Golden and resplendent, the majestic palace stood proudly among multicolored auspicious clouds. Each cloud shimmered with hues that gently shifted like watercolor—crimson fading into violet, gold melting into jade. Between these dreamlike clouds stretched countless ethereal bridges, translucent and delicate, each arching like a stroke of divine ink across the canvas of the heavens.
This was the Divine Realm — an eternal miracle that had floated serenely through the cosmic tide for over ten billion years.
Within its boundless domain, each whisper of a god's thought could birth an immortal realm, or even an entire universe. Time bent here, space sang with silence, and the radiance of divinity illuminated all.
Among the lords of this sacred domain stood Jin Xiu — the Holy Sovereign of one such immortal realm. His power could cast all beings into samsara, tracing their karmic threads through endless lifetimes, washing their sins clean across the fabric of eternity. His gaze alone could stir winds through the Six Realms, and his will shaped the very geometry of divine law.
Yet even gods are not immune to weariness.
Behind the stoic might of Jin Xiu's celestial presence lay a longing that no power could silence — for he once had a disciple, one he cherished beyond all things. Her name was Vera. A girl of bright laughter and blazing spirit, she had stood beside him through countless trials across the heavens and hells. And then... she had vanished.
But now, after an age of wandering through the Mortal Realm, the Demon World, and the chaotic fringe of the Immortal Plane, Vera was finally returning. Today, the stars themselves paused to witness their reunion.
In his private hall woven of phoenix feathers and dragon bone, Jin Xiu stood before a velvet pedestal upon which rested a mirror — not just any artifact, but the one he had spent ten billion years mending: the Prism Mirror, Vera's most precious treasure.
He held it reverently, fingers trembling despite his godhood, and whispered softly, almost in prayer:
"You once said a shattered mirror could never be made whole again... But I was willing to spend ten billion years — even ten times ten billion — to mend it into a divine mirror that leads straight to your heart."
The mirror shone faintly, as if echoing his words. Within its depths shimmered the memories of an age long past — an age when they had laughed and sparred and watched sunsets bleed across the Nine Heavens together.
He could still remember the moment he hurt her — her furious tears, her voice trembling as she held the broken mirror in trembling hands.
"Waaah! Stupid Master!" she had cried, her eyes fierce with heartbreak. "You shattered my fragile little heart into pieces!"
She had floated there, wrapped in silken ribbons and standing atop luminous clouds, her anger as radiant as the stars behind her. "You don't understand anything! Some things, once broken, can never be fixed!"
"I'm not speaking to you anymore!"
And she hadn't — not with words, not for centuries.
But even in silence, she had left traces. Letters folded in moonlight. Mooncakes stacked neatly upon stardust-laced plates. A single strand of hair tied with a ribbon, left where he would find it. She had remained unseen, her presence as elusive as mist, but always watching.
So he pursued her. Across the edges of the Void Realm, where nothing stirred but unformed thought, Jin Xiu had searched — not as a god, but as a man who could not bear the weight of her absence.
He spoke into emptiness. He offered incense to shadows. He wrote poems to silence. And always, always, he carried the broken mirror with him.
Even now, it trembled faintly in his hands, as if it knew — as if it remembered.
Meanwhile, deep within the Void Realm, Vera was leaping from panel to panel. These floating platforms of steel and silence existed in a place where form had no anchor. Each step demanded focus, each breath required purity. Here, even a single stray thought could send one plummeting into endless grayness.
But Vera did not waver.
She had trained for this. She had waited for this.
Her mind was filled not with fear, but with memory. She remembered Jin Xiu's solemn gaze, the scent of tea in his robes, the way he awkwardly patted her head when words failed him. She remembered the warmth he hid behind his divinity — the warmth he had shown only to her.
She still called him a "silly fool" in her heart, but it was a nickname of affection now — for she had come to understand the weight of immortality, and the loneliness that came with eternal power. She realized that behind his divine mask, Jin Xiu was just a lonely soul who had forgotten how to smile.
She whispered to the silence, as she leapt once more: "I'm coming back, you silly Master. Don't cry when you see me."
Far above, across time and space, in the Celestial Hall where jade stars blinked like tears, Jin Xiu closed his eyes and felt the thrum of fate quickening. The Fall of the Gods was upon them — an event that only occurred when fate twisted and rebirthed the balance of all realms.
Soon, the skies would burn. Realms would collide. Souls would weep in the thousands.
But none of that mattered — not to him.
What mattered was a promise. A promise whispered beneath a cherry blossom tree long ago, when Vera had looked up at him and asked, "Will you wait for me, Master?"
And he had said, without hesitation, "Even if the universe ends, I will be where you return."
The divine clock began to toll — a sound heard across dimensions. Vera's trial neared its end.
And Jin Xiu, Sovereign of Eternity, simply stood, heart laid bare, waiting at the gate of the Divine Realm.
For her.
His calamity, his salvation. His disciple, his beloved.
Even a god must kneel before love — especially one that took ten billion years to mend a single broken mirror.