The storm did not wait for permission to fall.
Black clouds churned above the ravaged land, stretching claws of lightning across the blood-red sky. Rain fell in heavy silence, not to cleanse, but to mourn. It soaked through Lianyin's robes, through the ash of Velomir's death, through the torn ground beneath their feet.
Meiran was unconscious, wrapped in the last barrier seal she'd summoned before collapsing. Her body trembled with shallow breath, caught between spirit exhaustion and life itself. Lianyin knelt beside her, a hand on her forehead, hollow flames flickering over his palm to keep her warm.
He should've felt victorious.
Velomir, the emperor's reaper, was gone.
But instead, his body ached with weightless grief.
The Hollow Flame flickered violently around him. It no longer listened—only screamed. His sixth art was spiraling, unraveling threads of spirit that once held steady.
And worse…
The seventh art was no longer asleep.
He felt it.
Cold.
Endless.
A whisper in the marrow of his bones.
A call in a voice that sounded like his own.
> "Lianyin… do you want to forget?"
> "Do you want it to stop hurting?"
> "I can take it away…"
He staggered away from Meiran and clutched his chest, where his core pulsed erratically. Thunder cracked overhead. The Seventh Forbidden Art—the one no one had ever survived long enough to master—was waking within him.
It did not roar.
It wept.
And every drop was his.
---
In the dream realm, he stood beneath the Moonless Tree—a tree made of glass and bone, its branches reaching into darkness that had never known stars. Before him stood her.
His sister.
His real sister.
Mo Lixue.
Not the innocent child he once carried through garden paths, but her spirit—aged, hollow-eyed, dressed in the robes of the Celestial Court, but with black stains creeping up her sleeves.
"Lixue…" he whispered. "You're dead."
She tilted her head. "You think death means absence?"
"I buried you myself."
She stepped forward, brushing cold fingers along his jaw. "You buried my body. Not my suffering."
He couldn't speak.
Her voice grew colder. "You let them take me. You let the Emperor's Sages shatter my core for the Sect's prophecy."
Tears welled in his eyes. "I didn't know. I—"
"You chose silence," she spat. "While they carved the moon into my back."
She turned away.
The dreamscape cracked.
"You let me die in chains, Lianyin. And now you carry my rage."
She held out her hand.
In it bloomed a violet lotus.
Its petals were made of blood and spirit.
"This is the Seventh Art," she whispered. "The Lotus of Undoing."
He stared at it, trembling. "What does it do?"
"It severs your soul from pain," she said. "Completely. Forever."
He stared.
A power like this… to end suffering. To erase agony. To become a ghost that walks in flesh, untouchable, unbreakable.
"You'll forget me," she added. "You'll forget why you're angry. Why you fight. You'll lose the reason… but you'll gain the strength."
"Why show me this?"
She looked at him—no longer with anger.
But sadness.
"Because you're about to make the same mistake the emperor made."
---
Lianyin woke with a gasp.
The lotus symbol was seared into his chest.
The Seventh Art had chosen him.
And it was already taking root.
---
Three days passed.
Meiran recovered slowly, her steps shaky but determined. They walked through the barren north, heading toward the last known sanctuary of the Rebellion Sect—deep within the cliffs of Ebonrise, a place surrounded by death qi and long-forgotten curses.
She noticed it before he spoke of it.
"You're too quiet," she said. "The flames around you… they don't move like before."
"They don't need to," he replied, eyes half-lidded. "The seventh art doesn't burn. It buries."
She stopped walking.
"You activated it, didn't you?"
He nodded.
"And?" she asked quietly. "Do you still feel grief?"
He looked at her.
And for a terrifying moment, she saw no emotion behind his gaze.
"No," he said.
Not emptiness.
Not peace.
Just absence.
She swallowed. "What did it take?"
"Her," he whispered. "It took my memory of her."
"Your sister?"
He nodded.
"But I remember her name. Not the warmth. Not her laugh. Not the tears."
"Lianyin…"
"I buried her again," he said. "But this time inside me."
---
That night, as they camped near the frozen marshes of Ebonrise, she watched him sit alone, staring into a fire that didn't warm.
His spirit was stronger now.
Almost invincible.
But Meiran's heart ached.
Not for the boy she once saved…
But for the man who had saved himself at the cost of becoming someone else.
Somewhere beneath that skin and flame, Mo Lianyin still lived.
But the man rising now—the wielder of the Seventh Art—was something new.
Something the world would soon come to fear.
---
Meanwhile…
At the Imperial Palace, the High Seer wept blood.
"The Seventh Flower has bloomed," he gasped.
The Emperor rose from his obsidian throne.
"Then the Moonbreaker has returned."
He turned to his generals.
"Find Mo Lianyin."
"And if we can't?" one of them asked.
The Emperor's smile was thin and cold.
"Then prepare for war."