The flames of Azure Sky Sect burned blue.
Not from fire, but from the last sputtering remnants of its ancient formation — shattered, leaking spiritual energy into the howling wind. Corpses lay strewn like discarded robes: elders with wide, unseeing eyes, disciples curled in unnatural positions, talismans clenched in their fists.
In the very center of the devastation knelt a girl in plain robes, blood soaking through the cloth at her side.
Li Xiyan.
No one looked her way.
Across the broken courtyard, the sect's young prodigy — tall, brilliant, shining with golden qi — was hoisted up by surviving disciples. "He saved us!" someone shouted. "He held the demons back long enough for reinforcements to arrive!"
They cheered for him.
But none of them knew it was Li Xiyan who had stayed behind long before the heroes arrived. Who had poured her own spiritual core into the crumbling seal beneath the sect. Who had taken the poisoned spiritual backlash into her veins to keep the rift closed just long enough.
She felt cold.
So cold.
Her fingers trembled as she pressed them into the cracked stone, lips moving in a half-silent chant. The barrier — the one no one else even saw — flickered above them, still holding.
Just barely.
"I just need… a little longer," she whispered, her voice swallowed by the wind.
But there was no qi left in her. Her core had been hollowed out like an old gourd. Her spirit sea was dry. Her meridians splintered.
She had given everything.
Still, no one came.
Not the elders she once served tea for. Not the disciples she had stitched wounds for. Not the beasts she had fed in secret.
And that was fine.
She had never done any of it for recognition.
A smile — thin, tired — pulled at her lips. "At least… you'll all live," she murmured, her sight fading to shadow.
Her body collapsed.
No applause. No thanks. No name etched into the memorial stone.
Just silence.
And yet, as her soul began to scatter, something in the heavens stirred.
The winds paused.
Time rippled.
And then… a voice like thunder, yet kind, whispered through the void:
"Do you wish to return?"