The Flames of the Unseen War
The sky above Realm Academy had not stopped pulsing since Orion's duel.
Though the battle was over, its echo lingered—etched into the clouds, the whispers in the halls, the very stones beneath their feet.
In the early hours of morning, **Orion Jiang (Xuán Yí 玄疑)** stood atop the Wind Pavilion alone.
The glyphs on his arms had dimmed but not disappeared. They pulsed faintly, like coals under ash.
Below him, the campus bustled with forced calm. Guardians resumed drills. Scholars reviewed prophecies. Elders held council meetings filled with bitter words.
But nothing was the same.
He wasn't supposed to be here.
And yet, he was.
---
Footsteps approached behind him—soft, but deliberate.
"Trying to look majestic again?" Meilin teased, voice breaking the heavy air.
Orion smiled faintly, but his eyes didn't leave the horizon. "Trying to remember who I was before this."
She stepped beside him. The wind pulled at her robes—stained with ash from the Four Realms.
"You weren't anyone special," she said flatly. "Just a skinny dropout who got chosen by mistake."
He glanced at her. "Thanks for the confidence."
She smirked. "Just reminding you who you're fighting for."
---
A bell tolled across the Academy—a low, ancient sound not heard in generations.
It wasn't a call to class.
It was a summons.
A warning.
Orion and Meilin turned toward the South Gate.
A procession was entering—armored, hooded, and bearing banners of deep violet.
Meilin's smile faded instantly.
> "The Heavenly Peacekeepers…"
Orion felt the glyphs on his arms thrum.
They had come early.
And they were not here to celebrate.
---
At the Academy's central dais, Elder Magistrate **Zhao Wushen (赵无神 / Marcus Zhao)** stood facing the Peacekeepers as they dismounted. His eyes were sharp, unreadable.
He bowed with the rigid grace of someone forced to obey.
"Commander Ruan," Zhao greeted, "We weren't told to expect you until the Season of Lanterns."
The Peacekeeper commander, a woman with a jagged scar across her left cheek, removed her hood.
> "Plans change," she said. "Especially when a prophecy breaks."
Her name rang through the whispers around the courtyard:
**Ruan Xiuying (阮秀英) / Commander Sable.**
---
**Ruan's gaze locked onto Orion.**
"You," she said, with no pretense. "The one who bears stolen light."
Orion stepped forward.
"It wasn't stolen."
"No," Ruan replied, voice cold. "It was *misplaced.* Which makes you a liability."
She turned to the elders.
"By order of the Heavenly Tribunal, I am to escort the Mistaken Vessel to the Southern Citadel for containment and observation."
"Containment?" Meilin hissed under her breath.
Zhao Wushen raised his hands. "He is still under the Academy's guardianship. You have no right to—"
Ruan unsheathed her blade in one smooth, defiant arc.
"I have every right."
Gasps rippled across the courtyard.
Peacekeepers did not draw steel in sacred places—especially not at the Realm Academy.
Zhao Wushen's expression cracked, his calm mask faltering. "Commander Ruan, this is not the borderlands. This is a sacred place of learning—"
Ruan's blade remained steady. "Then your *sacred place* should not house weapons forged from broken prophecy."
Her soldiers stepped forward, their boots loud and deliberate against the stone. Each bore a long glaive marked with divine runes—burned in silver, not painted.
Orion raised a hand slowly, signaling Meilin to stay back.
He walked down the dais stairs, eyes fixed on the commander.
"I'll go," he said.
Meilin spun toward him. "What—? No!"
"I'll go," Orion repeated, louder this time. "But not as a prisoner."
Ruan tilted her head. "What are you, then?"
Orion met her gaze squarely.
> "A question your prophecy wasn't ready for."
---
For a moment, silence held like a storm behind glass.
Then Ruan gave a small nod.
"Good. Perhaps some truth will bleed out of you under pressure."
She turned on her heel.
"We leave within the hour."
---
Back in the dormitory tower, Orion packed his things in silence. Meilin stood by the door, arms crossed, furious.
"You think this is smart?" she demanded. "Letting them take you?"
"They were going to take me anyway."
She stepped forward. "Then *fight.* You've done it before."
"This isn't a duel, Meilin. This is politics. If I stay, the Academy becomes the enemy."
She opened her mouth to argue—but stopped. Her fists clenched at her sides.
"You always do this," she said finally. "Take everything alone. Shoulder every burden like it's your fault."
He looked at her.
"Isn't it?"
That stopped her cold.
---
Before dawn, a black carriage lined in protective talismans waited outside the main gates.
Ruan stood by it, unreadable as ever.
Meilin embraced Orion, tightly and without words. When she pulled back, her eyes were damp—but she didn't cry.
She pressed something into his palm: a folded piece of rice paper, bound in silk thread.
"What is it?" he asked.
"A favor I can't explain. Not yet."
He nodded and stepped into the carriage.
The doors shut.
The wheels turned.
And Realm Academy vanished behind him in the gray mist of morning.
---
Inside the carriage, darkness reigned.
Not because of the lack of light—there were lanterns etched with gentle flame-glyphs—but because of **presence.**
A quiet, suffocating pressure.
And at its center sat a figure draped in layered robes, face hidden by a golden mask.
Not Ruan.
Not a soldier.
A **Witness.**
Orion had heard of them—monks of the Eternal Script, who recorded all anomalies tied to divine prophecy.
The figure spoke, voice brittle and ancient.
> "You dream of the original Oracle, don't you?"
Orion froze.
"…yes."
The Witness tilted its head.
> "She dreams of you, too."
Orion's mouth went dry.
"How do you know that?" he asked the Witness.
The monk didn't answer right away. Instead, they reached into a sleeve and drew out a delicate scroll.
No ink marred its surface—just lines that shifted like living veins of light.
> "Because your soul now holds pieces of the World-Soul," the Witness said softly. "And the Oracle... was once its voice."
That sentence wrapped around Orion like a noose.
The glyphs on his arms itched under his sleeves.
"So this is what I am now?" he whispered. "Some broken vessel full of borrowed destiny?"
The Witness looked at him—not with pity, but with **certainty.**
> "No. You are the question the World-Soul asked itself… and feared the answer."
---
Hours passed.
Mountains gave way to barren stone, forests faded into dry plains.
The Southern Citadel came into view like a wound on the horizon—tall black walls, spiked towers, and no windows.
The glyphs etched into its gates were not for invitation or protection.
They were seals.
Prison locks.
Orion stepped out under heavy sky. Lightning cracked in the distance—not from storm, but from residual divine energy.
He followed Ruan and the Witness inside without a word.
No guards lined the walls.
Only silence.
---
They took him not to a cell, but to a chamber of red glass and silver thread.
An altar sat in the center, covered in fine dust.
Ruan gestured toward it.
"Sit."
Orion obeyed.
The Witness took their place on the opposite side of the altar. They opened the light-veined scroll again, murmuring phrases in Old Script.
Glyphs lifted from the page and began to circle Orion.
Not threatening.
Scanning.
> "We are not here to judge you," the Witness said.
> "We are here to see what you *might* become."
Ruan, standing off to the side, scowled. "If he becomes what I suspect, we'll all regret not sealing him when we had the chance."
The scroll glowed suddenly.
A glyph neither Orion nor the Witness recognized rose from his chest—
**裂** (*liè*) — *To break. To rend. To divide.*
It pulsed once.
Then twice.
And then—
It split.
---
The room screamed.
The altar cracked down the middle.
Ruan drew her blade, shouting orders to guards who weren't even present.
The Witness was knocked backward by the force of the glyph shattering mid-air.
And Orion—
—fell into himself.
---
He landed in a space of shifting ink.
An in-between.
A memory not his.
Before him, a young girl knelt before a mirror lake.
She was the Oracle. Younger than he'd ever seen her.
Tears streamed down her cheeks as she whispered:
> "I told them the wrong name.
> I saw *his* face… but said *the other.*
> The ritual chose him because I lied…"
She clutched her chest.
> "But I didn't lie. I *feared.*
> And in fearing, I doomed him."
Orion reached toward her—but his hand passed through.
She turned.
Looked *through* him.
> "Forgive me, Xuán Yí."
---
He snapped back to the red glass chamber, gasping.
Blood trickled from his nose.
The Witness knelt beside him.
"Your soul just brushed against a Forbidden Thread," they whispered, awed. "One buried by time itself."
Ruan cursed. "Enough visions. Enough prophecy games. Put him in containment—he's unraveling."
But the Witness ignored her.
They looked Orion straight in the eyes.
> "The Oracle saw your face in the flame. Not Jian's.
> The mistake… wasn't *you.*
> The mistake… was **hers.**"
Orion sat in stunned silence.
The words echoed in his mind, louder than any prophecy chant or glyph hymn.
> *The mistake wasn't you… it was hers.*
All this time, he had believed he was a walking error—an accident of fate, a vessel misaligned.
But if the Oracle had *known*, had *seen*—
Then everything changed.
He wasn't some lost fragment of destiny.
He was its **correction.**
---
"You knew," he said quietly, turning toward Ruan. "Didn't you?"
She didn't flinch. "I suspected."
"Then why treat me like a threat?"
Ruan's eyes burned with the weight of too many wars.
"Because even the correct sword can cut the wrong throat."
She approached him slowly, blade lowered.
"You want truth? Then listen carefully, Jiang Orion. Xuán Yí. The Realms are at war—and the gods refuse to admit it."
Orion stared. "What war?"
Ruan gestured around them.
"This citadel is one of seven. All built to monitor rifts in the Veil—the barrier between our world and the Inverse Sea."
Orion blinked. "The what—?"
"The realm beneath truth," the Witness whispered. "Where glyphs unravel. Where forgotten prophecies bleed."
Ruan continued.
"Three of the rifts are now active. One opened a week after your 'awakening.' Two more cracked after your duel."
She looked at him like a warning dressed in skin.
"You didn't just absorb a fragment of the World-Soul, boy. You broke something ancient. Something *caged.*"
---
A deep tremor rumbled through the citadel walls.
Dust fell from the ceiling. The lights dimmed.
Sirens—low, guttural glyph-chimes—began to pulse red.
The Witness froze. "Not now. Not here—"
Ruan was already moving, shouting into a sigil-stone. "Seal corridors three and four! Pull containment runes over the west gate!"
She turned to Orion.
"You wanted purpose? Prove yourself."
He stood. No hesitation.
"Where's it coming from?"
Ruan snarled. "The lowest vault. A Veil breach."
Orion grabbed Meilin's charm from his pocket and tucked it into his robes.
"Let's go."
---
They descended into madness.
Every step into the lower vaults brought the temperature down.
Frost crawled over stone. Shadows whispered in tongues without consonants.
Glyphs on the walls peeled away—stripped by forces that did not obey the divine script.
At the lowest level, a rip in the air shimmered.
It pulsed black and violet, like a wound that refused to heal.
From it, a hand emerged.
Not a person.
A creature made of anti-light and fractured scripture.
It screamed in reverse.
And lunged at them.
---
Orion moved on instinct.
The glyph **承** (*to bear*) flared across his palm. He slammed it forward, forming a shield just as the creature struck.
Behind him, Ruan called down sigils from the ceiling. They fell like lightning, hammering the breach.
The Witness chanted faster.
The glyphs around the tear flickered.
But the wound would not close.
Until—
Orion stepped forward and placed his hand against the breach itself.
> "I wasn't chosen by mistake," he whispered.
> "I was chosen by the wound."
He activated all seven glyphs at once.
**选问疑合承玄真择**
A perfect cycle.
The wound screamed.
And shut.
When the light returned, Orion stood alone before the wall—breathing hard, eyes glowing.
Ruan stared at him like someone seeing a god begin to *form.*
The Witness spoke, reverent:
> "The Unseen War has begun.
> And the first soldier… is the one we tried to bury."