Chapter 3: The Oracle of Ash

Part I: The Ash That Speaks in Silence

The Forgotten Realm did not burn.

Fire implies heat, destruction, cleansing. But here, nothing consumed — it erased. Stone turned to breathless powder. Sky unformed itself into concepts. And names, once spoken, dissolved like old ink in tears.

Here, ash was not what remained. Ash was what arrived.

Jiang Ye knelt on a jagged ridge that wasn't quite earth. His new body — skeletal, wreathed in drifting memory threads — pulsed faintly with soullight, a flickering mockery of what once was qi. There was no wind. And yet the ash fell constantly, like whispers the void itself had forgotten how to hush.

The air did not sting. It remembered how to sting, once.

[Oblivion System – Core Fragment 2/108][Host Memory Retention: 14%][Stability: Fragile][Directive: Seek the Oracle]

He exhaled — though no breath escaped.

Something stirred ahead.

It did not walk. It emerged.

A figure built of ruined ink, drifting robes, and a face smeared into abstraction. Not faceless — worse. A face half-remembered, like the impression of a name on the edge of sleep.

The Oracle of Ash had found him.

"You do not belong," the thing whispered, each syllable unraveling into ash as it spoke. "You are not written. Not sanctioned. Not shelved in any Library of Fate."

"I'm not asking for permission," Jiang Ye said, standing slowly.

"You are a ghost of memory. A fracture in forgetting. Why do you seek what even gods have abandoned?"

Jiang Ye stepped forward, and though the ground didn't exist in the way mortals understand terrain, it allowed him.

"I seek the fragments."

The Oracle tilted its non-face.

"Then you must give something in return. A truth. A lie. Or a name."

Jiang Ye clenched his ruined fists. He had few names left. Few truths that hadn't eroded.

But one thing burned behind his eyes.

"Xueyin."

The Oracle stilled. For the first time, the ash paused mid-fall.

"That name… has weight," it rasped.

"I carry her memory," Jiang Ye said. "And all that was stolen from her."

The Oracle lowered its head.

"Then take this."

It extended its hand — or rather, manifested the memory of a hand — and in it coalesced a small flame. Not of fire, but of memory — delicate, shivering, tinted in tones of violet and silver. It hovered above the Oracle's palm like a forgotten prayer caught in time.

"This is the Ember of Witness," the Oracle whispered. "It remembers the first betrayal. The moment the Cycle cracked. Swallow it… and you will see."

Jiang Ye hesitated.

"Will it burn me?"

The Oracle didn't answer. Instead, it leaned forward — and in a voice that carried the weight of dust-laden tomes and nameless tombs, it said:

"It will remind you who you were… before even the heavens forgot."

He took the ember.

And swallowed it.

The world shattered.

Part II: The First Memory

He fell.

Not through space.

Through time.

Through memory.

Through oblivion's dream of what memory used to be.

He saw himself. Not now — not Jiang Ye the broken, the flame-eaten exile. But a child. Wide-eyed. Star-touched. Running through the gardens of the Celestial Pavilion with a wooden blade too big for his frame. Laughter trailed behind him like golden petals on the wind.

Xueyin chased him, older by two years but slower that day because she had tucked scrolls into her sleeves — lessons she'd stolen from the elders to read in secret by moonlight.

He remembered this day.

The last day they laughed together before the rituals began.

And as he watched, Jiang Ye felt the ember inside him flicker — not with warmth, but with clarity. The memory didn't fade as most did under Oblivion's law. It strengthened.

[Memory Reinforcement Successful][Anchor: "Xueyin's Laughter" Preserved][System Retention +2%]

Then everything twisted.

The gardens became a battlefield. The Pavilion collapsed inward, frozen in an eternal moment of crumbling stone and silent screams. And standing at the center — Quen. Grand Elder. Traitor. Flame-eyed and unbroken.

"Why do you keep coming back?" Quen's voice thundered, though no lips moved.

Jiang Ye growled.

"Because you took everything."

Quen stepped forward. "You still don't understand. Memory is a curse. Pain is ink. History, a coffin. What we did… was mercy."

Jiang Ye lunged — but this was not real.

Quen vanished.

In his place stood a mirror.

Jiang Ye looked into it.

And saw nothing.

No face. No eyes. No shape. Just the outline of a person made of empty parchment.

[Warning: Identity Degradation Detected][Stabilize through Anchor or Risk Collapse]

He clenched his fists.

"My name is Jiang Ye."

Nothing changed.

"I remember Xueyin."

The parchment twitched.

"I remember the Azure Gate cracking. I remember my father's throat opening like silence. I remember the Bridge of Names and the blood it could not hold."

The reflection began to burn.

And then—

He woke.

Or thought he did.

Ash again. But different.

And in the air, the taste of something new:

A direction.

A pull.

Another fragment had surfaced.

[System Notice: Fragment 3 of 108 Detected Nearby][Directive Updated: Seek the Severed Hymn]

Jiang Ye rose from the dust.

And began to walk.

Part III: The Severed Hymn

The path was not real.

There were no stones, no ground, no shadow. Only a string of sound—notes without instrument, melody without memory—guiding Jiang Ye through the silence.

Each step he took resonated with a fading echo, like someone else had once walked this path and left behind the ghost of a song.

At the end of that sound-thread, he found a temple.

Not a structure of stone, but of petrified breath—frozen chants and collapsed prayers, shaped into an impossible cathedral.

Its doors opened inward—not into a room, but into a scream.

Inside, a choir of eyeless figures stood in rows, mouths stretched open, throats lit by dying runes. Their song was not audible. It was remembered. Each note they tried to sing had been severed, halfway between sound and silence.

Above them, floating where an altar should be, was a shard of something ancient. A crystal inscribed with bleeding symbols.

[Object Identified: Severed Hymn Fragment][Warning: Contact will alter Host's Soul Thread Permanently][Accept?]

Jiang Ye stepped forward without hesitation.

When his fingers brushed the shard, the choir stopped.

And then—

They remembered how to scream.

The silence shattered. Every severed note burst outward, slamming into Jiang Ye's mind like tidal waves of broken sound. He collapsed to one knee as his spirit twisted in pain—but also clarity.

He saw visions.

A child born under a moon that was not a moon.

A sect that drank silence like wine.

The moment Zeyra whispered her first betrayal to a flame that could speak.

[Fragment Absorbed – 3/108][New Trait Acquired: Echowound Lv. 1 – Wounds remember the last word spoken before death.][System Core Stability: +1.3%]

The choir turned toward him.

No longer screaming.

Now chanting.

"Name the traitor," they sang in a voice made of sand.

Jiang Ye's throat burned.

He spoke the name:

"Zeyra."

And the temple shattered like glass.

Part IV: The Pale Monastery

Ash rained from above.

But not just any ash—this one hummed.

Tiny notes. Threads of half-thoughts. Forgotten chants once sung by monks whose throats had long been devoured by Oblivion.

Jiang Ye walked through the Pale Monastery, where the sky was a prayer scroll stretched across infinity, and the monks were shadows that walked in loops, repeating forgotten rituals.

At the center stood a figure bound in chains of syllables.

The Writ-Keeper.

His face was covered in slips of scripture, each one blank.

"You are late," the Writ-Keeper said.

"I was not summoned," Jiang Ye replied.

"You were remembered."

With a flick of its head, the Writ-Keeper cast forth a scroll.

It unfolded in the air, revealing a map—not of land, but of memories.

Each location was a name.

Each name… a person Jiang Ye had forgotten.

"Choose one," the Writ-Keeper whispered. "But know this: once chosen, all others will vanish."

He looked at the scroll.

His hand hovered.

There—near the edge—a name flickered like a dying flame.

Xueyin.

He touched it.

The other names vanished like breath on glass.

The Writ-Keeper wept ink.

"So it begins again."

[System Anchor Reinforced – Core Memory Secured][Warning: Next Fragment is Locked Behind Anomaly][New Location Unlocked: The Ember Crypt]

The monastery dissolved.

Part V: The Ember Crypt

The world reassembled in crimson.

Heatless flame licked the air, coiling in delicate patterns like dancing calligraphy written in suffering. The Ember Crypt lay before Jiang Ye—a spiral tomb sunken deep beneath the bones of forgotten monks. It was neither warm nor cold. Just… full of memory.

Each wall was carved from melted prayer-stone, inscribed with names of those who died remembering. Souls too stubborn to be erased, now sealed into the walls themselves, humming like buried coals.

The system pulsed in his mind:

[Location Verified: The Ember Crypt][Warning: This domain is unstable. Host's Soul Integrity will deteriorate over time.][Time Remaining: 42 Minutes of Stable Cognition]

Jiang Ye descended.

At the third spiral, he heard weeping.

Not sorrowful.

Furious.

A girl sat atop a throne of bones—her hair silver, eyes burning with phantom fire. She wore the remains of a monk's robe, stitched together with threads of flame. She wept not for grief, but as if trying to burn away everything she remembered.

"You are late," she spat.

He paused. "You know me?"

"I knew what you were before you were broken."

The girl rose, flame trailing her bare feet like memory turned violent.

"I am Yamael," she said. "The Crypt's last guardian. Bound to ash by oath, abandoned by Heaven, and kept alive only because Oblivion forgot to kill me."

"I seek the next fragment."

"Then you must offer blood."

She unsheathed her palm—blazing with a sigil shaped like the ☉ he bore.

Jiang Ye stepped forward and held up his own.

Their marks resonated.

[Synchronicity Detected – Ancestral Sigil Match: ☉][Unlocking Crypt Memory Fragment 4/108…]

A glyph flared between them.

Yamael's lips twisted.

"You remember Xueyin," she said. "But do you remember her promise?"

Jiang Ye's soul flinched.

He remembered.

"If we're ever separated…"

"…find me where fire forgets to burn."

Yamael struck.

Their battle wasn't physical. It was mnemonic—an exchange of pain and memory. Each blow he received stole part of a moment: a childhood laugh, a fragment of an old lesson, the way rain once smelled on temple rooftops.

He didn't block.

He endured.

And when the duel ended, he stood with bloodless wounds but a brighter core.

"You still carry her," Yamael said, collapsing to one knee. "Then take this."

She offered a flame—not to burn, but to restore.

It entered his chest.

[Memory Fragment 4/108 Acquired – "The Ash-Sewn Promise"][Trait Enhanced: Memory Anchor – Xueyin (Stabilized)][Host Cognition Restored – Timer Reset]

The Ember Crypt collapsed.

But Jiang Ye remained.

And in the darkness that followed, the system whispered again:

[Next Directive: The Oracle of Mirrors ]

Part VI: The Reflection That Refuses

There are mirrors that show you as you are.Others reveal who you fear to become.But in the Forgotten Realm, some mirrors remember what even gods refuse to see.

Jiang Ye stood at the threshold of the Mirror Hollow — a crater of glass, vast and pulsing with reflected sky. Every shard hummed with stolen identity. The air crackled with names. Not spoken… echoed.

The system flickered in agitation:

[Location: Mirror Hollow – Class: Forbidden Relic Site][Warning: Reflected entities may distort Host identity][Protection Enabled: Anchor – Xueyin ☉]

He stepped into the crater.

Instantly, the world duplicated.

Thousands of Jiang Ye(s) stood in the mirrors — some bloodied, others crowned, some kneeling, some laughing, one… weeping while holding the spear that had once pierced his sister's spine.

He swallowed.

The Mirror Hollow tested. Not with force, but with truth.

A reflection stepped forward — calm, composed, eyes burning with godlight.

"You blame Quen," it said. "But you were never meant to inherit the Cycle."

"You're a lie the world let live too long."

Jiang Ye raised his hand, and his reflection mirrored him. Every movement identical. Until Jiang Ye whispered:

"Xueyin would have let me live."

The reflection flinched.

And shattered.

One by one, the other reflections began to break. Not from attack — but from refusal. Jiang Ye did not reject himself. He accepted who he had become — broken, vengeful, grieving.

At the center of the crater, a shard pulsed red.

He approached.

Inside it — a memory.

Xueyin, as a child, brushing ash from his face and smiling.

"You don't have to remember everything," she had said. "Just one thing. One person. That's enough."

He touched the shard.

[Memory Fragment 5/108 Recovered – "The First Smile After Grief"][New Trait Unlocked: Mirrorbound – Immune to Identity Displacement][Host Soul Integrity: +7%][Directive Updated – Seek the Tower That Devours Prayers ]

The Hollow stilled.

And Jiang Ye left, bearing no scars — only clarity.

Because in the place where reflections die, he remained whole.

Part VII: The Tower That Devours Prayers

There are places the gods once wept over, then abandoned.The Tower That Devours Prayers was not built. It grew.From the bones of a forgotten deity, fueled by unanswered pleas.

Jiang Ye stood before its base.

A spire of black stone, veined with molten regret, stretched into a sky with no stars. The tower pulsed like a heartbeat. Every few seconds, a whisper crawled from within — a prayer once spoken, long denied.

"Save my son.""Let me die first.""Just one more day."

The words clung to the walls, decayed but defiant.

The system buzzed faintly:

[Location: The Tower That Devours Prayers – Divine Remnant Class][Warning: Prolonged exposure will erode hope-based anchors][Suggested Action: Recover Fragment / Exit within 300 soulbeats]

He entered.

The air thickened. Not with dust — with despair. Not sorrow, but accumulated silence. Prayers that had once held light now hung like rusted chains.

A figure knelt in the center of the chamber.

Shrouded. Breathing.

No—sobbing.

She lifted her head.

And Jiang Ye staggered back.

It was his mother.

Not alive. Not undead. A memory construct, but so complete it ached.

"Ye'er," she whispered.

He dropped to one knee, instinct overpowering logic.

But the system interjected:

[Warning: Identity Distortion Detected – This is not your mother][Memory Entity: "The Shape of Unfinished Prayer"][Risk: Emotional Overload – Host Soul Fracture at 63%]

Still… he didn't move.

"Why didn't you answer me?" she asked.

Jiang Ye trembled.

"I couldn't. I was a child."

"No," she said gently, "you were a god in waiting."

The chamber around them began to collapse. Prayers unspooled from the walls like thread, curling toward Jiang Ye, begging, bleeding.

"You must carry them now," his mother-echo said. "Because no one else will."

She placed something in his hand.

A page.

Unwritten. Untouched. Immortal.

[Memory Fragment 6/108 Acquired – "The Prayer Left Unheard"][New Trait Gained: Burdenbearer – Immune to Hope Collapse][Soul Integrity: +9%][Directive Updated: Journey to the Maw of Silence ]

Jiang Ye bowed to the echo.

When he looked up, she was gone.

Only the page remained.

And from it, one word burned faintly at the edge:

☉

He turned, cloak sweeping the bloodless stone.

The tower did not consume his prayer.

Because this time—

It was he who devoured it.

Part VIII: The Maw of Silence

There was a place where even echoes dared not tread.

The Maw of Silence.

A chasm older than language, carved not by time, but by forgetting. No bird crossed it. No wind whispered. It was not a void, but a verdict.

Jiang Ye stood at its edge.

Below: nothing.

Above: less than that.

The silence here was not absence of sound—it was consumption. Every footstep, every heartbeat, was swallowed before it could reach memory. Even thought slowed, like it feared being devoured.

[Location Identified: The Maw of Silence – Oblivion Depth Tier IV][Hazard Level: Terminal][System Protection: 22% Active / 78% Subject to Collapse][Fragment Signal: Nearby – Intermittent Pulse]

He stepped forward.

And the world tried to erase him.

Names peeled off his skin like ash. Titles he'd earned flickered out. The system stuttered.

[Jiang ____][Soul _____ion: 39%][Directive: --rr—J—rr—e–]

He clenched his jaw.

Held tight to one thought: Xueyin.

The system hissed back into form.

[Name Anchor Stabilized: Jiang Ye][Memory Thread Reinforced: Xueyin – Fragment 02][Path Forward: Accepted]

He descended.

There was no ground.

Only weight.

Not gravity—expectation. Every life he could have lived pressed in from the dark: Jiang Ye the coward. Jiang Ye the betrayer. Jiang Ye who forgot.

And then—

A voice.

But not from ahead.

"What do you regret the most?"

He didn't answer.

"You had power. Why didn't you save her?"

He stayed silent.

"You were meant to rewrite fate. But you couldn't even rewrite a death."

That struck deep.

A figure emerged from the dark. Himself—but not. This Jiang Ye was unscarred. Unburned. Clothed in perfection and certainty.

"Who are you?" he asked.

The other smiled. "The version of you who obeyed. Who let the past go. Who bowed before the forgetting and lived happy."

"I don't want happiness," Jiang Ye said. "I want the truth."

"And if the truth damns you?"

"Then let me burn."

They clashed.

No swords. No spells.

Just will.

Two truths grinding against each other like tectonic plates. One trying to forget. The other refusing to die.

And in the end—

The false Ye cracked.

Split down the middle.

And from its chest emerged a shard of crystal, pulsing with fractured light.

[Memory Fragment 7/108 Acquired – "The Self That Yielded"][New Trait Gained: Will Unbroken – Immune to Identity Overlap][System Core Stabilization: +14%]

The Maw began to seal behind him.

Not out of mercy.

But fear.

Even Oblivion now recognized what Jiang Ye had become:

A memory that fought back.

Part IX: The Dead God's Spine

The sky here was broken vertebrae.

A staircase of bones stretched across a colorless horizon, each rib a continent, each spinal segment a forgotten war. This was the spine of a god long dead—a being erased so completely that even its worshipers had no name to curse.

Yet the bones remained.

Jiang Ye walked.

Every step was a throb of pain—not in his body, but in history. These bones remembered. And their memory hurt.

[Location: Spine of the Nameless Divinity][Warning: Memory Density Critical – Prolonged Exposure Will Fracture Sanity][System Firewall Engaged – Delay Threshold: 13 Minutes]

Around him, fragments swirled. Not ash. Not mist.

Prayers.

Muttered in broken tongues. Echoes of desperation. Wails of those who had begged salvation from a god who no longer existed.

Each prayer tried to enter him.

Tried to rewrite him.

A beggar's plea: "Make my child live again."A warlord's cry: "Let me burn the unbelievers."A widow's whisper: "Take my name. Just let me be remembered."

And over them all:

"I offer my soul. Just don't let me vanish."

Jiang Ye trembled.

His soul wanted to answer.

To be these people.

To give them form.

That was what the Spine did—it tempted.

By offering the oldest dream of all:

To matter.

[System Distress: Identity Drift Detected – Purging External Anchors…][Memory Anchor Reinforced: "Father's Final Look"][Anchor Detail: Blood pouring like ink. Mouth forming "Run." Eyes saying "Remember."]

Jiang Ye screamed—and found his voice again.

The prayers recoiled.

He stepped onto the god's skull.

And there, seated on its cracked brow, was a figure cloaked in wings of dead light.

A god-walker.

An ancient guardian bound to protect what the god once knew.

But now—

It was blind.

Its voice was not male, not female. Just judgment.

"Why do you walk this place of mourning, Jiang Ye?"

He answered with another step forward.

"Do you come to awaken what should not rise?"

"No," Jiang Ye said. "I come to remember what the world is too afraid to hold."

The god-walker rose. Towers fell from its shadow. Storms bloomed in the hollow spaces where its eyes had once burned.

"Then take its heart. And suffer its burden."

The ribcage cracked.

From deep within—

A heart of stone and fire and silence pulsed once, twice, then tore free, floating toward him.

Jiang Ye reached out.

It burned.

Not his hands.

His name.

[System Update: Memory Fragment 10/108 Acquired – "The Forgotten God's Heart"][New Trait Gained: Flame of Devotion – Immune to Passive Oblivion for 10 minutes][Unlocked Passive: God-Wound Echo – Your presence destabilizes false divinities.]

He turned away from the bones.

They groaned, as if relieved.

The spine would sleep again.

But it remembered him now.

And that was enough.

Part X: The Mirror of Zeyra

It was not a place.

It was not even a memory.

The Mirror of Zeyra was a question.

Jiang Ye stood before it, unsure when or how he had arrived. The world around him had bled into silver fog—lightless, scentless, time-dead. Only the mirror stood out, tall and thin as a blade, forged from a metal that remembered betrayal.

It did not reflect him.

It reflected possibility.

And in its cold surface, Jiang Ye saw—

—Zeyra.

His cousin.

The traitor.

The girl who once slept beside a sword cradle, whispering stories of starbeasts and promised heavens. The same girl who, with the calm of a winter storm, had driven a spear through Xueyin's chest.

But in the mirror, she wept.

She knelt before the body of their father.

She screamed Jiang Ye's name as if she had not meant to betray it.

"…what is this?" Jiang Ye whispered.

[System Directive: Interpretative Echo in Progress][This is not her truth. This is her could-have-been.]

He stepped closer.

Zeyra stood in a field of unburnt flowers, holding a jade token Jiang Ye remembered gifting her at age ten. The wind carried the smell of ink and dried herbs—familiar.

Her eyes—those same ones that had stared through him like dust—were soft now.

"Do you remember the Bridge of Names?" Mirror-Zeyra asked.

Jiang Ye flinched.

"I do."

"Then you remember I carved your name beneath mine."

"I remember you cut it out the night you betrayed us."

The mirror quivered.

Zeyra's image rippled, blurred—as if trying to stay in that false world, but failing.

"I didn't want to," she said, and for a moment, Jiang Ye believed her.

But then—

The mirror shattered.

And standing behind it was her.

The real Zeyra.

Clad in armor made from memory shards. Holding the same spear. Eyes full of ancient quiet.

"You shouldn't be here," she said softly.

"You shouldn't be alive," he replied.

The wind did not move.

They stood in the debris of false futures.

And then—

She attacked.

Spear and sword met—not as weapons, but as testaments. Neither tried to kill.

Not at first.

This was not yet war. It was memory demanding witness.

"Why?" he asked as they clashed.

"Because someone had to break the cycle," she answered.

"And you chose me to shatter?"

She hesitated.

That hesitation cost her a rib.

Blood, real this time, sprayed the air.

Jiang Ye staggered too—her spear had clipped his shoulder.

[Warning: Core Instability Rising – Mirror Memory Bleed Detected][System Option Available: Seal Encounter OR Convert to Anchor]

He made a choice.

He dropped his sword.

She froze.

"I won't kill you," he said. "Not here. Not until I understand."

Zeyra stared.

And then—for a breath—

She cried.

One tear.

Then vanished.

The mirror reformed behind her, sealing the echo.

And Jiang Ye… remained.

Alone.

But with one new thing:

[Memory Anchor Acquired: "Could-Have-Been Zeyra"][Fragment 11/108 Retrieved – Trait Gained: Mirror-Bound Resolve – +Resistance to Illusion & Regret-Based Attacks]

He turned from the mirror.

The path ahead led not forward.

But deeper.

Into the ruins of prophecy.

Into the next name he dared not remember.

Part XI: The Flame Library That Burns Thought

It did not have doors.

It had thresholds—moments in time that chose whether to open or not.

Jiang Ye passed into the library without walking. One blink, and he stood among corridors forged not from stone or wood—but from burnt thought. The walls shimmered with psalm-ashes. The floor trembled under the weight of half-spoken secrets.

This was not a place where books were kept.

It was where they died.

Where the thoughts of dead worlds—memories too dangerous, truths too sharp—were exiled and set aflame.

At the center of the hall: a single librarian.

Headless.

Clad in robes stitched from syllables, faceless, nameless.

Still, it watched him.

"Who seeks flame?" it asked—not aloud, but in thought-echoes, directly into his spirit.

"I do," Jiang Ye said. "I seek what was lost."

"Then burn," the librarian replied.

And the shelves ignited.

Scrolls burst into violet flame.

Ink screamed.

Philosophies clawed their way out of parchment.

But Jiang Ye did not flinch. He stepped forward. Through fire that was not fire. Through knowledge so vast it had to be destroyed to be contained.

[System Interface: Mind Integrity — Holding at 63%][Environmental Trait Detected: Reality Feedback Loop][Warning: Every memory read here remembers you back]

He found it.

A tome bound in scales—not leather. It hissed at his hand.

"To read me is to forget your name."

He opened it anyway.

Inside: a single sentence.

"Jiang Ye never existed."

His pulse froze.

But his soul roared.

"I do exist. You remember me enough to deny me."

The book snapped shut and bowed.

Behind him, the librarian knelt.

"You are the exception," it said. "The story unwritten but refusing silence."

A staircase unfurled from the flames.

At its top: a door carved with a single word.

TRUTH.

Jiang Ye ascended.

Behind him, the Flame Library burned itself out of existence, satisfied.

[System Fragment 12/108 Acquired][New Trait Gained: Flame-Touched Cognition — Resistance to Existential Dissonance / +Perception in Realms of Thought][New Directive: Seek the Oracle Who Remembers]

And beyond that door—

Something alive was waiting.

"I let them."

The Oracle turned—its movements slow, as if it had to sift through centuries to remember how motion worked.

"I have not been spoken to in ten thousand broken calendars," it said.

"And I am not here to speak," Jiang Ye said.

"What then?"

"I need to remember something no one is allowed to recall."

The Oracle reached beneath its robes and withdrew an orb—not glowing, not cold. It radiated nothing.

Because it contained everything once erased.

"The name you seek exists inside this," the Oracle said. "But to touch it is to carry all the forgotten grief that came with it. History is not passive. It fights back."

"I was born into a clan that decided who remembers and who vanishes," Jiang Ye whispered. "Let it fight. I won't forget again."

He took the orb.

It did not shine. It shuddered.

And with it came the memory—

A cradle. A child not yet named. A prophecy older than any star. A mother whispering her son's name to the stars, just once, before it was stripped away.

Not Jiang Ye.

But a name that came before.

The system hissed:

[True Name Detected: ████████][Access Forbidden: System Override Attempt Detected][Name Encryption Protocol Activated: Soul Lock Engaged][Warning: Attempting to recall this name will result in memory bleed]

But Jiang Ye held on.

Blood poured from his ears. His bones screamed.

Yet the Oracle did not stop him.

Because this was a rite.

Not of power—but of defiance.

He remembered not just the name, but the moment they erased it.

And who ordered it.

Grand Elder Quen.

Zeyra.

The Council of Endings.

And worse—

The Will of Heaven itself.

He opened his mouth.

And said the forbidden name.

The chamber cracked.

Reality twisted.

The Oracle shattered into sand—and whispered as it dissolved:

"You are not what the world allowed… but what it forgot to erase."

Jiang Ye fell to one knee, shaking.

But his grip on self did not loosen.

[System Fragment 13/108 Acquired][True Name Anchor Integrated – Soul Stability Increased][Trait Gained: Anti-Forgotten – Immune to Standard Memory Removal Techniques]

He stood again.

In the void left behind, one phrase remained, written in light:

THE WORLD REMEMBERS YOU NOW.

Part XIII: The Manuscript of Thorns

The next gate was not a door.

It was a sentence.

Jiang Ye stood before a wall of living script—an infinite parchment unfurling through the void, inked in blood and woven with threads of pain. Words twitched like dying insects across the surface. They rearranged, rewrote, and sometimes tore themselves apart. A library of agony. A scripture of betrayal.

This was The Manuscript of Thorns—one of the forbidden relics written not by scholars, but by those who had been erased.

The system whispered:

[Warning: Unauthorized Access to Forbidden Lexicon][Manuscript of Thorns – Status: Cursed / Mutable / Sentient][Initiating Precautionary Memory Bind…]

Jiang Ye ignored it.

He stepped forward.

Each step bled a word from his shadow.

The Manuscript reacted—lines of script surged forward like vines, wrapping around him, testing him.

"Name yourself," the text demanded, its voice a chorus of forgotten gods.

"I have many names," Jiang Ye said. "But the one you fear is the one you wrote and buried."

The vines coiled tighter.

He did not resist.

"I am the flame you tried to footnote," he said, "and the ink you could not burn."

The Manuscript shivered.

Then opened.

A thousand pages spun out around him like wings of a dead angel. Each page showed a memory, not his own—but stolen from the collective soul of humanity. Wars forgotten. Loves undone. Futures aborted. He saw Zeyra's first betrayal. Quen's pact with the Oblivion. The moment the Wheel of Return was cracked in secret.

And then…

One page glowed.

Not crimson. Not silver.

But violet—the color of grief remembered.

He touched it.

The page hissed, screamed, then unfolded into a blade.

Not metal.

A sword made of written wrath.

[Item Acquired: Lexisfang – Blade of the Unwritten][Property: Cuts through False Narratives / Binds Lying Tongues / Severs Divine Scripts]

Jiang Ye raised it.

The Manuscript recoiled, but not in anger—in submission.

"You carry memory not as burden," it said, "but as blade."

"I don't want to be a god," Jiang Ye whispered. "I want to be the reckoning they forgot to footnote."

[System Alignment Shift Detected][Archetype: Unwritten Heir → Ascending Scribe of Ruin][New Directive: Seek the Quill That Ends Heaven]

The Manuscript of Thorns closed behind him.

And the path ahead glowed—lit not by stars, but by unwritten destinies.

The Book had been opened.

The Name remembered.

The Sword forged.

All that remained…

Was to rewrite the world.

Part XIV: The Book That Binds the World (Chapter 3 Finale)

The final gate was silence.

Jiang Ye emerged into a void not of darkness—but of stillness. Thought refused to echo here. Emotion bled dry. Even the Oblivion System dimmed, its voice hushed by something older than code.

In the center of that timeless space floated The Book.

No longer closed.

No longer waiting.

It pulsed with a presence that defied everything—divinity, mortality, even memory. Not a record of the world. Not its future.

Its soul.

And carved into its exposed first page was a single glyph:

☉

The system returned—its voice almost reverent.

[Object Confirmed: The Book That Binds the World][Warning: Direct Contact May Rewrite All Reality Threads][Narrative Authority Detected: Jiang Ye – Ascending Scribe of Ruin][You may now write…]

He approached.

Each step unmade a law.

The law of gravity. The law of time. The law of consequence.

He stopped before the page.

Tears welled—but not from sorrow.

From presence.

He reached toward it, his fingers trembling with the weight of every name that had been erased. Every story burned. Every truth corrupted.

Then a voice.

Not the system.

Not the book.

Her.

"Ye…"

His hand froze.

The page shifted. And written in curling, violet flame:

Xueyin still waits.

His throat tightened.

The past clawed at his ribs. Her voice, soft. Her laughter. Her blood.

He pressed his hand to the glyph.

The Book did not resist.

Instead, it opened into him.

He did not write.

He remembered.

And remembering was enough.

The world began again.

[End of Chapter 3: The Oracle of Ash]