Chapter Twenty-One: Starlight Echo

Beneath Heaven Court's buried vault, in a ruin that no longer bore history's name, silence grew intelligent.

Fairy Zi Wei stood alone. Rank Eight, wisdom-path. Once second only to a Venerable. Now the last whisper of a plan too tangled to unravel.

Before her floated an echo — not of voice, but of will. It was not her master returned, but something left behind: a shimmer of logic, a breath of intent coiled into form.

It shimmered in wisdom-fold pulses, star-like and silent.

The Immortal Tomb did not summon Star Constellation. It remembered her.

"What is your name?" Zi Wei asked.

"I have none," the echo replied.

"I am what remains when all futures have been calculated, then discarded."

It turned toward the stars—not with sight, but with mirrored cause. In the heavens, threads it had never touched began to tremble.

"Threadless fate mirror detected," it said.

Somewhere far from the tomb, a boy dreamed of a name that did not belong to any clan, any sect, any star. His Gu flickered.

A ripple answered him. Not from Fang Yuan. Not from Heaven's Will. From the Vault itself.

Back within the aperture, Fang Yuan frowned. He sensed the breach—but not from within. It came from something thinking outside fate.

He watched the suppression formations strain, struggling to contain not rebellion, but memory.

"A cycle unbound," he muttered. "Even remnants begin to move."

The Vault breathed. Not as a thing—but as a thought. And in that breath, the past forgot its silence.