Chapter 16: The Hollow Palace

The mountain trembled beneath their feet as they climbed. Cracks spiderwebbed across the Celestial Sword Palace's pristine steps, each fissure leaking **black vapor** that smelled of burnt hair and rotting parchment.

Lian pressed a hand to the stone. **"It's breathing."**

Kai's crystallized arm had grown heavier, the veins around it now threaded with **glowing fractures**. His shadow stalked ahead, its form flickering between shapes—sometimes a man, sometimes something with too many joints.

*"Hurry,"* it whispered. *"The Echo comes."*

---

**The Price of Memory**

A bridge of shattered statues led to the palace gates. With each step, Kai's shadow **forced memories into his mind**:

- **A younger Draven** bowing before the Demon Emperor

- **Himself** (in another body) sealing the First Sin into the Birthwell

- **Lian's mother**, her hands bloody as she reforged the well's lock

**"You remember now,"** the shadow crooned. **"You were never the prison. You were the **key**."**

Kai's vision swam. The crystallization reached his **shoulder**.

---

**The Echo Arrives**

The merged clones oozed up the mountainside—no longer human, but a **single entity** of glass and stolen flesh. Its voice was the Patriarch's, layered with a hundred others:

*"Daughter. Look what your cowardice has wrought."*

Lian's hands shook as she drew her dagger. **"Mother died to keep this seal intact. You **perverted** her work."**

The Echo **laughed**, its form splitting into **doppelgängers** of Kai and Lian.

**"We are all perversions here."**