The wind whispered over the mountain pass—not in howls or shrieks, but in layered murmurs, as though the air itself remembered. Tens of thousands of voices drifted through the silence, each cry stitched with agony, reverberating in the breath of all who dared walk these slopes. The snow refused to fall here. Even the clouds curved away, bending their course as if the heavens themselves could not bear to witness what had been drawn forth.
In the frozen basin where gods had once bled and demons wept their last, the Fang had risen—not like a blade drawn in defiance, but like a truth exhumed from beneath a nameless tomb.
It pulsed faintly under the darkened sky. Black steel shimmered with runes that wept slow rivulets of red light. Around it, arranged in a perfect circle of bowed heads and bent knees, the last surviving masters of the Nine Searing Sects chanted the final stanzas of a rite they had sworn never to complete.
At the center stood a girl.
Barefoot. Unarmored. No older than sixteen.
Her hair, pale as ash, fell in loose strands around a face drained of color. Her eyes, twin panes of storm glass, held neither clarity nor innocence—only the weight of something older than memory. In her hand, she clutched the Fang. Not with pride. Not even strength. Just a tremble that would not end.
She had never asked for it.
She had not wanted to be chosen.
But the blade had chosen her.
Lian Xue—last of a broken bloodline, a child born to the echoes of annihilation. Her clan had been reduced to scattered names on burnt scrolls when the Glutton had first risen. The bloodline left behind bore wounds too deep to be healed. Her cultivation core had cracked in infancy. She could not shape qi. She could not ascend, or fly, or summon even the faintest spiritual sea.
She had no future in cultivation.
But pain, the Fang whispered, had other uses.
It had slumbered beneath this mountain for three hundred years. Sealed in ritual. Buried in consequence. But when her fingers met its hilt, when her flesh touched its hunger, something ancient stirred—and the weapon woke.
At first, they believed she would die. Her body convulsed with a violence beyond mortal comprehension—bones bent, tendons twisted, blood flooding from her mouth and eyes. Her pulse vanished. Her breath stilled.
And then, against all logic, it resumed—not to the rhythm of life, but of vengeance.
The blade drank her sorrow, her helplessness, her guilt-ridden longing to become something—anything—that could strike back against what had once consumed her world. It fed, and it forged. Cloaked in flickering spectral armor that shimmered in and out of reality, Lian Xue rose anew.
Around her, the elders whispered. Some in awe. Some in guilt. And some—perhaps wisely—in fear.
But none denied the truth.
The vessel had accepted the weapon.
The weapon had accepted her.
Far across the realms, down where rivers carved soft songs into stone and morning sun warmed the fields in amber light, a man sat quietly on a porch, carving tokens from wood. Two children danced in the field nearby, their laughter rolling like wind chimes in the distance. He watched them without expression, slowly tracing runes into each piece, each line etched with hands that remembered too much.
These were not mere charms.
They were memories, shaped into protection.
And he was not meditating.
He was waiting.
The wind had changed.
There was metal on it—not iron or steel.
But something older. Something far more intimate.
It was his.
That afternoon, he left the village without a word. No blade strapped to his back. No armor. No aura of warning. He moved like a man walking into memory, not battle.
Thirty shadows followed at a respectful distance. Assassins. Guardians. Witnesses. None dared draw breath too loudly. They could erase sects in an instant—but they knew today was not for blood.
It was for reckoning.
Deep in the woods, in a clearing wrapped in ancient silence, Lian Xue stood alone. Her journey had stretched for two days and nights, guided not by map or talisman, but by the Fang's pull. It whispered in fragments. In urges. It told her where to walk. When to stop. What to fear. And when to prepare.
She did not know his face.
But when her eyes opened—and found him standing before her—she knew.
He wasn't draped in light. He wasn't tall or regal or cruel.
Just a man.
Calm eyes. A mouth that never quite settled between a sigh and a smile. Stillness, but not indifference. Presence, but not threat.
"Your steps are loud," he said.
She raised the Fang.
He regarded it for a moment. A long, heavy moment.
"…So they finally woke it."
She inhaled sharply, bracing her stance.
"You were there," she said.
"I was."
"You killed my family."
"Probably."
Her grip tightened, rage bubbling up like hot oil beneath fragile skin. "Say their names."
"I can't," he replied quietly. "There are too many."
The runes along the blade surged in protest, igniting with crimson heat. Lian Xue cried out, leaping toward him.
But she never landed.
She wasn't stopped by force. She was simply… removed.
Reality folded gently around her, the way parchment folds around ink too new to dry. When the world straightened again, she stood where she began. Her breath rasped. Her hands shook. The Fang pulsed, confused.
He hadn't moved.
Not even an inch.
"You seek vengeance," he said. "I understand."
Her voice broke as she snarled, "What could you possibly understand of vengeance?!"
He took a step forward.
All sound vanished. Even the wind froze.
"I killed my best friend because I couldn't forgive myself. I drowned cities when nightmares wouldn't let me sleep. I drank demon blood because I wanted silence. I've destroyed temples that took gods millennia to build."
Another step.
"You want vengeance? I am vengeance. I consumed heroes who begged as they died. I shattered entire heavens just to feel something. I swallowed gods who couldn't scream fast enough."
He took one more step.
No threat. No intent. Only the unbearable weight of truth.
"I don't ask for your forgiveness," he said. "But if you raise that blade again, it won't be your will that swings it."
She stared, wild-eyed, the weapon trembling in her grasp.
He pointed.
"That is not a blade. It is a graveyard."
And suddenly… she heard them.
Voices.
Not one. Not dozens.
Thousands.
Millions.
They cried, pleaded, shrieked. Some cursed. Others begged. A storm of grief pressed against her thoughts.
And in the center of that endless wail…
Her mother's voice.
Her brother's laughter.
Her own soul, quietly whispering for release.
Tears carved clean lines down her cheeks.
The Fang dimmed.
Its furious glow retreated. The spectral armor peeled away in fragments, disappearing into mist. She dropped to her knees. The blade clattered beside her, inert for the first time since its awakening.
"I didn't want to kill anyone," she whispered. "I just wanted to protect someone. Anyone."
He knelt beside her, not as a monster, nor as a king.
Just a father.
"You still can."
Her gaze lifted—confused, hollow, yet still alive.
Far above, in the hidden sanctums of the Nine Searing Sects, the elders jolted as the Fang's signature went still.
Jin's lips turned pale. "It's rejecting her."
Fei's voice cracked with fury. "No—it's him! He's polluting the vessel!"
But Mo, who had watched longer than either, narrowed his gaze. "No… he's freeing her."
And within the Seer's trembling grasp, the orb that once showed glimpses of fate split down the center—and shattered.