Chapter 90: The Ashes Beneath Our Feet

The wind atop the Floating Isles howled like a wounded beast, a song of sorrow that wrapped itself around the shattered spires and ancient clouds.

Zhao Lianxu stood at the edge of the Temple of Shattered Possibilities, overlooking a world that shimmered with threads of destiny. The remnants of the Tianmo Mirror still floated in the air behind him, shards swirling with the last embers of prophetic illusions, casting soft flickers of starlight upon his silhouette.

Lingxi approached from behind, her footsteps soft but certain, every step echoing with memories of battles won and hearts lost.

"Did you see it all?" she asked, her voice barely audible above the roar of the divine winds.

"Enough," he replied, his voice carrying the weight of things not yet spoken, of truths half-buried beneath eons of duty and love. "Enough to know what must come next."

She stood beside him, her eyes narrowed against the wind and the blinding radiance of shattered fate. "You still believe we can change it? That we—that I—can avoid the fate we saw?"

He turned to her, his expression softer than she remembered from their days as warriors and rulers, when the world bowed beneath their footsteps.

"Fate isn't a chain," he said. "It's a mirror. It shows what we could become. Not what we must."

She wanted to believe that. Gods, she wanted to.

But deep inside, a seed of fear bloomed. Not for herself. For him. For what he might sacrifice to save her.

Meanwhile, in the Shadowed Realms beneath the continent, the Gate of Withered Stars pulsed with ominous energy. Each beat was like a heart trying to remember how to live again—a slow, painful rhythm of rebirth and decay.

From the darkness, a form emerged—twisted, beautiful, and impossibly ancient.

Tianluan, once a guardian of the upper realms, now corrupted by his centuries of imprisonment and madness, stepped into the half-light. His body shimmered between form and void, a shifting silhouette of broken celestial glory, his wings made of ash and forgotten dreams.

A voice whispered in the air, ancient and female.

"They broke the Mirror. They opened the path. The Child of Three Bloods has chosen love."

Tianluan lifted his face to the world above, lips curling into a smile both tragic and terrifying.

"Then let him see what love costs. Let him bleed for it."

Back in the skies, Zhao Lianxu and Lingxi journeyed across the edge of Nanhai toward the Cradle of Silence—a long-lost sanctuary of forbidden cultivation techniques. It was said to be the place where the One Who Sealed the Tianmo World had buried his final creation, a place untouched by time yet humming with forgotten divinity.

They needed answers. They needed power. And more than anything, they needed each other.

Traveling with them were their companions—Mei Xueyan, whose bond with artifacts grew sharper with each passing hour, and Yun Kai, who had begun dreaming in symbols none of them could read. His dreams twisted into riddles of stars, flames, and tears.

But more than enemies, they were being followed by echoes.

At night, the skies whispered their names, weaving sorrow into the starlight.

In the clouds, faces of the past appeared. Zhao Lianxu's mother. Lingxi's father. Broken friends. Slain comrades. All accusing. All weeping. All warning.

On the fourth night, Lingxi could bear no more.

She stood at the fire, trembling like a blade held too long.

"Do you ever think we made a mistake?" she asked.

Zhao looked up from the map, the flickering firelight casting shadows across the lines of his tired face.

"Which one?"

"All of it. Choosing each other. Choosing love. Defying fate."

He walked to her and took her hands, warm against the cold wind.

"Every choice we made, Lingxi, we made knowing it would break us. But we made it because we believed the world needed something better than another tyrant or another martyr."

She blinked tears. "And if we're wrong?"

He held her closer. "Then we'll fall together. But we won't go back. We never will."

The Cradle of Silence was not silent at all.

It sang.

A strange, melodic hum resonated through the air—a harmony of memories and spirit energy, an echo of battles that had never been recorded in history but etched themselves into the bones of the world.

They descended into the old temple—a structure built from petrified wood, hovering stones, and prayers carved into obsidian. Vines of moonlight wrapped the pillars. Ghosts of ancient cultivators walked the halls.

There, in the center, floated a crystal shaped like an hourglass.

Mei Xueyan reached for it.

Time shuddered.

She fell backward as visions overwhelmed her, her scream swallowed by eternity.

She saw the One Who Sealed the Tianmo World—a nameless man with eyes like burnt stars and a voice made of silence.

She saw him crafting a blade not of steel, but of sacrifice.

A weapon fueled not by qi, but by memories.

She saw him weeping as he buried the blade within a star, a piece of his soul dying with it.

And then she saw Zhao Lianxu.

The man—the guardian—had left his legacy for him.

The Starshard Blade, a weapon meant for the one who could bear the weight of three worlds and the sorrow of countless lives.

When Mei awoke, she gasped, and her eyes glowed silver.

"We must go to the Hollow Star Sanctum," she whispered. "The weapon is calling. It remembers him."

But time was running out.

In the north, Tianluan unleashed his first assault.

Not armies.

Not beasts.

But memories twisted into monsters.

They struck villages. Wounded dreams. Corrupted cultivators.

They infected thoughts, bent reality.

In one sect, a master killed his own disciples, believing they were traitors born from illusions.

In another, a lake boiled until its guardian spirit drowned in its own sorrow, its final song a lament only the stars heard.

The world was unraveling.

Not from power.

From within.

At the gates of the Hollow Star Sanctum, Zhao Lianxu paused.

"Once I take this blade," he told Lingxi, "there is no more turning back. It will bind to me. It will feed on what I remember. And what I forget."

She placed her palm on his chest, feeling the storm in his heartbeat.

"Then remember me. And forget your fear."

He stepped forward.

The chamber was dark.

And then—

Light.

The Starshard Blade floated before him, whispering in a language older than gods.

It called him by name.

It remembered him before he was born.

And as he wrapped his fingers around the hilt, a part of him shattered.

His past lives flooded into him.

Soldier. Scholar. Tyrant. Lover. Betrayer. Dreamer. Healer. Destroyer.

He gasped, heart breaking and mending at once.

And then stood tall.

The blade flared with celestial fire.

The Child of Three Bloods was no longer just a prince.

He was the last guardian of the world.

A bearer of memory.

A weapon of love.

But far away, Tianluan raised his hand.

"Come to me, Lianxu. Bring your blade. Bring your love."

The final war had begun.

Not for domination.

But for memory.

For truth.

For the soul of creation.