Zǐ Ruì did not move.
The voice had come from the gap between two collapsed towers ahead — ten meters, maybe twelve. Deep dark in there, the kind that wasn't just absence of light but presence of something else. The Hollow Fiend beside him had not unfrozen. Eight eyes fixed forward. Every wrong joint locked. It was making a sound below hearing, something Zǐ Ruì felt in his back teeth rather than his ears.
He had understood three words spoken in a dead language.
He filed that under things to think about later and tightened his grip on the iron blade.
"I heard you," he said.
His voice came out level. He was quietly grateful for that.
Silence from the gap. Then — movement. Not fast. Deliberately slow, the way something moves when it wants to be seen approaching rather than simply arrive. A shape separated itself from the dark between the towers and stepped into the bruised violet light of the Sunken World sky.
It was tall. Three meters, nearly four, and it walked upright on two legs the way a man walks — but the proportions were wrong in ways that accumulated. Too much torso. Arms that hung slightly too long. A head that sat on its neck with a heaviness that suggested the neck was working harder than it should. Its surface was stone-grey, textured like weathered rock, and across that surface ran lines of the same script as his brand mark — carved in, or grown into, he couldn't tell. Some of the lines still faintly luminous. Most dark.
Its face was a face. That was the unexpected part. Not smooth skin like the Hollow Fiend, not featureless — actual features. Heavy brow. Closed eyes set deep. A mouth that had the shape of a mouth that had spoken a great many things and remembered all of them.
It stopped five meters away.
The closed eyes opened.
White. Entirely white — no iris, no pupil, just flat white light the temperature of old bone.
It looked at him the way old things look at things they were expecting.
"You are late," it said again. Same dead language. Same impossible understanding in his chest. "The third seat has been empty for one thousand years. We had begun to consider the possibility that the line was finished."
"We," Zǐ Ruì said.
The creature's head tilted — slowly, just slightly, the way a very large thing moves when surprised by a small thing's quickness.
"The Wardens," it said. "Seven seats. Seven wardens. We maintain what was left for the inheritors to return to." A pause. "Some of us have maintained longer than others."
Zǐ Ruì looked at it. Looked at the script across its surface matching the script on the back of his hand. Looked at the Hollow Fiend beside him, still locked rigid, still making that sub-hearing sound.
"It's afraid of you," he said.
"Yes."
"But it positioned itself as my guard without being told. Before I entered the ruins."
The Warden's white eyes moved to the Hollow Fiend briefly. Something in its expression shifted — not warmth exactly. Recognition.
"The lesser ones remember the shape of authority even when they cannot name it. They arrange themselves correctly by instinct." It looked back at Zǐ Ruì. "As I said. The line was not finished."
Zǐ Ruì did not put the blade away. He adjusted his grip instead — loosened it slightly, blade angled down. Not threatening. Not surrendering. Somewhere between, in the space where thinking happens.
"My name is Zǐ Ruì. I am seventeen years old. Six hours ago I was a side-branch member of a mid-tier clan with no legacy technique, no training inheritance, and a formal deadline to either awaken an Earth Brand or be expelled." He paused. "I do not know what the Null Throne is. I do not know what these seats are. I do not know what happened one thousand years ago or why the First Emperor sealed whatever records exist about this Brand."
He looked directly into those flat white eyes.
"Tell me."
***
The Warden was quiet for long enough that Zǐ Ruì started to think it wouldn't answer.
Then it sat. Not collapsed — sat, deliberately, folding those too-long limbs beneath it until it was at eye level with him, which changed things in a way he hadn't expected. Made it feel less like a confrontation and more like something else.
"Before the current era," the Warden said, "there was another. You have no name for it because the people who named things then are gone, and the people who came after were not told. What you call the Heavenbreak — the cracking of the sky, the emergence of the Sunken World — was not a disaster."
"What was it?"
"A door opening. The Sunken World did not emerge from nothing. It was always here, beneath the surface of your world. What broke was the seal keeping it separate." The script on the Warden's surface pulsed once — slow, dim. "The Null Throne was the authority that maintained that seal. Seven inheritors, seven seats, seven points of anchoring. While the Throne was occupied, the boundary held. When the last inheritor died—"
"The sky cracked."
"The sky cracked," the Warden confirmed. "And the Hollow Fiends came through. And everything your kind has spent the last several decades fighting and dying over was, in its origin, the consequence of one empty seat."
Zǐ Ruì sat with that for a moment.
"One thousand years ago. The last inheritor died. And since then the seven Wardens have been—"
"Maintaining. Waiting. Keeping the seats intact so that if an inheritor appeared, there would be something to return to." Another pulse of the script. Dimmer this time. "It has been a long wait."
"All seven seats are empty?"
"Were. Until today."
Zǐ Ruì looked at the mark on his right hand. At the script that matched the lines carved into the Warden's stone-grey surface. The same language. The same shapes.
The third seat has found its heir.
Someone had sent Wuchen that letter. Someone had known before the Assessment happened what the Assessment would find.
"Who sealed the records?" he asked. "The First Emperor — why? If the Null Throne is what maintains the boundary between worlds, why would anyone seal knowledge of it?"
The Warden's white eyes held steady on him.
"Because," it said, "there are those who do not want the boundary maintained. Who have spent one thousand years ensuring the Sunken World remains open. Who would find the reappearance of a Null Throne inheritor—"
It stopped.
Its head turned. A slow rotation, northeast, toward a part of the ruined city Zǐ Ruì had not looked at yet.
The Hollow Fiend made the sub-hearing sound louder.
"Warden," Zǐ Ruì said quietly.
"They already know," the Warden said. Its voice had changed — same resonance, different weight underneath it. Urgency, maybe. Or something that had not felt urgency in a long time and was relearning the shape of it. "The moment your Brand activated, the moment the third seat registered an inheritor — they felt it. Every one of them."
"Who is they?"
———————————————————
ALERT — NULL THRONE SEAT #3
Inheritor signature now active.
———————————————————
Entities that have detected this signal:
— The Pale Court (Sunken World faction)
Estimated strength: [extreme]
Known goal: prevent Throne restoration
Time since detection: 4 minutes
Current distance: closing
— [REDACTED] (surface faction)
Classification: above this system's clearance
Known goal: [above this system's clearance]
Note: they were waiting for this signal.
They have been waiting for a long time.
Recommendation: this system has learned
from last time.
No recommendation issued.
———————————————————————
***
From the northeast, something screamed.
Not an animal sound. Not a human sound. Something that occupied the frequency between both and belonged to neither — a sound that carried intent the way a thrown stone carries direction. It landed against Zǐ Ruì's ears like a physical thing and the Hollow Fiend beside him dropped to both knees, head down, every joint shaking.
The Warden rose.
Standing again it was enormous — three meters of carved stone and old script, and the lines across its surface were all luminous now, every single one, pulsing in a rhythm that matched the beat of Zǐ Ruì's right hand where the mark was.
"The Pale Court," it said. "The first test of every returning Throne inheritor. They will send a Pale Devourer — an elite rank, stronger than anything your Assessment was designed to produce." It looked down at him. "You cannot fight it. Not yet. Your Brand has just awakened. You have no techniques, no developed abilities, nothing that matches its strength."
"Then what do I do?"
The Warden extended one stone-grey hand, palm up. On the palm, carved into the surface — the same script as his mark, as the seat inscription, as everything in this plaza — was a single symbol he didn't recognize. It began to glow.
"The first thing a new inheritor receives from their Warden is not power," it said. "It is knowledge. One thing. One piece of what was lost when the last Throne went dark. Enough to survive the first test."
Another scream from the northeast. Closer. The Hollow Fiend pressed its forehead to the ground.
"One thing," Zǐ Ruì said.
"One thing."
He looked at the glowing symbol on the Warden's palm. Looked northeast toward the sound that was still getting closer. Looked at the mark on his own hand.
He thought about the clan law page that had stopped being words. About seventeen years of careful nothing, practiced and refined. About the decision he had made before dawn with no words attached to it.
He reached out and pressed his marked hand to the Warden's palm.
The symbol transferred — not painfully, not dramatically. Just moved, the way water moves into a lower vessel. He felt it settle somewhere behind his sternum, in the place where the door had opened during the Assessment. Felt it click into something that had been waiting for it.
He understood what it was immediately.
Not a weapon. Not a combat technique. Something older and more fundamental — the same ability that had made the Hollow Fiend position itself, that had made the Warden sit down to speak to him as an equal, that had made the Dread Sovereign lower its head in the plaza.
But now he could use it intentionally.
Now he could aim it.
The scream came again, so close now that the black grass at the ruin's edge flattened in a wave toward him. Something enormous moving through the dead city without caring what was in its way.
Zǐ Ruì turned to face the northeast.
He put the iron blade away.
He would not be needing it for this.
***
In the Assessment Pavilion above the Sunken World, sixty-one disciples had woken from their First Descents. Each had been examined, recorded, assigned their Brand class and initial rank. The attendants were efficient. The Elders were thorough.
Two sections of the Array remained dark.
One was Zǐ Ruì's — scorched black, sigils ash, the stone beneath cracked in a perfect circle. The Elders had placed screens around it and were speaking in low voices about what to tell the clan council.
The other dark section was Zǐ Haoran's.
He had not woken up.
The attending physician had checked three times. His signs were stable — he was not in distress, not dying, not in the coma-state that preceded a failed Descent. He was simply still under, still inside, far longer than any normal First Descent should take.
Grand Elder Wuchen stood at the edge of Haoran's section and looked at the boy's face — slack, eyes moving rapidly beneath closed lids, brow furrowed in a way that suggested concentration rather than sleep.
Or witness.
Whatever Zǐ Ruì was doing inside the Sunken World, Zǐ Haoran had not yet looked away.