> Location: Emberveil, Monolith Sanctum – 7 hours post-Veyra Echo Event
Echo Pulse Strength: Surged +18%
Thread Anchor Status: Recovered — 6,112 individuals
The chamber trembled softly with heatless wind. The kind that didn't stir the air—but moved the world.
Xia Zhi stood alone beneath the awakened Monolith. Glyphs had unfolded along its base like petals responding to sunlight. Each shimmered with spectral names—no ink, no stone, just flameprint.
Thousands of them.
Some glowed bright and whole.
Some flickered, partially forgotten.
Others were cracked and silent.
She reached out her hand.
---
The Scroll of the Forgotten
A glyph string floated toward her touch, arranging itself into a vertical scroll of identity threads—every bearer who had once carried the unrecorded flame.
The system had overwritten most of them. Some were preserved by anchors, others restored when Jiang reawakened Veyra.
But one name stood out.
It glowed at the edge of the scroll—half-buried in distortion.
She traced it.
> Subject: Xia Zhi
> Flame Signature: Resonance-Class (Redacted)
Status: Erased
Memory Index: 8 times rewritten
Original Classification: E-Class Flame Devourer
Current: Echoframe Flame Host
Her knees buckled.
Eight times?
---
Fractured Self
Su Lian arrived just in time to catch her.
"Zhi!"
Xia tried to breathe. "They didn't just erase me. They replayed me. Over and over. Different versions."
She looked up at the scroll.
"And none of them… were mine."
Su Lian's flame surged protectively. "Then we burn this version into permanence."
"I don't even know which one I am."
"Then we choose," Su Lian said. "Together."
---
Back in Veyra – The Song Remembers
As Jiang Han walked through the temple's final chamber, the Lamereon at his side, something shifted.
A gust of wind—not physical.
It said his name.
He looked up.
The songstone on the wall—the last shrine of Veyra—now bore his name beneath the original:
> Veyren – The Flame that Wept
Jiang Han – The Flame that Answered
Tian Xue turned.
"They're… linking you."
Jiang closed his eyes.
"They're remembering me."
---
Final Scene – The Thread of Fate Tangles
Back in the Sovereign Spire, a burst of flame snapped across the high court's glyphwall.
A Seer froze.
> "We have a problem."
> "Another anchor has formed."
> "Veyra lives again."
The Sovereign Prime hissed.
> "Then send the Witnessblades."
> "Let the world watch as we erase him live."