The air smelled of burning silk and spilled qi.
Yan Lingshu stumbled over the shattered remains of the Dawn Temple's Phoenix Gates, her white robes heavy with ash and blood. Around her, the golden spires that had once pierced the clouds now lay broken like discarded bones. The sacred chimes still rang in the wind—not with their usual clear tones, but with the hollow, broken sound of funeral bells.
She had been too late.
The Shadow Sovereign stood at the center of the ruin, his sword dripping with the luminous blood of her sect brothers and sisters. Feng Moyan. The name alone had once made entire cities surrender without a fight. Now she saw why.
His robes were black as a starless night, his long hair unbound and moving as if in some unfelt wind. But it was his eyes that stopped her breath—amber flecked with gold, exactly like her own. The mark of the Yan bloodline. The mark of the Dawn Temple's sacred lineage.
Impossible.
Ji Zhentan, the Grand Abbot, lay dying at the foot of the broken altar. His hand, slick with blood, seized her wrist. "Lingshu," he gasped. "The ritual. Now."
Her fingers closed around the Jade Needle of Fenghuang. Its surface was warm, pulsing faintly with the last remnants of her sect's power.
Feng Moyan turned.
And smiled.
The needle struck true—
—and the world shattered.
The sky split open like a wound. The earth heaved beneath her feet. Pain, white-hot and searing, tore through her meridians as her qi reversed, flooding her body with something dark and hungry.
When the light faded, Feng Moyan was gone.
But the air beside her stirred.
"You should have let me die," a voice murmured, so close she felt the words against her skin.
She turned.
Feng Moyan stood there, his form translucent as smoke, his eyes burning with the same eerie light. A ghost. A remnant. Bound to her.
The temple was gone. The war was over.
And the Shadow Sovereign's ghost smiled at her, slow and knowing. "Now, little phoenix," he said. "Let us see how deep the rabbit hole goes."