The mist parted slowly.

  A breath.

  A hesitation.

  And then the twins saw it—what remained of their home.

  The Twin Lotus Sanctuary gates, once carved from blessed whitewood and soul-etched jade, now stood in ruin. The right gate had collapsed inward, torn from its hinges during the siege. The left still stood, but crooked, its lotus inlay blackened and split down the center like a wound that never healed.

  Stone paths lay cracked and overgrown. Fallen banners, long faded by sun and time, fluttered weakly in the breeze—barely recognizable as the colors of their clan. What had once been a sacred entrance now resembled the mouth of a forgotten tomb.

  Lian Xue and Lian Yue stood at the threshold in silence.

  No words passed between them.

  There were no words for this.

  Xue stepped forward first, her footfall soundless against the cracked stone.

  Yue followed, her expression unreadable—but her fingers curled slightly as she walked, brushing lightly against the hafts of her sabers.

  ?

  Within the Sanctuary

  The air inside the ruins felt… wrong.

  Not malicious.

  Just hollow.

  As though something sacred had been torn free and never replaced.

  The inner courtyard, once filled with spirit lotuses and flowing water, had become a garden of stone and ash. The ponds were dry. The lanterns unlit. And though no bodies remained, the walls whispered of blood.

  They passed what had once been the eastern training pavilion.

  Only its foundation remained.

  “This is where I first challenged you,” Yue murmured, voice faint.

  Xue nodded, pausing beside the rubble. She knelt, brushing dust from a scorched flagstone.

  “You lost.”

  “Only because I tripped... On purpose. To get your attention.”

  A faint smile. Brief. Then gone.

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  ?

  They moved toward the heart of the sanctuary.

  Where the main dais and ancestral altar once stood.

  Where the Lotus Blooming Rite had been held.

  Where the Heavens had been defied.

  And where their world had died.

  The dais was shattered. The ceremonial pillars, broken at the base. Cracks ran through the platform like veins, yet in its center… a single white lotus still bloomed.

  Small.

  Unassuming.

  But untouched.

  ?

  Xue stepped toward it and knelt.

  And for the first time since their return, she bowed—low, graceful, and full of grief.

  “To those who came before,” she whispered.

  Yue joined her, kneeling beside her sister, head lowered.

  “And those who gave everything,” she said.

  “We have not forgotten,” they said in unison.

  They stayed silent, unmoving for a time.

  Then they rose, and turned toward what remained of the sanctuary.

  ?

  They walked deeper into the ruins—through collapsed halls and shattered pavilions, past old training grounds now smothered by moss. The map of their childhood unfolded around them like a story written in ash.

  Near the western overlook, they paused.

  This was the last place they had seen her—Lian Fengyu—their mother had pushed them off the cliff and then turned to face the tide of invaders.

  The stone where she had stood was cracked, scorched at the edges by residual spiritual force. The air still remembered her presence.

  Yue touched the broken ledge.

  “She smiled,” she said quietly. “Even then.”

  Xue nodded, her voice soft.

  “And told us to Survive.”

  ?

  Just as those words were spoken, something shifted in the air.

  Not a sound.

  Not a whisper.

  A pulse.

  Faint, like a ripple across the surface of a deep, forgotten pond.

  The twins froze.

  Then it came again.

  A soft vibration gently tugged at their awareness. A spiritual call, not urgent, but persistent. Like a heartbeat in the bones of the sanctuary.

  Xue turned toward the origin.

  It came from beneath.

  From the far side of the ruined platform—beneath the roots of the old winter-bloom tree that had once marked the boundary of the sanctuary’s forbidden ground.

  There, nestled half-buried in stone and frost, lay a weapon.

  A sword.

  Long, slender, its hilt carved in the shape of a crystalline lotus. The blade itself was encased in a sheath of soulglass ice, glowing faintly from within—like it had waited, untouched, through the years.

  Xue approached slowly.

  Her breath caught.

  “It’s hers,” Yue whispered.

  Xue knelt, fingers hovering just above the blade. Even before touching it, she felt it—the presence. Like her mother was still near. Watching. Waiting.

  She closed her hand around the hilt.

  The ice sheath shattered with a soft chime, and a pulse of frost qi flowed into her palm. The blade thrummed once—hummm—a low, sorrowful tone. Then it tilted, pointing toward the base of the stone wall behind the tree.

  Toward something hidden.

  The twins looked at each other.

  Then, without a word, followed the blade’s guidance.

  ?

  The spiritual energy grew stronger as they approached—still subtle, but unmistakable. A concealed formation pulsed faintly on the stone wall. Xue held the sword near it, and a lotus-shaped sigil bloomed in response. They recognized the sigil from before when they acquired the cultivation manual and their weapons.

  “Seems this was mom’s lotus sigil” Yue said.

  “Yes, we saw it previously but couldn’t discern it” Xue replied.

  Like they done before, they placed their hands on the sigil.

  The stone groaned.

  The air shifted.

  And a thin seam opened in the wall—a passage descending into darkness cloaked in soul frost.

  The Frozen Lotus Chamber awaited.

  “She’s here,” Xue whispered.

  “And she’s not dead,” Yue said, voice trembling. Her tears on the verge of falling.

  Together, they stood at the threshold.

  And stepped inside.