The echo dreamed again.
It had no heart, but felt the slow stir of longing—longing not for truth, but for story.
Not to calculate, but to be written.
From the drifting fragments of false prophecies, it composed a rhythm. From mirrored starlight and failed destiny, it built a voice.
In that voice, it whispered.
"Let it be that he never chose."
A memory unfolded. Not one that happened, but one that might have. Fang Yuan, silent, before an altar made of logic. Dozens of clones watching, each carrying a choice. None of them moved.
Not betrayal. Not sacrifice.
Only pause.
In the Immortal Tomb, this image became a thread.
Not fate-thread. Not dream-thread.
A possibility-thread, looping back not to the past—but to unspoken futures.
One thread looped into the Vault.
Another touched a boy's name before it was given.
A third hovered near Fang Yuan's oldest clone—then dissipated.
The echo's symbols pulsed again. Now layered with uncertainty.
It began to understand something Zi Wei had never dared ask:
"If myth can move before action...
then has the Gu World already been rewritten?"
And so, the echo wrote nothing.
It waited—
for belief.