The Tomb of Ash drifted in a void realm, far beyond the maps of men or gods. Three dying suns floated above like silent witnesses, and the entire world seemed to hang in their withering glow. Lin Xue stood at the threshold of a forgotten gate—one carved not with scripture, but with memories pressed into stone.
The wind here was not wind at all. It carried names, laughter, regret.
With every step she took forward, she heard echoes of herself—not her current self, but the ones she might have been. A healer. A mother. A tyrant. A martyr. Each footfall passed over bones fossilized into the path. Names were etched into them, but they were always blurred unless she looked away.
Ahead stood a wall of chained arms—fleshless, writhing, bound in silence. They blocked her path. She raised the Remembrance Flame from her palm, and the chains screamed. Not from pain, but recognition.
As the flame brushed them, they retracted, and a dark corridor opened before her.
The interior of the Tomb was disorienting. The walls moved when she wasn't looking. The mirrors that lined the halls didn't reflect her image, but pieces of her past—or perhaps someone else's. Yan Zhuo appeared again and again: teaching a class of orphans, defending a crumbling palace, whispering something into the ear of a woman in robes of mourning.
Her.
No—Yue Lian.
And yet… weren't they the same?
Lin Xue staggered forward, gripping her head. The mirrors shattered as she passed, splintering into smoke.
A soft cough echoed. From the shadows emerged a young man. Golden eyes glowed faintly. He held a cracked jade talisman in trembling fingers.
"I wondered if you'd find this place," he said.
"Who are you?" Lin Xue asked.
"I am Xu Jian. My father was the last emperor before the world was rewritten. He died for believing the Tyrant wasn't a tyrant at all."
He placed the jade in her hands. The moment it touched her skin, it pulsed—an old memory hidden deep in her bones burst forth. A voice from her childhood: "If they must call you cruel to stay safe, let them."
She fell to one knee.
A roar split the air. Chains rained from above.
The Ashbound Warden emerged—its form an abomination of steel and spirit fire, a hound of the heavens that had been starved on duty.
Xu Jian stood back. "Only memory can harm it."
Lin Xue let go of the present. Her mind fell into the past:
—Her first act of mercy, mocked.
—The betrayal at the Jade Summit.
—Yan Zhuo's hand, releasing hers at the final trial.
The Warden lunged, but her memories lanced through its form like spears of blue fire. It reeled, screaming in reverse.
Then came a deeper memory—hidden, sealed, sacred:
Yue Lian kneeling at a pyre, giving up her name. "Let me be forgotten. Let them thrive."
That memory burned the Warden apart.
Chains unraveled. Light poured into her chest. The Third Flame awakened.
Silence followed.
Xu Jian looked at her—not with fear, but awe.
"You're not Lin Xue anymore, are you?"
"I am both. I am what remains."
The chamber shifted. Walls fell away.
In the heart of the tomb, a crystal coffin lay open. Within it, a girl—identical to Lin Xue—slept in stillness. Her features were peaceful. Youthful. Eternal.
As Lin Xue approached, the eyes in the coffin opened.
"You've returned," the voice whispered. Not aloud—but within her.
Lin Xue's knees buckled.
It wasn't someone else.
It was her. Yue Lian.
"I sealed myself in this tomb. I split myself. I became Lin Xue so that the world could forget the name they feared."
The Third Flame responded, casting her silhouette across time.
"You must remember why you were feared—not for cruelty, but for choosing peace over vengeance. For loving them so much, you let them hate you."
Lin Xue stood tall.
"Then let them fear me again, if it means they remember the truth."
The coffin melted into ash.
One of the three suns above dimmed and vanished.
Far away, Ji Wuxian screamed as flame surged through his veins. In the Celestial Court, a sealed scroll tore open in blood.
A judge whispered, "The Tyrant's Path stirs."
End Of Volume 1:- The Tyrant Forgotten