Chapter 27 – The Thread That Should Not Be
The training platform beneath the Floating Sanctum shimmered with layered runes and shifting spiritual arrays. Shen Liang watched as Yue stood alone in its center, cloaked in the soft gold-orange of dawn. Her hair, damp with sweat, clung to her temples as she extended both hands, calling forth her inner flame.
[Technique Initiation: Flame of Remembered Light – Variant Phase]
[Emotion Anchor: Regret-Forged Devotion]
[Warning: Unstable Emotional Core Detected]
Her flame responded—an intricate blossom of gold and black spirals. But as it reached the apex of its growth, it trembled, fracturing into ghostly petals that disintegrated into ash.
Yue fell to her knees, gasping.
Shen Liang stepped forward, but Lin Zhi reached her first. "You're pushing too hard again."
Yue didn't look at her. "I don't have time to ease into it. The Hollowed won't wait for us to be ready."
"You're not alone," Lin Zhi said more softly. "Let us help."
From a distance, Qilin watched the exchange in silence, her eyes glowing faintly as she scanned internal memory logs. Her posture stiffened suddenly.
[Memory Recovery Sequence Triggered]
[Fragment Identifier: Directive Zero – Crosslink: Unknown Tether Class]
[Fragment Content: REDACTED—ERROR—ANOMALOUS THREAD DETECTED]
She blinked, staggering slightly as a surge of static flashed through her perception.
"Something's wrong with this world," she muttered.
Shen Liang turned toward her. "What do you mean?"
"I remembered a layer… beneath this one. A mirrorworld, coded into the Celestial Framework. But this tether… it never belonged. It wasn't assigned. It was born, not written."
Yue and Lin Zhi looked up in alarm.
"You're saying it's… what? A naturally evolved tether?" Shen Liang asked.
"No." Qilin's voice turned cold. "I'm saying it's a mistake. One the System buried."
Before they could discuss further, the sky cracked open above them—dark lightning tearing through the sanctified clouds
.
[External Breach Detected – Origin: Hollowed Agent #Σ-07 ("Mirrorwalker")
]
A ripple in space formed. From it stepped a figure half-wrapped in glassy strands, its skin etched with inverted code sigils. Its voice was like three people whispering in unison.
"I have come for the Thread That Should Not Be."
It pointed at Shen Liang.
Combat broke out instantly.
Lin Zhi flared her spear technique, forming shields around the training platform. Yue launched controlled bursts of her flame—but it wavered, still unstable.
Qilin vanished, reappearing above the enemy with a triple-sequence blade construct, aiming to sever the invading tether stream. But Mirrorwalker adapted, splitting into multiple reflections of itself, each moving in unnatural reverse-flow motions.
Shen Liang closed his eyes, reaching into his system pathwa
ys.
[Emotion Tree: Activated – Branch Path: Protect Those Who Bear Broken Threads]
[Technique: Heart-Flare Basti
on]
He burst forward, shielding Yue just as one of the Mirrorwalker's attacks distorted the platform into a mirror-field, bending all actions in strange feedback loops.
Yue's hands trembled. Her flame flickered between co
lors.
"Stop thinking about him," a voice echoed within her mind.
"You were never meant to carry a dead man's w
ill."
"No…" she whispered. "He was my father. And I… I forgave him."
With a cry, she cast her unstable fire—not outward, but
inward.
[Self-Synch: Flame of Remembered Light – Phase 2]
[Emotion Channel: Forgiveness]
[Tether Rewriting – Successful]
[Stabilized Emotional Form Unlocked: Devotion Without
Chains]
Her body glowed like the core of a star. The fire that emerged now was soft, yet searing—white-hot and laced with memory-motes.
The Mirrorwalker shrieked. One of its reflections cracked, shattering like glass.
In the aftermath, they regrouped in the shattered observatory above the training grounds.
Qilin paced, disturbed. "I think I know what that agent was after. There's a tether encoded in your system, Shen Liang. One I've never seen before."
He frowned. "What kind of tether?"
She showed him the scan—an anomaly embedded deep in his soul-signature.
It pulsed faintly.
A tether without a name.
No alignment. No origin.
Not light. Not dark.
Just… there.
"Is it Hollowed?" Lin Zhi asked, hand on her weapon.
Qilin shook her head. "It predates even the Hollowed code. This might be First System-level data. Before the division into Order and Corruption."
Silence fell.
Yue stepped forward, now fully cloaked in white-flame embroidery. "If it's something that old… maybe it's not meant to be judged yet. Not by the System. Not by the Hollowed. Maybe it's something we must decide the shape of."
Shen Liang nodded. "Then let's train for it. Let's grow it. And if it threatens us—"
"—We'll rewrite it," Yue said.
That night, in the sanctum gardens, the emotional weight of the day settled like mist.
Shen Liang sat beneath the jadewind tree, watching the stars shimmer. Yue approached quietly, her steps light but deliberate.
"You were right," she said. "About forgiveness being strength."
He looked at her. "You did that on your own. I just... believed in it."
She sat beside him. "Still… thank you. I don't want to be haunted anymore."
He turned to meet her gaze. Her flame still flickered behind her eyes—but it no longer consumed her.
They leaned in, close enough to breathe each other's memories.
And yet—
From the shadowed edge of the garden, Lin Zhi watched.
And from the high spire, Qilin narrowed her eyes—not in jealousy, but in sorrow.
For she had seen that anomaly tether respond to emotion.
Not just Shen Liang's.
All of theirs.
And the tether?
It had pulsed in recognition.