The final road
The mists cleared for a heartbeat.
And in that moment, the Realm of Ashen Reeds **remembered** him.
A whispered voice echoed from the soil itself:
> "Welcome, Xuán Yí. We have waited long."
---
The Order bowed.
Even Meilin.
But Orion didn't feel pride.
He felt **responsibility.**
"I need to know what comes next," he said. "What the prophecy truly means."
Wren nodded.
"There are three more realms. Three Guardians who received what you should have had. But power doesn't belong—it's *recognized.* And you've already been seen."
Orion clenched his fists. "They'll never accept me."
"Then make them doubt what they accept."
Wren reached into her sleeve and handed him an object.
A compass.
Its needle was not a direction, but a **glyph**—constantly changing.
"This will guide you not where to go, but what to question."
Orion took it.
The moment he did, a third glyph etched itself on his arm:
> **问** (*wèn*) — *To ask.*
---
Three glyphs now burned along his forearm:
* **玄** — Mystery
* **疑** — Doubt
* **问** — Ask
Wren whispered, "You've begun the path not of power, but of *rewriting meaning.* That is harder than fire, and deeper than prophecy."
Orion's heart surged with both fear and fire.
He looked around at the Order.
At the misty horizon.
At the floating scripts above the reeds.
And then said:
> "I'll go to the Realms.
> I'll find the others.
> I won't take back what they were given.
> I'll make them *see what they missed.*"
---
A hush fell across the Order.
Then, one by one, they each pressed their palm to their heart and gave a single syllable:
> "疑."
Doubt.
Not insult.
But *honor.*
---
The wind shifted.
A path began to write itself through the mist—spelling the name of the next realm.
Orion stepped toward it.
Not as a mistake.
Not as an exile.
But as the beginning of a question the Realms had never dared to ask.
The path to the next realm unfolded beneath Orion's feet not as road or bridge, but as syntax—a sequence of glyphs forming a single living sentence, winding forward into the mist.
Each step he took erased the word behind him.
"Why's it doing that?" he asked Meilin, who followed behind, hood raised.
"So you can't go back," she said. "Once the sentence is read, it vanishes. This journey is forward-only."
Ahead, the mist swirled violently, until it parted to reveal a towering archway carved from obsidian and memory. On it, a single glowing character pulsed in defiance:
誓 (shì) — Oath.
Beneath it lay the first gate to the next realm: The Realm of Heaven's Silence.
Realm Name: 寂天界 (Jì Tiān Jiè) — Realm of Heaven's Silence
Floating in the skies above Mount Emei, suspended between storm and prayer. All sound is muted upon entry; only internal thought may pass.
The moment they crossed the threshold, sound died.
Not just muffled—erased.
Orion tried to speak.
Nothing.
Even the crunch of his steps on pale stone echoed only in his mind.
The sky here was endless and gray, stitched with lightning that didn't thunder. Cities floated in the clouds above, held together by lines of divine script like iron chains.
Meilin pointed upward.
Three glowing figures watched from high towers—cloaked in silence, faces obscured by divine masks.
"They are the Oathbound. The guardians of this realm."
One descended.
She wore robes the color of parchment and bore a blade made from a broken vow.
Her voice entered his head like ink flowing backward:
"You who walk with erased names. Speak not with tongue. Speak with soul."
Orion instinctively raised his arm. The glyphs on his skin glowed.
The Oathbound paused.
Then extended her hand—and behind her, the storm clouds parted.
A stairway appeared, ascending into the heart of the city above.
As they climbed, Meilin explained via written sigils between them:
"This realm doesn't trust voice because voice lies. Here, you speak only what your glyphs allow. Only what your belief permits."
"Then how do they train Guardians?" Orion wrote.
"Through silence, clarity, and one impossible test: The Reflection of Meaning."
At the summit stood a crystal pool, motionless as glass.
The Oathbound Guardian stood beside it, still silent.
She gestured for Orion to step toward the pool.
He did.
The surface did not show his reflection.
It showed a version of him in full regalia, cloak of light, blade of doubt in hand—the idealized Guardian.
But the image cracked almost instantly.
From the fracture, a second version emerged.
Dirty. Bloodied. Frightened. Holding nothing.
And beneath that image—a third.
Blindfolded. Standing before a crowd. Alone.
The pool pulsed with a single question:
"Which of these is you?"
Orion froze.
Meilin stood behind him, silent.
The Oathbound Guardian waited.
The pool whispered the question again.
"Which of these is you?"
His first instinct was to choose the second—the frightened version.
But that wasn't the full truth.
The third—silent, blindfolded—was accurate too.
And even the first, the ideal… some part of him wanted that.
Orion reached into the pool.
Not to touch one.
But to merge them.
The instant his hand touched the water, the three images spiraled together.
Merged.
And the glyphs on his arm flared violently.
A fourth glyph was etched onto his skin:
合 (hé) — To unify, to integrate.
The Guardian stepped forward.
For the first time, her mask dissolved.
Beneath it, her face bore no mouth—only a glowing mark where lips should have been.
She pressed her hand to his chest.
And thought-spoke only one phrase:
"You are not the chosen one.
You are the one who chooses."
The air around them shimmered.
And suddenly—
Sound returned.
The storm cracked. Thunder raged.
And Orion heard his own voice again, gasping aloud.
He turned to Meilin, whose expression had shifted from caution to quiet awe.
"You passed the test," she said.
Orion looked at his arm, now bearing four glyphs:
玄 — Mystery
疑 — Doubt
问 — Ask
合 — Unite
"I didn't pass," he replied. "I answered. There's a difference."
Suddenly, another presence stirred.
Not the Guardian.
But someone watching.
A figure cloaked in gold, standing far above.
The Second Chosen.
Jian Longwei. 剑龙威.
Now a Guardian of Soundless Oath, watching from a thousand feet above with eyes of judgment and fire.
He did not speak.
But Orion felt the message in his bones:
"You don't belong."
And to that, Orion whispered to himself:
"Not yet."
Then turned his back on the Guardian Tower—
And stepped onto the next path.
As Orion descended from the Realm of Heaven's Silence, the glyphs beneath his feet reformed once again, shaping the next path—not in stone or sky, but in **memory.**
Each step unlocked an echo, and with it, the names and stories of the other Guardians. Fragments. Whispers. Shadows of truths not yet faced.
By the time he reached the boundary of the next world, the air around him had changed.
It was not mist, or silence, or even wind.
It was **weight.**
Emotion too thick to name.
And ahead, rising like a temple carved from regret, stood the gate to the third realm.
---
Realm Name: 赤忆界 (*Chì Yì Jiè*) — Realm of Crimson Memory
Hidden within the underground caverns of the Kunlun Mountains, buried in memory echoes and volcanic heat. Only those who have lost something irreplaceable may enter.
---
The arch to this realm was shaped from red glass, its edges humming with barely-contained heat. In its center, a single glyph burned like a wound:
> **忆** (*yì*) — *Memory.*
Meilin turned to Orion before they entered.
"This realm shows you the moment you broke… and the moment you began."
He nodded. "I'm ready."
"No," she whispered. "You're *never* ready. That's the test."
---
The moment they stepped through, fire greeted them—not burning skin, but burning **thought.**
The world inside the realm shimmered like stained glass seen through tears. Every structure was jagged, half-formed, as though trying to recall how it once looked. The air smelled of ash and childhood.
And then—**a voice.**
Not Meilin's.
Not the Oathbound Guardian's.
But his mother's.
> "Orion. Come back inside. It's cold."
He spun.
They stood in front of his old home.
Not in the Academy. Not in the Realms.
But back in **Beicheng village**—the day before everything changed.
> "This isn't real," he said.
Meilin didn't answer.
She was gone.
---
Inside the house, the memory waited.
His father at the table, his mother beside the stove. The fire crackling.
And in the corner—*himself,* younger, smaller, scribbling glyphs with a broken stick.
A warm lie. A perfect moment.
Then—
The window shattered.
And a blinding white light erupted from the sky.
Orion cried out, instinctively shielding the younger version of himself.
But time would not listen.
The **ritual of selection** began again.
The same one where the divine soul was misfired—*into him.*
---
A shadowy figure descended through the ceiling.
The original Chosen—**Liang Chen**, known in English as *Caleb Liang.*
Orion remembered this.
He'd been hiding behind the tree line, hoping just to witness the sacred rite.
But the pulse of the ritual had misfired.
The soul fragment meant for Caleb had bent, twisted—and entered **Orion** instead.
A wild glyph. An unscripted accident.
Now, here in the Realm of Crimson Memory, he saw it again.
Only this time—he could *act.*
---
He surged forward, trying to reach his younger self.
But something blocked him.
A wall of fire, shaped like **Caleb.**
"You stole it," it said. "You took what was not yours."
Orion shouted, "I *didn't know!* It wasn't supposed to happen!"
The fire didn't care.
"You carried it anyway. You ran. You lied. You let others bleed for your mistake."
Orion dropped to one knee. "I didn't ask for this."
"No one ever does."
The fire grew, engulfing the house, the memory, the boy.
"Then what will you do with it *now?*"
---
Orion stood.
The fire swirled around him, raging, mocking, testing.
And he spoke—not with apology, not with defiance, but with truth:
> "I'll carry it because it happened.
> I'll walk with it, not run from it.
> I'll burn, if that's what it takes to keep others from burning."
The fire paused.
Then, for the first time—
It bowed.
---
From its heart, a glyph emerged:
> **承** (*chéng*) — *To bear, to carry, to take responsibility.*
It carved itself into Orion's arm as the fifth glyph.
The fire faded.
The memory dissolved.
The boy disappeared.
And standing where the flames had been was Meilin—watching him with something between sorrow and pride.
"You remembered," she said.
Orion nodded. "I finally saw it clearly."
---
The ground beneath them shifted.
Stone folding inward. Glass rebuilding.
A new path formed in the molten cracks below.
It led to the final realm.
The place where the last of the false Guardians waited.
But before they could move—
A voice rose from the fire again.
A **new** voice.
Caleb Liang's.
> "You're walking toward the truth.
> But truth alone doesn't save anyone."
Then silence.
And smoke.
And the final road.
The path to the final realm was unlike the others.
It did not rise in mist, or descend in flame.
It **collapsed**, folding into a spiral that drew Orion and Meilin downward through language itself. Glyphs blurred past them—ancient scripts, dead dialects, erased symbols—until even the concept of *writing* seemed to unravel.
Finally, they landed in silence.
But not peace.
**Emptiness.**
Before them stretched an endless plain of black stone, cracked with veins of silver.
And at the center: a tower made entirely from broken swords.
The sky above was colorless.
The wind hummed in reverse.
And across the jagged archway of the fourth realm, one word pulsed, trembling:
> **虚** (*xū*) — *Void. Illusion. Emptiness.*
---
Realm Name: 空刃界 (*Kōng Rèn Jiè*) — Realm of Hollow Blades
Beneath the bedrock of the Four Realms, sealed within a fault-line of unkept oaths and shattered magic. Accessed only through self-doubt given shape.
---
"Not many return from this realm," Meilin warned. Her voice was quieter here.
"Why?" Orion asked, already sensing the despair rising around them.
"Because the final test isn't power, or memory, or silence."
She turned to face him.
"It's *belief.*"
---