Chapter 21: The Sovereign’s Promise

Before the Gate of Ancients, reality bent.

Each step Wang Chung took forced his soul to split. From his body emerged fragments—each holding an emotion long buried: Rage, Regret, Hope, Love, Fear.

The Gate demanded he leave them behind.

He did.

One by one.

Until only silence remained within him.

> "Name?" the Gate asked, in a voice older than the stars.

> "I have none," Wang Chung answered.

> "Past?"

> "Burned."

> "Future?"

> "Unwritten."

The Gate opened—not with grandeur, but with a soft sigh. Like the exhale of a dying god.

As Wang Chung entered the Realm Beyond Time, time froze.

From the folds of eternity emerged a silhouette — vast, draped in robes woven from timelines, eyes like shattered mirrors.

> "You are my final inheritor," the being said. "The last ember of the First Flame. You may reshape destiny. Or destroy it."

But Wang Chung did not bow.

> "I did not come to inherit. I came to break the chain."

The Sovereign Beyond Time watched him quietly. "Then walk. And learn what it means to carry all fate."

Behind him, Yu Meilan watched from afar, whispering a promise.

> "Come back to us, Wang Chung. Not as a Sovereign. But as yourself."

And in the Realm Beyond Time, Wang Chung walked deeper, alone—toward something no cultivator had ever touched.

Toward the truth that lay beyond god