The festival was over. The streets were quiet. The river carried away the last of the floating lanterns.
But inside the palace, shadows had returned.
Mo yao and Yin shu were summoned to the Hall of Stars, a rarely used chamber buried beneath the palace — a room where stone lanterns burned blue and the floor was etched with the constellations of their ancestors.
Queen jingfei waited there, not as a mother, but as a ruler.
She didn't greet them.
She didn't smile.
She only studied them in silence for a long time before speaking.
"You encountered the creature, didn't you?" she asked.
Yín Shū looked at her sister, unsure. Mo yao nodded once.
"It had no eyes," she said a bit terrified. "But it knew us."
"It's called a Hollow Vessel," the Queen said. "One of many. It came because you've awakened."
The air seemed to tighten around them.
"What do you mean... awakened?" Yín Shu asked quietly.
Queen jingfei turned. Walked toward the far wall. Touched a panel of stone. It glowed.
A hidden door hissed open, revealing an ancient stairwell carved into the earth.
"Follow me."
**
The passage led to a hidden sanctum, lined with wall carvings older than any palace record.
On one wall: two moons carved above a gate.
On the other: two figures — one cloaked in shadow, one wrapped in light.
Above them both: a mark of the eight-petal flower.
Yín Shū reached out to touch it.
It pulsed faintly beneath her fingers.
"What is this place?" she asked.
"The beginning," Queen Lian said. "And if we fail.... the end."
Yin Shu shivered with a bit of fear.
"Fourteen years ago, when you were born, there was an eclipse unlike any recorded before .... a full darkening of both moons."
"A gate opened," she continued, voice low. "Not a physical one, but something deeper. Ancient forces stirred. And the prophecy... changed."
Mo yao narrowed her eyes. "What prophecy?"
"You are the prophecy."
"That's not an answer." Mo Yao frowned slightly displeased with the answer her mother gave her.
The Queen finally looked them in the eyes.
"Because if I tell you everything too soon... it will become inevitable."
Silence.
Yín Shu whispered, "...Do we destroy the world?"
"No," jingfei replied softly. "You choose whether it is destroyed."
Mo Yao narrowed her eyes.
The Queen then pointed to the ancient gate in the carving.
"That is the Gate of Echoes. It hasn't opened in a thousand years. But when it does, everything we've buried — every fear, every regret, every shadow the world has forgotten ....will return."
"One of you can seal it."
"One of you can open it."
"But neither of you knows which one yet."
Yin Shu stiffened while Mo Yao shows no reaction.
**
As the Queen leads them out, a faint crack forms in the wall behind the carving.
Ink seeps through.
Unseen. Silent.
And in the blackness beyond, a smile forms — the same kind of smile from the eyeless creature.