---
The sky no longer held its shape.
Clouds hung still. The light had no source. Reality rippled like disturbed glass around the shattered remnants of the Sky-Rooted Throne Realm.
Jasmine stood barefoot on what was once an execution platform.
It was now dust and silence.
Ashes of divine armor and broken divine thrones littered the air like snow—each a testament to the decision the world had made… and failed to enforce.
Yun Che sat beside her, silent.
Neither of them spoke.
Because there were no words left for what had just happened.
They hadn't won.
They had simply reminded the heavens of something it tried too long to forget:
That gods were born of fear.
And that love—real, defiant love—was the only thing the divine couldn't chain.
---
"I thought it would feel… heavier," Jasmine whispered.
Yun Che didn't look at her. "It does. You're just holding it better than before."
She chuckled, bitter and soft. "You always say things like that after we burn the world."
He smiled faintly. "That's because we always do."
The wind shifted.
For a long moment, it carried nothing.
Then...
Something moved beneath the ash.
---
Jasmine's body tensed. Her senses spread like a net. "Did you feel that?"
Yun Che nodded. "Not from the divine remnants. From… below."
He walked forward slowly, past shattered formations and splintered soul-bonds.
The ground cracked under his feet, not because it was weak—
—but because something old, older than law, stirred beneath it.
He stopped.
In a basin of broken marble and divine blood, something shimmered faintly.
A symbol—drawn not in ink, nor light, but in remembrance.
A blade. Too massive for any man.
Too sacred for any god.
Etched not into the stone, but into the world's memory.
The Sword.
---
His breath caught.
Jasmine came up beside him.
She, too, fell into silence.
It wasn't just a vision.
It was a scar.
A mark left by the Heaven Punishing Ancestral Sword.
Once wielded by the divine emperor Mo E.
Once used to suppress the Evil Infant itself.
Now… it had shown itself again.
To them.
---
Yun Che knelt and placed his hand against the phantom blade.
Pain flooded through him—not in body, but in memory.
The blood of the Evil God within him began to boil.
And for a heartbeat, he saw something—
A woman of light, tall as mountains, with a crown of voidfire and a voice that could silence galaxies.
"You carry his veins."
"But you carry my wound."
Then she was gone.
And the sword-mark faded.
---
Jasmine caught him as he stumbled.
"Yun Che!"
"I'm fine," he muttered. "Just… someone said I'm part of a wound."
She stared. "A wound?"
He looked back at the cracked sky. "A sword wound… from the first creation."
---
They left the ruins that day with more than questions.
They carried silence.
The kind of silence that spoke louder than prophecy.
Because now, they weren't just hunted by realms.
They were being watched by something before realms ever existed.
And far above, in the deepest celestial vault, the seal surrounding the Mirror of Samsara shuddered once—
—And showed the reflection of a blade.
---