Beneath the Oracle's breath, Feng Xian steps into the mirror-jade pool. His reflection fractures — not broken, but split, like serpents shedding old skins.
Darkness folds over him, silken yet suffocating.
✧ The Coil-Dream
Feng Xian opens his eyes in a void of sky less flame. Floating islands of bleached serpent bone twist above a rotting root-system — a tangled underworld pulsing with sickly green light.
He walks.
Each step births visions — ghosts from his blood, not his mind.
🔥 Vision I: The Crimson Serpent of the Outer Flame
He sees a serpent wreathed in solar fire, its coils twisting through ten thousand burning suns. It speaks in syllables that shake stars, calling him by a name older than language:
"Ash borne, Seed of Sundown, Flame-That-Sheds-Chains…"
The voice burns his bones. But when he tries to answer, another serpent bites through the vision.
🐍 Vision II: Rotspire's Corruption
The flame-serpent recoils — and in its place, rises the Rotspire Coil.
A dead serpent god, its body bloated and swollen with fungal decay and Hollow ichor. Its eyes are pits of void, and black serpents grow from its back like cancerous branches.
It whispers — not aloud, but into his will, his resolve:
"Why burn? Why fight?"
"Let the Coil consume. Let fire rot. Let roots devour sky."
Feng Xian drops to his knees — but something ancient stirs within him. Not the Crown. Not his fire.
A blood-memory.
A girl's voice — soft, defiant — from another time:
"We were the Ember kind, before even the heavens knew fire. Before Dao or Divine…"
He sees a child with ember-stained skin, chained beneath a mountain, guarded by serpent-men with burning eyes.
A war. A rebellion.
A secret pact between the first Flame Serpent and a lost human tribe, binding their blood to light.
"We bled for freedom. Now we burn for it."
Feng Xian screams as his veins ignite. The Crown relic at his core erupts in glyphs — ancient ones, never taught, but known.
He wakes in the Coil-Dream — standing on a massive coiled root, staring down into a pit of rotted scale and black fire.
There, beneath the dream… the Rotspire twitches awake.
🌿 Elsewhere…
In the real world, the Serpent Oracle trembles.
Luo Fen:
"Something's wrong. The Dream… it breathes."
From the northern isles, Hollow-Touched serpents rise, drawn to the echo of Rotspire's awakening. Black rain falls.