The Rift Sovereign's tendrils lashed like living lightning, each strike carving trenches into the earth and filling the air with the stench of scorched void. Lin Feng hung suspended in its grasp—black threads from his palms anchored deep into one massive limb, pulling essence in greedy, stuttering gulps while the creature tried to crush him.
Pain was a distant roar.
The Spirit Song fragment had ignited fully.
It no longer whispered. It **sang**.
And the song carried the entire lost history of Cloudveil Valley.
He saw it as clearly as if he stood there himself.
Cloudveil Valley was never meant to be "minor."
Nestled in the mist-shrouded peaks of the eastern continent's forgotten spine, the Valley had once been a sanctuary older than the Lin Clan's founding stones. Its people were not nobles in the usual sense. They were **Keepers of the First Note**—descendants of the primordial singers who had helped weave the world's qi into harmony during the Age of Shattering, when the heavens first cracked and the earliest gates appeared.
Their bloodline, the Spirit Song, was not mere healing or music.
It was **memory made melody**.
A single true singer could soothe a rampaging spirit beast, mend shattered meridians with a hummed refrain, or—most dangerously—**recall forgotten truths** from the world itself. Secrets the heavens had tried to bury. Prophecies the greater sects had erased.
Lin Mei (his mother) had been the last direct heir.
In the vision surging through him now, he saw her at seventeen—standing on the Valley's central Singing Terrace, white robes fluttering in perpetual mist, voice rising pure and clear as she performed the Rite of Veiling. The entire valley responded: clouds thickened into protective barriers, ancient spirit trees bloomed with silver leaves that could neutralize any poison, and the hidden vault beneath the terrace hummed in resonance.
But the Valley had enemies.
The **Heavenly Oversight Council**—a shadowy alliance of peak sects and immortal envoys—had long feared the Spirit Song. A bloodline that could remember what the heavens wanted forgotten threatened their control over the coming Apocalypse Cycles. Every few centuries, when the gates weakened the barriers between realms, the Council would move to silence the singers.
They came for Cloudveil Valley the year Lin Mei turned nineteen.
Not with armies. With subtlety.
A "diplomatic delegation" from the Lin Clan arrived under the guise of alliance talks. Among them was a young, charismatic heir—Lin Jian, Lin Feng's father. He had been sent not to court her, but to assess the threat.
He fell in love instead.
The two of them eloped the night the Council's assassins struck.
Lin Mei fled with nothing but the fragment of the First Note sealed in her blood and the half-finished lullaby her own mother had been singing when the blades fell.
She never told Lin Jian the full truth. Only that her home was gone.
She believed—hoped—that by burying herself in the Lin Clan, the Valley's secrets would die with her.
She was wrong.
In the vision, Lin Feng watched his mother's final conversation with Elder Zhu, years later.
The treasurer had cornered her in the outer courtyard, the same night he delivered the second dose of poison.
"You should have stayed in your little misty grave, Mei Lan," Zhu hissed. "The Council never forgot. They paid us handsomely to watch you. To make sure the Spirit Song never woke again. Your husband suspected the gates were artificial—engineered cycles to cull the weak and elevate the chosen. He was going to expose it. So we removed him. And now you… you've passed the fragment to that worthless boy."
Lin Mei had smiled through blood-flecked lips.
"Then the song will find him when he needs it most. And when it does… Cloudveil will rise again. Not as a valley. As a reckoning."
The vision shattered.
Lin Feng roared.
The black threads exploded with new power—infused by the Spirit Song. Silver notes, visible now as shimmering motes, danced along the devouring strands. The Rift Sovereign shrieked as its essence was not merely consumed but **harmonized**—purified and rewritten before being absorbed.
[Ding! Spirit Song Integration: 7%]
[New Ability Unlocked: Echoed Refrain – You may temporarily infuse devoured essence with the First Note, converting hostile energy into restorative qi or temporary protective veils.]
[Bloodline Revelation: Cloudveil Valley still exists. Hidden. Sealed behind layered mists that only a true singer can part. The surviving Keepers await the return of the Last Heir's blood.]
[Major Arc Seed Planted: "Veil of the First Note" – Future journey to Cloudveil Valley will reveal the true origin of the Eternal Dominion System and the Council's role in every apocalypse cycle.]
The Sovereign's body convulsed one final time and collapsed into dissolving violet mist.
Lin Feng dropped to the ground, knees buckling.
His meridians burned with new power, but his heart ached worse than any wound.
He understood now why the system punished mercy.
The Sovereign Path and the Spirit Song were oil and water—one devoured, the other remembered and healed. Forcing them together was tearing him apart from the inside.
And his mother had known.
She had chosen to plant both seeds in him anyway.
Hoping he would find balance.
Hoping he would become the bridge instead of the blade.
Yue Li burst from the mist—sword drawn, robes torn, blood on her cheek from a glancing blow she must have taken while covering Xiao Qing's escape.
She saw him on his knees.
Saw the silver motes still fading around him.
Saw the tears he hadn't realized were falling.
"Lin Feng—"
She dropped her sword and ran to him, sliding to her knees in the mud and blood.
He caught her before she could speak.
Pulled her against him so tightly it must have hurt.
"I saw it," he whispered into her hair. "Cloudveil Valley. My mother's home. It wasn't just healers. They were the ones who kept the world's true memories alive. The Council killed them to control the gates. My father died trying to warn everyone. And I… I'm carrying the last piece."
Yue Li's arms tightened around him.
"Then we go there," she said fiercely. "When the time comes. Together. You don't have to carry the song alone."
From the treeline, Xiao Qing watched—small hands pressed to her mouth, eyes shining with something like awe and heartbreak at once.
Lin Hao stood frozen on the command platform, face pale.
He had seen the silver light. Had felt the impossible harmony in the air.
For the first time, he understood that the "trash" was not rising.
He was **remembering**.
And what he remembered might unmake them all.
The second gate snapped shut with a final, thunderous crack.
But in Lin Feng's chest, the First Note continued to sing—soft, relentless, heartbreaking.
A lullaby for a dying world.
A promise that some veils were meant to be lifted, no matter the cost.
To be continued...