"What the fire forgets, the ashes remember."
Shen Li had not slept since the trial.
The meditation hall his father once favored had become a refuge. Here, the silence felt earned. The old fire basin in the center of the room smoldered with a low ember-flame, its heat strangely uneven, flickering like it was breathing.
He knelt before a shattered scroll rack, running fingers over brittle parchment, searching.
Since the Mirror had affirmed his status, the sect had grown quiet—not with reverence, but caution. Elders bowed politely. Disciples muttered in corners. Some seemed relieved. Others looked at him as if he were carrying something contagious.
He wasn't sure which bothered him more.
He expected a record. Notes. Anything from his father that might explain why he had sealed Yi Wuren, why he'd erased the Flame Covenant from history, why he'd trusted Kaiyuan for so long.
There was nothing.
Then he heard a knock.
Lan Xueyi entered without waiting for his permission. Her presence was becoming a constant now—not by duty, but necessity. She looked at the disheveled hall, one eyebrow raised.
"You always destroy a room when you're thinking?"
"Only when history hides from me."
She crouched beside him and picked up a burned fragment.
"Your father wasn't sloppy. If nothing's here, it means it was moved."
"Or hidden," Shen Li muttered.
He stood and turned toward the fire basin. "This room has layered protections. I felt it when I stepped in. The flame doesn't warm—it waits."
Lan Xueyi followed his gaze.
"Then we start there."
Lan Xueyi knelt by the basin and examined the stone foundation underneath. Her fingers traced a spiral of faintly glowing symbols—barely perceptible in the low light.
"A mirror-lock," she said, surprised. "And it's old. Soul-etched, not inked."
Shen Li frowned. "Those are outlawed."
"Only if you're hiding something from the council," she said, already pulling a pendant from inside her robes—a fire-forged fang given to her years ago by Shen Huolong himself.
She placed it at the center of the spiral. The runes flared to life in crimson gold, then folded inward.
Stone gave way to a descending stair.
"Your father really didn't want anyone finding this," she murmured.
Shen Li didn't hesitate. He started down the steps, the faint glow of his internal flame casting dim light against the spiraling descent. Lan Xueyi followed silently, one hand on her blade.
The deeper they went, the colder it became.
Spirit qi twisted in the air here. Not hostile—but watchful.
They reached a sealed iron door marked with an archaic version of the Emberheart crest—twinned phoenixes rather than the modern solitary one. The wall beside it bore an inscription in high-flame script:
Only fire tempered by truth shall open this gate.
Shen Li placed his palm against the door.
It flared.
And then it opened.
The chamber beyond was lined with blackstone shelves, some filled with ancient scrolls, others with small relics wrapped in spirit-binding cloth. A mural stretched across the far wall, painted in deep, long-faded fire-dye.
The mural depicted five sects arranged in a circle around a massive, spiraling flame. Each sect bore different elemental affinities—wood, water, metal, earth, and fire—interwoven, not divided.
At the mural's center was a flame shaped like a lotus—its petals marked with each sect's symbol.
Lan Xueyi's breath caught.
"That's the Frostveil crest," she said, pointing to the sigil beneath the blue-lotus flame. "But it's older—our original emblem, before the Glacial Doctrine."
She stepped back slowly, visibly unsettled. "This isn't a painting. It's a record."
Shen Li walked to a central pedestal where a locked wooden box sat beneath a preservation seal. On the lid was his father's personal mark—an ember-bird folded around a sun sigil.
Without hesitation, he pressed his flame-infused qi into the lock.
The seals peeled away, one by one.
Inside: a sealed scroll and a memory orb filled with swirling golden-red smoke.
The scroll unfurled easily in Shen Li's hands.
It bore his father's handwriting—precise, forceful.
My son,
If you read this, then I am gone—and the Mirror has judged you ready. I once believed sealing the truth would protect you. I now see that protection breeds ignorance, and ignorance breeds ruin.
Yi Wuren was not a traitor. He was my conscience. I sealed him to preserve the illusion of unity, to avoid civil war. That war is coming anyway.
The Flame Covenant was destroyed, not forgotten. Kaiyuan and I erased it after the Battle of Hollow Spires, when the five sects fractured. He believed power would keep us united. I chose silence.
The orb contains what the Mirror showed me the day I named you heir. Not just your future—but the future of fire itself. The root burns. The seed waits.
Burn wisely. Or everything turns to ash.
Shen Li stared at the words long after they had finished burning into his memory.
Then he looked at the orb.
Lan Xueyi placed a hand on his wrist. "Wait. You don't know what it will show you. Memory or prophecy—it could change you."
"I need to know what my father feared," Shen Li replied.
"And if it breaks you?"
He looked up.
"Then I burn broken."
Far below them, beneath the deepest vault of the mountain, a pulse echoed.
A half-buried array flared awake.
Lines of ancient script crawled across a blackened stone seal. At its center was a molten eye—the Bound Ember, long buried, long forgotten.
It turned once.
And saw.
A deep, silent voice rumbled through the mountain's bones.
The heir has seen the truth.
Soon, the fire will ask what he is willing to burn