Darkness, not silence, came first. The world was loud with ruin.
Fang Yuan stood at the edge of a shattered cliff within his immortal aperture, staring at the heavens above — cracked like the shell of an egg struck from within. Celestial lines of golden light ran jagged through the sky, dripping faint strands of Heaven's Will into the void. Each fragment shimmered with ancient power, but none dared descend. Not yet.
He did not blink. The winds screamed, but his cloak barely moved. Even here, time flowed a thousand times faster, yet his thoughts remained sharper still.
He had killed Fate.
And Heaven had not died. It had broken. Pieces of it drifted now through Gu World, through his dreams, through the past.
"It begins again," he muttered.
A pulse from the aperture's core trembled. One of his clones had awakened early. Another had not reported in days. The river of time had forked. The clones no longer moved as one.
Fang Yuan turned.
Behind him stood a figure that looked like him, but did not bow.
"You're late," the clone said.
Fang Yuan's eyes narrowed. "You're early."
Lightning cracked the vault overhead. And below it, two wills clashed in silence.Beneath the shattered vault, only one will remains.