When the final envoy fell, the mountain was no longer a mountain — just a ridge of broken stone smoldering under a sky split by claw marks of pale fire. Hollow Sky lived up to its name: the wind moaned through cracked prayer towers like a chorus of ghosts too tired to remember the words.
Li Shen dropped to one knee among the ash. The Codex roared behind his ribs — no longer chained, not truly. The pact Red Sigil gave him burned bright as molten iron — but it was iron bent under Ku Mo's teeth, straining at the seams.
He could feel it: a last link holding the demon's will beneath his own. And that link was him — flesh, bone, a boy who once crawled through snow for a crust of stale rice.
Yue Lan stumbled toward him, half her spirit threads shredded to pale mist. Frost burned in the hollow of her throat where the envoy's seal had struck. Her boots left bloody prints on the stone as she knelt at his side.
She caught his face in both hands. Her palms trembled. She didn't care.
"Li Shen—"
His eyes flicked up. Red. But his red. Not Ku Mo's blind abyss. Not yet.
"I'm here," he rasped. "Still here."
---
Above them, the sky rippled — Heaven's crack shivered wider. Beyond it, something vast and old and hungry drifted closer. Not Ku Mo — something that watched Ku Mo's kin devour a thousand mountain shrines before the Nine Heavens ever wrote their first prayer scroll.
A voice rolled through the rent clouds, neither male nor female — thunder made of broken temple bells.
"Bloodbound. Devourer. Do you see now?"
Li Shen laughed. A sound like broken glass in snow. He spat red onto the cracked stone.
"I see you hiding behind your broken dogs."
The voice pulsed — a second crack split the clouds. Pale flame dripped from the wound in the sky, sizzling against the old ridge.
"You wear the Chain. You feed the Chain. Break it — and drown. Keep it — and kneel."
The Codex inside him writhed. Ku Mo's snarl rose like a storm tide: We can eat the sky. Open me. Open everything.
Yue Lan pressed her forehead to his — her breath the only warmth left in Hollow Sky.
"Li Shen," she whispered. "If you open it all, there's no chain left. Not you. Not me. Just the hunger."
His breath hitched — frost and fire warring in his ribs. His name dangled over a cliff made of teeth.
---
He saw himself — a boy on the river path. Snow crusted on torn boots. Cold in his marrow, but something hotter behind his eyes. A name no sect scroll would remember — Li Shen. His alone.
He saw Yue Lan — her threads binding frostbitten skin, her eyes dark with trust she'd never given any elder.
He saw the Codex — its runes burning in his bones. Ku Mo's grin splitting the dark like a funeral pyre.
---
Li Shen's blade scraped stone as he dragged himself upright. Yue Lan rose with him — her fingers still tangled in his, the last thread binding him to himself.
The wound in the sky pulsed — Heaven's voice waiting.
He grinned — teeth bright as a dying star.
"Take it, then."
Ku Mo roared — TRAITOR—
Li Shen shoved the Codex's last chain wide open — not to feed Ku Mo, not to feed himself.
To burn it clean.
His spirit flooded the Codex's runes — not devouring, but devoured. Not by the demon — but by the iron will that had always been his only true blade.
The Codex shrieked. Ku Mo's howl cracked the ridge. Pale flame from Heaven slammed down like a spear.
Li Shen didn't flinch. Yue Lan's threads wrapped his heart — silver lattice fusing with the runes as the Codex's crown crumbled.
Ku Mo screamed — a crown of teeth scattered into drifting ash.
The sky above Hollow Sky shuddered — the wound sealing in a single rush of freezing wind.
---
When the light faded, Li Shen stood alone in the ash.
Yue Lan's fingers were still tangled in his.
The Codex was gone — no hunger in his veins, no roar behind his teeth.
Only the echo of his own breath — raw, ragged, real.
She stared at him — saw the boy on the river path again, crowned in nothing but cold stars and his own name.
"Li Shen," she breathed.
He grinned — a tired, blood-crusted grin that belonged to no demon's chain.
"Still me."
---
Far above, the Nine Heavens watched through the sealed crack. They saw a boy who would not kneel — who bound a demon and burned it for his name alone.
And they shivered.
Because chains can bind teeth.
But will — true will — devours them all.
---
⚡ End of Chapter Twenty-Five
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