The scroll hissed when Zhao Wei unrolled it.

  Its ink writhed like a living thing, ancient characters bleeding crimson against parchment that pulsed faintly with energy. The moment her fingers brushed the final seal, the air thickened. A sudden rush of wind coiled around her like a serpent, dragging the scent of old ashes and wet stone. The scroll burst into flames not with fire, but with memory and the world cracked.

  When she opened her eyes, she was no longer in the ruined shrine.

  She stood at the threshold of a chamber carved into nothingness. Stone floated in suspended spirals, as if the room itself had forgotten the laws of gravity. Shifting walls breathed with time, not air, and the light came from a source unseen, casting silver shadows that moved even when she did not.

  This was the Creed's Memory Chamber. Forbidden. Hidden. A place that did not exist unless one carried the weight of death.

  Zhao Wei stepped forward.

  Each footfall echoed with dissonant chimes, like temple bells tolling for the dead. Symbols etched in deep gold glowed beneath her steps. The chamber responded to her not just her presence, but her blood, her past.

  The echoes of her previous life vibrated against her skin, as if the very walls remembered her differently. As if Wei Ning had once walked here.

  At the center of the chamber hovered a mirror not glass, but liquid shadow suspended in a perfectly still veil. Before it, a figure waited.

  Not a person.

  A memory.

  This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.

  He stood tall, draped in the robe of a Creed tactician, one that bore no insignia. His face was sharp, scarred, with a mark beneath his left eye: the sigil of the Oathkeepers. And though he had long since crumbled into history, her pulse stuttered when she saw him.

  Li Shuyin.

  Her second-in-command.

  The man who had died to protect her.

  The man she had once sworn to protect in return.

  "You took your time," his voice said dryly, amused, but beneath it, an ache.

  Zhao Wei didn’t speak. The chamber wouldn’t allow lies. Not here.

  “You’re not really him,” she finally said. “You’re what the Creed recorded of him.”

  “Yes. But they recorded everything. Including the last thing he thought before dying.”

  The figure stepped toward her, hand outstretched, and the mirror rippled violently.

  “You know what he believed?”

  Zhao Wei’s throat felt tight. “He believed I betrayed him.”

  “No,” the echo whispered, almost too softly. “He believed he failed you.”

  The chamber darkened. Symbols on the floor flared, and the mirror erupted into visions fragments of forgotten histories, of ancient wars, of a prophecy older than the clans.

  She saw a twin star falling from the sky. A child born without a spirit but cloaked in shadows. And in the end, a throne of shattered fire where a girl sat weeping over the bodies of her enemies and friends alike.

  Zhao Wei saw herself.

  But not alone.

  Beside her stood a second figure, face obscured by light, hands soaked in blood. And on their neck, a pendant. One she had buried long ago with a body that never burned.

  “No...” Zhao Wei breathed.

  The echo of Li Shuyin stepped back. “He didn’t die. The Creed took him. Changed him. And now... he waits.”

  The visions faded. The mirror stilled. But the weight in her chest only grew.

  “What do I do?” she asked.

  The memory smiled, sad and knowing. “You already know. You’ve always known.”

  She looked down at her hands, steady, stained, shaking only slightly.

  “End what began.”

  Behind her, the chamber cracked. The vision had cost its last breath.

  As the chamber began to collapse, Zhao Wei turned, stepping through the unraveling veil of memory and back into the world. Her eyes glowed faintly, marked by the prophecy she now carried.

  A prophecy she could no longer outrun.

  And somewhere far beyond the trees, someone stirred awakening to her presence, to the echo of a bond that should have died.

  But didn’t.