Opposite her, Li Zephyr stood like a revenant pulled from the grave, his cloak tattered, his eyes hollow with years lost between realms. He had spoken little after their reunion in the ruins of the Memory Chamber. But what he had said… had unraveled the floor beneath her.
“You died,” she’d whispered when she saw him.
“I did,” he’d answered simply, like it was a fact as casual as rain.
Now, as the Ember remnants reassembled in this underground sanctuary—those who survived the last assault, those who had received the message hidden in smoke—Zhao Wei watched them shift restlessly around the man they did not know. And she didn’t blame them. They had bled for her cause. They deserved to know who this ghost was and why she didn’t kill him on sight.
Li Zephyr stepped forward.
“My name is Li Zephyr,” he began, voice raspy from disuse, but firm. “Some of you will not know me. That is how death works. It erases, even from memory. But once, long ago, I was Wei Ning’s strategist. I served beside her at the Battle of Vermilion Gorge. I fell there—or so history says.”
A stir went through the Ember.
Zhao Wei narrowed her gaze. “You didn’t fall.”
“No,” he admitted. “I was taken.”
His fingers brushed the edge of the scarf at his throat—tugging it down to reveal the faint glow of etched symbols burned into his skin. Curse marks. Binding seals. Creed work. The gasp from the crowd was nearly unanimous.
“They kept me as a relic. For interrogation, for punishment. I survived longer than they intended. Learned more than they wanted. I escaped only when their seers turned on one another over a vision. A name kept appearing in their flames.”
He turned, eyes finding Zhao Wei’s.
“Your name.”
Zhao Wei’s fists curled.
Li Zephyr continued. “The Creed fears her return. Not just because of her history. But because she is written into the foundation of what comes next. Into a prophecy older than their order.”
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Bai, standing near the rear, raised a shaky hand. “Wait… what prophecy? We've seen pieces, but—”
Zephyr nodded. “What you’ve seen are fragments. They fear the full verse. I stole the last stanza before I fled.”
He reached into the folds of his cloak and drew out a tightly bound scroll—its parchment inked with crimson thread and sealed in wax formed from sunstone dust. The room fell into complete silence. Even the air held its breath.
Zhao Wei stepped forward slowly. “Let me read it.”
Zephyr hesitated for only a heartbeat before placing the scroll into her hands.
She broke the seal.
And the room fell away.
The Vision
She stood in a garden of ruins, stars hanging low enough to taste. Before her, an ancient mirror floated, cracked and glowing. Within it: herself—older, regal, with eyes that burned not with rage, but wisdom. Her reflection whispered:
“The child of silence shall unweave the creed,
Her soul split by death, her heart born of need.
Betrayer reborn, with blade of the dead—
Shall raise the forgotten, where angels once bled.
But should the twin flame fall to despair,
Then Chaos shall claim what the stars could not bear.”
Zhao Wei staggered back as the words echoed, burned, and embedded into her ribs like knives. Her fingers trembled.
Twin flame?
Chaos?
She blinked—and was back in the war hall, the scroll dimmed, the Ember watching her with anticipation and fear.
Zhao Wei said nothing.
Zephyr stepped closer, voice low. “I don’t know who or what the ‘twin flame’ is. But they believe it means you’ll turn. That you’ll become something worse than any Creed general. That you’ll unmake not just them—but the entire balance.”
Bai murmured, “So that’s why they’re so desperate to stop you... It’s not vengeance. It’s survival.”
Zhao Wei nodded faintly. “And they’re right to fear it.”
She turned to the others.
“I won’t lie to you. I’ve come back from death not just to avenge. I came to finish what I started. But if prophecy is involved, if something deeper is moving under this world—we’ll need more than knives and fire. We’ll need to wake the old alliances. The ones buried before I died.”
Li Zephyr raised his brows. “You mean the Pactborn?”
She nodded.
Several Ember gasped.
“The Pactborn haven’t been seen in over a decade,” said one masked fighter.
“They vanished after Wei Ning’s fall,” added another. “Everyone thought they were dead.”
“No,” Zhao Wei said softly. “They’re sleeping. And I know where they dream.”
Hours Later — In a Hidden Vault Beneath the Ash Root Forest
A hidden staircase had taken them to the lowest reaches of the forest’s dead roots—where the earth bled sap as black as pitch and the trees above never bloomed. Zhao Wei led the way, her hands moving across forgotten sigils carved into the walls.
“This place was built before kingdoms,” she murmured. “Before language itself.”
Behind her, Zephyr watched with reverence.
At last, they reached a chamber of petrified wood and obsidian pillars. Within it, thirteen caskets, each bound in spirit chains, sat in a perfect circle.
Bai nearly dropped his lantern. “Are those…?”
“The Pactborn,” Zhao Wei confirmed. “The first rebels. Born with spirits that refused all bonds. Even death.”
She approached the nearest casket, touched its seal—and the chains hissed, retracting slightly.
“They can be awakened,” she whispered.
“But they might not remember who you are,” Zephyr warned.
“I’ll make them remember,” she said, eyes dark with steel. “Or I’ll remind them what it means to owe the dead.”