The stone floor was slick. Xiao Yan kept one hand on the wall and tried not to think about where the moisture was from. Each scrape of his boot came back to him twice—once from the walls, once from somewhere deeper—and his lungs were wrong in a way he couldn't fix by breathing carefully.
"Keep moving."
Xuelian was five paces ahead. Her wings were pulled so tight against her back that they looked like they hurt. She hadn't turned around since the stairs.
"How much further?" he asked.
"Three hundred yards."
He didn't ask again.
The air down here tasted like water that had been sitting in the dark for a long time. Old sulfur. Old stone. The "Sigh" arrays from the stairwell were still humming somewhere in the back of his teeth.
The bronze door at the end of the corridor looked like it had rusted shut fifty years ago. Xuelian pressed her palm flat to the center, and the metal groaned like something in pain. The hinges shrieked as it opened.
The room was small. In the center, a stone basin. The liquid inside was so dark it had no su—just just a depth that started at the rim and went somewhere you couldn't see.
"Get in," she said.
Xiao Yan looked at it. "Is it supposed to look like that?"
"Yes." She stepped toward him. "It's concentrated soul-essence. It doesn't sit on the skin—it pushes through. It looks for gaps." She reached for the silk wraps on his arm. "If you fight it, you'll go brain dead."
He pulled his arm back. "I can do it myself."
She grabbed his wrist. Not roughly, but there was no question in it. "Your meridians are frayed to snapping. You go in alone; the pressure caves your skull before you hit the bottom."
She began to unwind the bandages. She kept her eyes down. A pink flush was climbing her neck, and she clearly knew it, which made it worse. Her fingers were steady until they weren't—a faint tremor she controlled by slowing down. Xiao Yan felt the heat coming off her skin. Ice-Dragon blood, and she was warm as a coal.
The last wrap fell away. His forearm looked like something that had lost a long argument.
"To your waist," she said quietly.
He pulled off what was left of his tunic and stepped into the basin.
It wasn't cold. It wasn't warm either. It was pressure—like stepping into mercury, like the liquid had weight and intention. It climbed his legs, his chest. When it reached his throat, he made a sound he didn't mean to make, and his head snapped back, and for a second there was nothing—no room, no Xuelian, no stone—just white.
The Primordial Soul Core stirred. Not smoothly. It caught, groaned, and turned like a gear that had been still for years.
"Master." Michael's voice came from somewhere inside the white. "Don't fight it. Let it burn."
The water moved.
Xuelian stepped in behind him. Her robes spread out around her. Without a word, she pressed her palms flat against his spine.
The cold that hit him wasn't the pool's cold—it was hers, direct, clean, and surgical. It didn't stop the pain. It just made a small quiet space beside it where he could still think.
"Focus on my breath," she said. Very close. "The visions aren't real. My voice is."
He closed his eyes and let the water in.
He saw the Nansha Empire. The red sky. The smell he still couldn't name even though he knew exactly what it was. The faces of the Xiao kin—not angry, just gone, looking at him with eyes that had nothing left in them.
He didn't look away. He sat with it until the black water found it and started to work.
The pool began to move. A slow spiral is forming around them, tightening.
Xuelian made a low sound against his shoulder. He felt her forehead drop there—just for a second—and then her nails went into the skin of his shoulders, and he understood she was fighting something too. The Ice Dragon in her blood had found the Azure Dragon in his, and neither of them was happy about the proximity.
"Xiao Yan—"
He turned and caught her waist before the current took her legs out. They were chest to chest, the liquid at their chins, and her eyes were blown wide, and she looked nothing like the person who had told him to stop wasting oxygen.
His left eye went gold. The Codex read the space between them, and he ignored everything it said.
"Don't let go," he said.
She turned her face into his neck. "I won't."
The vortex stopped.
The liquid went clear—not gradually, but all at once, like it had simply decided it was done. Then there was just water. Just a stone room. Just the sound of both of them breathing.
He picked her up and carried her out of the pool. She didn't protest, which meant she genuinely couldn't. He laid her on the stone floor and crouched beside her a moment, watching her chest rise and fall.
[Notification: Soul Path—Mortal Stage 12 (Peak reached)]
He stood up.
The room was too quiet in taway that meant his hearing had sharpened past the point where silence was possible. Spiders in the door hinges. A heartbeat, faint and slow, three gates above them — some Elder who had no idea what had just happened down here.
He brushed the wet hair off Xuelian's face. His hand was steady. That was new.
"Three days," he said to no one. "Bring the mirror."