The Valley of Dissolution was not marked on any map, not whispered about even in the deepest vaults of the Celestial Archives. It was a place shrouded in layers of cosmic denial, known only to the condemned and the forgotten. It lived in the dreams of mad prophets and the screams of broken sages—an echo in time that should never be heard. Now, Zhao Lianxu and Mu Shilan stood before its veil, staring into the wound carved across dimensions.
The sky overhead had lost all hue, rendered a flat, oppressive gray that bled into the land. The air was thick, metallic, heavy with the scent of scorched essence and the haunting perfume of decay. Trees stood petrified like ancient sentinels turned to stone in anguish. Cliffs rose like jagged teeth, and beneath their feet, the ground was marbled with ancient runes, cracked and glowing faintly—pulsing like a sleeping beast's breath.
"This place…" Shilan whispered, her voice curiously absorbed by the silence. "It doesn't belong to time."
Zhao's expression was grim. "It's a null-point. A scar in the fabric of existence. Time doesn't move forward here—it forgets."
They moved forward. Every step was a battle against reality itself. The silence deepened into something tangible, a pressure in their skulls, in their bones. Shilan's talismans dulled, their runes unraveling, and Zhao's elemental energies grew sluggish. But within him, the dark power—long dormant—began to stir like a beast roused from slumber, not in hostility, but with an eerie calm, as though it recognized this place as its cradle.
For three days they navigated a labyrinth of entropy. Landmarks twisted when unobserved. Paths folded inward. Gravity wavered like a breath. Finally, they arrived at the heart of the valley—a basin of shadowed stone and ruins swallowed by eons. At the center, a throne loomed—composed of weapons long rusted and bones half-crushed, melted together by suffering into a grotesque monument of forgotten sovereignty.
Before the throne knelt a solitary figure.
He wore nothing but the ash of his victims and the blood of his regrets. His eyes were blindfolded by strands of iron thread, and yet he turned toward them as though sightless vision still pierced their souls. His voice broke like embers under wind.
"You come seeking the Flame that devours purpose."
Zhao's throat tightened. He bowed his head, not in reverence, but recognition. "You are the Forgotten Flame—the one who challenged Balance and lost."
A laugh followed, thunderous and hollow. The very sky above groaned, as if the sound disturbed something ancient.
"I am what's left when meaning is reduced to ash. I was Balance, then Ruin. Now? Merely memory. But you, Zhao Lianxu, you are not here to reclaim me. You are here to face your unmaking."
The basin split open.
Flames not of fire, but of memory and agony, roared from fissures in the ground. Wraiths of dead cultivators rose, dragging broken dreams with them. The sky shifted to molten silver, screaming with celestial echoes. Shilan summoned her strongest barrier, but the energy shattered on contact with the air—as though protection was forbidden here.
Zhao turned, calm amidst the chaos. "Don't protect me. This is my reckoning."
The Forgotten Flame raised a hand. A sword materialized from smoke and sorrow, forged in betrayal's fire. He hurled it forward. Zhao caught it barehanded. Blood gushed, fingers split open, but he didn't flinch. Instead, he guided the pain inward, feeding it into the whirlpool of his meridians.
Element by element responded. Earth locked his stance. Water numbed his nerves. Fire danced in recognition. Wind carried the scream of his spirit. Lightning surged—pure judgment. Then darkness unfurled—whispers and tendrils, not chaotic, but cleansing. They did not consume—they embraced.
The sword shattered into stardust.
So did Zhao.
He collapsed, burned and trembling. Veins glowing, eyes filled with storms. Yet within that destruction, something began to coalesce.
The Forgotten Flame knelt beside him. "To wield the Core Flame, one must endure all fire, even the one that burns within."
Zhao forced himself upright. "Then I am ready to forge the seals anew."
The throne disintegrated. The ghosts lowered their heads. Light—not harsh, but warm—bloomed at the basin's center. A flame, silver-gold and silent, floated before Zhao, pulsing like a newborn heart.
Shilan rushed to him. "You survived. You changed it."
Zhao grasped the flame. It pulsed in harmony with his breath. "The Core Flame... It's pure creation. We can remake the broken seals."
Yet even as hope kindled, a cold wind blew.
And with it, laughter.
Soft. Playful. Ancient.
From the edge of the basin, a silhouette emerged—veiled in mist, robed in white that absorbed color. Her presence warped gravity, warped breath. Her eyes, dark and infinite, shone with a familiarity Zhao couldn't place.
"You've come far, Zhao," she said. "Far enough to remember me."
Shilan stepped in front, her blade singing.
"Who are you?"
The woman's smile was impossibly gentle. "I am the First Flame. And your final echo."
Zhao stood, despite the trembling of his frame. "You're a myth—an origin wrapped in fiction."
"All myths are truths disfigured by fear," she replied. "And all truths are cages waiting to be reforged."
The ground pulsed. The flame in Zhao's palm dimmed, then brightened again. The ghosts shifted, murmuring. The valley itself seemed to sigh.
"Your path leads not just to restoration," the First Flame said. "But confrontation. Take the Core Flame to the Tower of Echoes. There, reality frays, and the old seals lie broken. What you choose there will decide what remains."
Shilan held Zhao's arm, her fingers trembling. "You won't be alone."
The First Flame nodded. "You are bound by more than fate. But know this: The path is riddled with trials not of strength—but of trust. Of loss. Of sacrifice."
Zhao met her eyes. "Then let every step burn."
She smiled, turning back to the mist. "Then let your fire become the forge of worlds, Prince of Three Bloods."
She vanished. Only her echo remained.
Zhao and Shilan stood in the heart of what had once been ruin and was now something reborn. The Core Flame hovered above them, steady and warm.
Above, for the first time in ages, stars broke through.
But it was not peace.
It was the calm before a greater storm.