The corridor did not collapse.
That would have been simple. Clean. Final.
Instead, it reconfigured itself.
The walls slid a few centimeters inward, as if space itself had decided to constrict. The low lamps flickered, and the temporal echoes—far from dissipating—began to overlap erratically, repeating disconnected fragments of past actions.
"It's closing!" Su Yanlin shouted, adjusting Tao Wen's weight on her shoulder.
Lin Ye barely heard her.
Every attempt to move felt like pushing through thick water. The Threshold was sealed from within—not by external will, but by structural exhaustion. Forcing it now wouldn't be a technique. It would be definitive self-harm.
"Don't look back," he murmured, unsure whether he was speaking to them or to himself. "The corridor… learns."
The bearer of the Temporal Echo Eye advanced, staggering but determined. Blood ran down his forehead, yet his eyes still shone with that irregular glint.
"They shouldn't be able to leave," he said tensely. "This sequence was closed."
He raised his hand.
The echoes aligned.
Not to attack directly, but to repeat the escape. Shadows of Lin Ye, Su Yanlin, and Tao Wen appeared ahead of them, running… and crashing into a wall that no longer existed.
"He wants us to follow a false memory," Su Yanlin said. "Don't look at the echoes!"
"I'm not following them," Lin Ye replied with difficulty. "I'm contradicting them."
He stopped dead.
The movement was so unnatural that his body responded with a brutal spasm. He dropped to his knees, coughing blood—but the effect was immediate: the echoes mimicking his run failed. They didn't know what to repeat.
"Now!" he shouted.
Su Yanlin turned right without hesitation, taking a narrow passage that didn't appear in any visible repetition. Space protested—but yielded just enough.
Behind them, the bearer of the Temporal Echo let out a strangled cry as one of his memories collapsed in on itself, causing a violent mental shock.
"Bastards…!"
The passage opened onto a spiraling service staircase. No guards. No seals. Only urgency.
Halfway up, Lin Ye lost strength in his legs.
"Leave it," Su Yanlin said without stopping. "Don't die here."
"I wasn't planning to," he replied, though darkness was already biting at the edges of his vision.
They emerged into an abandoned warehouse, the night air striking them like an icy slap. Su Yanlin closed the hatch and activated a simple seal—not to block, but to delay.
"That won't stop them for long," she said. "But it'll be enough."
Lin Ye leaned against a wall and slid to the floor.
The world spun.
The Sutra of the Fragmented Threshold appeared one last time before shutting down completely.
"Debt confirmed."
"Interest active."
"Compensatory event: initiated."
"What… does that mean?" he murmured.
Yan Mo emerged from the shadows of the warehouse, as if he had been there all along.
"It means," he said gravely, "that you weren't the only one affected."
Tao Wen, pale but conscious, lifted his head.
"Lin Ye…" he said weakly. "While they had me… I heard things."
Lin Ye forced his eyes to focus on him.
"Talk."
"They weren't holding me for information," Tao Wen continued. "They were holding me as an anchor. To provoke a reaction… somewhere else."
Yan Mo closed his eyes for a second.
"Where?" he asked.
Tao Wen swallowed.
"In the Upper District," he said. "At a minor house that refused to participate. They said that… someone had to pay for the balance."
At that moment, a distant tremor ran through the city.
It wasn't an explosion.
It was a blackout.
The spiritual lights of the Upper District went out one by one, like candles methodically blown out.
Lin Ye felt something close inside his chest.
"The debt…" he whispered.
Yan Mo looked toward the distance, his face hardening.
"Someone is already dying," he said. "And this time, it isn't close to you."
The warehouse fell silent.
Far away, screams could be heard.
The blackout didn't last long.
That was the most unsettling part.
The spiritual lights of the Upper District began to reactivate one by one, with deliberate slowness, as if someone were counting the return of each pulse. There were no follow-up explosions. No alarms. Only a thick silence spreading faster than any rumor.
Lin Ye felt it even from the cold floor of the warehouse.
Not as a vision.
Not as a premonition.
As a sealed absence.
"That wasn't an attack," he murmured with difficulty. "It was… a conclusion."
Yan Mo didn't answer immediately. He walked to the warehouse door and cracked it open just enough to look toward the city. His expression hardened by a single degree more than usual.
"An entire house was sealed," he said. "Not destroyed. Sealed from within."
Su Yanlin turned sharply.
"Sealed how?"
"As if it had reached its permitted end," Yan Mo replied. "No excess. No error."
Tao Wen swallowed.
"I heard that term," he said. "When they spoke among themselves. 'Permitted end.'"
Lin Ye clenched his teeth.
"That's not local jargon," he said. "It's… older."
The pain returned with force, this time not as a spasm but as internal weight. Something inside him was trying to readjust… and failing. The Threshold remained in absolute silence, sealed by exhaustion.
"Lin Ye," Su Yanlin said, kneeling in front of him. "Look at me."
He did so with difficulty.
"You can't use your power again," she continued. "Not today. Maybe not for weeks."
"I know," he replied. "It's not responding anymore."
Yan Mo returned to them.
"The affected house is House Lu," he said. "Minor. Discreet. Two generations ago, they refused to yield routes to the gray market."
Su Yanlin closed her eyes.
"Then this was a message."
"Yes," Yan Mo nodded. "And it wasn't aimed directly at you."
Lin Ye raised his gaze.
"It was aimed at anyone who thinks balance can be negotiated without consequences."
Tao Wen clenched his fists.
"They didn't kill everyone," he said. "But… they left them without cultivation. Without contracts. Without protection."
"That's worse," Su Yanlin replied.
The silence broke when a new pain pierced Lin Ye.
Not physical.
Something deeper reacted.
An ancient, dormant pressure, stimulated by the forced use of the Threshold and by the distant death that had just occurred. The Sutra didn't appear—but something else did.
A slow heartbeat.
Heavy.
Steady.
"Do you feel it?" Yan Mo asked suddenly, watching him closely.
Lin Ye nodded, breathing with difficulty.
"My blood…" he said. "It moved."
Su Yanlin tensed.
"Now?"
"It didn't awaken," Lin Ye clarified. "But it responded. As if something… had been recognized."
Yan Mo closed his eyes for a second.
"That confirms a theory I hoped wouldn't be validated so soon."
"Tell me," Lin Ye said.
Yan Mo looked at him directly.
"You weren't the first to touch the Threshold," he said. "But you're the first to do so from the inside."
The air seemed to grow colder.
"What does that mean?" Su Yanlin asked.
"That Lin Ye's bloodline wasn't created to dominate," Yan Mo replied. "It was created to endure endings."
A shiver ran down Lin Ye's spine.
"That doesn't sound like a blessing."
"It isn't," Yan Mo confirmed. "It's a hereditary condemnation."
Tao Wen looked at them, confused.
"Who would do something like that?"
Yan Mo hesitated for a moment.
"A name," he finally said. "That isn't spoken in local records."
Lin Ye held his gaze.
"Say it."
Yan Mo exhaled slowly.
"Aurelion Varkesh."
The name fell like a slab of stone.
Su Yanlin froze.
"That's impossible," she said. "Varkesh disappeared before the founding of the Aureon Empire."
"Disappeared," Yan Mo repeated. "Didn't die."
Lin Ye closed his eyes, the heartbeat in his blood growing heavier.
"So then…" he murmured. "None of this is improvised."
"No," Yan Mo replied. "And the worst part…"
He leaned closer.
"Someone is accelerating a design that wasn't meant to activate yet."
In the distance, bells began to ring.
Not alarms.
Registers.
Someone was documenting what had happened.
And this time, Lin Ye's name was not left out.