The void-black rain fell like weeping shards of eternity, hissing where it struck the scorched earth. Yan Meiling's cocoon had solidified into a spire of obsidian ice, its surface swirling with trapped constellations—a tomb and a crucible. At its base, Su Ling'er knelt, Bai Zhu'er's claws buried in her shoulder, her celestial light flickering like a guttering candle.
"Let me go, beast!" Su Ling'er spat golden ichor onto the steaming ground. "The Well's justice—"
"—is delayed," Moran finished, his gaze fixed on the bleeding sky. The Eclipse Codex pulsed in his chest, its pages whispering the terrible truth: The Well is you. The prison is your own making.
Xia Qingyue staggered through the downpour, her moonlit dagger trembling. "You saw it too, didn't you? The vision... That thing in the golden prison wears your face!"
"A future," Moran said, his voice devoid of recognition. "Or a warning."
"Or a lie!" Bai Zhu'er yanked Su Ling'er's head back. "Glowy here reeks of fear. Real fear. The kind that makes gods wet their fancy pants."
Suddenly, the obsidian spire shrieked. Cracks spiderwebbed across its surface. Within, Yan Meiling's eyes snapped open—no longer gold, but pools of liquid Voidflame. Her voice echoed, layered with a thousand whispers:
"Master... He hungers. Your eternity is his key."
The ground split. Not in eruption, but in unraveling. Stone became smoke. Gravity inverted. From the fissure rose a figure wreathed in chains of condensed time—the shadow from Moran's vision. His features blurred like a half-forgotten memory, but the eyes...
His own eyes.
"At last." The shadow's voice was Moran's, stripped of warmth. "The wheel turns. The caged god gnaws his chains."
The Well's Echo.
Bai Zhu'er released Su Ling'er, tails bristling. "Okay, now I'm annoyed. Knock-off Sovereigns are terrible for digestion."
The Echo smiled—a hollow mimicry of Moran's ruthlessness. "Little fox. Still stealing crumbs from fate's table? I remember your eighth tail snapping like a twig when you begged for mercy."
Bai Zhu'er flinched, a raw, animal snarl tearing from her throat. "Liar!"
"Truth is a wound that never heals," the Echo sighed, turning to Xia Qingyue. "And you... Moon-touched fool. He will let you die screaming, just like he did the Star-Shattering Empress. Sacrifice is his only love language."
Xia Qingyue's dagger clattered to the ground.
Moran stepped forward, Voidflame igniting not in rage, but cold, surgical precision. "You talk too much for a reflection."
"Reflection?" The Echo laughed, its chains rattling like bones. "I am what you become when the Codex consumes your soul. The Well didn't imprison me—I am the Well's despair. The end you fear... is already here."
It raised a hand. Time fractured.
Xia Qingyue's scream began to rewind. Bai Zhu'er's leap reversed mid-air. Su Ling'er's wounds flowed backward. Only Moran stood untouched, the Eclipse Codex shielding him within a bubble of absolute negation.
"Pathetic," Moran hissed. "You wield time like a blunt club. Let me show you its scalpel."
The Codex's pages tore free, swirling into a vortex of unraveling causality. Moran didn't attack the Echo—he attacked the chains binding it. The temporal links screamed as Voidflame dissolved them, not breaking, but erasing their existence.
The Echo stumbled, its form flickering. "Fool! Without these chains, I am unbound! I will consume—"
"Consume this," Moran snarled.
He ripped a page from the Codex—a page etched with the Oath of Sundered Stars, a vow he'd made at the dawn of creation. He thrust it into the dissolving chains.
The Echo shrieked, not in pain, but recognition. "No! That vow... it was a lie! You never meant to—"
"All vows are lies," Moran said coldly. "Especially those made to oneself."
The Oath ignited. The chains vaporized. The Echo dissolved, not into nothingness, but into a stream of liquid time that flowed into Yan Meiling's spire.
The obsidian ice exploded.
Yan Meiling stood reborn—not as a disciple, but as a Voidflame Archon. Her hair flowed like liquid shadow, her eyes twin supernovae. In her hand, she held a scythe forged from the Echo's shattered chains.
"The path is clear, Master," she intoned, her voice resonating with the Codex's power. "The Well's heart lies in the Sundered Throne. Your future... awaits correction."
Bai Zhu'er whistled. "Okay, now she's useful. Can she make snacks too?"
Su Ling'er crawled forward, her celestial light extinguished, only desperate humanity remaining. "He... he showed me things. The Well's true face... It's harvesting gods! Using their fear to—"
Moran silenced her with a look. "Your usefulness expires in three breaths. Choose your next words wisely."
Xia Qingyue picked up her dagger, her eyes hollow. "And what use are we, Sovereign? Just more kindling for your war against yourself?"
The Voidflame Archon tilted her head. "No, child of moonlight. You are the bait."
High above, the bleeding sky tore wider. Through the rift descended not Celestials, but silhouettes of forgotten gods, their eyes fixed hungrily on Xia Qingyue's moonlit soul.
Moran smiled—a predator scenting blood.
"The hunt begins."