The Stone-Beast rises.
Its body is not made of flesh or scale — but strata: ribs of basalt, sinew of compressed quartz, obsidian claws still etched with ancient pictographs. Moss and soot fall from its jaw as it slithers up the broken passage of the world, guided by a pulse Tshepo no longer controls… but still remembers.
Above, the sky splits — fire and sea still clashing over the Jade Isles.
And somewhere ahead… Lan'Fei, radiant with storm-kissed aura, draped in the scent of beasts, blades bared against Pavilion guards.
But now, even she halts.
Scene: The Whispering Tides
Lan'Fei stands at the edge of a fractured reef-temple, ancient stone columns half-drowned in seawater and ash. Two Pavilion guards, still loyal to the central Elder Council, confront her with wary steel.
"You've no right to bear beast blood here!"
"The Leviathan stirs! Step back, outsider—"
Before either can move, the ground hums.
A low, bone-rattling tremor peals out from the deep — not thunder. Not Hollow. Something older. A deep rhythm, like tectonic memory.
The waters part. Coral fragments erupt upward.
From the dark surge slithers a shape like an ossified dragon-serpent, carved entirely from layered stone, its long body glinting with molten veins. Around its neck coils a fragment of the Obsidian Pact, still etched in Tshepo's tongue.
It does not roar.
It simply stops. And watches Lan'Fei.
The Pavilion guards fall silent. One drops his blade.
One whisper escapes the breeze:
"It follows the fire."
Lan'Fei's hand tightens on her blade — but her spirit beasts, the three primal companions still bound to her aura, whimper and retreat behind her legs. Even they remember.
The stone-beast does not strike. Instead, it lowers its head, as if... smelling her Crown-mark.
Lan'Fei steps forward, not backing down.
"I am no flame-bearer," she says. "But I have walked beside one."
The stone-beast shudders, then turns — not in hostility, but in recognition. It slithers westward, toward the deeper Pavilion grounds… toward Feng Xian.
And etched in its back, barely visible in the coral light, is an image long faded from mortal memory:
A boy of fire, flanked by a beast-whisperer, standing before a cracked Crown — while something beneath them all waits.