Chapter 6 – The First Vow

"Some doors do not open. They awaken."

The door pulsed like a wound.

It had no lock. No hinges. No seams. Just pale flesh stretched across bone, carved with symbols Aren didn't recognize—but somehow understood.

Each one was a number.Each number was a name.

Thirteen in total.

His own was the ninth.

The Eleventh stood beside him in that crimson-tinged dreamspace, silent, more human now. His stitched mouth was whole here. His eyes… had sorrow in them.

"You don't have to go in yet," the Eleventh said.

Aren stared at the door. "I already did. The moment I came back."

The Eleventh exhaled through his nose. "You really are him."

"I'm not anyone," Aren replied. "I failed Foundation. I don't even have qi."

The Eleventh smiled thinly.

"You have something worse than qi now. Memory."

Then the door opened.

It didn't swing or crack or break.

It simply wasn't closed anymore.

Inside was a chamber made of red stone and wet shadow. No ceiling. No floor. Just a descent—endless, spiral, stinking of rot and sanctity.

And at its center:A throne of marrow.

A body sat atop it.

Or what was left of one.

Wrapped in robes that flickered between white and black, flesh like glass, bones like petrified jade, and eyes—if they were eyes—burning with the light of ten thousand deaths.

The First did not move.

But Aren felt it see him.

Felt his own lungs forget how to breathe.

"You carry Nine," the voice said. Not from the body. From the air. The blood. His own mouth. "You've seen fire. Pain. Begging. You still crawl forward. That is admirable."

Aren's throat was dry.

He didn't kneel.

He didn't speak.

He waited.

That felt like the only respectful thing to do in the presence of something like this.

"You are wondering what this place is," the First continued. "It has no name. Just as you no longer have time. Each of us came here by accident. None of us left."

Aren's voice was rough. "Then why keep going?"

The First smiled—or cracked.

"To finish what the heavens feared we'd start."

A pulse of heat filled the space. Not flame. Emotion.

Something between rage and mercy.

"There were cultivators who achieved godhood," the First said. "They ascended. And with their last breath, they severed the ladder behind them."

"Why?" Aren asked.

"So none could follow," said the First. "But the Scarlet Path was different. We did not climb the ladder. We died through it."

Aren shook.

He didn't know why. His body in the dreamspace was fine.

But his mind felt like it was made of thread.

The First raised a hand—or what resembled one.

It pointed.

And thirteen coffins emerged from the void behind the throne, floating in a perfect ring.

Twelve were sealed.

The Ninth… was cracked open.

Aren saw himself inside. Pale. Bleeding. Eyes open and staring at nothing.

"You are only half-born," the First said.

"I never asked to be born at all," Aren spat.

The First laughed. A sound like glass cracking beneath centuries of pressure.

"None of us did."

From the void between the coffins, another figure appeared.

Not dead. Not bound.

A woman.

Human.

Eyes black as void, robes stitched with living ink that squirmed as she moved.

She knelt before the First.

And she saw Aren.

"You shouldn't be here yet," she whispered. "You'll unravel."

"Who are you?" Aren asked.

She didn't answer. Instead, she placed a scroll at the First's feet, bowed, and turned to leave.

As she passed Aren, her hand brushed his.

She didn't touch him.

But he still bled.

And in that split-second, he saw her death.

A child thrown from a tower.A mother burning herself alive.A sect poisoned from within by petals made of ash.A river of screaming mirrors.

She had died four times.

She was the Fourth.

Then it all vanished.

The throne. The First. The coffins.

Gone.

And Aren was standing in the ruins of Hai'ren Hollow, bleeding from the nose.

Yin was beside him, arms around his shoulders, screaming.

His ears were ringing.

The Eleventh was gone.

But the Hall of Records was on fire.

No flame. No fuel.

Just paper screaming as it turned to light.

Later, in the burnt shell of the Hall, Yin asked what happened.

Aren looked up at the stars.

"The First," he whispered. "He was waiting."

"For what?"

"For me to make a choice."

She hesitated.

"And what did you choose?"

Aren didn't answer.

Because he didn't know.

Yet.

But later that night, when they rested in the ruins, Aren reached into his robe.

And pulled out a scroll.

One that hadn't been there before.

Written in black blood across parchment made of skin.

A title:

-- "The Scarlet Vow

Thirteen names. Thirteen deaths. One path that never ends.

Do not seek salvation. There is none.

Only memory. Only marrow. Only the truth behind immortality's lie." --

And beneath it : 

[🩸The First Vow

I shall not live. I shall not die

.I will become the wound the heavens cannot close. 

]

Aren looked at the words.

And for the first time since his Ninth Death…

He smiled.

End of Chapter 6 – "The First Vow"

Next: Chapter 7 – "A Flower That Bleeds"