The Man In Crow Feathers

Snow drifted soundlessly across the northern ridge of the Withered Vale, veiling the world in a hush older than time. Lin Xue descended from the shattered skies, her robes torn, eyes rimmed with frost, and the second flame flickering slow and steady inside her core.

It did not burn with fury. It remembered.

Her every step upon the frozen earth stirred forgotten whispers. Ghost-words. The ground, once dead, bloomed with faint visions—smudges of light, fragments of song, hints of names buried under centuries of silence.

She did not pause to admire them.

Memory was not yet mercy.

Far to the west, beyond the spines of the Blackbone Mountains, lay the Blackfeather Province—a cursed stretch of land where even the sun feared to linger. The sky hung bruised and purple, and the trees grew crooked, their branches hung with talismans like corpses, swaying not with wind but with some deeper, unseen breath.

At the heart of this gloom stood a temple of broken glass and bonewood. Within it, seated before a mirror cracked sevenfold, sat a figure cloaked in obsidian feathers.

He did not move.

Around him, paper charms burned slowly, one after another—each one a memory denied.

His face, half-reflected in the glass, was a blur. But in another life, long buried, he had been known as Ji Wuxian—the final Shadow Reader of the forbidden Ebon Library.

But Ji Wuxian no longer walked the path of men.

That name had died the moment he opened the Book of Null Prophecies… and glimpsed a future that should not have been.

"She walks it," he murmured, as the mirror caught flame—showing Lin Xue standing unyielding on the Severed Heavens Platform, Remembrance blazing behind her like judgment.

"She burns what cannot be spoken."

Behind him, ice groaned.

The coffin, ancient and locked in mourning, cracked once more.

A pale hand, fingers like porcelain wrapped in veins of frost, twitched against the surface.

Elsewhere, Lin Xue arrived at a border village, nestled beneath pine-covered cliffs and the skeletal ruins of a forgotten temple. No children played. No animals stirred. Only eyes watched her from behind papered windows, silent, fearful, remembering things they were not allowed to say.

She stepped into the village square, and even the wind seemed to hold its breath.

An elder emerged from a shadowed door, hunched and trembling.

He sniffed the air—and recoiled.

"You smell of… him," the old man whispered.

"Of whom?" she asked, though she already knew.

"Of the Tyrant."

A stillness passed through her like cold steel.

But before she could speak, a child stepped forward—no older than six, his cheeks red from cold, a wooden toy sword clutched in his small hands.

"He once saved us," the boy said. "From the sky-fire. But the heavens said we must forget."

Lin Xue dropped to one knee, her voice gentle but fierce.

"Then remember," she said. "Tell me what he did."

The boy spoke haltingly—describing a storm of divine lightning, and how a man cloaked in silver flames had stood alone between the village and the heavens. The boy's words were uncertain, as if drawn from dreams—but the emotion was clear.

As he spoke, the Remembrance Flame stirred within Lin Xue.

The air grew warmer.

Behind them, the sealed door of an abandoned house groaned and cracked—revealing a shrine long hidden beneath dust and divine seals.

Upon the inner wall, now exposed, was a mural: Yan Zhuo, arms outstretched, shielding the villagers as a spear of heavenly fire descended.

His face in the mural was blurred—but his intent was not.

That night, beneath a cloudless sky, an old woman approached the village on trembling legs.

She bore no banners, no weapons.

Only a quiet grief.

Mistress Ning, once a swordswoman of mythic repute—now only a flickering candle, her meridians dim, her qi brittle with age.

She did not speak at first. She simply knelt before Lin Xue and touched her hand.

"You carry him," Mistress Ning whispered. "Not in blood. In burden."

Lin Xue's eyes stung, but she said nothing.

Mistress Ning reached into her sleeve and pulled out a parchment, ancient and stained—drawn not with ink alone, but with blood, tears, and something deeper: intent.

"It's not a place," she rasped. "It's a moment. Buried in time. Frozen, cursed. Only one bearing the flame can enter it."

Lin Xue unfolded the map.

At its center, orbiting three black suns in a spiral of locked time, was a single name written in trembling hand:

"Ashen Crown of the Forgotten Emperor."

Meanwhile, in the temple of mirrors and feathers, Ji Wuxian fed another plume into the flames.

The fire whispered.

His body convulsed.

Visions invaded him.

—Lin Xue stepping into a realm where time curled like a dying leaf.—A boy with golden eyes, holding a broken jade talisman in trembling hands.—A gate of chains, each link shaped like reaching human arms, screaming in silence.—And behind it all, in the far mirror of the dream—A face identical to hers, watching her… from inside.

"She's not just the heir," Ji Wuxian breathed, choking. "She is the fracture."

Behind him, the coffin hissed.

A voice issued from within it—raw and ruined, like glass dragged across stone:

"Then prepare the Third Flame."

Ji Wuxian turned away, clutching his head.

But he did not scream.

He wept.

Not from sorrow.

But from remembrance.

Lin Xue stood on the outskirts of the village the next morning, gazing at the map, the flame within her beating slower now—measured, tempered, but no less fierce.

She did not know yet what the Tomb of Ash would demand of her.

Nor what waited behind the chain-gate of memory.

She only knew this:

The flames would not stop.

And neither would she.

Not until even Heaven remembered what it chose to forget.