The Ritual Hall held no warmth.
Not in its stones, not in its breathless air. Even the water—once shimmering with sacred song—lay still, black, and silent as obsidian glass.
Tian Qiren stood at the river's edge, wrapped in the plain gray robes of the unmarked. Around him, a half-circle of watchers: the High Patriarch, the robed elders of the House of Flow, ward-masters with rune-covered scrolls, and ceremonial stewards whose eyes never rose above their hands. His mother stood near the jade pillar, her face unreadable. His father farther behind, mouth a tight line.
No names were called this time.
This was no celebration.
It was a correction.
And each step Qiren took toward the water pressed heavier against the earth, as if the world itself resented his presence.
No incense burned. No drums marked the moment. Only the endless whisper of the waterfall, falling from high stone lips above, filled the silence like a chant no one dared speak aloud.
He stepped into the water.
The obsidian cuffs on his wrists shimmered briefly, then dimmed. The runes engraved on them sparked with cold light before fading—signaling the casting of the spiritual net. If anything stirred within him, any glimmer of resonance or thread, the net would draw it out. Lay it bare. Mark it.
He let the river close over his head.
And the world above disappeared.
At first, there was nothing.
No color. No sound. Just weight. Pressure. The kind that didn't push against skin but bone. It pressed in from every direction, as if the world had turned inward.
Then—
A hum.
Not a voice. Not a thread. A vibration, low and distant, buried so deep in silence it might not have existed at all.
But it wasn't his.
It was a memory.
He opened his eyes.
He was no longer in the Ritual Hall.
A city, burning.
Spires of black glass collapsing into a red sky.
A scream—long, continuous, echoing without end.
A child stood on a pyre. He didn't burn.
He became fire.
Ash swept across stone. A throne stood in the center, jagged and ancient. The world seemed to end around it.
And then, a voice. Cold. Familiar.
"You do not flow.You do not rise.You are not born of the wheel."
Qiren gasped. Water flooded his lungs.
But he didn't drown.
"You burn from beneath it."
His eyes snapped open.
He was still underwater. Still in the Ritual Hall. But his hands glowed faintly in the dark—traced by symbols, outlines, shadows beneath the skin. Not light. Not qi. Not thread.
Just… a mark. Faint. Fleeting. Gone the moment he blinked.
And then, nothing.
The river went still again.
The cuffs dulled. The runes died.
No thread had answered.
They pulled him from the water.
No one spoke.
High Patriarch Tian Renshu did not move from his place. His eyes said nothing. His posture did not shift. The ritual elder glanced once toward the sky-light, then lowered his head.
"Threadless," he said. "Again."
This time, the silence was total.
Not because they feared the word.
But because it had become truth.
Tian Qiren wasn't just late to awaken.
He was nothing.
Not even the river recognized him.
Lady Yueyin didn't weep.
She didn't speak.
She only touched her chest once—where the flame-seal had once rested, hidden deep beneath her robes.
She looked at the river. Then at the boy kneeling on the stones.
She whispered:"I should've sent you home when you cried the first time."
Only one person heard.
Qingyue.
And she flinched.
The High Patriarch turned. Gave a single nod.
"His qi shall be sealed."
There was a sharp intake of breath from the stewards. A whisper rippled through the crowd, too quiet for names.
"But… he's Tian blood," one murmured.
"Not anymore," came another voice.
The decree was carved into light above the water's surface, glowing cold and blue:
Tian Qiren.Threadless.Spiritual channels sealed.Status: Condemned.
The guards moved forward. Their faces were covered. Their footsteps didn't echo.
Lady Yueyin stepped back—not to shield her son, but to hide the trembling in her hands.
Qiren didn't resist.
He didn't look at his mother.
He didn't look at the elders, or the water, or the sky.
He just walked.
Through the ceremonial arch.
Down the path no one returned from.
But far beneath the river's surface—where light could not reach—a shard of obsidian pulsed once.
Not with brightness.
But with memory.
And deep in the sealed heart of the Ritual Hall, behind wards that had held for ten thousand years, a spirit bell rang once.
No one heard it.
Except the Mirror Elder, waiting in the ghostwillow grove.
And he smiled.