Scene I – Within the Flame's Heart
Feng Xian's soul has crossed the Burning Gate.
He does not walk anymore — he drifts, naked before flame-will, memory, and judgment.
Before him, the cavern shifts into a crucible sky — stars flicker like embers, and mountains burn in silence.
There, bound by seven serpent-shaped chains, stands a being made of molten dusk — neither man nor beast, but a skeletal silhouette forged of fire. Its chest flickers with a crown-shaped brand, fractured.
It speaks in a dozen voices.
"You wear what was broken. You wake what should not stir."
"Who gave you the Crown?"
"I found it. It… chose me."
"You were chosen by ashes. Let us see what remains when we burn the rest."
The being lifts one hand, and Feng Xian's past selves split away, becoming ash-phantoms. His child-self, his wounded self from Sky veil, his furious self from Verdant Maw.
Each attacks.
The child begs for protection, distracting.
The wounded one curses his weakness.
The furious one tries to claim the flame alone.
"You must kill one… to keep the others."
Feng Xian hesitates — then embraces them all instead.
"I am all of these. I won't burn them away just to wield your power."
Chains snap. The Crown on his brow glows amber and blue — a new hue.
The Splintered Flame merges with him — not as a weapon, but as a scar that remembers.
Scene II – Outside the Flame: Pavilion Under Siege
Lan'Fei claws through a wall of ice-bound coral as guard's reform. Smoke from her spirit beast still hangs heavy, even as healing talismans blink across their armor.
Master Du'an, a stoic Pavilion enforcer, steps forward.
"You bring beasts and storm — are you Crown-touched or Hollow-bound?"
"I followed the call of your Crown. I bled for this realm long before your sealed libraries whispered its name."
A tremor splits the court tiles — a roar vibrates through the Pavilion halls. The storm changes tone.
Du'an freezes. Elder Yao steps out behind him.
"Let her through. She comes not to fight, but to witness."
Feng Xian falls back into his body — eyes lit with flickering gold, breath steaming like sun through a pyre.
Disciples stare — some fall to one knee.
The Crown does not rest now, but pulses.
From beneath the Pavilion, an ancient bell rings once — not by hand.
The Crown thirsts. The fire stirs.
The world is watching.
And above the Isles, storm clouds part, revealing not calm…
…but a second storm, gathering beyond.
🌑 Interlude: Tshepo, Beneath the Lightless Deep
Far from the storms above the Jade Isles… deeper than even the Hollow's roots… there is a place where light drowns.
Here, in a continent-forgotten vault below the Shishapangma Peaks, the One Who Watches Without Flame sits — unmoving, unbreathing, bound beneath a monument of stone veins and carved fossils. The stasis shell has cracked — hairline fractures spreading across obsidian scales older than the first Sect War.
Tshepo, once a seer-blooded titan, dreams through layers of molten time.
But now?
Now he wakes.
The Awakening Pulse
At the moment Feng Xian's Crown burns true, a sliver of radiance slips between planes — like an ember falling through an oil-black lake. And it touches Tshepo's cage.
The fissures widen.
From the seams of ancient volcanic flesh, a liquid shadow spills. Not blood. Not flame. Something that refused both.
His third eye, sealed since the last Sundering, creaks open.
What does he see?
A boy with fire in his bones.
A serpent roaring beneath the waves.
A Hollow Hand reaching far too soon.
He speaks, but not in words. The cavern trembles with concepts:
"The fire... was not supposed to return. The bargain held. Why now?"
"The Crown has fractured, again... but it speaks. Through him."
From the dark stone rises a single avatar — a stone-carved beast, long-necked like an ancestral serpent, with twin rows of eyes along its sides. It slithers outward through the Under deep's tunnels, bound for the surface.
"Find the fire-bearer. If the pact has broken, the Flame must choose again — or be snuffed."
And Tshepo, for the first time in millennia, leans forward.
Old Memories Stir
Visions flicker around him.
A woman crowned in sunlight, standing at the Leviathan's horn.
A blade made of smoke, refusing fire, held in Tshepo's own hand.
A pact carved into the bones of the world: Flame will sleep. Hollow will rot. Stone will endure.
And now…
Flame wakes.
Hollow feeds.
Stone cracks.