The dawn after the Crimson Soul's awakening came with silence, but not peace.
Li Shenhai sat cross-legged beneath the Wraithpine Tree at the edge of the Trial Grounds, eyes shut, chest rising and falling like the tide. Around him, the grass had scorched to ash, and faint embers danced around his body, feeding on the memory of flame. His aura pulsed with power both alien and ancestral.
Inside, he battled chaos.
The Crimson Soul—an ancient essence bound to the blood of warriors born under a cursed moon—was no ordinary inner spirit. It whispered in tongues Shenhai could barely comprehend. Its voice was fire. Its will was war. And in the depths of his spirit sea, it bled.
"You carry more than blood, boy. You carry judgment. The sins of the sword. The wrath of the forgotten."
Shenhai opened his eyes, blood leaking from the corner of one. The crimson in his irises hadn't faded. The soul had not settled.
At the far side of the Trial Grounds, Master Lei watched in silence. The elder's robes flapped gently, untouched by wind.
"He is not ready," said Elder Huang from behind him.
"No. But fate no longer asks permission."
Meanwhile, back at the monastery's ancient vaults, Xiao Lan stood before the Grand Mirror of Echoes—an artifact rarely used. With her was the masked assassin, now revealed to be Wu Feiyan, once a Blade of the Silent Pavilion, now disgraced. She had saved Xiao Lan during the ambush, but refused to explain why.
"He awakened something," Xiao Lan said.
"Yes. And it is watching everything, including us." Feiyan's eyes, black as night, scanned the mirror.
In the mirror's surface shimmered not Shenhai, but a distant mountain, cloaked in perpetual lightning. At its peak, a ruined shrine glowed with the same red light that now clung to Shenhai.
"The origin of the Crimson Soul," Feiyan whispered.
"The Shrine of First Blood."
Back beneath the Wraithpine, Shenhai rose.
"It wants me to go," he said aloud.
"Where?" asked a voice. It was Yun'er, the mute acolyte who had followed him since the village.
He looked at her, eyes softer now.
"To the storm where it all began."