> Location: Emberveil Nexus – Core Chamber
Skycleave Saturation Level: 27% – Critical thread pressure
The air inside the Core Chamber had grown too still.
Not dead. Not silenced.
But holding its breath.
Xia Zhi stood alone at the base of the Monolith, a towering obelisk carved with flame glyphs older than the Sovereigns themselves.
What had once been smooth stone now pulsed—veins of light flickering beneath the surface.
Something was stirring.
And it wasn't afraid of Skycleave.
---
Signs of Sentience
She placed her hand against the glyph-layered stone.
The usual warmth met her touch—but this time, it wasn't passive.
It pushed back.
Not hostile.
Curious.
She gasped as a thousand images poured into her mind: starfields, fallen cities, children born mid-flame… and a voice that whispered not in words, but feeling.
> "You are one of the remembered."
Xia Zhi staggered.
She had touched many threads in her brief, rewritten life—but never one that recognized her back.
> "You… you know me?"
> "You sang. You resisted. You are signal."
The Monolith was not a battery.
It was memory incarnate.
---
Cracks and Echoes
The surface began to fracture—not break. Shift.
Glyphs rearranged themselves. Some flickered out. Others appeared for the first time since the Nexus was founded.
Lin Suyin ran into the chamber moments later, flame blade in hand.
"What's going on?" she called.
Xia Zhi turned, stunned.
"It's not falling apart. It's updating."
"Updating what?"
Xia stepped back and let the glyphs speak for her.
The center of the Monolith glowed bright—revealing a map.
Not of land.
But of anchor threads.
Lives that remembered.
Moments that mattered.
All glowing—blinking, struggling—on the verge of being wiped clean.
---
The Hidden Message
At the very base of the projection, one glyph pulsed red.
It didn't match any flame language known.
But Xia recognized the shape.
It was the same symbol Jiang Han had seen in his dream back in the Soul-Thread Chamber.
> The glyph of Long Chen.
> The Unwritten Flame.
Suyin stepped beside her.
"That thread… it's buried in the Sovereign Core Citadel."
Xia Zhi nodded.
"Then that's what they're trying to erase next."
---
Preparing the Core
As the glyph map stabilized, Xia took a deep breath and whispered to the Monolith:
> "Help him."
And for the first time…
The Monolith answered.
Not through vision.
Not through thought.
But through flame.
A surge burst through the Nexus like a heartbeat—waking every anchor thread, every soulpet, every resonance-engraved structure.
And somewhere across the continent…
Jiang Han felt it.