The old man's laughter sounded like a pile of dry bones grinding against each other.
"Xi Xi... that little girl who cried in the blizzard... don't you want her anymore?" The old man pointed a finger into the void, and an image unfolded before Silas.
It was the frozen north, where a girl in a tattered linen dress huddled in a corner. Her face was blurred, but the despairing loneliness felt like hooked iron wires, piercing Silas's heart.
"Silas, don't look! He's weaving your cognition!" Isa's voice sounded distant and faint, her lower body completely petrified, like a delicate statue forced into the earth.
Silas's eyes began to redden.
His Core Loom—the fusion of the Dreamweaver's remnants—emitted a strained hum, the collision of dream法则 and void will.
"Want her... come closer." The old man extended his hand, revealing a pure white thread. "Give me your core, and I'll take you to eternal reunion."
Silas took his first step.
His footsteps were heavy, as if wading through mud. Yet, the struggle on his face disappeared, replaced by a near-stagnant calm.
"You're right," Silas murmured. "I want her."
The old man's grin widened in triumph.
But as Silas stood three steps away, he stopped. He lifted his head, his once-muddled eyes now shadowed with an eerie black hue—the lingering trace of the Void Scar he had just copied from the Red Robe Reaper.
"But I've realized something," Silas sneered. "Since I've forgotten her face, I've also forgotten... the pain of losing her."
The old man's smile froze.
"If you want to trap me with pain, you must first ensure I have 'pain' to begin with." Silas slashed his temple with a divine thread, transforming it into a blade.
[Mirror Trigger: Self-Stripping.]
[Target: Immediate cognition of "sister suffering."]
Crack.
In that instant, Silas severed the empathetic link he had just formed with the image.
The old man's illusion collapsed before Silas's eyes. The blizzard, the crying girl—all turned into a swirling mass of gray smoke.
"You... you madman!" The old man shrieked, his voice distorted. "You cut your emotional ties?!"
"Without emotion, there is no fear." Silas's voice was icy. "Now, it's my turn to copy your 'malice.'"
Silas lunged forward, dark red Void Scars blooming beneath his feet. He wasn't trying to kill the monster—he knew a Weaver of Ordinary Weaver (Level 1).couldn't destroy such a high-level projection.
He thrust his hand through the old man's body, pulling a strand of gray thread from the smoke.
[Copy Successful: Void Whisper (Incomplete).]
[Cost Paid: You've lost the physiological memory of "how to taste sweetness."]
"Isa, go!"
Silas pressed the gray thread against Isa's petrified legs. Chaos of the void shattered the stone bindings.
Isa felt a surge of icy energy, her legs regaining sensation. Without hesitation, she spread her tattered wings, grabbed Silas, and, propelled by the Void Scar, became a streak of silver and red, crashing toward the edge of the wasteland.
Behind them, the old man's specter roared in fury, countless eyes in the sky snapping shut in despair.
...
Three hours later.
At the edge of the wasteland, beside a withered forest.
Silas slumped to the ground, his stomach convulsing with pain.
"This is your 'false miracle'?" Silas gasped, stuffing a root into his mouth.
Then he froze.
He could feel the bitterness of the root, the fibers of the plant, but his mind was empty of the concept of "sweetness." Like a colorblind person seeing a traffic light, he knew it was sugar, but he could no longer understand what "sweet" meant.
"If you'd stayed a moment longer, you'd have forgotten what 'alive' means." Isa leaned against a tree, her face pale as translucent glass. "But... thank you."
"Don't thank me yet. I'm hungry enough to devour a Thunderwing Beast." Silas rubbed his empty stomach. "And I still can't remember who you are."
Isa was about to speak when a distant, thunderous rumble echoed.
It wasn't the sound of a monster.
On the horizon, a massive fortress on six mechanical legs moved slowly. Its towers bore the banners of the Pantheon, grand and imposing under the moonlight.
"That's..." Silas's eyes widened.
"Celestia Mobile Academy," Isa's voice finally held a glimmer of hope. "The only 'neutral sanctuary' on this land. They don't belong to any god, only accepting the most elite with the Dual Mark."
The fortress's amplification array boomed across the wasteland:
"Unstable divine reaction detected. One Weaver of Mortal Threads, one Divine Covenant Keeper. To enter, present your 'cost.'"
Silas stood, staring at the approaching mechanical behemoth.
"Are we going there?"
"It's our only chance to survive." Isa looked at Silas. "But the Academy's entrance exam is more brutal than the monsters in the wasteland. They'll use Divine Regression to dig up the ugliest parts of your soul and lay them bare."
Silas straightened his torn clothes, a gray smile on his face:
"Perfect. The ugliest part of my soul might be something even I don't remember."
At that moment, the half piece of Golden Mask in his pocket vibrated faintly again.
"...Silas... they... are lying..."
The wet voice was clearer than before.
The side gate of Celestia Mobile Academy lowered slowly.
Silas stood on the metal deck, the vibrations beneath his boots. This was not just a fortress—it was a marvel woven from thousands of gears, steam cores, and divine circuits. The air was thick with the scent of lubricant and the cold fragrance of high-purity divine threads burning.
"Name, race, awakening level."
The speaker was a guide standing at the entrance. He wore a dark purple robe, his right half-face covered in intricate mechanical parts, a glowing green mechanical eye scanning the divine frequency of each entrant.
"Silas. Human. Ordinary Weaver (Level 1)."
"Isa. Avian. Divine Covenant Keeper (Three Lines)."
The guide's mechanical eye lingered on Silas for three seconds, emitting a sharp buzz: "Weaver of Mortal Threads (Level 1)? Young man, you're either mad or haven't seen the dried corpses hanging outside. We don't take trash here."
"I am mad," Silas smiled, his signature gray humor. "But the 'cost' I carry might weigh more than your Academy's annual output."
The guide snorted, handing them two blank metal plaques: "Go to Chamber 3. The Box of Truth awaits you. If you die inside, the plaque will be reclaimed."
Inside the fortress, Silas was stunned by what he saw.
In the vast courtyard, dozens of divine loom pillars interwove, with awakened beings of different races walking on suspended bridges. He saw a three-meter-tall beastman priest arguing with a slender elven dreamweaver over the arrangement of a magical array, and a group of mechanical descendants installing a drive core into a massive Titan skeleton.
Here, there were no racial divisions—only an obsessive pursuit of "progress."
As Silas crossed the corridor, his steps suddenly froze.
On the opposite bridge, a group of apprentices in white silk robes passed by. At the end of the line was a girl wearing a translucent white veil. Though dozens of meters away, though her face in his memory was blurred, Silas's soul was struck by a thunderbolt.
That figure, that slight tilt of her head as she walked...
"Xi Xi?" Silas rushed toward the bridge's edge, ignoring everything.
"Silas! What are you doing?" Isa grabbed him.
For a moment, the girl in the white veil seemed to hear, turning her head to look at Silas across the void. Her eyes were clear, empty, yet seemed to hold endless stars. But a second later, she disappeared behind the heavy metal door with the group.
"That's not her." Isa pressed Silas's shoulders, her voice coldly calm. "She's a candidate for the Saintess of the Stellar Church. They sever all mortal blood ties from birth. If you rush over now, the Academy's guards will weave you into meat paste."
Silas gasped for air, his heart pounding against his ribs. He closed his eyes, realizing he could barely remember why he felt that surge of madness, only the instinct remained.
"Let's go," Silas said, his voice hoarse. "To that Box of Truth."
...
Chamber 3 was a fully enclosed cylindrical room, its walls lined with thousands of tiny drawers.
An old woman sat in the center, blind, holding two scales in her hands.
"Welcome to the Weighing of Souls," the old woman's voice echoed as if in an empty cellar. "Place your most precious, most ugly, or most irreplaceable memory on the scale. If its 'weight' is enough to pay for your entrance, the door will open. If not..."
She grinned, revealing toothless gums:
"...you'll become a piece of waste paper in one of these drawers."
Isa took a deep breath, stepping to the left scale. She closed her eyes, and a silver thread emerged from her forehead, landing on the tray.
Click.
The scale tipped steadily downward.
"Revenge for the betrayal of the Avian race, bitter and heavy. Approved," the old woman nodded.
It was Silas's turn.
He approached the scale, hesitating. He had lost too many memories—he didn't know what "heavy" thing he still had left.
"...Silas... place the... Golden Mask fragment on it..."
The wet voice echoed in his mind again.
Silas ignored the voice, staring at the old woman instead. "What if I place something I'm gradually losing, something I'm not even sure is real?"
"Oh?" The old woman's interest was piqued.
Silas pressed his hand against his Core Loom, channeling the power of the Dreamweaver's Core, weaving that desperate, self-doubting longing for the "girl in white veil" into a shimmering golden-black thread.
The moment the thread touched the tray, the entire scale groaned under the strain, shaking violently.
"What is this..." The old woman stood, her empty eye sockets overflowing with tears. "This is 'rootless obsession'? You've forgotten her, yet you still suffer for her? This weight, defying divine logic..."
Boom!
The scale shattered completely.
The drawers on the walls opened simultaneously, a chorus of whispers exploding in the room.
[Assessment Result: Unique Rank.]
[Student Silas: Admission Granted.]
The old woman pointed at Silas, her hand trembling: "Go, freak. Before that girl in white veil kills you, see how far you can 'cut' yourself."
As Silas left the chamber, Isa looked at him as if he were an incomprehensible miracle.
Silas only looked at his hands. He found that the memory of the girl in white veil's glance was fading, replaced by an intense, insatiable hunger for energy.
"Isa," Silas said softly, "I think I know how to ascend to Divine Covenant Keeper."
"How?"
"By killing those who give me 'weight.' Or," Silas's eyes flashed with madness, "by weaving them all into my memories."
At that moment, the fragment of the Golden Mask in his pocket vibrated joyfully, as if applauding his descent into darkness.