When the last crack in Hollow Sky sealed shut, it didn't bury Li Shen. It buried his chains.
He stood at the ridge's edge until dawn, boots sunk in old ash, blade resting across his shoulder like an iron promise. The Codex was gone — its runes burned to ghost-ash in his marrow. Ku Mo's voice was no longer a roar, just a stain on the wind.
The Nine Heavens turned their gaze away, pretending they hadn't felt the tremor in their oldest chains. But the wind did not forget. And the rivers carried rumor the way blood carries iron.
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Li Shen left Hollow Sky before the frost could settle over the broken shrine stones. Yue Lan walked beside him — hair tangled, cloak torn, threads drifting like pale breath around her wrists. The demon's leash might be gone, but her vow was not.
At the first bend in the ridge path, they paused. Below lay a river valley unfurling like a banner — thawed rice paddies, old footpaths, drifting smoke from a hamlet too small for any sect's scroll.
Yue Lan tugged her cloak tight. Her voice was hoarse from nights whispering bindings against Heaven's teeth.
"Where now?"
Li Shen didn't answer right away. He ran his thumb over the nicked edge of his blade — steel dull but real. No Codex brands to hum under his skin, no demon crown to whisper more.
Just him.
He looked at the valley — at the frost melting under sunfire, at the smoke coiling lazy against blue sky.
"Wherever the road breaks next."
Yue Lan snorted, but her smile cracked the frost.
"Then lead on, chain-breaker."
He almost laughed. "No chains left to break."
She caught his wrist — threads brushing his pulse. Wrong.
"Just you left," she said. "Don't lose that."
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They walked down from Hollow Sky into mud and rumor. By dusk, the river whispered around their ankles, soft as an old lullaby: A boy devoured the sky. The sky blinked first. And now his name walks barefoot where kings fear to kneel.
Beneath that broken sky, the Bloodbound Immortal walked on — crownless, unbound, alive.
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⚡ End of Chapter One — Beneath the Broken Sky
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