Chapter 114: Ashen Veil

The morning after the Requiem did not arrive with a blaze of brilliance but with a quiet, haunting murk, as if the very sky wore mourning veils. Smoke from the still-glowing remnants of battle curled into the sky like the slow exhale of some ancient god, and the wind that passed through the Ancestral Peaks carried with it the scent of scorched memory. Where triumph should have roared, silence lingered. Not the peaceful kind, but one thick with grief and consequence.

Zhao Lianxu stood alone atop the Crowned Ridge, the highest and most solemn precipice of the Ancestral Peaks, a place carved not by nature, but by intent—built by generations who sought not height, but perspective. From here, the entire horizon of fractured lands was laid bare before him, and yet he gazed inward.

The Ember Mirror Blade was lodged in the earth at his side, its edge buried deep into ancient stone and black soil. It hummed lowly, as if still remembering the blood it had drunk, the lies it had severed. It pulsed not with wrath, but with restraint. A weapon waiting not to kill, but to witness.

His eyes were closed. His posture was that of stillness, but within him a maelstrom swirled. Every breath summoned ghosts. Every heartbeat echoed with forgotten names.

Each moment of this silence became a crucible. In it, the faces of the fallen rose—not with judgment, but with sorrow. Promises made and left unfulfilled. Hands that once reached for his in trust, now lost to time's devouring tide. And the betrayals—the worst carved not by enemies, but by those once closest—seared like acid etched across his marrow.

The wind shifted.

"You cannot redeem all things, Lianxu," it whispered. The voice was his mother's, preserved in some deep corner of his soul, awakened only in these moments of brutal clarity. "But you can choose which truths are worth dying for."

Behind him, the soft rustling of silken robes broke the fragile stillness. Yanmei approached. Her steps were not hurried, not hesitant. Just deliberate, steady—as she had always been, the unwavering presence that refused to vanish.

"You didn't return to the Accord Hall," she said, her voice gentle but edged with knowing.

"I couldn't," he replied, still facing away. "Not yet."

She came to stand beside him, her gaze following his to the edge of the world, where the remnants of the rift pulsed faintly—a scar that refused to heal.

"It's quiet," she said, after a pause. "Too quiet."

"That's when the world lies the most."

Yanmei's eyes narrowed slightly. "You feel it too?"

Zhao nodded. "The Dream-Eater hasn't left. It's waiting—lurking just beneath memory. It feeds not on flesh or energy, but on forgetting. It thrives on the things we bury just to keep breathing."

Her voice sharpened. "Then we must not forget."

Far beneath the Peaks, in the labyrinthine corridors of the Skyburied Library, Yelan moved like a shadow, her fingers trailing over volumes etched in dying languages, stitched with time, regret, and silence. Dust swirled like spirits in the lamplight, and the shelves seemed to lean in, as if listening.

She sought more than magic. More than weapons. She sought understanding.

Spectral flames hovered above her, summoned to light her way. Ghostly librarians, long dead but bound to their duty, watched her without blinking. Their silence felt less passive and more accusatory.

Yelan ignored the dread curling in her gut and pressed deeper into the forbidden levels.

The Oracle Ming Yuexian's voice still echoed within her: "Memory is the only armor that cannot be forged. Only remembered."

At last, she found it.

A sealed tome bound in twilight bark, marked with a symbol she had seen only once—on her father's wrist, concealed like a wound: the sigil of the First Betrayer.

Her fingers hovered above it, trembling. She hesitated. To open this book would be to unravel illusions that had once protected her sanity. But lies were no longer a luxury.

She opened it.

No diagrams. No invocations. Just a story. A simple tale.

Of a man who had loved too fiercely and a world that punished him for it. Of a prince who had surrendered heaven for a demoness. Of a weapon forged from the ashes of deception and silence.

The story bore no name.

But she knew him. Every word resonated with a truth she had long buried.

Zhao Lianxu.

Chaos reigned once more in the Accord Hall.

The unity forged in fire was already fraying. Emissaries argued, their voices shrill with fear and pride. Old hatreds stirred beneath polished words. Greed bloomed where grief should have lingered. The flames of ambition rekindled, devouring reason.

Kaien stood among them, the voice of reason, trying to broker fragile peace. But his words found no purchase in the hearts already closing again like fists.

Then a voice broke the clamor.

Low. Calm. Unyielding.

"The fire will not last unless it is fed by truth."

Yelan entered the chamber, her presence drawing every gaze. In her hands was the tome.

She placed it gently upon the pedestal of unity.

"This," she said, "is the first story. The one you buried. The truth you erased from your records, your laws, your teachings. This is what the Dream-Eater thrives on—our collective refusal to remember."

A thick silence fell.

Ma Lin, ever skeptical, rose. "What does sentiment have to do with our survival?"

"Everything," Yelan replied, unwavering. "We are not battling a monster. We are at war with erasure. With silence. The Dream-Eater is born of our refusal to remember the inconvenient, the painful, the intimate. It grows stronger every time we silence the stories that shape us."

The doors opened again.

Zhao Lianxu entered. His presence did not shout—it settled, like ash, like truth.

"We must go to the Hollow Crypts," he said. "Not to fight. But to remember."

Lord Kuang scoffed. "You'd have us face nightmares with bedtime tales?"

"No," Zhao said. "With the pieces of ourselves we've tried to forget. That is the only way to unmake the veil."

That night, under a sky too dark for stars, a solemn procession formed.

Warriors. Seers. Leaders. Exiles. All those who had borne scars not just on skin, but on soul.

At the gate of the Hollow Crypts, each was asked a single question:

"What memory do you fear the most?"

One by one, voices spoke:

"My brother's scream as I let him fall."

"The day I branded my sister a traitor."

"The name of my child, whom I abandoned for power."

And with every confession, the veil shimmered, weakened. The Crypt itself seemed to lean forward, listening.

When Zhao stood at the threshold, his answer was soft, but unwavering:

"The moment I loved her more than duty—and chose silence over salvation."

The doors yawned open.

Inside was not darkness, but reflection. They faced not beasts, but echoes. Living memories. Each truth re-lived became a blade and a balm.

The Dream-Eater rose—not as a beast, but as a perfect mirror.

"You bring stories," it said. "But they fade. Truth is written by victors."

Zhao stepped forward, Ember Mirror Blade in hand.

"Then let this truth live in us all. We are not here to win. We are here to remember."

He drove the blade into the heart of the Crypt.

Flames erupted. Not to burn—but to illuminate.

Forgotten names were spoken. Tears fell. Grudges were let go. Ancient wounds, long cauterized in silence, were opened—and healed.

The Dream-Eater screamed—not in rage, but in despair.

For it could no longer consume what had been claimed and spoken aloud.

Memory.

When the fire finally ebbed, a new dawn crept over the Peaks.

Not cold. Not gray.

But gold.

And for the first time in an age, the mountains stood—not as walls against the world.

But as monuments to remembrance.