember only one for now."
He pointed at Lian Xue.
"Yours."
She looked away.
"Why mine?"
"Because I want to know who you were before all of this. Before we died a thousand times."
The slab vanished, burning into embers and returning to the root mark on his arm.
Suddenly, the world shifted again. A ripple passed through the earth like an echo of thunder.
"Someone else is watching," he said.
The girl nodded.
"Then we need to move. You've just painted a target on your soul."
"Let them come. I need answers."
She sighed.
"You're reckless. Just like before."
"Good. Then tell me where we go next."
"To the Vault of Names. North of the Ruined Spiral Mountains. Every forgotten name ends up there eventually."
"And what's there?"
"The one who keeps the records. An immortal who never cultivates but remembers everything: The Archivist."
Far away… in a glass tower that reflected no light…
A figure closed a book with a frown.
"He read her name."
A voice behind him, deep and amused:
"Then the thread has begun to fray."
"Shall I send the Mirror Maidens to intercept?"
"No," said the seated man, eyes glowing like empty scrolls. "Let him reach the Vault. Let him remember a little more."
He smiled.
"The more he remembers, the more he'll suffer. And the sweeter his fall."
He dipped a brush in ink and wrote on a blank scroll:
"Chapter 1: The Origin Root must never be allowed to finish his story."
The scroll caught fire the moment the sentence ended.