Li Shenhai awoke beneath a shattered sky.
Yun'er was at his side, her blade drawn, her face pale. Around them, the shrine lay in ruin—the guardian gone, the sigils cracked, and the mountain rumbling with distant thunder.
Three marks now burned on Shenhai's chest.
Each one pulsed with the weight of ancient oaths—not his own, but those of the Bloodmother, carved into generations of soulbearers.
"What happened?" Yun'er whispered.
Shenhai could not answer. His voice was still echoing with hers.
"Soon, my son."
As Yun'er helped him to his feet, Shenhai looked toward the eastern horizon, where the clouds swirled unnaturally. A red mist had begun to spread, barely visible, like a veil drawn across the world.
Far below, Xiao Lan stood in the ruins of the Black Hollow Library, surrounded by ink-slicked stone and scrolls that moved of their own accord.
She had opened a book she shouldn't have.
A scroll bound in human hair and stitched with crimson thread—a final record written by a fallen Oracle of Light.
It told of the Bloodmother's betrayal.
She had been divine once.
A seer. A protector. A mother to the lost.
But when she refused to give prophecy to kings, they branded her a heretic and forged the Crimson Soul to bind her.
The Soul was not her gift.
It was her cage.
Xiao Lan looked up—and for a moment—the shadows bowed.
She turned to Wu Feiyan. "She's not coming back to destroy the world," she said.
"She's coming back to finish what she started."
Elsewhere, in a burned-out village west of the mountain, Wu Feiyan knelt in a circle of ash.
She had traced a ward in salt and blood, hoping to contain the spreading corruption.
But the ritual had gone wrong.
Her hand was burned—her veins darkened where the mist had touched her skin. The corruption had entered her—but had not consumed her.
Instead… it listened.
In the fire's reflection, Feiyan saw herself standing alone in a darkened field, crimson flowers blooming behind her.
"You are not hers," a voice whispered.
"But you are no longer only your own."
A figure appeared before her—shrouded in silk, with a familiar veil.
"The priestess falls, and the herald rises," it said. "You carry her wound now."
Feiyan's eyes turned bright with light—and then black with shadow.
She screamed once.
Then stood up, changed.
Meanwhile, in the Azure Cloud Sect, chaos was no longer contained.
Elder Lei had fled. Elder Huang had taken control. But now, even the skies above the sect swirled with red clouds.
The seal that protected the sacred peak had cracked.
One of the younger disciples—barely sixteen—collapsed in the training yard, screaming the Bloodmother's name.
"She's waking up… she's waking up inside us!"