"Welcome to Ghostspire," she said flatly. "Let's go learn why the Realms threw us away."
Orion followed the girl through the crooked halls of Ghostspire, his footsteps echoing alongside hers.
"Is this really an *academy*?" he asked.
She didn't slow her pace. "It was. Once. Long ago."
They passed by levitating stones trapped in orbit around shattered support beams. Walls bled inky water. Some doors led to staircases that turned into vines before vanishing.
"Now," she said, "it's a graveyard for forgotten prodigies and divine 'accidents.' You're lucky, though. Most people who steal sacred power don't survive the *first* night."
"I didn't steal anything," Orion muttered.
She looked at him—sharp. "Didn't say you did. But that's what they think. And in the Realms, what they think *is* truth."
---
They arrived at a half-collapsed amphitheater built into the side of a cliff.
The seats hovered in place—stitched together by light. A single instructor floated in the center, arms folded behind his back, long black beard trailing into a braid of feathers.
He radiated **controlled madness**—the kind bred from genius, pain, and years in exile.
"Ahhh," he said as Orion and the girl arrived. "The Mistake joins us."
"His name's Orion," the girl said flatly.
The man smiled. "And your name, little interruption?"
"Lán Mèixué," she said. "But most just call me *Snow Lan.*"
"Very well," he said, bowing dramatically. "Miss Lan. And Mistake Orion."
Orion flinched.
The instructor turned to the rest of the small class—about a dozen students scattered in the floating seats.
"All of you are here," he declared, "because the Realms failed to contain you. You were too unstable. Too strange. Or, in our friend Orion's case—too *unplanned.*"
A few students snickered.
"Your presence in this place," the instructor continued, "means one of two things. Either you were wrongly judged… or you are indeed the monsters they believe you to be."
He smiled grimly.
"My job is not to teach you. My job is to *observe* which truth you become."
He clapped once—and the floor **fractured into runes.**
---
Instantly, the floating amphitheater expanded into a **pocket realm**—a testing ground formed from memory and magic.
Trees shimmered into existence. Broken towers hovered above lava streams. Clouds of sentient ink drifted above, whispering secrets in forgotten tongues.
"You will each complete three trials," the instructor said. "Each designed to measure your internal *Qi cycle, memory retention,* and *resonance with the divine threads.*"
He looked at Orion.
"You especially."
Orion tensed.
"Begin."
---
**Trial One: The Mirror Roots**
Orion found himself in a grove of silver trees. Their roots pulsed like veins. Mirrors grew on the trunks instead of bark—each one reflecting not his image, but different **versions** of himself.
One mirror showed him as a proud warrior, robed in white flame, crowned with golden light.
Another showed him as a **monster**—arms blackened, eyes glowing red, surrounded by fire and screaming innocents.
A third showed him dead.
He stepped back.
The Word-Soul pulsed inside him again—just once.
> *Choose.*
"What am I choosing?" he asked aloud.
The trees whispered:
> *Truth. Or potential. Or the lie you want to live.*
He stepped toward the middle mirror.
The one that showed him weak. Alone. But still *trying.*
His reflection blinked.
And then smiled.
---
When he returned to the others, the instructor merely nodded.
"No collapse. No false breakthrough. Interesting."
---
**Trial Two: The Spiral Memory**
This time, the students were led into a corridor where time folded in on itself.
Orion walked down a hallway that repeated every ten steps—but each repetition pulled a memory from his mind and placed it into reality.
He saw:
* Himself as a child, sitting alone in a ruined field, watching cultivators fly overhead.
* His mother arguing with a village elder, pleading for her son to be tested for Qi potential.
* Himself, rejected, over and over. Weak. Unnoticed. Powerless.
The corridor *fed* on those moments.
Then came something new.
He saw the Oracle, standing in front of him just before the accident.
Her face was **afraid.**
But not of him.
Of what was **behind him.**
Orion turned in the memory—
And saw only **a door.**
A black one, pulsing with glyphs.
He reached for it—just as the corridor ended.
He stumbled out, panting.
---
The instructor was watching.
"You opened no false doors," he said. "You remember pain clearly. That can be used."
Orion said nothing.
---
**Trial Three: Divine Thread Resonance**
The final trial was the most dangerous.
A floating thread—almost invisible—drifted in a chamber of silence.
"Touch it," the instructor said. "If it accepts you, you'll see your role. If not… you may unravel."
One by one, students tried.
Some were thrown backward. Others passed out. A few screamed and ran.
When it was Orion's turn, the room grew **colder.**
He stepped forward.
The thread shimmered.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers brushed it—
A thousand voices screamed in his mind:
> *THE ORACLE WAS WRONG.*
> *THE GUARDIAN IS BROKEN.*
> *THE WORD CHOSE THE VOID.*
Orion fell to his knees.
He didn't black out.
He simply *shook.*
The instructor's smile faded.
"You're not a vessel," he muttered. "You're… a gate."
The word **"gate"** echoed in Orion's mind like a bell underwater.
The instructor said nothing more. He simply turned and vanished into the collapsing spellspace, leaving the students stunned.
Orion lay on the cold floor of the trial chamber, breath ragged. His fingers trembled from where they'd touched the Divine Thread.
The whispering hadn't stopped.
Even now, a low *murmur* stirred at the edge of his hearing.
> *The gate is misaligned. The guardian is absent. The soul is fractured.*
No one helped him up.
Not Lan Ghost, who smirked from the back.
Not Snow Lan, who was already turning to leave.
Not Silence Yu, who watched with narrowed eyes from the shadows.
But as Orion stood, knees shaking, he noticed something—
The thread hadn't vanished.
It still hovered in the air.
And it was still **tethered to him.**
A faint silver line now trailed from his fingers into nothingness—nearly invisible unless you looked directly.
A connection that shouldn't have lasted past the trial.
And yet...
It **clung to him**.
---
Outside, the sky had darkened again. Not night—there was no natural cycle in Ghostspire—but a storm of **language** had begun in the upper atmosphere.
Literal letters—giant glowing characters—rained from the sky and shattered on the cliffs like meteorites.
Silence Yu joined him beneath a crooked shelter.
"They'll start to notice you now," she said. "That's a problem."
Orion was still dizzy. "What… do they think I am?"
She glanced sideways. "Some will say you're a reincarnated sage. Others, a possessed vessel. But most... will call you the *Devourer's Mistake.*"
"The Devourer?"
She hesitated. "A force sealed away centuries ago. It was once a guardian like the others. But something went wrong. It consumed divine energy instead of balancing it."
Orion stared. "And they think *I'm*... like that?"
She didn't answer.
She didn't need to.
---
They walked back toward the main tower as more word-meteors fell across the cliffs. One struck the side of the western spire and exploded in a burst of floating calligraphy. It spelled only:
> **"UNCLAIMED."**
That night, as Orion lay in his tiny stone room, he opened the linen bag again. The scroll marked **"Failure: Classification E-77"** now pulsed with faint light.
He unfurled it.
Where once were blank lines, now appeared sentences burned into the parchment:
> **Subject:** Liu Xingchen / Orion Liu
> **Incident Level:** Unprecedented
> **Observed Symptoms:**
>
> * Spontaneous glyph assimilation
> * Divine thread attachment
> * Mirror resonance with all potential timelines
> * Soul anchor instability
> * Gate-like properties
Then came a final line in bold red ink:
> **Recommendation: Immediate soul-break or transfer to Realm Four. Do not allow further evolution.**
Orion read the words three times.
His hands clenched.
They'd meant to kill him.
Not exile him.
---
Suddenly, the scroll **burned** in his hands. It crumbled into ash, as if self-destructing to hide the truth.
A soft whisper echoed from the remains:
> *You were not meant to survive.*
He stood up, the silver thread still faintly tethered to his finger.
He walked to the cracked window.
Beyond it, the sky was now filled with **falling ink-stars**—calligraphy storms swirling across the void between Realms.
He whispered to the darkness, to the Word-Soul inside him:
> "Then why did you choose me?"
And for the first time…
It answered clearly.
> *Because you are the only one who can choose back.*
---
Back inside the floating amphitheater, the instructor stood alone.
He reached into his robe and withdrew a talisman wrapped in black jade and old silk.
He pressed it to his lips and whispered.
A moment later, the air around him **tore open**, revealing a flickering image of a woman seated on a throne of broken jade.
Her eyes were hidden behind a veil. Her voice was a tremor.
> "You saw it?"
The instructor nodded. "He's alive. And more than that—he's *connected.*"
> "You told no one?"
"I told them what they wanted to hear. That he's unstable. That he's fading."
The veiled woman smiled—barely. "Good. Let the Realms believe he's dying. In truth… he's becoming."
The instructor bowed.
> "He is the key. And if the Oracle was right about anything, it's that the key will open either salvation… or the Devourer's prison."
---
Far away, in a hidden monastery buried under a frozen sea, a blind monk woke screaming from a dream he hadn't had in 40 years.
He whispered one word to the wind:
> "Mistake."
---
Orion awoke to a knock.
Not the cautious tap of a curious peer. This was insistent. Sharp. *Authoritative.*
He opened the stone door.
A tall woman stood there, robes embroidered with living glyphs, her hair tied in a looped knot that marked her as **Enforcer Class**—above teachers, but beneath Judges. Her eyes glowed with indigo light.
"Liu Xingchen," she said, using his Chinese name without hesitation. "You are to attend a summons from the Inner Mirror Council. Now."
"Council?" he echoed. "I haven't—"
"No questions," she interrupted. "Dress. Follow. Speak only when addressed."
She turned.
Orion dressed quickly. The air seemed heavier this morning. The silver thread trailing from his finger hadn't faded. If anything, it shimmered more brightly now, as if anticipating confrontation.
He followed her through twisting halls.
Eventually, they arrived at a **mirror chamber**—a vast circular space surrounded by thirty-two hovering mirrors, each shaped like a lotus petal.
The chamber pulsed with truth energy. He could feel it vibrating in his bones.
A voice echoed from everywhere:
> "Step forward, mistake."
---
Inside the ring of mirrors sat six spectral figures. Each was a *projection*—their bodies hidden somewhere deeper in the academy or even beyond. But their presence here was enough to warp the air.
These were the **Inner Mirror Council**, former High Judges of the Realms, exiled when their predictions failed or their prophecies contradicted others.
One wore red flame. Another, black frost. The central figure was veiled in a halo of silent runes.
"You are the one who absorbed the Guardian Word-Soul?" asked the haloed figure.
"I didn't mean to," Orion said.
"Intent does not matter," said another. "You survived it. That alone breaks a dozen laws."
Orion looked up. "If the laws are broken, doesn't that mean the prophecy was wrong?"
Silence.
A third figure leaned forward. "The prophecy was incomplete."
"So I wasn't meant to have the power."
"No. But the power... **chose anyway**."
That shook something in the chamber. Several of the mirrors rippled.
"You've already passed the preliminary trials," said the flame-wrapped judge. "And yet you remain unbound. The thread is still active."
They could see it too.
"What do you want from me?" Orion asked, voice sharper than he intended.
"To observe," said the rune-veiled judge. "To decide whether to suppress your connection… or exploit it."
Orion stepped forward. "You want to use me?"
"No," said the frost judge. "We want to **survive** you."
---
A deep tone echoed—one of the mirror petals turned **black.**
"Time is running out," the haloed judge said. "The Realms will discover the Oracle is gone. When they do, their armies will descend here seeking answers."
"You think they'll come after me?" Orion asked.
"No," the judge said.
"They'll come after **what you've become.**"
---
After the hearing, Orion was escorted back—but not to his old room.
Instead, he was placed in a **sealed cell** carved from black jade, deep beneath the lower levels of Ghostspire.
Inside, it was cold. The silver thread curled along the ceiling now like a living line of ink.
A voice greeted him from the corner.
"You know they're going to kill you, right?"
He turned.
**Lan Ghost** sat cross-legged on a floating slab of stone, sipping tea from a chipped cup. His glass-bone staff leaned casually against the wall.
"Why are you here?" Orion asked.
"I told them I wanted to study you," Lan said cheerfully. "Turns out having a reputation for insanity gets you privileges."
Orion blinked. "You're serious?"
"Oh, dead serious. They don't understand what you are. I don't either. That's why I want to watch." He leaned forward. "I think you're the last experiment of a god who gave up on order."
"…thanks?"
"You're welcome." Lan stood. "But you need to make a choice."
"What kind of choice?"
"Are you going to keep surviving like a victim…" He grinned.
"Or start *evolving* like a monster?"
---
Later that night, when the guards changed shifts, Orion sat alone in his sealed cell, staring at the glowing thread.
He reached for it again.
This time, it didn't scream.
It **unfolded.**
And what he saw inside it wasn't a path or a future—it was a **map**.
Not of land.
But of **fates.**
Thousands of lives. Thousands of possible *Orions.* A burning network of who he could become. Hero. Villain. Martyr. King. Nobody.
At the center of the web was a broken glyph.
And beneath it, a name he didn't recognize.
> "Xie Yiran."
He whispered it aloud.
The air cracked.
Suddenly, **Silence Yu** appeared outside his door, eyes wide. "What did you say?"
He looked up. "Xie Yiran. Why?"
She pressed her hand to the jade barrier, her expression changing—shock, fear… grief?
"That was the **Oracle's true name.**"
Orion's mouth went dry.
Before he could speak again, the silver thread ignited.
And for the first time since the accident…
The **Word-Soul** spoke in a human voice.
> *The Oracle is not gone.*
> *She is sealed inside you.*
Silence Yu didn't move.
The name—*Xie Yiran*—still hovered between them like a blade.
"I felt her," Orion said. "Not just memories. She… spoke. Through the thread."
Yu's voice was hoarse. "That name was wiped from every Realm Archive. Only six people ever knew it. And only one ever spoke it after her disappearance—me."
Orion stepped closer to the jade wall. "Then you knew her?"
"I was her shadow," she whispered. "Before she vanished, she made me swear to remain hidden. To watch for signs. She said if someone ever spoke her real name… it would mean she had failed."
Orion clenched his fists. "What was her failure?"
Yu looked directly at him, her eyes rimmed with violet sorrow.
"She tried to rewrite fate."
---
Inside the sealed cell, the silver thread now danced with visible symbols—fractured scripts flickering like broken code. One character burned brighter than the others:
> **启** (*qǐ*) — *to awaken, to begin.*
Orion focused on it, and suddenly he saw it—not just as a word, but as a **key**.
With trembling fingers, he touched the character.
The cell shuddered.
The jade cracked.
Outside, Yu gasped. "No, don't—"
But it was too late.
---
**A Memory Unlocked**
The world around Orion shifted. The walls dissolved into stars.
He stood now in a wide marble hall beneath a cracked sky. Floating scrolls orbited above him. A single figure stood in the center.
A woman.
Her hair was white—not from age, but from the weight of *truth.* Her robes shimmered with bound prophecies. Her eyes bled slow lines of gold.
The Oracle.
"Xie Yiran," Orion whispered.
She turned.
"You've come further than expected," she said.
"Am I… inside your memory?"
She smiled, but it was hollow. "You're inside the last thread I left behind. A contingency for failure. You were never meant to carry the Word-Soul. But the moment you did, a path opened."
"Why me?"
"Because every Realm crafts its heroes. Its Guardians. But the language of fate cannot function without… error." She gestured around her. "You are the *chosen mistake.* The broken line that cannot be erased."
Orion stepped forward. "Then you knew this would happen?"
"I hoped it wouldn't. But the moment the ceremony began, I felt the truth slip from my grasp. Something *else* took hold. Something older than even prophecy."
"What do you want me to do?"
Xie Yiran's image flickered.
"I want you to survive. But not to prove them wrong."
She stepped forward.
"I want you to **unwrite** the Realms."
---
The vision shattered.
Orion collapsed in the cell.
Silence Yu was already inside, kneeling beside him. "What did you see?"
He opened his eyes. "She doesn't want me to save the Realms."
Yu's breath caught.
"She wants me to… *destroy* the system that governs them."
---
Above Ghostspire, clouds spiraled into glyph-storms. Winds howled like angry syllables. The Realms trembled.
In distant cities, ancient guardians stirred from sleep. Jade seals cracked.
And in the upper court of the Eastern Realm, a bell tolled—one that had not rung since the Devourer was sealed.
Its toll meant one thing:
> **A gate has opened.**
---
In the fractured halls of the Mirror Council, the haloed figure staggered as the mirrors around him flashed with thousands of overlapping futures.
"No… too soon," he whispered. "He's already aligning threads…"
The frost judge slammed her hand on her armrest. "Then we kill him now."
But the flame judge raised a hand.
"Wait. If he *is* the key, then destruction might release what's inside."
"Then what?" the frost judge snarled. "Let him *rewrite* the structure of fate itself?"
The haloed judge spoke slowly.
"There may be only one solution."
"…What?"
"*We bring him to Realm Four.*"
Silence blanketed the chamber.
"No one returns from Realm Four," someone whispered.
The haloed judge simply replied:
"Exactly."
---
Back in the cell, Orion looked at his hands.
The silver thread had now wrapped around his forearm, pulsing softly like a heartbeat.
"I need to leave this place," he said to Yu. "I need to find out what the Oracle meant."
"You can't just walk out of Ghostspire," she said. "It's sealed across six dimensions."
"Then help me break them."
Yu stared at him—measured him.
At last, she nodded. "I'll bring you to someone who knows the inner locks."
"Who?"
She hesitated.
Then said:
> "Her name is Fei Ren. Realmwalker. Exiled Guardian. She once broke into the Emperor's dreamscape."
---
And in the deepest foundation of Ghostspire, buried under a lake of frozen ink, a single glowing glyph pulsed for the first time in centuries.
> **門** (*mén*) — *gate.*
The descent took hours.
Silence Yu led Orion through hidden paths carved behind the official halls of Ghostspire—a secret trail known only to those who had lived in the shadows of the Oracle's secrets.
Walls of stone transitioned to woven blackwood, then into glass that shimmered with trapped memories. Occasionally, a flicker of the past would appear—a laughing student, a fallen Guardian, the Oracle herself in mid-sentence before fading away like a flame in wind.
"This place feels alive," Orion said.
Yu didn't look back. "It is. These halls are part of the First Script. Not built, but written. That's why they shift."
They passed through a silent room with no floor—only floating glyphs holding their steps midair.
Then finally, they arrived.
A gate. Simple. Wooden. Burned at the edges.
Upon it, only one character had been carved:
忘 (wàng) — Forget.
Yu paused. "From this point forward, no memory can be recorded. Even your Word-Soul will go silent here. This is the Edge of Truth."
"Then how will I know where to go?"
"You won't." She opened the gate. "But she'll find you."
Inside was an enormous cavern.
And at its center floated a prison: a suspended cube made of fractured glass and rusted chains. It twisted gently in the air, like it breathed. A soft hum came from within—like an ancient song made of mistakes.
Yu nodded at it. "That's her."
Orion blinked. "She's locked up?"
"She locked herself up," Yu replied. "To stop from falling apart. Her power is unstable. Not even the Judges dared unseal her."
Orion stepped closer.
Inside the cube sat a woman with hair like smoke and eyes like starless sky. Her presence felt like friction—as if she belonged to a different genre of existence.
She looked up.
"You're late," she said, voice dry.
Orion hesitated. "You're… Fei Ren?"
"Fei Ren, yes. Or Renee Feng, if you prefer my foreign name. I don't care."
"You were a Guardian?"
"I was the Guardian," she replied. "Realm Three's blade. Until I failed the Oracle's test and walked into the Emperor's mind to tear out a truth he refused to speak."
"Why are you here?"
She smirked. "Because the Realms hate those who don't follow the narrative."
Orion glanced at Yu, who nodded for him to go on.
"I need to escape Ghostspire," he said. "And you're the only one who knows how."
Fei Ren tilted her head. "No. I'm the only one who survived doing it."
"Then help me."
She leaned forward, and for the first time, he saw pity in her eyes.
"You don't want my help. Because once you leave here, you don't get to be 'confused student with a burden' anymore."
"What do I become?"
"A target."
They sat in silence.
Eventually, Fei Ren sighed.
"I'll get you out. But I want something in return."
Orion nodded. "What?"
She lifted a hand. Her chains groaned.
"Break one of my bindings. Just one. That's enough to weaken the seals."
Yu tensed. "If you release her, the entire lower ward might collapse."
"I'll handle it," Orion said.
He reached out.
The silver thread around his arm pulsed—and a glowing word formed on his palm:
破 (pò) — Break.
He pressed it to the nearest chain.
There was a sound like shattering heavens.
One link snapped.
Immediately, the cavern flickered. Walls cracked. Glyphs spun out of alignment.
Fei Ren stood inside the cube.
And then…
She stepped through it.
Her eyes no longer looked like the void.
They looked like memory.
"I forgot what air smelled like," she whispered.
She touched Orion's shoulder.
"You have her inside you, don't you?"
He nodded.
"Then we don't have much time."
She waved her hand—and a tear opened in the cavern air.
Not a portal.
A sentence, ripped into space like punctuation on reality.
It glowed with eight characters:
走出天命,踏入遺忘之路
Walk beyond fate. Step onto the Road of the Forgotten.
Orion stepped toward it.
"Where does it lead?"
Fei Ren shrugged. "Away."
Yu reached for his arm. "You don't have to do this now."
"Yes, I do," he said.
Then, without looking back, he walked through the glowing script.
The moment he crossed, his body twisted.
Not painfully.
But like being rewritten.
He landed hard on black stone. No sky. No horizon.
Only towers of crumbling words and staircases that led to floating punctuation marks.
Realm Four.
The place no one returned from.
The final test for mistakes.
In the shadows above, something stirred.
A figure stitched from red threads and ash watched him. Its face was a page of burned prophecy.
It whispered in a voice made of echoed regrets:
"The Devourer… is watching."
Orion stood still.
The very air in **Realm Four** pulsed with meaning—but none of it stable. Language itself was fractured here. Colors flickered between words. Gravity pulsed like a heartbeat.
His silver thread? Gone. Or perhaps buried under layers of noise.
A sound echoed—like a scream muffled by time.
"Where… am I?" he whispered.
> "A question," the wind answered.
> "So begins your test."
He turned.
There was no clear direction. Only ruins of impossible architecture—archways carved from broken metaphors, floating staircases made of hesitation, statues carved in the shape of forgotten regrets.
Every step Orion took felt like walking through someone else's unfinished sentence.
Then, suddenly—**laughter.**
Not cruel. Not mocking.
Just… tired.
A figure sat on a cracked syllable, dressed in tattered gray, a crown of ink thorns circling his brow.
"You're early," the figure said.
Orion approached. "You're waiting for me?"
"In a way." The figure looked up. "I'm *Remnant.* What's left of all those who came here before you. Every failed Guardian. Every broken mistake."
Orion paused. "Are you real?"
"I'm as real as the cost of a prophecy."
"…Then what is this place, really?"
Remnant pointed at the sky.
There was no sun. No stars.
Only a massive, slowly turning **glyph**—half-written, its edges constantly reshaping.
"*That's* what remains of the Word-Soul," he said. "Its original form. Before it was split and portioned to Guardians."
Orion stared. "So it's not inside me?"
"No," Remnant said. "Only one piece is. But it connects you to the original. That's why the Council fears you. Not because you're strong."
"Then why?"
"Because you might finish the word."
---
A deep tremor shook the realm.
Black rivers opened beneath Orion's feet—rivers made of forgotten futures. He saw himself falling, ruling, dying, kneeling, **burning.**
Remnant stood.
"It's waking up. The Devourer. It feeds on unwritten futures."
Orion clenched his fists. "Then I need to get out."
"You can't *escape* Realm Four," Remnant said. "But you can survive it. You just have to answer one truth."
He pointed at the broken glyph in the sky.
"What will you become if no one ever chooses you again?"
---
Orion looked up at the swirling symbol. It began to solidify. Each stroke a part of his journey: The failed ceremony. The exile. The Oracle's voice. Fei Ren's freedom. The Council's threats.
What will I become?
The glyph cracked.
And then, without understanding why, Orion reached out—not with his hand, but with the part of him that had touched the Word-Soul.
And he **wrote.**
A new symbol formed in the sky.
Not prophecy.
Not fate.
Just one character:
> **错** (*cuò*) — *Mistake.*
It glowed.
Then *burned.*
The realm shook.
And far above, in the Realms beyond, every Oracle Mirror shattered.
---
Inside Ghostspire, alarms screamed.
In the Inner Council chamber, the Judges collapsed as futures bled into their minds.
"He rewrote it," one whispered.
"He chose *Mistake* as his path," said another.
The haloed judge fell to his knees.
"Then the Realms will never be the same."
---
And in Realm Four, Orion stood at the center of a collapsing truthstorm.
Remnant smiled. "Well done, kid. You didn't escape."
"I didn't want to," Orion replied.
Remnant bowed once. "Then go. The road is open."
A spiral of golden text unfurled beneath his feet, reaching into the unknown.
Orion stepped forward.