Chapter 4: The Mirror That Remembers

The Broken Sect had no wealth to spare on its servants. Their quarters were crumbling stone sheds buried beneath the cliff walls, where mold grew on the walls and the wind screamed through shattered windows. Ashen Wu shared his shed with rats and rain—and still, it was considered lucky.

That night, the moon was veiled behind dark clouds. A storm grumbled on the horizon, the kind that drowned lesser sects in mudslides. Servants scurried for shelter. But Ashen remained behind.

He had sensed something.

Not qi. Not beast presence. Something else—memory. A pull from the past.

It came from under the floorboards.

He waited until the others were gone, then tore open the rotting planks near the far wall. Beneath the muck and spider's web, his fingers struck cold glass.

A mirror.

Cracked.

Dust-covered.

Forgotten.

He pulled it free. It was small, palm-sized, its once-polished surface now webbed with fractures. And yet… the moment he touched it, something in him pulsed.

His heart. His mind. His rootless core.

As if the mirror recognized him.

He wiped the dust from the glass.

And froze.

Because the reflection staring back at him… wasn't the boy he had become.

It was the man he had been.

Long black hair tied in warrior's fashion. A crimson mark between the brows. A cloak of stars and bones. Eyes that burned like devouring fire—eyes that had once made monarchs tremble.

It was Ashen Wu, the Heaven-Eater, as he had been before his execution.

The mirror pulsed.

"Still alive, are you?" the reflection asked. Its voice echoed in his mind, not the air. "How pathetic you look now."

Ashen's breath caught. "You're… me."

"Was," the image sneered. "Before you let them pierce your soul and grind your bones to dust."

"I was betrayed."

"You were weak," the reflection snapped. "You sought to devour heaven, yet forgot the rules of this world. No one fears power that does not bite."

Ashen's fists clenched. "Then teach me to bite harder."

The mirror went still.

Silence stretched.

Then the image nodded.

"Good. You're still hungry."

Ashen leaned closer. "What are you? Some remnant?"

"I am memory," said the reflection. "A fracture of your true self, sealed in this mirror with your final breath. When they burned your body, you spat the last ember of your soul into this artifact, hoping one day it would return to you."

"And now?"

"Now you're weak. Rootless. But alive. That means possibility."

Ashen stared into his own burning eyes. "Can you restore what I lost?"

"No," the reflection said simply. "But I can help you remember how to steal it back."

The mirror began to glow.

Symbols twisted in the glass—ancient characters from the Heaven-Eating Scripture, each one a crime against the heavens themselves. Forbidden runes. Reversed qi pathways. Cannibalistic incantations. Knowledge he had written in blood and silence, long ago.

Ashen's breath slowed. The script returned to him like an old friend.

"I remember this…"

The reflection smirked. "Of course you do. It's who you are."

Ashen sat cross-legged on the cold floor and let the mirror rest in his palm. He began to chant the first verse of the Heaven-Eating Scripture—not aloud, but in soul-speech, the language of thought and intention.

And the mirror responded.

Images bloomed across the glass.

A beast's black core, crushed in his hand.

A flame-root cultivator screaming as his essence was devoured.

A silver tide of essence flooding into a broken root—and becoming something new.

The Null Root.

A root not gifted by heaven—but stolen.

Built through hunger. Made to consume.

Ashen's spine arched as pain wracked his body. Blood poured from his nose. His lungs seized.

The mirror did not care.

He chanted through the agony.

The Heaven-Eating Scripture burned its way back into his soul—not gentle, not kind. A thousand reversed meridian paths rewired his insides. Where others opened their dantian to gather, he emptied his.

He became a void.

And that void—hungered.

His stomach gurgled.

Not from hunger for food.

But essence.

He reached out, grasping the air.

And the air shuddered.

Just a flicker.

A breeze twisted toward him unnaturally, as if answering a call it did not understand. The mold on the floor blackened and curled. The insects near the mirror withered and died.

Ashen opened his eyes.

The mirror had gone dark.

The reflection had vanished.

But its voice lingered.

"Now you remember. Good. When you are ready to devour again, return to me."

The cracks in the mirror had rearranged themselves.

Into a mouth.

Ashen smiled.

Not with joy.

But with teeth.