The moonlight dripped like silver tears across the temple ruins, coating the broken stones in pale serenity. Mo Lianyin knelt among the overgrown vines, sweat glistening on his forehead, fingers trembling from exhaustion. He had been awake for three days now, his body screaming for rest, but the scroll before him hummed with an ancient energy too dangerous to ignore.
It was the sixth of the Seven Forbidden Arts—The Whispering Flame.
"Once mastered, it does not burn… it consumes," he muttered, reciting the words he had memorized from the hidden tombs beneath Jadefire Monastery.
But unlike the other arts, this one demanded more than just spiritual energy. It asked for something personal.
Something living.
Lianyin's heart pounded. His fingers hovered over the ink-brushed seal, a circle etched in blood and soul. The temple around him stirred with windless whispers, as though the spirits of the long-dead cultivators had risen to witness his madness.
He had not come this far to turn back.
Not after everything.
Not after they took his brother.
Not after they sealed his heart.
With a deep breath, he sliced his palm open once more and let the blood drip into the center of the flame-marked seal. The moment it hit, a wave of searing heat burst upward, the circle igniting into a quiet, blue fire that danced like a living thing.
The flame spoke.
But not with words.
Images.
Memories.
Regrets.
The face of his master, lying lifeless in a pool of crimson.
The mocking smile of High Lord Feiyun as he held his brother's severed cultivation core.
The pleading eyes of Jianyu—the only friend who had dared to stay—before he was forced to betray him under the elder's spell.
"No more," Lianyin growled, teeth clenched. "I will not be a pawn."
The flame pulsed once… twice… then exploded outward in a ring of fire that did not scorch the ruins but seemed to burn through his very soul. Every secret he had buried, every fear, every suppressed grief—it was laid bare under the weight of the Whispering Flame.
His body convulsed as pain unlike anything he had known surged through him. It wasn't physical—it was memory, regret, guilt.
And something else.
Resolve.
When the fire settled, it did not fade.
It coiled around his arms like tattoos of light and ash. It flickered behind his eyes, changing the golden hue of his irises to an unnatural amber-blue, like twin lanterns lit by sorrow.
He had mastered it.
The sixth Forbidden Art.
He collapsed onto his knees, gasping for breath, the weight of it crushing but also awakening.
A voice rang out in the silence behind him.
"You're not supposed to be here."
Lianyin turned sharply.
A young girl stood at the edge of the ruins. No older than sixteen, hair like twilight and a cloak that shimmered with night sky. In her hands, she held a sword that pulsed with an energy he recognized instantly.
Starlight Essence.
"Who are you?" he rasped, too tired to rise, but fingers twitching toward his blade all the same.
She stepped forward, eyes wary. "My name is Meiran. I was sent to destroy the last heir of the Seven Forbidden Arts."
He laughed, bitter and breathless. "Then you're too late."
She stopped only a few feet away, sword raised. "Not yet."
But her hand trembled.
She had seen it too.
The fire in his eyes.
The curse woven into his bones.
"You're cursed," she whispered. "You're not even alive anymore, are you?"
Lianyin smiled faintly. "No. Not in the way that matters."
Silence settled between them, broken only by the chirping of insects and the crackle of the dying flames.
"You should run, girl," he said. "Before you become part of this story too."
Meiran did not lower her sword.
And Lianyin did not reach for his.
They simply watched one another, two threads of fate now tangled together, uncertain of whether to become allies or enemies.
But the fire had spoken.
And so had destiny.
The journey to the seventh and final Forbidden Art had begun.
And no one—no one—who crossed his path would remain untouched.