He kept his promise sooner than they expected.
...
The next night, the nameless town slept.
Wind brushed over tiled roofs and narrow alleys, carrying the faint smells of frying oil, beast fat, and cheap rice wine. Lanterns outside the inn had been turned low; their tired glow smeared orange across the courtyard stones. From the common room below came only a muffled hum—dice, drunken laughter, a serving girl's voice—dimmed to a soft vibration in the floorboards.
Inside the second-floor suite, it was quiet.
Na Yi and Na Shui had washed and changed. The innkeeper, driven by the sight of Ren's gold and the weight of his aura, had practically sprinted to find them sleeping robes. The cloth was plain but clean, with that faint scent of sun-baked cotton and cheap soap. On the sisters, even simplicity looked solemn.
Their hair hung loose, dark waves spilling over shoulders hardened by years of flight and fighting. Callused hands didn't quite know what to do without blades.
Ren sat cross-legged on the bed opposite them, back resting lightly against the wall, cloak tossed aside. The small oil lamp between them painted his features in warm gold, shadowing the corners of his eyes. In this light he did not look like a demon who reshaped worlds, nor like some aloof ancient expert.
He looked like a calm, annoyingly relaxed man who had time to sit.
They talked.
Not of Chi Guda—there was nothing left to say about him. That chapter was over, burnt down to embers.
So they talked about small things.
Na Shui, to her own surprise, discovered she could complain.
About the inn's thin pillows that barely counted as bedding.
About the way her muscles still ached from days of cultivation, the soreness hidden beneath the smooth flow of true essence.
About how humiliating it was that her heart raced every time Ren smiled at her in that knowing way, and how unfair it was that he obviously knew it.
Ren listened, eyes warm, mouth curving in that lazy half-smile that made people forget the abyss behind it. He answered with nonsense of his own: stories about markets in distant cities, about strange beasts in other regions of Sky Spill Continent, about a kind of food from a faraway world—"dumplings"—that sounded suspiciously like steamed meat buns, except, somehow, better.
Na Shui narrowed her eyes, suspicion written all over her face.
"You're making that up," she said.
Ren shrugged, unbothered. "Then we'll just have to find some one day," he said. "Verification through practice. That's cultivation too."
He said it lightly. But the words—practice, walk, verify with their own hands—sank deep into the hearts of two witches who had grown up under the Sorcerer's faith, where every step and every trial was meant to be walked, not imagined.
Na Yi discovered she could, sometimes, laugh.
The sound was low and rare, like a hidden spring bubbling out in a dry ravine, but once it escaped her chest, it did not feel like betrayal. The dead did not vanish just because she smiled. They were already gone. Carrying them forward did not mean she had to carve herself hollow.
Ren let them pull more nonsense out of him—muttered jabs at arrogant sect elders, the way the Southern Wilderness smelled different from other lands.
The lamp burned low, wick showing through the oil. Shadows thickened.
At some point, Na Shui ended up leaning against his shoulder again, voice going drowsy at the edges as she kept "complaining." That her new body still felt strange sometimes. That the Fire Martial Intent he'd carved into her meridians was too fierce, that it felt like something older and more ruthless than the Southern Wilderness itself was coiled inside her.
He only said, "Good. Fire that can't scare you isn't worth cultivating."
Na Yi had meant to stay straight-backed and composed the whole night. Her spine had learned that posture from years of clinging to discipline when everything else was chaos.
But somehow her weight tilted forward. Her knee brushed his. She didn't move it away.
Ren did not push.
He didn't need to.
There were occasional kisses—stolen, then offered back more steadily. Na Shui's were clumsy and fierce, as if she were charging into battle with her whole heart. Na Yi's were cool at first, measured, then unexpectedly deep once she allowed herself to fall.
He didn't reach for more than that tonight. There would be time. What they needed now wasn't heat that burned and vanished with the night.
What they needed was the quiet knowledge that, when they closed their eyes, the world would not fall apart beneath them again.
So, when the lamp finally gave up and guttered out, Ren simply pulled them both into his arms beneath his cloak, heartbeat steady beneath their ears.
"Rest," he murmured into the darkness, words brushing against their hair. "Tomorrow, we finish the swamp."
Na Yi's fingers tightened once in the fabric of his robe.
Na Shui's breath hitched, then steadied, guided by the steady thump against her cheek.
They slept.
Dawn came cool and clean.
The town's dust-pale streets turned a gentle gold as the sun climbed over low hills. Merchants yawned and dragged open shutters; smoke rose from kitchens, the smell of porridge and stale wine mixing in the thin air.
They ate breakfast like ordinary travelers.
Congee. Pickled vegetables. A few strips of dried meat. Na Shui burned her tongue on the first spoonful, too impatient to wait, hissing and scowling as Ren passed her a cup of water with a faintly amused look.
Na Yi pretended not to watch each time Ren quietly added more food to their bowls. He did it with a casualness that would have fooled anyone else, chopsticks moving as if it were nothing, but the portions in front of the witches somehow never ran out.
Na Shui eventually noticed.
"You're going to make us fat," she mumbled around a mouthful of porridge.
"That just means your foundation will be better when I make you burn it off later," he said mildly. "Eat."
Na Yi hid a small smile behind her bowl.
After the last dish was cleared, Ren set his chopsticks down.
He looked at them, eyes clear and steady.
"Ready?" he asked.
Na Shui's hand tightened in her lap. The carved wooden flower hairpin he had bought for her the day before caught the morning light, petals flashing gold-red like tiny flames.
Na Yi exhaled slowly. The hollow in her chest, where hatred had once sat like a second spine, was still there. That kind of wound did not close in a single night.
But around that hollow, something new had begun to grow. A faint warmth. The memory of falling asleep without dreams of fire and screaming for the first time in years.
She met his gaze.
"Mn," she said softly. "Let's end it."
A small smile curved his lips.
"Good," he said.
He rose.
They did not take horses.
They did not prepare a caravan.
Ren led them into the little courtyard behind the inn, where broken baskets and old crates leaned against a weathered wall, and a half-dead tree stood stubbornly in a cracked corner, trying to remember how to be green.
He looked up at the sky.
True essence stirred.
Behind him, Na Yi and Na Shui both felt it—the subtle shift in pressure, the almost inaudible vibration along the meridians he had carved into their bodies. Their own Fire Martial Intent, still young and rough-edged, stirred in response, instinctively bowing before a higher order of the same path.
Deep within their dantians, the Azure True Dragon Infinity Seed pulsed once, like a dragon opening a single golden eye, adjusting its rhythm to the change in heaven and earth.
A red-gold wheel of runes bloomed overhead.
Lines of Fire Martial Intent spun into existence, each spoke etched with law. It wasn't physical, but it bent the courtyard all the same—a ring of flame that didn't burn air, but space itself, compressing light and distance into something dense and obedient.
Within its domain, every stray warmth—morning sun on the inn's tiles, coal-smoke from nearby kitchens, the simmer of blood in their veins—quivered, then aligned, as if a general had walked into a camp of unruly soldiers and every back had straightened on instinct.
Na Shui's breath caught.
"Ren…" she whispered, awe threading through her voice.
He held out a hand.
"Come," he said.
They stepped forward together.
The moment their fingers touched his, heat wrapped around them—not scorching, not painful. It felt like stepping into the heart of a well-tended forge: deadly to outsiders, but to the smith, home.
Ren lifted his other hand, fingers flicking through a pattern too complex for ordinary eyes to catch. Dao lines flared, then sank into the rune-wheel, turning its edges ever so slightly.
The world folded.
The town fell away—roofs, streets, the ragged edge of Fog Valley's influence—all flattening, rolling up like an ink painting taken from a wall. For a heartbeat, there was only red-gold light, cut through with deeper crimson threads, like veins pulsing inside a living flame.
Then the light cleared.
The Southern Wilderness' true stench slammed into them.
They stood on a ridge of cracked black stone overlooking a valley of fire.
Below, the Fire Worm Tribe sprawled like an infected wound.
Crude wooden watchtowers ringed the camp, their sharpened stakes crowned with weather-bleached skulls. Shacks of bone and hide huddled around a massive altar built from piled corpses and iron-hard stone. A river of half-dried blood flowed in carved grooves, turning the ground into a sacrificial array that all converged toward the altar's base.
At the altar's center, a shaft had been dug deep into the earth.
Heat poured from it.
Not the swamp's diseased humidity. This was purer, older—the dense, oppressive breath of the earth's heart. Even without reaching out, Na Yi and Na Shui felt it: an ancient pulse, as if the buried heart of the world beat, chained, beneath their feet. Somewhere far below, a flame essence slept and raged—the Earthcore Crimson Flame, bound by crude shamanistic methods and years of sacrifices.
Above the altar, dancers of fire and smoke coiled, forming vague shapes: beasts with too many eyes, people with skulls for faces, writhing worms crowned in flame. They twisted in time with the deep thrum of drums.
The Fire Worm Tribe was celebrating.
On trestles near the ritual ground, bodies hung from crude hooks—some still whole, eyes glazed; others missing limbs, carved like livestock. Tattooed witches from other tribes, warriors, ordinary people, even a few cultivators in torn armor. Flies swarmed. The air was thick with the stink of roasted flesh and burned hair.
At the altar's apex stood the shaman.
Chi Yue.
He wore a robe stitched together from scalps and beast hides, the fur burnt in places, the skin inked in twisting shaman runes. Bone charms rattled at his wrists, clacking together as if applauding the madness. His hair was bound into a high knot, and his sunken eyes were ringed with witch-tattoo ink that glowed faintly red.
In his hands, he held a staff carved from some unknown beast's spine, the tip set with a rough crimson crystal that pulsed in time with the earth's heart—an anchor for the Earthcore Crimson Flame itself.
"Burn!" he shouted, voice thick with fanatic joy. "Burn and feed the flame! Today, Fire Worm steps onto the path of kings!"
The tribe roared back.
Warriors stomped their feet, stamping out a rhythm like a thousand hammers beating on flesh and bone. Flames leapt higher, licking the sky, as if trying to set the clouds themselves on fire.
On the ridge, Na Shui's lips peeled back from her teeth.
The smell.
The laughter overlaid on distance-muffled screaming.
The curve of the altar stones—so like the temple where her father had stood, but twisted, defiled, drenched in blood and smoke.
Her fingers shook where they gripped her sword hilt.
Na Yi stood very straight.
Her face was calm.
Too calm.
It was the calm that came after rage had boiled too long, burned too hot, and condensed into something clear and cold.
Memories slid through her mind like knives: her tribe's banners pulled down and trampled under Fire Worm feet; elders killed and hung as warnings; her people dragged in chains to serve as tribute and food. The nights she'd listened to Na Shui's quiet sobs and promised revenge she had no power to enact.
Now, the man beside her had brought them here with a single turn of his Dao.
Ren watched the scene below with half-lidded eyes.
He said nothing for a while.
Then he flicked his wrist.
Above them, the rune-wheel tightened.
The first sign the Fire Worm Tribe had that their world had changed was not thunder or some blazing sun dropping from the sky.
It was silence.
Halfway through a drumbeat, the sound cut out.
Halfway through a warrior's roar, his voice vanished, throat working soundlessly.
Flame froze on the altar—tongues of fire halted mid-flicker, like glass sculptures made of light and heat.
Even the oppressive, pounding presence of the Earthcore Crimson Flame… changed.
It did not weaken.
It was compressed.
Every wisp of heat, every strand of fire qi that had been rampaging freely through the ritual field, was seized by an invisible hand and forced into order.
Red-gold light fell over the valley.
A domain.
Within it, fire obeyed.
Chi Yue's pupils shrank.
"…What—"
The word strangled in his throat, crushed by the weight pressing against his soul.
A figure appeared above the altar.
He did not descend slowly like a pompous sect master showing off.
He simply was there—one foot resting lightly on an invisible step of flame, as if he had always been part of this sky and the world had only just noticed.
Travel-worn black clothes fluttered faintly in the heat. His hair shifted in the hot wind. His expression was calm, almost lazy, as if he were standing in a courtyard listening to someone practice sword strikes instead of hovering over a sea of cannibals.
At his sides, slightly behind, stood two women.
Witches.
Na Yi's witch tattoos glowed faintly under her sleeves, their patterns cleaner now, the Sorcerer's mark harmonizing with the circulation map Ren had carved into her body. Na Shui's eyes were bright, Fire Martial Intent coiling around her like a newly awoken beast, held in check only by will and the steady rhythm of Modified Heretical God Force guiding her breaths.
To Fire Worm's warriors, they were familiar faces.
To Chi Yue, they were ghosts that should have died in a swamp.
His lips twisted.
"Na… Yi," he spat, voice rasping. "Na Shui. You dare—"
Ren's gaze slid past him to the shaft in the altar, where the earth's heart-fire pulsed like a chained dragon.
"Mm," he murmured. "So that's where you buried it."
His eyes returned to Chi Yue.
They were very dark.
"Shaman," he said mildly. "Today's a good day to die, don't you think?"
Chi Yue's aura exploded.
Flames surged up around him—not simple campfire heat, but something denser. Years of sacrifice, hatred, and blood soaked into the earth had been forcefully fused into his cultivation. He had bound his life's foundation to that stolen Earthcore crimson fire, grafting sorcery and martial path together in a twisted union.
His robe burned away, revealing flesh covered in scales of char-red light, like plates of cooled magma. His staff slammed down, runes along its length igniting blood-red. Ghostly shapes rose around him—robed figures of bone and ash, screaming silently.
"You… bastard!" he roared, voice shaking the air. "Who are you to interfere in the Fire Worm's great ritual?!"
He flung his staff forward.
"Earthcore Heaven-Burning World!"
The shaft at the altar's center howled.
Flames geysered upward—true essence fire, sorcery fire, earth-core fire, the accumulated burning of countless captives. It twisted into a colossal serpent of molten light, thicker than the altar itself, crowned with a burning skull.
Its jaws opened wide, fangs of flame descending toward Ren and the Na sisters with the heat of a miniature sun.
Na Shui's heart lurched. For a heartbeat she saw the Fire Worm banners again, saw her tribe's shrine swallowed by flame and laughing warriors.
Na Yi's fingers whitened on her sword. Instinct screamed: move, dodge, hide—
Ren raised his hand.
Two fingers extended, casual, as if indicating a line in the sky.
The rune-wheel overhead turned.
One spoke flared, lines of Dao igniting in sequence—each stroke representing some facet of fire: heat that destroyed, light that revealed, purity that refined, life that warmed, will that refused to be extinguished.
Creation.
Third level.
The serpent's roar broke off.
Its body shuddered, scales of fire buckling inward as if grabbed by invisible hands. The colossal attack Chi Yue had built on sacrifices and madness shrank in the space of one breath—from mountain-wide to the thickness of a tree trunk, then to the width of a man's arm, then to the thinness of a finger.
Ren reached out.
The Earthcore serpent coiled obediently around his extended fingers like a tame pet, its flaming skull pressing against his palm, flickering with confused fury.
He squeezed.
The flame's crude structure collapsed. Impurities—hatred, resentment, shamanistic brands—crumbled to ash inside the fire. What remained was a single bead of crimson-white light, so dense the air around it warped.
Ren flicked his wrist.
The bead vanished into his sleeve.
He hadn't touched the main body of the Earthcore Crimson Flame deep below.
That had been only an edge.
Na Yi and Na Shui stared.
Chi Yue choked.
"Impossible…!" he rasped. "That flame is—"
"Stolen," Ren said politely. "From a place your tribe should never have touched."
He smiled.
It was not kind.
"Don't worry. I'll return it to a better owner."
He didn't draw True Longinus.
He didn't need to.
A sword formed at his side, condensing from the rune-wheel's light—a blade of red-gold flame, its edge so thin that air refused to touch it. There were no jewels, no elaborate inscriptions.
Only law.
Chi Yue screamed something wordless and lunged, the Earthcore power flaring around him. His body blurred, using a movement art born in the depths of the Southern Wilderness' savagery—each step echoing the rhythm of drums, each strike heavy with lives devoured over decades.
To the Southern Wilderness, he was terrifying: a shaman whose realm grazed the threshold of Xiantian, backed by a medium-grade Flame Essence. To the weaker tribes, he was disaster given flesh.
But Ren Ming was not something this world had raised.
He stepped forward once.
Modified Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians opened within his body, bones humming with accumulated force, each movement leaving a faint impression on his marrow. Modified Heretical God Force rose, not like a berserk flood, but like a controlled spiral; every breath pulled more of heaven and earth into his Spiritual Sea, refining it through the lens of the Ancient Ming bloodline coiled in his cells.
His aura did not explode outward.
It sank inward.
The pressure multiplied, not like a wave crashing, but like a mountain suddenly proving how deep its roots went. The Na sisters felt it—not as a weight crushing them, but as if they were standing very near a peak whose summit was hidden in clouds, its true size invisible, yet undeniable.
Ren moved.
To the Fire Worm warriors, it was as if space blurred.
One instant, he stood above them, flame-sword hanging relaxed at his side.
The next, he was directly in front of Chi Yue.
The shaman's staff descended, a burning world forming along its path, all of Fire Worm's blood-soaked faith compressed into that single strike.
Ren's sword rose.
No roaring sword shouts. No images of dragons or phoenixes.
Just a single, clean stroke.
Sword and staff met.
The sound was small.
A clear ding, like a fingertip brushing porcelain.
Then the sky split.
From the point of contact, a thin line of red-gold light shot outward, carving across the ritual ground, the altar, the valley. Everything it touched parted—flame, stone, bone, flesh—without resistance, without sound.
Chi Yue's ultimate art shattered along that line, its structure unraveling into embers and broken runes.
The shockwave that should have followed never came.
Fire Martial Intent's domain devoured it, compressing the excess power, folding it back into Ren's body, into the sword, into the quiet hum of his cultivation.
Chi Yue staggered.
Blood burst from his mouth and evaporated before it hit his chest.
From his left shoulder to his right hip, a hair-thin line appeared. No blood at first.
Then his aura stuttered.
His control over the Earthcore fragment seized.
The line deepened.
He dropped to one knee, staff clattering from numb fingers. The magma-light scales coating his body winked out, leaving pale, ashen flesh.
He was not dead.
Not yet.
Ren had deliberately left him a single breath.
Fire Worm warriors stared, souls locked between terror and denial.
This was their shaman.
The one who called fire from the earth and sharpened their tribe into a blade that cut through the Southern Wilderness. The man who had turned Chi Guda into a monster and pointed him at weaker tribes.
He had been cut down with one sword.
Na Shui's chest heaved, eyes burning.
"…Ren," she whispered. "He—"
"I know," Ren said.
He didn't look back.
His gaze remained on Chi Yue, who was forcing himself upright, legs trembling.
The shaman raised his head.
Blood steamed from the corner of his mouth.
"You…" he rasped. "What… are you?"
Ren smiled faintly. "All you need to know is that I'm the man they chose to walk with."
Behind him, the Na sisters' hearts clenched.
Chi Yue's gaze flicked past Ren to them.
He laughed—a broken, wet sound like burning wood cracking.
"Witches… of Na… Tribe," he croaked. "Look… what you've… brought… to the Southern Wilderness."
Mad light filled his eyes.
"You think this ends… anything? More flames will come. Greater tribes, great clans—they will devour… your little dreams. In this world, the strong—"
Ren's sword lifted.
"Just die," he said.
The blade fell.
No flourish. No second strike.
It passed through Chi Yue's neck as if through smoke.
The shaman never even formed the seal for Avatar Flame Boy.
For a heartbeat, his head remained on his shoulders.
Then both parted.
They never hit the altar.
Red-gold fire flared, consuming corpse and blood before they could stain the stone. The Shaman of the Fire Worm Tribe vanished without even a scrap of ash remaining.
The tribe broke.
Some warriors dropped their weapons and collapsed, eyes empty, minds refusing to accept what they had seen.
Others screamed and charged, howls cracking into madness—the desperate fury of men whose faith had just been executed.
A few turned to flee, scrambling over bone and stone, shoving their own comrades aside, eyes rolling white with terror.
Ren's expression did not change.
He lifted his hand.
The rune-wheel descended.
It did not fall like a physical object. It flowed.
Red-gold lines of Dao fell from the sky like threads, stitching through the camp—along blood grooves, around shacks, through bone piles. In the space of a breath, the entire valley became a furnace.
Fire roared.
Not the crude flames that had fed on crying captives.
This was sharper, purer—a fire that burned more than flesh. It licked at the idea of "Fire Worm Tribe" itself, dragging that concept into the crucible that was Ren's Dao.
Na Yi and Na Shui watched as warriors who had once laughed over human meat were swallowed by flame. Their screams were caught and compressed, reduced to thin streaks of light that flickered, then went out.
Deep below, the Earthcore Crimson Flame responded.
Freed from Chi Yue's crude bindings, its main body surged, trying to break free and plunge back into the deep earth, away from interference.
It slammed against the boundaries of Fire Martial Intent's domain.
The domain held.
Ren closed his eyes, senses plunging down into the shaft.
He felt it: a vast ancient flame coiled around the world's bones, born in a time when the ground had been molten and the sky ash. It wasn't truly sentient, but it had an instinctive will—to burn, to refine, to return to chaos.
His profound soul brushed against it.
The Earthcore Crimson Flame froze.
It struggled.
But power followed instinct. The flame essence recognized something: a predator from a higher food chain—Ancient Ming bloodline, Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique, Dao woven from worlds beyond this one.
It bent.
A torrent of crimson-white light surged up the shaft, leaping skyward. For an instant, the entire valley was bathed in pure heat; the air trembled, the sky wavered.
Na Yi's breath caught; sweat sprang across her brow. Na Shui's hair whipped back, her true essence stirring as if trying to answer the ancient call.
Then the torrent arced.
It poured into Ren's chest.
His meridians flared with light, then quieted. His inner world—Twelve Heavens, Fate Palaces, Immortal Soul Bone—all shifted slightly to accommodate the new presence. The Earthcore Crimson Flame roared once inside him.
His profound soul simply pressed down, silencing it.
Externally, nothing changed.
He did not sway.
The shaft went dark—truly dark—for the first time in generations.
The Fire Worm Tribe's foundation was gone.
Ren opened his eyes.
Below, there was nothing left that could lift a weapon.
No more warriors.
No more screams.
Only cooling stone, drifting ash, and the faint echo of a tribe that had once believed itself destined to sit above others, now erased from the world.
Na Shui's knees gave out.
She fell, catching herself on trembling hands at the altar's edge. Her breath hitched, chest tight, throat raw.
Na Yi remained standing by sheer will, but her fingers shook where they gripped her sword hilt. Her pupils were small, fixed on the place where Chi Yue's body had vanished.
"Is it…" Na Shui's voice cracked. "Is it… really over?"
Ren stepped over the altar's lip, flame-sword dissolving into motes of light that the rune-wheel swallowed.
He walked to them, boots whispering over stone that still radiated faint warmth.
"It's over," he said.
He did not say it lightly.
He did not say it the way people lied to themselves when wounds were still open.
He said it like a law.
Na Yi swallowed.
Images flickered faster now: Fire Worm banners; her father falling beneath shaman flames; chains. Slave markets. Chi Guda's twisted grin. Chi Yue's fanatic eyes. The endless nights whispering promises she had no power to keep into Na Shui's hair.
All of it, ending here, on this black stone, in a valley that would one day be forgotten by those who had never bled here.
Her shoulders shook.
Na Shui turned to Ren, eyes bright with tears and a raw, almost panicked hope.
"You… you really… wiped them out," she said hoarsely. "All of them. Fire Worm…"
"Is now a lesson," Ren said calmly. "Not a threat."
He let the words sink into them.
The wind shifted, tugging at Na Shui's hair, at Na Yi's sleeves. The residual heat from the devoured Earthcore flame retreated, leaving the air oddly empty, like a room after a funeral.
Na Yi's lips trembled.
"What… are we now?" she asked quietly. "If not prey of the Fire Worm?"
Ren's smile softened.
"What you always were," he said. "Na Tribe's witches."
He reached out, thumb brushing away a smudge of soot on Na Shui's cheek.
"And my women."
Na Shui's face went crimson, even here, atop an altar of ash.
"Y-you… can't just say that while we're standing on a destroyed tribe," she protested weakly.
"Why not?" Ren looked genuinely puzzled. "It's precisely because we burned the trash out of the way that you're free to hear it properly."
He glanced around at the ruined valley, then back at them.
"Besides," he added, eyes gleaming with a teasing light that didn't quite hide the seriousness under it, "from today on, the world has to learn a new story. Not 'Na witches whose tribe was eaten by cannibals,' but 'Na witches who walked out of the swamp with their future husband and started climbing toward the sky.'"
Na Shui made a noise somewhere between a sob and a strangled laugh.
"F-future…" she echoed, burying her burning face in her hands.
Na Yi's ears reddened, but she did not look away.
"…You speak wildly," she said, voice low. "But…"
She looked down at the ash swirling on the altar, at the empty place where the Fire Worm Tribe's name had once stood like a wall between her and the future.
She lifted her head.
"…I don't dislike that version," she finished, barely above a whisper.
Ren's smile warmed.
"Good," he said. "Because we're not done."
Na Shui blinked, dazed.
"Not… done?"
"Of course not." Ren's tone made it sound obvious. "Like I said—next is the world."
He turned, raising his hand.
Above, the red-gold rune-wheel trembled, flame-lines shifting. The valley's lingering heat shivered in answer, already bending to his will.
"First stop," he said, as if he were suggesting a casual stroll rather than going against the world.
"Sky Fortune Kingdom."